JPS Scholar of Distinction Book – serie

In this collection of essays, Dr. Moshe Greenberg, one of world's foremost Bible experts, stays true to the task of the classical Jewish scholar: to enhance the Bible in the eyes of the faith/cultural community by seeking to set forth existential values embodied in the biblical narratives, laws, and rituals, and pointing to the continuities and transformations of the biblical materials in later Jewish creativity.

A JPS Scholar of Distinction Title Nahum Sarna is one of the most regarded and well-known names in biblical academia. This collection contains 26 essays, spanning his career. Together they cover the Torah, the Prophets, the Writings, the Psalms, and biblical history.

A JPS Scholar of Distinction title Noted educator, author, and speaker Eugene Borowitz delivers the fruits of his scholarship with grace in this new addition to the JPS Scholar of Distinction series. Gathered in this single volume are 33 essays covering the themes of modern Jewish theology, education, the history of Reform Judaism in America, Jewish law, ethics, and religious dialogue. This collection will appeal to a wide audience, including rabbis; scholars; and readers of religion, modern Jewish thought, and liturgy.

This outstanding volume of 26 essays represents a cross-section of the writings of Arnold Band on Jewish literature. Band, a renowned Jewish studies and humanities scholar, writes on such topics as: literature in historic context, interpretations of Hasidic tales and other traditional texts, Zionism, S.Y. Agnon and other important Israeli writers, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, Jewish studies, and the Jewish community. Scholars and students of Jewish studies and literature—particularly Jewish literature—won't want to miss this remarkable collection.

A JPS Scholar of Distinction title The best writings of the long and distinguished career of renowned feminist Bible scholar Tikva Frymer-Kensky. Each of the thirty essays here delves into a topic that gives us much food for thought: the Bible as interpreted through ancient Near-Eastern creation myths, flood myths, and goddess myths; gender in the Bible; the feminist approach to Jewish law; comparative Jewish and Christian perspectives on the Hebrew Bible; biblical perspectives on ecology; creating a theology of healing; feminine God-talk. The volume concludes with the author’s own original prayers in the form of poetic meditations on pregnancy and birthing. This book is unique, not only because it is the only volume in the JPS Scholar of Distinction series written by a woman, but also because Frymer-Kensky’s personal and forthright voice resonates so clearly throughout each piece. Scholars and students of Bible, Jewish studies, and women’s studies will surely find this to be a one-of-a kind collection.

Judaism, like all the great religions, has a strand within it that sees inward devotion, the opening of the human heart to God's presence, to be the purpose of its entire edifice of praxis, liturgy, and way of life. This voice is not always easy to hear in a tradition where so much attention is devoted to the how rather than the why of religious living. The devotional claim, certainly a key part of Judaism's biblical heritage, has reasserted itself in the teachings of individual mystics and in the emergence of religious movements over the long course of Jewish history. This volume represents Arthur Green's own quest for such a Judaism—as a rabbi, as a scholar, and as a contemporary seeker.  This collection of essays brings together Green's scholarly writings, centered on the history of early Hasidism, and his highly personal approach to a rebirth of Jewish spirituality in our own day. In choosing to present them in this way he asserts a claim that they are all of a piece. They represent one man's attempt to wade through history and text, language and symbol, and an array of voices both past and present while always focusing on the essential questions: "What does it mean to be a religious human being, and what does Judaism teach us about how to be one?" This, the author considers to be the heart of the matter.

Internationally recognized scholar David Ellenson shares twenty-three of his most representative essays, drawing on three decades of scholarship and demonstrating the consistency of the intellectual-religious interests that have animated him throughout his lifetime. These essays center on a description and examination of the complex push and pull between Jewish tradition and Western culture. Ellenson addresses gender equality, women's rights, conversion, issues relating to who is a Jew, the future of the rabbinate, Jewish day schools, and other emerging trends in American Jewish life. As an outspoken advocate for a strong Israel that is faithful to the democratic and Jewish values that informed its founders, he also writes about religious tolerance and pluralism in the Jewish state. The former president  of Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, the primary seminary of the Reform movement, Ellenson is widely respected for his vision of advancing Jewish unity and of preparing leadership for a contemporary Judaism that balances tradition with the demands of a changing world.  Scholars and students of Jewish religious thought, ethics, and modern Jewish history will welcome this erudite collection by one of today's great Jewish leaders.

Coming to Terms with America examines how Jews have long “straddled two civilizations,” endeavoring to be both Jewish and American at once, from the American Revolution to today.In fifteen engaging essays, Jonathan D. Sarna investigates the many facets of the Jewish-American encounter-what Jews have borrowed from their surroundings, what they have resisted, what they have synthesized, and what they have subverted. Part I surveys how Jews first worked to reconcile Judaism with the country’s new democratic ethos and to reconcile their faith-based culture with local metropolitan cultures. Part II analyzes religio-cultural initiatives, many spearheaded by women, and the ongoing tensions between Jewish scholars (who pore over traditional Jewish sources) and activists (who are concerned with applying them). Part III appraises Jewish-Christian relations: “collisions” within the public square and over church-state separation.Originally written over the span of forty years, many of these essays are considered classics in the field, and several remain fixtures of American Jewish history syllabi. Others appeared in fairly obscure venues and will be discovered here anew. Together, these essays-newly updated for this volume-cull the finest thinking of one of American Jewry’s finest historians.

