Jacob Neusner

Biography: Neusner is a social commentator, a post-Holocaust theologian, and an outspoken political figure. Jacob Neusner (born 1932) is one of the most important figures in the shaping of modern American Judaism. He was pivotal in transforming the study of Judaism from an insular project only conducted by--and of interest to--religious adherents to one which now flourishes in the secular setting of the university. He is also one of the most colorful, creative, and difficult figures in the American academy. But even those who disagree with Neusner's academic approach to ancient rabbinic texts have to engage with his pioneering methods. In this comprehensive biography, Aaron Hughes shows Neusner to be much more than a scholar of rabbinics. He is a social commentator, a post-Holocaust theologian, and was an outspoken political figure during the height of the cultural wars of the 1980s. Neusner's life reflects the story of what happened as Jews migrated to the suburbs in the late 1940s, daring to imagine new lives for themselves as they successfully integrated into the fabric of American society. It is also the story of how American Jews tried to make sense of the world in the aftermath of the extermination of European Jewry and the subsequent creation of the State of Israel in 1948, and how they sought to define what it meant to be an American Jew. Unlike other great American Jewish thinkers, Neusner was born in the U.S., and his Judaism was informed by an American ethos. His Judaism is open, informed by and informing the world. It is an American Judaism, one that has enabled American Jews--the freest in history--to be fully American and fully Jewish.

Straightforward terms concerning why, while Christians believe in Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of Heaven, Jews believe in the Torah of Moses and a kingdom of priests and holy people on earth.

In his brilliant introduction on the Mishnah, Jacob Neusner asks: How do you read a book that does not identify its author, tell you where it comes from, or explain why it was written – a book without a preface? And how do you identify a book with neither a beginning nor end, lacking table of contents and title? The answer is you just begin and let the author of the book lead you by paying attention to the information that the author does give, to the signals that the writer sets out. As Neusner goes on to explain, the Mishnah portrays the world in a special way, in a kind of code that makes it a difficult work for the modern reader to understand. Without knowing how to decode the Mishnah, we may read its works without receiving its message. Neusner, one of the world’s foremost Mishnaic scholars, demonstrated that the Mishnah’s own internal logic and structure form a solid foundation on which to build an understanding of this vitally important Jewish work. Using examples of how the Mishnah’s language, logic, and discourse associate and categorize behaviors, events, and objects, Neusner opens the Mishnah to readers who would not otherwise be able to grasp its most fundamental concepts. Since the Mishnah forms the basis of both the Babylonian and the Palestinian Talmuds (which are, in Neusner’s elegant terms, “the core curriculum of Judaism as a living religion”), study of the Mishnah is essential to an understanding of Judaism. Drawing on his own new translation of the Mishnah and displaying the enthusiastic dedication that has sparked a whole new body of Mishnaic research, Neusner allows readers with no previous background to join Jews who have studied, analyzed, and delighted in the wisdom of Mishnah for centuries. In addition to giving us a thorough exploration of the Mishnah’s language, contents, organization, and inner logic, Neusner also provides us with a broad understanding of how it communicated its own world view – its vision of both the concrete an spiritual worlds. The Mishnah: An Introduction gives us a tour of this sacred Jewish text, shedding light on its many facets – from its view of life to its conception of God and His relation to our world.

Examines the notion of divine incarnations as a central element of the portrait of God that came into focus through the Judaism of the dual Torah.

With the conversion of Constantine in 312, Christianity began a period of political and cultural dominance that it would enjoy until the twentieth century. Jacob Neusner contradicts the prevailing view that following Christianity's ascendancy, Judaism continued to evolve in isolation. He argues that because of the political need to defend its claims to religious authenticity, Judaism was forced to review itself in the context of a triumphant Christianity. The definition of issues long discussed in Judaism—the meaning of history, the coming of the Messiah, and the political identity of Israel—became of immediate and urgent concern to both parties. What emerged was a polemical dialogue between Christian and Jewish teachers that was unprecedented. In a close analysis of texts by the Christian theologians Eusebius, Aphrahat, and Chrysostom on one hand, and of the central Jewish works the Talmud of the Land of Israel, the Genesis Rabbah, and the Leviticus Rabbah on the other, Neusner finds that both religious groups turned to the same corpus of Hebrew scripture to examine the same fundamental issues. Eusebius and Genesis Rabbah both address the issue of history, Chrysostom and the Talmud the issue of the Messiah, and Aphrahat and Leviticus Rabbah the issue of Israel. As Neusner demonstrates, the conclusions drawn shaped the dialogue between the two religions for the rest of their shared history in the West.

Imagine yourself transported two thousand years back in time to Galilee at the moment of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. After hearing it, would you abandon your religious beliefs and ideology to follow him, or would you hold on to your own beliefs and walk away? In A Rabbi Talks with Jesus Jacob Neusner considers just such a spiritual journey.

An introduction to the seven Midrash compilations with a lucid account of their main points. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

In The Economics of the Mishnah Jacob Neusner showed how economics functioned as an active and generative ingredient in the system of the Mishnah. With this new study, Rabbinic Political Theory, he moves from the economics to the politics of the Mishnah, placing that politics in the broader context of ancient political theory. Neusner begins his study with a modification of Weber's categories for a theory of politics: myth, institutions, administration, passion, responsibility, and proportion. Detailing the Mishnah's conception of politics, Neusner considers what he calls the stable and static structure and system through comparison with Aristotle. Although Aristotle's Politics and the Mishnah share a common economic theory based on the fundamental unit of the householder, they diverge in their conceptions of political structure and order. Aristotle embeds economics within political economy, while, Neusner argues, the Mishnah presents the anomaly of an economics separated from politics. Using modern political terms, this study explicates the complicated politics developed by the philosopher-theologians of the Mishnah. It is a first-rate contribution to our understanding of the intersection of politics, political philosophy, and the Mishnaic system.