Ta’am HaTe’amim is a messianic treatise in the Hebrew language composed by the Catholic French orientalist and mystic Guillaume Postel (1510-1581). Ta’am HaTe’amim is a relatively unknown Renaissance document, which sheds light on unique intellectual and political stands prevalent among sixteenth-century Catholic reformators . Throughout the treatise, Postel refers to several famous historical issues, depicting them through his own particular perspective, which was based upon a blend of Joachite millenarism, French patriotism and Jewish Kabbalah. In addition, Ta’am HaTe’amim is a rare example of Hebrew writing by an Early Modern Christian Scholar, and it is characterized by remarkable linguistic traits expressing Postel’s theological concepts regarding languages in general and Hebrew in particular.

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.

Replacing Myself with Myself is the fifth selection of Michael Handelzalts's weekly columns, written and published in the Haaretz newspaper between June 2005 and November 2008. Anchoring his amused musings in the headlines, he ponders, among other things, on the kind of fruit with which the Snake and Eve had tempted Adam in the Garden of Eden, on the virtues of good spirit, and on other matters, most of them highly immaterial. A selection of his columns, Histoires d’en lire, was published in French in 2001 by Gallimard.

The struggle between philosophy and theology in the middle ages has been a central topic for historians of ideas. The Clash of Paradigms claims that this struggle can be fully explained by scientific paradigms. Aristotelian and Neoplatonic paradigms in the Jewish world confronted the kalam paradigm at their early stage, and magic and experimental science in the following stage.

Hasidism, a movement of religious awakening and social reform, originated in the mid-eighteenth century. After two and a half centuries of crisis, upheaval, and renewal, it remains a vibrant way of life and a compelling aspect of Jewish experience. This book explores the profound intellectual and religious issues that the hasidic masters raised in their Torah commentary, and brings to the fore the living qualities of their sermons ( derashot ). Ora Wiskind-Elper addresses a spectrum of topics: creation, revelation, and redemption; hermeneutics, epistemology, psychology, Romanticism, poetry and poetics, art history, Hebrew fiction, cultural history, and tropes of Jewish suffering and hope. Fully engaged in the texts and their spirituality, she brings them to bear on postmodernist challenges to traditional spiritual and religious sensibilities. This is a comprehensive study, unique in pedagogy, clarity, and originality. It uses the full range of critical scholarship on hasidism as a social and ideological movement. At the same time, it maintains a strong focus on hasidic Torah commentary as a conveyor of theology and value. Each of its chapters presents a fundamentally new approach. Wiskind-Elper’s translations are in themselves an innovative moment in the tradition and spiritual history of the passages she offers.

This issue contains the following essays: Ronnie Goldstein | YHWH’s Inheritance and His Enthronement Shraga Bar-On and Yakir Paz | The Land of God to the Sons of God: Deuteronomy 32: 8-9 and the Inheritance of the Land of Israel Shlomi Efrati | A Quire of Chapters of Sanhedrin and Megillah, Part 1: A Unique Textual Tradition of the Babylonian Talmud Mordechai Akiva Friedman | The Shabbat Evening Prayer in the Palestinian Congregation of Fustat in Abraham Maimonides’ Times

Music, which speaks in the language of tones, tends to elude attempts at a description in words. Precisely for this reason, perhaps, it has always posed a great challenge to authors, who have been writing musical works and performances throughout the generations. Contrary to what might be expected, literature is far from unanimous in praising music. Frequently, it assigns it dark powers and presents it as dangerous. This two-volume study is the most massive attempt yet to survey the moment musicaux (musical moments) of world literature. Volume I contains a thematic mapping of some 250 literary representations of music; volume II offers an in-depth analysis of 30 of them .