Yad Vashem is far more than a remembrance institution. For decades, the Yad Vashem Historical Museum has been one of the principal sites where the Israeli narrative of the Holocaust has been shaped, defined, and transmitted to generations of visitors from Israel and around the world. But how did this narrative develop? What values, messages, and interpretations did the exhibition designers seek to convey to the public? And how has Holocaust memory changed over the years? Dr. Yohai Cohen examines the development of Yad Vashem’s historical exhibitions, drawing on extensive archival research and the discovery of rare materials, he analyzes how key themes in Holocaust memory have been shaped and presented. The book offers an original perspective on exhibitions as a symbolic, cultural, and political system that reflects transformations in historiography, national identity, and Israeli society’s relationship with its past, it introduces a new research tool for understanding how memorial institutions shape historical consciousness and influence the formation of collective identity. Horror on the Wall is a groundbreaking study that offers a fresh and thought-provoking interpretation of how the Holocaust is transformed from a historical event into a national narrative—and what this narrative reveal about Israeli society itself.

In the Middle Ages, as today, writing a book was difficult, and it was even harder to retract or amend things that had already been written and made public. Could an author ensure that the revisions made to their work would reach everyone who held a copy? In the book Postscript: Three Medieval Authors Correcting Their Own Books , the author examines the revisions made to their works by three medieval scholars—Rabbi Isaac Alfasi (the Rif), Rabbi Zedekiah of Rome, and Rabbi Hillel ben Eliakim—and the extent of their success in updating the text of their books across the entire Jewish diaspora. Based on all known manuscripts of the three works, the book investigates which copies preserve the revised version and which ones transcribe the initial text, which the author himself had already rejected and sought to replace.

Rabbi Joseph Rosen (1858–1936), known as "the Rogatchover," author of the Zaphnath Paaneah books of Lomdus, was a revered Talmudic genius, a rabbi of a Hasidic community, an original Halakhic authority, and one of the most colorful rabbinic figures in modern Europe. The Zaphnath Paaneah: Lomdus Meets Philosophy is the first academic study dedicated to his thought, and it deals with the fascinating interaction in his writings between Talmudic scholarship and Halakhic analysis (Lomdus) on the one hand, and ideas from philosophical and academic sources on the other. This interaction developed in his work largely through his engagement with Maimonides' Guide to the Perplexed and its commentators. In its scope, richness, systematic nature, and originality, this interaction is unprecedented in the history of rabbinic literature. Alongside the prominent influence of Aristotelian and Maimonidean philosophy, the Rogatchover's learned Halakhic thought engaged in direct dialogue with additional schools of thought and a broad spectrum of thinkers: the Mutakallimun, Averroes, Moses Narboni, Spinoza, and figures from the Haskalah movement – Isaac Satanow, Salomon Maimon, and Samuel David Luzzatto (Shadal). The Zaphnath Paaneah: Lomdus Meets Philosophy examines the diverse modes of affinity and discourse at the intersection of these two realms, revealing extraordinary ideas that emerge from this encounter.

The Decisive Decade (1939–1949) examines the encounter between the needs of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in the Land of Israel) and those of North African Jewry. It explores the implications of this encounter for the eventual end of the Jewish presence in North Africa and the period's influence on the patterns that characterized that conclusion. The book analyzes this era through the lenses of decolonization processes, French policy in North Africa, the functioning of Jewish leadership, and—above all—the ways in which North African Jews shaped their own world and future during this time. Topics discussed include: Muslim and French colonial societies and their attitudes toward immigration to the Land of Israel; stages of clandestine immigration ( Ha'apala ); early points of contact between North African Jews, Holocaust survivors, and the Yishuv society; the period's impact on decolonization; the protection of the Jewish population; the roots of the ethnic divide in the Land of Israel; and the shaping of the historical memory of this era.

Carnival and Canon examines the emergence and development of the Purim parody, a distinctive genre of Jewish literature that flourished from the Middle Ages onward. Created for the annual celebration of Purim, these humorous works transformed the language and forms of canonical Jewish texts, including the Talmud, the Hebrew Bible, liturgy, and prayer, into playful parodies centered on the festive customs of eating, drinking, and revelry. Situated at the intersection of the sacred and the secular, elite literary culture and popular humor, the genre offers a unique perspective on the cultural life of medieval and early modern European Jewry. The book focuses on the three most influential Purim parodies: Masekhet Purim by Kalonymus ben Kalonymus (1324–1328), and Megillat Setarim together with Sefer Ḥabakbuk by Rabbi Levi ben Gershom (Gersonides, 1332). First printed together in 1513, these works circulated widely in manuscript and print and inspired generations of later Purim parodies. Combining literary analysis with cultural history, the book explores the Jewish and non-Jewish intellectual contexts in which these texts were written, their role in Purim celebrations, and their reception over several centuries. It presents the first comprehensive historical study of a genre that illuminates the dynamic relationship between ritual, humor, and literary tradition.

They were ordinary people – citizens of Mandatory Israel – Jewish women, children and men who had traveled to visit Poland and with the German occupation were unable to return home. Most of them remained in Poland and became hostages, captured by Nazi Germany, who used them to exchange them for German Templars living in Israel. The Drowning Person Grabs at Straws follows their journeys, the actions taken to rescue them, the many efforts invested by various political elements, and the pressure exerted by the families in the country to return them. Ultimately, in December 1941 and November 1942, about 120 civilians – “uninvolved” – were returned to their homes in Israel, and upon their arrival, they gave testimonies about the fate of the Jews in Poland that shocked the Yishuv. Another hero of the book is the foreign passport. Immediately after the German occupation, Polish Jews believed that a foreign passport could save them. Demand increased in 1943 after the mass murder of the Jews. Those who survived lived under false identities or in hiding. For some, these were shaky solutions, and they hung their lives on foreign papers, mainly from Latin American countries, which were bought for a lot of money. The Germans lured and hunted them down, and concentrated them in a special camp in Bergen-Belsen. Thus, the Jews with foreign passports once again became hostages, until they were murdered. However, not all of them were murdered. Out of 2,500 people, a group of 275 Jews who held British-Eretz Israel passports, and dozens more citizens of the United States and South America, arrived on Liberation Day and were saved. The book won the "Am Ve'olam" prize in the name of the late Bella and Shlomo Bartal for an outstanding book in history.

The Living Symbol explores one of the Zohar’s most distinctive literary and theological features: the symbolic connection between its stories and its teachings about the divine realm. A young woman holding a lamp in a remote inn, travelers crossing dark mountain ranges, a doe crying out in distress, an old man emerging from the desert, all become symbols of processes unfolding within the hidden life of God. The lamp signifies divine love, the doe the suffering Shekhinah, the mountains divine judgment, and the desert the realm of metaphysical evil. Focusing on a wide range of Zoharic narratives, this book examines how everyday realities are transformed into symbols of the divine and how earthly stories intertwine with mystical interpretation. Through close readings of the Zohar’s tales, it reveals the intricate ways in which narrative and theosophy are woven together, linking the human world and the divine, the visible and the hidden. At the heart of the study stands the kabbalistic symbol. The book argues that the symbolic relationship between story and exposition reflects fundamental Zoharic conceptions of reality and offers a fresh perspective on one of the Zohar’s most important literary and religious innovations.

Korot publishes original articles related to medical history covering medicine in Jewish and Hebrew sources, the history of Jewish physicians, medicine in Palestine and Israel and medicine during the Nazi era. There are shorter historical notes on these topics, book reviews and comments on important developments in medical history. Articles are mainly in English but with a significant Hebrew section.

De Nobilitate et Praecellentia Foeminei Sexus is a revolutionary proto-feminist treatise written by Cornelius Agrippa in 1509. The book boldly argues that women are morally, spiritually, and physically superior to men. Reinterpreting biblical stories, Agrippa notes that Eve was created in Paradise from refined substance, unlike Adam who was made from crude dust. He systematically attacks historical misogyny rooted in Roman law and theology, blaming women's subjection on patriarchal tyranny and restricted education. By emphasizing that God granted both sexes identical souls, this radical Renaissance declamation delivered a profound critique of male authority and gender inequality.

Asher Shkedi's book Words of Meaning , first published in 2003, immediately took a prominent place on the bookshelves of researchers and students in the social and behavioral sciences. To this day, it is a "textbook" in many courses at academic institutions, and it was even adopted as a guide for a research course at the Open University. Over the years, the book has been reprinted many times and has even been published in English. More Words of meaning adds many issues not discussed in previous editions, most notably guidance on using qualitative methodology to build theory grounded in data. Readers will also find extensive reference to issues of research quality, with an emphasis on the boundary between research and non-research. This is the most comprehensive book in Hebrew on qualitative research. The book includes theoretical and practical guidance for conducting qualitative research using various approaches and research types. It is accompanied by diagrams that clarify the research processes, and it includes examples from many studies. In recent years, studies that combine quantitative and qualitative methodologies have become very popular and are often conducted by researchers who define themselves as quantitative researchers. Conducting these studies requires great methodological rigor. The book is therefore also aimed at the general public who are interested, who have not yet been exposed to qualitative research and identify research with statistics and a large number of subjects, and are unaware of the inherent quality of qualitative studies, even though the population of subjects in them is smaller.

