Writing back in 1888, Adolf Neubauer, the father of modern scholarship on the Lost Tribes, warned that “It would be lost time . . . to trouble ourselves about the identification of this stream.” Neubauer was referring, of course, to the Sambatyon River, the mythical waterway that, according to common understanding, rests each Sabbath and separates missing Jews—the ten lost tribes or others—from their brethren, and indeed from the known world. Six days each week, according to the legend, the river runs so powerfully that neither these tribes nor their seekers can cross it; on the Sabbath, either natural wonders or halakhic restrictions prevent them from doing so as well. Thus, whether showcasing the sheer power and solemnity of the seventh day or the piety of the isolated (or general) community, the Sambatyon legend certifies that only in the messianic age will this lost population be restored to the rest of the Jewish people.

A strange statement appears in Maimonides' (d. 1204) code of Jewish law, the Mishneh Torah. When dealing with prohibited marriages, Maimonides writes that a convert from among the gentiles, including the seven Canaanite nations (Deuteronomy 7:3), may marry within the Jewish community. Originally there were some exceptions to this in regard to four nations: Ammon, Moab, Egypt, and Edom. However, Sennacherib, King of Assyria, commingled all the nations, and since then these four nations have been mixed up with all the other permitted nations, and they have all become permitted. “Thus a convert these days, whether he be an Edomite, an Egyptian, an Ammonite, a Moabite, a Kushite, or any other nation, whether male or female, is permitted to enter the community [of Israel, i.e. to marry within the community] immediately.”

Researching the translation and commentary of the tenth century Karaite scholar and exegete Yefet ben ʿElī on the Book of Proverbs, numerous statements that seemed to ring with egalitarianism were found. Some of these statements found in Yefet's commentary on wisdom literature and biblical narrative will be examined in this article. One case in which he speculates on biblical Hebrew syntax will also be examined. Gender equality in Yefet's work is anchored in the principle of logical inference, also known as analogy, qiyās, which served as one of the three major sources for the determination of Karaite halakhah. This article includes also a brief discussion of the role of qiyās in Karaite halakhah on marriage, divorce, and inheritance laws.

While discussing the rites and customs of burial and mourning in his book Tashbeẓ katan, the early fourteenth-century Rabbi Shimshon ben Ẓadok made the following remark:

A trenchant and rather paradoxical Hasidic saying asserts the following: He who believes the tall tales told by the Hasidim may be a fool, but he who does not believe them is a heretic. It turns out that many secular writers have in fact read and examined Hasidic tales sympathetically, without necessarily regarding them as true. But what exactly is the relationship of such non-believers to Hasidism? Can a secularist genuinely connect with texts that seem to be totally immersed in their religious context and driven by specifically religious interests? Can a reader who repudiates the assumptions of the original author (and even of his intended audience) nevertheless engage in a personally uplifting or even spiritually-inspired reading of such texts? Is there a spiritual dimension capable of traversing the barriers of religious doctrine, and penetrating the inner world of the heretic?

The controversy surrounding Hannah Arendt's reportage on the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem and the subsequent book cannot be underestimated. For Arendt personally, the trial was the decisive event in the second half of her life and amounted to nothing less than a second exile. On the world stage, it marked not only a critical turning point in international consciousness of the Holocaust, but also both initiated and reflected a critical shift in intra-Jewish representations and expression. Arendt's book could in fact be considered as a master text for Judaic studies in the second half of the twentieth century. To mention two of many possible consequences, the controversy may be seen as a pivot point from which the culture of the public intellectuals of New York argued itself out of the spotlight, as well as a primary catalyst for two of the most significant works on the Holocaust penned by women: Lucy Davidowicz's The War against the Jews (1975) and Leni Yahil's The Holocaust (1987).