Daniel Reiser Edition Volume one Rabbi Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira, a Holocaust victim and the Grand Rebbe of Piaseczno, used to deliver priceless sermons in the Warsaw Ghetto during the war. For years, the printed editions of the sermons' manuscripts have provided only partial versions of the text, which had been perpetually changed, rephrased and revised by its original author. The first volume of this book provides a critical and annotated edition of these manuscripts, published following a long editing and deciphering process based on the original manuscript, located in Warsaw's Jewish Historical Institute Archives. The book paints a new picture of this important, universal and historical document and unveils the personal story of its fascinating author. The second volume is a facsimile edition and can be purchased here

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

According to common opinion, in the research of Jewish law and in the Halakhic literature, transactions in incorporeal estates are non-valid. However, economic life and the business world are based on these transactions. As a result, a gap was created between Halacha and reality. The book " Out of Nothing" proposes resolving this problem through Talmudic research methods, various issues which are discussed in the Talmudic law, including Davar She'lo Ba La'olam , Tovat Hanaha , and bills sale. In the course of the discussion it turns out that the Tannaitic ruling recognized these transactions, but Talmudic Halakha refused to recognize them. However, the Amoraim suggest various ways of mediation in order to enable transferring of future estate, debt bonds and so on. The book proposes to take the bridges that the Amoraim proposed based on the Tannaitic law and to use them as tools for Halakhic validation of current market life.

Contents: Nili Wazana – Preface In Memoriam Gershon Galil Prof. Zecharia Kallai 24.6.1923-17.1.2016 ) Amihai Mazar Prof Trude Dothan 12.10.1922-28.1.2016 ) Biblical Studies David Frankel - The Final Form of the Story of the Rape of Dinah in Light of Textual and Redaction Criticism Noam Mizrahi - From Wisdom to Hymn: The Literary, Textual and Linguistic Development of Jer 10:12-13 Miriam Sklarz - The Poet Before God, Against his Enemies and Facing his Congregation Naphtali S. Meshel - Dramatic Irony and double entendre in the Book of Job Amitai Baruchi - Unna Plural Forms Referring to ‘Elohim’ and the Israelite Cultic Proclamation Recurring in the Cult of the Calf The Bible in Relation to the Ancient Near East Shira J. Golani - ‘That (No) Plague May Come Upon Them for Being Registered’ (Exod 30:12): Census and Plague in the Bible in Light of the Ancient Near East Mordechai Cogan - Restoring the Empire: Sargon II’s Campaign to the West in 720/19 BCE History of Exegesis David Kopeliovich - Hated by his Brothers: The Typological Function of Jeremiah the Prophet in Josephus’ Jewish War Jonathan Jacobs - Use of the ʻNarrative Parableʼ by Northern-France Disciples (11th-12th Centuries) Isaac Gottlieb and Stewart Vanning - Rupert of Deutz (c.1075-1129) and Jewish Commentaries on the Joseph Story Itamar Kislev - The Contribution of Minhat Yehuda for Improving the Text of Rashbam’s Torah Commentary Yohanan Kapah - Joseph Hayyun’s Maggid Mishne

All cultures, religions, and ethical or legal systems struggle with the role intention plays in evaluating actions. The Talmud compellingly elaborates on the notion of intention through the radical concept that “A sin committed for the sake of God [ averah li-shmah ] is greater than a commandment fulfilled not for the sake of God [ mi-mizvah she-lo li-shmah ].” The Babylonian Talmud attributes this concept, which challenges one of rabbinic Judaism’s most fundamental dogmas, the obligation to fulfill the commandments and avoid sin—to R. Nahman b. Isaac (RNBI), a renowned 4th century Amora. Considering the normative character of the rabbinic culture in which Halakhah (Jewish religious law) plays such a central role, this concept, seems almost like a foreign body in the Talmudic corpus. The book reveals the origins of this radical idea, its accurate meaning and use in the time this concept was formulated and the movement of this radical idea from the margins culture to mainstream - into the Babylonian Talmud, the canonic book of Rabbinic Judaism. The findings of this research provide substantial insight into our understanding of the interpretive process and of conceptual adaptation in rabbinic culture.

