The fourth volume of Meḥqerei Talmud published on behalf of the Department of Talmud at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is dedicated to Professor David Rosenthal on the occasion of his eightieth jubilee. Professor David Rosenthal is one of the leading researchers of the Mishnah and the Talmud , and his research also encompasses diverse bordering fields. In his bright studies and his captivating teaching, he produced countless brilliant and pulsating innovations. Some of them, which constitute the core of Talmud research, changed research concepts and set the research agenda with basic questions. Prof. Rosenthal, together with his colleagues, edited the series Meḥqerei Talmud from its inception in 1959. The articles in the collection are the fruit of the research of his colleagues and students, in his main fields of activity and in bordering fields.

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.

Tarbiz is the only Hebrew academic journal devoted to the entire range of Jewish studies. Appearing quarterly, this journal is the principal forum for the expression of the most important developments in Jewish studies in our generation, and among its contributors are the leading scholars in the various fields of Jewish studies in Israel and the world, as well as young scholars who are beginning to make their mark. Tarbiz was first published in 1930 by the Institute of Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, under the editorial pen of Prof. Jacob Nachum. Purchase of the subscription online includes domestic shipping via registered mail of the Israel Post. Other delivery options are available in the online form . International subscriptions include shipping via Fedex.

In his two masterworks, Mishneh Torah and The Guide for the Perplexed , Maimonides explicitly articulates a dual crisis: the disintegration of the Halakhic tradition and the erosion of the esoteric knowledge of the Torah. This study presents a novel interpretation of Maimonides’ crisis proclamations and the narratives linked to them. It primarily analyzes how Maimonides crafted a discourse of crisis, illuminating this through a comparison with earlier discourses in the Jewish canon and parallel crisis narratives in Islamic sources. The key question it seeks to answer is: why did Maimonides prominently employ this discourse in his works? The exploration of crisis discourse in Maimonides’ work reveals how he introduces a marked internal tension in each of his two major works. On the one hand, he declares his commitment to both the halakhic tradition and the esoteric knowledge tradition, even as he retrospectively reshapes them. On the other hand, he emphasizes the urgent need for reforming these traditions to confront the rupture they have undergone. This study demonstrates that in both Mishneh Torah and The Guide for the Perplexed , Maimonides portrays the process of breaking and refashioning tradition as an act of loyalty to these traditions during a time of crisis.

In this issue: Adiel Schremer and Benjamin Katzoff | The Tannaitic Tradition Concerning the Passover Celebration of King Hezekiah Menahem Kahana and Ofra Tirosh-Becker | Jeshua ben Yehuda’s Contribution to the Study of the Mekhilta of Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai and Its Language Israel Ori Meitlis | ‘Sidrei Taharot’: An Attempt to Complete the Talmud as a Chapter in the History of Hassidism and Its Opponents (Hitnagdut) Simcha Emanuel | An Error Always Repeats Itself

Armenian Manuscripts of the David and Jemima Jeselsohn Collection is devoted to the five Armenian codices in the Jeselsohn collection in Zurich. Of great importance for Armenian studies and the history of art more generally, they represent various literary types, including biblical, hagiographic, homiletic, and liturgical texts. They also reflect an array of visual and artisanal traditions, connected to artistic centres in the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, Constantinople, and New Julfa, and span a period of over 300 years. A newly identified Sargis Picak manuscript is of exceptional importance for the study of medieval Armenian art, for its images, for Sargis’ colophons, and for a a hitherto unstudied ivory plaque of the Transfiguration. A Ritual of 1586 holds particular importance for scholars of the Armenian liturgy and its development in sixteenth-century Jerusalem. Also presented is a beautiful parchment leaf of the opening of the Gospel of John, studied and published previously by Michael and Nira Stone, and likely originating from a Bible produced in seventeenth-century New Julfa. Two Gospel Books complete this study: one from New Julfa, dated to 1695, and another likely produced in late seventeenth or early eighteenth-century Constantinople. This book was initiated and supported by David Jeselsohn, avid and longtime collector of archaeological artifacts, manuscripts, and Judaica. It was written jointly by Michael Stone and Christina Maranci. Maranci is an art historian and Stone is a specialist in Armenian philology, palaeography and codicology. Maranci bears primary responsibility for research on the miniatures – their art-historical analysis and iconography as well as their attribution, date, and context. Stone contributed the textual, codicological and palaeographical research, including translation of the colophons from the Classical Armenian (Grabar) into English, and catalogued the contents of all five manuscripts.

