Grounded Spirituality: Aspects of Rabbinic Culture in Its Late Antique Context

Grounded Spirituality: Aspects of Rabbinic Culture in its Late Antique Context examines a series of themes engaged by rabbinic literature, including the primacy of learning, the fading of universalism, the place of love, a unique rhetoric of charity and good deeds, and rabbinic attitudes to philosophy and mysticism. Particularly, it focuses on the formative period of rabbinic religion, from 1-500 C.E., which roughly parallels what classical historians call late antiquity.

Each chapter focuses on a central text from the rabbinic corpus drawn from Mishna, Tosefta, Midrash and Talmud. After carefully explicating the text, Marc Hirshman explores the themes emerging from the central text and other --often differing and opposing-- views in rabbinic literature. An exploration of possible influences or polemics with the regnant cultures and religions of the region will be included in most chapters. The book is both a primer for a critical reading of rabbinic texts, as well as an exploration of the development of rabbinic thought and religiosity.

In the final chapter, Hirshman explores the implications of the study of classical rabbinic literature of antiquity for contemporary humanities and religion. What lessons are to be learned from rabbinic discourse, and what place should their unique cultural approaches have on the development of religion and the humanities in the twenty-first century?

Marc Hirshman is Mandel Professor emeritus at the Melton Centre for Jewish Education of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was a visiting professor at a number of leading American universities including Columbia University, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, The Jewish Theological Seminary, and the University of Notre Dame. Additionally, he was a Starr Fellow at Harvard, a Joyce Zeger Greenberg Fellow at University of Chicago, and a Strauss Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his books are: A Rivalry of Genius: Jewish and Christian Biblical Interpretation in Late Antiquity (1995) and The Stabilization of Rabbinic Culture 100 C.E- 350 C. E: Texts on Education in their Late Antique Context (2009).