Islamic Enlightenment in a Radical Age opens a window to trends of innovation and openness in modern Islam in the mid-twentieth century, a period marked by decolonization, the rise of centralized regimes, and the emergence of Jihad organizations. Important agents in the development of the reformist discourse were Mustafa al-Saba'i and the "Muslim Brotherhood" in Syria from 1946 to 1964. Under al-Saba'i's leadership, the Muslim Brotherhood strove to establish an Islamic Enlightenment that sought to elevate the stature of believers and integrate them into the wider world, while preserving their indigenous identity. Al-Saba'i's rich intellectual and public work has been neglected in the scholarly literature, and this book brings him to the forefront and does him historical and historiographical justice. Al-Saba'i called for the revival of the heritage of Islam and its connection to universal values ​​of freedom and justice, humanism and brotherhood, democracy and nationalism. He served as a voice for the voiceless in society through a commitment to public education, social legislation, and support for women's rights, subject to moral reservations. By promoting a dynamic version of Islam—attentive and responsive to key issues on the public agenda—Al-Saba'i and his movement contributed to preserving the diversity of Islamic thought in an era of puritanism, radicalization, and violence.

A refugee crisis of huge proportions erupted as a result of the mid-seventeenth-century wars in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Tens of thousands of Jews fled their homes, or were captured and trafficked across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Rescue the Surviving Souls is the first book to examine this horrific moment of displacement and flight, and to assess its social, economic, religious, cultural, and psychological consequences. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources in twelve languages, Adam Teller traces the entire course of the crisis, shedding fresh light on the refugee experience and the various relief strategies developed by the major Jewish centers of the day. Teller pays particular attention to those thousands of Jews sent for sale on the slave markets of Istanbul and the extensive transregional Jewish economic network that coalesced to ransom them. He also explores how Jewish communities rallied to support the refugees in central and western Europe, as well as in Poland-Lithuania, doing everything possible to help them overcome their traumatic experiences and rebuild their lives. Rescue the Surviving Souls offers an intimate study of an international refugee crisis, from outbreak to resolution, that is profoundly relevant today.

Simon Bernfeld (1860–1940) was one of the most popular Jewish European writers of the early twentieth century. A prolific bestselling author in a broad range of fields of history and Jewish studies, and a pivotal figure in the renaissance of Jewish national culture. His oeuvre encompassed dozens of books, hundreds of essays, and thousands of daily columns published in Hebrew and German. Yet despite his vast influence, Bernfeld remained outside the mainstream. His prominent presence until the late 1920s stands in stark contrast to his subsequent obscurity. This gap prompts for an examination of whether his “forgetting” was deliberate and connected to the historical narrative he sought to promote. His political views, expressed in his sermons as a modern rabbi in Belgrade, in his polemic essays criticizing both the rabbinate and the Zionist Congress, were similarly marginalized. On The Margins: A Biography of Simon Bernfeld unfolds a biography woven into the history of the Jewish intelligentsia circles in Galicia, his birthplace, and Berlin, where he lived for many years until his death. His correspondence with a wide array of figures reviles the emergence of Hebrew mass media and a national canon. Through spatial and cultural analysis, exploring themes of Jewish imperial relations and intra-European migration, the book maps the Jewish intellectual networks of Galicia and the Pale of Settlement, examining their impact on the formation of Jewish cultural and intellectual power centers at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Few texts have left a mark on history as profound as The Communist Manifesto . First ‎published in 1848, this brief yet explosive work by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels became ‎one of the most influential texts in the formation of modern society and the modern self. It ‎ignited revolutions, inspired political movements, and provoked fear, resistance, and ‎enduring controversy, while offering a powerful framework for understanding the economic ‎and social forces that continue to shape our world.‎ But The Communist Manifesto is more than a political program. It is a striking work of ‎philosophical and moral reflection, grappling with the human condition in a world defined ‎by perpetual change—a world of capitalism, restless desire, and the drive toward ceaseless ‎innovation. Read anew, the Manifesto emerges as a mirror of our present moment, ‎challenging us to rethink freedom, justice, and the transformative power of ideas.‎ This book offers a fresh introduction to The Communist Manifesto and its place in the ‎history of ideas. Through close reading and conceptual analysis, it seeks to restore the ‎text’s vitality—not as a document of the past, but as a living invitation to reflect on the ‎present and imagine our collective future.‎

A Guide to Jewish Warsaw 1938 is an extraordinary book, describing a place that no longer exists: Jewish Warsaw was, as is well known, utterly destroyed in World War II. And yet, the book seeks to pretend as if everything is still intact, and it is possible to go on a tour following it or embark on an imaginary journey. Every detail is based on information pertaining to Jewish Warsaw in 1938 from countless sources: newspapers, literature, travel guides, written and oral memoirs, archives, interviews, films, and exhibitions. A Guide to Jewish Warsaw 1938 seeks to reveal the beauty hidden from the eye in the largest Jewish city in Europe before the war. The acquaintance with Jewish Warsaw is made through general and useful introductions, describing its history, its beliefs and opinions, its unique language, and its tastes and smells. At the center of the book are seven walking tours, revealing the city's delights: the antique bookstores on Świętokrzyska Street; the buffet at the Writers and Journalists Association at Tłomacka 13; the "Maccabi" swimming pool and the Bund's sports field; cantorial music at the Great Synagogue and Hasidic melodies in the Modrzyc courtyard in the resort town of Otwock; the summer terrace at the Rubinchik cafe, opening onto Krasiński Garden, "the Jewish Garden"; modern marble sculptures in the cemetery; the "Tel Aviv" cafe on Nowolipie Street; the treasures in the Jewish Museum; courtyards that are a world of their own on Nalewki Street and its surroundings, and much more.

How does the past remain present in the urban landscape—in houses, streets, and public squares—even after the culture that once sustained it has been destroyed? What happens when history is not merely an abstract memory but a material reality that continues to shape and unsettle the present? In Bloody Wednesday , Yechiel Weizman traces the ghostly presence of the Jews of Olkusz, a town in south-central Poland whose large Jewish community flourished for centuries, until the Holocaust. Despite their total physical absence, from the end of the war until today the memory of the Jews is palpable and persistent—and at the same time silenced and repressed—in every street corner: in empty houses, in abandoned cemeteries and synagogues, in plaques and monuments, and through the ongoing public debates about property, heritage, and commemoration. Using the case study of a single Polish town, the book shows how the urban topography of Eastern Europe was continuously reshaped and redefined in relation to the legacy of the Second World War, the question of Jewish property, and the politics of Holocaust memory during the Communist period and after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Adopting a microhistorical lens and examining the smallest details of everyday life and urban history, the book reveals how the persistent debate over the presence of the dead Jews in the concrete and imagined spaces of one small town became a dramatic arena for a painful, intimate, and nostalgic confrontation with the violent fingerprints of the twentieth century and with pressing questions of responsibility, ethics, and guilt.

How can a teacher-education institution transform itself so that the preparation of future teachers will foster meaningful and high-quality professional growth? This question lies at the heart of contemporary debates among teacher educators in Israel and worldwide. This book offers a rigorous and data-rich examination of a long-term structural and pedagogical reform that had taken place at the Hebrew University, with the goal of meeting the evolving challenges of teacher education in the twenty-first century. Through detailed analysis of the reform’s achievements and its complexities, the book illuminates the conditions, processes, and dilemmas involved in reshaping teacher education. The study provides an unprecedented, comprehensive, and systematic account of change processes in Israeli teacher education and contributes valuable insights to international scholarship on pedagogical reform, teacher education and institutional innovation.

The book sheds light on the aims and achievements of the twelve first female members, who served in the first Israeli Knesset, and in particular on the perception of the status of women in the early years of the state. This study examines the heated debates that arose with the legislation of the following laws: the Marriage Age Law; the Income Tax Ordinance, which serves as a mirror of the status of the married woman; the Security Service Law, which can contribute to the understanding of Israeli society; and the Women’s Equal Rights Law of 1951, whose enactment concluded the work of the first Knesset. The influence of this legislation is felt to this day.

Immediately upon the establishment of the State of Israel, Israel welcomed approximately 720,000 as part of the Great Aliyah. More than one third of these newcomers, immigrants and refugees, were housed in immigrant camps and later in transit camps known as maabarot . Some were later removed from them or left on their own accord; others remained in the maabarot for many years, and the maabarot remained within them. In their early years, the maabarot played an important social role and gave rise to new interethnic relations and new identities. Within a short period of time, and in a space intended to serve as a temporary way station, a shared form of existence emerged in the maabarot. It established principles of organization, fostered cooperation that crossed boundaries of ethnic and communal origin, and created communal cohesion that developed despite the limitations imposed by the absorbing establishment. This book reexamines life in the maabarot through a division into three distinct subperiods that reflect profound changes in social composition, in patterns of power, and in the immigrants’ consciousness of identity. The elimination of the heterogeneity that had characterized the social fabric not only changed the status of the residents in the eyes of the state and society, but also narrowed the social and future possibilities that had opened before them. Through an examination of diverse sources, a detailed depiction of everyday life, and a thematic analysis of language, religion, and education, a formative chapter in the social history of Israel is revealed through the world of the immigrants as they themselves shaped it. From a charged encounter among diasporas, social groups, and a harsh, brutal, and impossible daily routine, a society emerges that has until now remained at the margins of historical research.

The Italian commedia dell’arte troupes roamed across Europe for two hundred years, captivating wide and diverse audiences. The performances of the commedia dell’arte were improvised, as the actors executed on stage a concise outline of a play, called "scenario". This book presents, for the first time in Hebrew translation, complete scenarios written by one of the greatest men of the Italian Renaissance theater, Flaminio Scala. The scenarios are accompanied by annotations and a comprehensive essay that reviews Scala’s life and work, and presents his scenario as a perfect recipe for comic improvisation. The book will therefore be of interest to theatre enthusiasts and scholars alike, and will provide directors, actors, and acting students with new and refreshing tools for staging comedies.

Muslim beliefs have inspired charitable giving for over fourteen centuries, yet Islamic history has rarely been examined from this perspective. In Charity in Islamic Societies , Amy Singer explains the basic concepts and institutions of Muslim charity: the obligatory annual payment of zakat together with voluntary donations of all sizes, undertaken at every level of society, and across the span of individual lifetimes. Charitable endowments – established by rulers, wealthy individuals, and even those of more modest means – shaped Muslim societies, cultures, and landscapes in ever era. This book demonstrates how historical circumstances, social status, gender, age, and other factors interacted with religious ideals to produce a vast array of charitable practices, from the early days of Islam to the present. Relying on evidence from written texts, buildings, images, and objects to anchor the discussions in each chapter, the author explores the motivations for charity, its impact on the rich and the poor, and the politicization of giving, arguing that the study of philanthropy affords a unique prism through which to examine the past.

In the philosophical and psychological tradition, the concept of imagination is associated, first and foremost, with the human mind’s ability to intend and depict to itself objects that are not directly present before it. In contrast to sensory perception, imagination is often linked to a spectrum of mental states—such as fantasy, hallucination, and dream—that are freed from the burden of factuality and the logic of what is possible within its bounds. Such states are typically of interest because of the creative—sometimes anomalous—potential they hold, even though they are generally understood as secondary additions to the project of human knowledge. Imagination—in all its material expressions—not only presents us with spaces of unrealized possibilities but even with ones that cannot be realized at all in reality, and in this sense, they are beyond reality, "outside," or "above" the real. Thus, in its literal sense, imagination is surrealism. Once we recognize the imagination’s potential to challenge the existing order, it is no longer possible to think of reality and imagination as two entirely separate domains, and the question of the interaction between them becomes more pressing and clear.

The Last Trial deals with the trial of Ivan Demjanjuk, who was tried in the State of Israel in 1986 on charges of being "Ivan the Terrible," the operator of the gas chambers at the Treblinka extermination camp, and was acquitted after a seven-year legal process. The book is based on in-depth archival research and reveals for the first time a rich collection of historical documents from the legal authorities in Israel, the United States, and Germany. The book is also based on in-depth interviews with senior members of the legal system who were involved in the trial – judges, attorneys, and witnesses. The Demjanjuk case was considered both a case with a high chance of conviction and a potential for severe punishment, and a case that was expected to bring the memory of the Holocaust back onto the public agenda, some half a century after the Eichmann trial. It was chosen from among the cases of other suspects to be the first test case for the possibility of extraditing Nazi criminals from the United States to Israel. The results of the trial therefore had a decisive impact on the continued activity of the State of Israel in bringing Nazi criminals to justice. When Demjanjuk was acquitted, it became clear that not only had the prosecution failed to achieve the desired result of convicting the defendant, but also that the legal process in his case had failed to fulfill the educational, documentary, and historical goals that were attached to it. In the final analysis, this resounding failure brought the prosecution of the Nazis and their accomplices in the State of Israel to an end. The tension between the legal field and the historical field, and between legal judgment and factual truth, runs throughout the book. The greatest danger of blurring the lines between "law" and "history" lies in the fact that the legal outcome of a criminal proceeding – "guilty" or "not guilty" – may mistakenly be linked to the historical determination of "did happen" or "did not happen." A misunderstanding of legal acquittal as historical acquittal is one of the biggest obstacles to the influence of criminal law, which ends in acquittal, on collective memory. As the book shows, the case of Demjanjuk's extradition and trial in Israel illustrates the difficulties inherent in dealing with the Holocaust within the courtroom, and also sharpens the problematic nature of using criminal law tools to establish historical truths.

