Originally published in Zvia Ginor, ed., Yakar Le’Mordechai: Jubilee Volume in Honour of Rabbi Mordecai Waxman. Essays on Jewish Thought, American Judaism, and Jewish-Christian Relations (Ktav Publishing House, Inc.: Temple Israel of Great Neck, NY 1998)   In yeshiva circles they say: ‘One does not die because one has a difficulty in a given text.’…...

Originally published as entry in the Blackwell Companion to Jewish Culture: from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (Blackwell Publishing: 1990) or EJ. vol. 12: 268-9. Montefiore, Claude Joseph Goldsmid (1858-1938) Theologian and founder of Liberal Judaism in England. Montefiore, scion of a prominent Anglo-Jewish family, studied at Balliol College, Oxford, where he came under…...

In this issue we have transcribed discussions from two Roundtables. The former was held in London, England, among leading specialists of a mixture of disciplines. The group included biblical scholars, linguistic experts, an eminent archaeologist and a psychologist. The latter brings back old friends who have appeared in these pages before, and who now round…...

Originally published in Moshe Hallamish, ed., Ish Bi-Gevurot: Studies in Jewish Heritage and History Presented to Rabbi Alexandre Safran   In tractate Bava Batra of the Babylonian Talmud (89b) three baraitot are quoted, dealing with fraudulent practices when buying and selling. The third baraita reads: ‘Our rabbi taught: the strike may not be made thick…...

Originally published in Gevuroth haromah: Jewish studies offered at the eightieth birthday of Rabbi Moses Cyrus Weiler. Ed. Ze’ev W. Falk (Jerusalem: Mesharim, 1987), xvii-xxxi [Engl. section]. Republished in L. Jacobs. Judaism and Theology: Essays on the Jewish Religion (London; Portland, OR: Vallentine, Mitchell, 2005), 102-16.   An attempt is made in this essay to…...

Originally published in The Solomon Goldman Lectures, vol. v, ed. Byron L. Sherwin and Michael Carasik (Chicago: Spertus College of Judaica Press, 1990: 45-55) Based on lecture delivered at Spertus College, 27 Oct 1985   The kabbalists and the Hasidim had what we would call today a ‘love-hate relationship’ with Maimonides. On the one hand,…...

Originally published in Modern Judaism 5.1 (Feb. 1985): 95-104. A major theme in Scholem’s writings on Hasidism is the relationship between Hasidic thought and Kabbalah. All the early Hasidic works use Kabbalistic terms and vocabulary, the Hasidic masters undoubtedly believing in the Kabbalah as revealed truth. Yet Hasidism is not simply a later development of…...

Originally published in HUCA 42 (1971): 185-96. Republ. in L. Jacobs. Rabbinic thought in the Talmud. London; Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2005: 42-54. Every student of the Babylonian Talmud is aware that not infrequently in this work a ruling is given by an amora and the very same ruling is then quoted from a baraita…...

Originally published in Masorti 3 The very brief entry ‘Birthday’ in the Encyclopaedia Judaica (vol. iv, p. 1054) simply states: ‘The celebration of birthdays is unknown in traditional Jewish ritual. A comparatively late exception, however, is the bar mitzvah and the bat mitzvah. The only reference to a birthday in the Bible is that celebrated…...

Originally published in the Masorti Journal, no. 2 One often hears arguments about which of the aliyot confers greater privilege. According to the Talmud (Gittin 59a-b), there was so much contention over the aliyot in ancient times, members of the congregations vying with one another to be called up first, that rules were laid down…...

Originally published as an entry in the Blackwell Companion to Jewish Culture: from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, ed. Glenda Abramson (Oxford; Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Reference, 1989), 19. Repr. in new ed. of this work, Encyclopedia of modern Jewish culture [‘EMJC’], vol. 1 (London; New York: Routledge, 2005), 18. [Bibliography updated.] Rabbi, thinker, and…...

Originally published in Seymour Siegel (ed.), Conservative Judaism and Jewish Law (New York: Rabbinical Assembly, 1977), pp. 111-22. Three distinct attitudes are possible with regard to the challenge of Bible criticism and its implications for Jewish observance, and each of these has found protagonists among Jews in this century. There is the school which accepts the…...

Originally published in JJS 25, 3 (Winter 1974), 398-411. Nedarim 27a-b; Ketubot 2b-3a; Gitin 30a, Gitin 34a The phenomenon of parallel sugyot in the Babylonian Talmud is sufficiently well known and has received scholarly attention. [1] Most of the instances noted, however, are, in reality, those in which the same sugyah has been recorded in…...

Originally published in the New York Jewish Spectator in November 1952. In a well-known passage, Pepys, the diarist describes with disdainful mockery his visit to a Synagogue on Simchat Torah and his disgust on observing the antics of the congregants in the House of God. The Jewish reaction to criticism of this kind is to point…...