Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī’s Mishkat al-Anwar (The Niche of Lights) is justly included in the Hall of Fame of world mysticism as an immortal masterpiece for generations to come. Its subject matter is an arcane mystical interpretation of the Light Verse, sura An-Nur (Qur’an, verse 35), whose text has become a central symbol for the mainstream of Sufi mysticism. The book centres on the light and the mystery of light within a Sufi’s world. Its central importance caused The Niche of Lights to be translated to Hebrew twice in the Middle Ages, and for many generations it provided a source of inspiration in the realm of Judaism for philosophers and Kabbalists alike. This essay has now been re-translated to contemporary Hebrew. This classic inspirational text, a guide for the perplexed of the internal journey to the mystery of Divine Light, is an important, central chapter in the history of human spirituality; and occupies centre stage in the endeavour to establish prophesy, divine inspiration and a new Israeli spirituality.

In a brief historic moment in the nineteenth century, printing presses, publishing ventures, a periodical press, circulation networks, and a mass readership came into being all at once in the Middle East, where none had previously existed. The shift had ramifications in every sphere of the community's life. Among other outcomes, it facilitated the cultural and literary movement known as the Arab nahḍa ('awakening'). Ayalon's study offers a critical inquiry into the formative phase of that grand change in Arab societies, from 1800-1914. It explores the advent of printing and publishing, the formation of mass readership, and the creation of distribution channels, the vital and often overlooked nexus linking the former two processes. The book considers questions of cultural and religious tradition, social norms and relations, and concepts of education, thus shedding new – and often surprising – light on crucial facets of the emerging print culture in the Middle East.

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.

This volume presents twelve scholarly chapters by Prof. Ilan Eldar, discussing ancient Hebrew vocalization methods and reading traditions (pronunciation and configuration) among Jewish communities, especially among ancient Ashkenazi communities. These chapters have been published over the years as separate essays, and are compiled here for the first time. This volume contains the following chapters: Chapter 1: The Palestino-Tiberian Vocalization Chapter 2: The Vocalization of the Passover Haggada in Mahzor Vitry Chapter 3: The Sources of the Hebrew Reading Traditions in the Middle Ages Chapter 4: The Research of Oral Reading Traditions of Hebrew Chapter 5: The Hebrew Reading Traditions of the Baghdadi Community Chapter 6: Doublets in the Language Traditions of Hebrew Chapter 7: The Pre-Ashkenazi Reading Tradition Chapter 8: The Sources of Ashkenazi Reading Tradition Chapter 9: Vocalization Systems and Pronunciation Traditions of Hebrew Chapter 10: The Contribution of Prof. Shlomo Morag to the Study of the Hebrew Language Heritage of the Yemenite Jews Chapter 11: Neologisms in the Piyyutim of the Ashkenazi Mahzorim Chapter 12: Post-Biblical Forms in the Ashkenazi Tradition as Reflected by the Vocalization of the Worms Mahzor

The eighteen studies presented here originated in a symposium held at Yale in 2014, attended by scholars from Europe, Israel, and North America. The papers approach the subject of Mishnaic Hebrew from many different angles and directions, including grammar, from morphology to syntax to pragmatics; the relationship between the literary dialect and epigraphic evidence; manuscripts; questions of language contact, lexicography, social history, and medieval traditions; and the problem of translating Mishnaic Hebrew into modern languages. The contributors to this volume are among the leading scholars in the field and the collection represents both the current state of research and the cutting edge of future work. This volume includes the following essays: Chanan Ariel | Deviations from Mishnaic Hebrew Moshe Bar-Asher | Problems in the Description of the Morphology of Mishnaic Hebrew Elitzur A. Bar-Asher Siegal | Towards a Reconsideration of the Tense-Aspect-Mood System of Tannaitic Hebrew Gabriel Birnbaum | Phonological and Morphological Studies in MS Antonin 262 (Mishnah Seder Teharoth) Steven E. Fassberg | The Language of the Bet Amar Papyrus in Light of Other Judean Desert Documents Steven D. Fraade | The Innovation of Nominalized Verbs in Mishnaic Hebrew as Marking an Innovation of Concept Aaron Koller | The Social and Geographic Origins of Mishnaic Hebrew Aharon Maman | Rabbinic Hebrew in the Eyes of Medieval Hebrew Philologists Emmanuel Mastey | Cases of Semantic Variation in Mishnaic Hebrew: The Verbs hillek and qaras Michael Ryzhik | The Language of the Mishnah from the Late Manuscripts to the Printed Editions Bernard Septimus | The Face of Shame: Between Palestinian Blushing and Babylonian Blanching Rivka Shemesh-Raiskin | Towards a Description of Halakhic Give-and-Take Conversations in the Mishnah Nurit ShovalDudai | Identical Lemmata of Greek and Latin Loanwords in the Historical Dictionary of the Hebrew Language: Classes and Criteria Ruth Stern | The Noun haluq and Its Variant Forms in Rabbinic Hebrew Daniel Stokl Ben Ezra | The Mishnah into French: Translation Issues Ofra Tirosh-Becker | The Relative Pronoun Se- Rabbinic Hebrew as Reflected in Karaite Sources Doron Ya'akov | The Relation between Maimonides and the Yemenite Tradition in Mishnaic Hebrew Alexey (Eliyahu) Yuditsky | qosin and qorpayot To view the other volumes please press here

The book presents a broad and varied picture of Islam. It covers a wide range of topics, including faith and jurisprudence, theology and philosophy, mysticism, culture and society, from the dawn of Islam in the seventh century to contemporary times. Geographically, the book encompasses such regions as the Middle East, North Africa, the Indian subcontinent, East Asia and Europe/West . The book traces lines of continuity and change in Islam throughout the ages on such complex and sensitive issues as religion and state, the concept of jihad, Islamic attitudes to religious minorities or to Western Christian culture. These issues became hotly debated in the modern era, especially from the late 18th century, when Muslim societies were forced to contend with European colonialism, political upheavals, social and economic schisms, and identity crises . There is a clear need for a comprehensive and up-to-date introduction book in Hebrew for students and readers alike so that the appearance of the book is timely. Apart from containing new materials, the book also contains many insights, and in some cases reexamines and revisits prevailing scholarly approaches.

