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Braided and spiral loaves of challah have long been a delicious centerpiece of the Jewish table, but with a few extra twists, the beloved Shabbat bread can become a work of art that teaches Torah. In Loaves of Torah, Rabbi Vanessa M. Harper— creator of the hit Instagram account @lechlechallah—shapes interpretive challot for each weekly Torah portion and Jewish holiday. A creative journey through the Jewish year, the book pairs gorgeous color photographs with insightful commentary, in-depth questions for reflection and discussion, as well as beautiful kavanot. Rabbi Harper also includes blessings, recipes, and tips for creating your own interpretive challot. A fresh, contemporary commentary on our holiest text, Loaves of Torah will inspire you to think outside the braid and take Torah into your own hands.

This revised and expanded English edition of Bernd U. Schipper’s 2012 Hermeneutik der Tora incorporates the results of his continued research and writings on Proverbs. For nearly a century, many biblical scholars have argued that the main theological traditions, such as the divine law, God’s torah, do not appear in the book of Proverbs. In this volume, however, Schipper demonstrates that Proverbs interacts in a sophisticated way with the concept of the torah. A detailed analysis of Proverbs 2 and other passages from the first part of the book of Proverbs shows that Proverbs engages in a postexilic discourse around “wisdom and torah” concerning the abilities of humans to fulfill the will of YHWH exemplified in the divine torah.

A revised view of the Pentateuch with consequences for the broader literary history of the Bible

This collection of thirty-one studies on the Pentateuch represents more than twenty years of Konrad Schmid’s research and publications advocating for a new view of the Pentateuch’s formation. Schmid’s essays present the case for a Persian period Priestly document that provided a basic narrative thread to the Torah, which included separate, pre-Priestly components of narratives in Genesis and the Moses story. Schmid’s open discussion includes evidence from various fields, such as literary history, comparative cultural history, historical linguistics, epigraphy, and archaeology. The essays are divided into eight sections usefully structured around the themes of the Pentateuch in the Enneateuch, the history of scholarship, the formation of the Torah, Genesis, the Moses story, the Priestly document, legal texts, and the Pentateuch in the history of ancient Israel’s religion.

In These Words, liturgist Alden Solovy distills the Torah into its very essence: the individual words it contains. Echoing the midrash that the Torah has seventy faces, Solovy selects seventy of its Hebrew words that are pregnant with meaning. For each word, he delves into the etymology, translation, and usage, providing deeper insights into familiar texts. Then Solovy presents a beautiful poem—what he calls “poetic midrash”—inspired by and interpreting each word. From b’reishit (“in beginning”) to shamayim (“heavens”) to zachor (“remember”), These Words will change the way you look at the language of the Torah.

This volume is the first in The Bible and Women series. It presents a history of the reception of the Bible as embedded in Western cultural history with a special focus on the history of women and issues of gender. It introduces the series, explaining the choice of the Hebrew canon in connection with the Christian tradition and preparing the way for a changed view of women throughout the series. The contributors explore the gendered significance of the canonical writings as well as the process of their canonization and the social-historical background of ancient Near Eastern women’s lives, both of which play key roles in the series. Turning to the Pentateuch, essays address a variety of texts and issues still relevant today, such as creation and male-female identity in the image of God, women’s roles in the genealogies of the Pentateuch and in salvation history, the rights and responsibilities of women according to the Hebrew Bible's legal and ritual texts, and how archaeology and iconography can illustrate the texts of the Torah. Contributors include Sophie Démare-Lafont, Dorothea Erbele-Küster, Karin Finsterbusch, Irmtraud Fischer, Mercedes García Bachmann, Thomas Hieke, Carol Meyers, Mercedes Navarro Puerto, Jorunn Økland, Ursula Rapp, Donatella Scaiola, Silvia Schroer, Jopie Siebert-Hommes, and Adriana Valerio.

The present volume explores the ever-evolving understandings and diverse manifestations of the Hebrew notion of torah in early Jewish and Christian literature and the different roles torah played within those communities, whether in Judea or in the Hellenistic and early Roman diaspora. This collection of essays is purposefully wide-ranging, with contributors exploring and rethinking some of the most basic scholarly assumptions and preconceptions about the nature of torah in light of new critical approaches and methodologies. Contributors include Gabriele Boccaccini, Francis Borchardt, Calum Carmichael, Federico Dal Bo, Lutz Doering, Oliver Dyma, Paula Fredriksen, Robert G. Hall, Magnar Kartveit, Anne Kreps, David Lambert, Michael Legaspi, Jason A. Myers, Juan Carlos Ossandón Widow, Anders Klostergaard Petersen, Patrick Pouchelle, Jeremy Punt, Michael L. Satlow, Joachim Schaper, William Schniedewind, Elisa Uusimäki, Jacqueline Vayntrub, Jonathan Vroom, James W. Watts, Benjamin G. Wright III, and Jason M. Zurawski.

Did wisdom literature in the Hebrew Bible develop over time from secular to religious, as many early modern scholars believed? Did it develop in reaction to historical events or out of conflict with other traditions, including Torah? In Wisdom Discourse and Torah in Second Temple Judaism, JiSeong James Kwon moves beyond this impasse by applying a discourse-critical method to intertextual readings of Proverbs, Ben Sira, the Wisdom of Solomon, Baruch, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Deuteronomy. Kwon’s study reveals that wisdom literature maintained an independent identity and theological orientation distinct from the legal traditions of the Torah. Rather than wisdom being subsumed into legal material, Jewish intellectual production remained pluralistic in form, genre, and theological orientation throughout the Persian and Hellenistic periods.