Adapted from the author's adult novel, Rashi's Daughters, Book I: Joheved.

In 1068 the scholar Salomon ben Isaac returns home to Troyes, France to take over the family winemaking business and embark on a path that will indelibly influence the Jewish world, writing the first Talmud commentary and secretly teaching Talmud to his daughters.

Based on the life of the author’s thirteenth-century ancestor, Meir ben Baruch of Rothenberg, a renowed Jewish scholar of medieval Europe, this is the richly dramatic fictional story of Rabbi Meir’s wife, Shira, a devout but rebellious woman who preserves her religious traditions as she and her family witness the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. Raised by her widowed rabbi father and a Christian nursemaid in Normandy, Shira is a free-spirited, inquisitive girl whose love of learning shocks the community. When Shira’s father is arrested by the local baron intent on enforcing the Catholic Church’s strictures against heresy, Shira fights for his release and encounters two men who will influence her life profoundly—an inspiring Catholic priest and Meir ben Baruch, a brilliant scholar. In Meir, Shira finds her soulmate. Married to Meir in Paris, Shira blossoms as a wife and mother, savoring the intellectual and social challenges that come with being the wife of a prominent scholar. After witnessing the burning of every copy of the Talmud in Paris, Shira and her family seek refuge in Germany. Yet even there they experience bloody pogroms and intensifying anti-Semitism. With no safe place for Jews in Europe, they set out for Israel only to see Meir captured and imprisoned by Rudolph I of Hapsburg. As Shira weathers heartbreak and works to find a middle ground between two warring religions, she shows her children and grandchildren how to embrace the joys of life, both secular and religious. Vividly bringing to life a period rarely covered in historical fiction, this multi-generational novel will appeal to readers who enjoy Maggie Anton’s Rashi’s Daughters, Brenda Rickman Vantrease’s The Illuminator, and Geraldine Brooks’s People of the Book.

In much of Western literature and Greek mythology, women have an evident lack of purpose; a woman needs to either enter or leave a relationship in order to find herself and her own identity. Matthew Schwartz and Kalman Kaplan set out to prove that the converse is true in the text of the Hebrew Bible. Examining the stories of women in Scripture -- Rebecca, Miriam, Gomer, Ruth and Naomi, Lot's wife, Zipporah, and dozens more -- Schwartz and Kaplan illustrate the biblical woman's strong feminine sense of being crucial to God's plan for the world and for history, courageously seeking the greatest good for herself and others whatever the circumstances. Empowering, illuminating, and fascinating, The Fruit of Her Hands makes a singular contribution to the fields of biblical and women's studies.

In the Jewish tradition, reading of the Torah follows a calendar cycle, with a specific portion assigned each week. Following on this ancient tradition, Torah Queeries brings together some of the world's leading rabbis, scholars, and writers to interpret the Torah through a "bent lens." This incredibly rich collection unites the voices of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and straight-allied writers, including some of the most central figures in contemporary American Judaism. All bring to the table unique methods of reading and interpreting that allow the Torah to speak to modern concerns of sexuality, identity, gender, and LGBT life. Torah Queeries offers cultural critique, social commentary, and a vision of community transformation, all done through biblical interpretation. Written to engage readers, draw them in, and at times provoke them, Torah Queeries charts a future of inclusion and social justice deeply rooted in the Jewish textual tradition. A labor of intellectual rigor, social justice, and personal passions, Torah Queeries is an exciting and important contribution to the project of democratizing Jewish communities, and an essential guide to understanding the intersection of queerness and Jewishness.

In 2004, Mayer Gruber?s landmark Rashi?s Commentary on Psalms made one of the 11th-century scholar?s most important works accessible to a larger audience for the first time. The JPS paperback edition of this exceptional volume includes the complete original Hebrew text and acclaimed linguist Mayer Gruber?s contemporary English translation and supercommentary. Fully annotated by Gruber, Rashi?s Commentary on Psalms places Rashi, the most influential Hebrew biblical commentator of all time, in the larger context of biblical exegesis. Gruber identifies Rashi?s sources, pinpoints the exegetical questions to which Rashi responds, defines the nuances of Rashi?s terminology, and guides the reader to use the English translation as a tool to access the original Hebrew text. Gruber?s extensive introduction takes a critical look at Rashi and his enduring legacy.

“This splendid reference describes every woman in Jewish and Christian scripture . . . monumental” (Library Journal). In recent decades, many biblical scholars have studied the holy text with a new focus on gender. Women in Scripture is a groundbreaking work that provides Jews, Christians, or anyone fascinated by a body of literature that has exerted a singular influence on Western civilization a thorough look at every woman and group of women mentioned in the Bible, whether named or unnamed, well known or heretofore not known at all. They are remarkably varied—from prophets to prostitutes, military heroines to musicians, deacons to dancers, widows to wet nurses, rulers to slaves. There are familiar faces, such as Eve, Judith, and Mary, seen anew with the full benefit of the most up-to-date results of biblical scholarship. But the most innovative aspect of this book is the section devoted to the many females who in the scriptures do not even have names. Combining rigorous research with engaging prose, these articles on women in the Hebrew Bible, the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books, and the New Testament will inform, delight, and challenge readers interested in the Bible, scholars and laypeople alike. Together, these collected histories create a volume that takes the study of women in the Bible to a new level.

Linda Silver selected the titles that "represent the best in writing, illustration, reader appeal, and authentically Jewish content--in picture books, fiction and non-fiction, for readers ranging from early childhood through the high school years."--P. [4] of cover.

This book brings to light how the genealogies in the Bible are a developing genre, flexible in both patterns and deviations, allowing the inclusion of otherwise absent family members like mothers and daughters.