This volume contains the following essays: Yitzhak Avishur | Names of Jewish Holidays in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic Ilan Eldar | The Hebrew of Dutch Sepharadim in Seventeenth Century Amsterdam David M. Bunis | The Iberian Judeo-Arabic Roots of the Ladino Bible-Translation Tradition Joshua Blau | Remarks on the Biblical Dictionary of David Alfasi Joshua Blau and Joseph Yahalom | The Typology of Palestinian Vocalization Systems Preserved in Manuscripts from the Last Quarter of the First Millennium Dror Ben-Arié | Miqneh Abram of Abraham de Balmes: A New Reading of a Sixteenth Century Hebrew Grammar in the Light of Hebrew and Latin Treatises Nasir Basal | On the Comparison between Languages in Tafsīr al-̓Alfāẓ by ̓Abū al-Faraj Hārūn: Comparisons to Rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic Moshe Bar-Asher | The Limitations of Orthography, Script, and Morphology: A Problem of Mishnaic Hebrew Grammar Elitzur Bar-Asher | Siegal Rhetorical Questions in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic Yochanan Breuer | Rabba and Rava, ’Abba and ’Ava - Spelling, Pronunciation, and Meaning Chanoch Gamliel | Lexical Definitions in Menaḥem’s Maḥberet and Rashi’s Commentary Santiago García-Jalón | Manuscripts that Preceded the Introductiones of Alfonso de Zamora Aron Dotan | The Double Pronunciation of the Ancient Resh Jonathan Howard | Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek: The List of Languages in Me’or ‘Ayin and the Transmission of Diqduqe ha-Miqra Yehudit Henschke | On the Language of the Musta‘arabi Jews of Peqi‘in: between Jewish Arabic and Local Arabic – A Look at the Names of the Holidays Doron Yaakov | Remarks on a Verbal Form in the Yemenite Tradition of Mishnaic Hebrew Geoffrey Khan | The Pronunciaton of Dageš in the Tiberian Tradition of Biblical Hebrew Asher Laufer | Contemporary Realizations of Qameṣ: The Pronunciation of Qameṣ before a Ḥaṭef-Qameṣ José Martinez Delgrado | The Making of Accumulative Lists in the Maḥberet of Menaḥem ben Saruq Hananel Mirsky | The Maḥberet Menaḥem According to the Critical Edition of Sáenz-Badillos Yosef Ofer | Two Masoretic Notes about Words Vocalized with a Qameṣ and Their Metamorphosis Steven E. Fassberg | Perfect Third Masculine Singular בעו and Related Forms in Samaritan Aramaic Yona Sabar | Hebrew in the Shadow of Neo-Aramaic: Mizraḥi Hebrew as Reflected in the Report of a Kurdish Hakham Traveling in Kurdistan in 1932 Moshe Kahan | The Transformation of Ellipsis from an Exegetical Rule to a Logical Theorem in Kaspi’s Work Michael Ryhzik | Orthographic Differences between Orders of the Mishnah in MS Kaufmann Yael Reshef | Distinctive Lexical Features in the Written Hebrew of the Revival Period Ora (Rodrigue) Schwarzwald | The Common Denominator Principle in the Formation of Israeli Hebrew Joseph Chetrit | Representations of the Jewish Community and Communal Ethos: A Socio-Pragmatic and Linguistic Analysis of a Hebrew Elegy by R. Shemuel Haliwa (Meknes, 1790) Joseph Tedghi | Neologism and Rare Forms in the Spiritual Works of the Sages of Morocco Ofra Tirosh-Becker | Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic of Bar Mitzva Homilies from Ghardaïa English Abstracts

The Stage as a Temporary Home : On Dzigan and Shumacher's Theater (1927-1980) has been designated as the winner of the prestigious Shapiro Award for 2019 for the best book in Israel Studies The Stage as a Temporary Home takes us through the fascinating stages in the life and career of the duo Shimen Dzigan and Isroel Shumacher , over the course of half a century - from the beginning of their work at the Ararat avant-garde Yiddish theater in Łodz, Poland, and to their Warsaw theater, where they produced bold, groundbreaking political satire. The book further discusses their wanderings through the Soviet Union during the Second World War and their attempt to revive Jewish culture in Poland after the Holocaust, and finally describes their arrival in Israel, first as guest performers and later as permanent residents. Despite the restrictions on Yiddish actors in Israel, the duo insisted on performing in their own language and succeeded in translating the new Israeli reality into unique and timely satire. In the 1950s, they voiced a political and cultural critique of a kind that was not heard on any of the Hebrew stages. After they parted ways, and following the death of Shumacher in 1961, Dzigan continued to perform on his own and with other Israeli artists until his death in 1980 . The book is based on rare recordings, transcriptions, programs, personal diaries, letters, photographs, oral testimonies, and critical articles, all of which come together to create the first critical portrait of this extraordinary duo. The book also examines their art, the connection between theater and politics, and the complex relationship between majority culture and minority language . The study includes several valuable indexes: of titles of programs and plays, of the artists who participated in them, of writers and the drafts they wrote, of actors and the programs in which they participated, and a general name index. The book also includes a facsimile of the manuscript Der Nayer Dybbuk [The New Dybbuk]. Click here for the English edition, published by De Gruyter in collaboration with Magnes Press