The chapters of this book present the reader with a broad and complex picture of the challenges that Israel’s higher education system is facing today. Despite the impressive contribution of the academic system in Israel to the national culture, economy and society and its value as a prolific creative center for intellectual growth, scientific and technological innovation, it has experienced major upheavals in the past two decades. This book reviews these crises. The chapters of this book examine the growth of Israel’s academic system since the beginning of the millennium, the upheavals it has undergone, and the policy directions that may help stabilize it and improve its ability to cope with the challenges it faces today. Chapter 1 examines historical conflicts that took place during the 1950s about the scope of freedom and institutional autonomy as defined by the Council of Higher Education Law, 1958. The Law followed a decade of dispute in the Knesset, which ended with the establishment of regulatory bodies, the Council of Higher Education and the Planning and Budgeting Committee and the opening of the gates to academic studies to almost half of year book since the 1990s . Chapter 2 examines with the "lost decade" when budget cuts of approximately 25% affected academic standards across academia, but took a heavier toll on the Humanities and Social Sciences. Chapters 3 and 4 examine policies that encouraged the integration of ultra-Orthodox Jews and of Arabs into higher education by removing barriers. Analyzing th e policy tools and steps needed to integrate these two communities into the academic system aimed inter alia, to reduce poverty among them. Chapters 5 and 6 examine disparities in the quality of research and teaching , disciplines based on sixty-one reports by international committees appointed by the CHE to assess the quality of the disciplines in Israeli universities and colleges since 2006. The findings of these committees shed light on the achievements and weaknesses of various areas of research and teaching. A preliminary analysis of the commissions’ reports found that the experts recommended that the CHE and PBC adopt a policy of corrective measures and preferences to support neglected disciplines, which in many cases didn't happened. Chapters 7 and 8 examine the politicization of higher education and its impact on regulatory bodies . For approximately half a century, the CHE and the PBC enjoyed freedom in navigating their roles. Accrediting a new university in Judea and Samaria in Ariel caused upheaval in academia and an ongoing crisis of trust between its senior officials and the government. Once political interference created this rift, and membership of the regulatory bodies was changed so as to ensure that the government could pass resolutions as it wished, it continued to widen and erode the authority of the entity entrusted with planning higher education. Chapter 9 examines the failure of a committee appointed by government . The committee was charged with reviewing and updating the regulatory bodies of the higher-education system, and recalibrating the balance between academia and the state in policy decision-making. The goal was to intensify the state’s participation in planning higher education, while preserving the freedom of the institutions. The government eventually vetoed the committee’s bill, fearing that the governance mechanisms proposed would limit the scope of its influence on the higher education system. Chapter 10 is dedicated to recent efforts to discard traditional teaching models. It reviews preliminary steps toward a new pedagogic model that changes students’ study patterns and lecturers’ teaching styles, by examining policy measures taken by six universities and three colleges. Chapter 11 summarizes the research findings. The Epilogue examines the possible consequences of the attempted regime overhaul by Israel’s 37th government on for the country’s higher education system.

The full edition of the secular poems of Yehudah Halevi is published here for the first time, based on the original collection of his poems edited by his contemporary Haya the Maghribean, who met the poet in Egypt. The poems follow Judaeo-Arabic incipits, which are discussed and translated into Hebrew by the modern editor. Variants, as well as a full modern Hebrew translation have been added.

Preludes is the story of the composer and conductor Noam Sheriff (1935-2018), whose life was dedicated to art and music almost from the moment he could think of it. In the first person Sheriff recounts a personal initiation story, which begins in the small Tel Aviv of the days of the British Mandate and the divided Jerusalem of the first years of the State of Israel, followed by the most renown and magnificent concert halls in Israel and around the world. In doing so, he describes some of the personalities who stood at the heart of world of music: Leonard Bernstein, Gary Bartini, Paul Ben-Haim, Arik Einstein and others. This is a story of pioneering musical activity, part of an enterprise of building Israeli culture. This is also the story of an artist who, looking back from a sober, unapologetic and unselfish perspective - recounts his achievements, doubts and personal and artistic choices.

Although Jews were at the centre of commercial activity in medieval Europe, a talmudic ban on any wine touched by a Gentile prevented them from engaging in the lucrative wine trade. Wine was consumed in vast quantities in the Middle Ages, and the banks of the Rhineland hosted some of the finest vineyards in northern Europe. German Jews were, until the thirteenth century, a merchant class. How could they abstain from trading in one of the region’s major commodities? In time, they ruled that it was permissible to accept wine in payment of debt, but forbade trading in it, and they maintained that ban throughout the Middle Ages. Further study in the twelfth century, however, led Talmudists to discover that Jews were only forbidden to profit from trading in Gentile wine if they dealt with idolaters, but that trade with Christians and Muslims was permitted. Nevertheless, the German community refused to take advantage of this clear licence. Using Jewish and Gentile sources, this study probes the sources of this powerful taboo. In describing the complex ways in which deeply held cultural values affect Jews’ engagement in the economy of the surrounding society, this book also illustrates the law of unintended consequences—how the ban on Gentile wine led both to a major Jewish contribution to German viticulture and to the involvement of Jews in moneylending, with all its tragic consequences.

