A bit more than a quarter of a century has passed since the publication of Thomas Thompson's landmark The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives, inaugurating what has been called the Copenhagen School, typified by the works of Thompson and Niels Peter Lemche, who now both teach at the University of Copenhagen. Few works have changed the face of biblical scholarship so completely. In conjunction with John Van Seters' Abraham in History and Tradition, Thompson's book sounded the death knell for those who insisted on the historicity of the patriarchal period, a relatively common position up to that point, especially in America. By illustrating that details of the Genesis narratives reflect first rather than second millennium institutions, contrary to the claims of Albright, Gordon, Speiser, and others, Thompson began a revolution in biblical scholarship.

Literary and historical evidence of religious disputes that took place between Jews and Christians during the Middle Ages exists in a variety of sources. Hebrew manuscripts and Latin documents concerning such encounters survive from the disputations that were held in Paris (1240), Barcelona (1263), and Tortosa (1413–1414). Some of these were written by participants themselves after the events described. Some were produced by Christian authors as protocols, either during or after the disputations. Significant discrepancies concerning the same dispute are to be found between the Christian and Jewish accounts.See Y. Baer, “Towards a Critique of the Disputes Between Rabbi Yeḥiel of Paris and Rabbi Moses ben Naḥman,” (Hebrew) Tarbiz, 2 (1931), pp. 172-187; Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1966), II, pp. 176-181; Ḥ. Merḥavia, The Talmud in the Eyes of Christianity: the View of Post-Biblical Jewish Literature in the Medieval Christian World, 500–1248 (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute, 1970), pp. 227–348; R. Chazan, Barcelona and Beyond: The Disputation of 1263 and its Aftermath (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 1–80; J. Riera I Sans, La Crònica en Hebreu de la Disputa de Tortosa (Barcelona: Fundacio Salvador Vives Casajuana, 1974). Other material on this subject exists in the literature of the Christian Adversus Iudaeos (dating from late antiquity and the early Middle Ages) and in the Jewish polemical literature (dating from the twelfth century). Pioneer studies have also recently appeared using the records of the Spanish Inquisition, in which much evidence was found concerning such disputes.See E. Gutwirth, “Gender, History and the Judeo-Christian Polemic,” in O. Limor and G. G. Stroumsa, eds., Contra Judaeos (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1996), pp. 257–278.

The second Aliyah brought a large number of Hebrew authors to Palestine, some of them among the greatest Hebrew writers of all time.U. N. Gnessin (1907), David Shimoni (1909), S. Y.Agnon (1907), Y. H. Brenner (1909), and Dvora Baron (1911). Those who remained endured the privations of the First World War, which became particularly severe throughout its final year, but few of them wrote about it. In fact, within the large corpus of belletristic writing in Hebrew and Yiddish at the time, there is little devoted to the Jewish experience in the First World War. Many critics and scholars of the period, in addition to later commentators, affirmed (and some lamented) that the output of Jewish war writing was modest in Yiddish as well as Hebrew.See Avner Holtzman, Avigdor Hameiri vesifrut hamilḥamah. Maעarakhot, 1986, p. 33; Ḥanan Ḥever, ed., U.Z Greenberg: taעarukhah bamilءat shemonim. Jerusalem: Beit hasefarim haleءumi vehaءuniversitaءi, 1977, p.17. Nonetheless there exists a substantial body of such work about which little is known to this day. At the time, it seems, Hebrew literature had to serve greater aims than the individual responses of soldiers in a foreign war soon after the Balfour Declaration. The most powerful responses were, with some notable exceptions,Notably, Uri Zvi Greenberg, Tchernichowski, and Hameiri and their works written some time after the events or by writers, such as Y. H. Brenner, who were not combatants but were victimized by the war nonetheless.

Mary Douglas. Leviticus as Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. xv, 280 pp; Hyam Maccoby. Ritual and Morality: The Ritual Purity System and Its Place in Judaism. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1999. xii, 231 pp.

