L’occasion de consacrer un numéro de Perspectives à Theodor Herzl nous a été naturellement offerte, cette année, par la célébration du cent cinquantième anniversaire de sa naissance. Bien des questions se posaient.Comment cet homme si étroitement lié à la société et à la culture viennoises a-t-il pu devenir le concepteur et le fondateur d’un Etat juif ? Comment cet homme d’imagination, longtemps préoccupé par la réalisation de ses ambitions littéraires en est-il venu à poursuivre obstinément une seule et unique ambition : donner un pays aux juifs ? Fallait-il penser que l’Affaire Dreyfus eut un rôle déterminant dans ce changement d’orientation ? Fallait-il supposer d’autres causes ? Nous avons pensé que le creuset viennois eut son rôle à jouer. De quelle manière ? C’est ce que dira l’ensemble des articles réunis ici. L'aube du sionisme JAQUES LE RIDER - Theodor Herzl, austro-hongrois jusqu'au des ongles: réflexions à partir de son journal présionisme STÉPHANE ENCEL - Herzl et sa lecture de la Bible: le passé pour l'avenir GEORGES YITSHAK WEISZ - Aux origines du sionisme de Herzl RITA THALMANN - Du sens de l'honneur viril ay malaise identitaire du judaïsme viennois PHILLIPE OLIVIER - De l'opérette a Un Survivant de Varsovie. Regards croisés sur Theodor Herzl et la musique viennois De la fiction à la réalité CYRIL ASLANOV - L'indifférence de Theodor Herzl vis-à-vis de la langue hébraïque: causes et conséquences MARTIN RODAN - Theodor Herzl: itinéraire d'un Juif viennois de Paris à Jérusalem DENIS CHARBIT - Herzl, le judaïsme et le rabbins: entre respect et méfiance YEHUDA MORALY - Rêves viennois: antisémitisme et anticipation Échos et regards BÉATRICE GONZALÉS-VANGELL - Theodor Herzl, un portrait brosse par ses contemporains viennois GÉRARD HUBER - Herzl et Freud: au-delà de l'exclusion réciproque SOPHIE NORDMANN - Les philosophes juifs allemands face au sionisme THIERRY ALCOLOUMBRE - Une histoire de famille à Vienne. Autour d'un portrait de Klimt Hommage à un ami STÉPHANE MOSÈS - Cyrano de Bergerac

The prevailing popular view as well as that of the academic world is that rebelling against a super-power like Rome was both thoughtless and lacked any prospect of success. David Rokéah refutes this view. He compares the rebellions of the Britons and the Gauls against Rome with that of the Jews, and considers the attitude of the modern British and French—and Israelis-- to the disaster caused by their ancestors’ rebellions.

Kobez al Yad , an annual of the Mekize Nirdamim Society, is a forum for the publication from manuscript sources of ancient texts in Jewish studies that are shorter than book-length Contents Two Genizah Fragments of Eccl. Rabbah published by Tamar Kadari An Additional Shivata for Dew published by Michael Rand New Fragments from Sefer ha-Dinim by R. Judah ha-Kohen published by Simcha Emanuel Ashkenaz Responsa concerning " Matnata Temirata " published by Uziel Fuchs Minhat Kena'ot by R. Zechariah ben Moshe ha-Kohen of Candia published by Eli Gurfinkel The Events in Crimea during the Reign of Sahin Giray Khan: An Eighteenth-Century Historical Chronicle by the Karaite Azariah ben Elia published by Golda Ahiezer

The history of the myth of the Jewish sources of philosophy and science from their inception in Hellenistic culture, until present day, is laid out inthis book, the first comprehensive history of this fascinating subject. The Author follows the emergence and development of the myth, in Hellenistic-Pagan culture and in ancient Jewish culture, through the writings of the Church fathers, in Medieval Christian, Muslim and Jewish thought, throughout the Renaissance, the Early Modern period, the Enlightenment Era in both the general and Jewish cultures and up to present day. The book lays out the stories and traditions regarding the myth of the Jewish origins of philosophy and science, and explores their chain of transmission and acceptance throughout the generations in four different cultures: The Hellenistic-Pagan, Jewish, Christian and Muslim. The motives for the creation of these stories and traditions of this myth, as well as the reasons behind it, are all thoroughly discussed. Amongst them is the justification to study foreign wisdoms by Jewish scholars. Once it had been "proven" that the source of all philosophical and scientific knowledge lies in the Torah, their study became an inherent part of the study of the Torah, a re-appropriation of the knowledge that has been lost in the tribulations of time and exile. The myth also served Islam and Christianity as similar apologetic theological reasoning. Although various aspects of the myth have been criticized since the Renaissance, a phenomenon which reached its apex during the Jewish Enlightenment, it has never lost its power and is still expressed in a variety of ways in Jewish and Israeli Culture today.

