These essays propose "a new and richly detailed engagement between Judaism and the political" ( Jewish Book World ).Judaism, Liberalism, and Political Theology provides the first broad encounter between modern Jewish thought and recent developments in political theology, arguing in opposition to impetuous associations of Judaism and liberalism and charges that Judaism cannot engender a universal political order. Th...

The impact of technology-enhanced mass death in the twentieth century, argues Zachary Braiterman, has profoundly affected the future shape of religious thought. In his provocative book, the author shows how key Jewish theologians faced the memory of Auschwitz by rejecting traditional theodicy, abandoning any attempt to justify and vindicate the relationship between God and catastrophic suffering. The author terms this rejection "Antitheodicy," the refusal to accept that relationship. It fi...

Jewish art has always been with us, but so has a broader canvas of Jewish imaginings: in thought, in emotion, in text, and in ritual practice. Imagining the Jewish God was there in the beginning, as it were, engraved and embedded in the ways Jews lived and responded to their God.This book attempts to give voice to these diverse imaginings of the Jewish God, and offers these collected essays and poems as a living text meant to provoke a substantive and nourishing dialogue. A responsive, liv...

During its 2,500-year life, the book of Genesis has been the keystone to almost every important claim about reality, humanity, and God in Judaism and Christianity. And it continues to play a central role in debates about science, politics, and human rights. With clarity and skill, acclaimed biblical scholar Ronald Hendel provides a panoramic history of this iconic book, exploring its impact on Western religion, philosophy, science, politics, literature, and more.Hendel traces how G...

Rethinking Effective Apologetics for the Present Age.Christians have always had to defend their faith against all kinds of criticism and misunderstandings, but these attacks change overtime, and the strongest arguments of the famous classical apologists who preceded us are not necessarily the strongest today.Intellectuals Don't Need God is written to today's faithful apologists who are trying to commend Christianity in terms of its relevance to eve...

Christianity Today 2008 Book Award (Biblical Studies)Even mature Christians have trouble defending the person and divinity of Christ. The Jesus Legend builds a convincing interdisciplinary case for the unique and plausible position of Jesus in human history. He was real and his presence on the planet has been well-documented.The authors of the New Testament didn't plant evidence, though each writer did tell the truth from ...

Challenge Yourself to Delve into a Deeper Interfaith Dialogue"To wrestle with the ideas these thinkers present is to find ourselves challenged to look at our own religious lives in new ways; and to appreciate the spiritual endeavors of others, whatever form their religious expression may take. To engage with these thinkers can leave us enlarged in our perception of human religiousness and deepened in our appreciation of it."—from the ConclusionThe mo...

From a profoundly influential social theorist comes a posthumously published analysis of the deepest level of crisis in our culture.“A compelling diagnosis of our condition.” —The Wall Street JournalAccording to Rieff, the contemporary notion of charisma—the personal magnetism of political leaders or movie stars—is a tragic misunderstanding of a profoundly important concept. Charisma originally meant religious grace and authority t...

Does death end life, or is it the passage from one stage of life to another?In The Death of Death, noted theologian Neil Gillman offers readers an original and compelling argument that Judaism, a religion often thought to pay little attention to the afterlife, not only presents us with rich ideas on this subject—but delivers a deathblow to death itself.Combining astute scholarship with keen historical, theological and liturgical insights, Gillman o...

Christianity Today Book Award winnerThe scholarly quest for the historical Jesus has a distinguished pedigree in modern Western religious and historical scholarship, with names such as Strauss, Schweitzer and Bultmann highlighting the story. Since the early 1990s, when the Jesus quest was reawakened for a third run, numerous significant books have emerged. And the public's attention has been regularly arrested by media coverage, with the J...

Once upon a time, evangelicalism was a countercultural upstart movement. Positioned in between mainline denominational liberalism and reactionary fundamentalism, evangelicals saw themselves as evangelists to all of culture. Billy Graham was reaching the masses with his Crusades, Francis Schaeffer was reaching artists and university students at L’Abri, Larry Norman was recording Jesus music on secular record labels and touring with Janis Joplin and the Doors, and Carl F. H. Henry was reachi...

In this pioneering work, David Bakan challenges the popular view of Freud as an entirely secular intellectual, schooled in modern culture rather than Jewish traditions. Bakan contends that the father of psychology was profoundly influenced by mystic lore about which he appeared to know very little -- and which represents the antithesis of scientific method. This work is based on the premise that Freudian psychoanalytic theory is largely rooted in the Jewish religion, particularly the mysti...