A religious scholar explains the history of the High Holy Days and why they might offer consolation...
Judaism
Some Jews accepted the claim that Jesus was their messiah, while the majority did not. By Dr....
In medieval Europe, Passover was a touchpoint for conspiracy theories, violence, and libel against Jews. Introduction The...
The destruction of the first temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE challenged traditional notions about the inviolability...
Later, during the Iron Age, the Israelite religion became distinct from the Canaanite polytheism out of which...
Abrahamic views of poverty as a curse and poverty as a blessing – and their interrelated history...
The Book of Enoch brings Azazel as a fallen angel onto Mount Hermon, a gathering-place of demons...
The earliest account of demon sex in Jewish and Christian traditions comes from the Book of Genesis....
Little if any direct archeological evidence exists concerning Abraham. Introduction In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Abraham is a...
How shared texts offer community in a time of isolation. Every spring for millennia, Jews around the...
A historian of the Bible explains how ancient Israelites changed the ways of their worship. As the...
The foundational Jewish texts assert that a fetus does not attain the status of personhood until birth....
A tombstone commissioned by a man in memory of his deceased mother, “Siporah daughter of Dan”. Everything...
In the ancient world, the concept of monotheism as we understand it today did not exist; all...
Sephardic, German, and Eastern European immigrants each contributed to the formation of American Jewry. By Dr. Joellyn...
“Rosh HaShanah” means ‘head [of] the year’, referring to the Jewish day of new year. Introduction Rosh...
Widely held beliefs in eugenic “science” and pervasive fear of foreigners led the US Congress to pass...
Considering the spread of Judaism from the viewpoint of other cultures in the Ancient Near East. Introduction...
Examining the transitions from “selective polytheism” to henotheism and subsequently, from henotheism to global monotheism. Introduction In...
Jews living in Europe were easy, early targets for Crusaders while life was comparatively tranquil in Islamic...
Painstaking reconstruction of fragments of text has revealed the working draft of an ancient Jewish calendar and...
Five of the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Museum of Bible were found to be forged. The...
Jewish life did not solely consist of worrying about one’s day-to-day survival. Summary Jewish culture reflects the...
The urban region of Hamburg represents a special case in the modern religious history of German Jewry...
The story of King Solomon begins with his father, King David, and his mother, Bathsheba. Introduction According...
Allegedly around 1000 BCE, David was the eighth son (and youngest) of Jesse, from the tribe of...
The ancient synagogue represents an inclusive, localized form of worship that did not crystallize until the destruction...
The Torah deals with the origins of not only the Israelites, but also – at least according...
The Herodian dynasty is named after Herod the Great, who was recognized as king of the Jews...
Israel was a regional superpower, but unable to retain its independence in the face of Assyrian imperialism....