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Happiness in Premodern Judaism
Virtue, Knowledge, and Well-Being

Hava Tirosh-Samuelson 		That Jews were interested in happiness may appear odd to most people. According to conventional thought, its pursuit hardly seems like one of the major tenets of the religion. This book argues to the contrary.
To demonstrate the connection of Judaism with the good life, Tirosh-Samuelson shows how Aristotle's reflections on happiness were very much a part of Rabbinic thought and how Jewish philosophers in the Hellenistic period read the Jewish Scriptures in light of the Greek conception of happiness.
The book is arranged chronologically, showing the correlation between a given notion of happiness and Jewish history and culture at a particular time. Demonstrating how the discourse on happiness is a dramatic interplay between Wisdom and Torah, between philosophy and religion, and between reason and faith, Tirosh-Samuelson presents—for the specialist and the non-specialist alike—a fascinating tour of Jewish intellectual history. 		1. Thinking Happiness and Hellenistic Views
2. Ashrei: Torah, Wisdom, and Living Rightly in Ancient Judaism
3. The Happy Life of Torah in Rabbinic Judaism
4. Happiness and the Cultivation of Character in Islam
5. Perfectly Happy: Maimonides' Conception of Happiness
6. The Maimonidean Controversies: Debating the Meaning of Happiness
7. The Kabbalsitic Prescription for Happiness
8. Intellectual Perfection and Jewish-Christian Rivalry
9. Religious Perfection and the Interplay of Philosophy and Kabbalah
Published by Hebrew Union College Press

$50.00s cloth / ISBN 0-87820-453-9

596 pages
Monograph No. 29

2003