The systematic and orderly presentation of the Halakhah, normative law, of Rabbinic Judaism in its formative age makes its principal statements in response to a program of social reconstruction; it speaks through the details of norms of law about the community, Israel. Rabbinic Halakhah lays out a social philosophy of an coherent and encompassing character. Part 1: Corporate Israel and the Individual Israelite In the first part of the project, on Corporate Israel and the Individual Israelite we ask where and how the Halakhah sorts out the relationships of the individual and the community: the realm of responsible action and particular responsibility assigned by the Halakhah to each. Prophecy, from Moses forward, and the Halakhah from the Mishnah onward, concur that the condition of "all Israel" dictates the standing of each individual within Israel, and further concur that each Israelite bears responsibility for what he or she as a matter of deliberation and intention chooses to do. If individuals were conceived as automatons, always subordinated agencies of the community, or if the community were contemplated as merely the sum total of individual participants, a particular social teaching would hardly demand attention. But Scripture, continued in the Mishnah, Tosefta, the two Talmuds, and Midrash, insists that Israelites are individual responsible for what they do, and further that corporate Israel on its own, not only as the sum of individual actions, forms a moral entity subject to judgment. So these are the governing questions: How to sort out these intersecting matters, then, the obligations of the community, the responsibilities of individuals? How does the social teaching of Rabbinic Judaism hold together doctrines of individual obligations to Heaven and mutual responsibilities, on the one side, with all Israel1s commitments and public convictions, on the other? Part 2: Between Israelites Part 2 turns to relationships between Israelites, with particular attention to those that require resolving conflict. Once the law recognizes not only Israelites but the integrity of corporate Israel, how does it regulate relationships within the framework of that corporate community? By regulating relationships the sages will have understood, relationships of competition, contention, and conflict. Those of collaboration, consensus, and cooperation require no regulation on the part of constitutive law; they regulate themselves by their nature: people keep rules. Then at issue are where the corporate community intervenes to protect its interests in relationships between and among individual Israelites, and how it does so. The exposition then follows the laws presentation of those relationships as integral to the larger system of Rabbinic Judaism and its plan for its Israel's public life, hence, once more, the focus on large constructions, category-formations that are integral to the main beams of the Halakhic system and structure. Part 3: God's Presence in Israel Part 3 raises the third and final question of the social order: God's role in society. For Rabbinic Judaism to be "Israel" means to live in God's kingdom, under God's rule, in a very particular way. That imperative addresses not individuals alone or mainly but, rather, corporate Israel, that is, the entire social order. It encompasses not merely feelings or attitudes but registers in the here of tangible transactions and in the now of workaday engagements, not only in some distant time. The generative question of this third and concluding part of the study of the social t...

The academic study of Judaism requires a systematic inquiry into the history, literature, and religion—and eventually the theology—as revealed in the historical documents themselves. Under this premise, Three Questions of Formative Judaism encounters the canonical writings of Judaism in the context of their creation at a certain time and place. How something is said thus becomes as important as what is said. Bringing nearly fifty years of research to bear on these fundamental questions, Jacob Neusner challenges his readers to face the difficult, often unasked or neglected questions about the nature, background, and purposes of Rabbinic Judaism and rewards them with an enriched understanding and a stronger foundation for tackling the even more elusive questions concerning the theology of formative Judaism. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.

This book explores the question: How did the rabbis of the first two centuries CE approach bodies that are born with variant genitals—bodies that they could not identify as definitely male or female? The rabbis had constructed a system in which every behavior was governed by one’s sex/gender, posing a conundrum both for people who did not fit into that model and for the rabbinic enterprise itself. Despite this, their texts contain dozens of references to intersex. And the Sages Did Not Know examines the rabbis’ legal texts and concludes that they had multiple approaches to intersex people. Sarra Lev analyzes seven different rabbinic responses to this conflict of their own making. Through their rulings on how intersex people should conduct themselves in multiple circumstances, the early rabbis treat intersex people as unidentifiable males or females, as indeterminate, as male, as non-gendered, as sui generis, as part-male/part-female, as a sustainable paradox, and, finally, as a way for them to think about gender, having nothing to do with intersex people themselves. This is the first such work that concentrates primarily on the potential effects of these rabbinic texts on intersex persons themselves rather than focusing on what the texts offer readers whose interest is rabbinic approaches to sex and gender or gender diversity. Although the rabbinic texts do not include the voices of known intersex people, these materials do offer us a window into how one small group of people approached intersex bodies, and how those approaches were both similar to and different from those we recognize today.

If law alone yields legalism, then religious belief, by itself, fails to create justice. In Performing Israel's Faith, Jacob Neusner shows how Jewish Halakhah (law) and Aggadah (narrative) fit together to form a robust and coherent covenant theology--one directly concerned about this world. Neusner's careful and thorough examination of several key issues within rabbinic Judaism--the nations, idolatry, sin, repentance, and atonement--demonstrates that neither Halakhah nor Aggadah can be fully and rightly understood when the two are isolated from each other. Performing Israel's Faith thus effectively reveals that rabbinic Judaism's true pattern of religion was constituted by a covenant theology comprised by both law and story--a covenant theology whose aim was to restore the sanctification of God's original creation.

This collection of essays draws on work done in 2011¬–2012. The author takes up several topics in the systemic analysis of Judaism, its literature, and its theology. The reason for periodically collecting and publishing essays and reviews is to give them a second life, after they have served as lectures or as summaries of monographs or as free-standing articles or as expositions of Judaism in collections of comparative religions. This re-presentation serves a readership to whom the initial presentation in lectures or specialized journals or short-run monographs is inaccessible. Some of the essays furthermore provide a précis, for colleagues in kindred fields, of fully worked out monographs.

This volume treats the interrelationship between Judaism and Christianity from the first centuries and into modern times, paying particular attention to these faithsa (TM) social, cultural, and theological interactions. The issues covered range from the formation of Jewish and Christian ideology in the context of Roman paganism to the ways in which Christian culture and theology of the medieval and modern periods form a backdrop to the creation of Jewish identity. While the historical periods and issues discussed are diverse, the result is to suggest the importance of our recognizing the close development of Judaism and Christianity. Written by top scholars in Judaic and Christian studies, these essays reflect on how the two faiths related to and were shaped by each other as they evolved in shared historical and cultural contexts, even as each maintained its own distinctive ideologies and beliefs.