Description:Representing the spectrum of subfields within Jewish Studies, the contributing scholars to this volume use "beginnings" as a hermeneutic stance to analyze texts in their area. While each essay is a significant contribution to its own subfield—Bible, Talmud, Kabbalah, Modern Jewish Thought, Feminist and Cultural Studies—the essays taken as a whole present new possibilities for exploring the space that is Jewish Studies and beginning an inquiry into what might constitute a definable hermeneutics of Jewish texts.