Judaism and Emotion breaks with stereotypes that until recently branded Judaism as a rigid
religion of laws and prohibitions. Instead authors from different fields of research discuss
the subject of Judaism and emotion from various scholarly perspectives they present an
understanding of Judaism that does not exclude spirituality and emotions from Jewish thought.
In doing so the contributions account for the relation between the representation of emotion
and the actual emotions that living and breathing human beings feel in their everyday lives.
While scholars of rabbinic studies and theology take a historical-critical and socio-historical
approach to the subject musicologists and scholars of religious studies focus on the overall
research question of how the literary representations of emotion in Judaism are related to
ritual and musical performances within Jewish worship. They describe in a more holistic fashion
how Judaism serves to integrate various aspects of social life. In doing so they examine the
dynamic interrelationship between Judaism cognition and culture.
