The eight studies in this volume focus on additional aspects of the narratives in the Five Books of Moses that have frequently been glossed over by commentators, ancient and modern, and remain contentious to this very day. These studies address subjects such as the primal mission of man in the creation narrative, the ‘covenant between the pieces,’ the symbolism of circumcision, the story of Jacob and his four wives, and the rape of Dinah, as depicted in the book of Genesis; the story of the exodus from Egypt as related in the book of Exodus; the reason for the premature death of the sons of Aaron, Nadav and Avihu, and the reason for the dietary laws, as set forth in the book of Leviticus. Although these studies do not claim to resolve the issues they examine, it is their purpose to stimulate further interest in the complexities of the ancient biblical narratives and the hidden insights about human nature they provide.

This book is a continuation of an earlier work, Reading Genesis Politically, the primary focus of which is the first ten chapters of the much larger book of Genesis. The present study begins with chapter eleven of Genesis which introduces the story of the emergence of Abraham, the iconic founder of the Jewish nation and Judaic civilization. As indicated by the title of the present study its primary concern is with the prehistory of ancient Israel. The sole source of information about Israel’s national origins is imbedded in the Pentateuch, the five books of the Torah, in which the birth of Israel is portrayed as part of a divine plan for the betterment of mankind. As a result, its prehistory beginning with Abraham and concluding with Moses is necessarily theopolitical in nature, reflecting the critical divine role in its formation. There are of course virtually innumerable studies of the Pentateuchal narratives that address the roles of the Patriarchs in preserving the religious heritage of Abraham until its culmination in the work of Moses. However, there are very few studies that direct attention to the necessarily socio-political aspects of the narratives that establish the basis for the ultimate emergence of a viable but querulous nation out of what the biblical text repeatedly terms “a stiff-necked people,” primarily related by common ethnicity as descendants of the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Judaic thought on the role of war in the history of the children of Israel begins with the biblical narratives that record a variety of belligerencies in which God is often depicted as the one who leads the Hebrews in battle, protects them from their enemies, and makes them victorious over other armies. Thus, during the initial phase of the exodus from Egypt, when the people were terrified by the approach of the Egyptian army, Moses sought to calm them by assuring them that the Lord will fight for you (Ex. 14:14), which he repeated when he sought to calm their concerns by again assuring them: The Lord your God who goeth before you, He shall fight for you (Deut. 1:30). These assurances clearly were not intended to be taken literally. The metaphor of God as their warrior had multifaceted connotations for a people who knew or at least perceived themselves to be smaller and weaker than the nations with which they would have to contend in order to establish themselves in the land divinely promised to their ancestors. The metaphor provided the children of Israel with a sense of security; informing them that they were chosen for freedom by an all-powerful God who would continue to support them even in the face of apparently overwhelming challenges. The present study focuses primarily on a number of biblical narratives selected because they each reflect the basic issues of reason and morality that relate to the conduct of warfare throughout human history, as understood in Judaic thought. In each case, the context will be described to the extent necessary to evaluate the rationale and consequences, both intended and unintended, of the resort to armed conflict. The study then addresses the efforts, in the post-biblical rabbinic period, to amplify and codify the rules pertaining to the making and conduct of war and peace, a process that continues in Judaic thought to the present day, when such decisions, after a lapse of two millennia, once again confront autonomous decision-makers in the modern State of Israel.

Jacob and Esau is a profound new account of two millennia of Jewish European history that, for the first time, integrates the cosmopolitan narrative of the Jewish diaspora with that of traditional Jews and Jewish culture. Malachi Haim Hacohen uses the biblical story of the rival twins, Jacob and Esau, and its subsequent retelling by Christians and Jews throughout the ages as a lens through which to illuminate changing Jewish-Christian relations and the opening and closing of opportunities for Jewish life in Europe. Jacob and Esau tells a new history of a people accustomed for over two-and-a-half millennia to forming relationships, real and imagined, with successive empires but eagerly adapting, in modernity, to the nation-state, and experimenting with both assimilation and Jewish nationalism. In rewriting this history via Jacob and Esau, the book charts two divergent but intersecting Jewish histories that together represent the plurality of Jewish European cultures.

This Handbook of Jewish Languages is an introduction to the many languages used by Jews throughout history, including Yiddish, Judezmo (Ladino) , and Jewish varieties of Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Berber, English, French, Georgian, Greek, Hungarian, Iranian, Italian, Latin American Spanish, Malayalam, Occitan (Provençal), Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Syriac, Turkic (Karaim and Krymchak), Turkish, and more. Chapters include historical and linguistic descriptions of each language, an overview of primary and secondary literature, and comprehensive bibliographies to aid further research. Many chapters also contain sample texts and images. This book is an unparalleled resource for anyone interested in Jewish languages, and will also be very useful for historical linguists, dialectologists, and scholars and students of minority or endangered languages. This paperback edition has been updated to include dozens of additional bibliographic references.