The Book of Blessings is an extraordinary and deeply poetic re-creation of Jewish prayer that offers new blessings, poems, and meditations for Sabbath, holiday, and everyday observance. Steeped in dialogue with rabbinic tradition, it is for those who seek a more contemporary, egalitarian approach to traditional liturgy. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Women's prayer groups have recently become a subject of controversy. These services, organized and attended by women who wish to become more actively involved in communal prayer while remaining faithful to Halakhah, are increasing in number and have come under attack from several points of view. In a source-filled and closely reasoned discussion of the obligations of women in regard to private and public prayer. Torah study, and aliyot, Rabbi Weiss analyzes the relevant passages in the Talmud and Rishonim. He concludes that there are no halakhic impediments to the functioning of such prayer groups. The expanded edition includes a section on the reading of the Megillah for women.

In the traditional Jewish liturgy, a man praises God daily for not having been made a gentile, a woman, or a slave. Manuscript editions of the Babylonian Talmud teach that recitation of this prayer is obligatory for all Jewish men. Despite the fact that these blessings have been officially part of the daily morning liturgy for more than a thousand years, the propriety of whether and how to recite them is an ongoing subject of debate. Yoel Kahn offers the first longitudinal study of the evolving language, usage, and interpretation of a Jewish liturgical text over its entire 2000 year life-span.

Isaac’s Fear is a wide-ranging study of a Hebrew encyclopedia of Judaism by Isaac Lampronti, a rabbi and physician from eighteenth-century Ferrara, in Italy; this is the first encyclopedia of Judaism, with entries on thought and praxis. The book’s eight chapters are previously published studies. Isaac’s Fear represents the attempt to synthesize modern science and religious tradition, a fundamental issue then and in our own day. Encyclopedia entries illuminate the society and culture of early modern Italy, its Jewish community and the intellectual life of the author and his contemporaries.

In the history of Jewish thought, no individual scholar has exercised more influence than Maimonides (1138-1204) philosopher and physician, legal scholar and communal leader. This collection of papers, originating at the 2007 EAJS colloquium, places primary emphasis on this influence not on Maimonides himself but the many movements he inspired. Using Maimonideanism as an interpretive lens, the authors of this volume representing a variety of fields and disciplines develop new approaches to and fresh perspectives on the peculiar dynamic of Judaism and philosophy. Focusing on social and cultural processes as well as philosophical ideas and arguments, they point toward an original reconceptualization of Jewish thought.

In The Religious Cultures of Dutch Jewry an international group of scholars examines aspects of religious belief and practice of pre-emancipation Sephardim and Ashkenazim in Amsterdam, Curaçao and Surinam, ceremonial dimensions, artistic representations of religious life, and religious life after the Shoa. The origins of Dutch Jewry trace back to diverse locations and ancestries: Marranos from Spain and Portugal and Ashkenazi refugees from Germany, Poland and Lithuania. In the new setting and with the passing of time and developments in Dutch society at large, the religious life of Dutch Jews took on new forms. Dutch Jewish society was thus a microcosm of essential changes in Jewish history.