The contributions that comprise Ten Measures of Beauty, the 10th volume published by the Society of Biblical Literature’s Midrash Section, pertain to Sifra, Midrash Tadshe and Masora, Rabbi Meyuḥas ben Elijah (a biblical commentator), food and meals in midrash, and peace studies.

The Passover Haggadah, the quintessential Jewish book, began taking shape in the period of the Mishnah and the Talmud (ca. 100-600 CE). Even by 600, it did not look like it does today. Major portions were wanting, e.g., the story of eminent sages at a seder in Bene Beraq; the typology of the four sons; the midrashic expansion of the story of the exodus; the song Dayyenu. Those compositions (mostly) or borrowings were incorporated into the Haggadah between ca. 600-900 (the Geonic period). Such selections completed the Haggadah, producing the book used at Passover Seders to the present day. This study shows how the section of the Passover Haggdah known as maggid (“recounting”) achieved its comprehensive structure and contents between ca. 600 and 900 CE (the geonic period).

Male circumcision is one of the oldest and most widespread rituals, it has been practiced for millennia across many parts of the world. Yet this prevalence and long history do not make circumcision self-evident: it has also long been a topic of reflection, discussion, and controversy and continues to be so today. As the cases in this volume show, already in Antiquity, Greeks, Romans, Jews and Christians clashed over male circumcision. Then as now, concerns about identity, ritual, health, masculinity, and sexuality were a factor in these disputes. Very little is known about actual circumcision practices in the ancient world. Apart from depictions in art, the relation of which to daily practice is difficult to ascertain, we have historical access mainly through texts that reveal how the practice was discursively constructed, and that relate circumcision to wider cultural practices and ideas. This book therefore mainly discusses references to circumcision in literary sources, and the way these relate to other known cultural practices and ideas. These sources date from biblical times and Antiquity and their interpretations in medieval Jewish texts and recent scholarship.

Was Maimonides a radical philosopher who subtly argued for a naturalist world and who saw the obligation to keep the Torah's commandments as a social and moral obligation – or was he a conservative Jewish believer who only tried to formulate philosophical arguments in favour of a revealed religion? This question has been central to the interpretation of Maimonides from the 12th century until modern times. In the four chapters of this book, Shalom Sadik argues for a radical philosophical interpretation of Maimonides.

The Scholastic Culture of the Babylonian Talmud studies how and in what cultural context the Talmud began to take shape in the scholastic centers of rabbinic Babylonia. Bickart tracks the use of the term tistayem ("let it be promulgated") and its analogs, in contexts ranging from Amoraic disciple circles to Geonic texts, and in comparison with literatures of Syriac-speaking Christians. The study demonstrates increasing academization during the talmudic period, and supports a gradual model of the Talmud's redaction.

In this engaging book of commentary on the Talmud, the author upends the long-held theory of the immutability of halakhah, Jewish law. In her detailed analysis of over 80 short halakhic anecdotes in the Babylonian Talmud, the author shows that the Talmud itself promotes halakhic change. She leads the reader through one sugya (discussion unit) after another, accumulating evidence for her rather radical thesis. Along the way, she teases out details of what life was like 1500 years ago for women in their relationships with men and for students in their relationships with mentors. An eye-opening read by one of today’s leading Talmud scholars.

The chapters in Emerging Horizons: 21st Century Approaches to the Study of Midrash pertain to an intriguing midrash that appears in a Masoretic context, the Qur’anic narrative of the red cow, midrashic narratives that rabbinize enemies of Israel, the death of Moses, emotions in rabbinic literature, and yelammedenu units in midrashic works.

Perils of Wisdom engages the biblical Solomon narrative that appears in the Book of Kings and its reception by Jewish texts from scriptural sources through the traditional commentaries of the Middle Ages. By systematically following the thread of exegesis through biblical, rabbinic, targumic, and medieval Jewish texts, and by examining their interplay with other ancient, Christian, and Islamic treatments of Solomon, Keiter traces the emergence and ascendance of an apologetic image of Solomon that has colored Jewish perceptions of the biblical king ever since.

In and Around Maimonides presents eight highly focused studies on Moses Maimonides and those around him.

This monograph explores the nature of the Elijah traditions in rabbinic literature and their connection to the wisdom tradition. By examining the diverse Elijah traditions in connection to the wisdom and apocalyptic traditions, Alouf-Aboody sheds new light on the manner in which Elijah’s role developed in rabbinic literature.

In Second Slayings: The Binding of Isaac and the Formation of Jewish Memory, David N. Gottlieb explores the decisive - and, until now, under-appreciated - influence exerted on Jewish memory by the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac narrative in the Book of Genesis. Through the lenses of hermeneutics, literary and social theory, and history, Gottlieb reveals the ways in the Akedah narrative models the act of interpretation as a means of recovery from and commemoration of crisis - a strategy that has penetrated every aspect and era of Jewish life.

