Diana Lipton

"I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is informative, thought-provoking, and ? despite being a commentary ? holds the reader's attention. It made me appreciate Lamentations in a new way. To be recommended." The Swedish Exegetical Yearbook 2014, 1 October 2014 One of the shortest books in the Bible, Lamentations exercises a disproportionately powerful cultural influence. As an unflinching account of the devastation wreaked by war, it has been called upon again and again by Jews, Christians, and others in their responses to catastrophes as varied as the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, the Great Fire of London, the Holocaust and 9/11. Covering two-and-a-half millennia of liturgy and literature, theology and psychology, art, music and film, this volume explores the astonishing variety of cultural and religious responses to Lamentations, taking in the New Testament and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Yehudah Halevy, John Calvin, and Thomas Tallis, as well as the startling interpretations of Marc Chagall, Cynthia Ozick, Alice Miller, and Zimbabwean junk sculpture. Viewed through this kaleidoscope of sources, the ancient biblical text acquires a vital and resonant new life. Lamentations Through the Centuries is published within the Wiley Blackwell Bible Commentaries series. Further information about this innovative reception history series is available at www.bbibcomm.info.

Food is at the heart of Jewish life and culture. It's the subject of many studies, popular and academic, and countless Jewish jokes. From Forbidden Fruit to Milk and Honey spotlights food in the Torah itself, where, as still today, it's used to explore themes including love and desire, compassion and commitment, social justice, memory, belonging and exclusion, control, deception, and life and death. Originally an online project to support the food rescue charity, Leket Israel, From Forbidden Fruit to Milk and Honey comprises short essays on food in the parasha by 52 internationally acclaimed scholars and Jewish educators, and a verse by verse commentary by Diana Lipton on food and eating in the Torah.

An intriguing and subtle study of five Genesis dreams: Abimelech's (20.1-18), Jacob's (28.10-22; 31.10-13), Laban's (31.24) and Abraham's (15.1-21). Like many of their ancient Near Eastern counterparts, all occur at times of uncertainty, concern status, and emphasize divine involvement in human affairs. At a deeper level, they also address doubts arising from God's promise of land, descendants and a unique role for Israel among the nations. Their particular treatment of relations between Israelites and non-Israelites and of Israel's absence from the land points to the Babylonian Exile as the background against which the patriarchal dream texts achieved their present form. Revisions of the Night shows how dreams combine the highly personal with the ardently political in an inspired response to national crisis.