These are good times for those who are fascinated by the book of Leviticus. While denigrations of the Israelite purity system and priestly traditions are still to be found, there seems to be an increasing willingness to give Leviticus the benefit of some doubt, considering it to be something other than a dry, rigid, ritualistic, and hierarchical code. These two books argue forcefully, convincingly—and quite differently—against many previous misunderstandings of Leviticus. What is more, we can perhaps even begin to speak of an emerging consensus on one important issue that both books deal with: the nature of ritual impurity. More and more scholars seem to be saying what these two are: that ritual impurity is a complex ritual structure, not a blunt instrument of social control. But if the evaluation of Leviticus in general (and ritual impurity in particular) is positive in both of these books, they share little else. It is difficult to conceive of two scholarly books with as many overlapping concerns, published in the same year and country, which differ so much with regard to scope, structure, and method. They differ too, in the end, with regard to both quality and importance.

This work is an updated revision of Kalimi's Zur Geschichtsschreibung des Chronisten, published in 1995 in the BZAW series, which in turn is based on his Hebrew University dissertation. Kalimi begins by outlining his (mainstream) positions on central questions concerning Chronicles, such as its date, unity, and genre: issues that are crucial before developing his thesis. The bulk of the book comprises nineteen chapters, each dealing with a particular literary or historical principle, such as harmonization, measure for measure, chiasm, inclusio, and use of literary patterning. A final chapter deals with inconsistencies of various sorts, and an “Afterward” discusses how the book has advanced scholarship on Chronicles.

Did the God of Israel have a wife? Posed in the context of monotheistic Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity this is, of course, a nonsensical question. However, even in the heavily edited Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible there remain traces of an earlier stage of belief in which Yahweh was accompanied by other beings. Among these para-human figures is Asherah, the form of whose name clearly indicates her feminine gender. In recent years numerous scholars have addressed the ticklish question of the original relationship between this lady and the Lord of Hosts, a problem that involves probing into the prehistory of the Hebrew scriptures.

The field of Aramaic studies has witnessed a steady stream of major developments in recent years. Important new volumes include M. Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Palestinian Jewish Aramaic (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 1990); J. Hoftijzer and K. Jongeling, Dictionary of the North-West Semitic Inscriptions, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1995); and T. Muraoka and B. Porten, A Grammar of Egyptian Aramaic (Leiden: Brill, 1998).1 Two classics have been reprinted by Eisenbrauns: J. Payne Smith, A Compendious Syriac Dictionary (Oxford, 1903; repr. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1998); and T. Nöldeke, Compendious Syriac Grammar (London, 1904; repr. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2001). In addition, the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon web site has been launched (http://cal1.cn.huc.edu/index.html), with various databases currently available and with the promise for more online resources.

Fox's objective is “to refine current definitions of titles of royal functionaries and their roles in the monarchic state-organization and to create a tentative reconstruction of the government structure” (p. 269). Secondarily, she questions whether “Israelite officialdom and administrative practices were modeled after foreign prototypes” (p. 276f).

The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years serves as a kind of handbook for the study of the synagogue in antiquity. It discusses every major site, every major text and most major issues and secondary sources. It is indeed a worthy successor to Samuel Krauss' Synagogale Altertümer (Berlin and Vienna), published in 1922. Comparison of this volume with that of Krauss shows the intention of each author to be inclusive of all that was known about the synagogue in an encyclopedic fashion. This comparison also shows how much more we know of the ancient synagogue than Krauss did. This is crudely expressed by sheer number of pages in each volume. While Krauss produced a book of 470 pages in length, Levine's magnum opus is a whopping 748 pages. Archaeological discoveries in Israel and the Mediterranean basin, as well as texts discovered or published (most significantly from the Cairo Genizah) have greatly increased our sources for the history of the synagogue. In addition, new methods for the study of ancient Judaism, its literature, and its material culture have facilitated a complete rethinking of the history of the synagogue.

The Battles of Armageddon is a meticulous chronicle of the dozens of military clashes over the centuries that have given an aura of apocalyptic expectation to a small patch of valley in northern Israel. Television-evangelists and Bible-thumpers all over the world continue to whip up their followers with nightmarish visions of nuclear disaster and divine judgment linked to the ominous word “Armageddon.” But for those who care to dig a little deeper, Eric H. Cline of The George Washington University masterfully shows us that a long, violent, and tangled history lies behind that name. Cline systematically reveals the millennium-long steps by which certain arbitrary topographic realities, unchanging military technologies, and the relative geographical positions of the great Near Eastern empires made the site of Megiddo—and indeed all of the Jezreel Valley—a tragically tiresome cockpit of war.