Usury: Moneylending, Money and Society in Rabbinic Literature is a study of the moneylending norms in the early stratum of rabbinic literature. It shows how these norms use the language of legal formalism to construct a community of status-equals, into which rabbinic adherents can buy their entry by making the correct investment choices. Placing these norms in a broad historical and intercultural context, it is a fresh look at Jewish moneylending norms, the first in over 30 years.

Yehuda Jud Ne'eman's latest book, Auschwitz Capital of the 20th Century , presents the work of one of the most important scholars of Israeli cinema, who was also a groundbreaking director and creator. In this book, Ne'eman shares with his readers his involvement as a creator and intellectual in the establishment of Israeli cinema as a space for central artistic, cultural, and political discourse, whose significant contribution to Israeli culture and society is beyond doubt. The book includes two parts that complement each other. The first part contains an innovative and original discussion that maps the history of Israeli cinema by comparing it to cinema that began during the yishuv period. During this period, cinema was committed to the Zionist narrative, and the work is characterized as a continuous conflict between avant-garde and ideology, similar to Soviet avant-garde cinema. Within the framework of this comparison, Ne'eman emphasizes the preoccupation with modernist cinema of the "New Sensibility," a term coined years ago, and refers to films created by Israeli directors following the French "New Wave," including his own films. In doing so, he claims that between Israeli folk film and the modernism of the "New Sensibility" films, there was in fact cooperation in opposition to the establishment and Zionist ideology. The second part of the book discusses films made in the State of Israel and during the yishuv period that deal with the representation of the Holocaust as a central test case. Among other things, Ne'eman shows that the attempt to heal the horrors of the Holocaust in a simplistic national way expresses feelings of guilt and offers a limited solution to the problems of the survivors.

This volume is a jubilee book, celebrating with appreciation the work of Prof. Jonathan Cohen – a teacher, thinker, researcher, friend and loyal colleague – who is one of the central figures in the philosophy of Jewish education in our generation. The book is divided into five chapters. The first is dedicated to Cohen's character and his thought, and the other four chapters encompass topics at the core of his world: philosophical-literary discourse, the concept of translation between inside and outside, the transition from theory to educational practice, and dealing with the educational thought of others in light of his path. Some of the best contemporary Jewish education scholars have gathered here to offer a fascinating intellectual journey, which dwells, among other things, on the dialogue between tradition and innovation, textual study and pedagogy, universality and particularity. This collection of articles is unique in its combination of philosophical study and educational research rooted in the educational field. The original discussions it contains on key issues demonstrate from various angles the contribution of Prof. Cohen and his intellectual world to the philosophy of Jewish education. This collection is another important testament to the possibility of a practical philosophy that responds to the calls of the time, with all its challenges, and out of a deep sense of loyalty to education that looks at the human face and to Jewish tradition.

This book examines Israeli-German relations after the fall of the Berlin Wall and during the reigns of three chancellors: Helmut Kohl, Gerhard Schröder, and Angela Merkel. The book is the product of research based on various sources, and primarily on dozens of interviews the author conducted with key figures involved in the relations between the countries. The generational change in Germany and the internal and international normalization process that the Federal Republic underwent following the German unification did not harm the special relations with Israel. On the contrary: At their peak, in 2008, against the backdrop of the worsening nuclear threat from Iran, Chancellor Merkel declared that Israel's security was part of Germany's national interest. The book describes the contribution of the relations between the countries to the development of the State of Israel and its strengthening in vital areas, and even to its close ties with the European Union. These relations have been put to the test in recent decades, after controversy surrounding foreign policy issues between the two countries increased and the negative trend towards Israeli policy in German public opinion polls strengthened. All of this has raised question marks about the future of the special relationship between the two countries.

Martin Buber aroused passionate, often contradictory opinions, both regarding his personality and his thought. Gershom Schocken, editor of Haaretz , said that one day he was walking with S. Y. Agnon: "We were walking around Talpiot and I asked him what his attitude was towards Buber. Agnon stopped in his walk and said: 'I want to tell you something. There are people about whom you have to decide once: do you love them or do you hate them. I decided to love Buber.'" Buber's philosophical and theological writings, including the famous I and Thou , have contributed greatly to religious and Jewish thought, as well as to biblical studies, political theory, and Zionist thought. In this new biography, Paul Mendes-Flor situates Buber's legacy at the crossroads between the intellectual and cultural life of German Jewry and European life in the first half of the twentieth century. This is the first full biography of the groundbreaking modern Jewish philosopher. The book is organized around several key events in his life, such as his mother suddenly abandoning him when he was three years old—a formative trauma that left Buber with a lasting sense of sensitivity to the fragility of human relationships and the need to nurture them with what he would later call "dialogical attention."

The Sages of Yavneh traces the rebirth of Jewish law and thought in the aftermath of the Great Revolt and the destruction of the Temple. In Yavneh the early Sages laid the foundations for post-Temple Jewish life and created the conceptual framework that continues to shape halachic discourse to this day. Through close analysis of early Tannaitic traditions, the book uncovers the sages’ intellectual world, their diverse approaches, and the deep ideas underlying their disputes. At a decisive historical crossroad, the sages of Yavneh bridged second Temple traditions with the emerging Tannaitic corpus, offering a farsighted response to the crisis of their age and charting a path for the future of Jewish law, Halacha.

AMILAT – Asociación Israelí de Investigadores de Judaísmo Latinoamericano se complace en presentar el décimo volumen de la serie Judaica Latinoamericana, inaugurada en 1988. El objetivo de la serie es publicar trabajos expuestos en la Sección de América Latina que forma parte, desde 1985, del Congreso Mundial de Estudios Judaicos realizado cada cuatro años en Jerusalén. Judaica Latinoamericana X incluye los correspondientes al décimo-octavo de dichos congresos, que tuvo lugar en la Universidad Hebrea en agosto de 2022. El volumen reitera el enfoque multi- e interdisciplinario de la serie: sus artículos presentan investigaciones sobre distintos aspectos de la experiencia judía en América Latina, en sus dinámicas intra- y extracomunitarias, nacionales y transnacionales. Todos los trabajos constituyen un aporte original e inédito al respectivo campo de estudio. Este volumen se inicia con las exposiciones presentadas en una sesión especial en homenaje al Prof. Haim Avni y su fructífera labor en su larga carrera académica como pionero del desarrollo de la investigación y la enseñanza académicas del Judaísmo Latinoamericano.

In this landmark volume, noted Jewish scholar Alon Goshen-Gottstein offers a full-orbed treatment of the Jewish faith for today. Goshen-Gottstein's presentation explores the history and practice of Judaism and offers a framework in which this complex religious tradition makes sense to both the insider and the outsider. Painting a composite picture of Judaism from its beginnings until today, Goshen-Gottstein draws on history, literature, theology, spirituality, and practiced religious life to craft an overview in which these different parts are appreciated as pieces of a larger whole. Beyond the canonical foundations of the Bible and the Talmud, Goshen-Gottstein incorporates mystical sources in presenting an image of spiritually engaged Jewish practice and belief. He thus argues that Judaism is best understood as a religious tradition that seeks to uphold not only a life lived in allegiance to God's law but, more importantly, a life lived in God's presence. Written by a senior scholar well known in Jewish, Christian, and interreligious circles, In God's Presence will appeal to Jewish and Christian academic readers, those interested in the intersection of Jewish and Christian thought, and students in introduction to Judaism courses.

The book deals with basic principles and concepts, the scope of the phenomenon of iatrogenic damage, and the development of risk management practices in medicine and organizational safety culture, emphasizing human and organizational factors, legal and safety aspects, risk management processes in medical organizations, partnership with patients for assuring patient safety, evaluation and measurement, and current trends. In addition, a large chapter is devoted to risk management during the coronavirus pandemic, during which the inexhaustible capabilities of the Israeli health care system were manifested. The target audiences for this book are doctors, nurses, pharmacists, psychologists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, managers, and all those working in health care institutions who are directly or indirectly involved in patient care.

Purchase of the subscription online includes domestic shipping to a pickup location. Other delivery options are available in the online form . International subscriptions are shipped via Fedex. The current subscription includes two volumes (75-76). Iyyun was established in 1945 as a Hebrew philosophical periodical by Martin Buber, S. H. Bergman and Julius Guttmann and is published by the S. H. Bergman Center for Philosophical Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Iyyun has been rebranded, and as part of this renewal a number of thematic issues are published, aiming to advance contemporary philosophical discourse, primarily in Hebrew, to indicate new paths of thought and lines of original research, and to build bridges between academia and the broader public.‍ Iyyun seeks to give expression to a wide spectrum of writers, and is committed to cultural and ideological pluralism, scholarly excellence, high quality writing, and vitality of thought. This in the belief that philosophical thought has a formative role in local culture, and could be influential in shaping the sociopolitical sphere.

Anti-Semitism emerged in the late nineteenth century as a political movement that swept the masses. It presented a worldview in which a cohesive tribe called "the Jews" conspired to rule the earth by controlling international capital markets, trade, and money lending, while at the same time working to destroy—through revolutionary plots—the very capitalist system it supposedly controlled. It is easy to draw a straight line from this paranoid thinking at the turn of the century to the murderous delusions of fascism in the twentieth century. But, argues Laura Engelstein, the line was not straight. Anti-Semitism as a political weapon had its opponents, even in Eastern Europe, where its consequences were particularly terrible. Jewish leaders who joined forces in various countries and in cooperation with non-Jewish public figures worked for the rights of Jews and in firm opposition to persecution and acts of violence against Jews. In Tsarist and Soviet Russia, as well as in Poland and Ukraine – regions notorious in the West as centers of hatred for Jews – there were also those who saw anti-Semitism as a harmful burden on society and their movement. In the introduction to the book, Engelstein describes the different ways in which Jews were treated through the ways in which one Jew, Maurice Greenfeld, the author's grandfather, dealt with the upheavals of World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the civil war that followed, including the expressions of hostility and sympathy he encountered throughout his life. In the following chapters, she reveals the – sometimes surprising – positions of Russian liberals such as Prince Sergei Urusov, Ukrainian leader Symon Petliura, and Polish émigré in Paris Andrzej Bobkowski. The chapters on the inevitable rise of anti-Semitism thus examine the complex reasons why leaders and intellectuals renounced pogroms and incitement against the Jewish population. Engelstein added a short introduction to the Hebrew edition of the book.

The Military Government was established during the war and operated within the army, but it promoted political and ideological objectives. In July 1948, David Ben Gurion established it as body intended to govern the Palestinians who remained in Israel. Its main objectives were threefold: to facilitate the transfer of Palestinian land into Jewish hands; to exclude Palestinians from the labor market and prevent them from organizing on a national basis. The Military Government promoted these objectives through a bureaucratic mechanism that prevented the Palestinians citizens of Israel from leaving their place of residence without the governor's approval. The supporters of the Military Government were well aware of the fact that its existence makes Israel a non-democratic state. They supported its existence because they believed it was necessary to maintain Israel's Jewish character. The Military Government was controversial in the political system in Israel, but the intensity of the opposition to its existence was sometimes contingent on the partisan and ideological interests of the opponents, both from the left and the right. The book describes the factors that shaped the political system's relationship with the Military Government and traces the changing strength of the debate surrounding it. The book seeks, among other things, to answer the question of whether Prime Minister Levi Eshkol's decision to abolish the Military Government in December 1966 was due to the struggle of the opponents or rather from the recognition that the Military Government had fulfilled its objectives.

This study examines the evolving nature of Hasidic leadership, with a focus on the institution of the Admorut (leadership of Rebbes) in Israel from 1966 to the early 21st century. Hasidic leadership is rooted in the doctrine of the Tzadik, a theological-ideological concept developed since the mid-18th century. The Tzadik is believed to possess a unique connection with God, enabling him to channel divine blessing, guide individuals spiritually, and lead entire communities. Central to Hasidic life is the demand for both faith in the Tzadik and attachment to the Tzadik, encompassing emotional, spiritual, and practical devotion. The study traces the historical development of these ideas and their transformation in the context of contemporary Israeli society, where Hasidim constitute a significant segment of the Haredi population and wield notable political and economic influence. It analyzes the ways in which Rebbes exercise authority in both spiritual and material realms, operating within dynastic frameworks that have endured since the 18th century. By examining the theological foundations, social functions, and mechanisms of power associated with the Admorut, the study aims to offer a comprehensive account of a leadership model that continues to shape the religious and public life of ultra-Orthodox Jewry in Israel.

Setting Tables: Eating, Social Boundaries, and Intercultural Transfers is a first-of-its-kind collection of Hebrew articles exploring commensality and various practices associated with shared eating, whether with acquaintances or strangers. This volume examines how meals—though routine—function as significant normative anchors in different societies and historical periods, delineating hierarchies within and between social groups and cultural categories. Shared eating can occur in everyday settings or in political and ceremonial contexts. Participants may adhere to contemporary etiquette, engage in discussions, remain silent, focus solely on the meal, or manage social impressions. Regardless of time or place, shared eating consistently signifies both divisions and connections, shaping and reflecting intricate social identities. The volume offers a range of case studies, from Assyrian royal banquets through the Roman world, to Jewish and Arabic sources from the Islamic world and addresses current issues like municipal conflicts over falafel vendors in Mandatory Tel Aviv, sustainable consumption at weddings and the rise of personalized microbial diets. It investigates the characteristics of this complex social interaction and reveals the connections between the material aspects of meals and their cultural meanings.

