About 350,000 Jewish children are currently enrolled in Jewish day-schools, in every continent other than Antarctica. This is the first book-length consideration of life in such schools and of their relationship both to the Jewish community and to society as a whole. It provides a rich sense of how community is constructed within Jewish schools, and of how they contribute to or complicate the construction of community in the wider society. The volume reframes day-school research in three ways. First, it focuses not just on the learner in the day-school classroom but sees schools as agents of and for the community. Second, it brings a truly international perspective to the study of day-schools, viewing them in relation to the socio-cultural contexts from which they emerge and where they have impact. Third, it considers day-school education in relation to insights derived from the study and practice of non-parochial education. This cross-cultural and genuinely comparative approach to the study of Jewish schooling draws on research from the United States, the former Soviet Union, South America, and Europe, making it possible to arrive at important and original insights into parochial Jewish schooling. With contributions from outstanding scholars as well as practitioners of public education and of Jewish parochial schooling, the volume reveals conflicting conceptions of the social functions of schooling and also produces original insights into the capacity of schools to build community. The book is timely in that it studies questions about faith-based schooling and the public good that today are as much questions of public policy as they are of academic inquiry. It will appeal first and foremost to those with a particular interest in Jewish schooling but will also attract the attention of academics and professionals concerned with the place of parochial education in contemporary society. CONTRIBUTORS Ami Bouganim, Erik H. Cohen, Ira Dashefsky, Howard Deitcher, Jay Dewey, Joshua Elkin, Yoel Finkelman, Zvi Gitelman, Scott J. Goldberg, Ellen B. Goldring, Yossi J. Goldstein, Eli Kohn, Jeffrey S. Kress, Binyamin Krohn, Jon A. Levisohn, Ilana Maryles Sztokman, Deborah Meier, Helena Miller, Christine Müller, Michal Muszkat Barkan, Alex Pomson, Joseph Reimer, Randal Schnoor, Susan L. Shevitz, Asher Shkedi, Claire Smrekar, Uriel Ta’ir, Michael Turetsky, Rahel Wasserfall Published for the Melton Centre for Jewish Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Order In the Bible: The Arrangement of the Torah in Rabbinic and Medieval Jewish Commentary examines ideas about biblical order in the commentaries of Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Nahmanides against the background of the Midrashic tradition. On the face of it, the arrangement of portions in the Torah is chronological, but close examination reveals more than a few discrepancies. The Midrash sometimes responded by saying that "There is no ‘earlier’ and ‘later’ in the Torah" (en muqdam ume'uhar ba-Torah)-- the order of the Torah is not always chronological. This response left the reader facing unexplained juxtapositions of chapters and verses. In some of the cases, the sages asked, lama nismekha, “Why were these two portions juxtaposed?” Usually, they sought to connect the unconnected stories and verses in the midrashic fashion, by adding to the events of the stories or by taking the second unit as the outcome of the first and deriving therefrom some moral teaching. Occasionally though, we find an attempt to answer the question of juxtaposition in terms that might be considered closer to the peshat method of explication. Moving in the direction of the peshat, medieval Jewish exegetes tried to explain biblical arrangement of both narratives and law based on thematic, associative, or literary links. Their attempts resulted in new ideas about the ordering of the Torah. This book contains hundreds of references to juxtaposition and non-chronological arrangements cited in the writings of the above commentators. These examples are put into the framework of each commentator's general approach to interpretation and his particular sense of biblical order. Dr. Isaac Gottlieb is a Senior lecturer in the Department of Bible at Bar-Ilan University and a member of its Institute for Jewish Bible Interpretation.