Over the past few decades, South Korea has astonished the world with its remarkable transformation. From one of the world's poorest countries, it has emerged as a global economic power, a vibrant democracy, and a leading force in technology, innovation, and popular culture. Korea: Between Tradition and Innovation takes readers on a fascinating journey through the history, society, and culture of the Korean Peninsula. From the legendary founding of Korea in 2333 BCE and the rise of its royal dynasties to the Japanese colonial period, the division of the peninsula, and the contrasting paths of North and South Korea, the book provides a comprehensive perspective. Focusing primarily on South Korea, it explores the country's transition from military rule to democracy and from postwar poverty to global prominence. The book also examines the enduring influence of Korean religions and philosophies, social changes, education, and economic development, alongside the challenges of modernization and globalization. The book also focuses on the global phenomenon of the Korean Wave (Hallyu), highlighting the worldwide impact of K-pop, cinema, television dramas, cuisine, and cosmetics. This book is an essential guide for students, scholars, business professionals, diplomats, travelers, and anyone seeking a deeper understanding of Korea's unique journey from tradition to innovation.

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 a double volume (77-78). 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.

The Roman philosopher Seneca wrote the treatise on anger for his brother Novatus, who was not a philosopher but a statesman. The brother, governor of the province of Asia during the time of Emperor Nero, asked his philosopher brother to help him with practical advice on how to govern better and improve his relationship with his subjects, and in particular how to moderate and restrain anger, a disturbing emotion and sometimes even frightening in its outbursts. Seneca, as is evident from the treatise he wrote, thought that the best way was to prevent the outbreak of anger and the impulse that always accompanies it – to take revenge. The work sheds new light on the universal human emotion that dominates people of all times and generations, describes anger and its consequences, offers suggestions for controlling this harmful emotion with reason, and gives advice for preventing circumstances that may arouse anger and the urge for revenge that stems from it. To illustrate his points, Seneca brings a selection of historical events about the behavior of rulers who can take revenge on their subjects as they please, and about the subjects' methods of survival.

Trusting the Process offers a fresh approach for anyone working or dealing with older individuals by employing new and exciting custom methodologies in psychodrama, particularly for clients with Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia. This book offers a general explanation of the use of psychodrama by giving an overview of the therapeutic use of drama in all its forms, clearly explaining the concepts and methods and describing the rationale of every intervention while also following a group over six years with precious documentation of the group process. It addresses the main concerns of those who suffer from dementia - adjusting to a new and changing level of functioning, fostering a sense of belonging, preserving their innate dignity and redefining relationships and roles. This practical guide will help therapists, social-workers, family and other care-givers, teachers and medical professionals working with older clients seeking comfort from the loneliness of old-age and dementia.

In this comprehensive and unique study, Ofer Israeli focuses on six case studies from the Middle East and analyzes the unexpected and unintended consequences of interventions in this region by the United States, Britain, and other Western powers during the Cold War. From his research, he develops a complex causal mechanism, or applied tool, that states can employ when designing and implementing foreign policy - with the aim of reducing the number of conflicts and wars in the world, and especially in the Middle East. In doing so, the book examines the complex effects of international relations concerning a variety of indirect results - intended and unintended - of deliberate human action. These effects may be desirable or undesirable, overt or covert, expected or surprising, predictable but not actually observed, or observed but at the same time neglected or downplayed.

The story of the migration of German Jews between the two world wars is a multifaceted story that spans different routes and destinations: to the United States, the Land of Israel, Britain, and other places in the world. The book explores this story from a comparative perspective and from the perspective of the immigrants themselves. In this way, the envelope that defines the migration of Jews from Germany as a movement of purely persecuted refugees, as passive objects swept along in the course of history, is unraveled. The book seeks to examine the decisions of migration, its timing, and its destinations, and to illuminate the similarities and differences in the identities of the immigrants at different times and destinations. To this end, it traces the course of immigration from the moment the decision to emigrate was made, the choice of timing and destination, the obstacles and opportunities, to the patterns of adaptation in the destination countries and the role played by immigrant groups in the host countries. This historical perspective places the question of whether the immigration of German Jews created a distinct German Jewish diaspora or whether it marked the end of the German chapter in Jewish history at the center.

In this issue we sought to give expression to the historical dimensions of the philosophical debate on the concept of "identity" as well as to discuss philosophical questions about identity related to this time: What is the place of "selfhood" in an era of rapid change? What is the relationship between personal identity and the consciousness of identity? What is the relationship between psychoanalytic conceptions of identity and the decomposition of the concept of identity in postmodern thought? What role should personal, national, and religious identity play in a multicultural and global world? How should the place of individuation processes – private, social, technological, and environmental – in the establishment of identity be understood? And can philosophical identities be characterized in the struggle for peace, justice, and human rights?

The Politics is a foundational work of Greek philosophy and a cornerstone of Western political thought. It is an investigation into the nature of the polis (the city-state), which Aristotle defines as a partnership of a certain kind among similar people for the sake of the best attainable life. In this inquiry, Aristotle seeks to determine how a virtuous and flourishing city is constructed and sustained. In Books VII–VIII - presented here for the first time in Hebrew - Aristotle depicts a vivid portrait of the ideal Greek city, and formulates a guide for the establishment of a flourishing city.

Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe is a topic laced by prejudice on one hand and apologetics on the other. Beginning in the Middle Ages, Jews were often portrayed as criminals driven by greed. While these accusations were, for the most part, unfounded, in other cases criminal accusations against Jews were not altogether baseless. Drawing on a variety of legal, liturgical, literary, and archival sources, Ephraim Shoham-Steiner examines the reasons for the involvement in crime, the social profile of Jews who performed crimes, and the ways and mechanisms employed by the legal and communal body to deal with Jewish criminals and with crimes committed by Jews. A society's attitude toward individuals identified as criminals - by others or themselves - can serve as a window into that society's mores and provide insight into how transgressors understood themselves and society's attitudes toward them.

Within the Babylonian Talmud are dozens of stories depicting sharp confrontations between the Amoraim, the Talmudic sages. These narratives portray the charged relationships among the sages, the emergence of conflict, and the profound emotional harm that results from it. Why do conflicts among the creators of Talmudic literature occupy such a central literary place? This book examines these stories as a distinct literary corpus. The analysis shows that the conflicts consistently center on one domain: injury to personal honor. They are also marked by a characteristic plot structure, in which conflict develops unintentionally and escalates uncontrollably, leading to a rupture between the characters. Using tools from narrative theory and comparative poetics, the book explores how these stories operate. They draw the reader into a web of misunderstandings and communicative failures, making simple moral judgment difficult. Instead, they direct attention to the inner and interpersonal worlds of the characters, and to the literary construction of the Talmudic study house as a space of mutual dependence and identity formation.

For thousands of years, people pictured the sky as a giant dome surrounding the Earth. The stars were thought to be fixed to this dome, which slowly turned above us, much like the motion of the Sun, the Moon and the planets. This book tells the story of the scientific revolution that changed that picture forever—the moment humanity realized that the motions we see in the sky are only apparent motions, created by the Earth spinning on its axis and traveling around the Sun. The “celestial dome,” it turned out, was an illusion. It is the Earth—and the heavens—that move. This revolution began with Nicolaus Copernicus’s book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres , published in 1543, just as the author was nearing the end of his life. The bold ideas in that book sent shockwaves through the scientific world and helped lay the foundations of modern physics. They also transformed the way people thought about nature—and about humanity’s place in the universe. This book follows the dramatic story of the Copernican Revolution and the long struggle to convince the world of its truth, from Galileo’s telescopic discoveries—made with a telescope he built himself—to the fierce scientific and religious debates that followed. The Copernican Revolution opened the door to an even bigger idea: The universe is vast, stretching far beyond our solar system. The “fixed stars,” we learned, are actually distant suns, so far away that they appear as tiny points of light. From there, it was only natural to wonder whether some of those stars might have planets of their own. At the end of the twentieth century—more than 400 years after Copernicus—astronomers finally discovered that planets are everywhere, orbiting stars across the galaxy. And who knows—perhaps some of those distant worlds may even host life.