The Hebrew University campuses are not just buildings and lawns. They are a huge museum, where walls are paintings, sculptures are stories, and every work of art invites the viewer to a conversation. Art at the Hebrew University is present not only physically, but also in spirit. Art at HUJI presents eighty-three artworks selected from the thousands of pieces on display at the Hebrew University – on the lawns and in enclosed spaces – ranging from well-known works by Henry Moore and Yigal Tumarkin to hidden gems by Marina Abramović and Sigalit Landau. The book is an invitation to embark on a journey through time and discover the stories behind each piece, the artists who created them, and the way in which art has influenced the university. Art at HUJI weaves a dialogue between the works of art displayed at the university and its academic faculty, students, and employees. Inspired by Plato's dialogues, these individuals were invited to choose one work that spoke to them and write about it. Each work featured in this book is accompanied by these reflections, alongside commentary written by the editor of the book and curator of the university, Dr. Michal Mor.

Since its creation, the Babylonian Talmud has stood at the center of the Jewish intellectual canon and the heart of Torah study. Despite its wide circulation and enduring significance, it remains an elusive work to define. It is a religious text, yet contains little theology; it is deeply legal, yet it is hardly concerned with practical rulings; it is framed as a commentary on the Mishnah, yet frequently departs into independent expansive discussions. What, then, is this composition? How was it constructed? How did it come to occupy such a central place in Jewish tradition? And how has it been interpreted over the centuries? The first part of The Talmud: A History of Learning is devoted to analyzing the Talmud itself—dissecting its constituent parts and exploring their formation, purpose, and historical context. The second part turns to the reception of the Talmud: the ways in which it has been read, studied, and reinterpreted from its redaction through the present day. The title of the book reflects this dual focus: it addresses both the internal processes of learning that gave rise to the Talmudic text, and the external history of its study and the discourses it has generated from late antiquity to the present.

The Two Mekhiltot on the Jethro Portion (Exodus 18) is, in a sense, a complement to Menahem Kahana's previous book, The Two Mekhiltot on the Amalek Portion . The book is based on new text editions of Mekhilta d'Rabbi Ishmael and Mekhilta d'Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai on the Jethro portion. It includes a systematic and detailed commentary on the exegeses of the Mekhiltot, shedding new light on many exegeses – their literal meaning, their real and historical context, and the worldviews reflected in them. The book reviews the previous editions of The Two Mekhiltot on the Jethro Portion and presents the important contribution of fragments from the Cairo Geniza that were discovered after the previous editions were published. It compares the traditions of the two Mekhiltot in their language, style, and content, and establishes the insight that in the Jethro portion, as in the Amalek portion, the tradition of Mekhilta d'Rabbi Ishmael generally takes precedence.

The Terminology of the Yerushalmi - The Secondary Terms presents a systematic study of the secondary terminology in the Talmud Yerushalmi. This work analyzes hundreds of terms in this Talmud, in light of all comprehensible occurrences of these terms according to all extant textual witnesses of the work. In addition to defining all of these terms, this volume analyzes all other characteristics of these expressions, including the types of sources they introduce, their "style," and the relationship between them and interchangeable and synonymous terminology.

Among the medieval liturgical manuscripts from Ashkenaz, the Nuremberg Mahzor takes a special place. Its size, its extraordinary selection of piyyutim and piyyut commentaries, and its lavish decoration that differs from the model used for many mahzorim in southern Germany make it a spectacular object. This aroused curiosity and interest, as reflected by those who are known to have viewed the manuscript, including Emperor Leopold I (1658–1705), who visited the Nuremberg Municipal Library in 1658, and several 17th and 18th century Christian scholars who wrote about the treasures of Nuremberg. In the 19th century, several Jewish scholars studied the manuscript in Nuremberg, among them Leopold Zunz from Berlin and Rabbi Isaak Meier Eppstein from Jerusalem, culminating in the detailed study and description by Nuremberg rabbi Bernhard Ziemlich (1884–1886). Salman Schocken had hoped to acquire the manuscript already in 1934 and succeeded in adding it to his collection in 1951. The fact that during its 56-year stay at the Schocken Library in Jerusalem the Mahzor was rarely exhibited and not easily accessible to scholars and the wider audience shrouded the manuscript in mystery.

Corner of a Foreign Field portrays the British colonial community in Mandatory Palestine and explores the lives of its members—men, women, and children. The book sheds new light on the British mandatory experience as a set of practices and habits, emotions and sensibilities, identities and relationships. It examines how British everyday lives were an inseparable part of the mechanisms of control and governance in Palestine, intertwining the public with the private, the political with the intimate. The book examines the consolidation of British citizens in Palestine into a colonial community, offering a fresh perspective on the British as a heterogeneous and hierarchical group marked by various internal tensions. The history of this community unfolds through a wide range of themes: bachelorhood and marriage, sexuality, family and education, body and health, domesticity, leisure and cultural institutions, celebrations and rituals—all of which are interwoven with political, ethnic, class, and gender power relations. By focusing on the composition of the British community and the fabric of its daily life, Corner of a Foreign Field is a pioneering study that brings the social and cultural history of the British from the margins to the center, integrating it into the broader history of British colonialism in Palestine.

Neighbors, Neighborhoods, Neighborliness explores the development of urban neighborhoods established during the British Mandate and their pivotal role in shaping the Yishuv and Jewish society in Palestine. Combining “history from above”—planning and legislation—with “history from below”—the everyday experiences of residents—the book shows how neighborhoods emerged not only through planning policies but also through private initiatives and grassroots community efforts. It examines interactions among residents—immigrants, workers, housewives, and entrepreneurs—and between neighborhoods and institutions, from local committees to the Mandate government. The study highlights how processes of modernity intersected with questions of gender and nationalism, tracing the relationships among diverse social groups: women and men, children and adults, immigrants and native-born Jews, Jews from Europe and MENA countries, and Jews and Arabs. Through its analysis of construction patterns, social dynamics, and communal relationships, the book traces the emergence of “neighborhood citizenship”—a sense of belonging rooted in everyday life that shaped both urban development and the broader social fabric. Neighbors, Neighborhoods, Neighborliness is not only a history of places but of people and communities. It offers new insights into the social cohesion of the Yishuv and uncovers the origins of the social divisions that continue to shape Israeli society today.

A letter written during the destruction of the communities of Galicia in the spring of 1943 by Solomea Ochs, née Luft, found among the possessions of a Wehrmacht general and later featured in an exhibition in contemporary Berlin, transforms in the hands of historian Ram Ben-Shalom into a wide-ranging documentary novel. Solomea's letter, in her own handwriting, describes not only the horrors of the massacre and extermination but also touches on the depths of humiliation and devastation felt by the Jews kneeling before their killers. This is the voice of mighty force of nature that has been silenced; something stronger than poetry and lamentation, even if it will surely be remembered alongside the great Jewish laments of the Middle Ages and Bialik's "Upon the Slaughter." Ram Ben-Shalom discovered that this letter is none other than a letter from his aunt to her family before her murder, and that the letter was kept in the drawer of his father's desk at their home in Tel Aviv. From here, a complex search journey emerged, with surprising dimensions that accumulate into a picture of distinctly epic proportions. With craftsmanship, Ben-Shalom weaves a story that is at once a poetics of life, a cultural critique, and an unparalleled delicate analysis of the depths of the selfhood of Israeli Judaism.

This wide-ranging book shows how, since the first centuries of the Christian era, gentiles have associated Jews with noise. The study focuses on a “musical libel" - a variation on the Passion story that recurs in various forms and cultures in which an innocent Christian boy is killed by a Jew in order to silence his “harmonious musicality.” In paying close attention to how and where this libel surfaces, Ruth HaCohen covers a wide swath of Western cultural history. The author combines in her analysis the perspectives of musicology, literary criticism, philosophy, psychology, and anthropology, tracing the tensions between Jewish “noise" and idealized Christian “harmony” and their artistic manifestations from the high Middle Ages through Shakespeare, Bach, Wagner, George Eliot, Kafka, Schoenberg and others. She explores testimonies by outsider visitors of synagogues, operas, caricatures, and Nazi movies. Her analysis shows how entrenched aesthetic-theological assumptions have persistently defined European culture and its internal moral and political orientations. Following the publication of the book, the author received two prestigious awards: the Polonsky Award for Creativity and Originality in the Humanities, and the Kinkelday Award from the American Musicological Society for the best book in musicology published in 2011 .

This volume is the first attempt at broad and deep research from a gender perspective into the halakhic attitude towards abortion. With the argument that halakhah reflects the male outlook and the consequent gender biases taken as its starting point, it examines the influence of gender concepts on contemporary halakhic rulings about abortion, in light of bio-ethical, conservative, liberal, and feminist theories, as well as the ideas of feminist legal theory and the feminist critique of the reigning epistemology. The book analyzes the gender implications of the stringent halakhic rulings of the twentieth century and the way they construct women. It asserts that the halakhic stance that takes the ban on abortion as a Torah-based prohibition constricts the idea of the sanctity of life to biological terms only and thereby highlights the reduction of women to mainly an entity for reproduction. The research raises a number of questions that have never been asked before: How do the decision makers see the female essence in general, and specifically in the context of abortion? Where do the woman’s needs rank on the scale of the decision makers' considerations? Are women perceived as subjects with their own interests and will—or are these deemed irrelevant and appropriated for the benefit of the collective (the family, the Jewish people)? These questions serve as the foundation for the discussion in the present volume. Even though it deals mainly with abortion, I suggest that it be seen as demonstrating the masculine identity of the halakhic discourse in general.

In this book, the complicated relationship between religion and nation, as well as the relationship between nationalism and the process of secularization are discussed from a multidisciplinary perspective. In the last decades these issues attracted considerable research and public interest throughout the world. The book consists of articles from renowned scholars dealing with the relations between religion, secularism and nationalism in general, in prominent historical patterns as expressed in German, English, American, Turkish, Polish and Russian nationalism, and in the Jewish-Israeli context . The book's articles shed light on the phenomena of nationalism and secularization, in light of contemporary research on these two fascinating fields .

Man and Nature , the most notable work by A. D. Gordon (1860-1922) was written mostly during the second decade of the twentieth century. It is an original philosophical work, which revolves around the ethics, aesthetics and philosophy of religion. In addition to presenting a comprehensive philosophical theory in Hebrew, Gordon discusses issues which became more and more central in the generations that followed him – like ecology, gender and the rejuvenation of Judaism. By returning to nature Gordon advocates a full life of creation. This new edition contains sections from the Dgania Alef archives, which were omitted from previous editions. In the introduction, the editors describe how the text deviates from the time and place in which it was written, explaining the recent wave of renewed interest in Gordon’s writings.

Since the early 2000s, Israeli television drama has become a highly sought-after product in the global TV market. Israel is indeed an intense and dynamic place that offers drama creators a wealth of diverse and compelling stories. In 1971, three years after the establishment of Israeli television, the first drama series in Hebrew Hedva and Shlomik aired—still in black and white—based on the literary novel by Aharon Megged (1953). The evolution of television drama in Israeli television from its inception has not been thoroughly documented until now. This book aims to fill that gap and provide readers with tools for watching, interpreting, and understanding television series in general, and Israeli ones in particular . The story of Israeli television drama in this book is set within broad socio-political and cultural contexts. Drama consistently engages with reality and responds to it in various ways, even if not always overtly. It also addresses the foundational myths of Israeli identity—sometimes reinforcing them, other times questioning or subverting them. Like other popular cultures, it often fulfills desires or offers imagined solutions to the contradictions underlying these myths . Through the prism of Israeli television drama, this book reveals a self-portrait of the people and society—both as they were and as they might've like to be seen .

This collection of articles deals with the connection between the concept of death and the philosophy of the Halakha. Many would argue that recoil from death and flight from it underlie in every culture, including the Halakha. To understand a culture one must examine its attitude toward death. The articles in this volume and its special symposium on the denial of death follow this assumption by studying what the Halakha has to say on this subject. Three themes that link death and Halakha lie at the heart of the book: the issue of fear of death and the tools for coping with it; the connection between human experience and Halakhic conceptualizations and tools pertaining to the issue of death; and the influence of meta-Halakhic views on Halakhic rulings and thought on the issue of death. This diverse collection presents the voices of the leading scholars and intellectuals in the field; it touches on existential issues whose sources lie in deep Halakhic and philosophic study, from the Sages and Maimonides to the Holocaust and the technological age. The book, whose foundation is the philosophical discourse of the Halakha, constitutes a cornerstone for broad study that encourages additional scholarship. It presents the Halakhic world’s deep insights on the end of life, coping with these moments, and the Halakhic implications of the concept of death, including all its derivatives in the Halakha and the Aggada.

The Western Wall—Judaism’s holiest site—occupies a prominent position in contemporary Jewish and Israeli discourse, current events, and local politics. In Holiness in the Eye of the Storm: The Judaism and Israeliness of the Western Wall, 1967–2000 , Kobi Cohen-Hattab and Doron Bar offer a detailed exploration of the Western Wall plaza’s evolution in the late twentieth century. The examination covers the role of archaeology, attempts to design the space, the Wall’s transformation as an Israeli and Jewish symbol, and the movement to open it to a variety of Jewish denominations, studying the central processes and shifts that took place at the Western Wall during the three decades that followed the Six-Day War, a relatively short yet crucial chapter in Jerusalem's extensive history.

Ta’am HaTe’amim is a messianic treatise in the Hebrew language composed by the Catholic French orientalist and mystic Guillaume Postel (1510-1581). Ta’am HaTe’amim is a relatively unknown Renaissance document, which sheds light on unique intellectual and political stands prevalent among sixteenth-century Catholic reformators . Throughout the treatise, Postel refers to several famous historical issues, depicting them through his own particular perspective, which was based upon a blend of Joachite millenarism, French patriotism and Jewish Kabbalah. In addition, Ta’am HaTe’amim is a rare example of Hebrew writing by an Early Modern Christian Scholar, and it is characterized by remarkable linguistic traits expressing Postel’s theological concepts regarding languages in general and Hebrew in particular.

