Great Agnostic Robert Ingersoll & American Freethought

During the Gilded Age, which saw the dawn of Americaandrsquo;s enduring culture wars,and#160;Robert Green Ingersoll was known as andldquo;the Great Agnostic.andrdquo; The nationandrsquo;s most famous orator,and#160;he raised his voice on behalf ofand#160; Enlightenment reason, secularism, and the separation of church and state with a vigor unmatched since Americaandrsquo;s revolutionary generation. When he died in 1899,and#160;even his religious enemies acknowledged that he might have aspired to the U.S. presidency had he been willing to mask his opposition to religion. To the question that retains its controversial power todayandmdash;was the United States founded as a Christian nation?andmdash;Ingersoll answered an emphatic no.

In this provocative biography, Susan Jacoby, the author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, restores Ingersoll to his rightful place in an American intellectual tradition extending from Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine to the current generation ofand#160; andldquo;new atheists.andrdquo; Jacoby illuminates the ways in which Americaandrsquo;s often-denigrated and forgotten secular history encompasses issues, ranging from womenandrsquo;s rights to evolution, as potent and divisive today as they were in Ingersollandrsquo;s time. Ingersoll emerges in this portraitand#160;as one of the indispensable public figures who keep an alternative version of history alive. He devoted his life to that greatest secular idea of allandmdash;liberty of conscience belongingand#160; to the religious and nonreligious alike.

A biography that restores Americaand#8217;s foremost nineteenth-century champion of reason and secularism to our still contested twenty-first-century public square

The legendary Akiva ben Yosef has fascinated Jews for centuries. One of and arguably the most important of the Tannaim, or early Jewish sages, he lived during a crucial era in the development of Judaism as we know it today, and his theology played a major part in the development of Rabbinic Judaism. Reuven Hammer details Akivaandrsquo;s life as it led to a martyrandrsquo;s death and delves into the rich legacy Akiva left us.

That legacy played an extraordinarily important role in helping the Jewish people survive difficult challenges and forge a vibrant religious life anew and it continues to influence Jewish law, ethics, and theology even today. Akivaandrsquo;s contribution to the development of Oral Torah cannot be overestimated, and in this first book written in English about the sage since 1936, Hammer reassesses Akivaandrsquo;s role from the period before the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE until the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 135 CE. He also assesses new findings about the growth of early Judaism, the reasons why Akiva was so outspoken about andldquo;Christian Jews,andrdquo; the influence of Hellenism, the Septuagint, and the canonization of the Hebrew Bible. Ultimately, Hammer shows that Judaism without Akiva would be a very different religion.

Rabbi Reuven Hammer is the former director and dean of the Jerusalem branch of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS), 1974and#8211;92, where he served as a professor of Rabbinic literature. He holds a Doctor of Humane Letters from JTS and a PhD from Northwestern University. He was also the founding director of the Seminary of Jewish Studies (1987and#8211;90). He is the author or editor of many books, including Entering the High Holy Days: A Complete Guide to the History, Prayers, and Themes (JPS, 2005) and Sifre: A Taanaitic Commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy, both National Jewish Book Award winners.

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