In a broken world, in which even God Himself is in a state of deep crisis, what is required in order to mend the rupture? How can one heal God and His world? Moreover, what might allow our actions to be effective? These questions stand at the heart of the Lurianic Kabbalah, the apex of the Safedian intellectual and religious renaissance of the sixteenth century, and one of the constituting phenomena of Modern Jewish thought. God as Patient presents medical discourse – the knowledge, language, and practice of medicine – as a significant key to our understanding of the Lurianic search for a way to mend reality, and first and foremost the Godhead. The book reads together the Lurianic texts alongside the medical writings of R. Hayyim Vital, R. Isaac Luria's chief disciple, and a medical practitioner. Consequently, the book analyzes how medicine becomes the model for the Lurianic language of action. In its final part, the book shows how God becomes in this Kabbalah the ultimate patient of the Lurianic Kabbalist, who in turn becomes the private court physician of the King of Kings, and needs, like every physician, the proper modes of healing to accomplish his task.

In this issue: Shira Shmidman | The Dispute between Rami bar Hama and Rava – New Perspectives Ariel Malachi | David Ben Saꜥad Al-Saꜥadi and the Intense Polemic Regarding Allegory in Yemen Oded Yisraeli | Keter Shem Tov of R. Shem Yov Ibn Gaon: A Chapter in the History of Nahmanides’ Kabbalah in the 13th–14th Centuries Oz Bluman | Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin and the Recontextualization of Hasidic Innovation Gideon Freudenthal | 'Maꜥasseh Nissim'. Salomon Ben Joshua (Maimon)’s Commentary on The Homilies of Haran (R. Nissim Ben-Reuben Gerundi)

For Louis Jacobs, the quest—the process of engaging with and thinking about Jewish faith—was a lifelong pursuit. He offered a model in the 1960s, a period characterized by general religious crisis, of an observant, committed, but intellectually curious Judaism that empowered individual seekers to address challenges to faith. In Orthodox Judaism at the time a battle was under way for religious control. Generating a widespread controversy in British Jewry known as the "Jacobs Affair", his thought offers a lens for examining the trajectory of Orthodoxy. In a contemporary context marked by the changing cultural and intellectual concerns of a "post-secular" age, the focus of some of these debates over religious control has shifted. Yet Jacobs' emphasis on a personal quest is as relevant as ever, perhaps more so. This first book-length analysis of his theology unpacks the building blocks of his thought. It argues that, despite its particularities and limitations, his approach can provide a powerful model for contemporary religious seekers in the context of a growing impetus away from established, denominationally bound forms of religion. Many orthodox believers across a range of faiths continue to prefer the certainty of unquestionable religious truth claims rather than pursuing a subjective search for religious meaning. For those seeking alternative models for the contemporary Jewish quest, a reconsideration of Jacobs’ theology can offer valuable tools.

A jubilee volume in honor of Prof. Menahem Ben-Sasson. The book, which contains 22 articles written by Prof. Ben-Sasson's colleagues, students, friends, and family members is dedicated to phenomena of leadership in the Jewish world . The various articles examine conceptions, practices and ways of Jewish leadership from diverse perspectives and in varied times and places. They are based on variegated sources: historical and judicial documents, biblical exegeses, poetry, letters, Responsa, polemical and philosophical writings. The volume is a tribute to Prof. Ben Sasson's extensive academic and public activity.

The Book of Daniel is one of the later books of the Bible, and perhaps the latest of them. Its composition reaches up to Antiochus IV Epiphanes' persecution of the Jews and ends even before the liberation of Jerusalem and the purification of the Temple. The book is bilingual, written in Aramaic and Hebrew, and was written in the Hellenistic period in two different places: Babylon and the Land of Israel. Chapter 1, written in Hebrew, serves as an introduction to chapters 2-6, which are in Aramaic. The stories in these chapters are about Jewish courtiers in Babylon who manage to maintain their faith and the customs of the ancestors, even when their lives are threatened. They are then saved from the hands of their persecutors, and even rise to greatness in the courts of foreign kings. These chapters are intended to encourage Jews in the Diaspora to maintain their faith. Chapters 7-12 have a completely different tone. Chapter 7 is written in Aramaic and links the two parts of the book. Chapters 8-12 are in Hebrew. These chapters are visions that Daniel had, but required an angel in order to interpret and understand them. These visions are an interpretation of global and local historical events and their vicissitudes, which both occurred during the author's lifetime and are yet to occur in his future. The chapters written in Aramaic are translated into Hebrew, and appear facing the Aramaic text. This is the only book in the Bible that touches upon the resurrection of the dead, among other things. A special appendix is added, which surveys the development of the idea of the remaining soul and the resurrection of the dead.

The Israel Folktale Archive (IFA), named after founder Dov Noy, was established in 1955 aiming to protect oral traditions at danger of becoming extinct or sinking into oblivion. It currently stores some 25,000 stories told in dozens of ethnic groups, mostly Jewish but also Muslim, Christian and Druze. Poetic Memory deals with the appearance of early Hebrew traditions in the archive tales, from the days of the Bible to the Middle Ages.