The book Habima in Berlin delineates the net of interconnections between Habima, a Hebrew theater troupe, and the German Jewish cultural and economical elite, that were woven together in the years 1926-1931. It analyzes how Berlin Jews, among them renowned theater artists, Zionist activists, intellectuals, wealthy businessmen, industrialists and bankers, formed a coalition to support Habima and how they shaped its Hebrew-Zionist artistic profile.

The book deals with the conceptual and practical transformation of history as modern science and art between 1740 and 1940. The book concentrates on the work of six major historians who turned history from its rhetorical classical models of "teaching by examples" into a meaningful investigation narration of human life. Common to them as was the belief that human life and history are made by human being like themselves, by themselves.

The Truth of Scientific Medicine is an attempt to deal with one of the crucial problems in modern medicine: the rapid rate of exchange of truths serving as the foundation of medical practice. Unstable truths are a source of skepticism and concern among many physicians. They are also one of the main reasons for the crisis undermining the trust between patient and physician. The quest for the truth in modern medicine passes through the six core concepts of scientific truth: paradigms, methods, borders, criteria, interpretation and inference. The author deliberates each of these concepts through concrete examples at three levels: the historical, the theoretical and the political. The issues serving as the basis of the discussion are of concern to the medical world, and appear at the core of professional and sometimes the public debate: management of coronary heart disease, treatment of bronchial asthma, hormone replacement in menopausal women, early detection of breast cancer, drug therapy for diabetes, conventional vs. alternative medicine.

For over fourteen hundred years, since post-Talmudic times, a list of fast days has been in circulation; it mandates at least one, but occasionally two, three, and even four fasts per month. These fasts commemorate disasters that occurred during biblical and Second Temple times; events connected with the Temple’s destruction; and the deaths of well-known individuals. The list penetrated into central halachic works; in some circles these events are commemorated to this day, albeit not by fasting. This list is known as Megillat Taʿanit Batra, “the later scroll of fasts,” to distinguish it from Megillat Taʿanit, which originated in the Second Temple period. This book traces the historical development of the list. The author has culled previously unknown versions of this list from manuscripts, early piyyutim , and other surprising sources. All these versions of the list are discussed in detail; a synoptic analysis of each fast, as presented in the various sources, attempts to solve some of the riddles presented by the texts. Towards the end of the book, a detailed chapter deals with the complex occurrences of the list in halachic literature. The final chapter sets out the internal structure of the list; attempts to arrive at its original form; and maps its metamorphoses through time.

The author presents in this work, which is based on an exhaustive study of the sources by means of philological-historical methods, a vivid picture of the religious and social thoughts of the Tanna'im and Amora'im, their absorption and rejection of extraneous concepts, their spiritual struggles and the goals they sought to achieve. The intellectual ferment marking this era crystallized principles that fashioned the Jewish national and religious image for generations. The wisdom of the great Jewish teachers of antiquity is on display here like in no other book. Two indexes (one by topic, one by texts) mentioned help the reader make use of the many obscure texts that Urbach quotes, some of them virtually impossible to find in translation anywhere. The sheer wealth of material collected in this volume is amazing. The book is well organized by 'doctrine' or belief, and Urbach does an excellent job of quoting the texts that he uses to come to his conclusions.

Order In the Bible: The Arrangement of the Torah in Rabbinic and Medieval Jewish Commentary examines ideas about biblical order in the commentaries of Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Nahmanides against the background of the Midrashic tradition. On the face of it, the arrangement of portions in the Torah is chronological, but close examination reveals more than a few discrepancies. The Midrash sometimes responded by saying that "There is no ‘earlier’ and ‘later’ in the Torah" (en muqdam ume'uhar ba-Torah)-- the order of the Torah is not always chronological. This response left the reader facing unexplained juxtapositions of chapters and verses. In some of the cases, the sages asked, lama nismekha, “Why were these two portions juxtaposed?” Usually, they sought to connect the unconnected stories and verses in the midrashic fashion, by adding to the events of the stories or by taking the second unit as the outcome of the first and deriving therefrom some moral teaching. Occasionally though, we find an attempt to answer the question of juxtaposition in terms that might be considered closer to the peshat method of explication. Moving in the direction of the peshat, medieval Jewish exegetes tried to explain biblical arrangement of both narratives and law based on thematic, associative, or literary links. Their attempts resulted in new ideas about the ordering of the Torah. This book contains hundreds of references to juxtaposition and non-chronological arrangements cited in the writings of the above commentators. These examples are put into the framework of each commentator's general approach to interpretation and his particular sense of biblical order. Dr. Isaac Gottlieb is a Senior lecturer in the Department of Bible at Bar-Ilan University and a member of its Institute for Jewish Bible Interpretation.

In 1931, Kurt Gdöel published a revolutionary article - an article that challenged some basic assumptions on which a significant part of the research in mathematics and logic was based until then. The unknown land Terra Incognita that he discovered is recognized today as one of the greatest contributions to the development of scientific thinking. This is the first book to present to the enlightened reader who is not an expert a readable explanation of the main ideas and extensive history of Gödel's Proof. It offers every cultured person, who has a sympathetic approach to logic and philosophy, an opportunity to satisfy the intellectual curiosity regarding the subject that has been blocked from him until now.

This study describes the contribution of the British Administration to the development of Palestine between 1917-1929. It deals with the relation between a new modern government and changes in the landscape. The special character of the British Administration in Palestine helped to create a new state in the Middle East, a modern state with a geographic “iconography” that reflected British taste and input. This view differs from other works on the British in Palestine which deal mainly with the political history of the area rather than its historical geography.

This book offers an account of a key event in Jewish intellectual history that is also an important chapter in the history of Western philosophy: the dissemination of Maimonides’ chief philosophical work, the Guide of the Perplexed, through Samuel ibn Tibbon at the beginning of the 13th century in Southern France. Whereas Maimonides interpreted Judaism as a philosophical religion, Ibn Tibbon turned this interpretation into the foundation of Jewish philosophy up to Spinoza, making it into a systematic justification for studying Greco-Arabic philosophy and science in a religious setting. If Maimonides’ work was the gate through which philosophy became an important component of Jewish culture, Ibn Tibbon built the hinge without which this gate would have remained shut. The book examines Ibn Tibbon’s relationship to Maimonides in all its facets: how he translated Maimonides’ work from Arabic into Hebrew, explained its technical terminology, and interpreted and taught its doctrines. Due attention is also paid to Ibn Tibbon’s comprehensive criticism of Maimonides. The book includes the edition of what may be called the first commentary on the Guide: about 100 glosses attributed to Ibn Tibbon that were discovered through examining 145 manuscripts of Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation. The glosses illustrate the different aspects of Ibn Tibbon’s relationship to Maimonides and the complex transition of Maimonides’ work from one cultural context to another.

This book discusses Emile Habibi's stories "The Pessoptimist," "Ekhtayyeh" and "Saraya" and their revolutunary translation into Hebrew by Anton Shammas.

The book is intended for teachers and students who specialize in the field of non-formal education in universities, academic colleges and teacher training colleges in Israel. It will interest educators and all who cherish the subject of education.

MA‘ARAG : The Israel Annual of Psychoanalysis is a democratic forum for psychoanalytic research, practice, and criticism published through the initiative and cooperation of the Sigmund Freud Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis of the Hebrew University and the Israeli Association for Self Psychology and the Study of Subjectivity, the Israel Society for Analytical Psychology, the Israel Psychoanalytic Society, the Israel Institute for Group Analysis, the Israel Institute of Jungian Psychology, and the Tel-Aviv Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. The articles in this volume: Aviel Oren and Gaby Shefler - AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF KLEINIAN THEORY: THE PARANOID-SCHIZOID AND DEPRESSIVE POSITIONS AND THE RELATION BETWEEN SPLITTING AND PSYCHIC DISTRESS Dana Amir - PERVERSION: FROM EMPTY EVENT TO EVENT WITHOUT A WITNESS Gideon Lev - DENIGRATION, INDIFFERENCE, FASCINATION: PSYCHOANALYTIC APPROACHES TO FAITH Ofir Levi - THE ROLE OF HOPE IN PSYCHODYNAMIC PSYCHOTHERAPY WITH CHRONIC AND COMPLICATED POST-TRAUMATIC REACTIONS Moshe Halevi Spero - A BRIEF NOTE REGARDING THE HEBREW TRANSLATION OF FREUD’S CONCEPT OF NACHTRÄGLICHKEIT Emanuel Amrami - THE ANALYTIC TRI-COLLAGE: COMBINING ALIEN THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES DURING CLINICAL WORK Beatriz Priel - PSYCHOANALYSIS AND TRANSLATION: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY ESSAY Guy Perel - FROM THE ‘WALL’ TO THE ‘MOJO’ WITH WINGED SANDALS: A JUNGIAN PERSPECTIVE ON LONG-DISTANCE RUNNING Michael Shoshani and Batya Shoshani - BORGES ALONGSIDE THE ANALYTIC COUCH: THE ANALYSIS OF A MAN WHO DWELLED OUTSIDE TIME Meir Chelouche - GRANDPARENTS AND THEIR GRANDCHILDREN: PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVES Ofrit Shapira-Berman and Michal Waldman - A SONATA FOR TWO: PROFESSIONAL PERSPECTIVES AMONG PSYCHOTHERAPISTS WHO GREW UP IN CHILDREN’S HOSTELS ON THE KIBBUTZ

FORMTEXT This study examines the Pentateuchal account of Israel’s preparations for entering Canaan, appearing within the concluding section of the Book of Numbers. Literary-critical analysis reveals that each of the passages that comprise this account is the product of several stages of composition, with each literary stratum reflecting the ideological tendencies of the authors responsible for its creation. It emerges that ideological disputes that raged in Judea of the Persian period, when these texts were composed, manifested themselves in historiographical accounts describing a much earlier time – that just prior to the entry into Canaan. The wilderness period, seen as decisive for Israel’s past, and the notion of the Mosaic Torah believed to have been given during this formative era, along with the obvious parallel to these Judean authors’ own days, those of the return from exile, led them to depict the events at the end of Moses’ time in ways that addressed the burning questions of Yehud of the Persian period. The textual and historical analysis reveals that a previously unrecognized substratum, running throughout the account, has been augmented by several editorial additions. This recognition in turn sheds new light on the Pentateuch’s formation and on the historical circumstances reflected in its composition . FFFFFFFF000100000000060054006500780074003200300000000000000000000000000000004E00D605D4052000D405D805DB05E105D8052000E905D905D505E405D905E2052000D105EA05D905D005D505E8052000D405E105E405E8052000D105D005EA05E8052000D405D005D905E005D805E805E005D8052E002000D105E805D905E805EA052000D405DE05D705D305DC052000D405D905D0052000D405DB05D905EA05D505D1052000E205DC052000D205D1052000D405E205D805D905E405D40500000000000000000000

The religious transformations that marked late antiquity represent an enigma that has challenged some of the West’s greatest thinkers. But the oppositions between paganism and Christianity that characterize prevailing theories have endured for too long. Instead of describing this epochal change as an evolution within the Greco-Roman world from polytheism to monotheism, he argues that the cause for this shift can be found not so much around the Mediterranean as in the Near East . The End of Sacrifice points to the role of Judaism, particularly its inventions of new religious life following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.. The end of animal sacrifice gave rise to new forms of worship, with a concern for personal salvation, for scriptural study, for rituals like praying and fasting, and with the rise of religious communities and monasticism. It is what Christianity learned from Judaism about texts, death, and, above all, sacrifice that allowed it to supersede Greco-Roman religions and transform religion itself.

Martin Buber aroused passionate, often contradictory opinions, both regarding his personality and his thought. Gershom Schocken, editor of Haaretz , said that one day he was walking with S. Y. Agnon: "We were walking around Talpiot and I asked him what his attitude was towards Buber. Agnon stopped in his walk and said: 'I want to tell you something. There are people about whom you have to decide once: do you love them or do you hate them. I decided to love Buber.'" Buber's philosophical and theological writings, including the famous I and Thou , have contributed greatly to religious and Jewish thought, as well as to biblical studies, political theory, and Zionist thought. In this new biography, Paul Mendes-Flor situates Buber's legacy at the crossroads between the intellectual and cultural life of German Jewry and European life in the first half of the twentieth century. This is the first full biography of the groundbreaking modern Jewish philosopher. The book is organized around several key events in his life, such as his mother suddenly abandoning him when he was three years old—a formative trauma that left Buber with a lasting sense of sensitivity to the fragility of human relationships and the need to nurture them with what he would later call "dialogical attention."

The problems of ethnicity and migration encapsulate the modern dilemma, not only for those who are on the move, but also for those who remain at home deliberating their existential identity. This volume brings together an international array of scholars to discuss some of the leading questions concerning ethnicity and migration. Roots tell us about origins, identities and the past. Routes refer to peregrinations, diasporas and future paths. This volume incorporates a rich variety of case-studies from all over the world contributed by a group of international scholars from countries as far afield as Spain and India.

