Friendship in Jewish History, Religion, and Culture

Lawrence Fine is Irene Kaplan Leiwant Chair of Jewish Studies and Professor of Religion Emeritus, at Mount Holyoke College. He is the author or editor of seven books, including the award-winning Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship.

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction: Studying Friendship in Jewish History, Religion, and CultureLawrence FinePart 1: Love, Intimacy, and Friendship Between Men1. “Cherished in Life, for They Loved Each Other Exceedingly”:Friendship in Medieval AshkenazEyal Levinson2. God in the Face of the Other: Mystical Friendship in the ZoharEitan P. Fishbane3. Friendship and Gender: The Limits and Possibilities of Jewish PhilosophyHava Tirosh-SamuelsonPart 2: Women and the Bonds of Friendship4. “She and Her Friends”: On Women’s Friendship in Biblical NarrativeSaul M. Olyan5. Friends and Friendship in the Memoir of Glückel of Hameln:Learning from ExperienceJoseph Davis6. “Got Yourself Some Friends? Now Build a Movement!” Friendship in the Jewish Women’s Movement in the United StatesMartha AckelsbergPart 3: Friendship and its Challenges7. Jacob and Esau: Twinship, Identity, and Failed FriendshipGeorge Savran8. Hebraica Amicitia: Leon Modena and the Cultural Practices of Early Modern Intra-Jewish FriendshipMichela Andreatta9. Friendship and Betrayal: Hasidism and Secularism in EarlyTwentieth-Century PolandGlenn DynnerPart 4: Crossing Boundaries: Friendship Between Women and Men, and Between Jews and Gentiles10. Interfaith Encounters Between Jews and Christians in the Early Modern Period and Beyond: Toward a FrameworkDaniel Jütte11. Friendship, Jewish Female Philosophers, and FeminismHava Tirosh-Samuelson12. A Friendship in the Prophetic Tradition: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Luther King Jr.Susannah HeschelList of ContributorsIndex

“This volume’s pattern of frequently pairing the overarching identity of Jewishness alongside an additional identity varying by chapter (socioeconomic, gender, interfaith, race, etc.) cuts right to the heart of human connection, developing implications beyond the Jewish tradition and community. ... This work truly understands friendship as a phenomenon to be experienced rather than one to be analyzed in isolation and written into the text.”—Michael Tofte Religious Studies Review