Originally published in Religious Studies 11: 3 (Sept. 1975), pp. 377-378. Orlinsky, Harry M., Essays in Biblical Culture and Bible Translation Pp. xv 462. (Ktav Publishing House, New York, 1974.) $15.00. The Bible, in addition to being a great literature in its own right, is, of course, the sacred scriptures of Judaism and Christianity. Until very…...
The Halakhic Process and The Rabbinical Assembly of Israel Law Committee Responsa 5746
By Joel Roth, A Centennial Publication of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. New York, 1986. The Rabbinical Assembly of Israel Law Committee Responsa 5746 (Heb.), Committee Members: Rabbi David Golinkin, Rabbi Reuven Hammer, Rabbi Theodore Friedman. Jer., 1986. Since its inception Conservative Judaism has been committed to the halacha, that is, to the traditional…...
Hans Jonas: Philosophical Essays
From Ancient Creed to Technological Man Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974. pp. xviii, 349. Reviewed by Rabbi Louis Jacobs in the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 7: 3 (Fall 1976), 454. Hans Jonas has gathered together in a single volume a number of essays, previously published between 1965 and 1973, in the two…...
Simon Greenberg: The Ethical in the Jewish and American Heritage
Simon Greenberg, The Ethical in the Jewish and American Heritage, vol. 4 in the Moreshet Series, Studies in Jewish History, Literature and Thought xvi+327 pp., Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York, 1977, $15 The first and longest chapter in this book discusses the general question of the relationship between religion and ethics with particular…...
Emil L. Fackenheim, ‘To Mend the World: foundations of future Jewish thought’
Originally published in JJSO 25: 1 (June 1983), p. 63. Emil L. Fackenheim, To Mend the World: Foundations of Future Jewish Thought (Schocken Books, New York, 1982) Reviewed by Rabbi Louis Jacobs In addition to his general place in contemporary Jewish philosophy, Professor Fackenheim is well known as one of the foremost Holocaust theologians. He has…...
Max Kadushin, ‘The Rabbinic Mind’
Max Kadushin, The Rabbinic Mind, 2nd edition, with an appendix by Simon Greenberg, New York: Blaisdell, 1965, 414 pp.; $8.50. In Conservative Judaism, Volume XX, Number 1, Fall 1965 Rabbi Naftali Ropshitzer is said to have declared that, before he was born, an angel showed him two contradictory lists of rules for the conduct of…...
Neusner, Jacob, ‘A History of the Mishnaic Law of Purities – Parts 12-14’
Orginally published in BSOAS 40: 2, pp. 64-68. Jacob Neusner, A History of the Mishnaic Law of Purities. Parts 12-14 (Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity, Vol. 6.) xvi, 230 ; xvi, 226 ; xviii, 235 pp. Leiden : E. J. Brill, 1976. Guilders 288. Solomon Schechter once wrote to a friend: ‘It is some time since I…...
Byron L. Sherwin: Living in the Image of God
Jewish Ethics for the Twenty-First Century – Syracuse University Press To my esteemed. colleague Rabbi Doctor Louis Jacobs of London, I am profoundly indebted for his thoughtful and thought-provoking foreword to this volume. For over thirty years, I have continued to learn from him, mostly through reading his erudite and stimulating works. For this reason,…...
James E. Priest, ‘Governmental and Judicial Ethics in the Bible and Rabbinic Literature’
Originally published in Expository Times 92:5 (1981), p. 151. LAW AND JUSTICE An interesting feature of contemporary religious thought is the acknowledgement of the important role law and justice play in Judaism and through Judaism has been instrumental in fashioning the attitudes of Western man so that the ancient insights might be helpful even for those…...
Current Theological Literature: Jewish Perspectives
Originally published in Judaism, 18:1 (Winter 1969), pp. 78-83. It is the unhappy experience of the writer of a column such as this to suffer the embarrassment of a lack of riches, so few are the books devoted to Jewish theology in the Jewish world today. In a number of recent collections of essays, however, there…...
Bernard S. Jackson, Theft in Early Jewish Law
Clarendon Press: Oxford University Press, 1972, pp. xviii, 316, £5.50 Dr. Jackson traces with great erudition the development of the laws of theft in all their ramifications from the earliest pentateuchal code, the Book of the Covenant, down to the end of the tannaitic period. Philological and form-critical methods are used and the laws are…...
Richard Barnett (ed.), ‘The Sephardi Heritage’
Essays on the history and cultural contribution of the Jews of Spain and Portugal, vol. i: The Jews in Spain and Portugal Before and After the Expulsion of 1492 (Vallentine Mitchell, London, 1971), 639pp, £4.75 The World Sephardi Federation, assisted by the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture in 1963, decided that a fitting way to…...
David B. Ruderman, ‘The World of the Renaissance Jew: The Life and Thought of Abraham ben Mordecai Farissol’
Originally published in The Heythrop Journal, A Quarterly Review of Philosophy and Theology, 25: 1 (January 1984), pp. 342-3. The World of the Renaissance Jew: The Life and Thought of Abraham ben Mordecai Farissol. By David B. Ruderman. pp. xvii, 265, Cincinatti, Hebrew Union College Press, 1981, $20.00. Abraham Farissol (1452-1528) was born in Avignon but spent…...
E.J. Fisher and D.F. Polish (eds.), ‘The Formation of Social Policy in the Catholic and Jewish Traditions’
Originally published in The Heythrop Journal, A Quarterly Review of Philosophy and Theology, 23: 3 (July 1982), pp. 342-3. The Formation of Social Policy in the Catholic and Jewish Traditions. Edited by E.J. Fisher and D.F. Polish. pp.xiv, 194, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1980, £5.40 This small but novel and important book is…...