A powerful exploration of how literature expresses and transforms our earliest preverbal experiences.Primacies begins with the assertion that our earliest preverbal experiences are accompanied by a primary language—a universal expression of tears, cries, and laughter offered long before we learn our distinctive, ordinary languages. For Michael Fishbane, these "primacies" release the raw feelings of our existential condition and catalyze our most powerful li...

The world we engage with is a vibrant collage brought to consciousness by language and our creative imagination. It is through the symbolic forms of language that the human world of value is revealed—this is where religious scholar Michael Fishbane dwells in his latest contribution to Jewish thought.In Fragile Finitude, Fishbane clears new ground for a theological life through a novel reinterpretation of the Book of Job. On this basis, he offers a contemporary engagement wi...

This volume is a study of Jewish liturgical poetry (Piyyuṭ) from late antiquity in Byzantine Palestine (5–6th century CE) through 11th century in Ashkenaz (Rhineland) and in northern Egypt. This poetry is based on synagogue lectionaries composed for the Sabbath and Festivals of the Jewish ritual calendar year. The central focus is on the various genres of these liturgies and their expansion into forms of prosodic epic (from short, dense quatrains to expanded prosodic recitations t...

Leon R. Kass has been helping Americans better understand the human condition for over four decades-as a teacher, writer, scholar, public champion of the humanities, and defender of human dignity. From bioethics to civic education, from interpreting the Bible to weighing the moral implications of modern science, Kass has offered wisdom, guidance, and instruction. In this volume, fifteen of Kass's admirers, including students, colleagues, and friends, honor his work by reflecting on the bro...

Jewish Culture and Creativity honors the wide-ranging scholarship of Prof. Michael Fishbane with contributions of his students on subjects that cover the gamut of Jewish studies, from biblical and rabbinic literature to medieval and modern Jewish culture, and concluding with case studies of the creative application of Prof. Fishbane’s thought and theology in contemporary Jewish life. The innovative scholarship represented in this volume offers critical new perspectives from antiqu...

The Jewish intellectual tradition has a long and complex history that has resulted in significant and influential works of scholarship. In this book, the authors suggest that there is a series of common principles that can be extracted from the Jewish intellectual tradition that have broad, even life-changing, implications for individual and societal achievement. These principles include respect for tradition while encouraging independent, often disruptive thinking; a precise system of log...

This book examines the narratives of series heroines that preceded and followed Nancy Drew, each in relation to their social, historical, and economic environments. Covering heroines including Miss Pickerell, Madge Sterling, and Polly the Powers Model, among others, this book illustrates that the recovery of stolen inheritances during the Great Depression serves different social ends than, for example, fighting Germans on an international stage. This book expands scholarship that tends to ...

A Centennial, writes Hebrew College President Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, “is an invitation to reflect on the last century of teaching and learning at Hebrew College, to ask ourselves what has changed and what has endured, to explore accomplishments and share ongoing struggles, to articulate our aspirations for the next one hundred years.” A compilation of captivating essays on Jewish studies alongside powerful personal memoirs from the College’s earliest years until today, Ḥiddushim capt...