Books
In addition to the scholarly articles he has contributed to peer reviewed publications, Rabbi Allen has edited two books on Jewish law and co-written along with Harvey Haber a book of introductory prayers for various occasions. Rabbi Allen has also made a significant contribution to the understanding of Jewish theology, philosophy, history, and religious practice through his books.
Thinking about Good and Evil: Jewish Views from Antiquity to Modernity
Starting with the Bible and Apocrypha, Rabbi Wayne Allen takes us through the Talmud; medieval Jewish philosophers and Jewish mystical sources; the Ba’al Shem Tov and his disciples; early modern thinkers such as Spinoza, Mendelssohn, and Luzzatto; and, finally, modern thinkers such as Cohen, Buber, Kaplan, and Plaskow. Each chapter analyzes individual thinkers’ arguments and synthesizes their collective ideas on the nature of good and evil and questions of justice. Allen also exposes vastly divergent Jewish thinking about the Holocaust: traditionalist (e.g., Ehrenreich), revisionist (e.g., Rubenstein, Jonas), and deflective (e.g., Soloveitchik, Wiesel).
Rabbi Allen’s engaging, accessible volume illuminates well-known, obscure, and novel Jewish solutions to the problem of good and evil.