What motivated you to write this book? While directing Yad Vashem’s Righteous Among the Nations Department, I often came across the names of many Jewish rescuers who had worked in tandem with non-Jewish rescuers to save Jews. While the non-Jewish ones were honored with the title “righteous among the nations” and their names and stories […]
What motivated you to write this book? After many years of biblical studies and eclectic readings of ancient Near Eastern literature, I realized that the Jewish Bible made some huge advances in ethics over ancient Near Eastern civilizations. However, the scholarly tendency is either to ignore the ancient Near Eastern context, or to see the […]
How is this Torah commentary different from all other Torah commentaries? This Torah commentary is aimed particularly at young people and their parents. It expresses difficult concepts in down-to-earth and even colloquial terms. It poses questions that challenge kids. And I believe it does something that no other Torah commentary does: it takes the haftarah […]
by Rabbi Barry L. Schwartz The Jewish Standard: Feb 10, 2017 In the national debate over immigration, it is worthwhile to remember that the status of immigrant residents is not peripheral to the Torah, but central to it. In his just published book, Justice for All: How the Jewish Bible Revolutionized Ethics, biblical scholar Jeremiah […]