One of the most visible aspects of Orthodox Judaism in present-day Israel is the ubiquity of the "Gdoilim" – "the great ones" - the luminary spiritual leaders whose presence dominates orthodox politics, media and the public space. However, these individuals, whose lives are constantly canonized in hagiographies, have largely remained unknown outside the Orthodox Jewish communities, and have generally been overlooked by the academic research. The 'Gdoilim': Individuals who shaped Haredi Judaism in Israel is a pioneering attempt to fill this gap by offering a comprehensive collection of articles by Israeli and American leading scholars of Orthodox Judaism striving to elucidate the lives and theologies of these extraordinary individuals and explain the secret of their lasting power.

The articles in this volume: Nili Samet - New Light on the Administrative Term bēn bayît in Biblical and Rabbinical Sources Bezalel Bar-Kochva - The Religious Persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes as a Historical Reality David Henshke - Between Blessings and Prayer: On the History of the Amidah Prayer Mordechai Sabato - On the Inclusion of the ‘Mikan Ameru’ Homilies in the Halakhic Midrashim Michael Rand - Surviving Fragments of the Qillirian Heritage in Provence/Catalonia and in Spain: In the Wake of New Materials from the Genizah Jonathan Vardi - Between Shemuel Ha-Nagid and the Poets of Zaragoza For contents and article abstracts in English press on Sample pages which is located on the right of the cover photo.

Sanjay Subrahmanyam's Three Ways to Be Alien draws on the lives and writings of three figures cast adrift from their traditional moorings into an unknown world. The subjects includea "Persian" prince of Bijapur (in central India, no less) held hostage by the Portuguese at Goa; English traveler and global schemer, whose writings reveal a surprisingly nimble understanding of realpolitik in the emerging world of the early seventeenth century; and an insightful Venetian chronicler of the Mughal Empire in the later seventeenth century who drifted between jobs with the Mughals and various foreign entrepôts, observing all but remaining the eternal outsider. In telling the fascinating story of floating identities in a changing world, Subrahmanyam also succeeds in injecting humanity into global history and proves that biography still plays an important role in contemporary historiography.

Articles in this volume: Emanuel Tov - The Development of the Text of the Torah in Two Major Text Blocks Michael Segal, Emanuel Tov, William Brentת Seales, Clifford Seth Parker, Pnina Shor, Yosef Porath, with an Appendix by Ada Yardeni - An Early Leviticus Scroll from En-Gedi: Preliminary Publication Kristin De Troyer - Reconstructing the Older Hebrew Text of the Book of Joshua: An Analysis of Joshua 10 Armin Lange - 4QXIIg (4Q82) as an Editorial Text Gary A. Rendsburg - How Could a Torah Scroll Have Included the Word זעטוטי Nancy Benovitz - Psalm 91:1 and the Rabbinic Shemaʿ in Greek on a Byzantine Amuletic Armband Yosef Ofer - A Fragment of the Aleppo Codex (Exodus 8) that Reached Israel Rachel Hitin-Mashiah - Main Division in the Verse in the 21 Prose Books: Syntactic Study Jordan S. Penkower - An Esther Scroll from the 15th Century: Determining its Type among Five Traditions (Oriental, Sefardi, Ashkenazi, Italian, Yemenite)

Most of the nineteen essays presented in this book deal with tongues and traditions of Maghreb Judaism. The communities of Morocco are a central topic in this collection as well as essays dealing with documents from the Ghardaïa community in south Algeria. This collection also offers extensively studied records of practices and actions of other communities in the area. Most of the chapters are based on manuscripts and records from the collection of Jewish North-African manuscripts at the Yale University library. The first two parts of the appendix are dedicated to four Masoretes. Bar-Asher based quite a few of his researches on their spoken and written Masoretic texts.

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.

Free choice has been one of the main philosophical issues throughout the ages. The Essence of Choice in Medieval Jewish Philosophy offers a comprehensive analysis of the views of medieval Jewish philosophers on this topic. It presents various perspectives on the problem of free choice in philosophy in general and in Jewish philosophy in particular: Does free choice really exist, or is it an illusion? What is the attitude of the medieval philosophers toward what the Bible and the Sages have to say about free choice? Does Judaism have a substantive position on philosophical questions? What power can free a person from causal determinism? The book discusses at length the opinions of twenty-one philosophers, from Al- Muqammis in the ninth century to Rabbi Joseph Albo in the fifteenth. This engagement with many philosophers demonstrates the richness of Jewish philosophy and the multiplicity of opinions in it, as well as how historical changes, such as the transition from Arabic to Hebrew, affect philosophical thought. On the basis of his historical analysis, the author argues that there is no fundamental Jewish position on the question of free choice and that one can find support in the religious texts for every philosophical view.