The religious poetry of Judaism turned a corner with a prolific hymnist from seventh-century Palestine called Eleazar birabbi Kallir (or Killir). Modern studies of medieval Jewish liturgical poetry, or Piyyut, have increased considerably and many manuscripts and fragments have been discovered in several Genizah collections, offering new material on the tradition of classical hymnists from the period of late antiquity and early Islam. Yosse ben Yosse, Yannai, Shimעon bar Megas, Yehudah, Kallir, and Yohanan ha-Kohen are the outstanding names of synagogue poets who composed their hymns for the weekly sabbath and the festivals, predominantly in Palestinian-Jewish communities.

Jonathan Klawans recently argued that there are two distinct types of purity in the Bible: ritual and moral. In biblical texts, the impurity of Gentiles is not ritual, but moral (the exception being corpse impurity, to which Gentiles are susceptible). Moral impurity is not contagious and is not subject to rites of purification. In the first section of her recently published work on Gentile impurities, Christine Hayes further categorizes impurity by introducing two types of purity considered to be intrinsic to Gentiles by some second temple groups: genealogical and carnal.

In recent decades, an array of scholars has investigated the oral and written (re)creation and transmission of early Jewish and Rabbinic tradition. Martin S. Jaffee stands at the forefront of this field of research, devoting much of his recent scholarly effort to the topic. In a series of journal articles and chapters in edited volumes over the past ten years, Jaffee has offered diverse insights from a variety of research forays into the literary traits of early Judaism. Torah in the Mouth is Jaffee's initial monograph on the subject, in which he builds extensively and impressively on his prior work, augmenting it in breadth, depth, and theoretical sophistication.

In The Sinner and the Amnesiac, Alan Goshen-Gottstein returns to the question of rabbinic biography with a comprehensive study of all traditions about Elisha ben Abuya, also known as Aher, “the Other.” (One chapter is devoted to the few traditions of R. Eleazar b. Arakh, a sage who reportedly forgot all his knowledge of Torah.) Goshen-Gottstein also provides a thorough summary of the secondary literature on Elisha, whom scholars variously have portrayed as a mystic, gnostic, apostate, philosophical atheist, and heretic. He appends a complete Hebrew version of the main Bavli story of Elisha including all manuscript variants.

Avi Sagi and Zvi Zohar have, in recent years, made great contributions to Jewish studies, in particular the study of halakhah. In their many individual publications they have mined the often ignored halakhic literature in order to offer perspectives in a variety of areas. They have also jointly published a number of works, including a very learned study on conversion (Giyur ve–Zehut Yehudit). In their latest work, Circles of Jewish Identity: A Study in Halakhic Literature, they follow the path set out in their previous work by asking what the assumptions and conclusions of halakhic literature tell us about issues of Jewish identity, such as how to define it; whether it is immutable; and, if not immutable, whether one's Jewish identity can be removed against one's will. Their discussion proceeds from the relevant talmudic texts, through the medieval period, up until the most recent responsa. This chronological approach is helpful in charting the development of concepts.

Talmudic chronology is an uncertain science. Aside from stray data here or there in the Talmud, there are only two sources: Seder Tannaءim ve-ءAmoraim and ءIgeret Rav Sherira Gaon. Both are Geonic, separated by centuries from the Amoraic period. Moreover, they deal mainly with heads of yeshivot (or perhaps master–disciple circles), not with individual Amoraim. Avinoam Cohen's revision of the dating of the sages named Ravina and of a few other Babylonian Amoraim who functioned during Rav Ashi's time (d. 427) and afterwards is a closely reasoned study and, as such, a paradigmatic work of talmudic historiography. Through painstaking readings of Talmudic passages and medieval commentators, Cohen takes issue with the regnant dating of those Amoraim and, in arguing for his revisions, explains how to identify historically relevant information in talmudic sugyot and how to utilize it.

Medieval Ashkenazic culture often appears monochromatic, especially when contrasted with the dizzying array of cultural and intellectual disciplines that were cultivated by the Jews in Spain and Provence. The typical perception of Franco-German Jewry is that of a self-contained minority devoting itself to traditional intellectual pursuits (Bible, Talmud, Halakhah etc.), while addressing the externally imposed need to respond to the increasingly aggressive missionary activities of the Catholic Church. Its spiritual life (with the prominent exception of the German pietists) is typically portrayed as profound but uncomplicated.

The title Medieval English Jews and Royal Officials whets the appetite for a rich exploration of the general policies of the English crown towards the Jews. What were the contradictions in royal policies from the Conquest to the expulsion, the relation between policy and implementation, and the capacity of the Jews to parry injurious policies or to encourage more generous ones? Unfortunately, the book that addresses these issues in a sophisticated contemporary way still remains to be written. The subtitle of the book under review here, Entries of Jewish Interest in the English Memoranda Rolls, 1266–1293, more accurately defines its content.