The chapters in Torah is a Hidden Treasure pertain to authorship in Seder Eliyahu Rabba and Pirqe deRabi Eliezer, natural law and Israel’s statutes, Masorah and midrash, as well as a definition of midrash. The Hebrew Bible and midrash is researched in the interpretation of Israelite tribes, the Ten Commandments and the Covenant Code, and in Rashbam’s Bible commentary and its exegetical devices.

This work is volume 2 of Boaz Cohen’s collected articles, with a new introduction by rabbinics scholar Natalie B. Dohrmann.

This work is volume 1 of Boaz Cohen’s collected articles, with a new introduction by rabbinics scholar Natalie B. Dohrmann.

This volume contains selected proceedings of the Midrash Section sessions convened during the 2015-2016 meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature. It is comprised of contributions by both leading and emerging scholars of Midrash whose research shares a common focus on early and medieval rabbinic biblical interpretation. Additionally, the research on Midrash in this volume intersects with a range of related biblical texts, religious themes, and foundational and forward-thinking methodologies and interdisciplinary academic fields of study, including: Gender Studies; Classics; Jewish Studies; Religious Studies; Literary Studies; the Aqedah/Binding of Isaac; biblical parables; and, medieval rabbinic biblical commentary.

This volume presents case studies of the phenomena that contributed to group identity in late antique Syria-Mesopotamia, in particular traditions reflecting interactions between Judaism and Christianity, among various Christian groups, and among other religious traditions of late antiquity (such as Zoroastrianism or 'paganism'). By studying Christian, Jewish and other sources that deal with the establishment, modification and deletion of boundaries, the authors seek to create a frame of reference that will in turn explain and contextualise the existing evidence concerning communication and interaction between highly diverse groups in Late Antiquity.

The Sasanian Empire was home to many religious communities. It was also a place of meeting and transformation. The studies in this volume encompass a diverse array of topics concerning these religious communities inhabiting the Sasanian Empire. Some include the Roman East in their deliberations. Most, however, deal with the interaction of one or other religious community based in the Sasanian Empire with the dominant religion of the empire, Zoroastrianism.

This volume contains selected proceedings of the Midrash Section sessions convened during the 2012-2014 meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature. It is comprised of contributions by leading and emerging scholars that share a common focus on Rabbinic biblical interpretation as it intersects with a range of biblical texts and associated fields of study, including: Jewish legal literature; Hellenistic Judaism; post-biblical interpretation; biblical commentary; liturgical studies; and, cultural studies.

This book completely redefines our understanding of fin de siècle Anglo-Jewish author Amy Levy and her writing. Demonstrating that Levy’s writing is less anti-Judaic and more profoundly influenced by the religious concerns of classical German Reformism, Luke Devine's innovative approach reveals that Levy's writing constitutes a genre whose female subjectivity evinces a concern for justice and authority that prefigures numerous aspects of Second-Wave Jewish feminist theory and its spiritual and theological underpinnings.

This is the fifth issue of Proceedings of the Midrash Section at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature published in this series, and contains six papers on Jewish and Black biblical hermeneutics with regard to Rabbinic Midrash.

This book is the first attempt to apply formal pragmatics to Judaic studies as a discipline under the auspices of cultural studies, reconstructing the pragmatic approach in Judaism and defining some of the pragmatic limits assumed in the Torah. It is a continuation of previous work considering Judaic reasoning from the standpoint of analytic philosophy and logic. The present volume aims to explicate the Judaic pragmatic point of view with an emphasis on logic, political studies, ethics, and speech act theory.

For almost a century after it was first published in 1845 Grace Aguilar's Women of Israel was presented as a high school graduation gift and even as a Christmas present to employees. More than 150 years before the current proliferation of books on women in biblical narrative and biblical law, Aguilar offered brilliant and innovative interpretations of abiding value. She took for granted that her readers could read Hebrew and that they, like herself, knew the King James Bible from memory. The extensive introduction and notes will make this new edition once again accessible to laypersons, students, and scholars.

Ritual and historical perspectives each provide only a partial view of early Jewish weddings. Combining these approaches allows for a new look at practices rejected or highlighted by early rabbis and their successors, and First Came Marriage: The Rabbinic Appropriation of Early Jewish Wedding Ritual investigates the process by which early Jews married and the various moves they used to minimize, elaborate or codify these practices.

Was there an active Jewish-Christian polemic in fourth-century Persia? Aphrahat’s Demonstrations, a fourth-century adversus Judaeos text, clearly indicates that fourth-century Persian Christians were interested in the debate. Is there evidence of this polemic in the rabbinic literature? Despite the lack of a comparable Jewish or rabbinic adversus Christianos literature, there is evidence, both from Aphrahat and the Rabbis that this polemic was not one sided.

Lily Montagu’s Shekhinah outlines Lily Montagu’s theological writing, particularly her appropriation of the feminine aspect of the divine presence, Shekhinah, and provides a much needed corrective to the androcentric Anglo-Jewish historiography that has ignored, marginalized, and completely erased the founder of the Liberal Jewish movement in England. Luke Devine’s book is vital reading for students of Anglo-Jewry, First-Wave feminism, Jewish feminism, Liberal Judaism, and Jewish mysticism.