The Indian language of Sanskrit is one the of oldest Indo-European languages. The Vedas, Upanishads, Mahabharata and Ramayana epics, religion and philosophy works, poetry, plays, mythology and legends were all written in this language. Sanskrit is the basis for any research on traditional Indian culture and Indo-European linguistics. This book presents the foundations of Sanskrit and all grammatical topics, accompanied by examples and poetry verses. The story of the עם Krishna is told along the book. The book is aimed at linguistics and students, who will be able to deal with literary, religious and philosophical texts upon completing the book. Illustrations by Dganit Greier.

By closely examining the interaction between intellectual and material culture in the period before the Nazis assumed power in Germany, the author comes to the conclusion that, contrary to widely held assumptions, consumer culture in the Weimar period, far from undermining reading, used reading culture to enhance its goods and values. Reading material was marked as a consumer good, while reading as an activity, raising expectations as it did, influenced consumer culture. Consequently, consumption contributed to the diffusion of reading culture, while at the same time a popular reading culture strengthened consumption and its values. Thus the book presents the argument that the Weimar period, characterized as it was by economic hardship and political instability, witnessed a constant widening of the gap between the world of print as a “virtual” area in which the world of symbols and images of the new consumer culture developed, and the daily realities of most social strata. In the German context of the 1920s, this was a fateful and ominous trend.

Leah Goldberg was for most of her life an Israeli writer. She was in her twenties when she immigrated to Palestine (in 1935) and wrote virtually only in Hebrew. She had a great poetic gift, and was the author of some of the most memorable lyrical poetry in modern Hebrew literature. The verses of her last period when, as she felt, words, the stuff of poetry, were deserting her, are perhaps her best. She was also a novelist, a playwright, and a critic. Everything she wrote bears the direct impress of her personality. This collection of essays is not meant to be a systematic history. The reader is given a sort of personal acquaintanceship with some of the major writers of 19th century Russia, and may receive a vivid impression of some of their works and necessarily those which are most famous outside Russia.

This book is a new Edition, amended and expanded, of the essay JEWS AND CHRISTIANS INTERPRET THE BIBLE originally published in 1992. The book is a collection of articles dealing with biblical commentary through the ages which centers mainly on the reciprocal relationship between the Jewish and Christian biblical commentary. These relationships are exposed as a rich and complex system of influence and controversy, which is manifested both explicitly and implicitly. The essays of the Jewish commentators, including Rashi, Rashbam, and R. Yosef Bechor Shor, are studied in light of the cultural world and reality of life at their time and as a response to that era, and the Christian commentary is examined through its complex and multi faceted relationship with the Jewish tradition and the Jewish Biblical Commentary.

Bibliophile edition of 200 enumerated copies with high quality color photographs, in a luxurious leather binding, together with a matching leather case. Mahzor according to the Roman rite, Soncino –Casalmaggiore 5246 (1485-1486). Facsimile edition of the copy printed on parchment in the U. Nahon Museum of Italian Jewish Art in Jerusalem. Among all the mahzorim in the various rites published during the earliest years of Hebrew typography this Italian rite Mahzor was the first to be brought to print by the renowned printers of the Soncino family. The Mahzor was printed in two towns in northern Italy, Soncino and Casalmaggiore in 5246 (1485-1486) and it is considered to be one of the great achievements in the early stages of Hebrew typography. This first edition of the Mahzor is also invaluable for the study of the history of Jewish prayer. This large-size volume includes prayers and piyyutim (liturgical poems) for the entire year and ritual laws and also incorporates instructions for all the annual rituals in the synagogue and the Jewish home. The laws and customs are not strictly limited to the rituals but provide sustenance for all the household needs of the Roman community and the hundreds of communities following the Roman rite throughout central and northern Italy towards the end of the 15th century. The typography of the Mahzor is clear and easily legible and includes vowel-points (nikkud) and is adorned with large decorated initials made from woodcuts. The copy of the Mahzor from which this facsimile edition was printed, together with the companion volume of studies, is in outstanding condition. The copy is now preserved in the U. Nahon Museum of Italian Jewish Art in Jerusalem. It is a complete, superb copy printed on vellum that was donated to the synagogue of the Italian Jews in Jerusalem in 1960, by the "Sereni Committee" headed by Prof. B.Z. Dinur, as an eternal memento of the first Italian pioneer, Enzo Sereni (Rome 1905 – Dachau 1945) who fell to the enemy after parachuting into Italy during World War II. The Mahzor is printed for the first time in a facsimile edition. Studies on the Mahzor according to the Italian Rite edited by Mordechai Angelo Piattelli - Available in eBook form here . This collection of studies by various Israeli scholars is dedicated to the study of the Italian (Roman) rite liturgy, prayers and piyyutim, their editions and the culture of the Jews in Italy during the second half of the 15th century, the period the first edition of the Mahzor was published (Robert Bonfil, Peter Lehnardt, Mordechai Angelo Piattelli, Yitzhak Akiva Satz). Also included are studies on the typography and contents of this first edition of the Mahzor (Yitzhak Yudlov, Michael Ryzhik and Peter Lehnardt, who compiled the index of piyyutim in the Mahzor). The prayer rite designated ‘rite of Rome’ – together with the related Romanian rite – is the most ancient rite practiced in Europe. This rite is an important link in the history of Jewish prayer, and it retains vestiges of the early Palestinian (Land of Israel) rite even though it absorbed many other religious practices, laws and Babylonian liturgies as did other rites. The original name was "the rite of the loazim" i.e., the custom of the Jews who spoke Latin or one of the other Romanite languages, or ‘the rite of Rome’. This rite was followed in the city of Rome and probably in other Jewish communities in Southern Italy until the final expulsion of the Jews from the South in 1541. The rite spread from Rome to other Jewish settlements in central and northern Italy and thus it was eventually designated the ‘Italian rite’, i.e., the custom shared by all the Jewish communities in Italy. Other communities as well adopted this rite including some in Safed during the 16th and early 17th centuries and some congregations in Constantinople and Salonica. Today this rite is followed in a few communities in Italy and in the Roman rite synagogue in Jerusalem.

First anthology of Canadian plays in Hebrew. Ten superb playwrights, Margaret Atwood, P.K. Page, Jason Sherman and others present Indians and Inuit, love and alcohol, Sasquatch and the end of the world.

While the history of Zionism in the US has been the subject of numerous works, American ideological attitudes toward the State of Israel have been less frequently treated in the scholarly literature. This book fills that gap. An international conference convened in the Negev brought together academic authorities for three full days of candid interaction and bold analyses of American Zionist ideology. This volume distills the results of that conference, illuminating the images and expectations of American Jews toward Israel, especially their liberal hopes. Readers interested in the status and fate of the Jewish state will find this collection of essays thought-provoking and instructive.

This is a non-technical introduction two the two pillars of 20th century physics: the Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. It presents a conceptual and philosophical discussion without entering the realm of complicated mathematics, focusing on natural sciences in general, and physics in particular.

A paradox is the mathematician's best joke. Like a good joke, the paradox develops easily, in a logical and seemingly plausible manner, until it reaches the punch line, which is an unbelievable, completely surprising error, which gleefully mocks simple logic. Some paradoxes are easily explained because they rely on the incorrect use of a well-known basic rule. Some believe that such mistakes should not be called paradoxes at all, but only erroneous arguments. This book is a collection of paradoxes, fallacies and thinking challenges which are suitable for integration into mathematics studies in high school. Each of the activities in this book will encourage students to see familiar mathematical concepts in a new light and deepen their understanding of these concepts.

From the Critics: "...the boldness, coherence, and sweep of the book are impressive...Ofek has good and highly persuasive ideas about his main concern, which is the importance and centrality of economic analysis from an early point in human evolution...Second Nature is an exhilarating and interesting read that raises powerful questions about how humans got here and how we should be studied." Alan Grafen (Professor of Biological Sciences, Oxford University) Science “This is without a doubt one of the most important books to be published in the field of socio-economics in recent years. Ofek has done a superb job in linking what he calls Bioeconomics with Paleoeconomics to explain the transition from Homo Erectus to Homo Sapiens . . . . Briefly put, any reader would benefit from the wealth of new ideas that virtually jump out from almost each and every page.” Warren Young (Professor of Economics, Bar Ilan University) European Journal of Political Economy "Ofek synthesizes an enormous range of research on human origins to advance to the key role of exchange of goods and services in the evolution of distinctively human species.... This superb book seems poised to be a touchstone for work in prehistory and human origins for the foreseeable future; essential for all academic libraries; highly recommended for others." D. Bantz (University of Alaska) Choice "Ofek's book is, in fact, remarkable because it gives interesting, exhausting and insightful answers to old problems and, at the same time, it provides a new way to approach human evolution from the economic viewpoint." Joao Ricardo Faria (Professor of Economics, University of Texas) Economic History Network “Altogether this is a stimulating and well-done book. It’s even written better than most books involving either biology or anthropology. It seems to me that it should be the beginning of a major revamping of our views of the early history of our ancestors. Its interest to economists is of course particularly great, but I would hope that biologists and anthropologists will find it equally stimulating.” Gordon Tullock (economics and law professor at George Mason University) Journal of Bioeconomics

How might a poem acquire divine forgiveness? Ariel Zinder’s book Arise and Sing follows medieval Jewish poets from Iraq and al-Andalus as they seek answers to this pressing question. The book presents close readings of liturgical poems (piyyutim) written in the 10th and 11th centuries, and brings them into contact with contemporary literary theory as well as modern philosophical discussions of the possibility of forgiveness.

The Iliad of Homer is a powerful poem of force and heroism. It is the earliest of epics in Western Civilization and, since its appearance in the 8th century BCE, has inspired subsequent literary works. It tells of the final year of the Trojan War, one of the central stories in Greek mythology, and of the wrath of Achilles and its horrendous consequences. This is the first Hebrew prose translation of this great work. It has been done with meticulous care both to accuracy and style, aiming to preserve as far as possible the literary richness and charm of the original. As the Iliad belongs originally to the oral tradition, it is meant rather to be listened to than read; hence the translation aims at a greater musicality of Hebrew and simplicity of expression – both important characteristics of the Greek original. The translator has added a concise introduction and comprehensive notes to enhance readers’ understanding of this timeless poem. An index was added in the second edition.

This publication, the first of its kind, analyzes the new evolving middle class among professional Bedouin women in the Negev. It examines the paradox that arises from this class category mainly as it encounters the ethno-colonial and collective-male hegemonies within both Arab and Jewish labor markets. Simultaneously, it reveals the power and contribution of this class category to the domestic spheres of marital, family and community circles. Dr. Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder's study is based on interviews with dozens of Palestinian-Bedouin women who have obtained economic and human capital recognized by their communities but not by the hegemonic labor market. The Emergence of a Class Identity unveils colonial and patriarchal practicalities which do not acknowledge the women’s professional identity, implementing cultural, religious and collective signifiers that create a paradox of class marginality.

This is a groundbreaking book in the field of inner biblical allusion. Using methodologies from the field of literary studies the book examines the Song Ha'azinu (Deut 32) and the Book of Isaiah and uncovers the fascinating connections between the two. The recognition of this relationship sheds new light on the subject of inner biblical allusion, the Song Ha'azinu and the Book of Isaiah.

This unique volume, which is sure to engage the attention of both scholars and the general public, is an unparalleled cross-generational and international dialogue among eminent historians about three central aspects of the unfathomable enigma of the Holocaust. In the first section, beyond a seminal overview of sixty years of research, the writers reflect on historiography and historical thought ranging from contemporaries of the Third Reich to the ongoing discussion about the controversial role post-war West German historians played in Holocaust research. This is followed by a section focusing on social antisemitism until the 1950s and the German public’s awareness of the Holocaust, including the posture of the German Resistance Movement. The third major theme is the Jewish society, from its initial attempts to develop new forms of societal life under the Nazi regime until the brink of annihilation during the mass deportation from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka. The concluding chapter sheds light on the unresolved tension between reflective personal memory and impersonal historical research of this dark period in human history.

The Philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941) creator of the "durée" theory was once asked to explain his premise concisely. The philosopher replied: "What I said was that time exists and is not a "space"". Differentiating between time of real existence -"durée" – and the "space" like time. Bergson meant that the real time has a novel unexpected quality, and cannot be anticipated due to unceasing creativity. Quantifiable time – physics time – on the other hand, all that transpires can be set in advance with the assistance of Mathematical Computations. If so the 'physical time' does not differ greatly from the 'space time' and the result of every movement in it can be calculated precisely in advance provided that we have enough data for the calculation. Since by this assumption the "durée" was stripped of all the process science related areas, it is only natural that while trying to base his central idea, Bergson turns to investigate the two main reality spheres: the spiritual or mental sphere, and in this essay – the life sphere. This is the origin of the spiritual-vitalistic theory.

