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Hasidism, a kabbalah-inspired movement founded by Israel Ba'al Shem Tov (c1700-1760), transformed Jewish communities across Eastern and East Central Europe. This book illuminates Hasidism's dramatic ascendancy in the region of Central Poland during the early 19th century, presenting Hasidism as a socioreligious phenomenon that was shaped in crucial ways by its Polish context. Despite their folksy image, the movement's charismatic leaders are revealed as astute populists who proved remarkably adept at securing elite patronage, neutralizing powerful opponents, and methodically co-opting Jewish institutions. The book also reveals the full spectrum of Hasidic devotees, from humbleshtetldwellers to influential Warsaw entrepreneurs. The Hasidic concept of “worship through corporeality” (avodah be-gashmiyut), a notion that holiness may be derived from even mundane endeavors, enabled Hasidic leaders and adherents to immerse themselves in politics, business, and popular culture, and yet effectively remain mystics. Hasidism's transformation into a mass movement is thus attributable to a convergence of sociopolitical and theological innovations.

In a book with a bold new view of medieval Jewish history, written in a style accessible to nonspecialists and students as well as to scholars in the field, Marina Rustow changes our understanding of the origins and nature of heresy itself. Scholars have long believed that the Rabbanites and Qaraites, the two major Jewish groups under Islamic rule, split decisively in the tenth century and from that time forward the minority Qaraites were deemed a heretical sect. Qaraites affirmed a right to decide matters of Jewish law free from centuries of rabbinic interpretation; the Rabbanites, in turn, claimed an unbroken chain of scholarly tradition. Rustow draws heavily on the Cairo Geniza, a repository of papers found in a Rabbanite synagogue, to show that despite the often fierce arguments between the groups, they depended on each other for political and financial support and cooperated in both public and private life. This evidence of remarkable interchange leads Rustow to the conclusion that the accusation of heresy appeared sporadically, in specific contexts, and that the history of permanent schism was the invention of polemicists on both sides. Power shifted back and forth fluidly across what later commentators, particularly those invested in the rabbinic claim to exclusive authority, deemed to have been sharply drawn boundaries. Heresy and the Politics of Communitypaints a portrait of a more flexible medieval Eastern Mediterranean world than has previously been imagined and demonstrates a new understanding of the historical meanings of charges of heresy against communities of faith. Historians of premodern societies will find that, in her fresh approach to medieval Jewish and Islamic culture, Rustow illuminates a major issue in the history of religions.

Rome or Syria? This article addresses the issue of the provenance of Mark's Gospel by exploring affinities between the second Gospel and Jewish sectarian groups of the first centuries bce and ce. It is argued that Mark displays certain sectarian tendencies, and that these tendencies, most notably seen in the Gospel's negative evaluation of the Jerusalem temple and its priestly overseers, strongly suggest that the Gospel was written in close geographical proximity to Jerusalem and its temple. Accordingly, an area in the Syrian Decapolis is a much more likely place of origin for Mark's Gospel than that of Rome.

Several Jewish groups from Antiquity until today have been traditionally identified as 'sects' or as 'sectarian', most famously the Qumran community and the Qaraites. This volume questions the appropriateness of this interpretation of social and religious movements in Jewish history.

For nearly four millennia Judaism was essentially a unified religious system based on shared traditions. Despite the emergence of various sub-groups through the centuries such as the Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, Karaites, Shabbateans and Hasadim, Jewry was united in the belief in a providential God who had chosen the Jews as his special people and given them a code of law.In the modern period, however, the Jewish religion has fragmented into a series of separate denominations with competing ideologies and theological views. Despite the creation of the State of Israel, the Jewish people are deeply divided concerning the most fundamental issues of belief and practice. Judaism Today gives an account of the nature of traditional Judaism, provides an introduction to the various divisions that currently exist in the Jewish world and identifies and discusses contemporary issues with which the Jewish faith engages in the twenty-first century. This refreshing new approach focuses on how Judaism is actually perceived and practised by Jews themselves and the problems currently facing Jews worldwide.

Drawing on the variety of archival sources in the host of European and Oriental languages, the book focuses on the history, ethnography, and convoluted ethnic identity of the Polish-Lithuanian Karaites. The vanishing community of the Karaites, a non-Talmudic Turkic-speaking Jewish minority that had been living in Eastern Europe since the late Middle Ages, developed a unique ethnographic culture and religious tradition. The book offers the first comprehensive study of the dramatic history of the Polish-Lithuanian Karaite community in the twentieth century. Especially important is the analysis of the dejudaization (or Turkicization) of the community that saved the Karaites from horrors of the Holocaust.

Tanya Luhrmann's explorations of religious consciousness address the structures of bodily, cognitive, and emotional discipline that contribute in specific ways to the cultivation of a particular experience of religious phenomena as real. Attention to Luhrmann's methods provides a new set of tools for exploring dynamics of religious experience in an ancient Jewish context. The example of Philo's Therapeutae serves as counterpoint for a discussion of disciplinary practices in the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls. Evidence for the disciplines of silent patient listening and tolerance for public judgment in the scrolls, along with descriptions of intensive study and prayer-practices suggest an atmosphere in which sectarians might have been primed to experience divine revelation, most likely through the authority of an angelic mediator. Attention to religious experience provides insights not only into sectarian life but also into some possible dynamics underlying the composition and development of textual traditions.

Yefet ben 'Eli (fl. 960-1005) was the most prolific and influential biblical exegete in the Karaite tradition. He was possibly the earliest Jew to write a commentary on the entire Hebrew Bible, and his writings were cited and borrowed from by Karaites and Rabbanites alike, from his own time to the early modern period. Despite his importance, however, only a small percentage of his works have been published. The present volume makes available for the first time his commentary on Joshua, which includes an Arabic translation of this difficult book with full Arabic commentary. The story of Rachab, the \"second circumcision,\" the covenant with the Gibonites, and the Sun standing still are among the things that captured Yefet's interest, who surveyed different views on these crux passages before presenting his own, very original exposition.

This work provides a guide for creative action and ritual making throughout the seasons, an exploration of anti-Zionist Judaism, and spiritual-cultural invitation to embody and expand decolonial, anti-racist, queer, and feminist Jewish practice.