Indo-Judaic Parallels: Notes on Similar Motifs in Judaism and Hinduism - Hardcover

by Daniel Sperber (Author)

While perusing various writings on Hindu myths, practices, and folkloristic rituals, Rabbi Daniel Sperber was frequently reminded of apparent parallels in Jewish sources and began keeping random notes on the similarities. Indo-Judaic Parallels is an orderly collection of these notes, which the author hopes will encourage analysis in greater depth and detail. Indeed, this material is presented as the first step in a possible developmental process to produce cumulative conclusions on such intercultural influences.

Author Biography

Rabbi Professor Daniel Sperber is a leading scholar of Jewish law, customs, and ethics. He taught in the Talmud Department of Bar-Ilan University, where he also served as dean of the Faculty of Jewish Studies and president of the Jesselson Institute for Advanced Torah Studies. In 1992, he was awarded the Israel Prize for Jewish Studies. In the mid-1960s, Prof. Sperber served as a rabbi in Calcutta, and he has visited India more than twenty times in the last sixty years. Prof. Sperber has published some forty books and more than four hundred articles on the subjects of Talmudic and Jewish socio-economic history, law and customs, classical philology, and Jewish art. Among his major works is a well-known, eight-volume series, Minhagei Yisrael, on the history of Jewish customs.