Description

Isaiah is the most impactful book of the Hebrew Prophets on account of its essential message, its powerful, elegant, and intense poetry, and the major events in Jewish history it depicts. Isaiah and His Contemporaries turns the Biblical Isaiah into something all readers – from students to scholars – can understand and appreciate.

Isaiah and His Contemporaries skillfully unpacks the complexity of the Biblical Isaiah and opens it to modern readers by providing an analysis of the poetic flourishes and presentation styles of Isaiah, contextualizing the precise setting of each prophecy within its historical environment, explaining the meaning of obscure Hebrew words, and more importantly highlighting the ever-relevant messages of Isaiah and his contemporary prophets.

Rabbi Dr. Yaakov Jaffe is the Rabbi of the Maimonides Kehillah in Brookline, Massachusetts and Director of the Tanach program at the Maimonides School, where he has taught Sefer Yeshayahu for more than a decade. Rabbi Jaffe’s Doctorate and Ordination is from Yeshiva University, from which he holds degrees in Bible, Jewish Education, Jewish History, and where he also studied in the Wexner Kollel Elyon in advanced Talmudic Studies. He studied in Yeshivat Har Etzion in Israel, and holds a degree in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. Rabbi Jaffe’s has published more than two dozen scholarly articles on Tanach, Jewish Philosophy and Hebrew poetry in Jewish Bible Quarterly, Hakirah, Tradition, and the Lehrhaus blog. He has also served as the Menahel of the Boston Rabbinical court and the director of the United States Bible Contest, the Chidon Ha-Tanach.