MA‘ARAG : The Israel Annual of Psychoanalysis is a democratic forum for psychoanalytic research, practice, and criticism published through the initiative and cooperation of the Sigmund Freud Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis of the Hebrew University and the Israeli Association for Self Psychology and the Study of Subjectivity, the Israel Society for Analytical Psychology, the Israel Psychoanalytic Society, the Israel Institute for Group Analysis, the Israel Institute of Jungian Psychology, and the Tel-Aviv Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. The articles in this volume: “TO WRITE OR NOT TO WRITE”—IS THAT THE QUESTION? A CLINICAL TALE - Rony Alfandary THE PSYCHOTHERAPIST’S SELF-DISCLOSURE OF COUNTERTRANSFERENCE AS A BRIDGE BETWEEN SAMENESS AND OTHERNESS IN THE TREATMENT OF BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER - Liat Warhaftig Aran THE LITERARY DOUBLE AS SYMPTOM OF FAILURE IN SEPARATION-INDIVIDUATION:`DORIT RABINIAN’S OUR WEDDINGS AS CASE STUDY - Michal Tal FOUR POEMS: ‘ACTS OF CREATION’ (MA’ASEY BEREISHIT) - Naomi Teller THE SEXUAL SUBJECT: BODY AND OTHERNESS - Shlomit Yadlin-Gadot DISRUPTION OF THE PSYCHOTHERAPIST’S ABILITY TO CONTAIN FOLLOWING PERSONAL CRISIS: THREAT TO TREATMENT ALONGSIDE POTENTIAL FOR GROWTH - Rany Levi “AS HE WAS YET SPEAKING, THERE CAME ALSO ANOTHER, AND SAID…” INTIMATE SEXUALITY FOLLOWING BEREAVEMENT - Michal Nir MYTHS AND RITUALS: SEARCHING FOR THE IMMORTAL AND THE ETERNAL, FROM RELIGIOUS RITUAL TO PSYCHOTHERAPY RITUAL - Ruth Netzer NON-DUALITY:A ZEN PERSPECTIVE ON THE RELATIONS BETWEEN ‘BODY’ AND ‘LANGUAGE’ IN PSYCHOANALYSIS - Yorai Sella FACING THE PAINFUL TRUTH:ON THE ROAD TO RECONCILIATION AND FORGIVENESS - Gila Ofer ON FREE ASSOCIATION - Victor Rubinov IS THE ANALYST’S CURIOSITY EMPATHIC? MODALITIES OF WONDERMENT AND THE SELFOBJECT’S INQUIRY - Liran Rogev TRIADIC DIMENSIONS OF PERVERSION:FAILURE TO THINK, MOURN AND LOVE. - Michael Shoshani and Batya Shoshani

What do we do when we are suddenly subjected to traffic and senseless suffering – suffering we did not bring upon ourselves, that we feel we do not deserve? This book is about the suffering of Jewish men, women and children who were singled out as targets of senseless hatred and ruthless persecution by the Nazi’s during the Second World War. The struggle of Holocaust survivors to come to terms with what happened to them in the Nazi concentration and death camps gives us a poignant picture of the human struggle to understand what life is all about in the face of its tragedies and hardships, and of the evil of man’s inhumanity to man.

The Intention of the Torah and the Intention of Its Readers surveys how traditional Jewish exegesis throughout the ages has coped with the literary and topical difficulties found in the Torah, in the context of the belief in the Torah’s divine source and sanctity. “All problems stem from expectations.” Readers and exegetes of the Torah throughout the ages supposed, and many continue to suppose, that the Torah is perfect and flawless. They expect the Torah to reflect superior and timeless standards of morality, as well as precise and eternal theological principles. They believe that everything written in the Torah is true, essential, and well thought out. The history of Torah scholarship from the end of the Second Temple period until our day can be conceived of as an uninterrupted continuum of challenges which this unique and, frankly, impossible level of expectations has imposed upon its readers and exegetes. These are glorious attempts to bring the Torah nearer to the time and place of its devotees and to adapt its meaning to theirs. This book is the first attempt of its kind to examine the history of the enterprise of Torah exegesis from a distance. It contains an examination of dozens of key texts from the end of the Second Temple period, from Talmudic and Midrashic sources, dicta of medieval Sages, and the reflections and research penned by scholars of the Enlightenment (Haskalah) and the modern era. A bird’s eye view blurs the details which differentiate between these texts, enabling us to more easily focus upon the similarities; this point of view also allows us to note the central crossroads of change and development which characterize each period. This is an indispensable book for anyone interested in the changing nature of biblical exegesis over the generations.

Why did the Israeli cinema disregard the Holocaust for many years? Why did it represent the Holocaust survivors as a homogeneous group of passive, detached and problematic people and ignored their enormous contribution to the prosperity of Israel? Was there any change in these representations from the late 40's until the present time? These questions are the center of the book Two Faces in the Mirror , that depicts the representation of the Holocaust, the Holocaust survivors and their rehabilitation in Israeli fiction and documentary cinema during 1945-2009. It is well known that films do not reflect reality, however they reflect cultural and social atmosphere – influence it and are influenced by it. The analysis of Israeli fiction and documentary cinema reveal two different paths of memory, two faces in the mirror: A society that ranges between shallowness and in-depth views, between strengthening superficial stereotypes and shattering them, between implanting distorted narratives and multi-cultural openness towards the "other".

The philosophy of Levinas has developed over nearly sixty years. Its evolution can be subdivided into three main stages: Following the pre-war writings, the period 1945-1961 lead to the book Totalité et Infini, in which the ethical thought of Levinas takes a first accomplished form. During the last stage, whose central opus is Autrement qu’être (Otherwise than Being), his thought both radicalized and opened up to multiple horizons. Indeed, Levinas is not merely an academic philosopher ignorant of other movements of thought that mark his century. This book aims to show how the stages of Levinas’s strictly philosophical thought is expressed with regard to politics, Judaism, and Christianity.

This is the story of an adventurous journey into a magical, unknown and incomprehensible world where nature is alive and has a psyche, including trees. Do trees have a spirit? Does a tree have a soul? Scientists may question the notion that trees have a mind, soul or spirit, but there are cultures where trees have a soul and a mind of their own. The book describes the mind-blowing experience of entry into a world of spirits and trees, a world of animism – the field of anthropology that ascribes a psyche to all natural elements. Written in the form of travel log accompanied by illustrations, the book reveals the wisdom and sensitivities of villagers in northern Burma, who opened their home, their trees and their hearts to the author, allowing him to touch and understand their beliefs, and through them understand his own self.

The Gulf of Aqaba-Eilat is a unique pocket-sized tropical coral ocean, functioning in a subtropical environment. This book, the first one to treat the Gulf in an interdisciplinary collection of contributed chapters, celebrates also the 40 years of existence of the Heinz Steinitz Marine Biology Laboratory in Eilat. The authors of the 28 chapters are mainly Israeli scientists , but many are also from abroad, chiefly from Germany. The results presented, relate to Israeli, Jordanian and Egyptian waters. In presenting the Gulf, virtually unknown some 50 years ago and today a major diving tourist hub , the issues of coral reef preservation and restoration are predominant in this richly illustrated book. How many marine biological laboratories are there in the world where you have clear water, coral reefs, seagrass beds, and deep reefs off your door step? This multiple-author volume edited by Dov Por deals optimistically with the elimination of the sources of pollution and the challenge of restoration of the marine habitats of the Gulf, especially the coral reefs. (John E. Randall, Bernice Bishop Museum Hawaii)

The Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie (1892-1975) was one of the most fascinating and mysterious figures of the twentieth century; a potent man of small dimensions, a cruel and generous leader, abstinent yet extravagant, a petty politician and statesman who took part in one of the most important junctions in history – the battle against Mussolini. He was a young revolutionist and aging reactionary, worshipped by many as the son of god. He sought asylum in Jerusalem, only to betray it later. A ruthless leader whose life ended in solitude, humiliation, and murder. Time Magazine named Haile Selassie “Man of the Year” in 1935, and he was among the “Top 25 Political Icons in History” in 2011.

Translated from the Greek with Introduction and Commentary by DWORA GILULA

Tens of thousands of intellectuals - refugees, displaced people, voluntary immigrants and emissaries - have left their homeland in modern times and moved to other countries in Europe and overseas. In a world-wide panorama, Peter Burke describes the important figures in the great waves of immigration since the fifteenth century: starting with the Greeks who came to Italy following the conquest of Byzantium by the Ottomans and ending with those fleeing from the Bolsheviks, the Fascists and the Nazis in the twentieth century. The migrations in the early modern period were mostly for religious reasons - for example, the Jews and Moriscos from the Iberian Peninsula, the Huguenots (French Calvinists) following the cancellation of the Edict of Nantes, and Catholics from Protestant countries. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, the migrations were mainly due to racial persecution and political and ideological reasons. Exiles and Expatriates in the History of Knowledge clarifies the difficulties of the scholars to integrate in the host countries and the choice between assimilation and seclusion in the expatriate community. But mainly he came to point out the enormous contribution of expatriates and immigrants to the creation of new knowledge and its dissemination, not only in immigration countries such as the United States and Israel, but in the entire world - from China in the East to Brazil in the West. Burke especially discusses the contribution of scholars in the humanities and social sciences: historians, researchers of the history of art and literature, philosophers, sociologists and anthropologists. Besides academics who managed to integrate into universities in the host countries, there were also other cultural mediators: printers and publishers, translators, merchants who settled for many years in distant lands, missionaries and scholars who were invited to the courts of rulers who sought to advance their country to modernity. The damage caused by the "brain drain" from the countries of origin eclipsed the gains produced by the world of knowledge as a whole: liberation from provincialism, bridging traditions, mutual fertilization. The detailed review in Peter Burke's book, which was written in 2015 as a warning against Brexit (Britain's exit from the European Union), is intended to convey a very important message even today: the reception of immigrants and refugees enriches the local and global culture and is the main antidote against the depletion of the spirit and narrow horizons.

How did Monet really paint his series? What influence did the writings of Kant, Goethe, and Rousseau, or the art criticism of Baudelaire and Zola, have on nineteenth-century artists? Did you know that Renoir also wrote art theory? How did women artists, such as Morisot and Cassatt, struggle against social barriers? How were the lives of the artists expressed in their works? This book answers these questions and much more about the art of the nineteenth century, the cradle of modern art, a century rich in innovations both in art theory, philosophy and in the ideas of writers with whom the artists held a fruitful dialogue. By means of these theories, the author analyzes the principles of the three main movements that developed simultaneously at the beginning of the century: the idealism that ruled the Neo-Classical school and is found in the paintings of David and Ingres; the subjectivism of Romanticism that is revealed in the landscapes of Friedrich and Turner, in the highly expressive works of Goya and Delacroix and in the sculpture of Rodin; and Naturalism's interest in present-day life that is displayed in the landscapes of Constable and Corot and in the figure paintings of Millet and Courbet. This last movement was developed by Manet, Degas, Monet, and Renoir into Impressionism in the second half of the century. The book concludes with an analysis of the many different styles that were current at the end of the century in the art of Seurat, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Redon, and Munch. The texts in the book illuminate the art works that were the gateway to modern art in a new light. These texts are translated into Hebrew – for the most part for the first time – while conserving the writing style of each author. Each chapter is accompanied by an introduction and explanatory footnotes. A book for artists, lovers of art, teachers, and students.

La Divina Commedia (Devine Comedy) is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between c. 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative and allegorical vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped establish the Tuscan dialect, in which it is written, as the standardized Italian language. It is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso . On the surface, the poem describes Dante's travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven; but at a deeper level, it represents, allegorically, the soul's journey towards God. At this deeper level, Dante draws on medieval Christian theology and philosophy, especially Thomistic philosophy and the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. Consequently, the Divine Comedy has been called "the Summa in verse ". (Wikipedia) This new Hebrew translation presents the three parts of the Devine Comedy where opposite to every Hebrew line its original Italian equivalent. Each page contains annotations relevant to the verses printed in that page. Translated and annotated by Reuven Cohen.

The essays brought together in this volume represent some of the research activities carried on in three departments of the Faculty of Humanities at the Hebrew University – the Department of Comparative Literature, the Department of English, and the Department of Romance Studies. The essays seem to fall into a pattern, which outlines some of the main directions of development in literature from the Renaissance to modern times, as it evolved in the West in Europe and on the two American continents.

The charm of Agnon’s work lies in an inebriating combination of the funny and the serious, in his famous irony that knocks down every unquestionable certainty and even its very self. Agnon’s humor eludes rhetoric borderlines, does not tolerate confines of a genre and disobeys simple interpretative solutions. In his new book, Roman Katsman suggests a new literary-anthropological method to break down Agnon’s complicated ‘laughter code’—a method based upon the cultural and semiotic interpretation of symbols. His reading of a wide selection of Agnon’s works, including his four major novels, reveals an entire world of his laughter symbols—a world of violence and sacredness, tragic bewilderment and eruption of new possibilities. In this world, arks fly, princes disappear, serpents eat their own tails, angels and demons dance, illusion turns into reality, and other foolish and cruel miracles occur. The research looks for a solution to the riddle: should Agnon's stories be considered serious or ironic, religious or secular, scornful or emphatic, archaic or modernist; or perhaps the reader is intended to swell with pathos or burst into laughter—and how come Agnon always has the last laugh?

MA‘ARAG: The Israel Annual of Psychoanalysis is a democratic, refereed annual publication, evaluated and edited by academicians, intellectuals in related fields, and clinicians. The journal, dedicated to research in psychoanalytic theory, practice and criticism, is the fruit of the initiative and cooperation of the Sigmund Freud Center for the Study and Research in Psychoanalysis of the Hebrew University, the Israeli Association for Self Psychology and the Study of Subjectivity, Israel Society for Analytical Psychology, Israel Psychoanalytic Society, Clinical Division of the Israel Psychological Association, Israel Institute for Group Analysis, Israel Institute of Jungian Psychology, The Sigmund Freud Chair of Psychoanalysis of the Department of Psychology, The Hebrew University, Tel-Aviv Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, The Winnicott Center in Israel and the New Israeli Jungian Association. From this issue: Itamar Levi | REFLECTIONS ON THE DREAM DISCOURSE Yael Pilowsky Bankirer | THE MOTHER'S NAME OF THE FATHER: ON NAMES AND SUBJECTIVITY Ravit Raufman | SIDE BY SIDE: RELATIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON WORKING WITH DREAMS USING EARLY PSYCHOLINGUISTIC FREUDIAN IDEAS Lital Pelleg | THE RAVAGE WREAKED BY LOVE: SEXUAL TRAUMA FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF LACANIAN JOUISSANCE Michael Sidi-Levi | FROM EARLY META-PSYCHOLOGY TO THE WIDENING OF THE LIBIDO CONCEPT: THOUGHTS ABOUT “ROBBING” AND BINDING Shani Samai-Moskovich | CROSSING THRESHOLDS OF INTENSITY IN THE AREA OF CREATION Shlomit Cohen | INTERIORITY AND INTERNALIZATION: A SKETCH OF A BASIC PROCESS

For contents in English please press Sample pages above.

