Originally published in Judaism Today, Spring 1998. Jeffrey S. Gurock & Jacob S. Schachter, A Modern Heretic and a Traditional Community: Modechai Kaplan, Orthodoxy and Modern Judaism. Columbia University Press, 1997. pp. 256, £32.00. This book is neither a biography of the seminal, Jewish thinker, Mordecai Kaplan, nor an intensive study of the theological ideas for…...

Originally published in Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought, 25:4 (1976). Concepts of Judaism. By ISAAC BREUER. Selected and edited by Jacob S. Levinger. Jerusalem. Israel Universities Press, 1974. 348 pp. Reviewed by LOUIS JACOBS PROFESSOR LEVINGER believes, with justice, that the writings of Isaac Breuer (1883-1946), grandson, and exponent of the ideas,…...

Originally published in Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought, 37:2 (1988). In this book the renowned Talmudic scholar, Professor David Weiss Halivni, offers a wide-ranging thesis, buttressed throughout by the meticulous attention to detail typical of his much admired Sources and Traditions, together with which it will undoubtedly take its place as an…...

Originally published in Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought, 31:2 (1982). A Contemporary View of the Mediaevalists Maimonides and Aquinas: A Contemporary Appraisal. By Jacob Haberman. Foreword by Professor Joseph L. Blau. New York. KTAV, 1979. xx + 289 pp. This very erudite book, written in a racy style by a remarkable polymath,…...

Originally published in Journal of Jewish Studies 46. Yaakov Elman, Authority and Tradition: Toseftan Baraitot in Talmudic Babylonia. KTAV, Hoboken NJ, 1994. xiv, 328 pp. $39.50. Jack N. Lightstone, The Rhetoric of the Babylonian Talmud, Its Social Meaning and Context. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Waterloo, Ont., 1994. xiv, 317 pp. $28.50. These two books contribute to the…...

Originally published in Journal of Jewish Studies 7:1/2. Abraham Weiss, Le-heqer ha-Talmud—The Talmud and its Development, Philip Feldheim, New York, 1954, pp. 446, price $5. The Babylonian Talmud (like the Palestinian) is strangely silent on the subject of its own composition. Who were its final redactors? What role did they play? By which process did the Talmud…...

Originally published in Journal of Jewish Studies 46. Yitzhak D. Gilat, Studies in the Development of the Halakha (in Hebrew). Bar-llan University Press, Ramat-Gan, 1992.417 pp. Bernard Jackson (ed.), The Jewish Law Annual, Volumes IX and X (1991-1992). Harwood Academic Publishers, New York. 300 and 302 pp. £65.00 per volume. Walter Jacob and Moshe Zemer, Rabbinic-Lay Relations…...

Originally published in Journal of Jewish Studies 46. Samuel Tobias Lachs, Humanism in Talmud and Midrash. Associated University Presses, London, 1993. 150 pp. £24.50. Lachs squarely admits in the Preface that his book is selective, an anthology of statements in the Talmud and Midrash which reflect, in the terms used by the author, an anthropocentric rather than…...

Originally published in Journal of Jewish Studies 47:1. Gloria Wiederkehr-Polack, Eliezer Zweifel and the Intellectual Defense of Hasidism. KTAV Publishing House, Hoboken, N.J., 1995. x, 254 pp. $39.50. Daniel Meijers, Ascetic Hasidism in Jerusalem: The-Guardian-of-the-Faithful Community of Mea Shearim. E. J. Brill, Leiden, 1992. vii, 142 pp. £33.75/$51.50. Nowadays, in addition to the many studies of Hasidic…...

Originally published in Journal of Jewish Studies 45:1. Lionel Kochan, The Jewish Renaissance and Some of its Discontents (Sherman Studies of Judaism in Modern Times). Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 1992. x, 125 pp. £35.00. The Jewish Renaissance referred to in this book is the astonishing re-creation and re-building of Jewish life after the Holocaust,…...

Originally published in Journal of Jewish Studies 45:1. Basil F. Herring, Jewish Ethics and Halakhah for Our Time: Sources and Commentary, volume 2 (The Library of Jewish Law and Ethics, vol. XVII). Yeshiva University Press, New York, 1989. xxvi, 279 pp. $19.95. Aaron Kirschenbaum, Equity in Jewish Law: Beyond Equity: Halakhic Aspirations in Jewish Civil Law (The…...

Originally published in Journal of Jewish Studies 45:1. Naftali Loewenthal, Communicating the Infinite: The Emergence of the Habad School. University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1990. xi, 336 pp. £31.95/545.95. Roman A. Foxbrunner, Habad: The Hasidism of R. Shneur Zalman of Lyady. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa and London, 1992. xi, 307 pp. Rachel Elior, The…...

Originally published in Journal of Jewish Studies 41:2. Abraham R. Besdin (ed.), Man of Faith in the Modern World: Reflections of the Rav, vol. 2 (adapted from the lectures of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik). Ktav, Hoboken, New Jersey, 1989. 164 pp. $15.95. Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik is renowned throughout the Jewish world as Halakhist, thinker and orator…....

Originally published in Journal of Jewish Studies 41:2. David Birnbaum, God and Evil: A Jewish Perspective. Ktav, Hoboken, NJ, 1989. xxi, 266 pp. $20.00. Birnbaum surveys the various theodicies advanced by Jewish thinkers in ancient, medieval and modern times (especially in connection with the Holocaust), subjects these to criticism and then offers his own which, he claims,…...