15
Laws in the Bible and in Early Rabbinic
Collections: The Legal Legacy of the
Ancient Near East
Samuel Greengus
Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2011
This volume seeks to examine
within a single study all of the
biblical laws that are similar in
content with ancient Near East-
ern laws from Sumer, Babylonia,
Assyria, and Hatti, and analyzes
a small but important group of
early rabbinic laws from postbib-
lical times that exhibit significant
similarities with laws found in the
ancient Near Eastern collections
or “codes.”
All These Vows: Kol Nidre
Edited by Lawrence A. Hoffman, N ’69, Ph.D. ‘73
Jewish Lights Publishing, 2011
Over thirty contributors – men
and women, scholars and rabbis,
artists and poets spanning three
continents and all major Jewish
denominations – examine
Kol
Nidre’s
theology, usage, history,
and deeply personal impact.
One Hundred Great Jewish Books:
Three Millennia of Jewish Conversation
Lawrence A. Hoffman, N ’69, Ph.D. ‘73
Bluebridge, 2011
This guide allows readers to
listen in on the Jewish conversa-
tion across many centuries—
from the Hebrew Bible and the
rabbinic masterpieces to the
pressing subjects of the early
21
st century, in great works of
biography, spirituality, theology,
poetry, fiction, history, and polit-
ical theory, with a special focus
on modern American Jewish life,
the Holocaust, and the founding
of the State of Israel.
Forsaken: The Menstruant in Medieval Jewish
Mysticism
Sharon Faye Koren
Brandeis University Press, 2011
Why are there no known female
mystics in medieval Judaism,
unlike contemporaneous move-
ments in Christianity and Islam?
Koren demonstrates that the
medieval Jewish male mystics
increasingly emphasized that
the changing states of the female
body between ritual purity and
impurity disqualified women from
the quest for mystical connection
with God.
The Benderly Boys & American Jewish Education
Jonathan B. Krasner
Brandeis University Press, 2011
Samson Benderly sought to
modernize Jewish education by
professionalizing the field, creating
an immigrant-based, progressive
supplementary school model,
and spreading the mantra of
community responsibility for
Jewish education. Benderly
trained a younger generation of
teachers, principals, and bureau
leaders, who, from the 1920s to
the 1970s, were the dominant force in Jewish formal and
informal education in the United States.
Awarded the 2011 National Jewish Book Award.
On Wings of Awe: A Fully Translated
Machzor for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
Richard Levy, C ‘64
KTAV Publishing, 2011
Transliterations of every Hebrew
prayer, poetic translations and
interpretations of all sections
of the Rosh Hashanah and
Yom Kippur services, personal
prayers, and suggested text
study are offered to help
worshippers find their own
pathway to prayer.
