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.

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 book is presented as “first a study of the classic rabbinic discourse on menstruation and of the range of meanings that talmudic literature accords to women's bodies in its discourse on Niddah” (p. 1). As the presence of the word “Christian” in the subtitle would suggest, however, the actual contents of the book are somewhat broader. The range of materials covered are all worthy of scholarly examination and analysis, which Fonrobert ably and engagingly provides. Yet, the wide reach of this book contributes to both its strengths and its weaknesses.

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.

As far as we know, the rabbis were not well acquainted with Latin, but there are occasional examples in rabbinic literature of their ability to formulate or understand bilingual (Hebrew-Latin) puns. In Midrash Tanḥuma, for instance, there is a play on Latin corona/Hebrew qeren, and, according to an observation attributed to Yehoshua Guttman, at B.T. Ta‘anit 29a on Latin nasi (nasus)/Hebrew nasi. The talmudic anecdote quoted below can be best understood when we perceive the Latin wordplay on which it is built.

This article examines a story in the Jerusalem Talmud depicting a wealthy woman who expects Torah instruction in exchange for her tithes. This textual example is used as a lens through which to view the changing social, religious, and economic relationships of Roman Syria Palaestina, whereby the biblically described institution of tithing to priests expanded to include priestly descendent rabbis. Giving the priestly tithe to a rabbi, while advantageous in a period of rabbinic fundraising, presented a distinct set of challenges as it came to resemble patronage practices associated with Roman elites. Through close textual analysis of the wealthy woman's tithe, the prominence and consequences of scholastic donations are examined, both in rabbinic literature and in the broader late ancient Mediterranean.1

Franz Kafka's short story “Schakale und Araber” (Jackals and Arabs) was published in October 1917 in the monthly journal Der Jude, the intellectual organ of German-speaking Zionism founded and edited by Martin Buber. The narrator, an unidentified and pleasant-mannered European man traveling in the desert, makes a stop at an oasis in an Arab area. The circumstances of his journey and its objectives are unknown. It becomes apparent from his story that the man has come to the Arab desert merely by chance “from the far North,” and that he has no intention of remaining in the area for long. All of a sudden, shortly after his “tall [and] white” Arab host has retired to the sleeping area, the narrator finds himself completely surrounded by a pack of jackals. One of them, who introduces himself as “the oldest jackal far and wide,” approaches the man and implores him to solve once and for all the long-standing dispute between the jackals and the Arabs, as the traveler alone—a man hailing from those countries in which reason reigns supreme, which is not the case among the Arabs—is capable of doing so. Once the jackal elder has related to the European traveler the story of his tribe's tribulations, and how they have been compelled to reside alongside the “filthy Arabs” from one generation to the next, another jackal produces a pair of scissors, which, according to the jackals' ancient belief, is to serve the long-awaited man of reason “from the North” to rescue them from their abhorrent and hated neighbors. But at that moment, the Arab caravan leader appears, wielding an immense whip. The reader learns that not only was the Arab awake while the jackal elder sought to persuade the European man to undertake the salvation project and listening attentively to the jackal's words, but in fact, he has been well aware of the jackals' intentions for a long time:

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.

This article proposes an analysis of two homiletic units in the Palestinian Midrash Leviticus Rabbah, which revolve around biblical chapters pertaining to sacrifices. A theme that pervades these units is that of eating as an animalistic activity that often entails moral depravity. In contrast, the act of sacrificing is constructed in these units as one in which one is willing to give up one's own nourishment, and in a sense one's own “soul,” in order to offer it to God. Many of the motifs used to vilify eating in the Midrash can be traced in moralistic Greek, Roman, and early Christian diatribes preaching for moderation in eating or for asceticism; the homilists in Leviticus Rabbah, however, utilize these popular motifs in order to present sacrifice as the spiritual contrary of eating, and thus to give the obsolete practice of sacrifice cultural cachet and compelling meanings.

The Mishnah is preserved in a web of exegetical texts—the Tosefta, the alakhic midrashim, and the Talmuds—which have accompanied it iroughout its history of transmission. A common problem in mishnaic:xtual criticism, therefore, is to clarify the extent to which elements of the Mishnah's exegetical tradition have become part of the the text itself. It is for this reason that a question most appropriate to other literary texts is so difficult to answer for the Mishnah: at what point does the history of the text's creation end and the history of its transmission and interpretation begin? In a certain respect, of course, in the mishnaic case this question is conceptually flawed. By posing an absolute distinction between the redactionand transmission-history of the Mishnah, one reifies processes which, in fact, are most difficult to distinguish. Epstein in particular has shown that the text of the Mishnah, in the recension of Rabbi (Judah the Patriarch), remained relatively fluid for some centuries after its promulgation, ca. 200 C.E. Thus, the mishnaic text-types now available are in a very real sense no less the creations of the Mishnah's later students (the amoraim, or “explainers”) than they are the work of the Mishnah's authors.

Fragment A2 of MS Or. 53 of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Rome, though only five folios in length, provides the student of medieval Jewish history with fresh insights into the development of Jewish anti-Christian polemics. The manuscript appears to have been written in response to heightened anti-Jewish propaganda that emerged in Northern France as a result of the visit to that area by Paul Christian in 1269. The work is a compilation of arguments against Christianity drawn from the polemical traditions of Northern France, Germany and Provence. It also contains excerpts from the so-called Vikkuaḥ ha-RaMBaN, the Hebrew account of the debate on the Talmud held in Barcelona in 1263. Analysis of the material indicates that the manuscript does not contain the record of a face-to-face disputation between Paul Christian and a Jew named Menaḥem, as has been suggested. Arguments assumed to be related to such a meeting can be traced back to extant literary sources that predate the 1260s. Of particular interest are the passages from fragment A2 that were adapted from the Sefer ha-berit of Joseph Kimḥi, written about 1170, and the so-called Vikkuaḥ ha-RaDaQ, written in the early thirteenth century. MS 53 A2, written in the last third of the thirteenth century, represents the earliest extant evidence for use of the Kimḥi and the pseudo-Kimḥi material in later polemical literature. The appearance of the Provencal Kimḥi arguments in this Northern French manuscript also points to the movement of traditions from the south into the north and sheds new light on the geographic patterns of cultural development in thirteenth century France. Fragment A2 also contains almost verbatim parallels to anti-Christian criticism found in Nizzachon vetus, including traces of German linguistic influence.

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.