Ethics at the Center culls the best of Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff’s pioneering thinking in Jewish ethics over nearly five decades. Dorff shows that our response to moral issues depends ultimately on our conceptions of the nature of human beings and God; how Jewish law, theology, prayer, history, and community should also define and motivate Jewish responses to moral issues; and how the honorable and divergent stances of Western philosophy and other religions about moral living shed light on Judaism’s distinctive standpoints.From there Dorff applies Judaism’s ethics to real life: abortion post–Roe v. Wade, sexual orientation and human dignity, avoiding harm in communication, playing violent or defamatory video games, modern war ethics, handling donations of ill-gotten gain after the fact. In conclusion he explores how Jewish family and community, holidays and rituals, theology, study, and law have moral import as well.Dorff’s personal introduction to each chapter reflects on why and when he wrote its contents, its continuing relevance, and if-and if so, how-he would now change what he wrote earlier. Readers will experience not only his evolving ethical thought but many facets of the person and the Jew that Dorff is today.

In Life Against Death, Volume 1, Rabbi Irving Greenberg curates, introduces, and reflects on the most important essays written over the course of his lifetime on the United States and Israel, from 1965 to 2025. These influential works recognized as classic in his oeuvre identify turning points in Jewish life, along with policies key to successful Jewish living in the modern world.Greenberg begins by reflecting on the universal struggle of life against death in the world. Judaism and the Jewish people are meant to serve as an avant-garde in repairing the world by overcoming the enemies of life, including oppression and war. In Part 1, "America," he champions an enrichment of Jewish life and an embrace of pluralism as necessary responses to Jews' acceptance in open society and endangerment from totalitarianism. In Part 2, "Israel," he offers vision and guidance on the religious significance of the State of Israel, on interactions of Israel and American Jewry, and on a new ethic of power that relinquishes purity for the opportunity to create real life in the real world.New introductions to each essay narrate behind-the-scenes stories and breakthroughs formative to its contents, as well as Greenberg's hindsight: evolving thoughts, recognitions of past errors, comparisons of his predictions versus realities, and insights on relevance of the core principles in our changed times.Two essays have never been published before: "The Religious Significance of the State of Israel," given as a conference paper in 1970, and "Israel and World Jewry After October 7," written in 2025 as a needed response to the fundamental transformation of Israel's image and world status.Readers will get to know Greenberg as a thought leader, an activist, a man, and a Jew.

In Life Against Death, Volume 2, Rabbi Irving Greenberg curates, introduces, and reflects on the most important essays written over the course of his lifetime on the Holocaust and Jewish-Christian relations, from 1977 to 2016. These influential works recognized as classic in his oeuvre identify turning points in Jewish life along with policies key to successful Jewish living in the modern world.Greenberg begins by reflecting on the universal struggle of life against death in the world. Judaism and the Jewish people are meant to serve as an avant-garde in repairing the world by overcoming the enemies of life, including oppression, war, and death. Against this, antisemitism has been a pathological force in Jewish history. The Holocaust was an almost successful attempt to obliterate Jewry as well as Judaism's teachings and values.In Part 1, "The Holocaust," Greenberg traces the development of his pioneering theological responses meant to incorporate this catastrophe into Jewish life while repairing the credibility and real life effectiveness of Jewish religion: the mandate to recreate life on the greatest possible scale; the discovery that God had relinquished control in history so that humans could take greater responsibility in shaping historical outcomes; and the flourishing of pluralism as an antidote to the flawed nature of even the noblest of singular paths.In Part 2, "Jewish-Christian Relations," he offers the most positive Jewish theology of Christianity ever produced by a traditional Jewish thinker: a trailblazing vision that God meant Judaism and Christianity to be covenantal partners and parallel channels to bring tikkun olam to humanity.New introductions to each essay narrate behind-the-scenes stories and breakthroughs formative to its contents, as well as Greenberg's hindsight: evolving thoughts, recognitions of past errors, comparisons of his predictions versus realities, and insights on relevance of the core principles in our changed times. Readers will get to know Greenberg as a thought leader, an activist, a man, and a Jew.

Coming to Terms with America examines how Jews have long “straddled two civilizations,” endeavoring to be both Jewish and American at once, from the American Revolution to today.In fifteen engaging essays, Jonathan D. Sarna investigates the many facets of the Jewish-American encounter-what Jews have borrowed from their surroundings, what they have resisted, what they have synthesized, and what they have subverted. Part I surveys how Jews first worked to reconcile Judaism with the country’s new democratic ethos and to reconcile their faith-based culture with local metropolitan cultures. Part II analyzes religio-cultural initiatives, many spearheaded by women, and the ongoing tensions between Jewish scholars (who pore over traditional Jewish sources) and activists (who are concerned with applying them). Part III appraises Jewish-Christian relations: “collisions” within the public square and over church-state separation.Originally written over the span of forty years, many of these essays are considered classics in the field, and several remain fixtures of American Jewish history syllabi. Others appeared in fairly obscure venues and will be discovered here anew. Together, these essays-newly updated for this volume-cull the finest thinking of one of American Jewry’s finest historians.