The religious poetry of Judaism turned a corner with a prolific hymnist from seventh-century Palestine called Eleazar birabbi Kallir (or Killir). Modern studies of medieval Jewish liturgical poetry, or Piyyut, have increased considerably and many manuscripts and fragments have been discovered in several Genizah collections, offering new material on the tradition of classical hymnists from the period of late antiquity and early Islam. Yosse ben Yosse, Yannai, Shimעon bar Megas, Yehudah, Kallir, and Yohanan ha-Kohen are the outstanding names of synagogue poets who composed their hymns for the weekly sabbath and the festivals, predominantly in Palestinian-Jewish communities.

In The Sinner and the Amnesiac, Alan Goshen-Gottstein returns to the question of rabbinic biography with a comprehensive study of all traditions about Elisha ben Abuya, also known as Aher, “the Other.” (One chapter is devoted to the few traditions of R. Eleazar b. Arakh, a sage who reportedly forgot all his knowledge of Torah.) Goshen-Gottstein also provides a thorough summary of the secondary literature on Elisha, whom scholars variously have portrayed as a mystic, gnostic, apostate, philosophical atheist, and heretic. He appends a complete Hebrew version of the main Bavli story of Elisha including all manuscript variants.

Avi Sagi and Zvi Zohar have, in recent years, made great contributions to Jewish studies, in particular the study of halakhah. In their many individual publications they have mined the often ignored halakhic literature in order to offer perspectives in a variety of areas. They have also jointly published a number of works, including a very learned study on conversion (Giyur ve–Zehut Yehudit). In their latest work, Circles of Jewish Identity: A Study in Halakhic Literature, they follow the path set out in their previous work by asking what the assumptions and conclusions of halakhic literature tell us about issues of Jewish identity, such as how to define it; whether it is immutable; and, if not immutable, whether one's Jewish identity can be removed against one's will. Their discussion proceeds from the relevant talmudic texts, through the medieval period, up until the most recent responsa. This chronological approach is helpful in charting the development of concepts.

The title Medieval English Jews and Royal Officials whets the appetite for a rich exploration of the general policies of the English crown towards the Jews. What were the contradictions in royal policies from the Conquest to the expulsion, the relation between policy and implementation, and the capacity of the Jews to parry injurious policies or to encourage more generous ones? Unfortunately, the book that addresses these issues in a sophisticated contemporary way still remains to be written. The subtitle of the book under review here, Entries of Jewish Interest in the English Memoranda Rolls, 1266–1293, more accurately defines its content.

As crusaders swept through the Rhineland in 1096 en route to the Holy Land, they brought destruction to Ashkenazic Jewry, through death or forced conversion. Record of this violence has survived in Latin and Hebrew chronicles as well as in Hebrew dirges. These chronicles have been the subject of intense scrutiny since their publication in 1892. Attention has focused on accounts that in Worms, Mainz, and elsewhere Jews killed their family members and then themselves when the enemy was at the door. The Hebrew sources glorify these acts of self-destruction as the embodiment of the religious ideal of martyrdom, Kiddush Hashem.

If there is a contemporary “dean” of Indo-Judaic studies, it is Nathan Katz, professor and chair of religious studies at Florida International University. He is helping revive the field of study inaugurated by Walter Fischel, who died in 1973. Katz first made his mark with several articles and a book about one of the three Indian Jewish communities, The Last Jews of Cochin (1993); he edited Studies of Indian Jewish Identity (1995) with chapters about the Jews of Cochin, the Bene Israel of Bombay and Maharashtra, and the Baghdadis of Bombay and Calcutta. He subsequently founded and currently co-edits the Journal of Indo-Judaic Studies. Katz contributes to comparative Jewish studies by synthesizing in this book a new wave of publications from the period of 1985 to 1995, which he calls “a groundbreaking era for the study of Indian Jewish communities” (p. 6). His purpose here is to explain generally how these Jews, who never suffered discrimination at the hands of the Indian majority, maintained their identities and their commitment to Halakhah while acculturating to Indian and English ways.

