In Ha-halakhah ha-nevu’it , the author traces the halakhic philosophy of Rabbi Abraham Isaac ha-Kohen Kook, one of the preeminent Jewish thinkers of modern times. Rabbi Kook was called upon to offer his opinions on the raging issues of the day within the Jewish world—enlightenment, secularization, and the Zionist movement—and his influence on Israeli public life was and remains enormous. His complex, poetically formulated pronouncements resonated with the community and gave rise to varied, sometimes contradictory interpretations. Although regarded as philosophically daring and a source of intellectual ferment, he is also recalled as a stringent halakhist. Not surprisingly, most of the literature on Rabbi Kook thus far has concentrated on his thought and has tended to disregard his halakhic rulings. This book is the first to examine the full extent of Rabbi Kook’s philosophical and halakhic writings, taking account of all the contradictions and tensions they embody. At the same time, it illustrates the linkage among halakhah, aggadah, and prophecy. The study shows that there can be no halakhah without aggadah; that every ruling is illuminated by an underlying philosophy. To elucidate Rabbi Kook’s halakhic writings, the book introduces the reader to the areas of his thinking and philosophy that encompass human thought in general as well as the hidden recesses of Jewish literature in all its forms: aggadah and halakhah; poetry and legal decisions; esoteric and exoteric teachings. Against that comprehensive background, the meta-halakhic principles that underlie his halakhic rulings clearly emerge. Rabbi Kook’s jurisprudence touches on the realm of prophecy, and his journals—extensively cited in this book—convey his prophetic sensibility. The sense of prophecy is tied to the experience of the return to the Land of Israel, and it plays a central role in understanding his halakhic writings. The book examines the problematic interplay between prophecy and halakhah in general and Rabbi Kook’s prophetic-halakhic world in particular, along with its wealth of implications.

Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995), is one of the greatest philosophers of our time. This title, which is a collection of essays written by experts on Levinas both in Israel and abroad, presents the main parts of his work: The philosophical writings, the Jewish writings, the Talmudic readings, present topics, and his controversial stances towards certain modern day streams or ideologies such as psychoanalysis. The articles in this book are based on an international conference which took place at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in May 2002 on the philosophy of Emanuel Levinas.

Biblical Beliefs reveals and describes the many faces and range of faiths and beliefs in biblical thought. Biblical Beliefs disagrees with the view of Yechezkel Kaufman in his monumental work "The History of Israeli Faith".

The Kethib and Qeri forms, scattered here and there throughout the Biblical Text, combine here, like a mosaic, to form a complete picture and give one a comprehensive system of language. The book analyzes this linguistic system according to the manuscript Kether Aram Tsova, presenting the method of the most authoritative Masorite scholar Rabbi Aharon Ben-Asher. This systematic study examines the Biblical phenomenon of Kethib and Qeri interchanges by linguistic criteria. The book consists of an introduction summarizing the research on this topic, followed by four chapters. Chapter One: Orthography dealing with different orthographic realizations of words as הנער (K ) / הַנַּעֲרָה Q))Deut.22:15) ). Chapter Two: Morphology engages in morphological interchanges, as ואתי (K ) / וְאַתְּ (Q ) (Jud.17:2). Chapter Three: Syntax including various categories related to the syntax in particular the morpho-syntax like syntactic concord, as מגדיל (ישועות) (K ) / מִגְדּוֹל (ישועות) (Q)( Sam.22:512). Chapter Four: Lexicon and style dealing with interchanges of K/Q in the domain of lexicon and style as העיר(התיכונה)(K ) / חָצֵר(התיכונה)(Q)(Kings. 20:42 ). Finally, a general summary of discussions and conclusions. Additionally, statistical data that indicate the validity of the findings with respect to occurrences of Kethib and Qeri in the Biblic Text in general. The Kethib and Qeri System in the Biblical Text is an innovative linguistic analysis, which will be of great interest to scholars of Biblical language, Bible Exegesis and Masoretic Text.

The Torah of the Ba'aeli Tosaphists-the scholars of Germany and France in the 12th and 13th Century, is the iron pillar of the Halacha and the Jewish law.

In this path breaking book, Yaron Ben-Naeh describes and analyzes for the first time in scholarly literature the Jewish Society in the urban centers of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, in Anatolia and in the Arab provinces. It focuses on the 17th century, the period which shaped and molded Ottoman Jewry as such. The book is solidly based on a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, among them Ottoman documents which the author has found and deciphered. The chapters of the book deal with various aspects of communal life, family life and social dynamics, with special relation to city life and the surrounding Muslim society and acculturation processes which had made it into the core of sephardi Jewry.

Is there a justification for continuous debate about Orthodox Judaism? This collection of articles presents Orthodox Judaism as a rich and varied phenomenon, from a new historic, social and geographic perspective.