scholars, students, and religious leaders who take interest in interfaith dialogues, and especially in the interactions between Latter-day Saints and Jews, will welcome Understanding Covenants and Communities: Jews and Latter-day Saints in Dialogue. The compilation demonstrates both a continuation of and a breakthrough in the long history of the exchanges between the two communities of faith.Latter-day Saint interactions with Jews started in the early days of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Scholars and religious leaders of various affiliations have pointed throughout the years to affinities and resemblances between the sacred narratives of the two traditions. The Book of Mormon presents the early Saints as Israelites who arrived from besieged Jerusalem just before its destruction by the Babylonians. Although the early Israelite migrants are gone, the Latter-day Saints consider themselves to be heirs of the children of Israel, particularly the tribe of Joseph. Jesus visited America and blessed the land, which in the fullness of time is destined to serve as a gathering place and center for the entire world. Remarkably, this divinely inscribed history does not come to obliterate the role of the other holy land on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. As promised in the Hebrew Bible, that land will serve as the gathering place for the tribe of Judah, identified with the Jewish people, who will eventually accept the Mormon faith.Actual encounters between Latter-day Saints and Jews started in the early days of the church. In 1836, Joseph Smith invited a Jewish scholar, Joshua Seixas, to teach Hebrew in Kirtland, Ohio, where Smith and a growing community of Latter-day Saints were residing at the time. In 1841, Smith sent Orson Hyde, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, to Jerusalem, to pray for the redemption of the Jews and their ancestral land. Latter-day Saints visited Palestine throughout the twentieth century, expressing in their reports interest in and good will towards the Jewish people and their settlement in the land. Although favorable opinions did not become church doctrines, officials of the church expressed at times support for Jews and their project in Palestine. In 1950, for example, LeGrand Richards, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, published A Marvelous Work and a Wonder, a tract about the developments in the land of Israel, portraying the people and the place in highly appreciative terms.The relationship between Latter-day Saints and Jews further developed when Brigham Young University established a campus in Jerusalem, where Latter-day Saint students have come for a semester to study topics relating to Palestine, Israel, and the Middle East. The mayor of Jerusalem in the 1980s, Teddy Kollek, allocated land for the building of the campus on Mount Scopus, and BYU built an impressive compound overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem. The campus project, and the support the Israeli government and the Jerusalem municipality lent it, stirred protests among Orthodox Israeli Jews. To reassure the Israeli public that the students were coming to study and not propagate their faith, the LDS Church promised, in a signed agreement with the State of Israel, that its followers would not engage in missionary activity in the country. The LDS Church also disbanded missionary enterprises directed at Jews.While cordial exchanges have taken place between Latter-day Saints and Jews, official dialogue as expressed in Understanding Covenants and Communities is a new development. The LDS Church did not join the ecumenical movement, or the related interfaith movement that started in America hesitantly at the turn of the twentieth century and reached its zenith between the 1960s and 1980s. For one thing, Latter-day Saints are committed to sharing their faith and have attempted to bring it to all humans in all corners of the earth. They do not view themselves as one denomination among many, but as bearers of the “fullness of the gospel.” In addition, a number of Christian groups have not felt comfortable engaging with Latter-day Saints, having considered the Latter-day Saint tradition to be an illegitimate move away from the Christian faith.This reality has changed considerably in recent years as Christian leaders, including conservative evangelicals, have come to accept the Latter-day Saints and expressed regret over past prejudices and discord. Latter-day Saints have also become more open to interfaith exchanges. In 2016, Latter-day Saint and Jewish representatives began a series of meetings in different locales, which both parties have defined as dialogue, not unlike exchanges in which mainstream Christian groups and Jews had been engaged in since the 1960s. Significantly, the Jewish participants have come from progressive quarters of the Jewish community, affiliated for the most part with the Reform movement, which alongside Brigham Young University has sponsored the publication under review. The Latter-day Saint representatives, like the Jewish ones, have often been