Our knowledge of the French school of biblical interpretation has benefited in the last two decades from much original scholarship, including newly published texts and groundbreaking studies. Sara Japhet has already contributed in both areas, with her edition of Rashbam on Qohelet (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1985, with a translation by R. Salters) and studies of this school's hermeneutics. Her new book, likewise, represents a two-fold advance in scholarship. It features the (unattributed) Job commentary in MS Lutzki 778, which she identifies as Rashbam's, preceded by an analytic introduction, divided into seven chapters, two appendices and a bibliography that itself is a most valuable, up-to-date study of Rashbam's exegesis. After demonstrating that this commentary was, indeed, written by Rashbam (Chapter One), Japhet outlines his concept of peshat (Chapter Two), system of beliefs (Chapter Three), literary insights (Chapter Four), and linguistics (Chapter Five). M. Banitt contributed a study of Rashbam's Old French glosses (Chapter Six), which is followed by Japhet's description of her edition (Chapter Seven). Apart from offering an important new commentary by Rashbam, critically edited and annotated, Japhet has produced the most comprehensive published study on this exegete since the pioneering work of Rosin over a century ago. Building on the substantial advances in our understanding of the interpretive tradition since that time, Japhet has created a lucid, nuanced picture of Rashbam's hermeneutical thought and practice.

In this exciting book, Professor Moshe Halbertal of the Hebrew University and the Shalom Hartman Institute uncovers with brilliant conceptual clarity the religious world of the philosophically inclined rabbinic scholars of southern France. With impressive erudition, Halbertal surveys most of the relevant thirteenth- and fourteenth-century primary source material, both in print and in manuscript, with an emphasis on the writing and thought of Menaḥem ha-Meiri of Perpignan (d. 1315). Meiri was the leading talmudist of a proud and self-consciously independent southern French Jewish community at the turn of the thirteenth century and the author of an encyclopedic commentary on the Talmud, Bet ha-Beḥirah. Halbertal argues that the history of medieval Jewish thought has been impoverished significantly on account of an inadequate appreciation of the impressive degree to which southern French talmudists, like Meiri, integrated philosophy and halakhah in their writing and thought. In this Halbertal is undoubtedly correct, and his book is therefore an unusually important contribution to Jewish intellectual history. (A conceptual core of Halbertal's work appeared as “R. Menaḥem ha-Me'iri: bein Torah le-Ḥokhmah,” Tarbiz 63 (1995): 63–118, but issues and themes treated there are examined here with much greater scope and depth.)

In Kabbalah in Liturgy, Halakhah, and Custom, Moshe Hallamish asks the seminal question: From where does the kabbalist, whose sources are heavenly, or at best heard from a teacher, gain the ability to speak into the halakhic tradition (p.118)? Presumably, the principle of “lo ba-shamayim hi” should prevail, excluding any kind of kabbalistic privilege. He asks further, Is there a historical point where there is a sudden penetration or was it through progressive process? Does the Kabbalah create new forms to exert its influence or does it use the halakhic forms in existence? This collection of thirty-one articles is the most comprehensive attempt to assess the relationship between kabbalah and halakhah, prayer, and custom, and as such marks a significant milestone in this important area of research.

The academic study of medieval Jewish philosophy began in the nineteenth century with a comparisons of classical Jewish texts (e.g., Saadia Gaon's Beliefs and Opinion; Judah Halevi's Kuzari; Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed; Gersonides' Wars of the Lord) with classical Islamic texts (especially those of the Aristotelians al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes; and the anti-Aristotelian al-Ghazali). The possibility that Jewish thinkers took their inspiration from, or should be seen in the context of, Islamic thinkers (such a Shiءites or sufis) and Christian philosophers (especially scholastics vis-à-vis late medieval Jewish thought) was rarely entertained, partially because of lack of availability of texts and partially because of preconceived notions. The last few decades have seen a reversal of this trend: as the chances fade of finding more parallels in the well researched Aristotelian texts, more attention has been paid to alternate contexts of Jewish philosophy. This excellent book, a much revised and updated Harvard University dissertation (1995), is a very welcome addition to this growing tendency.