From its earliest days, Christianity has viewed Judaism and Jews ambiguously. Given its roots within the Jewish community of first-century Palestine, there was much in Judaism that demanded Church admiration and praise; however, as Jews continued to resist Christian truth, there was also much that had to be condemned. Major Christian thinkers of antiquity - while disparaging their Jewish contemporaries for rejecting Christian truth - depicted the Jewish past and future in balanced terms, i...

Originally published in 1974. Focusing on a set of Jewish communities, Robert Chazan tells how, by the eleventh century, French Jews had created for themselves a role as local merchants and moneylenders in adapting to the political, economic, and social limits imposed on them. French society, striving to become more powerful and civilized, was willing to extend aid and protection to the Jews in return for general stimulation of trade and urban life and for the immediate profit realized fro...

This book examines the history of Jewish education from the Biblical period to the present. It traces how Jews have formally and informally transmitted their culture and worldview over the years, with particular attention to the shift from premodernity to modernity and to the unique opportunities and challenges of contemporary American Jewish education. Its authors combine historical background and insight with educational expertise to provide a robust portrait of the cultures and contexts...

A leading historian argues that historically Jews were more often voluntary migrants than involuntary refugees†‹For millennia, Jews and non-Jews alike have viewed forced population movement as a core aspect of the Jewish experience. This involuntary Jewish wandering has been explained as the result of divine punishment, or as a response to maltreatment of Jews by majority populations, or as the result of Jews’ acceptance of their minority status perpetuating the ma...

Volume 6 examines the history of Judaism during the second half of the Middle Ages. Through the first half of the Middle Ages, the Jewish communities of western Christendom lagged well behind those of eastern Christendom and the even more impressive Jewries of the Islamic world. As Western Christendom began its remarkable surge forward in the eleventh century, this progress had an impact on the Jewish minority as well. The older Jewries of southern Europe grew and became more productive in...

This book re-evaluates the prevailing notion that Jews in medieval Christian Europe lived under an appalling regime of ecclesiastical limitation, governmental exploitation and expropriation, and unceasing popular violence. Robert Chazan argues that, while Jewish life in medieval Western Christendom was indeed beset with grave difficulties, it was nevertheless an environment rich in opportunities; the Jews of medieval Europe overcame obstacles, grew in number, explored innovative economic o...

One of the issues confronting Messianic Judaism is their relationship to the Torah and to the Rabbinic Customs of the Jews. There are two tensions that confront Jewish Believers in Jesus. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says:"Do not think that I have come to destroy the Torah and the Prophets. I did not come to destroy, but to fulfil. Amen, amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, one yod and one tittle shall not pass away from the Torah until all is fulfilled. So whoe...

The first full account, based on access to key players who have never before spoken, of the Munich Massacre and the Israeli response–a lethal, top secret, thirty-year-long antiterrorism campaign to track down the killers.1972. The Munich Olympics. Palestinian members of the Black September group murder eleven Israeli athletes. Nine hundred million people watch the crisis unfold on television, witnessing a tragedy that inaugurates the modern age of terror and remains a scar on the co...

"Irwin Kula shows us how to to live our humanness -- the pleasures and the challenges, the messiness and the triumphs -- with a profound acceptance of our desires and foibles and a joy that can only come from understanding." --Deepak Chopra"Yearning. After twenty-three years as a rabbi, I can think of no more defining human experience."Life can be messy and imperfect. We're all looking for answers. And yet, as renowned rabbi Irwin Kula points out, ...

Winner of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for DramaSurprising, luminous, and powerful. It will mostl likely find a place in the American canon alongside Uhry's Driving Miss Daisy. —Laurie Winer, Los Angeles TimesA timeless American play, which inspired the Academy Award–winning film, Driving Miss Daisy is a delicate depiction of racial tensions and growing old. Set in Atlanta, Alfred Uhry tells the affecting story of the ...

From the bestselling author of The Red Tent and Good Harbor, a collection of intimate, autobiographical reflections on the milestones, revelations, and balancing acts of life as a wife, mother, friend, and member of a religious community.Before The Red Tent won her international literary acclaim, Anita Diamant was a columnist in Boston. Over the course of twenty years, she wrote essays that reflected the shape and evolution of her life, a...

Covenant & ConscienceA Groundbreaking Journey to the Heart of HalakhaAnyone curious about the Jewish way of life, yet dissatisfied with much of contemporary Jewish theology and practicerepelled, perhaps, by the cheap and vulgar apologetics of those who seek to justify and sustain some of the traditions systematic immoralities, who smugly deny expression to any doubt or uncertainty, claiming a monopoly on absolute truthis invited to join me on this pilgrimage.from the Introduction