academicians and the meetings have often taken place in university campuses.Unlike Christian-Jewish dialogues of the 1960s-1980s, the participants in the Latter-day Saint-Jewish meetings have not come up with dramatic statements of mutual recognition or reconciliation. Instead, they presented aspects of their traditions, a technique that has characterized interfaith dialogue since the 1980s. The compilation does not cover the full range of the presentations or exchanges during these Latter-day Saint-Jewish meetings, but gives voice to many of the participants and demonstrates the agenda and spirit of the nascent Latter-day Saint-Jewish dialogue.The first chapter in the collection introduces the history of Jewish-Latter-day Saint academic dialogue that stands in the background of the publication. The authors of this introductory essay include both Latter-day Saints and Jews, pointing to the editors’ constant attempt to maintain consensus and balance. This is also often evident in the choice of chapters. In chapter 2, Shon D. Hopkin presents the relation of Latter-day Saints to the Hebrew Bible. “Latter-day Saints . . . view themselves as building on the foundations of the Hebrew Bible,” Hopkin asserts (21). In chapters 3 and 4, Thomas A. Wayment and Joshua D. Garroway present the different positions of Latter-day Saints and Jews on Paul. Adopting current interpretations of Paul and his mission, Garroway writes that “Paul preached this vision of a refined Judaism as a loyal Jew . . . [but] the inheritors of Paul's reoriented Judaism eventually determined that it comprised a new and superior religion in opposition to Judaism” (83). In chapter 5, three Latter-day Saint scholars who have participated in the dialogue discus supersessionism, the Christian claim that Christians are “true Israel” and have inherited God's covenant with and promises to the Children of Israel. Supersessionism, they assert, exists in all religious traditions in one form or another (91). And “while the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a new religious movement (est. 1830), it draws heavily upon biblical narratives and frames of existence within the textual history of Judaism and Christianity” (93). This chapter is one of the highlights of the volume, which scholars and religious leaders will likely study and quote, because it directly addresses the relationship between Latter-day Saints and Jews (and Judaism), rather than simply presenting aspects of the two traditions.The volume proceeds to discuss lived experience and worship in the two traditions. In this section, the balance shifts and focuses mostly on Jewish experiences with greater representation of female scholars. Tamar Frankiel, for example, discusses lived experience of Jewish women (chapter 7) and includes brief comparisons with the role of women in Latter-day Saint temples (172–74). She also writes about Jewish liturgy, mostly during the early formation of the rabbinical tradition (chapter 11), while Kristine Garroway explores women and religion in ancient Israel (chapter 8). Mark Diamond writes about the Sabbath (Shabbat) in Jewish thought and practice. The observance of the Sabbath, Diamond notes, “has been a prime indicator of traditional Jewish identity and the raison d'etre for the formation . . . of close-knit neighborhoods and communities of observant Jews” (195). Brent L. Top responds by presenting the role of the Sabbath in Latter-day Saint theology (chapter 10). Shon D. Hopkin presents Latter-day Saint liturgical practices, emphasizing the importance of hymns (chapter 12).The fourth and last section of the collection centers on the political and cultural positions of Latter-day Saints and Jews. It includes statistics and analysis, by Steven Windmueller, of Jewish attachment to Israel (chapter 14) and a similar essay, by J. Quin Monson and Kelly N. Duncan, on evangelical and Latter-day Saint Christian Zionism in America (chapter 15). The collection also includes an appendix on “What Jews Can Learn from Latter-day Saints: Insights from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” and on the dialogue meetings that took place between 2015 and 2018 and their participants. (The volume lacks an equivalent appendix on “What Latter-day Saints Can Learn from Jews.”)Chapters in the volume have their intrinsic value and many would read them out of interest in the specific topics they present. The significance of the compilation, however, goes beyond its various essays. A decision to engage in interfaith dialogue entails a modicum of respect and good will towards the other partners in the conversations. This comes out strikingly in Understanding Covenants and Communities, which demonstrates keen interest in and a commitment to learn about each other's traditions and ways. This book is a testimony to a new chapter in the history of Latter-day Saint exchanges with other communities of faith as well as an advancement in Latter-day Saint-Jewish relations. Anyone advocating improvements in interfaith relations and growth in understanding between communities of faith will appreciate this publication.