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: Anat Tzur Mahalel | "THE STILL-TENDER MEMORY OF CHILDHOOD": SIGMUND FREUD AND WALTER BENJAMIN ON IMAGES OF CHILDHOOD Orit Yushinksy | THE ETHICS OF MEMORY AND FORGETTING Merav Roth | LIVING AFTER DEATH: FROM MELANCHOLIC DEADLOCK TO SYMBOLIC CONTINUITY Yael Khenin | CONTAINMENT CREATED THROUGH SPIRAL MOTION: THE COMPLEX INTERACTION BETWEEN EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL REALITY IN TIMES OF WAR, LOSS AND TURMOIL Nilly Szor | INSCRIBING PAIN: THE PHENOMENON OF OCTOBER 7 TATTOOS AS AN EXPRESSION OF PERSONAL AND COLLECTIVE TRAUMA Michal Bat Or | PSYCHOANALYTIC THOUGHTS ON WRAPPING AS A PSYCHIC MOVEMENT IN ART AND ART THERAPY IN THE CONTEXT OF COLLECTIVE TRAUMA Basmat Klein | "MEMORY FREEZE-FRAMES": ON PHOTOGRAPHY AND PSYCHIC PROCESSING Tammuz Aflalo | THE HOME NESTING METAPHOR: PHANTASY, THE UNCANNY, AND THE PSYCHIC POSITION Shai Levinger and Nurit Perl | REFLECTIONS ON TRANSFORMATIVE PROCESSES OF THE SELF IN PSYCHOANALYTICALLY-ORIENTED MUSIC THERAPY Alon Roe | THE ROLE OF MOVEMENT IN ESTABLISHING THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL IN FREUD

At the heart of this book’s ten chapters stands the rich, multifaceted figure of the mother. Are the Jewish mother and the Israeli mother one and the same, or does each have her own distinct identity? What are the enduring and evolving hallmarks of this maternal figure, and how are they reflected in songs in Hebrew and Yiddish? This is a guided journey through the fascinating, dizzying transformations of beloved and half-forgotten songs and melodies. The book's close readings bring these songs to life, offering a window into the worlds of their creators and shedding light on the events and processes that have shaped the Jewish people and Israeli society across the generations. Brimming with information, insights, and delightful curiosities, and accompanied by dozens of illustrations, this book is the fruit of meticulous research, written in clear, fluid, and utterly engaging prose. It is a book every mother will want to read, and that every son and daughter will want to give her as a gift of love.

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 1925, teacher David Idelson shared a pivotal insight with his colleague Yehuda Polani, reflecting on their educational endeavors in Tel Aviv: 'We were the novelty!' Both had migrated to Jerusalem from Germany in 1905 and were united by a vision for innovative Jewish education, inspired by cutting-edge Central European pedagogical methods. This journey from theory to practice reached its peak in 1922 with the founding of a distinctive school in Tel Aviv, promoting autonomy for teachers and child-led learning. The Children Community School stands as one of four key studies in this book, examining significant themes in the educational discourse in pre-state Israel and the formation of Hebrew education. The work delves into important milestones in the history of Hebrew education spanning more than half a century: the revival of the Hebrew language; building Hebrew teacher training; pedagogical innovation and its relationship with political ideologies; and the role of Eros in education. This historical perspective offers valuable insights, pertinent to ongoing educational debates.

Learning by inquiry is the search for answers through questions, as the pupil is active in acquiring knowledge himself, and he is active in his own understanding and in the construction of his knowledge. Teaching and learning through inquiry and the difficulties involved with implementing this inquiry are discussed in this work. The writers, who are pioneering Israeli researchers also in the international frame, illustrate theoretical and practical aspects of learning and teaching by inquiry; they present educational experiments and bring the latest research.

The Hope of Enlightenment presents for the first time in Hebrew a comprehensive analysis of the thought of Jürgen Habermas. A philosopher, social critic, and public intellectual, Habermas is an ardent but hardly a dogmatic defender on the Enlightenment. He has thus has contributed a distinctive perspective in the ongoing discourse on modernity. To illuminate the far-reaching significance of this contribution – and its challenges to both Israeli and modern society in general -- Matan Oram examines Habermas's critical thought through the prism of political philosophy in the broad context of the crisis of modernity. By focusing on the dialectical relationship between 'rationalism' and 'liberalism' in Habermas’s thought, the book traces his theoretical project as it has evolved throughout his vast corpus of writings, and explores its philosophical and intellectual origins.

Two distinct theories, each developed by an important theoretician in the field of psychoanalysis, constitute the theoretical starting point of this book. Donald Winnicott described the dialectic between two modalities of experience, the subjective and the objective, as creating a potential space. Wilfred Bion, from a totally different standpoint, considered the possible effects of destructive relations between an emergent aspect and a continuous aspect of human very being, believing that the interaction between them was central to the existence of a healthy and dynamic self. Bion thus assumed not only the simultaneous existence of two forms of perception, but also the existence of dynamic relationships between them. The aim of this book is to go one stage beyond these theories, and to describe the specific significance of different types of interaction between the two aspects of the self, as defined by Bion, by examining the influence of the integration between them on Winnicott’s potential space. For this purpose I expand Bion’s definition of these two elements: The term ‘emergent self’ embraces that aspect of the self which experiences the world of objects as constantly changing, discontinuous, impossible to grasp and explain, and not cumulative in terms of past and future or cause and effect. As against this, the term ‘continuous self’ embraces that aspect of the self which is responsible for the experience of continuity, for the ability to make deductions, and for the ability to remember and thereby to accumulate objects in terms of the laws of common reality: causality, time and space. In this context I show that every mental event, whether it is located in consciousness or in the unconscious, in a dream or in memory, contains these two modalities. Every mental event has an emergent aspect – which marks it as a unique, private event, inexplicable and unforeseeable – as well as a continuous aspect that simultaneously locates that same event as part of a sequence of causality and memory. The nature of the interaction between the emergent and the continuous aspects determines the possible degree of integration between them, which creates what I designate as the ‘lyrical dimension of potential space’: the dimension which transforms human mind from a flat expanse to a three-dimensional space. The manner in which the lyrical dimension of mental space makes it possible to extract the a priori potential from within the boundaries of actual existence is described as explaining the human capacity to mourn, to know and to love. The book analyzes several major literary works, such as T.S Eliot’s “Four Quartets”, Camus’ “Myth of Sisyphe”, as well as Israeli writers (H.N. Bialik, Amos Oz, A.B. Yohoshua), that either describe or else enact different variations on the theme of the lyrical dimension.

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 first attempt is made here to portray this folklore genre in Yiddish lexicography. The 200 blessings and around 450 curses included in this dictionary are arranged alphabetically. The Yiddish entries are accompanied by their equivalent in Hebrew, Russian and English. Also added are literal translations (in Hebrew and English), for readers whose knowledge of the Yiddish language is at a minimum, but who would still like to know the actual ideas and images behind the Yiddish expressions. The dictionary is illustrated by amusing drawings. Also included is an introductory essay in Yiddish, Hebrew, English and Russian on the blessings and curses – a subject almost never researched until now. This genre of Yiddish folklore is evidence of the fertile imagination of the Yiddish speaker and their keen sense of humor, and will be eagerly welcomed by specialists and Yiddish lovers around the world. “May you grow like an onion with your head in the ground!” Or, as it goes in the original Yiddish: “Zolst vaksn vi a tzibele mitn kop in dr’erd!” That’s just one of the colorful curses to be found in the new book, Let’s Hear Only Good News: Yiddish Blessings and Curses, by Dr. Josef Guri of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Among the blessings is the familiar, “Foon dein moil in gotz oieren” – “From your mouth to God’s ears,” an expression said in reply to a good wish. All told, there are 200 blessings and 450 curses in this folkloric work, which is illustrated with amusing drawings. The items are listed alphabetically in Yiddish, with the equivalent expressions in English, Hebrew and Russian. Indexes are provided in the translated languages according to alphabetical listing and by themes. This is the seventh lexicographical work by Dr. Guri, of the university’s Department of Russian and Slavic Studies. His other works include Yiddish idiomatic expressions and proverbs. Dr. Guri says that his latest work is the culmination of three years of work and is the first attempt to assemble and describe blessings and curses (or good and bad wishes) as a genre of Yiddish folklore. “This genre is highly developed in Yiddish and is richer and more variegated than similar expressions in the folklore of many other peoples,” says Dr. Guri. He acknowledges, however, that his book is by no means an exhaustive list of such blessings and curses since Yiddish has been spoken in many parts of the world, with local variations, and new expressions are still being coined. Among many peoples, curses are characterized by the use of foul language (swear words). Among the Yiddish-speaking Jewish Eastern European population, however, curses took the form of often humorous maledictions. Yiddish speakers, continue Guri, are accustomed to witty remarks and do not become overwrought when someone hurls an expressive curse at them. As the Yiddish proverb says, “Fun a kloleh shtarbt men nit,” or “Curses do not kill.” At the same time, neither does a blessing create a new reality, adds Guri. Josef Guri – a self-described “Yiddish addict” -- immigrated to Israel from Lithuania in 1957. After eight years of work compiling the Great Yiddish Dictionary, he began work on a series of dictionaries compiling various forms of expression in Yiddish, including proverbs and idioms. Dr. Guri points out that his latest book is intended not only for Yiddish lovers but also for those learning the language, for translators from Yiddish and for those interested in folklore.

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.

