This work proposes a reconstruction of the thought world underlying the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17-26). It focuses on the notions of people and land, which are central to the way the law is presented in this corpus. Important themes treated include the sons of Israel, the resident alien, the call to holiness, the camp in the desert and the land as the property of the Lord. The conceptual universe of the Holiness Code is entirely dominated by the notion of the presence of the Lord in his sanctuary, in the midst of his people. It is this presence which requires the Israelites to observe holiness and confers upon the land its particular status. The priestly conception of the relationship between God, people and land finds interesting parallels in the ideology of holy places evidenced in writings from the Ancient Near East.

Purity has long been recognized as one of the essential drives which determines humankind's relationship with the holy. Codes of purity and impurity, dealing with such far-ranging topics as 'external stains' and 'inner remorse', represent the physical and 'bodily' side of religious experience and provide the key to the understanding of human orientation to nature, and the structure of society, including even relationships between the sexes. Starting with the Hebrew Bible, a number of articles study some rather neglected passages from both exegetical and cultural-anthropological standpoints. Next, it is shown that the concept of purity is far more central to the New Testament than previously thought. Luke is portrayed as a Jewish-oriented writer. The discussion of purity in Mark is compared with Rabbinical and Qumranic material. Patristic discussions of purity reflect both allegorical and literal interpretations, while rabbinical rulings display a fine sense for detail and realia. Biblical references to illness are interpreted both in Christian and Jewish traditions as a metaphor for immoral behavior. The present collection of studies proceeds far beyond other collections on purity, studying both the medieval and modern periods. Purity rules, in both Christian and Jewish society, do not disappear in the Middle Ages, but become increasingly stronger. Sometimes there appear unexpected and surprising similarities between both societies. Modern society sees a decline in the importance of purity, reflecting a growing ambiguous attitude to the relationship between the body and the holy. A feminist perspective is also provided, examining the intertwined relationship between religion, gender and power. Exegesis, archaeology, liturgy, anthropology and even architecture are all used to study the complex phenomena of purity in their religious and social dimensions from both Christian and Jewish perspectives.

The groundbreaking volume The Torah: A Women's Commentary, originally published by URJ Press and Women of Reform Judaism, has been awarded the top prize in the oldest Jewish literary award program, the 2008 National Jewish Book Awards. A work of great import, the volume is the result of 14 years of planning, research, and fundraising. THE HISTORY: At the 39th Women of Reform Judaism Assembly in San Francisco, Cantor Sarah Sager challenged Women of Reform Judaism delegates to "imagine women feeling permitted, for the first time, feeling able, feeling legitimate in their study of Torah." WRJ accepted that challenge. The Torah: A Women's Commentary was introduced at the Union for Reform Judaism 69th Biennial Convention in San Diego in December 2007. WRJ has commissioned the work of the world's leading Jewish female Bible scholars, rabbis, historians, philosophers and archaeologists. Their collective efforts resulted in the first comprehensive commentary, authored only by women, on the Five Books of Moses, including individual Torah portions as well as the Hebrew and English translation. The Torah: A Women's Commentary gives dimension to the women's voices in our tradition. Under the skillful leadership of editors Dr. Tamara Cohn Eskenazi and Rabbi Andrea Weiss, PhD, this commentary provides insight and inspiration for all who study Torah: men and women, Jew and non-Jew. As Dr. Eskenazi has eloquently stated, "we want to bring the women of the Torah from the shadow into the limelight, from their silences into speech, from the margins to which they have often been relegated to the center of the page - for their sake, for our sake and for our children's sake." Published by CCAR Press, a division of the Central Conference of American Rabbis

The sixth and fifth centuries BCE were a time of constant re-identifications within Judean communities, both in exile and in the land; it was a time when Babylonian exilic ideologies captured a central position in Judean (Jewish) history and literature at the expense of silencing the voices of any other Judean communities. Proceeding from the later biblical evidence to the earlier, from the Persian period sources (Ezra–Nehemiah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Deutero-Isaiah) to the Neo-Babylonian prophecy of Ezekiel and Jeremiah, Exclusive Inclusivity explores the ideological transformations within these writings using the sociological rubric of exclusivity. Social psychology categories of ethnicity and group identity provide the analytical framework to clarify that Ezekiel, the prophet of the Jehoiachin Exiles, was the earliest constructor of these exclusive ideologies. Thus, already from the Neo-Babylonian period, definitions of otherness were being set to shape the self-understanding of each of the post-586 communities, in Judah (Yehud) and in the Babylonian Diaspora, as the exclusive People of God. As each community reidentified itself as the in-group, arguments of otherness were adduced to diregard and delegitimize the sister community. The polemics against “foreigners” in the Persian period literature are the ideological successors to the earlier ideological conflict.

The land is an important theme in the Bible. It is a theme through which the whole biblical history found in the Old and New Testaments can be studied and analyzed. Looking at the land in the Bible from its beginnings in the garden of Eden this publication approaches the theme from three distinct perspectives – holiness, the convenant, and the kingdom. Through careful analysis the author recognises that the land has been universalized in Christ, as anticipated in the Old Testament, and as a result promotes a missional theology of the land that underlines the social and territorial dimensions of redemption.

The title, Marbeh Ḥokmah, meaning “increases wisdom,” reflects the fact that Victor Avigdor Hurowitz was a scholar who increased wisdom and who continues to increase the wisdom of scholars throughout the world even after his untimely death at the age of 64. The book was edited by five of Professor Hurowitz’s colleagues: Profs. Shamir Yona and Mayer I. Gruber of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Edward L. Greenstein of Bar-Ilan University, Peter Machinist of Harvard University, and Shalom M. Paul of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The two-volume collection contains 49 groundbreaking essays written by 53 distinguished authors from various institutions of higher learning in Israel and around the world. The authors include Victor’s teachers, colleagues, and students, and the essays deal with a great variety of subjects. The breadth of subject matter featured in Marbeh Ḥokmah is a most appropriate tribute to Victor Avigdor Hurowitz, whose published scholarship encompassed a wide variety of fields of interest pertaining to the study of the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East: Wisdom Literature, Psalmody, prophecy and prophets, the priesthood, eschatology, historiography, ancient inscriptions, medieval Hebrew biblical exegesis, religious rites, building and architecture, temples, the art of warfare, Semitic philology, Sumerian proverbs, epigraphy, rhetoric and stylistics, poetry, lamentations, the interconnections between Hebrew Scripture and the ancient Near East, the cultures of ancient Egypt and ancient Mesopotamia, innerbiblical parallels, and many other subjects.

Scholar Israel Knohl offers a new perspective on the history and theology of the Priestly source of the Pentateuch. Knohl claims that groups associated with the Priestly Torah appear ensconced within the Temple, operating within a "Sanctuary of Silence", in contrast to the later Holiness School, which reached a loftier conception of God and a broader purview of faith, holiness, and practice.