Originally published in Tel Aviv Review 2 (Fall 1989/Winter 1990): 372-83.   Introduction An interesting development in modern talmudic scholarship is the detection of literary structures in the Babylonian Talmud, compiled at the end of the ... Continue Reading ➨

Originally published in Aspects of Liberal Judaism: Essays in Honour of John D. Rayner, eds. David J. Goldberg & Edward Kessler (London; Portland, 2004), 36-48. For all the discussions, ancient and modern, on Jewish ethics1 the fact remains ... Continue Reading ➨

Originally published in Problems in Contemporary Jewish Theology, ed. Dan Cohn-Sherbok (Edwin Mellen Press 1991), pp. 3-20. To attempt, as this article does, a presentation of the current state of the art in Jewish theology, presupposes that ... Continue Reading ➨

Originally published in Journal of Jewish Studies 28, 1 (Spring 1977), 46-59. Students of the Babylonian Talmud are aware that many of the statements attributed in that work to various teachers are not necessarily authentic. This paper is not, ... Continue Reading ➨

Originally published in Cambridge opinion 39: On the Jews, ed. Malcolm Griffiths (Cambridge: Cambridge Opinion, 1965), 4-8. Prominent among eighteenth-century revivalist movements in Europe, Hasidism reveals all the tensions, particularly strong ... Continue Reading ➨

Originally published in Conservative Judaism 37,3 (1984), 4-16. Every religion has its holy places; monotheistic faiths are no exception. The concept of a holy place does, however, present difficulties peculiar to monotheism. When earth is seen as ... Continue Reading ➨

Originally published in SIDIC (Service International de Documentation Judeo-Chretienne), 30: 7 (1997), Engl. edn. 18-21. What is Holiness? Because holiness (kedushah) by any definition points to an intangible world, to the spiritual, it is an ... Continue Reading ➨

Originally published in Ada Rapoport-Albert, ed., Essays in Jewish historiography. History and Theory 27 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), 66-77.   From the close of the Babylonian Talmud in the sixth century CE down to ... Continue Reading ➨

Originally published in Ada Rapoport-Albert (ed.), Hasidism Reappraised (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1996), 208-13.   From the very beginnings of hasidism enormous claims were made by the hasidim on behalf of the great masters, ... Continue Reading ➨

Originally published in Judaism, Summer 1969 The hasidic movement continues to attract attention. The spate of writings on it is unabated. The Kehot Publication Society of New York is currently engaged in publishing an English translation, in ... Continue Reading ➨

Originally published in Sh'ma 13/258 (September 30, 1983), 124-5. Whether the traditional halachah has been a dynamic and developing or static and unchanging system is not a halachic but a historical question, to be investigated by the ... Continue Reading ➨

Reprinted from Judaism, 6, 1 (1957), in Contemporary Jewish Ethics, ed. Menachem Kellner, Sanhedrin Press, 1978.'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' (1) This teaching has long been considered as ... Continue Reading ➨

Originally published in Twentieth Century 174 (Autumn 1965): 1-7.   A famous eighteenth-century rabbi was the author of a slim volume on God which became a classic of Jewish devotional literature running into many editions. One of his ... Continue Reading ➨

Originally published in Nova, 1965.   It might seem intolerably sentimental and priggish, an improper baring of soul, to write in a magazine on ‘What God means to me’. The old prophetic injunction to walk humbly with God refers not so much ... Continue Reading ➨

Originally published in Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought, ed. Arthur A. Cohen and Paul Mendes-Flohr (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1987), 291-8. Whether belief in God erupted spontaneously in ancient Israel or whether there can be traced in ... Continue Reading ➨

Originally published in Journal of Jewish Studies 9, 3-4 (1958), 139-47.   Some years ago I attempted to produce evidence that the Babylonian Talmud is a literary work and that a careful examination and analysis of relevant passages ... Continue Reading ➨

Originally published in the Jewish Year Book, ed. Stephen W. Massil. London; Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2000: [76]-[81]. Like most rabbis serving in this country, I have experienced at first hand in my career what used to be called ... Continue Reading ➨

Avigdor ben Hayyim, the fiery opponent of Hasidism, drew up a list of nineteen counts against the, to him, heretical sect for the consideration of the Russian authorities. Avigdor and his supporters believed that if his counts were substantiated they ... Continue Reading ➨

Originally published in Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought, ed. Arthur A. Cohen and Paul Mendes-Flohr (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1987), 233-8. A theological discussion of faith should begin with a brief account of its history in Judaism. ... Continue Reading ➨

From We Have Reason To Believe (1957), reproduced by kind permission of Vallentine Mitchell Publishers. (You can visit the Vallentine Mitchell Website where many of Rabbi Jacobs' books are for sale or go to our Shop section to buy books.) From ... Continue Reading ➨