Ethical dilemmas faced by teachers and the need to evaluate them with critical tools were the starting point of this study, which is based on stories collected in hundreds of interviews with educators from different sectors of Israeli society. Teachers and school principals recount how complicated it is to express in their work a variety of values and commitments, with pressure coming from different directions. Many educators are unhappy with the results of their work, but nevertheless keep ethical dilemmas to themselves, without consulting anyone.

This book focuses on a cycle of some thirty “praise” stories ( Shvachim ) whose heroes are Rabbi Shmuel the Pious and his son, the famous Rabbi Judah the Pious (died 1217; author of Sefer Hasidim ) – the two main figures of the medieval mystical circle known as Hasidut Ashkenaz. The narrative cycle in praise of these luminaries portrays them as extremely virtuous, as mystics with supernatural knowledge, and as masters of magical practices ( ba’alay shem ). Originating orally in Yiddish, these stories were first written down in Hebrew, the sacred language, and then translated “back” into Yiddish – the more widely understood language of the Ashkenazic community. The book presents all versions of these “praise” narratives, extant in manuscripts and print, both in Hebrew and Yiddish, side by side. A thorough introduction traces the growth of this narrative treasure from its embryonic oral beginnings to its fully developed bilingual written manifestations. A detailed analysis of individual stories sheds light on the cultural mentality of medieval Jewry in general and of Ashkenazic Jewry in particular.

"Criticism of Modern Secular Culture" discusses the ethical, social, national-political humanistic and religious foundations of modern and post-modern secular culture, especially amongst the Jewish People and in the State of Israel. The topics discussed are from a philosophical-historical perspective that relates directly to the present. The book defines the basic values of Western Humanism from a Jewish point of view, and analyses the problems of their implementation. It evaluates the achievements and the tragic failures of secular modernism which became factually anti-humanistic.

Remarks added by Chaim Wirszubski

Written in Arabic in the first half of the ninth century, Twenty Chapters is the first medieval Jewish philosophical work, and had a major influence on the development of Jewish theological and philosophical thought. Dawūd al-Muqammaṣ, a Jewish convert to Christianity, who wrote this theological Summa after his return to Judaism, also authored the first Judeo-Arabic Bible commentaries, and some of the earliest Judeo-Arabic polemical works. The annotated Hebrew translation of this pioneering work, published here for the first time, presents al-Muqammaṣ in his intellectual and historical context and throws light on his Jewish, Muslim and Christian background.

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

Therapeutics and Salvation: Freud and Schelling on Freedom proposes a new conceptual perspective on the history of the philosophy of freedom. The book focuses on Sigmund Freud’s theory of freedom, and its fundamental, yet uncharted, connection with the groundbreaking philosophy of the unconscious of F.W.J Schelling. The analysis radically challenges conventional liberal and rationalistic conceptions of freedom in psychoanalysis. The main argument of the book is that Freud formulated his theory of human nature with Schelling’s basic philosophical architecture, in particular Schelling’s concept of freedom, but, at the same time, subverted Schelling’s search for a new theology at the end of the latter's philosophical career. The detailed comparison of Freud’s work with the philosophy of Schelling backtracks a momentous shift from Schelling’s late theo-philosophy, at the endpoint of German Idealism, to the secular system of Freud, in which human reality ousted godly revelation and therapeutics replaced divine salvation. By delineating the move from Schelling’s God-subject relations to Freud’s human-subject relations, the book offers a new perspective on the historical evolution of German Idealism into modern secular thought.

The book deals with Martin Buber's contribution to Western thought in the new era. Its purpose is to introduce his thought, its sources and essence. From the historical perspective formed with the passing of time, and based on the knowledge accumulated since, the book presents the Archemedean point of his study.

The selection of articles in this volume provides a discussion on five fields from Martin Buber's thought: the Arab question, which Buber defined as a Jewish problem; the kibbutz within Israeli society; education, which Buber defined as a dialogue; psychotherapy; and the universal values of Judaism.

Identity and Its Discontents is an intellectual, gothic journey, which explores and interprets for the readers the personal story and thought of fourteen "marginal Jews", Jewish intellectuals from a variety of disciplines who lived in Europe from the end of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century. Jacob Golomb does a good job of describing the twisted Jewish-European identity of these spiritual giants in the face of the fractured European humanist ideal. The book is structured as a fabric created from the intersecting stories of key thinkers who left a singular intellectual mark on the twentieth century and the shaping of Jewish consciousness in it - from Kafka to Freud, from Bruno Schulz to Gensin, from Ahad Ha'am to Berdichevsky, from Herzl and Nordau to Martin Buber and Zeev Jabotinsky, and from Stefan Zweig to Primo Levi. The original key that Golomb offers to understanding the mechanisms of the identity construction of the "fringe Jews" is the attitude of these thinkers to the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, and the ways in which this illuminates the question of identity politics and the internal struggle in modern Judaism between nationalism and universal humanism. Identity in Discomfort is the fruit of the author's many years of important research work on Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and their acception in Hebrew literature and thought. Prof. Hagi Kenaan

Emile , the greatest philosophical essay of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is considered a masterpiece not only in educational thought but also social and political philosophy.

The basic assumption in the studies presented in this book is that you can reveal teachers thoughts about learning processes by watching them teach. Therefore, these studies are based on observing lessons and practice sessions.

The Western musical tradition has produced not only music, but also countless writings about music that remain in continuous—and enormously influential—dialogue with their subject. With sweeping scope and philosophical depth, A Language of Its Own traces the past millennium of this ongoing exchange. Ruth Katz argues that the indispensable relationship between intellectual production and musical creation gave rise to the Western conception of music. This evolving and sometimes conflicted process, in turn, shaped the art form itself. As ideas entered music from the contexts in which it existed, its internal language developed in tandem with shifts in intellectual and social history. Katz explores how this infrastructure allowed music to explain itself from within, creating a self-referential and rational foundation that has begun to erode in recent years. A magisterial exploration of a frequently overlooked intersection of Western art and philosophy, A Language of Its Own restores music to its rightful place in the history of ideas.

Presented here is a collection of songs, complete with the music, the words in Yiddish and in transliteration into Latin characters, and translations or summaries in English and Hebrew. A comprehensive and lyrical introduction by Abba Kovner, opens the Anthology. Kovner traces the sources of Yiddish song, recreates the pre-war East European Jewish world in which the songs are rooted, and fuses memory with history to make the material live.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is described by many as a paradoxical philosopher. He often seems to be asserting both sides of a contradiction. His teaching has been a source of inspiration for various opposing and even antagonistic political movements and doctrines: He is considered to be one of the first thinkers of modern democracy, and an apostle of totalitarianism. He is the father of "Natural Education", but his thoughts might sound as a program for "Social Engineering" of human beings. He is a romantic, longing to simple life within nature, but again, he is a loyal son of the bourgeois civilization of his era. Rousseau's Paradoxical character is also reveled in his account of "Progress". It seems that he is saying to contradictionary things about this notion. On the one hand, it appears that, according to Rousseau, mankind can realize freedom only through a process of historical progress. On the other: that progress has enslaved men and brought disaster upon them. These paradoxes have deceived many of Rousseau's readers and interpreters, who chose to emphasize one side of Rousseau at the expanse of the opposite. The book "Rousseau: Progress as a trap" strive to avoid this mistake. It shows that the greatness of Rousseau's philosophy lies precisely in its dialectical character. Rousseau is indeed a Severe critic of progress, but his critique is not merely an "external" and purely-negative one: He is a philosopher of the enlightenment, and accepts the principles of enlightenment (in fact, he is one of the formulators of such principles). On behalf of these principles he criticizes enlightenment itself. Rousseau's decree, that progress has enslaved mankind, gets its critical substance only if one presumes, as did Rousseau, that progress should emancipate mankind. The philosophers of the enlightenment celebrated progress. In his optimistic epoch, and without denying the credo of enlightenment, Rousseau pointed out a dark and dangerous character of human progress. This book shows the Rousseau's dialectical, or ambivalent approach to progress anticipates important currents in 20th century philosophy and critical theory. Due to this approach, Rousseau's philosophy is perhaps more relevant today than it was during his lifetime.

This book is the most comprehensive and complex study of reading that has taken place in Israel.

In the 1880s, Warsaw was a hub for Jewish writers and cultural agents from across the Russian Empire and outside it. In just two generations, it became the most dynamic and prolific center for Hebrew and Yiddish literature and journalism. Writers active in Warsaw not only enriched Jewish culture but also played an active role in Jewish life in Poland, facing a variety of everyday challenges. The main manifestation of literary life was the Union of Jewish Writers and Journalists, a socially and culturally significant institution. It reflected the ever-changing facets of the Jewish literary environment in Warsaw. This book reveals a variety of sources pertaining to this vibrant life in the years 1918-1939, as well as the years of ghetto and destruction, 1939-1942. Different historical and social aspects of this period in Jewish history are examined vis-à-vis these and other sources.

