An intellectual biography that critically engages Adolf Jellinek’s scholarship and communal activities Adolf Jellinek (1821–1893), the Czech-born, German-educated, liberal chief rabbi of Vienna, was the most famous Jewish preacher in Central Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. As an innovative rhetorician, Jellinek helped mold and define the modern synagogue sermon into an instrument for expressing Jewish religious and ethical values for a new era. As a historian, he made groundbreaking contributions to the study of the Zohar and medieval Jewish mysticism. Jellinek was emblematic of rabbi-as-scholar-preacher during the earliest, formative years of communal synagogues as urban religious space. In a world that was rapidly losing the felt and remembered past of premodern Jewish society, the rabbi, with Jellinek as prime exemplar, took hold of the Sabbath sermon as an instrument to define and mold Judaism and Jewish values for a new world.

The term ‘rabbi’ predominantly denotes Jewish men qualified to interpret the Torah and apply halacha, or those entrusted with the religious leadership of a Jewish community. However, the role of the rabbi has been understood differently across the Jewish world. While in Israel they control legally powerful rabbinical courts and major religious political parties, in the Jewish communities of the Diaspora this role is often limited by legal regulations of individual countries. However, the significance of past and present rabbis and their religious and political influence endures across the world. Rabbis of Our Time provides a comprehensive overview of the most influential rabbinical authorities of Judaism in the 20th and 21st Century. Through focussing on the most theologically influential rabbis of the contemporary era and examining their political impact, it opens a broader discussion of the relationship between Judaism and politics. It looks at the various centres of current Judaism and Jewish thinking, especially the State of Israel and the USA, as well as locating rabbis in various time periods. Through interviews and extracts from religious texts and books authored by rabbis, readers will discover more about a range of rabbis, from those before the formation of Israel to the most famous Chief Rabbis of Israel, as well as those who did not reach the highest state religious functions, but influenced the relation between Judaism and Israel by other means. The rabbis selected represent all major contemporary streams of Judaism, from ultra-Orthodox/Haredi to Reform and Liberal currents, and together create a broader picture of the scope of contemporary Jewish thinking in a theological and political context. An extensive and detailed source of information on the varieties of Jewish thinking influencing contemporary Judaism and the modern State of Israel, this book is of interest to students and scholars of Jewish Studies, as well as Religion and Politics.

This book examines the thought and legacy of Rabbi Loew (the Maharal), one of the most important Jewish thinkers. Taking a multi-disciplinary approach, the book encompasses organized perspectives that range from East European cultural and intellectual history, to Medieval Jewish intellectual history and its legacies, to Rabbinic theology, to Italian Jewish history, to Early Modern Jewish intellectual history, to Maharal Studies, to Postmodernism and Judaism, to Jewish political theory, Comparative Religion, and Cinematic Studies.

A thorough examination of the life and work of Rabbi Esriel Hildesheimer, an important contributor to the creation of a modern Jewish Orthodoxy during the late 1800s.

Who Rules the Synagogue? explores how American Jewry in the nineteenth century transformed from a lay dominated community to one whose leading religious authorities were rabbis. Zev Eleff weaves together the significant episodes and debates that shaped American Judaism during this formative period, and places this story into the larger context of American religious history and modern Jewish history.

This book examines the talmudic writings, politics, and ideology of Y.I. Halevy (1847-1914), one of the most influential representatives of the pre-war eastern European Orthodox Jewish community. It analyzes Halevy’s historical model of the formation of the Babylonian Talmud, which, he argued, was edited by an academy of rabbis beginning in the fourth century and ending by the sixth century. Halevy's model also served as a blueprint for the rabbinic council of Agudath Israel, the Orthodox political body in whose founding he played a leading role. Foreword by Jay M. Harris, Harry Austryn Wolfson Professor of Jewish Studies at Harvard University and the author of How Do We Know This? Midrash and the Fragmentation of Modern Judaism, among other works.

Schorsch -- The 1840s and the creation of the German-Jewish religious reform movement /Steven M. Lowenstein -- German-Jewish social thought in the mid-nineteenth century / Uriel Tal -- Religious dissent and tolerance in the 1840s / Hermann Greive -- Heine's portraits of German and French Jews on the eve of the 1848 Revolution / S.S Prawer -- The revolution of 1848 : Jewish emancipation in Germany and its limits / Werner E. Mosse.