Writing a survey history is not easy. Every basic decision—periodization, geographic limits, thematic focus—is fraught with the linked dangers of overgeneralization and oversimplification. There are always experts looking over the author's shoulder, ready to cry foul if their areas or contributions are not accorded sufficient attention. And if the author is a good historian, she will realize how much she has had to omit, how tendentious she has had to be. Anna Foa is a good historian, and she is therefore especially to be congratulated for having taken on the arduous task of producing this highly readable survey, now in its third, updated Italian edition and at last available in an unfortunately flawed English translation.

As crusaders swept through the Rhineland in 1096 en route to the Holy Land, they brought destruction to Ashkenazic Jewry, through death or forced conversion. Record of this violence has survived in Latin and Hebrew chronicles as well as in Hebrew dirges. These chronicles have been the subject of intense scrutiny since their publication in 1892. Attention has focused on accounts that in Worms, Mainz, and elsewhere Jews killed their family members and then themselves when the enemy was at the door. The Hebrew sources glorify these acts of self-destruction as the embodiment of the religious ideal of martyrdom, Kiddush Hashem.

If there is a contemporary “dean” of Indo-Judaic studies, it is Nathan Katz, professor and chair of religious studies at Florida International University. He is helping revive the field of study inaugurated by Walter Fischel, who died in 1973. Katz first made his mark with several articles and a book about one of the three Indian Jewish communities, The Last Jews of Cochin (1993); he edited Studies of Indian Jewish Identity (1995) with chapters about the Jews of Cochin, the Bene Israel of Bombay and Maharashtra, and the Baghdadis of Bombay and Calcutta. He subsequently founded and currently co-edits the Journal of Indo-Judaic Studies. Katz contributes to comparative Jewish studies by synthesizing in this book a new wave of publications from the period of 1985 to 1995, which he calls “a groundbreaking era for the study of Indian Jewish communities” (p. 6). His purpose here is to explain generally how these Jews, who never suffered discrimination at the hands of the Indian majority, maintained their identities and their commitment to Halakhah while acculturating to Indian and English ways.

Since the 1965 publication of his Hebrew book, Conversos on Trial, Haim Beinart justifiably has been hailed as the foremost historian of medieval Sepharad. Over the next three decades, in numerous articles and books, Beinart continued to examine the last years of Jewish life in the Iberian peninsula. It was therefore with great anticipation that Haim Beinart's magisterial overview of the expulsion of the Jews from Castile and Aragon was received when it was published in 1994 in Jerusalem. Now, eight years later, the Littman Library has presented an English translation of this imposing work.

Responsible students of Isaac Abarbanel face a complicated task. This towering figure was more than a “statesman and philosopher.” He was one of the most prolific writers in the Middle Ages and Early Modern periods, both in terms of quantity and variety of genres. As a Jewish leader, his writings reflect the turbulent age of Spanish Jewry after the expulsion from Spain and the spiritual needs of the refugees. Living in a milieu exposed to renaissance culture, one must be attentive to its influence on Abarbanel's world.

Our knowledge of the French school of biblical interpretation has benefited in the last two decades from much original scholarship, including newly published texts and groundbreaking studies. Sara Japhet has already contributed in both areas, with her edition of Rashbam on Qohelet (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1985, with a translation by R. Salters) and studies of this school's hermeneutics. Her new book, likewise, represents a two-fold advance in scholarship. It features the (unattributed) Job commentary in MS Lutzki 778, which she identifies as Rashbam's, preceded by an analytic introduction, divided into seven chapters, two appendices and a bibliography that itself is a most valuable, up-to-date study of Rashbam's exegesis. After demonstrating that this commentary was, indeed, written by Rashbam (Chapter One), Japhet outlines his concept of peshat (Chapter Two), system of beliefs (Chapter Three), literary insights (Chapter Four), and linguistics (Chapter Five). M. Banitt contributed a study of Rashbam's Old French glosses (Chapter Six), which is followed by Japhet's description of her edition (Chapter Seven). Apart from offering an important new commentary by Rashbam, critically edited and annotated, Japhet has produced the most comprehensive published study on this exegete since the pioneering work of Rosin over a century ago. Building on the substantial advances in our understanding of the interpretive tradition since that time, Japhet has created a lucid, nuanced picture of Rashbam's hermeneutical thought and practice.