The Devil's Renaissance describes the early modern period in Europe as a time of terrible bloodshed and persecution of minorities such as the Moriscos, the Gypsies, heretics, the Cagots and the imaginary sect of satanic witches. It was the age of fear of conspiracies and of the devil undermining the Christian commonwealth.

This collection of essays by feminist scholars from Canada and Israel explores the various aspects of Canadian identities and ethnic realities. A major source of tension and political conflict today, ethnicity and the problematics of identities inspire Canadian writers of all origins; to give a true picture of their society, they feel the urge to express their difference. The essays examine the voices of minority writers and of established writers from the two solitudes, whose views with regard to their identities and place in society highlight the specificity of the Canadian context. The book throws light on the paramount need to define ones’ position and identity in contrast to others, a need that may deny others the right to their own space. Foregrounding the diversity of perspectives characterizing Canada’s society, this volume will prove useful to students and researchers of Canadian Literature, Comparative Literature and the Social sciences.

Yehuda Halevi: Poetry and Pilgrimage follows the life story of the greatest Hebrew poet of medieval times from his first publication in Christian Toledo to his heroic journey toward Zion from Muslim Spain. The description is based, for the first time, on the entire collection of his poetry- the Diwan , which was edited and reedited between East and West at every important crossroad of his life. This in turn is done through comparison to autobiographical letters and contemporary correspondence discovered and collected over the past 50 years in the Cairo Geniza collections. Documentary material and Literary works, which were shun behind the iron wall in The Russian National Library in St. Petersburg, are woven for the first time into one, enabling us to examine closely the intricate relationship between old Jewish traditions and the ideological heritage associated with Halevi's innovative writings in prose and in poetry. Confronting Halevi's "Zion, will thou not ask"? opens the study which is mainly concerned with the story of Halevi's odyssey from Christian to Muslim Spain and eventually to Egypt, including the epic quest to the beloved yet fatal Zion. Professor Joseph Yahalom Studies and teaches Hebrew poetry at the Hebrew Literature Department of The Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

For contents and sample pages press on Sample pages which is located on the right of the cover photo.

When the speaker has "no words" she may utilize silence to communicate (opposed to stillness, pauses, the unsaid, empty-speech or silencing). Such silence speaks alongside words composing language structures. Our book studies (eloquent) silence: its functions and forms, as it emerges in Hebrew texts and genres aural and written (from the Bible, literary works, commercials, psychotherapy discourse, personal and public).

What are the considerations that move Halakhic decision makers? Which questions must they ask themselves in the process of producing a worthy ruling? How does the Halakhah contribute to the shaping of a person's character? How can the Halakhic decision maker play a conscious rule in this process of education? These are some of the questions raised in this book. The book "Halakhah as an Agent of Change" intends to move forward the discourse about the Philosophy of Halakhah by making a fundamental claim that the existent literature ignores. This claim is that in addition to the Halakhah being a juridical system – and for the religious Jewish person a religious imperative – the Halakhah is primarily an educational instrument and existential event. Therefore, the Halakhah is designed to effect cultural, valuative and educational changes in its devotees. Hence, in order to understand the Halakhah from a philosophical perspective we must make use of philosophical tools that are to be found in Philosophy of Education. In light of this basic insight – which has not received the attention of researchers – this book illuminates both the Halakhic field of studies and the process of Halakhic ruling itself but, also helps us to re-think Halakhic-philosophical studies in the past and intends to contribute to the development of Halakhic philosophy in the future. Furthermore, the book opens a new path for the discourse of the philosophy of Education.

Almost all of the articles in this collection were published between 1971 and 2010, but they have been updated to 2015, following the re-emergence of old controversies. The parties to the controversies include secular Jews, modern Orthodox-nationalist Jews, Orthodox Jews, and extreme-Orthodox (Haredi) Jews. In the Introduction, some controversies among the Pharisees, the forerunners of the Sages, and the adducees are discussed. The Sadducees held ancient, mostly literal, interpretations of the Hebrew Bible and of the oral traditions, whereas the Pharisees offered new interpretations in order to meet the needs of their day. The religious problems were raised in Israel after 1967, when large numbers of Russian immigrants entered the country, since many of them were not Halachically Jewish. The Chief Rabbinate could not cope with their numbers because of the lengthy conversion procedure. The solution offered here is to permit civil marriage, that will also facilitate swifter conversion procedures. In the articles, “Sharing the Burden,’’ and “The Torah is his Art,” the demand of the Haredi community that yeshiva (religious academy) students should be exempt from army service and from working in order to support their families is refuted. The article proves that this demand absolutely negates the position of the Sages. In “Sharing the Burden,” and in “Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Socialism,”the preferable economic and political regime in Israel is discussed. The alternatives were: a free and competitive Capitalistic market system, or a Socialistic / Communistic one. The author expresses support for the free, open market. The article, “The Sabbatical Year” (Shemittah), during which the fields must be left fallow, points out that this agricultural regulation was designed to prevent the impoverishment of the soil. For the same reason, it was also practiced by the Romans. Today, however, other means of preventing this exist, and therefore it is no longer necessary. The formal permission to sell crops of the seventh year issued by Chief Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook improved the condition of the farmers during that year, but the position of Rabbi Yehudah Ha-Nasi (the Patriarch) should be adopted instead; the interdiction of the working of the soil in the seventh year should be cancelled absolutely. The article, “Women are Light-Minded,. ” analyzes the condition and position of women in Israel, and compares them with the attitude towards women in ancient Greece and Rome. The article on “The Deserted Wife (Agunah; Who Cannot Remarry)” discusses divorce and the condition of a wife deserted by her husband in the ancient and modern worlds. It seems, unfortunately, that the interpretation of the Sages still prevails today. The discussion of “The Transfer of Land to Gentiles” clarifies the halachic aspects of this issue, and rejects the interpretation of Orthodox and Ḥaredi rabbis that is summarized in the saying, “The saving of life takes precedence over the [retention of the] land.” The article, “The Rebellions,” argues that one must examine the political and military situation in the world at the time of the Sages before defining his attitude towards the Jews who rebelled against Rome. In the article on “Vegetarianism,” the error of the Sages in understanding the words of the Torah concerning the diet of Adam, the first man, is discussed. The Sages thought that Adam was a vegetarian. This misinterpretation serves the adherents of vegetarianism today. Apart from stressing the moral aspect of killing animals in order to eat their flesh, the vegetarians claim that vegetarianism is healthy, and that it can supply food for an increasing world population, whereas the raising and consumption of animals cannot. The collection’s last article, “Paul and the Jewish-Christian Dialogue,” analyzes the expressions that the New Testament attributes to Paul, and their apologetic interpretation by Christian scholars. The author concludes that there is no place for a Jewish-Christian dialogue as long as the Christians embrace the anti-Jewish arguments of Paul.

Kobez Al Yad , an annual of the Mekize Nirdamim Society, is a forum for the publication from manuscript sources of ancient texts in Jewish studies that are shorter than book-length. Among the articles in this issue: Dan Greenberger | An Essay on the Ten Commandments attributed to R. Saadia Gaon Haggai Mazuz | Ma'aśeh Mehmeṭ: Re-examination and Critical Edition Gad Freudenthal and Hannah Kasher | Kalonymus ben Kalonymus rebukes Joseph Ibn Kaspi Pinchas Roth | A Collection of Rulings from Medieval Montpellier Eliezer Schlossberg | The Commentary of R. Avraham ben Shelomo the Yemenite on the Book of Zephaniah: A Critical Edition

The book examines the relations between Oriental, local Jews and Palestinian Arabs in Mandatory Palestine. It focuses on the role of Oriental Jews as possible mediators from a cultural, political and social perspective, as those who sought to bridge Jewish-Arab culture, Jewish-Arab nationalism, and Jewish-Arab identity. Examining these relations from the perspective of Oriental and local Jews sheds new light on the history and historiography of Zionism, the Yishuv, and the Jewish-Arab conflict.

The Adventurous Simplicissimus , the great literary monument of the Thirty-Years War (1618–1648) published in nearly real time – 20 years after it took place – combines a picaresque, historical, satirical, autobiographic, realistic and fantastic novel. This war which devastated Europe was the first example of a "world war" in history. The author, Hans Jacob Christoffel Grimmelshausen (1622–1676), experienced it in person and also took part in it at a young age. As author, he avoids taking sides with anyone of the fighting parties, or, as he declares, "For the future generations I will describe the atrocities that were committed again and again in our German war." The strange adventures of the hero are depicted sometimes with lurid detail, but always with a pinch of humor, ridiculing any admiration of heroes or personality cult. Thus Simplicissimus has become one of the most powerful anti-war literary works of all times.

When were the books of the "Former Prophets" written? Who wrote them? Who are the editors that made these books the most important source; describing the continuous history of the Jewish People in their land, from the time of the conquest of the Land of Canaan through the destruction of the Holy Temple and the Babylonian exile? These questions are at the center of this book. The name of the book, "From Settlement to Exile" reflects the sequence of events described in the books of the Former Prophets. The book discusses whether a failure could have been predicted from the events described, or whether there were also successful and tranquil periods prior to the destruction that brought hope to the hearts of the people and realistic expectations of establishing a lasting kingdom. Although the impression is that the Former Prophets describe a continuous history that leads inevitably to destruction, research proves that the Former Prophets were written by a number of authors during successful periods as well as difficult ones. The text actually includes several chapters or individual verses that were added after the destruction in order to find an explanation for the disastrous destruction event.

The Exodus, the central event in the historiography of the Bible and in the collective memory of the biblical period, represents an historical watershed; it shapes the recounting of events both before and after it. In this book, the influence of the Exodus tradition on the ideological – literary shaping of the biblical historiography is investigated, with particular attention paid to such questions as: Why were the Israelites enslaved in Egypt? Why did the Exodus traditions take on such enormous dimensions in the Bible? How is this phenomenon related to the separatism promoted as ideal in the Hebrew Scriptures?

The book deals with the story of Dinah, told in Genesis 34, and with the wide range of relationships it forms with other biblical stories. This is important, since the story of Dinah was not sealed in the last verse of Genesis 34. Other stories, both in Genesis and other biblical books, shed light on our story, clarifying and enhancing its meanings from their own viewpoints. Moreover, the story of Dinah was not born ex nihilo. In telling his story, the narrator of Genesis 34 was guided by other biblical narratives, whose voices he kept hidden in between the lines. The present book seeks to locate the texts whose traces are found in the story of Dinah, as well as those which, conversely, bear its traces. In this way, we add a further layer to the study of intra-biblical exegesis and the exploration of intertextuality. More precisely, this work is part of the scholarly endeavor to outline the literary chronology of the Bible’s stories and the hidden links that connect them to each other; to determine how these linkages work and what motivated their creation; and to comprehend the world of beliefs and opinions that is mirrored in them.

The papers collected in this volume represent the proceedings of a May 2011 conference organized by the 2008–2011 research group on ‘The Interpretive Imagination: Connections between Religion and Art in Jewish Culture in Its Contexts’ at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Scholion Interdisciplinary Research Center for Jewish Studies—a center that owes its existence to the vision and the generosity of the Mandel Foundation. The four undersigned editors of this volume, all professors at the Hebrew University, were the senior members of the group, which also included five younger scholars: Dr. Yonatan Benarroch, Dr. Irina Chernetsky, Anat Danziger, Dr. Vered Madar, and Tehila Mishor. In its research and activities, the group attempted an integrated examination of the religious and the artistic, and of their aesthetic, experiential, and interpretive aspects—and the present volume exemplifies the work which was carried out during the years at Scholion. The subjects in this title: Singing with the Sirens: Probing the Boundaries of Interpretation Sabba-Yanuka and Enoch-Metatron as James Hillman’s Senex-Puer Archetype: a Post-Jungian Inquiry into a Zoharic Myth The Vision of Florence as a New Rome: Some Rhetorical and Visual Aspects Authority and Its Discontent in 17th Century Amsterdam Jewry: Fin-de-Siècle Visual Interpretations Communities of Voice at Times of Twilight: Real and Imagined Spaces of Sound among Central European Jews at the Opening and Closing of the Gates Religion on the Opera Stage: Source of Conflict, Possibility for Reconciliation Allegory, Excess, Stuttering: On the Reading of Kafka’s Writing Machine A Permanent Shadow: Ilse Aichinger and Franz Kafka ‘Deus ex Machina’ in the Modern Theatre: From Brecht’s Threepenny Opera to the ‘plumpes Denken’ of Walter Benjamin Listening and Exegesis in a Women’s Vocal Community Agnon’s Biblical Ethnographies: “Edo and Enam” and the Quest for the Ultimate Song

Contents: Zvi Garfunkel- The tectonics of the Dead Sea transform Mordechai Stein- Climate change in the Dead Sea basin and the evolution of human culture in Israel and the neighboring regions during the Holocene Avinoam Danin- Vegetation in the Dead Sea basin Yoseph Yechieli and Meir Abelson- Sink-holes on the Dead Sea shore Nir Moscovitch and Oren Bar-Yosef- The magnesium metal era – the future is light Shimon Moses- The Dead Sea – a natural site for therapy and health

Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995), is one of the greatest philosophers of our time. This title, which is a collection of essays written by experts on Levinas both in Israel and abroad, presents the main parts of his work: The philosophical writings, the Jewish writings, the Talmudic readings, present topics, and his controversial stances towards certain modern day streams or ideologies such as psychoanalysis. The articles in this book are based on an international conference which took place at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in May 2002 on the philosophy of Emanuel Levinas.

