Ḥasdai Crescas briefly adumbrated his halakhic methodology in the introduction to his philosophic work, 'Or ha-Shem. He followed Maimonides by arguing for the importance of a comprehensive and succinct legal code and opposed himself to those who ascribe independent value to Torah study. However, Crescas disputed Maimonides on the proper goals and character of a legal code. Unlike Maimonides, he designated his code for Torah scholars and focused on the bedrock principles that are the bases for particular laws. According to Crescas, these principles allow the codifier to capture the infinite and boundless halakhah in a finite and accessible form. They also serve as exegetical rules that allow the Torah scholar to create new laws. In this regard, the halakhic enterprise resembles the process of creation and the scholar resembles God.

A trenchant and rather paradoxical Hasidic saying asserts the following: He who believes the tall tales told by the Hasidim may be a fool, but he who does not believe them is a heretic. It turns out that many secular writers have in fact read and examined Hasidic tales sympathetically, without necessarily regarding them as true. But what exactly is the relationship of such non-believers to Hasidism? Can a secularist genuinely connect with texts that seem to be totally immersed in their religious context and driven by specifically religious interests? Can a reader who repudiates the assumptions of the original author (and even of his intended audience) nevertheless engage in a personally uplifting or even spiritually-inspired reading of such texts? Is there a spiritual dimension capable of traversing the barriers of religious doctrine, and penetrating the inner world of the heretic?

Earlier scholars typically considered the tannaitic traditions transmitted by Amoraim in the two Talmuds to be later amoraic (largely Babylonian) creations. This supposition was based on a range of formalistic considerations: the introductory terms, the attitude of the Amoraim to their halakhic content, and the lack of parallels in tannaitic literature. A study of the approximately 140 baraitot introduced by the term “a Tanna taught in front of so-and-so” offers substantial critique of this supposition, which was often based on incorrect a priori assumptions or on faulty interpretations of sources. Assessment of the nature and origins of the halakhic content of these so-called “amoraic baraitot” requires thorough analysis of the halakhic traditions found in this collection and their comparison with parallels in Palestinian tannaitic literature.

The study of Moses ben Maimon's works is ultimately tied into scholars' assumptions about whether they are reading the writings of Maimonides, the medieval Jewish philosopher par excellence, or Rambam, the premier medieval codifier of halakhah. Three approaches to interpreting his works have dominated scholarship for the last century. Some read the works as consisting of two essentially independent oeuvres: halakhic works written for one audience and philosophical works for another. Thus, Maimonides did not need to be consistent in his views. The supporters of Maimonides the philosopher read his halakhic works as secretly containing philosophical truths consistent with those in the Guide of the Perplexed (referred to as GP herein). The supporters of Rambam prefer to see the Mishneh Torah as the foremost statement of his views and the philosophical stance expressed in the Guide as disingenuous. In the words of Menachem Kellner, Maimonides is presented as “everything from a late convert to Kabbalah to a halakhist, who in truth disdained philosophy, to an Aristotelian philosopher, whose own innermost thoughts stood in conscious opposition to normative Jewish teachings.”

This article examines how communal activists, leaders, intellectuals, and the Yiddish press understood and reacted to charges regarding purported Jewish criminality, which accusers often linked to the need to curtail immigration to America. The Jewish self-image as a nonviolent people proved to be quite resilient, and one of the ways to reconcile the existence of Jewish criminals with that self-perception was to put the blame on the surrounding (American) influence, or to evoke generalized negative images of gentiles as a foil for applauding Jewish qualities. New York Jews construed their relations with the larger non-Jewish society as a continuation of old-world patterns of Jewish-gentile relations rather than a change or reversal of them. The criminal episodes demonstrated how a cultural net of transnational meanings shaped Jews' understanding and reaction to allegations against them.

If Shmuel ben Yosef ha-Levi ibn Nagrella, better known as Shmuel ha-Nagid (938–1055), has been variously praised by his contemporaries, later medieval litterateurs and moderns as an innovative and forceful writer, his poetry qua poetry has been subjected to little close scrutiny. Three short poems have been analyzed as wholes; individual stichs illustrative of typical figures and rhetorical devices in the Hebrew poetry of Spain have been cited; diverse features of a good many genres, including influences of Arabic models have been noted; and various insightful observations have been made.

Unlike the works of the “old masters” in the fine arts, often seen as the apotheosis of the creative spirit of their and all time, works of historiography have a much briefer shelf life. It is in the nature of scholarship to subject forebears to critical scrutiny; few works hold up beyond a generation or so. We are charged in this forum with reconsidering one of the “old masters” of Jewish historiography, Salo Wittmayer Baron, whose formidable mastery of languages and sources and his prolific output position him as one of the preeminent twentieth-century historians of the Jewish people. Has Baron's three-volume The Jewish Community, a masterpiece of historical synthesis first published in 1942, still retained its scholarly relevance? What is striking about this work is how much ahead of his time it was in certain respects, and how, in this work on a subject so central to understanding pre-modern Jewish life, Baron's construction was ahistorical in crucial dimensions. Baron's Jewish Community has fallen into disuse, so much so that in the Hebrew collection, Kehal Yisrael (2004), intended to portray specific Jewries and their communal lives, the latter two volumes, comprising dozens of essays and over 800 pages, written by leading Israeli scholars, contain only two references to Baron, in the notes. This blatant example of ignoring Baron's treasure trove is true not only of Israeli scholarship: most recent studies of Jewish communities make scarcely any use of it. Is the neglect deserved?