In this exciting book, Professor Moshe Halbertal of the Hebrew University and the Shalom Hartman Institute uncovers with brilliant conceptual clarity the religious world of the philosophically inclined rabbinic scholars of southern France. With impressive erudition, Halbertal surveys most of the relevant thirteenth- and fourteenth-century primary source material, both in print and in manuscript, with an emphasis on the writing and thought of Menaḥem ha-Meiri of Perpignan (d. 1315). Meiri was the leading talmudist of a proud and self-consciously independent southern French Jewish community at the turn of the thirteenth century and the author of an encyclopedic commentary on the Talmud, Bet ha-Beḥirah. Halbertal argues that the history of medieval Jewish thought has been impoverished significantly on account of an inadequate appreciation of the impressive degree to which southern French talmudists, like Meiri, integrated philosophy and halakhah in their writing and thought. In this Halbertal is undoubtedly correct, and his book is therefore an unusually important contribution to Jewish intellectual history. (A conceptual core of Halbertal's work appeared as “R. Menaḥem ha-Me'iri: bein Torah le-Ḥokhmah,” Tarbiz 63 (1995): 63–118, but issues and themes treated there are examined here with much greater scope and depth.)

“Roman Jewry in the mid-sixteenth century,” notes Kenneth Stow in the introduction to this stimulating volume, “offers an excellent venue for seeking to answer the theoretical question of how a distinct and distinctive minority created the cultural tools to cope with a difficult, ambivalent, and sometimes hostile environment” (p. 5). Stow's reference to “cultural tools” reflects the implicit “Cultural Studies” orientation of his book, an orientation already indicated in the book's title as well as in its opening sentence, which declares that “this study is about strategies of cultural survival.” Yet unlike many other works of a similar orientation, Stow's is based on years of archival research, primarily among the notarial records of the Roman Jewish community. Some two thousand documents from these records have been ably registered and summarized by Stow in the two volumes of his The Jews in Rome (Leiden, 1995–1997) to which the current volume (based on the Kennedy lectures delivered at Smith College in 1996), serves as an attractive companion.

In Kabbalah in Liturgy, Halakhah, and Custom, Moshe Hallamish asks the seminal question: From where does the kabbalist, whose sources are heavenly, or at best heard from a teacher, gain the ability to speak into the halakhic tradition (p.118)? Presumably, the principle of “lo ba-shamayim hi” should prevail, excluding any kind of kabbalistic privilege. He asks further, Is there a historical point where there is a sudden penetration or was it through progressive process? Does the Kabbalah create new forms to exert its influence or does it use the halakhic forms in existence? This collection of thirty-one articles is the most comprehensive attempt to assess the relationship between kabbalah and halakhah, prayer, and custom, and as such marks a significant milestone in this important area of research.

Abraham Miguel Cardozo is one of the most unusual and complex figures in the history of Jewish thought, but his identification with the Sabbateans caused him to be largely excluded from the study of that history, in his time and in ours. He had no impact to speak of on the larger development of Jewish ideas; yet, his biography and thought shed much light on the peculiarities of late-seventeenth-century Jewish identity. Cardozo was born to a New Christian (converso) family in Spain in 1626, and, after fleeing the Iberian Peninsula with his older brother, Isaac (who was the subject of a well-known biography by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi), reverted to Judaism in Italy in 1648. He had already completed university studies by this time, and his fine Iberian training in philosophy and theology left its mark on all his writings.

The complex and intriguing figure of Moses Hess (1812-1875) has received attention as a socialist and a Zionist. His Rome and Jerusalem (1862) has been seen as a brilliant, if stylistically flawed, document that gives remarkably early evidence of the racial basis of antisemitism and striking testimony of a socialist intellectual's return to his Jewish roots. Despite the relatively large literature on Hess, no one had heretofore read Hess with a predominant interest in his fractured religious identity. This is the task that Ken Koltun-Fromm has set for himself in this highly novel, closely argued, and challenging work.

The academic study of medieval Jewish philosophy began in the nineteenth century with a comparisons of classical Jewish texts (e.g., Saadia Gaon's Beliefs and Opinion; Judah Halevi's Kuzari; Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed; Gersonides' Wars of the Lord) with classical Islamic texts (especially those of the Aristotelians al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes; and the anti-Aristotelian al-Ghazali). The possibility that Jewish thinkers took their inspiration from, or should be seen in the context of, Islamic thinkers (such a Shiءites or sufis) and Christian philosophers (especially scholastics vis-à-vis late medieval Jewish thought) was rarely entertained, partially because of lack of availability of texts and partially because of preconceived notions. The last few decades have seen a reversal of this trend: as the chances fade of finding more parallels in the well researched Aristotelian texts, more attention has been paid to alternate contexts of Jewish philosophy. This excellent book, a much revised and updated Harvard University dissertation (1995), is a very welcome addition to this growing tendency.