There is no one standard Hebrew term for blasphemy, indicating that blasphemy—namely, speaking impiously or irreverently about God or sacred things—is not recognized as a distinct, prohibited category of speech in traditional Judaism. In fact, some activities or statements that might appear to members of different religious traditions as blasphemous toward God are part and parcel of Judaism. Thus, although one might think that arguing with God is a blasphemous activity, the precedent of Abraham's bargaining with God before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gn. 18:16–33) legitimized the Jewish convention of disputing with God, most notably in modern Hasidism. Some medieval Christians found certain rabbinic utterances about God to be blasphemous, but this was partially the result of a Christian desire to find reasons to outlaw the Talmud (the accusation of blasphemy was used as a justification for Christian censorship of Jewish books). Jews...