Man and Nature , the most notable work by A. D. Gordon (1860-1922) was written mostly during the second decade of the twentieth century. It is an original philosophical work, which revolves around the ethics, aesthetics and philosophy of religion. In addition to presenting a comprehensive philosophical theory in Hebrew, Gordon discusses issues which became more and more central in the generations that followed him – like ecology, gender and the rejuvenation of Judaism. By returning to nature Gordon advocates a full life of creation. This new edition contains sections from the Dgania Alef archives, which were omitted from previous editions. In the introduction, the editors describe how the text deviates from the time and place in which it was written, explaining the recent wave of renewed interest in Gordon’s writings.

In the few years after his retirement from public life and before he was sentenced to suicide, the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote the majority of his texts, which included over one hundred letters of wisdom (espistulae morales) sent to his friend Lucilius. These letters are considered the first appearance of literary letters in Roman prose. The letters are philosophical essays written by a very wise and witty old man concluding his life, an autobiography of our spiritual world. The issues that interested Seneca are eternally relevant.

The question of theodicy has preoccupied philosophers and theologians throughout generations. Roughly: If God is moral, how can there be evil in the world? Or: Is the existence of evil not evidence against the existence of a righteous God? This question became the greatest philosophical challenge for the believer, and the main device in the hands of atheists. The question of theodicy also raises a second-order discussion, about the nature of the challenge: Is there a logical contradiction between a moral God and the existence of evil? If not, what sort of tension is this? Can the attributes of God be thought of in a coherent manner? Does the very existence of evil give rise to the challenge, or only the existence of unnecessary evil? The present research addresses Kant’s take on theodicy. It focuses mainly on two Kantian assertions that seem to disaccord with Kant’s theory of freedom: 1. That evil is entrenched in mankind, and 2. That if all-inclusive moral-order is impossible, the moral-law is erroneous. The conclusion, based on close examination of Kant’s argumentation, is that Kant did not exclude theodicy from rational discourse, but rather redefined the challenge enclosed in the question of theodicy.

This volume from the series of Mikra Leyisrael contains the commentary of the books Ezra and Nehemia , which provide important information on the return from Babylonia and Persia to Judea after Cyrus' decree and the rebuilt of Jerusalem.

Written at different times and for different audiences - some for scholars of rabbinic literature, some for laymen or for scholars not necessarily Jewish - the essays gathered together in this volume nevertheless have an inner coherence. They reflect the author's lifetime interest in the history of halakhah - not as intellectual history per se, but rather a concern to identify measurable deflection in the unfolding of halakhic ideas that could point to an undetected force at work. What was it that stimulated change, and why? What happened when strong forces impinged upon halakhic observance, and both the scholarly elite and the community as a whole had to grapple with upholding observance while adapting to a new set of circumstances? Haym Soloveitchik's elegant presentation shows skilfully that the line between adaptation and deviance is a fine one, and that where a society draws that line is revelatory of both its values and its self-perception. Many of the articles presented here are well known in the field but have been updated for this publication (the major essay on pawnbroking has been expanded to half again its original size); some have been previously published only in Hebrew, and two are completely new. An Introduction highlights the key themes of the collection and explains the underlying methodology. Having these essays in a single volume will enable scholars and students to consult all the material on each theme together, while also tracing the development of ideas. The opening section of the volume is a brief description and characterization of the dramatis personae who figure in all these essays: Rashi and the Tosafists. It covers the halakhic commentaries and their authors; the creativity of Ashkenaz; and the halakhic isolation of the Ashkenazic community. The second section focuses on usury and money-lending, including the practice of pawn-broking, while the third section deals with the ban on Gentile wine and how that connected to the development of money-lending. The final section presents general conclusions in the form of four studies of the communal self-image of Ashkenaz and its attitude to deviation and change.

