Bluethread Resource Reviews

Writer Index

Alter, Robert

Robert Alter is the Class of 1937 Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967. He has written seventeen books, focusing on such topics as the European novel from the 18th century to the present, contemporary American fiction, and modern Hebrew literature. He has also written extensively on the literary aspects of the bible.

Alter earned his master's degree and doctorate in comparitive literature from Harvard University.. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Council of Scholars of the Library of Congress, and is currently serving as president of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics. He has twice been a Guggenheim Fellow, has been a Senior Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, and Old Dominion Fellow at Princeton University.

Works:

The art of Biblical narrative
The art of Biblical poetry
The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel
Genesis: translation and commentary (Reviewed by Bluethread)
Hebrew and modernity
The pleasures of reading in an ideological age
Fielding and the nature of the novel
A lion for love: a critical biography of Stendahl
A literary guide to the Bible (co-editor)

Cohen, Abraham.

Rabbi Cohen was educated at London and Cambridge Universities, held the pulpit at Birmingham Hebrew Congregation 1913 — 1949, and was active in national and international Jewish organizations until his death in 1957 at 90 years of age. Perhaps his most lasting contribution was as editor of many of the Soncino Press’ Hebrew-English publications of scripture and related works.

Works:

Everyman’s Talmud
Teachings of Maimonides

As editor or co-editor and sometimes translator:

Soncino Books of the Bible
Soncino Chumash (Reviewed by Bluethread)
Soncino Midrash
Soncino Talmud

Hamilton, Victor P.

Hamilton is Professor of Religion and Chairman of the Division of Philosophy and Religion at Asbury College, Wilmore, Kentucky, and finds his calling in learning and teaching. A major teacher in the Wesleyan tradition, Dr. Hamilton joins others in both Jewish and Christian traditions in contending that it is not the deliberate sinner but rather the unrepentant sinner, who is excluded from expiation. Dr. Hamilton grew up in Canada, and was a carpenter before he found his present calling. He joined the Asbury faculty in 1963.

WORKS:

The book of Genesis (Reviewed by Bluethread)
A Handbook on the Pentateuch

Hertz, Joseph

Rabbi Joseph Herman Hertz was born in Slovakia in 1872 to a family versed in Talmudic scholarship. He was taken to New York in 1884, and in 1894 became the first person to receive ordination at the then-modern orthodox Jewish Theological Seminary. While a rabbi in Johannesburg at the time of the Boer War, it is said that he and Winston Churchill escaped together in a rowboat. In 1913, while he had a pulpit in Manhattan, the post of Chief Rabbi of the British Empire opened. Churchill¹s influence helped get Hertz appointed to that position.

Hertz is credited as being an orator on a par with Churchill, and as helping secure in 1917 the Balfour Declaration, announcing the British policy in support of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. He held the Chief Rabbinate until his death in 1946. Hertz¹ chief accomplishment may be his 1936 commentary on the Chumash, which realized his goal to make the Torah accessible to all in the vernacular, while conveying traditional interpretations against the proponents of the documentary hypothesis.

Works:
As editor and commentary author:

Book of Jewish Thoughts
The Pentateuch & Haftarahs (Reviewed by Bluethread)
The authorized daily prayer book

Plaut, W. Gunther

Dr. Plaut was born in Germany in 1912, came to the U. S. in 1935, was ordained as rabbi in 1939 at Hebrew Union College, and earned a Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota while serving a congregation in St. Paul 1948 — 1961. He also served as chaplain in the U. S. Army 1943 — 1946, on leave from a Chicago pulpit. Since 1961, he has been senior rabbi of Blossom Temple, Toronto, Canada’s oldest Liberal (i.e., Reform) congregation.

Works:

As author:

The Jews of Minnesota
Judaism and the Scientific Spirit

As editor and commentary author:

The Book of Proverbs: a commentary
The Growth of Reform Judaism: American and European Sources to 1948
The Haftarah commentary
The Torah, a modern commentary (Reviewed by Bluethread)
The Rise of Reform Judaism: a sourcebook of its European origins

Rad, Gerhard von

Dr. Rad was professor of the Old Testament at the German universities of Jena, Goettingen and Heidelberg, and perhaps the most important German biblical scholar of the twentieth century. He departs from the traditional German focus on the documentary hypothesis, in which he was fluent, to argue a unified core theology of a belief in a God who chose Israel as his people, and brought them from Egypt to their settlement in the Promised Land. That belief is to be found in a Hexateuch comprised of the five books of Moses plus Joshua, not just the five books of Moses alone. Rad presented his thesis in a 1938 essay, "Das formgeschichtliche Problem des Hexateuchs" ("The form-historical problem of the Hexateuch").

