Defining Judaism : A Reader

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 will 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.