Nietzsche is not ordinarily considered a philosopher of law, and despite the voluminous literature on almost every other aspect of his thought, little has been written about his reflections on the role of law in the social, intellectual, and personal spheres. Yet careful reading of his works reveals a significant body of critical reflection on socio-jurisprudential questions regarding the nature of law, obedience to the law, the criminal mindset, punishment, and more. The book presents for the first time, a comprehensive collection of aphorisms gathered from the entire Nietzschean corpus that explicitly or implicitly addresses the subject of law, arranged thematically, along with contextualization, annotation, and commentary. The book contains six chapters - The Self in the Presence of Law, The Criminal: A Profile, Causation, Action, Free Will, Punishment, Rights and Obligations, Religion and State. It thus provides a panoramic view of Nietzsche’s critical discourse on law and legal culture.

"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.

In this book, written in the aftermath of the Second World War, Heidegger deals mainly with the question of the meaning of human existence. He rejects the humanist traditional thinking on the essence of the human, and instead reinterprets human existence in terms of directedness toward Being. By doing so, he also introduces his opinions on language, history and ethics.

In the 1940s, Erwin Schrödinger attempted to tackle the eternal question "What is Life?" from the perspective of the "naïve physicist." The result is this short book, which has influenced generations of scientists, sparked much controversy and become a classic. What Is Life? appears in Hebrew for the first time, accompanied by an epilogue by Prof. Avshalom Elitzur, who demonstrates to what extent Schrödinger's insights are relevant eighty years after the first publication of the essay.

Bearing Witness to the Witness examines the different methods of testimony given by trauma victims and the ways in which these can enrich or undermine the ability of the reader to witness them. Years of listening to both direct and indirect testimonies on trauma have lead Dana Amir to identify four modes of witnessing trauma: The “metaphoric mode”, the “metonymic mode,” the “excessive mode”, and the “Muselmann mode.” The author thus demonstrates the importance of testimony in understanding the nature of trauma, and therefore how to respond to trauma more generally in a clinical psychoanalytic setting. In order to follow these four modes of interaction with the traumatic memory, the various chapters of the book present a close reading of three genres of traumatic witnessing: Literary accounts by Holocaust survivors, memoirs (situated between autobiographic recollection and fiction) and ‘raw’ testimonies given by Holocaust survivors. Since every traumatic testimonial narrative contains a combination of all four modes with various shifts between them, it is of crucial importance to identify the singular combination of modes that characterize each traumatic narrative, focusing on the specific areas within which a shift occurs from one mode to another. Such a focus is extremely important, as illustrated and analysed throughout this book, to the rehabilitation of the psychic metabolic system which conditions the digestion of traumatic materials, allowing a metaphoric working through of traumatic zones that were so far only accessible to repetition and evacuation.

An exorcism which took place in 1696 in Nikolsburg, Moravia (today Mikulov, Czech Republic) is the focus of this book. The description of this grandiose magic event reached us in two different versions: one well-known, in Hebrew became a model for this folk-genre in the 18th century; the other in Yiddish, remained unknown until now and is published here in full for the first time .The analysis includes a thorough comparison between these two competing descriptions, the identification of the participants – with special emphasis on their Sabbatean background and connections, as well as an identification of the specific ‘manual for exorcism’ used in this event (also published here in full, along other esoteric manuals of its kind). Through a thorough examination of the paradigmatic exorcism which took place in Moravia in 1696 and of its deep influence on the exorcism tales of the following generations, this book sheds new light on the central role magic in general and exorcism in particular played in the rich and multi-faceted cultural life of Ashkenazic Jews in the early modern period.

This first-of-its-kind book deals with education policy and administration, and sociology in the context of entrepreneurship in the education field as a new phenomenon. The book introduces recent empirical studies in the field, focusing on the Israeli education system, which examines the key issues in the field of entrepreneurship in education. The book creates a systematic and theory-based discourse on entrepreneurship in the education system, presenting a clear empirical context for the research fields surrounding the work of schools.

Homer's Odyssey is a grand epic poem of voyage and adventure. It recounts Odysseus' return to his native island of Ithaca after twenty years of war and wandering. We also encounter his son Telemachus, who has just come of age, as well as his wife, Penelope, sorrowful for her absent husband yet cunningly avoiding her boisterous and arrogant suitors. Having overcome the man-eating Cyclops Polyphemos, the bewitching Circe and the harrowing phantoms of the Underworld, as well as other perils, Odysseus finally arrives in Ithaca to reclaim his kingdom. Yet the Odyssey is not merely a tale of high adventure and a hero's triumphant return, it is also a story of man's inner confrontations and his encounter with the vicissitudes of fate. As with Arouetty's previous translation of the Iliad , the new prose translation of the Odyssey aims at precision and clarity. It strictly adheres to the Greek original, attempting to retain its nobility of language and style.

The first comprehensive academic study of the architectural planning of the kibbutzim and the moshavim, the utopian agricultural settlements that were created in Eretz-Israel during the 20th century. The book discusses the connection between the ideology and the architecture of these settlements in the broad historical context of the orientations intent on creating utopian societies and planning ideal settlements to house them. It presents the ideas on the architectural planning of ideal settlements that appear in the writings of social visionaries such as the prophet Ezekiel, Plato, Fourier, Owen, Marx and Engels, and of architects such as Vitruvius, Ledoux and Le Corbusier, and examines the extent of their creative imagination and their influence on the ways of thinking of the fathers of Zionist settlement such as Tabenkin and Eliezer Yaffe and architects of the kibbutzim and the moshavim, such as Kauffmann, Sharon and Bickels. The book presents an analysis of the spatial layouts of settlement models as related to the various social ideological movements that existed in Eretz-Israel. It surveys the development of these settlement models in light of the extreme political, economic and technological changes that took place in the world and in Israel in the course of the century, and examines the influences of the changes in the ideology on the changes in the spatial layouts of the settlements. The authors, Bracha and Michael Chyutin, are leading Israeli architects who have won numerous architectural competitions. They have been responsible for the construction of a number of iconic public buildings, among them the Court of Law Building in Haifa, the Givatayim Theater, and university buildings such as the Senate Building at Beer Sheva University and the Students Center at Haifa University. They have been awarded prestigious prizes, among them the Rechter Prize (twice) and the Israel Design Award (twice), for buildings they have planned.

Martin Heidegger is one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. His influence is very significant in many areas: Western culture, modern philosophy, existentialism, postmodernism, cultural criticism, literary theory, aesthetics, theology and psychotherapy. The book introduces his main philosophy. There is discussion of the major issues that concerned him in his numerous writings, such as: man, language, art, being, history, technology and humanism. The information is introduced from a critical point of view in order to allow readers who are not familiar with his doctrine to connect to it and understand it. The readers who do know the doctrine will be able to examine it from a different angle, which emphasizes the thematic unity and its program. Heidegger's connections with the Nazi regime is a subject that requires detailed attention in a book that introduces the main points of his philosophy in Hebrew. Heidegger's contact with the Nazi regime and the historical-philosophical ideology that guided his actions are described in an appendix.

Restorative justice is a social Mechanism used to replace or complement the criminal, legal process. It is designed to bring together offenders and victims, to meet in a safe and respectful environment in order to discuss the crime, the pain and suffering that it entailed - and look together for ways to repair these harms. Restorative Justice Conferences operate under state supervision and control. For over twenty years, restorative justice conferences have been practiced in Israel. Changes in the Israeli Youth Criminal Law have increased the number of such offender-victim conferences in recent years . Recent reforms in adult criminal justice law are also likely to encourage greater use of restorative justice conferences in cases of crimes conducted by adult, confessing offenders. Restorative justice theory and practices have facilitated and encouraged the emergence of Restorative Discourse programs. Such developments are important as they facilitate effective discussions and decision making among the different, sometime conflicting groups in Israel. Furthermore, restorative discourse promotes understanding between these groups and local and national authorities. Restorative Discourse enables people to discuss their exigencies, their wishes and preferences not only among themselves but with government agencies and officials as well. Such discourse is helpful and effective in improving the quality of life of individuals and communities in Israel. From Wrongdoing to Righting the Wrong is the first book addressing theoretical and practical aspects of Restorative Justice and Restorative Discourse in a unique Middle East context. The different chapters in this book were written by prominent scholars, practitioners and professionals who lead restorative justice and discourse programs in Israel.

In his article entitled "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness", David Chalmers divides the study of consciousness into two parts: the easy problems and the hard problems. The easy problems are those related to neurological/functional/cognitive processes. In contrast, the hard problem is the study of consciousness which is related to the subjective experience. In recent decades brain researchers have joined the race to understand consciousness. Most of them adopt an approach according to which any advance made in the study of neurological activity is also an advance in the study of consciousness. I contend that the gap between brain activities and the subjective experience cannot be bridged, among other things because consciousness is not confined within the brain. This book hence proposes that consciousness extends from the brain to the body and from only from there does it burst forth into the world. One of the book’s main arguments is that the world itself serves as our best model, without any need for representation or a central control system within our brains. Therefore, to better understand the subjective experience we must examine how human beings are present and act within the world.

