Books by Alon Goshen-Gottstein

The problem of Luther and the Jews has received much attention since World War II. Many consider there to be a direct line leading from Martin Luther's later anti-Jewish recommendations to policies carried out in the Third Reich. This has led contemporary Lutheran Churches worldwide to issue apologies and to distance themselves from Luther's anti-Semitic teachings. It has also led Jews to distance themselves from Luther as a religious figure. The present work revisits Luther's anti-Semitism and seeks to understand the compound factors that informed it. Drawing on contemporary Luther'scholarship, it develops a model, the Luther Model, that brings together multiple factors that help account for what went wrong, as we see it from our contemporary perspective. With that model in place, it engages in an examination of whether these factors, abstracted from the particularity of their historical context, are not also present in contemporary Jewish attitudes to Christians, as well as in broader negative relations between faith communities. By constructing the Luther Model, this work seeks to feature Luther as a teacher and a paradigm for how religion can turn violent and destructive to other religions and to draw the appropriate lessons for interreligious relations today.

This book sets forth a new area in the study of extraordinary individuals in religious traditions. The book complements existing, primarily historical, studies of saints by offering a phenomenological approach that seeks to touch the subjectivity of these individuals, and how they have affected the unfolding of their religious traditions.

Jews often consider Hinduism to be Avoda Zara, idolatry, due to its worship of images and multiple gods. In the process of considering Hinduism's status as Avoda Zara, this book revisits the fundamental definitions of Avoda Zara and asks how we use the category.

Hinduism has become a vital 'other' for Judaism over the past decades. The book surveys the history of the relationship from historical to contemporary times, from travellers to religious leadership. It explores the potential enrichment for Jewish theology and spirituality, as well as the challenges for Jewish identity.

This is a detailed study of two intriguing figures in early rabbinic literature, shown to be products of the literary creativity of rabbinic storytellers who convey a particular ideology through the image of the rabbinic heroes they portray: Elisha ben Abuya, considered as apostate and sinner, and Eleazar ben Arach, known as the one who forgot his Torah.