Publisher's Synopsis
This book illustrates the range of theoretical and practical issues involved in defining Judaism for the purposes of comparative and historical studies. The editor holds that sound definitions of religious traditions in general emerge from complex dialogues between insiders, who define themselves vis a vis outsiders, and outsiders, who theorize and generalize about the self-definitions of insiders. Accordingly, the texts anthologized here include examples of Jewish voices articulating their own native self-understanding as well as academic interpretive discourses proposing to place these self-understandings within historical, anthropogical, or phenomenological frameworks.
