Science deeply challenges classical descriptions of the human person as free and as spirit. This survey of contemporary neuroscience and evolutionary biology explores why these challenges have arisen. At the same time it finds in the religious dimension of human existence powerful resources for spea...

This study redresses the dearth of resources dealing with the sabbath in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. While focusing on a key passage in Exodus, it also incorporates comparative data from elsewhere in the ancient Near East and explores inner-biblical and other developments of the study's themes. ...

Interest in literature on wisdom derived from Israel and ancient Middle Eastern cultures has increased considerably in recent decades. Research findings from archaeological, theological, and cultural studies illustrate how sages decisively shaped the literature and language of a culture. Their influ...

On the threshold to modernity, Hebrew assumed new and contested meanings. It was no longer studied as a language of divine origin, but written and re-written as the language of the Jewish nation as the diaspora developed. German text....

This book analyses religious work for the marginalized from the perspective of citizenship and otherness. The articles try to answer the question of whether religion makes a contribution to a growing recognition of human rights in society or if current philantropic and religious work for the margina...

This volume is a festschrift in honor of Steven Fraade, the Mark Taper Professor of the History of Judaism at Yale University. The contributions to the volume, written by colleagues and former students of Professor Fraade, reflect many of his scholarly interests. The scholarly credentials of the contributors are exceedingly high. The volume is divided into three sections, one on Second Temple literature and its afterlife, a second on rabbinic literature and rabbinic history, and a third on prayer and the ancient synagogue. Contributors are Alan Applebaum, Joshua Burns, Elizabeth Shanks Alexand...