Thursday, March 04, 2010

Jacob Neusner interviewed in the Jerusalem Post

JACOB NEUSNER is interviewed in the Jerusalem Post:
'A utopian document, a utopian law'

04/03/2010 15:49

Jacob Neusner talks of his five-decade love affair with the ancient rabbis, on the future of Jewish life.

In the world of Jewish studies, Prof. Jacob Neusner needs no introduction. The 75-year-old scholar of Talmud and rabbinic literature has written, edited or translated more than 900 books (though he doesn't want you to read them all), making him among the most active and prolific authors alive. "But I have a limited repertoire," he says with a smile, an expertise which extends across a millennium and through dozens of difficult, tightly-written works that are the record of the rabbinic love affair with the Torah. For Neusner, the study of rabbinic literature has been a kind of love affair in itself, and as with all true loves, he remembers clearly when it began. ...