Abstract Kiddush Levanah is a currently little-known ritual of potentially rich symbolic value in progressive Jewish communities: this brief ritual over the moon in its waxing phase might be understood as a Divine endorsement of renewal (especially through the chatimah of the ritual's central blessing) that invites or even compels the evolution of Jewish practice. While it sits in the context of other moon-related Jewish rituals, which cluster around the new moon, it contrasts with them in its fluidity of time and as a ritual that still involves witnessing the moon. Ritual forms, practices and customs associated with Kiddush Levanah are outlined in this article, in addition to some midrashic connections with cycles of waxing and waning. The article begins and ends with a newly composed midrash, as one suggestion for a teaching tool to widen knowledge and appreciation of Kiddush Levanah.

Abstract Many Jews find themselves distant from traditional Jewish beliefs and practices in our worldly society. Yet the quest for a personal spiritual dimension in life may remain. What is the nature and experience of prayer, and how does it relate to Jewish liturgy and public worship? At the heart of this analysis is the personal journey of the author encountering the paradoxes and challenges, the openness and potential traps of a love affair with God. We have cleaned up religion to such an extent that we have made it too nice for the purpose it serves: what do we do with our anger, our aggression, our ambition and our bodies? This article is an important legacy of the teaching of Rabbi Blue, who had a considerable impact on generations of students of Leo Baeck College and the communities he reached through his contributions to contemporary Jewish liturgy and his popular public voice on British radio.

Abstract Is interfaith dialogue desirable or even possible from a Jewish point of view? In the 1960s, several Jewish positions were set out. At one extreme were those opposed to interfaith dialogue as being impossible in theory and unwelcome in practice. At the other extreme were those who supported interfaith dialogue as a religious duty that was stimulating and enjoyable. In the following years, attitudes shifted and interfaith dialogue is now seen in a positive light by a large spectrum of the Jewish community. Meaningful interfaith dialogue has been taking place, and reasons for this change are suggested. This article focuses on the area of interfaith pastoral care and counselling. It describes how counselling and care initiatives that began within one or another particular faith tradition have expanded their horizons and now include interfaith and intercultural aspects in a helpful and healing way.

Abstract This issue contains papers presented on the Book of Job, delivered over two sessions of the annual International Jewish-Christian Bible Week held at Haus Ohrbeck, in Osnabrück, Germany. Each year during the opening evening the Editor has delivered a ten-minute introduction to the Book we are about to study. Because of Covid, the 2021 conference was held on Zoom, studying Job 1–27, while for the 2022 session we were back at Haus Ohrbeck. Earlier in this issue I include the two brief introductions to the theme of the Week as part of the opening session. At the end of the Week is a Shabbat morning service and the Editor delivered the ‘derasha’ on each occasion, which is included here under the title of Epilogues.

Abstract This article discusses Israel Zangwill's play The Melting Pot (1908) and Horace M. Kallen's essay ‘Democracy versus the Melting Pot’ (1915) as two different visions of future Jewish inclusion. Zangwill's play and Kallen's response reflect social changes at the time, and both visions consider Jewish history exemplary for the world-to-come. Both show how conceptions of Jewishness were turned into universalist teleologies, but of different kinds. Zangwill's play opened in Washington at the height of immigration, urbanisation and social change, and it swiftly exemplified a vision of the American nation in the making, emphasising concepts of amalgamation more than old historical identities. In opposition, Kallen's response in 1915 emphasised historical identities and rejected the metal melting metaphors, replacing them with a Darwin-inspired spontaneous ‘symphony’. Zangwill and Kallen both imagined the future world as profoundly shaped by Jewishness, albeit with different consequences.

Abstract Israel Zangwill's diverse and changing political outlooks and activities have often led to scholarly confusion as to how to understand his contributions to Jewish politics. The efforts of Zionist historians, such as Benzion Netanyahu, have reduced the nuances of Zangwill's various political endeavours to a purely Zionist narrative. Departing from the premise that an intellectual-biographical lens offers the best approach to make sense of the seeming inconsistencies that appear during an individual's lifetime, this article employs a deep reading of some of Zangwill's political writings and correspondence. I identify and explore three inter-related thematic frameworks in which the Anglo-Jewish writer has been often understood most reductively: his changing position vis-à-vis Zionism; his engagement with issues of race and indigeneity in both a Western and a colonial/imperial context; and his presumed advocacy of the transfer of Arab Palestinians.

Abstract It was just four days after the botched, amateurish and poorly executed sabotage attack on the anti-Soviet and anti-Semitic ‘Soviet Paradise’ mass exhibition in Berlin's Lustgarten (18 May 1942) that the Gestapo began arresting members of the Herbert Baum group. Resistance historiography has basically ignored the important role that resistance-Gestapo interaction has played within Nazi Germany. This article uses Robert Gellately's important 1991 essay as a starting point in order to begin correcting that omission. Post-war interrogation reports and other primary source material on leading Gestapo figures provide insights into Gestapo interactions with and attitudes towards the German resistance. Primary sources are interpreted in order to recreate an interrogation session at the hands of the Gestapo. Torture methods used by the Gestapo on Baum group members are discussed.

Abram Leon, The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation, Pathfinder Press, 2020, £15.00

Abstract This article addresses a creative practice and philosophical line of enquiry that marked the culmination of Martin Buber's first period and was honoured as part of his commitment to community-building thereafter. The article will historicise this period of Buber's intellectual life, it will focus on his iconoclastic statements and gestures that were influenced by normative continental modernisms yet rooted in Jewish tradition, as well as his personal aesthetics, and will place Daniel (1913) at the heart of Buber's early creative emancipatory method. More importantly, it will seek to reframe a Buberian proposition that was abandoned because of the strictures and demands of the academic mannerisms of his time, but cannot be so easily dismissed in our own. It is an invitation for new work on Buber's own creative manifesto, here presented as the history of a practice that was set aside during Buber's academic ‘professionalisation’.

Jonathan Lewis, Jewish Chaplaincy in the British Armed Forces: Captains of the Souls of Men 1892–2021, Vallentine Mitchell, 2022.