Bilha Shilo unfolds the complex plot of the extraordinary success of the restitution of the collections of YIVO (Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut) – the prestigious research institution of the Yiddish language and culture. A Drama in Acts traces the fragments of post-Second World War YIVO, which meanwhile moved from Vilna to New York - in restituting its cultural property in the West, in the American occupied zone, and documents its bitter failure in the Soviet occupied territory in the East. The book explores, through the question of cultural property ownership, a range of historical issues: the development of modern Jewish culture in Eastern Europe, the advance of Yiddish as a modern literary language, the history of Jewish culture under communist regime, and its extermination under Nazi rule. Other issues addressed are the demise of Jewish culture in Eastern Europe following the division of Europe and the Cold War, and lastly - the conflict between Israel and the Diaspora over the inheritance of Jewish European culture. The book is published in the series "Hefez", which presents the latest research on Jewish cultural property and its demise, in German by the Dubnow Institute, Leipzig, and in Hebrew by Magnes Press.

Nathan Rotenstreich wrote that understanding the world is a precondition for changing it. Since his years in the youth movement "Gordonia", he was loyal to bringing together thoughts and ideas with the twisted road to their realization. His writings influenced and inspired, and still do so, the existential struggles of the Jewish world and of Israel in the turmoil of times. The present collection of papers aims to be a link to the interaction between thoughts and deeds, and between intellectual heritage and what he called: "The tempo of action and events" . Many of his writings bear very clear interpretations, so much so that it seems they were written in the present. These papers are hidden in periodicals, protocols of conventions and newspapers. Therefore it is appropriate they should be partly exposed in the new volume so that they are available and challenging for future generations. Moreover, his special contributions will illuminate aspects of the renewable sides of his work. The collection marks Nathan Rotenstreich 100 birthday and 20 years since he passed away.

The book in English can be purchased here . This book is an invitation to an anthropological journey to the politics developed around the professional therapy of PTSD (Posttraumatic Stress Disorder) in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Through four years' fieldwork (2004-2008) at two nongovernmental organizations — NATAL ("Israeli Trauma Center for Victims of Terror and War") and the ITC ("Israel Trauma Coalition") — the chapters of the book examines how clinical questions of diagnosis, treatment and prevention of the disorder intersect with collective markers of group identity and with political questions of ethno-national power-relations within the framework of the Israeli nation-state. How Israeli experts and their donors (most of them from Jewish-American federations) negotiating mental suffering against one bio-medical category, PTSD, but in relation to different military and political situations, from the uprising of the Second Intifada (October 2000), to the "Disengagement Plan" (August 2005) until the Second Lebanon War (July 2006)? Which symbolic struggles do therapists engage in over the meaning of trauma and its social boundaries within this highly politicized context? What practical agreements have been reached regarding aid interventions and the allocation of resources within deep religious, ethnic and demographic stratification, from Jewish-Israeli citizens who exposed to Palestinian terror attacks in the center of the country, many of them first and second generations of immigrants from East-Europe ('Ashkenazim') to the ongoing threat of rocket fire against Jewish-Israeli citizens who lived in the South of the country, many of them first and second generations of immigrants from North-Africa ('Mizrachim') and later from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia ?

How did cooperative social groups evolve? This is one of the major questions that concern evolutionary biologists ever since Darwin. One of the first explanations was selection at the level of the group: groups with cooperating individuals increase their reproduction and survival as a whole. Alternative explanations exist, such as selection at the level of the individual: a former beneficiary later rewords a cooperating organism or the seemingly altruist increases its social status thus increases its chances of finding a mate. Another explanation involves selection at the level of the gene: although an individual helping its relatives reduces its direct fitness, measured by its expected number of viable offspring, it enhances the frequency of genes identical to its own in the population. Each one of these models claims centrality or even exclusivity - theoretical primacy - in answering the question of the evolution of altruism. The book is an original and interdisciplinary contribution to the study of the evolution of cooperation. It facilitates a renewed discussion, from a fresh point of view, of classical problems in the fields of evolutionary biology and philosophy of biology; and raises fascinating questions about the history and sociology of science and the complex ties between science and values. From the Introduction by Prof. Yemima Ben Menahem and Prof. Eva Jablonka: Shavit's book discusses the different explanations to the evolution of altruism and how evolutionary researchers commonly decide between them. The author elucidates the nature of the problems and predicaments in this field, tries to identify their sources, and by using these insights offer new ways of thought that will avoid such pit falls in the future. The disposition to undermine observations and experiments of the local population while seeking the cause for universal altruism, and use of a narrow concept of 'group', biases researchers toward a semantic dispute, which completely denies group selection or spots this process everywhere. According to the author the roots of this practice lie, at least partly, in the socio-political echoes of the concept of 'group selection' since World War II. The author explicates an implicit and multifaceted dialog between science and values and argues for a plurality of selection processes in the evolution of altruism. This book is intended for anyone interested in the nature behind the well-known about the human nature. .

This book presents a comprehensive selection, translated for the first time into Hebrew, of the Latin works of Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374), the "father of humanism" and a pivotal precursor to the Italian Renaissance. The compilation includes some of Petrarch's renowned personal letters, such as the pair he addressed to the Roman orator and philosopher Cicero. It features a therapeutic-autobiographical dialogue in which he engages with his spiritual father, Saint Augustine, challenging the latter's strict worldviews. The selection also encompasses an Invective against the dominant Aristotelian philosophy of his era, asserting the preeminence of classical rhetoric over philosophy; a novella presenting his interpretation of the closing story of the Decameron ; and a portion of his Latin poetry, through which he sought to revive the works of the great Roman poet Virgil. Through these writings, Petrarch fostered the emergence of a new secular culture on the cusp of the modern era—one that emphasizes humanity and life in this world—and set the stage for the remarkable creative surge of the Italian Renaissance.

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This book present for the first time a comprehensive outlook at the field of internationalization in education combining a solid theoretical background with empiric studies within Israeli educational settings. This book contributes to the theory on globalization and education and it provides novel insights for scholars, students and practitioners within the discipline.

The Living Symbol explores one of the Zohar’s most distinctive literary and theological features: the symbolic connection between its stories and its teachings about the divine realm. A young woman holding a lamp in a remote inn, travelers crossing dark mountain ranges, a doe crying out in distress, an old man emerging from the desert, all become symbols of processes unfolding within the hidden life of God. The lamp signifies divine love, the doe the suffering Shekhinah, the mountains divine judgment, and the desert the realm of metaphysical evil. Focusing on a wide range of Zoharic narratives, this book examines how everyday realities are transformed into symbols of the divine and how earthly stories intertwine with mystical interpretation. Through close readings of the Zohar’s tales, it reveals the intricate ways in which narrative and theosophy are woven together, linking the human world and the divine, the visible and the hidden. At the heart of the study stands the kabbalistic symbol. The book argues that the symbolic relationship between story and exposition reflects fundamental Zoharic conceptions of reality and offers a fresh perspective on one of the Zohar’s most important literary and religious innovations.

You now have before you this volume which contains an assemblage of popular Yiddish humor: jokes both folksy and racy, proverbs and colloquial curses which originated in the hundreds of towns and cities of Eastern Europe up to the Second World War. In recent decades interest in Yiddish has been growing in Israel and in many other countries. It expresses itself as a longing, a nostalgia, for the language that was spoken in people's parents' home, and that they heard from their grandparents. This volume reveals some of the treasures of Yiddish humor to the many lovers of Yiddish around the world. This sampler does not specify the origin of the jokes it contains, because "An anecdote and a cat have no master, they belong to whoever manages to catch them." (N. Stutchkoff, p. 571, see Bibliography.) In order to select the approximately 400 jokes and sayings appearing in this book, the collector spent many months searching through anthologies, joke books, lexicons etc. The most important sources are listed in the Bibliography. In their world of poverty, pogroms, persecutions and evil decrees, the Jewish masses of Eastern Europe were in dire need of spiritual support and psychological defence. They found this support in humor, which relieves tension and makes life more bearable. This book is organized by theme into 51 sections, each section exhibiting a particular aspect or feature of Jewish life in the cities, towns and townlets of Eastern Europe.

A selection of annotated Hebrew translations of Dogen Zenji's essays, mostly from the Shobogenzo, followed by a thorough analysis of his life and thought.

The Cantor's Son , Sholem Aleikhem's masterpiece, is here offered to the reader in a new, complete and revised edition of the original text, presented in Modern Standardized Yiddish Ortorgraphy. The text is accompanied by an afterword by Prof. Chone Shmeruk treating the evolution of the narrative, and by a detailed textual apparatus. In the Yiddish-Yiddish glossary are listed words and expressions that are not to be found in current dictionaries.