Iggud: Selected Essays in Jewish Studies. Articles published in the Iggud Volumes will be based on the best lectures which were given in the World Congress for Jewish Studies held in Jerusalem once every 4 years, and these volumes will therefore replace the Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies which have been published thus far. I am certain that this upgrade in publication format will bring respect to the researchers and their research, a reverence they greatly deserve. In the first volumes of Iggud were gathered articles based on lectures given on the 14th Congress held in August 2005. The current volume is dedicated to three subjects: The Bible and Its World, Rabbinic Literature, Jewish Law and Jewish Thought. In editing this volume I enjoyed the cooperation of two colleagues: Prof. Aharon Shemesh of Bar Ilan University and Prof. Avraham Melamed of Haifa University, to each his work and experience. In the Bible and Its World Section eleven articles are published in Hebrew and five in English. This large number reflects truthfully the strenuous development in researching Bible commentators and their methods, a subject which is again central in Biblical Science of this era. Beside articles in this field, appears a selection of articles about Bible Study itself with its various spheres, such as Biblical criticism and prophetic books, archeology and realism, and the various ways that Biblical Literature takes. The Rabbinic Literature and Jewish Law section includes nine Articles in Hebrew and two in English. These studies span several branches of Talmud and Halakha, and show especially the expanding interest, these days, in the questions touching on the process of editing and forming of Rabbinic Literature. Further to these studies dealing with these aspects of the profession, appear discussions in issues of Halakha, Law and Talmudic tale history. Eight articles in Hebrew and two in English are published in the Third section, which is dedicated to Jewish Thought. The studies are naturally divided into studies of contemplation and teachings of the philosophers themselves, through their writings together with the era they lived in and the elements influencing them on the one hand, and in these several studies comparing between the first and the last and studying the connection between them, and studying their methods of research on the other hand.

Iggud: Selected Essays in Jewish Studies. Articles published in the Iggud Volumes will be based on the best lectures which were given in the World Congress for Jewish Studies held in Jerusalem once every 4 years, and these volumes will therefore replace the Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies which have been published thus far. I am certain that this upgrade in publication format will bring respect to the researchers and their research, a reverence they greatly deserve. The essays in this volume cover a broad span of issues concerning Jewish culture, offering a comprehensive linguistic analysis of the Hebrew and Jewish languages, a survey of ancient and modern Jewish and Hebrew literature, and an examination of the history of visual arts and musicology in the Jewish world.

Subordinated King (Melekh Evyon, ) studies the conception of kingship, and its status, powers and authority in Talmudic literature. The book deals with the conception of Kingship against the background of the different approaches to kingship both in Biblical literature and in the political views prevalent in the Roman Empire. In the bible one finds three (exclusive) approaches to kingship: rejection of the king as a legitimate political institution - since God is the (political) king; a version of royal theology according to which the king is divine (or sacral); and a view that God is not a political king yet the king has no divine or sacral dimension. The king is flesh and blood; hence his authority and power are limited. He is a Subordinated King. While the first conception in its day to day realization is close to anarchy, according to the second conception the king holds all the powers – in foreign and domestic affairs, in the law, economy, administration, army, and especially in the religious and the ceremonial realms. In contrast, the third conception subscribes to the principle of separation of powers: between the King, and the high court (Sanhedrin, bet ha-din ha-gadol), the priests and the prophets. The sages of the Mishnah and Talmud were well aware of these three conceptions. In the legal-halakhic parts of the Talmudic literature (Mishnah, Tosefta, parts of the halakhic midrash, and the halakhic discussions in the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds) the Sages followed the third conception of kingship, restructuring it according to their theological and socio-political views. When compared to the theological-political views common in the ancient near east and in late antiquity the political model designed by the Talmudic sages is a genuine innovation. Nonetheless, there are in the aggadic (non-halakhic) parts of the Talmudic literature echoes of the other two biblical conceptions of kingship, which undermine the conception that constitutes the halakhic sources.

