Hinduism has become a vital 'other' for Judaism over the past decades. The book surveys the history of the relationship from historical to contemporary times, from travellers to religious leadership. It explores the potential enrichment for Jewish theology and spirituality, as well as the challenges for Jewish identity.

This book explores past expressions of the Jewish interest in Hinduism in order to learn what Hinduism has meant to Jews living mainly in the 12th through the 19th centuries. India and Hinduism, though never at the center of Jewish thought, claim a place in its history, in the picture Jews held of the wider world, of other religions and other human beings. Each chapter focuses on a specific author or text and examines the literary context as well as the cultural context, within and outside Jewish society, that provided images and ideas about India and its religions. Overall the volume constructs a history of ideas that changed over time with different writers in different settings. It will be especially relevant to scholars interested in Jewish thought, comparative religion, interreligious dialogue, and intellectual history.

Rabbi on the Ganges: A Jewish-Hindu Encounter is the first work to engage the new terrain of Hindu-Jewish religious encounter. The book offers understanding into points of contact between the two religions of Hinduism and Judaism. Providing an important comparative account, the work illuminates key ideas and practices within the traditions, surfacing commonalities between the jnana and Torah study, karmakanda and Jewish ritual, and between the different Hindu philosophic schools and Jewish thought and mysticism, along with meditation and the life of prayer and Kabbalah and creating dialogue around ritual, mediation, worship, and dietary restrictions. The goal of the book is not only to unfold the content of these faith traditions but also to create a religious encounter marked by mutual and reciprocal understanding and openness.

This work provides an anthology of close textual readings and examinations of a wide range of topics by leading scholars in interreligious scholarship and Hindu-Jewish dialogue, offering innovative approaches to categories such as ritual, sacrifice, ethics, and theology while underscoring affinities between Hindu and Jewish philosophy and religion

This book stands at the crossroads between Jerusalem and Benares and opens a long awaited conversation between two ancient religious traditions. It represents the first serious attempt by a group of eminent scholars of Judaic and Indian studies to take seriously the cross-cultural resonances among the Judaic and Hindu traditions. The essays in the first part of the volume explore the historical connections and influences between the two traditions, including evidence of borrowed elements and the adaptation of Jewish Indian communities to Hindu culture. The essays in the second part focus primarily on resonances between particular conceptual complexes and practices in the two traditions, including comparative analyses of representations of Veda and Torah, legal formulations of dharma and halakhah, and conceptions of union with the Divine in Hindu Tantra and Kabbalah.

This book traces the history of Judaism back to its roots in India. Blamed by the nomadic Aryans (Devas and Christyanis) for two floods that destroyed the Indus Civilzation. The Yadava (Yahu-Deva) city dwellers, artisans, and farmers fled India for the Middle East and othe rparts of te world, taking with them and propagating their religion of Yishvara in their new homes. In the Middle East this Yishvara religion later became Judaism. The book gives many examples of the thousands of Hindu place names in various parts of the world and how Sanskirt influenced English. The author describes how the true meanings of the religious words of Yishvara, such as Prayer (Pray), Faith (Phath), Reverence (Rav-ara), Idolatry (Adaultar), etc., have changed so drastically that no one even knows what Religion is any more or what to do with it. Because of the computer age and other scientific innovations, Yishvara, the ancestor fo Judaism, has a powerful message to deliver to this millennium. When the reader finishes this book, he'll know more about religion than the Pope and the Dalai Lama.

In this comparative study of three modern religious movements, Lawrence A. Babb argues that thematic continuities exist between traditional Hinduism and its widely divergent modern expressions.