The theory of evolution evolved in the last 200 years. The book presents, for the first time in Hebrew, a survey of the ideas brought forward by scientists about the origin and the diversity of the living world, from the 18th to the end of the 20th century. Every chapter focuses on one of these scientists, to illustrate the uniqueness of his ideas against the views prevalent at the time. The contributions of Georges Cuvier and Jean Baptiste Lamarck in France, and of Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace and Thomas Henry Huxley in England, are emphasized, as well as the opposition to Darwin's views expressed by Bishop Sam Wilberforce, the biologist George Mivart, and the engineer Fleeming Jenkin. The description of the first mutations in plants and the re-discovery of a paper by Gregor Mendel in 1900 began the era of genetics. The Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries suggested a theory of mutations which was enthusiastically endorsed by the geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan when many "mendelian" mutations were discovered in his laboratory cultures of Drosophila. Genetic methods were employed in field studies of Drosophila by Theodosius Dobzhansky and his associates, and cooperation with Ernst Mayr yielded the genetic definition of the term species. Following the geneticists, mathematicians developed the theory of population genetics in evolution - R.A.Fisher, J. B. S.Haldane, and Sewall Wright. The combination of these models with Darwin's natural selection yielded the "Modern Synthesis " of the theory of evolution. Dissenting views of Richard Goldschmidt caused re-thinking about some established evolutionary principles.The introduction of electrophoretic and later molecular methods into field research on evolution in the mid-20th century caused a change in emphasis, giving more weight to random processes than to natural selection in evolution at the molecular level (The "neutrality" hypothesis of Motoo Kimura). The theory of evolution will no doubt continue to evolve in the future.

The history of the Jewish communities of these lands-where most of the Jews of Europe and America originated-is often the subject of wooly thinking and stereotypes. Antony Polonsky recreates this lost world in a way that avoids both sentimentalism and the simplification of the east European Jewish experience into a story of persecution and martyrdom. This is an important story whose relevance extends beyond the Jewish world or the bounds of east-central Europe.

The present volume is being published on the sixty-ninth anniversary of the Farhūd, the pogrom committed by religious and nationalist Arabs against the Jews of Iraq on the Jewish holiday of Pentecost (Shavu‘ot), 1–2 June 1941. The Hebrew edition of this book was published in 1992 by the Research Institute of Babylonian Jewry in Or Yehuda, Israel . This volume is a revised version of the Hebrew edition. The title consists of papers on the pogrom and on the events leading up to it which were originally published in English, others which were written in Hebrew and now appear in English for the first time, and documents which have not been previously published, including an updated list of the names of victims of the Farhūd and a map indicating the places in Baghdad where rioters attacked Jews. This book thus provides the English reader with comprehensive and updated information on the Farhūd and constitutes a memorial to the innocent victims killed during these pogroms and whose only crime was that they were Jews.

This book is dealing with the uses of the memory of the Resistance and of the Holocaust, born in the wake of the war between the years 1945–1985. Italy is used as a case study for the understanding, shaping and the formation of the new European national identities post World War II. This title focuses on the Italian agenda and is shedding a new light on the process of reconstruction and revitalization (including the rebuilding of national self-identity). The book traces the changes in the character and functions of historical memory during this period when national consciousness was u ndergoing a critical development in its search for unity. It leads to a broader venue of the tensions between the memory of anti-fascist resistance on the one hand and the shameful and disturbing awareness of the fascist past on the other. This is the first attempt of a synthesis of this kind of Italian history that combines all interdisciplinary sources: memoir literature and literary sources in general, historiographic debates as well as political discussions.

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