Yehuda Halevi: Poetry and Pilgrimage follows the life story of the greatest Hebrew poet of medieval times from his first publication in Christian Toledo to his heroic journey toward Zion from Muslim Spain. The description is based, for the first time, on the entire collection of his poetry- the Diwan , which was edited and reedited between East and West at every important crossroad of his life. This in turn is done through comparison to autobiographical letters and contemporary correspondence discovered and collected over the past 50 years in the Cairo Geniza collections. Documentary material and Literary works, which were shun behind the iron wall in The Russian National Library in St. Petersburg, are woven for the first time into one, enabling us to examine closely the intricate relationship between old Jewish traditions and the ideological heritage associated with Halevi's innovative writings in prose and in poetry. Confronting Halevi's "Zion, will thou not ask"? opens the study which is mainly concerned with the story of Halevi's odyssey from Christian to Muslim Spain and eventually to Egypt, including the epic quest to the beloved yet fatal Zion. Professor Joseph Yahalom Studies and teaches Hebrew poetry at the Hebrew Literature Department of The Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

What are the considerations that move Halakhic decision makers? Which questions must they ask themselves in the process of producing a worthy ruling? How does the Halakhah contribute to the shaping of a person's character? How can the Halakhic decision maker play a conscious rule in this process of education? These are some of the questions raised in this book. The book "Halakhah as an Agent of Change" intends to move forward the discourse about the Philosophy of Halakhah by making a fundamental claim that the existent literature ignores. This claim is that in addition to the Halakhah being a juridical system – and for the religious Jewish person a religious imperative – the Halakhah is primarily an educational instrument and existential event. Therefore, the Halakhah is designed to effect cultural, valuative and educational changes in its devotees. Hence, in order to understand the Halakhah from a philosophical perspective we must make use of philosophical tools that are to be found in Philosophy of Education. In light of this basic insight – which has not received the attention of researchers – this book illuminates both the Halakhic field of studies and the process of Halakhic ruling itself but, also helps us to re-think Halakhic-philosophical studies in the past and intends to contribute to the development of Halakhic philosophy in the future. Furthermore, the book opens a new path for the discourse of the philosophy of Education.

The standard study of Talmud is to accept the given as ultimate, that the sayings and the interpretations recorded therein are faithful to what was actually said. After having checked for the genuine version, for the right GIRSAH, eliminating the scribal errors, the text assumes reliability and serves as a starting point for further discussions and additional deductions. For over forty years, Prof. David Halivni has questioned the given as the authoritative text and argued for the necessity to go back in time and reexamine the veracity of the interpretations. Many of the given interpretations are forced, do not neatly fit the text they interpret and often attribute to the authors of the statements intentions that they did not necessarily share. As a consequence, substitute interpretations were necessary to which the multi volumes of "Sources and Traditions" were dedicated. While the books dealt mainly with the actual Talmudic interpretations, the introductions dealt with the causes responsible for the deviations from the original. It took the writings of a few volumes to become clear that the interpretations, unlike the apodictic statements were not officially transmitted by the Transmitters, the professional reciters and reached the later compilers which are referred to in the volumes as STAMMAIM, anonymous scholars, only through random survival which was not always complete. Sometimes it survived in a truncated form which the later compilers filled in, conjecturing what was missing. The present volume contains all of the introductions which provide the reader not only with the final conclusion but also with the developmental stages which led to that conclusion further strengthening its plausibility.

This selection of studies spans a period of about 50 years while including new studies which are published here for the first time. The studies in the first section all deal with religious rituals in Israel in Biblical times, and are characterized by a constant aspiration to infiltrate this exotic and mysterious world, described in utopist and anachronistic lines, and to see it for what it is, without disregarding its legislative uncompromising character on the one hand or its internal power and riveting wholeness on the other. The second section brings together studies dealing with the written work and the author's labor in Biblical times and from which arises the fact that it is impossible to properly understand the biblical literary design without paying attention to the conditions in which the biblical author lived and the material he worked with, mainly the scrolls. Various studies dealing with various aspects of biblical literature and Israel's biblical faith and religion, were collected in the third section. The fourth section holds programmatic contents on critical studying of the bible and exploring it in the new era.