Tractate Berakhot

This systematic introduction to the Talmud of Babylonia (Bavli) answers basic questions of form: how is this a coherent document? How do we make sense of the several languages in which it is written? What are the principal parts of the complex writing? Turning to questions of modes of thought, the account proceeds to address the intellectual character of the Bavli and in particular the character and uses of its dialectics. Finally, questions of substance come to the fore: how does the Talmud relate to the Torah? and how does tradition enter in? These basic questions of rhetoric, topic, and logic that anyone approaching the text will raise are dealt with clearly and authoritatively.

Vol. [2], the "appendix volume," contains the synopsis of the texts.

The Theology of the Oral Torah demonstrates the cogency and inner rationality of the classical statement of Judaism in the Oral Torah, bringing a theological assessment to bear on the whole of rabbinic literature. Jacob Neusner shows how the proposition

The result for the history of Judaism of a documentary reading of the Rabbinic canonical sources illustrates the working of that hypothesis. It is the first major outcome of that hypothesis, but there are other implications, and a variety of new problems emerge from time to time as the work proceeds. In the recent past, Neusner has continued to explore special problems of the documentary hypothesis of the Rabbinic canon. At the same time, Neusner notes, others join in the discussion that have produced important and ambitious analyses of the thesis and its implications. Here, Neuser has collected some of the more ambitious ventures into the hypothesis and its current recapitulations. Neusner begins with the article written by Professor William Scott Green for the Encyclopaedia Judaica second edition, as Green places the documentary hypothesis into the context of Neusner's entire oeuvre. Neuser then reproduces what he regards as the single most successful venture of the documentary hypothesis, contrasting between the Mishnah's and the Talmuds' programs for the social order of Israel, the doctrines of economics, politics, and philosophy set forth in those documents, respectively. Then come the two foci of discourse: Halakhah or normative law and Aggadah or normative theology. Professors Bernard Jackson of the University of Manchester, England and Mayer Gruber of Ben Gurion University of the Negev treat the Halakhic program that Neusner has devised, and Kevin Edgecomb of the University of California, Berkeley, has produced a remarkable summary of the theological system Neusner discerns in the Aggadic documents. Neusner concludes with a review of a book by a critic of the documentary hypothesis.

Explores the canon of Rabbinic literature.

The Sixteenth Century Hebrew Book is a bibliographic work describing books printed with Hebrew letters in that century, covering the gamut of Hebrew literature, encompassing liturgical works, Bibles, commentaries, Talmud, Mishnah, halakhic codes, kabbalistic works, fables, and belles-lettres. Each of the 455 entries has a descriptive text page comprised of background on the author, a description of the book’s contents and physical makeup, and is accompanied by a reproduction of the title or a sample page. There is an extensive introduction with an overview of Hebrew printing and a discussion of aspects of the Hebrew book in the sixteenth century, as well as detailed back matter. It is a necessary work for bibliographers, historians, and students of Jewish literature. The print edition is available as a set of two volumes (9789004129764).

This book takes the reader through a genealogical embodied journey, explaining how our historical context, through various expressions of language, culture, knowledge, pedagogy, and power, has created and perpetuated oppression of marginalised identities throughout history. The volume is, in essence, a social justice initiative in that it shines a spotlight on elitist forms of knowledge, and their attached privileged protectors. As such, the reader will unavoidably reflect on their own pre-conceived meanings and culturally inherent notions while engaging with these pages, and in so doing open a third space where new forms of knowledge that may transcend time and space can evolve into endless possibilities. It is these possibilities of expanding the nuanced meanings of evolving knowledge, fluid lifestyles, and of a dynamic connection to humanity and God, which make this book contextually relevant in our post-modern landscape. It un-situates philosophies which have traditionally been unknowingly situated, and, in so doing, propels the reader to re-interpret discourse and recreate taken-for-granted “universal truths.”