This book deals with being grateful and with the moral status of gratitude. It claims that gratitude is a moral obligation of great importance, being the right response to something done for the agent and out of regard for her. The more is done for her, the more grateful she should be. And yet, it seems that whoever is doing something out of regard for us is expecting nothing in return. Gratitude thus becomes a paradoxical obligation: the recipient of the favor owes something to the giver, which the giver does not want. Sometimes the recipient does not want it either. He is attached to it unwillingly, trying to rid himself of it if he only could. Can he? And how are his attempts to do so connected to being ungrateful? This book analyses such cases, and juxtaposes them with cases of full and happy gratitude. I claim that children's gratitude towards their parents is the paradigm case of full gratitude. But how can children show their gratitude? What should they do? Can one really do enough to thank another for upbringing one and shaping her into who she is? This is a philosophical book, presenting and criticizing philosophical analyses of gratitude, from Seneca to Kant, and from Kant to modern thinkers. But among its heros you will also find Dickens's Pip of "Great Expectations," Rabi Hia, Rabi and a Koves (washer) from the Talmud, key figures of psychological and sociological thinking, Jean Valjean and Javert of Hugo's "Les Miserables," and a construction and development company selling shares at the stock exchange.

This dictionary contains mainly idioms, which are combinations of words of an idiomatic nature and have an adopted, metaphorical meaning. Some are commonly used expressions, and are not necessarily idiomatic or metaphorical. These second kind of expressions which are termed "collocations" in linguistic parlance have been included only in cases where they do not appear in existing dictionaries of Yiddish. This dictionary offers four options for the user to find the required expressions: 1. By alphabetic order; 2. By alphabetized lists of the equivalent expressions in Hebrew, English and Russian; 3. By a list of the nouns and numerals that appear in the Yiddish expressions; 4. By a subject index. The alphabetized lists of equivalent expressions in Hebrew, English and Russian enable the dictionary to be used in two directions – Yiddish to Other Languages and Other Languages of Yiddish. The expressions in the dictionary are of three types: 1. Expressions which reflect the everyday life of the Jews of Eastern Europe (food, occupations, etc.): 2. Expressions associated with Jewish customs and religious life: 3. Loan translations (literal translations of expressions from other languages):

A 100 years after the Zionist congress decided to establish the university in Jerusalem (Vienna, 1913), this volume, the 4th in the series, is being published. The first three volumes were dedicated to the roots of the idea to establish a cultural and spiritual infrastructure of a national entity in the state of Israel and the founding of the university and it's progress during the steps towards an Israeli state. The first chapter in the history of this establishment ended when it was brought down from Mt. Scopus in 1948. The first volume of this series revealed to the reader the complexity of establishing this university through detailed and in-depth studies that dealt with the scientific, organizational and political aspects of the process. Only a small part of these studies were dedicated to the people behind the process. This volume lays before us the biographies of the first founders and professors of this university to make their mark on the establishment and development of the university during the mandate years. There are three parts to the book. The first part tells about the founders and designers of this institution and includes the people of action who accompanied it's setting up and enabled it's functioning. The second part is dedicated to the theoretical sciences: Humanities, Jewish Studies and the first researchers in the law and society fields. The third part brings us the biographies of the teachers and researches in the Mathematics and Experimental sciences fields. This book is dedicated to the people who arrived in Jerusalem under different circumstances from around the world. Thanks to their cooperation on Mt. Scopus, they enabled the fulfillment of an idea, first conceived in the second half of the 19th century, and turned into a successful reality during the settlement period.

The Series "Yiddish Literature" is published by the Yiddish Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Its purpose is to provide students of Yiddish Literature and readers in general with selected texts for reading and study. Each book in this series appears with an introduction and with glossary of words and phrases not found in standard dictionaries of Yiddish.

The content of the articles in this book reflect the diversity of the areas researched by Professor Zev Harvey. The three key subjects covered in this collection are: the first focuses on the teachings of Maimonides, the second- the philosophy of Rabbi Hasdai Crescas and other philosophers in the Middle Ages, while the third includes essays on Jewish philosophers since the beginning of the modern era to the present.

The struggle between philosophy and theology in the middle ages has been a central topic for historians of ideas. The Clash of Paradigms claims that this struggle can be fully explained by scientific paradigms. Aristotelian and Neoplatonic paradigms in the Jewish world confronted the kalam paradigm at their early stage, and magic and experimental science in the following stage.

Jewish thought and rhetoric may have dominated the Jewish people's way of life for years, but what happens when a Jewish state is established, whose laws and authorities are not necessarily based on that same Jewish tradition? Jewish-Israeli Political Thought is a collection of studies exploring the tension between Israeli and Jewish political philosophy, the relationship between the Jewish people's collective and personal past and present, individual identity and its place in the traditional Jewish collectiveness, and the intermediary role of the ancient Hebrew language in the dialogue between the past and the present. The chapters in this book were written by young scholars of different religious, and sometimes cultural and lingual backgrounds; however, they all live in modern-day Israel, and they all question the relation between traditional-Jewish and modern-Israeli political thought. The diversity of the writers enables a broad and unique perspective on the status of Jewish tradition in contemporary political thought in Israel. The book provides a window into various spatial and temporal horizons in the course of a Jewish tradition that is constantly being re-examined and re-discovered.

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."

Jacques Lacan’s teaching lasted about three decades. Like Freud before him, Lacan was profoundly interested in the arts, particularly in painting. Lacan not only turned to specific artworks to clarify psychoanalytic concepts but also addressed theoretical aspects of painting. Like scholars from other fields, such as philosophy or cultural studies, who have turned to Lacan’s thinking throughout his career, art scholars often make use of Lacan’s teaching while analyzing various notions in art. These arguments deal mostly with Lacan’s early teaching or his seminars from the sixties. Yet, his late teaching and its relation to the visual arts remains relatively unknown, even though Lacan’s most radical views are presented for the first time during his late teaching of the seventies, and these conceptualizations carry immense value for theoretical discourse on contemporary art. Lacan’s late teaching and its relation to art fashions the cornerstone of this book, it is the wrap thread that runs through it. The other thread, the woof, which this book weaves into the psychoanalytic discourse, is of a different kind and nature: the discourse of art which analyzes specific instances of the works of art of contemporary Israeli artists: Michal Na’aman, David Ginton, Joshua Borkovsky and Shahar Yahalom.

The book traces the changes that have taken place in the world views of Josef Zelkowicz, a modern Jewish intellectual, after he was imprisoned for more than four years in the Lodz ghetto under extreme living conditions. The book follows Zelkowicz and a fascinating group of intellectuals who struggled to understand life in the ghetto. The book presents the events as perceived by those intellectuals at the time of their occurrence. The readers get to know Zelkowicz's work through stories that were translated into Hebrew for the first time and are included in the book.

Several thousand short sections from newspapers, periodicals, books and other printed publications in Israel have been assembled in this book. They are all from the "Resurrection period"- from the seventies of the 19th century until the defeat of the Turks and their withdrawal from the country in 1918. What connects these sections is that they contain "Stray words": foreign words that over time were replaced with suitable substitutes in Hebrew; Words in Hebrew that failed in replacing foreign words; Words in Hebrew that were replaced by newer words and words that we use today but with different meaning. All these words are strays, but not necessarily lost: among them must be such that will draw the reader's attention, so much so that they will not hesitate to use them today . The dictionary is designed not only for lovers of language, researchers and teachers, but also for all those interested in the history of the early years of the new Israel, both because they will feel the spirit of that time through the quotations in the book and because it will help understand the writings of those times. Lovers of cultural anecdotes will find a large variety here .

Uri Zvi Greenberg’s early poetry, composed between 1912 and 1923, offers both a key to understanding his later work, and a means for re-conceptualizing modern lyrical discourse in general and modern Jewish lyrical discourse in particular. Often callow, this early work testifies to the poet’s quest for a way of writing poetry that would give voice to the Jewish experience in Europe just before and after World War I. Like many other Jewish poets of the period, Greenberg was aware of the pressing need to express Jewishness in a way that would allow for the continued existence of Jewish national identity, among nations jostling for independence in a Europe rife with tensions. Similar to many of these poets, Greenberg also knew that this expression would have to be, of necessity, grounded in modern subjectivity. Paying attention to the various literary, historical, and political contexts of Greenberg's writing, Green Mountain and Love traces the poet’s valiant attempt to come to terms with modern subjectivity, and in so doing, reinvestigate the mechanisms of modern lyrical discourse. It yields fresh insights into the nature of poetry; its aims and functions in the cultural, political, and historical arenas; and the reader’s relationship with the poetic word.

The Book of Comparison between the Hebrew and Arabic Languages ​​(Kitab al-Muwazanah) is the monumental work by Rabbi Yitzhak ben Baron, in which he summarized the achievements of comparative Semitic linguistic scholars in the 10th–11th centuries. Ben Baron, a Renaissance man, was close in Spain at the turn of the 12th century to the spiritual giants Rabbi Moshe ibn Ezra and Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, offers a systematic, in-depth, and innovative analysis of the structural and lexical relationship between Hebrew and Arabic, based on the teachings of Rabbi Yonah ibn Jannah and the traditions of classical Arabic grammar and lexicography. This edition presents for the first time all the remains of the work that have been discovered to date, edited in a critical, translated, and annotated edition, accompanied by a detailed introduction and a profound and extensive "Elucidations" section that sheds new light on Ben Baron's teachings.