In this issue: Moti Benmelech | From the Sambatyon to Tiberias: An Unknown Version of ‘MaꜤaseh Akdamut’ Rella Kushelevsky | Affinities between Orality and Literacy in Medieval Folktales in Western Europe: ‘The Tale of a Rich Man who used to seat Himself among the Poor’ David Manrique | Yohanan ben Zakkai meets Vespasianus: A Study of Midrashic History according to ‘MeꜤam Loez’ by Argüete Zeev Kitsis | The Baal Shem Tov’s Neighbor in the Garden of Eden ‒ A story from ‘Once There Was a Hasidic Man’ and its Connection to the Hasidic-Israeli Identity

Examining the convergence of cafés, their urban milieu, and Jewish creativity, Shachar Pinsker shows how cafés anchored a silk road of modern Jewish culture. He uncovers a network of interconnected cafés that were central to the modern Jewish experience in a time of migration and urbanization, from Odessa, Warsaw, Vienna, and Berlin to New York City, Tel Aviv, as well as cities in the Arab world. A Rich Brew explores the Jewish culture created in these social spaces, drawing on a vivid collection of newspaper articles, memoirs, archival documents, photographs, caricatures, and artwork, as well as stories, novels, and poems in many languages set in cafés. Pinsker shows how Jewish modernity was born in the café, nourished, and sent out into the world by way of print, politics, literature, art, and theater. What was experienced and created in the space of the coffeehouse touched thousands who read, saw, and imbibed a modern culture that redefined what it meant to be a Jew in the world.

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

This book deals with the cultural and emotional world of Jewish schoolchildren in the “Tarbut” school network in Poland between the two World Wars. It is based on a unique corpus of about 80 letters, written between 1934-1935 by 10-11-year-old fifth graders in the Tarbut school in the town of Nowi Dwόr in Poland to their beloved teacher who had immigrated to Eretz Israel – the place and destination they too dreamed about. In these letters – all composed in Hebrew – the children write about their class, their school, but also about themselves and their families. The pupils’ letters are analyzed in light of the educational practice of pen-pal culture which was developed in and encouraged by “Tarbut” schools, especially between pupils in the Diaspora and their cohorts in Palestine. The letters are also examined as ego-documents that reveal personal stories about the intimate and private world of children, their experiences, fears and hopes, their relationship with their teacher, their families and their friends. Studied as a corpus, they reflect the complexities of the educational experience in a Hebrew Zionist school in Poland. The uniqueness of this book is that it is attentive to children – not teenagers or adults – in their own voice and in real time, telling about their lives, and not from a place of retrospection or later memory. Sources that allow us to hear the authentic voice of a child in real time are very rare indeed. The letters, which were critically edited and published in full next to a clear photograph of the letter, are discussed from various perspectives including Jewish, Hebrew and Zionist education, the history and culture of the child, and the relationship between the Diaspora and Eretz Israel. The book also offers a short history of the influential, now almost forgotten, school network – Tarbut. Finally, the book presents a detailed history of one class in one town in Poland a few years before this world vanished.

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.

After four volumes primarily focused on the British Mandate period, the fifth volume of the History of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem series delves into the first two decades of the State of Israel: 1948–1967. This comprehensive and diverse volume explores the intricate relationship between the university and the nation-state. The 1948 war and the “sovereign turn” sharply altered the university's status from an institution of higher education under British rule to an institution pertaining to an independent state. The university of the Jewish people, located on Mount Scopus, became an Israeli university with campuses scattered across a divided Jerusalem. Bringing together articles by senior and early-career researchers, this volume analyzes the university's history between rupture and continuity, as an autonomous institution strongly tied to the establishment of the state. It examines the university within its external geo-political context on one hand and considers its internal structure as a research and teaching institution on the other. Editorial assistance: Amit Levy

Changes in childhood and children's roles in society, and in how children participate in determining their own lives, have long been of interest to historians. Recent years have seen the emergence of new perspectives on the study of childhood, both in historical scholarship and in literary and cultural studies. Children's experiences are now scrutinized not only as a means of examining the lives and self-representation of young individuals and their families, but also to investigate how the early experiences of individuals can shed light on larger historical questions. This volume applies both approaches in the context of Jewish eastern Europe. Historian Gershon Hundert has argued that studying the experience of children and attitudes towards coming of age offers an important corrective to the way we think of the Jewish past. This volume proves the potential of this approach in exploring many areas of historical interest. Among the topics investigated here are changes in perceptions of childhood and family, progress in the medical treatment of children, and developments in education. The work of charitable institutions is also considered, along with studies of emotion, gender history, and Polish-Jewish relations. From the First World War until after the Holocaust and the Second World War, countless children experienced traumatizing events. A special section is dedicated to their fate.

The Rebellion of the Daughters reveals for the first time the phenomenon of young Jewish women from Orthodox families escaping their homes in Krakow and its surroundings at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. In extreme cases, hundreds of these young women sought refuge in a convent in Krakow and converted to Catholicism there, and in other cases they sought to exercise their right to higher education, including at a university that recently opened its doors to women. The book relies on an abundance of archival documents, including police and court investigations, correspondence and memos of government ministries as well as personal letters, press reports and literary works, including the well-known story "Tehila" by S.Y. Agnon. Through all of these, the stories of three of the young women who run away are reconstructed and the background to their escape is revealed, the struggle of their families in trying to bring them back to their home, and the stormy discussions that the phenomenon of the Rebellious girls provoked in Jewish society in its various guises. The last part of the book describes how the crisis of rebellious girls later motivated Sarah Schnirer, a young woman from Krakow, to establish an afternoon school for girls, an institution that provided girls with religious education in a formal framework and later developed into the Beit Ya'akov educational chain.