A complete English translation from the original Arabic of one of the most important works of Jewish philosophy and ethics, composed in the early 12th century.

A new English translation of the 11th-century ethical classic which explores faith, service to G-d, understanding G-d's ways, and profound insights into human nature. Vowelized Hebrew text with facing English translation for ease-of-use. 2-volume gift-boxed set (individual volumes not sold separately). Pocket-size edition. Sold as a set only. Individual volumes not sold separately.

Holiness is a challenge for contemporary Jewish thought. The concept of holiness is crucial to religious discourse in general and to Jewish discourse in particular. "Holiness" seems to express an important feature of religious thought and of religious ways of life. Yet the concept is ill defined. This collection explores what concepts of holiness were operative in different periods of Jewish history and bodies of Jewish literature and offers preliminary reflections on their theological and philosophical import today. The contributors illumine some of the major episodes concerning holiness in the development of the Jewish tradition. They are challenged to think about the problems and potential implicit in Judaic concepts of holiness, to make them explicit, and to try to retrieve the concepts for contemporary theological and philosophical reflection. Not all of the contributors push into philosophical and theological territory, but they all provide resources for the reader to do so. Holiness is elusive but it need not be opaque. This volume makes Jewish concepts of holiness lucid, accessible, and intellectually engaging.

A new English translation of the 11th-century ethical classic. Vowelized Hebrew text with facing English.

A Chomprehensive anthology of classic writings on Jewish philosophy from the Bible to postmodernism.

This book is the first collection to feature histories of women in Western Esotericism while also highlighting women’s scholarship. In addition to providing a critical examination of important and under researched figures in the history of Western Esotericism, these fifteen essays also contribute to current debates in the study of esotericism about the very nature of the field itself. The chapters are divided into four thematic sections that address current topics in the study of esotericism: race and othering, femininity, power and leadership and embodiment. This collection not only adds important voices to the story of Western Esotericism, it hopes to change the way the story is told.

This contribution to the global history of ideas uses biographical profiles of 18th-century contemporaries to find what Salafist and Sufi Islam, Evangelical Protestant and Jansenist Catholic Christianity, and Hasidic Judaism have in common. Such figures include Muḥammad Ibn abd al-Waḥhab, Count Nikolaus Zinzendorf, Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Israel Ba’al Shem Tov. The book is a unique and comprehensive study of the conflicted relationship between the “evangelical” movements in all three Abrahamic religions and the ideas of the Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment. Centered on the 18th century, the book reaches back to the third century for precedents and context, and forward to the 21st for the legacy of these movements. This text appeals to students and researchers in many fields, including Philosophy and Religion, their histories, and World History, while also appealing to the interested lay reader.

In Knowledge of God and the Development of Early Kabbalah, Jonathan Dauber offers a fresh consideration of the emergence of Kabbalah against the backdrop of a re-evaluation of the relationship between Kabbalistic and philosophic discourse.

David Gillis’s highly original study of Maimonides’ Mishneh torah demonstrates that its form reflects a belief that observance of the divine commandments of the Torah brings the individual and society into line with the cosmic order. He shows that the Mishneh torah is intended to be an object of contemplation as well as a prescription for action, with the study of it in itself bringing the reader closer to knowledge of God.