The Levitical laws of ‘arakhin name only males as those who can actively donate the monetary value of another person to the sanctuary or temple. In contrast, tannaitic texts about ‘arakhin explicitly name females among those who can donate the monetary value of another to the temple. However, this legislation of females as valuers should not be attributed to a rabbinic desire to ameliorate the status of women, but rather should be viewed as part of the larger rabbinic project of rewriting Scripture. In this case, tannaitic literature recategorizes ‘arakhin with votive legislation instead of sanctuary/temple legislation. Close attention to gender enables us to notice the tannaitic rewriting of ‘arakhin and thus investigate the rabbinic reconfiguration of its biblical inheritance, not only for the ways in which rabbinic texts rewrite biblical law concerning gender but also for a richer understanding of the scholastic process itself.

Several scholars have noted the affinity of the German Orthodox thinker Isaac Breuer (1883–1946) for the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. In fact, legend has it that Breuer had two large pictures hanging over the desk in his study: one of his grandfather Samson Raphael Hirsch and, next to it, a picture of the philosopher from Königsberg, as if in perfect harmony. Just as Maimonides, eight hundred years earlier, had tried to reconcile the biblical Moses with Aristotle in the Guide of the Perplexed, Breuer attempted to explain Hirsch's theology using Kantian terminology. But if Maimonides interpreted the Torah of Moses to fit the needs of Aristotelian metaphysics, Breuer did the opposite: he had Kant's epistemology yield to the needs of his own interpretation of the Torah.

This is an interesting, well-written and important study, relevant to anyone interested in better understanding metaphor in the Bible, figurative language, or idolatry. David Aaron, Professor of Bible at Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, was trained in rabbinics and linguistics at Brandeis University; this training offers him a certain sensitivity to how language, especially what many would consider figurative language, functions. Thus, the book really deals with the importance of understanding semantics for interpretation.

Benjamin D. Sommer elevates the analysis of inner-biblical interpretation to the next level of sophistication and rigor in this volume, a substantially revised version of his University of Chicago doctoral dissertation written under the direction of Michael Fishbane. He focuses on the reuse of older biblical material in a specific biblical text, Isaiah 40–66. These chapters of the book of Isaiah, seen as an addition made a century and a half later to Isaiah 1–39, are assigned to an anonymous sixth-century prophet called, for the sake of convenience, Deutero-Isaiah. By treating the reuse of older biblical material in Deutero-Isaiah, Sommer is able to delineate what might be distinctive in Deutero-Isaiah's methods of inner-biblical interpretation, a desirable next step in the analysis of inner-biblical interpretation. What is impressive in Sommer's book is his ability to move to larger issues in biblical studies and to parallel issues in other academic and intellectual pursuits often ignored in biblical studies. The book also exhibits a clarity of writing and argument in what in many ways is a highly technical subject.

When in 1714 the artist Israel ben Mordecai Liśnicki from Jaryczów painted the interior of the wooden synagogue of Chodorów, today in the L'viv (Polish, Lwów) region of western Ukraine, he did not know that one of his paintings would be the subject of divergent interpretations by art historians some three hundred years later. The controversy centers around the depiction of an eagle grasping in its talons two hares trying to escape outward. The hares are grasped by the neck (fig. 1). This depiction, located in the center of the ceiling, is surrounded by a decorative medallion inscribed with the verse “Like an eagle who rouses his nestlings, gliding down to his young, so did He spread His wings and take him, bear him along on His talons” (Deuteronomy 32:11). In the background are the twelve signs of the zodiac.

This article explores rabbinic traditions that see in the character of Joseph a figure of uncertain sexual orientation. I examine a series of rabbinic and biblical texts in which an unconventional gender dynamic may be present. While it is true that these biblical and rabbinic texts ran contrary to the normative ideational and behaviorally prescriptive traditions concerning sexuality presented by the main body of biblical and rabbinic texts, it is nonetheless true that the texts I examine invite readers to see an alternative dynamic through their stories. I will employ a variety of methodologies, including philological/critical scholarship, close literary reading, and queer theory, through which we might most profitably examine the interpretative traditions I consider.

This article considers the role of the individual during crises in humanism and the ethical responsibility with which the individual is charged in such times of moral calamity. In a narrow sense, the article explores Emmanuel Lévinas's “Nameless” (“Sans nom”), an essay that appears in his book Proper Names, and proposes viewing it as his personal reading in honor of his unique, unaccounted-for teacher Monsieur Chouchani. From a broader philosophical perspective, the article attempts to consider the meaning of ethics and the assumption of responsibility in times when doing so appears to offer no benefit and hold no significance whatsoever. From an educational perspective, it endeavors to better understand the ethical role of the teacher in both tranquil and tempestuous times. And finally, it also offers another profound observation of what Lévinas's article refers to as the “Jewish condition,” not in a national historical sense but as a model of crisis-oriented ethical challenge.

In this bold and ambitious book, Rachel Elior seeks to trace the early history of Jewish mysticism, from biblical through rabbinic times. In the course of ten chapters, the author covers a wide range of material, with special attention devoted to Ezekiel, 1 Enoch, the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, and of course the Hekhalot texts. While not all scholars will be convinced by the analysis presented here, one should welcome this latest installment in the author's wide-ranging and creative efforts to understand better the origins and later developments of Jewish mysticism.

