I have usually found volumes of edited essays to be disappointing, especially those that emerge from conferences. The papers are often excessively specialized, with the result that one learns a great deal about specific elements of the topic the volume is supposed to cover, while the larger, more important issues are inadequately addressed. Moreover, the quality of the essays is often uneven. In my experience, on average, only one in four essays in volumes of this kind is both well written and has something important to say.

The present volume is an exception. The essays are based on papers that were given at a conference that took place in Jerusalem in December of 2009, and while some of the essays are indeed specialized, by the time one has finished reading all of them, one has learned a great deal about the topic at hand. One of the reasons is the sheer number of essays. The volume contains nineteen papers spanning 455 pages in relatively small font, and they deal with attitudes toward the Canaanites in every dimension of Judaism throughout history—biblical, rabbinic (aggadic and halakhic), philosophical (medieval and modern), kabbalistic, hasidic, and Zionist. One also finds essays on topics that one might not have thought of in planning the conference, but are very much relevant to its central theme. (Well, at least, I might not have thought of them.) In this vein, three particular essays stand out: An essay on medieval Karaite views toward the Canaanites; a thought-provoking contribution on the institution of the “Canaanite slave” in biblical and rabbinic law, in which the author discusses how it came to include all non-Jewish slaves, not just Canaanites; and another essay on the fascinating episode of the modern Canaanite movement, which, in the early decades of the State of Israel, attempted to reorient Israeli society toward an identity that was geographic rather than religious in focus, predicated on the theory that the Jewish people most likely evolved out of the aboriginal Canaanite residents of the Land of Israel.

Another reason that the volume is so educational is the stature of the scholars who contributed papers to the conference—some of the leading lights of Jewish academia in Israel. However, some of the best papers were contributed by scholars whose names I did not know.

But perhaps the chief reason that this volume is successful is that it is focused on a great topic. In reflecting on how Jewish thinkers throughout the ages have dealt with the Canaanites, the essays engage an issue that is not just interesting but highly relevant to modern Jews. The treatment of the Canaanites in Jewish tradition has always been an enormous ethical challenge for Jews in the modern period because it provides a formidable counterexample to the view, highly popular among a broad spectrum of Jews since the Enlightenment, that Judaism is a morally sensitive, compassionate, and peaceful religion. Even more significant, perhaps, is that the Canaanite issue has immediate relevance for the State of Israel. It raises the question of whether Jews can accept the presence of non-Jews living in Land of Israel, and therefore has ramifications for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The relevance of the topic seems to have infused the authors with an energy and purpose that is palpable throughout the collection.

It is quite obvious that the individuals who planned the initial conference were interested in the topic of the Canaanites for the reasons just stated, but understandably, these reasons are not raised explicitly in the papers. Academics are supposed to be objective and dispassionate about the research they do, and it would not have been appropriate for the authors to have brought in their own views on the morality of Judaism or the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Or, put another way, they could have done so, but then the volume would have been a very different kind of exercise that would not have been strictly academic. Some of the papers toward the end of the volume do come close to addressing current political questions by engaging the way in which Zionist thinkers have approached the Canaanite issue, and the question of the Palestinians certainly arises in their deliberations. But the authors are generally careful to engage the subject with the requisite scholarly distance.

The result is a book that will serve as a valuable resource for Jewish scholars in fields interested in how Judaism relates to the Other. Thus, for instance, scholars of Jewish ethics who research tolerance and intolerance in Judaism will discover a treasure trove of data. Attitudes towards the Canaanites, after all, are a critical lens through which to examine how Jews view and treat outsiders. Scholars like myself who are focused on questions of war, violence, and peace in Judaism will find the essays in this volume just as useful. The treatment of the Canaanites in the Jewish sources is an important barometer for dealing with such questions.

I should also add that the news is not all bad. Indeed, the biblical text does inform us that the Israelites slaughtered or expelled the Canaanites from their land. However, many Jewish thinkers throughout the centuries have been troubled by the moral implications of these events, and have made various attempts to soften the violence, attempts that are examined by several of the volume's authors. Scholars of modern Jewish ethics will therefore find much to ponder here in evaluating the treatment of the Canaanites in Jewish tradition and its implications for Jewish morality.

The volume does have some weaknesses. One is that it contains no subject index. For a collection of essays that contains a wealth of information that other scholars could use in their research, the lack of a subject index is a significant deficiency. If one is interested in getting information on a particular aspect of the Canaanite issue, there is no way, short of reading the entire volume, to get at it. Most of the essays do have concluding sections in which the main results of the papers are summarized, and these sections are helpful for getting an idea of the content of particular papers without having to read them in their entirety. However, this feature does not make up for the lack of a subject index.

One other technical problem is that the many of the papers appear to have been translated from Hebrew to English, and there are a number of instances in which the translation is either awkward or misleading. For those with a good knowledge of Hebrew, it is often possible to guess at the original Hebrew and thus figure out the author's intent. Nonetheless, given that there are plenty of well-trained individuals able to translate accurately from Hebrew to English, I was troubled to see so many instances of this problem.

I also have one criticism regarding the actual content of the essays. What is noticeably absent is any engagement with the social sciences. The scholarship is almost solely from the perspective of the history of ideas, which has characterized Israeli academic work in Jewish studies since its inception. Yet, in recent years, wonderful work has been done in such areas of social psychology, sociology, and anthropology on how individuals form their identity through the social, ethnic, religious, and national groups to which they belong. The same disciplines have also provided important insight into how group identity is often formed in opposition to other groups who are demonized as threatening and dangerous. Many of the essays could have been greatly enriched by the insights that the social sciences provide on these matters.

Still, this volume is a wonderful collection of essays. I only wish that there were more books like it in Jewish studies, books that are both academically sound and take on issues of such importance to our identity as Jews in the modern era.