In this book’s four brilliant approaches to the Jewish stress on extending both the vision and the Law of Moses (Torah) to every phase of life, Jacob Neusner points to the kinships of the two traditions: Learning is a form of devotion to God. The Temple and its ritual exercise of purity was the common concern of the ancient Pharisees and was the most systematic Jewish attempt at intense symbolic infusion of intelligence and light. In the absence of the Temple, after AD 70 observant Jews sought to extend the temple purification process to their own homes and then restructured their ritual into “acts of loving-kindness” and patient study not only of the meaning but the structure of Torah. Today the Mishnah is the continual revelation “element” of Jewish study, open-ended and adaptive and bringing into focus the incidents and acts of all-inclusive religious life.

ISBN 0-8849-4350-X

Published in 1978