In this second volume of his essays on the history of halakhah, Haym Soloveitchik grapples with much-disputed topics in medieval Jewish history and takes issue with a number of reigning views. His insistence that proper understanding requires substantive, in-depth analysis of the sources leads him to a searching analysis of oft-cited halakhic texts of Ashkenaz, frequently with conclusions that differ from the current consensus. Medieval Jewish historians cannot, he argues, avoid engaging in detailed textual criticism, and texts must always be interpreted in the context of the legal culture of their time. Historians who shirk these tasks risk reinforcing a version that supports their own preconceptions, and retrojecting later notions on to an earlier age. These basic methodological points underlie every topic discussed. In Part I, devoted to the cultural origins of Ashkenaz and its lasting impact, Professor Soloveitchik questions the scholarly consensus that the roots of Ashkenaz lie deep in Palestinian soil. He challenges the widespread notion that it was immemorial custom (minhag kadmon) that primarily governed Early Ashkenaz, the culture that emerged in the Rhineland in the late tenth century and which was ended by the ravages of the First Crusade (1096). He similarly rejects the theory that it was only towards the middle of the eleventh century that the Babylonian Talmud came to be regarded as fully authoritative. On the basis of an in-depth analysis of the literature of the time, he shows that the scholars of Early Ashkenaz displayed an astonishing command of the complex corpus of the Babylonian Talmud and viewed it at all times as the touchstone of the permissible and the forbidden. The section concludes with his own radical proposal as to the source of Ashkenazi culture and the stamp it left upon the Jews of northern Europe for close to a millennium. The second part of the volume treats the issue of martyrdom as perceived and practised by Jews under Islam and Christianity. In one of the longer essays, Soloveitchik claims that Maimonides’ problematic Iggeret ha-Shemad is a work of rhetoric, not halakhah—a conclusion that has generated much criticism from other scholars, to whom he replies one by one. This is followed by a comprehensive study of kiddush ha-shem in Ashkenaz, which draws him into an analysis of whether aggadic sources were used by the Tosafists in halakhic arguments, as some historians claim; whether there was any halakhic validation of the widespread phenomenon of voluntary martyrdom; and, indeed, whether halakhic considerations played any part in such tragic life-and-death issues. The book concludes with two essays on Mishneh torah which argue that that famed code must also be viewed as a work of art which sustains, as masterpieces do, multiple conflicting interpretations.

In his article entitled "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness", David Chalmers divides the study of consciousness into two parts: the easy problems and the hard problems. The easy problems are those related to neurological/functional/cognitive processes. In contrast, the hard problem is the study of consciousness which is related to the subjective experience. In recent decades brain researchers have joined the race to understand consciousness. Most of them adopt an approach according to which any advance made in the study of neurological activity is also an advance in the study of consciousness. I contend that the gap between brain activities and the subjective experience cannot be bridged, among other things because consciousness is not confined within the brain. This book hence proposes that consciousness extends from the brain to the body and from only from there does it burst forth into the world. One of the book’s main arguments is that the world itself serves as our best model, without any need for representation or a central control system within our brains. Therefore, to better understand the subjective experience we must examine how human beings are present and act within the world.

Something crucial and quite unprecedented happened to kabbalah in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Though it had previously been considered a highly secretive and esoteric tradition, its practitioners began to spread its doctrines throughout the Jewish world with missionary zeal. Their goal was ambitious: no less than the remodelling of the religious and ethical attitudes of the entire Jewish population, a reformation of Judaism. Few aspects of Jewish life and religious practice were not changed as a result of the spread of kabbalah. These innovations originated mainly in the city of Safed in Galilee. They were introduced by kabbalistic adepts, but would not have gained broad acceptance if they had not made sense to people in terms of their everyday lives. The kabbalistic corpus that emerged should thus be interpreted not just as the elaboration of a secretive literary tradition, but as a response to the needs of Jewish society in its manifest historical context. In addition, Roni Weinstein argues, these kabbalistic innovations were partly a response to changes in the Catholic world-view, revealing an intimate link with Counter-Reformation Catholicism that is explored here for the first time. The religious and political changes taking place in contemporary Ottoman settings also contributed to these changes. The effect of these developments on Jewish culture was nothing short of revolutionary, deeply affecting people’s lives at the time and also laying the foundations for change in future generations. Yet they were not presented as revolutionary: the early modern kabbalists understood that they would only succeed in spreading their message if they presented their doctrines as the natural continuation of what went before. Weinstein’s sociological reading of mystical texts encompasses a number of methodological innovations, including the need to consider the impact of the non-Jewish environment in the fashioning of Jewish texts. He sees the emergence of ‘Jewish modernity’ as the result of developments that were intrinsically Jewish rather than as a response to outside influences during the Enlightenment; controversially, he therefore places its origins in the Mediterranean world of the late sixteenth century rather than in eighteenth-century Berlin. His argument is based on a wide range of Jewish sources—including theological tracts, kabbalistic and ethical literature, hagiographies, mystical diaries, halakhic rulings and responsa, and community and confraternal regulations—as well as the testimonies non-Jewish travellers, and Catholic religious literature. This stimulating new reading of the development of kabbalistic texts and practices opens a new chapter in the understanding of Jewish modernity. The Hebrew edition of this book was awarded the Goren-Gottstein Prize for the Best Book in Jewish Thought 2010–2012.

