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Eucharistic prayers characteristically describe the eucharist as originating with the Last Supper. This has been the usual account since the end of the second century but it does not provide adequa...

This chapter assesses R. Yehudah he-Ḥasid's Commentary on the Torah (1976). R. Yehudah claimed that several verses were written after the time of Moses. R. Moshe Feinstein, the leading halakhic decisor (posek) of the time, had apparently been shown an advance copy of choice sections of the book and declared the statement of non-Mosaic authorship to be heretical. As it was inconceivable that R. Yehudah he-Ḥasid was a heretic, the work was clearly a forgery, or certain passages had been cunningly inserted into his blameless composition to better infiltrate the bastions of the faithful. That the composition is that of R. Yehudah he-Ḥasid there can be little question; there are too many citations from this commentary, specifically attributed to him, in medieval writings to leave room for doubt. Yet it is equally true that the work does attribute several verses of the Pentateuch to later writers.

It used to be the custom to donate a mantle (me’il) to the synagogue, either along with a new Torah scroll or on its own. When a mantle is donated with a scroll, they are kept together and the mantle acts as the scroll’s permanent covering, making it easier to identify a specific scroll. In congregations with many Torah scrolls, the dedicatory inscription on the mantle is of great importance since it helps to pick out the scroll that is to be read. There are also mantles with no connection to a specific scroll, the intention behind the donation often being that they should be used on particular sabbaths or to commemorate special occasions....

Textile accessories for the Torah scroll are the most sacred ceremonial objects because they come into direct contact with the scroll. This is true of the wrapper (mapah, or mitpaḥat) and the accessories that evolved from it. Various aspects of the sanctity of these objects are discussed in the rabbinical literature. Rabbi Joseph ben Solomon Colon, who lived in fifteenth-century Italy, ruled that the mantle acquires its sanctity as soon as ‘the Torah scroll had been wrapped in the mantle [...

This chapter discusses the major function of the synagogue from the ancient period until the present as a 'little sanctuary' and a somewhat substitute for the Temple. It explains how a synagogue is seen as the abode of the Divine Presence, in which the concept was expressed by the sages in the talmudic literature and became embedded in the Jewish tradition. It also cites the physical building of the synagogue that serve as a replacement in the absence of the Temple, which made the entire manner of worship to undergo fundamental change. The chapter reviews practices, such as sounding the shofar or the procession with the Four Species, that were performed in the synagogue instead of the Temple. It mentions points out how daily worship of animal sacrifice being performed on the altar was replaced by the reading of Torah and reciting of prayers.

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This chapter presents a commentary on ‘Laws of the Foundations of the Torah’, 6:9 and 7:3. Maimonides deploys aggadah to add extra layers of meaning in Mishneh torah. Where he makes intense use of biblical reference, close reading and attention to midrashic resonances can be rewarding. ‘Laws of the Foundations of the Torah’, 6:9, was interpreted as broadening the chapter's theme of avoiding desecration of sacred objects and texts to include the need for sensitive reading of texts. In ‘Laws of the Foundations of the Torah’, 7:3, the juxtaposition of Jacob's dream of the ladder with Ezekiel's vision of the chariot was found to refer to the combination of theoretical knowledge and insight into historical process in the vision of the prophet. This is reflected in the ontological and teleological dimensions of Mishneh torah's form.

This chapter studies Mishneh torah as a great parable that is not explicitly identified as such. In the introduction to The Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides chooses Jacob's dream of the ladder with the angels ascending and descending to illustrate the complex type of parable that is significant in all its details, as opposed to parables that are significant only in outline. He thus announces the centrality of this parable to his vision. In its later appearances in the Guide, it serves to concentrate that book's ideas in the realms of physics, metaphysics, and prophecy. Mishneh torah embodies all that Jacob's dream stands for in the Guide. Ultimately, the form of Mishneh torah in the literary sense is a parabolic representation of the form of the commandments in the technical, philosophical sense.

This chapter examines what the idea of man as microcosm means for the place of the commandments in Maimonides' scheme of things. Mishneh torah's microcosmic form reflects the various parallels that Maimonides draws more or less explicitly in The Guide of the Perplexed between the laws of nature and the law of the Torah: both are perfect; both are permanent; both are accessible to reason. It implies the Torah's derivation from nature via the uniquely comprehensive prophecy of Moses, who understood God's governance of the world more perfectly than anyone before or since and translated this understanding into a system of laws. Despite Maimonides' programmatic remarks about ease of reference and so forth, the classification of the commandments in Mishneh torah is above all a rationalization of the commandments. Through its form, Mishneh torah presents them sub specie aeternitatis: they condense the rationality of the cosmos. Its treatment is to be distinguished from mystical interpretations that link the commandments to a supernal domain rather than to nature.

This chapter focuses on the master exegete Rashi of Troyes. Although many have written supercommentaries, essays, and even books about Rashi as a biblical or talmudic exegete, until recently few have looked at him as an original medieval Jewish thinker, let alone as a historical source reflective of northern European Jewish mentalité. And yet, no medieval Jew shaped the collective identity of Ashkenazi and even Sephardi Jewry more than this remarkable figure, whose genealogy is obscure but who is often compared and contrasted to his Sephardi analogue, Maimonides, whose genealogy was long and distinguished. Could Rashi have been so widely accepted as 'the' interpreter of biblical-talmudic Judaism for all times had he himself not been a person of his own time as well as a refashioner of it? Rashi proposed Jewish core values to his readers, especially in his Pentateuch (Humash) commentary. He did not write a treatise but wrote biblical commentaries in the form of a selective editing of rabbinic lore. Even when he did not interpret narrative biblical irregularities, he wrote what can be called ‘rewritten Midrash’.

This chapter evaluates midrashic texts and methods in Tosafist Torah commentaries. The relationship between biblical and talmudic studies in medieval Ashkenaz is rather complex, and a number of trenchant questions remain. From all that is known about the Tosafists, and as E. E. Urbach's thorough treatment of their extensive literary corpus serves to demonstrate, talmudic and halakhic studies were at the core of the tosafist enterprise. Although the Talmud obviously cites and interprets myriad biblical verses for both halakhic and aggadic purposes and Tosafot passages include a fair amount of biblical interpretation in the course of their discussions and deliberations, the talmudocentric orientation of the Tosafists remains paramount throughout. As the leading rabbinic scholars in northern Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Tosafists cite a wide range of midrashic collections and perspectives in their talmudic comments. Indeed, the standard Tosafot on the Babylonian Talmud question and analyse talmudic sugyot (literary units) not only on the basis of halakhic and aggadic midrashim that were considered to be contemporary with the Talmud, but also in light of other midrashim whose origins and milieux are later and less clear.