Charles Perrault’s “Puss in Boots” was published in Paris at the end of the seventeenth century in his collection Stories or Tales from Times Past or, Tales of Mother Goose . Yigal Schwartz reveals how Perrault dresses the story in a new and colorful literary garment woven from the fairy tale and the contemporary story of the court of Louis XIV. Perrault’s story and the fairy tale both conceal and reveal things about each other and cruelly illuminate the nature of crowds and the royal court. Among the folds of this literary garment, a social, cultural, and political crossroads can be found. And what do the cat’s boots conceal? This question has excited Yigal Schwartz since childhood and is what sent him on a unique, sometimes perplexing, and multifaceted quest for “Puss in Boots.” In this in-depth literary study, Schwartz analyzes the well-known tale and determinedly examines each of its details, comparing style and content. Why does the cat wear boots? Why a miller’s son? Why the Marquis of de Carabas? And why the ogre’s castle? Schwartz draws his answers from a wide range of perspectives—those of psychoanalysis, phenomenology, sociology, and literary studies—all of which meet at the roots of the anxiety he identifies at the foundation of the tale: the anxiety involved in concealment, which is at the same time anxiety about the mask but also about what may not be concealed behind it at all.

The words seduction and ethics, which at first sight seem mutually exclusive, are at the heart of the analytic perspective. Vivian Chetrit-Vatine takes as her starting-point an encounter, which is not necessarily consensual, between Emmanuel Levinas's thought and his conception of philosophy as ethics - ethics understood as responsibility for the other - and that of the psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche, who posits the first adult other as a seducer of the young psyche from the outset, due to the transmission of enigmatic messages compromised by his or her unconscious. The analyst's ethical position is re-examined and with it the feminine/maternal origins of the human capacity for responsibility for the other.

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.

The book is made up of six meditations, in which Descartes first discards all belief in things that are not absolutely certain, and then tries to establish what can be known for sure. He wrote the meditations as if he had meditated for six days: each meditation refers to the last one as "yesterday". The Meditations consist of the presentation of Descartes' metaphysical system in its most detailed level and in the expanding of Descartes' philosophical system, which he first introduced in the fourth part of his Discourse on Method (1637).

In the few years after his retirement from public life and before he was sentenced to suicide, the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote the majority of his texts, which included over one hundred letters of wisdom ( espistulae morales) sent to his friend Lucilius. These letters are considered the first appearance of literary letters in Roman prose. The letters are philosophical essays written by a very wise and witty old man concluding his life, an autobiography of our spiritual world. The issues that interested Seneca are eternally relevant.

Abraham Joshua Heschel was one of the most important thinkers of Jewish religious thought in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century, a poet and philosopher who authored many works of thought and poetry. His writings have found wide resonance among Jews, and also among Christians, and are of interest in Europe and South America as well. They have been translated into Italian, French, German, and Spanish, and Hebrew. Heschel was highly versed in the Bible, Midrash, and Hasidism. He developed a method he called “depth theology,” in which he elaborated a distinctive interpretation of interiorization arising from the contemporary human situation. He is considered a thinker of religious existentialism. In his thought he is especially close to Reinhold Niebuhr; at times he is also compared to Paul Tillich, Gabriel Marcel, and Søren Kierkegaard in the Christian world, or to Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, André Neher, and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik in the Jewish world.

The Yiddish proverbs in this book have accumulated for hundreds years. They originate from the Bible, the Talmud, the Eastern European and German folklore, but some were coined by Yiddish speakers themselves. Parallel proverbs and literal translations in Hebrew, English and Russian accompany the Yiddish proverbs. The dictionary also contains alphabetical indexes of the Hebrew, English and Russian proverbs and references to the original Yiddish proverbs, thus producing a combined two-way dictionary. Eastern European Jewish folklore is distinguished by an unusual degree of self-criticism, which is reflected in the proverbs. A large proportion of Yiddish proverbs are humorous, perspicacious, and sophisticated and some make opposite statements about the same matter.

The emergence of the Yiddish and Hebrew press in the United States was one of the great cultural enterprises of the Jewish immigrants from the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires in the last third of the nineteenth century, and its influence on the lives of individuals and communities was enormous. From the Cellar to the Top Floor traces the journey of the Hebrew Alphabet press across the Atlantic following the Jewish mass migration. Against the background of the American press, the book discusses the development of the Hebrew and Yiddish press from an economic, cultural and political point of view. It traces the ongoing negotiations between the Jewish immigrant society and the American majority society at the end of the nineteenth century. Based on personal correspondence, legal documents, archival evidence, and contemporary press materials ,the book offers the first comprehensive analysis in Hebrew of the formative decades in the emergence of one of the leading cultural institutions in modern Jewish society.

This book contains thirty texts from the best philosophical literature of all the ages; Thoughts of modes of existence and its' problems as written by the greatest philosophers: Plato, Aristotle, Anselm of Canterbury, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Gottlob Frege, Whitehead, Russell, Willard Quine and many more. Most of these texts have been translated from five different languages especially for this volume. Edited, with an introduction and bibliographical notes by Abraham Zvie Bar-On.

The essay presents the lost archive of the Jewish author Zalman Shneour (Shklov 1887 – New York 1950). It was found in May 2018 at Calle Eraso 21 in Madrid – the city through which he had passed in the summer of 1941. Four carton boxes survived in the apartment of his late daughter, Renee Rebecca Shneour, who fled to New York together with her father but returned to live in Madrid in her adulthood. The essay offers a reading of Shneour's correspondences with three women - his mother in Shklov, his friend and lover in Berlin, and his daughter.

In the few years after his retirement from public life and before he was sentenced to suicide, the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote the majority of his texts, which included over one hundred letters of wisdom (espistulae morales) sent to his friend Lucilius. These letters are considered the first appearance of literary letters in Roman prose. The letters are philosophical essays written by a very wise and witty old man concluding his life, an autobiography of our spiritual world. The issues that interested Seneca are eternally relevant.

The selections in this volume, the fifteen prose poems of Griner akvarium (1953-54) and the eight entries in Meshiekes togbukh (1970-75) form a distinctive unit within Sutzkever's large poetic opus. Each of the narratives is a fragment of autobiography remembered and retold from a different perspective in space and time. The poet's lifeline has been severed by the holocaust and falls like a chasm between the past and the present. These works are an attempt to span the breach, creating in art an organic universe over which mutability and morality hold no sway.

Life crises present before the person experiencing them an opportunity to embark on a philosophical journey that is not detached from everyday life. This book provides philosophical guidance which could help a person define their own basic questions, as well as support in the process of creative, autonomous, critical and authentic development of a newly generated world view. It aims to enable a person to realize ideas from the history of human thought and to make their life more meaningful.

A groundbreaking work, this book brings together philosophy of science and language, conceptual dynamics and the Babylonian Talmud. The work asks: what philosophy of natural language lies at the basis of the Halakhic dynamic in the Amoraic discourse of the Talmud? Calling upon two post-Wittgenstein philosophies, the book undertakes a search for a philosophical account of the discursive culture that appears in the Talmud. It unearths the normative infrastructure that lies at its core. Thus, this study articulates what can be termed the Talmudic philosophy of language. On the other hand, it reveals the limits and weaknesses of central philosophical frameworks in coping with a profound traditional discourse like the Talmud, in which the past has a deep and integral role in the present, while at the same time, the present has its own natural and creative dynamic.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) was a polymath of Renaissance culture. His 1710 Essais de Théodicée , the longest work published in his lifetime, was a final and concluding phase in his life-long theological-philosophical journey. It constituted a milestone in the diplomatic and intellectual effort to restore the religious and political peace in Europe, and is, above all, a key philosophical work.

Dr. Amitai Mendelsohn investigates the various appearances of the figure of Jesus in Israeli art as a significant, multifaceted and ever-present phenomenon. Through works by prominent artists from different generations, it discusses in depth the evolving attitudes of Jewish, Zionist pre-state, and Israeli art towards Jesus, from the second half of the nineteenth century until today: from artists laboring "In the shadow of the Cross" to artists who saw Jesus as a symbol of the rebirth of the Jewish people in the land of Israel, and artists whose engagement with Jesus is detached from the complex and fraught relations between Christianity and Judaism, and who see him as symbolizing the suffering artist. The book examines the different directions taken by Israeli artists in portraying the figure of Jesus, and proves the extent of this phenomena and its ever present importance.

One of the world's most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt has crafted both an innovative work of history and a thrilling story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it. Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things , by Lucretius—a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in new directions. The copying and translation of this ancient book-the greatest discovery of the greatest book-hunter of his age-fueled the Renaissance, inspiring artists such as Botticelli and thinkers such as Giordano Bruno; shaped the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein; and had a revolutionary influence on writers such as Montaigne and Shakespeare and even Thomas Jefferson.

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