Jerusalem is an ancient venue that has been not only a symbol of peace and a focus of religious belief but also a city of dispute. For centuries, indeed millennia, it has been a magnet for conflict between diverse groups with divergent religious interests and others with competing political and/or national claims. It is sacred to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and claimed as a national capitol by both Israelis and Palestinian Arabs. Since the mid-1950s it has been a central issue of the Arab–Israeli conflict that emerged to be even more problematic after the Six Day War of 1967, in which Israel gained full control over the entire city that had been divided between it and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in the first Arab–Israeli war of 1948–1949. In recent years it has became the ultimate issue among the final settlement stumbling blocks for an Israeli–Palestinian peace. It has served as a pretext for Osama bin Laden and as a concern for Muslim regimes as diverse as Iran and Saudi Arabia because of Jewish control over Muslim holy places, in this instance the third holiest site in Islam, after Mecca and Medina.

In an Ashkenazic Bible produced in the thirteenth century, we find a unique micrography decoration portraying Ezekiel's vision. On the bottom margin the Masorah micrography shows the full bodies of the four creatures: the lion facing the ox, and the man, in full armor and holding an object in each hand, facing the eagle. I suggest that the choice to portray the human figure in this micrography as an armored knight can be explained by reference to the tradition describing seeing Jacob's image engraved on the throne in Ezekiel's vision, as also reflected in the writings of Hasidei Ashkenaz. The decoration identifies the human figure as Jacob, which may illustrate the verse 'Avir Ya‘akov, meaning “mighty one of Jacob” or Jacob the Knight.

Some time in the third decade of the nineteenth century, the maskil (enlightened Jew) Joseph Perl (1773–1839) appealed to the provincial authorities in Lemberg, Austrian Galicia to support those in the Jewish community who strove to find a solution to the rabbinic requirement that a male convert to Christianity grant his Jewish wife a writ of divorce (get).Contested divorces where the husband had converted to Christianity were particularly poignant for Ashkenazic Jewry living in medieval and early modern western Christendom because of the paradox inherent in the halakhic requirement for a male Jewish apostate to grant his wife a Jewish divorce. The apostate was viewed as both immutably Jewish, always a potential baעal teshuvah, to the Jewish community, and immutably Christian to the Church because the waters of baptism were indelible. Jewish jurists, well aware of their community's susceptibility to conversionary pressures, struggled between keeping the doors of repentance open and making an example of the convert by meting out harsh punishments against him. See Rashi's famous responsum regarding the marital status of women whose husbands had been forcibly converted during the Crusades, cited in Jacob Rader Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval World (Atheneum, 1938), pp. 301–302; and the discussion in Jacob Katz, “Though He Has Sinned, He Remains an Israelite,” Tarbiz 27 (1958): pp. 203–217. For the early modern period, see Elisheva Carlebach, Divided Souls: Converts from Judaism in Germany, 1500–1750 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 25, 138–139. Perl's treatise, with the bold title, Über die Modifikation der Mosaischen Gesetze (Regarding the Modification of Mosaic Laws),Joseph Perl Archive, folder 144, JNULA. Written primarily in Gothic German, with occasional use of Latin characters and Hebrew citations, the manuscript is 83 pages with an introduction. The only mention I have found of the text is by Avraham Rubinstein, who noted that the manuscript was indicated in Philip Koffler's appendix to the Perl archive. See [Joseph Perl] Über das Wesen der Sekte Chassidim, Avraham Rubinstein, ed. (Jerusalem, 1977), p. 4, n. 17. See, too, Joseph Perl Archive, folder 131, “Comments or corrections to the book dealing with Jewish Law,” and folder 38.7075. did not urge the abandonment of rabbinic law or authority. Rather, he argued that a historical investigation of Jewish divorce law proved that minimizing the possibility of ‘aginut (“grass widowhood”) had always been a priority of a responsible rabbinic leadership. Were the Austrians able to empower an upstanding contemporary rabbinate sensitive to women's needs, Perl reasoned, a rabbinically-sanctioned halakhic solution to the problem of an ‘agunah married to a convert could be found. Although the Austrian censor rejected the publication of Über die Modifikation der Mosaischen Gesetze, the manuscript is illustrative of the ideological concerns of moderate maskilim in Central and Eastern Europe who wanted to participate fully in civil society while retaining the authority of Jewish law.The censor rejected the manuscript on February 17, 1831. See number 6 in the list of manuscripts compiled as an appendix to Perl's Archives by Philip Koffler of Tarnopol during the interwar years, Joseph Perl Archive, JNULA, appendix.

This book contains a full review of Jewish marriage in antiquity, beginning with biblical injunctions, but focusing primarily on postbiblical material and specifically on rabbinic literature. It is divided into three parts: 1. Thinking about Marriage, in which Satlow describes how and why Jewish marriages were planned, 2. Marrying, in which he describes the process of marriage itself, and 3. Staying Married, in which married life and its consequences are at issue. In each of these parts Satlow correctly attempts to draw a line between the ideals of marriage as portrayed in the sources and what actually went on, as far as these allow us a glimpse of reality.

This study seeks to explain the origin of the fast of the 13th of Adar. The practice of fasting on this day is puzzling for a number of reasons. Although the Bible describes fasting in the year of the Purim threat, this fast occurred in Nissan and the weeks thereafter. Nor does tannaitic or amoraic literature mention the practice of fasting on the 13th of Adar. To add to the puzzle, Megillat ta‘anit, compiled in the first century ce, includes the 13th of Adar as a day on which Jews were prohibited from fasting.

This article will examine the development of Yavneh as a literary and cultural construct from tannaitic sources through the two versions of the story of the deposition of R. Gamliel, in Yerushalmi Berakhot 4:1 and Bavli Berakhot 27b–28a. It will explore the ways in which the talmudic storytellers present a more developed narrative world complete with a social and political culture. It will then analyze the complex relationships between the narrative worlds of the Yerushalmi and Bavli and their respective social and ideological contexts. Based on this analysis, I shall propose a model for understanding the way in which the Yavnehs of both the Bavli and the Yerushalmi functioned in amoraic and postamoraic society to create a nuanced and self-critical rabbinic cultural identity.