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Lifetime ofReading
the fight over their publication, see Lawrence Schiffman,
Reclaim
ing the Dead Sea Scrolls
(JPS)and Neil Asher Silberman,
TheHidden
Scrolls
(Putnam).
In the area of classical Rabbinic Judaism there have been numer
ous publications in the last ten years, but two stand out as most no
table. First, we have the ongoing project to publish in English Adin
Steinsalz’s edition (with his commentary) of the Talmud. Stein-
salz’s mission to make the Talmud available to non-specialists is
greatly advanced by this marvelous enterprise. This is available
through Random House in a number of handsome volumes,
though it is years away from completion.
Second, we saw in this decade the long-awaited English transla
tion of
Sefer HaAggadah,
the great anthology of midrash and ag
gadah by Bialik and Ravnitzky. Translated by the late William
Braude, the book appears as
The Book ofLegends
in a beautiful edi
tion from Schocken. It is worth noting that many other transla
tions of Rabbinic sources have appeared in these years. Included in
this list is a unique work: the Hebrew novelist S. Y. Agnon’s mag
nificent collection of various midrashim about the giving of the
Torah. This has been translated beautifully by Michael Swersky in
a volume entided
Present at Sinai
(JPS). The poet David Curzon
has produced a fascinating anthology of poetry written about Bib
lical themes, a kind of modern midrash collection with both Jewish
and Gentile poets included,
Modem Poems on the Bible
(JPS).
In my earlier essay I wrote about the monumental work in Jew
ish mysticism done by the great Gershom Scholem. In these past
ten years Scholem’s student Moshe Idel has emerged as a worthy
successor to the master and his many books, most importantly,
Kabbalah: New Perspectives
(Yale), have begun to reconceptualize
our understanding of Jewish mysticism. In a more popular vein I
should note the little anthology done by an American scholar of
mysticism, Daniel Matt,
The Essential Kabbalah
(Harper San Fran
cisco), and the journalistic exploration ofJewish spirituality in our
times by the poet Roger Kamenetz,
The Jew in the Lotus
(Harper
Collins).
Theology or the search for spiritual meaning has been a topic
that has also garnered considerable attention in this decade. The