The analytic tools of anthropology originally were fashioned on smallscale tribal groups that possessed no written traditions. After World War II, as anthropologists became involved in the study of complex societies in different “developing areas,” the discipline began to relate its findings to the concerns of other fields. Simultaneously, scholars from other social and humanist disciplines, who previously had assumed that anthropologists focused only on “primitives,” began to incorporate anthropological methods and concepts into their tool kits. As part of these general trends, there were anthropologists who turned to the study of Jewish society and culture. One natural expression of this trend has been the study of contemporary Jewish communities. There are now dozens of studies of Jewish life from one or another anthropological perspective, most of them dealing mainly with Jews in the United States of Ashkenazi background or with communities in Israel whose origins were in the Middle East. A very different trend is found in the analysis of classic texts, notably the Bible but with some attention being given to rabbinic literature, using structuralism and related methodologies. At first initiated by anthropologists who were not themselves specialists in the biblical period, these approaches have now been adopted by some students of ancient Judaism, who combine them with the more standard methods used in research on biblical and rabbinic texts.

The “killer wife” superstition, by which we mean the belief that the husbands of certain women are doomed to die, is examined here as it appears in Jewish sources from the Bible to Maimonides. The many pertinent developments in post-talmudic-midrashic sources require a separate study. For this period we confine our discussion to Maimonides, the most significant medieval spokesman on the subject. Our topic is a popular theme in folklore. Here our primary interest is in how the religion of Israel reacted to the superstition, both conceptually and practically.

What is Jewish ethics? Is there a distinct academic discipline under the rubric of “Jewish studies” or “Jewish philosophy” which can properly be called “Jewish ethics”? The answer to these two related questions is more elusive than one might think. Indeed, it has recently been argued that there really is no such thing as Jewish ethics at all. On the one hand, if a principle of action is truly ethical, then it must be universal, and if it is universal, it cannot be distinctively Jewish. On the other hand, if Jewish ethics is really halakhah in disguise, as so many writers in the field of medical ethics, for example, seem to believe, then why bother with the disguise if one can get the real thing?

The philosophy of Martin Buber has attracted more attention, both favorable and critical, than has any other modern Jewish philosophy. None of the criticism leveled against Buber's thought is as thorough and philosophically informed as that found in Steven Katz's seminal essay, “Martin Buber's Epistemology: A Critical Appraisal.” In this essay Katz argues that Buber adopts a Kantian architectonic to provide the metaphysical underpinnings for his philosophy of dialogue. In Katz's own words, I contend, however, that Buber ultimately rejects the Kantian architectonic that Katz attributes to him. A close reading of all the appropriate texts will demonstrate that there is only superficial warrant for considering Buber's use of some Kantian ideas to be ultimately determinative. Buber's rejection of central Kantian positions must be weighed alongside the evidence that Katz marshals to erect his thesis.

The essential argument of Lawrence Perlman's critique of my essay “Martin Buber's Epistemology: A Critical Appraisal” is that I have misunderstood Buber insofar as I claim that his dialogical philosophy is largely Kantian in structure. In response it must be said that Perlman has worked hard to make his case—but finally it is unconvincing, even seriously misleading, because it rests on a triple misunderstanding, i.e., a misunderstanding of Kant, of Buber, and of Katz.