Creating Judaism

Creating Judaism: History, Tradition, Practice
Michael L. Satlow

How can we define "Judaism," and what are the common threads uniting ancient rabbis, Maimonides, the authors of
the Zohar, and modern secular Jews in Israel? Michael L. Satlow offers a fresh perspective on Judaism that
recognizes both its similarities and its immense diversity. Presenting snapshots of Judaism from around the globe and
throughout history, Satlow explores the links between vastly different communities and their Jewish traditions. He
studies the geonim, rabbinical scholars who lived in Iraq from the ninth to twelfth centuries; the intellectual flourishing
of Jews in medieval Spain; how the Hasidim of nineteenth-century Eastern Europe confronted modernity; and the post-
World War II development of distinct American and Israeli Jewish identities. Satlow pays close attention to how
communities define themselves, their relationship to biblical and rabbinic texts, and their ritual practices. His
fascinating portraits reveal the amazingly creative ways Jews have adapted over time to social and political challenges
and continue to remain a "Jewish family."

Endorsements

"Creating Judaism is a work of uncommon synthesis that draws upon frameworks provided by the academic study of
religions to offer a sympathetic and insightful overview of the nature and development of Judaism from ancient to
modern times. Michael Satlow displays exceptional erudition and range in these pages, and he allows the reader to
understand the dynamism and diversity as well as the coherence that has marked Judaism as a religious tradition
throughout the ages. Creating Judaism will be of genuine interest and import to students of Judaism and scholars of
religion alike. I recommend it most highly."

—David Ellenson, President, Hebrew Union College-Jewish

Institute

of Religion

"An excellent, highly readable book laying out brilliantly the problematics of establishing the continuity, age by major
age, of the Jewish tradition from the Bible to the present. Drawing on a broad range of recent scholarship, Michael
Satlow’s insightful, lucid, and often daring account locates each period of Jewish history in its larger immediate context
yet linked in complex, unforeseen ways to antecedent Jewish collective identities, sacred texts, and ritual practices.
Judicious, erudite, and speaking in his own personal voice, Satlow adroitly describes how the Jewish heritage has
repeatedly remolded itself – and what that flexibility signifies nowadays. A book of great value to sophisticated novices
and informed academics alike."

—Robert M. Seltzer, professor of Jewish history, Hunter

College

and The City University of New York, and the

author

of Jewish

People, Jewish Thought: The Jewish Experience in

History, etc.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chronology

Introduction

1. Promised Lands