The purpose of this volume, like its predecessor, is to uncover fragments of important Hebrew works hidden in the “European Genizah”. Thousands of pages of Hebrew manuscripts have been discovered in this “Genizah”, which is scattered in hundreds of libraries and archives throughout Europe and even beyond. In the late medieval and early modern eras, these pages were used to bind books and as folders of archival documents. The nine works published herein are from a variety of genres: Biblical exegesis, Talmud commentary, halakhic literature, and liturgical interpretation. They appear in this volume in chronological order, from earliest to latest. The most significant of the works is also the work whose discovery required more effort than all of the others; it appears in the first chapter of the book. This work was written in ninth or tenth-century Palestine. It reveals valuable information on the history of halakhah in Palestine of that era, and also teaches a great deal about how Palestinian Traditions made their way to the European continent.

Journeys of the Soul: Concepts and Imageries of Paradise in Medieval Kabbalah covers the most decisive period in the history of Jewish speculation about the Garden of Eden. At the heart of the book is a thorough analysis of the compositions written by medieval kabbalists and other esotericists dedicated to that ultimate locus of retribution. Alongside their concrete and abstract portraits of the Garden, these works discuss its relationship to the Godhead and the role it plays in personal eschatology, anthropology, and psychology. The book examines trends within the interpretive history of the biblical Paradise in medieval Jewish thought more generally, and in medieval kabbalistic literature in particular. The notion of gradations or distinct sites within the Garden of Eden is explored in light of its possible influences, and the appearance of the Garden of Eden within kabbalistic psychology is considered in light of thirteenth-century theosophical doctrines. A lengthy treatment is devoted to those works which delineate the architectonic structure of the supernal Garden and depict the visual appearance of the earthly temples (hekhalot) of the lower Garden, while mapping them onto the structurally complex interrelationships within the Godhead. Within this context, the book treats a number of textual conundrums concerning the very development of the kabbalistic canon, including the appearance of the Zohar. Throughout the book, the author also investigates scientific paradigms, legendary traditions, and theological polemics in the religious literature of the period concerning the appearance and structure of the Garden of Eden. Similar exegeses, shared traditions, and a common conceptual foundation of the eschatological Paradise are identified in the kabbalistic literature, alongside echos of the Jewish apocrypha, Rabbinic literature, and Hekhalot texts. Dr. Avishai Bar Asher has been awarded the Matanel Prize for the best book in Jewish Thought published during the years 2018-2019.

The philosophy of Levinas has developed over nearly sixty years. Its evolution can be subdivided into three main stages: Following the pre-war writings, the period 1945-1961 lead to the book Totalité et Infini, in which the ethical thought of Levinas takes a first accomplished form. During the last stage, whose central opus is Autrement qu’être (Otherwise than Being), his thought both radicalized and opened up to multiple horizons. Indeed, Levinas is not merely an academic philosopher ignorant of other movements of thought that mark his century. This book aims to show how the stages of Levinas’s strictly philosophical thought is expressed with regard to politics, Judaism, and Christianity.