Perhaps no one figure is more responsible for the legitimization of kabbalah as an authentic esoteric tradition of Judaism than Moses ben Nahman (1194–1270). Although from the beginnings of its literary history kabbalah was associated with men of rabbinic standing, such as R. Abraham ben David of Posquieres, no one before Nahmanides had attained a reputation for excellence in halakhic and mystical matters and had written extensively in both domains. Nahmanides' involvement with kabbalah, especially in the context of a commentary on the Torah written for the layman, as the author plainly states in his introduction, surely lent a stamp of approval to the whole enterprise. R. Shem Tov ibn Gaon in his Baddei ha-'Aron u-Migdal Hananel gave the following characterization of Nahmanides' kabbalistic literary activity:

The great rabbi, Moses ben Naḥman, may his memory be for a blessing, wrote his book [i.e., the commentary on the Torah] and a book [on] Job. He alluded to hidden matters in every place () to arouse [people's awareness] as is appropriate and according to what he received. However, he concealed his words to a high degree, for it is written, “Honey and milk are under your tongue” (Song of Songs 4: 11).

Virtually without exception, the Bavli is described by its students as a commentary on the Mishnah. This definition is such a commonplace that it is difficult to imagine the need to test or defend it. Its accuracy seems so selfevident that the question “what is the Bavli?” is itself rarely, if ever, asked.

In 1871, the board of the Jewish community of Vienna attempted to reform Sabbath and holiday services in the two synagogues under its official jurisdiction. Following the guidelines established by the Leipzig Synod in 1869, the board decided to remove from the liturgy all prayers that called for a return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel and for the restitution of the ancient sacrificial system of worship. In addition, Vienna's Jewish leaders announced that the introduction of an organ, the symbol of the Reform movement, was a good idea. The board never implemented these radical reforms. An enormous protest from Vienna's Orthodox community, as well as from numerous individuals who professed no particular commitment to religious Orthodoxy but who preferred to pray in the traditional manner, forced the leaders of the community to back down from these ideological reforms and to implement only a few, relatively minor “modifications” in the services in the temples. Viennese Jews rejected the ideological changes which were gaining in popularity in German Jewish communities in the last third of the nineteenth century.

Although religious history has traditionally concerned itself with the transcendent dimension in human life, and social history with the mundane, the latter approach can also be used to illuminate the ways in which religion works itself out on the social plane. In fact, it might be argued that inquiries of this sort should occupy a prominent place on the agenda of any social and religious history of the Jews. Among historians of the Annales school, for whom the study of material life was long considered the backbone of historical inquiry, there has been a discernible move in recent years toward the study of religious life, especially in its popular forms. Whereas, for example, previous volumes in the valuable Johns Hopkins series of “Selections from the Annales” were devoted to such topics as food and drink in history, the one published in 1982 was entitled, significantly, Ritual, Religion and the Sacred.

Responsa emanating from the Ottoman lands of the sixteenth century give evidence of the widespread use of an oath which invoked the name of Samson the Nazirite. Someone who undertook a “Samson nazirite vow” generally did so by making it conditional on his performance of or abstention from a certain act, thereby using it as an assurance for his word. Although the Samson nazirite, as a halakhic concept, is discussed in the Talmud, and its laws are codified by Maimonides, the earliest trace of its use as a contitional sanction does not precede the fifteenth century. It appears then in a single genizah document. The language of the vow is Judeo-Spanish, a fact which points to its provenance. It does not appear in the halakhic literature before the sixteenth century, nor does it appear to have been current even then in Christian Europe.

They just don't fit very neatly; they never did. Ever since it became clear that the law-free mission to the gentiles would create a church and not a synagogue, Jewish-Christianity has been an uncomfortable reality with which to deal. The “Synagogue” didn't like it. The “Church Catholic” didn't like it. And modern scholarship, far less ready to accept the vagaries of a religion that resembles but cannot be made to fit known varieties of religion, seems to like it even less. Jewish-Christians seemed to want to hang on to an anachronism, a mission that should have failed already in Paul's lifetime.