Works:

Genesis: a commentary (Reviewed by Bluethread)
Deuteronomy: a commentary
Old Testament theology
Holy war in ancient Israel
The problem of the Hexateuch and other essays

Rosenberg, A. J.

WORKS:

As editor:
Soncino Chumash (Reviewed by Bluethread)

As translator, commentator and editor:
Hebrew-English Tanakh with Rashi Commentaries
Hebrew-English Prophets and Holy Writings [i.e., the remainder of the Hebrew Scriptures], with classic commentaries (Mikraoth Gedoloth )
Selected Talmud tractates

Sarna, Nahum

Professor Nahum Sarna, the former Dora Golding Professor of Biblical Studies at Brandeis University, is a native of London, England, as is his wife, Helen, who has retired from the library of Hebrew College, Brookline, Massachuseetts. He received his ordination at Jews' College, London, [now London School of Jewish Studies] and his Ph.D. from Dropsie College, now the Annenberg Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was recently appointed the first Fellow of the Center for Jewish Studies. He was also a visiting professor at Yale University. Prof. Sarna and his wife now reside in Boca Raton, Florida.

Works:

As author:
Exploring Exodus
Songs of the Heart, a study of the Psalms
Understanding Genesis

As Editor and author:

The Jewish Publication Society Commentary: Genesis (reviewed by Bluethread)
The Jewish Publication Society Commentary: Exodus

Scherman, Rabbi Nosson

Scherman is the co-founder and general editor of Artscroll Books. The publishing house began in 1976, when Rabbi Scherman was principal of a Brooklyn yeshiva. He and the late Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz wrote and published an English-Hebrew edition of the Book of Esther, with commentary. It sold 20,000 copies, unprecedented for a title with a straightforward Orthodox perspective. That was the beginning of Artscroll Books and its extensive list of works for a traditional Orthodox audience. Included are over 200 Hebrew-English titles, including the Torah, wtih a complete Talmud appearing as well. Not least of Artscroll¹s attractions are the attractive cover designs that help the books find a wide audience.

In responding to comments that his editions make no effort to acknowledge views of modern Orthodox or non-tradiitional scholars, Rabbi Scherman is unapologetic. "We present the Torah and Scripture as they were traditionally studied over the past 2,000 years in the academies of Europe, the Middle East and the United States," he says. "We make no bones about it."

WORKS:

Artscroll Siddur
The Chumash, Stone edition (translator, commentator and editor) (Reviewed by Bluethread)
The Family Haggadah

Skinner, John

John Skinner studied in Scotland and Germany at the end of the 19th century. He had pulpits in the Free Church of Scotland 1880-1890, until in 1890 he was elected to the faculty of what is now Westminster College, Cambridge. There he became one of the earliest English-language scholars to incorporate the documentary hypothesis in his teaching and writing, and his lectures were described as clear, illuminating, and impressive. Skinner was elected Principal (i.e., Dean) in 1908, and given Principal Emeritus status in 1922. His 1910 Genesis was for many years the standard English-language text, and he died in 1925 while revising it.

WORKS

As author:
The book of Samuel
The book of the prophet Isaiah
A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (Reviewed by Bluethread)
Ezekiel
Kings
Prophecy and religion: studies in the life of Jeremiah

Speiser, E. A.

Speiser was born and raised in Galicia, and came to the U. S. in 1920. In 1924 he earned a Ph.D. from Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, which was the first U.S. institution to offer a graduate program in Jewish Studies, and he was promptly appointed to the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania. When Dropsie merged with Penn, he joined its Center for Judaic Studies, where he received many awards until his death in 1965. Speiser's research in Iraq prior to and following World War II, and study in related Mesopotamian cultures, gave him an unequalled understanding of and familiarity with the ancient Near East. His pre-eminence on his field led to the realization of a lifelong goal with the debut volume of the Anchor Bible series, Genesis. Speiser also was a principal member of the committee that created the new JPS translation of the Torah.

REVIEWED WORKS:
As author:
At the dawn of civilization : a background of Biblical history (v. 1 of the The World History of the Jewish People.)
Genesis: translated and with an introduction and notes
Mesopotamian origins; the basic population of the Near East
The United States and the Near East

11/4/01

© Rosemarie E. Falanga, Cy H. Silver