ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book seeks to facilitate a conversation between two fields, Religious Studies and Rabbinics. These fields pursue related and overlapping lines of inquiry, though each does so in the context of its own distinctive concerns. Religious Studies is a comparative discipline that seeks to understand religion as a human endeavor in the broadest sense. In Rabbinics, many scholars spend considerable time in traditional centers of learning before turning to academic study. Rabbinics, as well, has developed in ways that make Religious Studies an increasingly appealing resource for its work. The book is organized into some parts, with each one engaging a different set of theoretical concerns and modeling a different mode of interaction between the two fields. In religious societies, one's sense of temporality is deeply conditioned by one's involvement in religious ritual.
