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Zev Garber's signature mantra, historiosophy, demonstrates his commitment to using sacred text to shine a light on the moral issues of contemporary life, in general, and the life of the Jewish people, in particular. Garber's existential voice calls for the celebration of life, the power of faith, and the importance of moral action in the midst of confusion and evil, insisting that these are the secrets for survival. His teaching, his aesthetics, his epistemology, and his politics form a holistic approach to life, learning, and beauty. This essay explores, using a figural structure, the dimensions of Garber's voice—suggesting PaRDes.

Passion and commitment are two of the defining characteristics of Zev Garber's scholarship and of his approach to life. Students can immediately identify and identify with these features; moreover, many of Garber's colleagues have followed his lead in stepping down from the pristine environment of the ivory tower into the messy realities of life as it is being, and has been, led throughout human history.

This article explores the difference between Edith Stein's self-definition as a Catholic Jew and the normative Jewish position that precludes conversion to another religion. Zev Garber's description of the distinction between \"gug\" and \"neshema\" shows one way of partially bridging the gap between Stein's self-definition and normative Jewish understandings—Stein saw her guf as Jewish and her neshema as Catholic. Stein's interior life reveals that she had hoped that the Jews would accept Jesus as one of their own. According to Garber, Stein's self-understanding would preclude her from the Jewish community; in fact, they would view her as an apostate.

Interpreting and identifying the implications of biblical texts read through the lens of rabbinic sources and thought is a key component of Zev Garber's teaching, oral presentations, and published works. Garber engages biblical sources in a midrashic manner in order to extract theological and moral lessons relevant to Jews and others, especially Christian theologians. He writes and teaches so as to have his readers and audiences grapple with theological, philosophical, and moral concerns emerging from these documents when read holistically. Central to Garber's interpretation of the Bible is his understanding of midrash and Oral Torah as the rabbinic method and underlying concept for reading the Written Torah in an effort to have it speak to the changing circumstances over the ages.

As Editor of this Festschrift, after initially discussing this overall project in the context of \"Festschriften\" as a contribution to the academic project, this contribution examines and comments on Part 2 of \"Maven in Blue Jeans\", \"Jewish-Christian-Muslim and Other Dialogues,\" by looking at my own essay as well as those of Eugene Fisher, Daniel Morris, and John T. Pawlikowski (pp. 105–144). Since September 11, 2001, the world of the dialogical enterprise has changed, not only the academy but in the world outside the academy as well. What do these four essays tell us about the current and future states of dialogical and trialogical relations? Can they contribute to furthering this newer agenda? Where do we go from here?

Integrating Jewish Studies into college humanities classes taught at schools of higher learning, public and private, is a constant in my decades of teaching, writing, lecturing, and editing in the wellspring of Judaica and its tributaries. The impact (light, dark, and myriad grey shadows between) is reflected upon by the essayists and discussants of the Maven, who analyze my historiosophy, methodology, and Torahtology. What they say and write is learning (academics, exegesis), what I teach and profess is laerning (existential faith knowledge, eisegesis). How so and why so, is the ikkar of my response delivered in the genre of a shiur to the panelists of the Mavenfest and audience.