From Empathy to Denial is the first comprehensive study of the broad range of Arab responses to the Holocaust based on years of painstaking historical research. The book explores how Holocaust representations developed after the Second World War by analyzing themes, and case studies, spanning a period of almost seventy years. It shows how these perceptions evolved in the shadow of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Rabbi Judah Leib Alter of Ger, a famed nineteenth-century Hasidic master, wrote an influential collection of Hebrew homilies. But it seems that R. Judah Leib’s sermons were also transcribed by his students, some of whom recorded their teacher’s words in the original Yiddish rather than Hebrew translation. This monograph is based on a newly-discovered Yiddish manuscript of sixty pages. It presents a synoptic edition of the Yiddish text alongside the Hebrew version, thus enabling comparison of the witnesses and demonstrating the development of the various texts. The introduction uses this manuscript to explore broader historical and theoretical issues such as the relationship between written texts and oral culture, the development of written Yiddish, the nature and boundaries of translation, and the complex pathways of transmission from teachers to their students.

A man wanted a new house, with more and more rooms, for all his belongings. But then he discovered that he needed nothing but a single room and lots of good and friendly neighbors. By the beloved author Haya Shenhav and the award-winning illustrator Yirmi Pinkus.

"This is how I was lead to the idea of time. Here is where a surprise was waiting for me". With these terms Henri Bergson (1859-1941) describes the discovery all his cogitation grew out of: the "durée", the simple fact – that many deny – that "time lasts". In the intellectual landscape of the end of the 19th century, which was characterized by a huge leap in the development of the exact sciences and in the spreading of Kant's philosophy, Bergson's iteration sounded like defiance.

A sociological-historical study of the German Jews in Israel.

What is Philosophy of Halakhah? Can the Halakhah be understood philosophically? Is the Halakhah influenced by factors external to it? This book, New Streams in Philosophy of Halakhah points to new directions of research by outstanding scholars in this field. This book has four sections: delineating the field of inquiry; study of the role and function of philosophy in Halakhic discourse; formalism and realism in Halakhic interpretation; sociological, anthropological and gender orientated readings of the Halakhah. In these sections fundamental issues will be clarified including defining the discourse of philosophy of Halakhah, the diverse elements within Halakhah, and the contribution of the Halakhic philosopher to an understanding and clarification of the Halakhah and its significance. Also treated in this book is the issue, whether the Halakhah is characterized only by factors inherent in it or whether also by valuative and philosophical worlds outside of it. What is the weight of external considerations in the shaping of the Halakhah and its decision makers? Can the tools of Sociology and Anthropology enrich our understanding of the Halakhic process? In examining these questions the authors deal with the Philosophy of the Halakhah through critical but also normative lenses. This book lays before the readers the cutting edge of research in Philosophy of Halakhah, and it gives the reader a fascinating point of entry into philosophical-Halakhic discourse.

The Hebrew Bible is the cornerstone of Judaism and Jewish culture; as such, it also provides the foundation for the other two monotheistic religions, Christianity and Islam. It is a book that embodied numerous revolutions, the most prominent of which was the Monotheistic Revolution, the replacement of polytheism with the belief in one all-powerful God who both created the world and governs it. Among the other revolutionary ideas that are put forward by the Bible we find the establishment of the Sabbath, the granting of one city — Jerusalem — a monopoly over holiness, the opposition to human kingship, and the moral dimensions of prophecy, to name just a few. Over the centuries and millennia, these revolutionary ideas have continued to attract and inspire readers, believers, interpreters and artists.

AMILAT se honra en presentar el séptimo volumen de su serie Judaica Latinoamericana , que incluye una amplia selección de los trabajos presentados en la Sección América Latina del XV Congreso Mundial de Estudios Judaicos (Jerusalén 2009), por investigadores establecidos en las Américas e Israel, especializados en diversas disciplinas de las humanidades y las ciencias sociales. El volumen enfoca una variedad de temas pertenecientes a las experiencias históricas, sociales y culturales del judaísmo en América Latina, tanto respecto de lo que poseen en común como en cuanto a sus diferencias debidas a los diversos contextos nacionales. A ello se suman renovadoras propuestas metodológicas, necesarias en vista de fenómenos socio-culturales recientes originados en la globalización y el transnacionalismo, que se proyectan hacia el futuro de las investigaciones en el área.

This book seeks to re-examine the question of whether, indeed, Rav Kook's halakhic teachings lack originality and innovation; whether the two worlds of Rav Kook – the philosophical and the halakhic – are truly contradictory; whether those who maintain this position are correct in neglecting Rav Kook's halakhic heritage. The discussion here focuses on the nature of the philosophical and ideological considerations that find expression in his halakhic teachings. The type of considerations to be examined is called "meta-halakhic" or "extra-halakhic"; this term is defined in relation to the accepted conceptual framework and boundaries of halakha. Won the Wiler Prize from Bar Ilan University, The Faculty of Law 2006.

Facsimile Edition Volume two This book presents the sermons of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira, The Piaseczno Rebbe, which were delivered during the Holocaust years in the Warsaw Ghetto. The second volume is a facsimile edition, with the original manuscript on one side and the detailed line-by-line presentation of the text as the Rebbe corrected it. The second volume includes the words and passages that were deleted and is printed in 4 different colors which follow the proofs and changes that the Rebbe made in the text.

“ Comment peut-on être Persan ? ” demandaient les Parisiens à l’aimable héros de Montesquieu. “ Comment peut-on être écrivain, ‘’scripteur ‘’ juif en marge du judaïsme ? ” se demandent les auteurs qui ont participé au présent volume de Perspectives. La réponse n’est pas simple. Le judaïsme pour beaucoup de ces scripteurs n’est guère plus que traces (Zard) mais il déclenche un processus identitaire ou une quête des origines qui ne laisse pas l’écriture indemne. Mais qui sont ces scripteurs ? Comment, pour chacun d’entre eux, se situe le rapport au judaïsme ? Telles sont les questions auxquelles se sont efforcés de répondre les participants du colloque qui s’est tenu à Jérusalem (26-28 octobre 2004) sur les “Scripteurs en marge du judaïsme dans les grandes littératures européennes du XXe siècle “ et dont Perspectives 12 recueille quelques conférences marquantes.

What is Social Leadership? What makes a true leader? The book Social leaders in Israel focuses on life stories of a wide range of social leaders. The stories are based on interviews with social Israeli leaders and their personal stories. The book was written by students pursuing doctorate studies and research while also devoting their time to social agendas.The students are all fellows of the Hoffman Leadership and Responsibility program at the Hebrew University.

According to the conventional understanding, the ultimate goal of Zionism as a national political movement was the establishment of a nation-state. In his new book on the history of the Zionist political imagination from the beginning of the idea of modern Zionism to the establishment of the State of Israel, Dimitri Shomsky challenges a deterministic view by examining unknown writings by the founding fathers of Zionism and by re-examining the known sources, which were interpreted in a tendentious and ahistorical way in the classical literature on Zionism. The author reveals that the leaders of Zionism envisioned the realization of Jewish self-determination in the Land of Israel within a multinational framework. First, they envisioned an autonomous province in the multinational Ottoman Empire, and then - during the British Mandate - a multinational democracy. The book shows that the models of a Jewish state, which were established and developed by the founding fathers of the State of Israel, included recognition of a collective national existence of the Arabs of the Land of Israel. Such political patterns were not the property of marginal figures among Zionists (such as the "Brit Shalom" people), but on the contrary, were presented by the most mainstream Zionists: Yehuda Leib Pinsker, Benjamin Ze'ev Herzl, Ahad Ha'am, Ze'ev Jabotinsky and David Ben-Gurion. The book focuses on these five figures and presents them and their views in an innovative way, which is known to have an impact on contemporary Israeli discourse.

According to its Declaration of Independence, the State of Israel "will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex". However, the equality between men and women in Israel was not de facto. What did Israeli women have to say about that? The book presents views and opinions of Israeli women in the 1950s and the early 1960s about their roles and duties in the public and the domestic spheres, based on contemporary women's sections in the press and women's magazines. It shows what women said about women in the Israeli parliament (Knesset) and about Golda Meir; women's service in the Israeli Defense Force and the exclusion of women from the public sphere; motherhood and parenthood, woman's right to choose to have an abortion and women's struggle for peace; women's duties as housewives and the discrimination of women as employees. The book also uncovers a forgotten feminist journal, sheds light on a famous adoption story of a Yemenite baby and discusses a protest of female cadets in the Israeli Air Force flight course that was ignored and silenced for many years. The book unveils Israeli women's voices from the past, which show that in an era of many fateful decisions, Israeli women also made choices that affected their status in society. Readers might find these decisions relevant vis-à-vis women's status in Israeli society nowadays.

A Ramble in the Hive is an eco-philosophical text that deals with the relationship between humans and honeybees from the dawn of humanity to the present day, interlinking mythology, folklore, literature, art and science from different historical periods. A Ramble in the Hive works as both popular science and philosophy, combining a study of the history of beekeeping and its multitude of inventions, with a philosophical and poetic view of the human encounter with honeybees as reflected in the imagination of our culture. It suggests approaching the hive as an archetype of living mythology that works on our collective imagination. A Ramble in the Hive presents the planetary honeybee crisis as a fascinating window through which to observe wide-ranging ecological issues. How did the honeybee get such a lofty and critical role – holding responsibility for both the future of humanity and the earth? What do the bees tell us in their current state? This book is an attempt to answer these questions.

In 1980, the Italian publisher Einaudi wanted to publish a series of personal anthologies of its authors. Primo Levi quickly arose to the challenge and submitted La ricerca delle radici ( The Search for Roots ): thirty excerpts from thirty masterpieces of world literature, accompanied by thirty short introductions he wrote. Every such introduction is a brilliant commentary on the work, and a reflection of Primo Levi himself - as a kind of self-portrait, in which the painter produces his collage from materials created by others. These excepts - published for the first time in Hebrew - reveal some of the important ethical and aesthetic influences on Primo Levi and his work. Levi quotes from Job, Lucretius, Rabelais‏, Babel, Shalom Aleichem, de Saint-Exupéry and more, but also from Darwin's On Origin of Species and even from Practical Organic Chemistry. Thus, it is possible to trace his extensive and diverse, humanistic and scientific education, the roots from which his unique literary work grew.

When Franz Kafka died in 1924, his loyal friend Max Brod could not bring himself to fulfill Kafka’s last instruction: to burn his remaining manuscripts. Instead, Brod devoted his life to championing Kafka’s work, rescuing his legacy from both obscurity and physical destruction. Nearly a century later, an international legal battle erupted to determine which country could claim ownership: the Jewish state, where Kafka dreamed of living, or Germany, where Kafka’s three sisters perished in the Holocaust? Benjamin Balint offers a gripping account of the controversial trial in Israeli courts—brimming with dilemmas legal, ethical, and political—that determined the fate of Kafka’s manuscripts.

This beautiful volume is the fruit of almost 40 years of collecting by Vivienne Silver-Brody, one of Israel's few photography collectors. She has written and edited a book, which narrates the shared history of photography in a land that in the last century has seen development alongside war and destruction, and that remains divided and conflicted by the two peoples that call it home. The text is accompanied by some 200 exquisite photographs from Silver-Brody’s collection, and includes a special section inspired by the 1983 volume published by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Personal Choice: A Celebration of Twentieth-Century Photographs . In this section, Silver-Brody invited some 60 writers – photographers, scholars, artists, curators, collectors, lovers of photography and others with a special connection to the land – from different religions, national and political tendencies, to choose a single photograph from her collection and to write a short essay relating to it. The result is a fascinating selection of texts that contributes to the overall narrative in the book. This book could speak to a diversified readership; those interested in photography and its history or in the Middle East and Israel / Palestine, especially in light of the ongoing conflict and public debate surrounding it around the world, and in light of the unique voice that attempts to reach beyond politics and religion, and to present a photographic history of the Land of Israel as a shared place rather than as disputed territory. Translated by Daphna Levy View English edition

The New Arabic-Hebrew Dictionary is a dictionary of the Arabic language across the ages, with focus on the language of the spoken and written media. The dictionary also reflects the rich literary history of the Arabic language, of more than 1,400 years, including the Qur'an, ancient poetry, proverbs, the Hadith and jurisprudential literature, Adab literature and historical literature. Terms and expressions from the sphere of Islamic theology and jurisprudence, which were considered archaic 50 or 60 years ago, have come back into use following the rise of fundamentalist Islam in the 1970s, and this new dictionary provides translations and explanations for these terms as well. With over 44,000 entries, this dictionary is today the most comprehensive, up-to-date and reliable dictionary of contemporary Arabic. User-friendly: full vocalization of all Arabic and Hebrew entries. About 6,000 examples from Arabic literature of all eras and from the press clarify the use of words. Over 4,000 grammatical and historical notes. The New Arabic-Hebrew Dictionary is intended for university students and scholars, school pupils and teachers and anyone interested in the Arabic language. To the concise edition of The New Arabic-Hebrew Dictionary