Charles Perrault’s “Puss in Boots” was published in Paris at the end of the seventeenth century in his collection Stories or Tales from Times Past or, Tales of Mother Goose . Yigal Schwartz reveals how Perrault dresses the story in a new and colorful literary garment woven from the fairy tale and the contemporary story of the court of Louis XIV. Perrault’s story and the fairy tale both conceal and reveal things about each other and cruelly illuminate the nature of crowds and the royal court. Among the folds of this literary garment, a social, cultural, and political crossroads can be found. And what do the cat’s boots conceal? This question has excited Yigal Schwartz since childhood and is what sent him on a unique, sometimes perplexing, and multifaceted quest for “Puss in Boots.” In this in-depth literary study, Schwartz analyzes the well-known tale and determinedly examines each of its details, comparing style and content. Why does the cat wear boots? Why a miller’s son? Why the Marquis of de Carabas? And why the ogre’s castle? Schwartz draws his answers from a wide range of perspectives—those of psychoanalysis, phenomenology, sociology, and literary studies—all of which meet at the roots of the anxiety he identifies at the foundation of the tale: the anxiety involved in concealment, which is at the same time anxiety about the mask but also about what may not be concealed behind it at all.

Commedia dell’arte, originating in Italy and proliferating on European stages from approximately 1650 to 1750, is one of the most significant and long-lasting phenomena in theatre history; its influence on all performing genres is notable throughout Western Drama to this very day. The new study From Carnival to Theatre: Structure and Chaos in the Commedia Dell'arte provides a comprehensive, deeply-researched study of the development of the genre, the establishment of the first professional troupes in Europe, their organization, their patrons and wide variety of popular and elite audiences. The study traces all aspects of the unique improvised performance: the show's space, dramatic patterns, dramatis personae, acting style, costume and stage design are re-interpreted by the attachment of the commedia dell’ arte to its double roots: the heritage of written literature, and manifestations of popular oral tradition in seasonal festivities. The book explores especially the interaction of the commedia dell'arte with the phenomenon of carnival, in its very existence as an opposition to the social structure within the liminal time and space related to the celebration. Being an authorized event, containing metaphors of annihilating the existent order, in which subversion could be substituted by amusement, the carnivalesque combined time, place and creative means into a new theatrical form: the commedia dell'arte.

Galit Hasan-Rokem | Dov Noy – A Centennial Anniversary Amos Noy | Three Variants of a Riddle and a Solution: In Memory of Dov Noy Few articles in this issue : Avishar Har-Shefi | On the Beginnings of the Hasidic Story Itamar Dagan | Written New Year’s Greetings According to Texts from the Cairo Geniza and Rabbinic Literature Haya Bar-Itzhak z”l | The Dead and the Survivors: Historical Legends about Women during the1648/49 Pogroms as a Female Site of Memory Hanna Cohen-Perez and Esther Schely-Newman | Sainte Laktar (el Guettar) in Tunisia and Israel: Passages through Time and Space Michael Lukin | The Traditional Yiddish Lullaby as an East-Ashkenazi Phenomenon

Articles: Yona Sabar | Grandpa Ephraim and Grandpa Menashe: Two Opposite Characters, Based on Personal and Communal Childhood Memories Dov Cohen | ‘The Holy Island of Chios’: New Findings Concerning the Purported Burial Place of R. YaꜤakov ben Asher (BaꜤal Ha-Turim) on the Island of Chios and Pilgrimages to His Gravesite Itamar Drori | Rabbi Israele Costa’s ‘Miḳweh Yisrael’ (1851): The Beginning of the Adapted Jewish Story for Youth Carmela Abdar | Reflections on Magical Texts on Jewelry and Amulets of Jewish Women and Children from Yemen and Habban Tom Fogel | JaꜤle – Yemenite Nostalgia in a Jerusalem Café Jacqueline Laznow | ‘I Recognized the Holidays According to the Food’: Tradition and Memory in the Jewish Community of Argentina Reviews: Eli Yassif | The First Book of Jewish Jokes: The Collection of L. M. Büschenthal, ed. Elliott Oring, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2018 Dudu Rotman | Vered Tohar, The Book of Tales, Sermons and Legends. Anthology of Hebrew Stories from the Print Era: An Annotated Edition, Tel Aviv: Hakibbuz Hameuchad 2017, 201 pp.

Articles: Haim Weiss | ‘From That Hour the Doom Was Sealed’: On Class Reversals in the ‘Legends of Destruction’ Vered Tohar | ‘Rabbi Hanina and the Frog’: An Ancient Ashkenazi story Adapted for Children by Asher Barash Lital Lieberman-Avital | ‘Take the Illness and Give the Medicine’: Removal by Salt – Traditional Women’s Healing Practice on a Socio-Cultural Borderline Yuval Harari | Wonders and Sorceries in Yeruham: A Magical-Political Rashomon Dalia Marx | Welcoming the Sabbath in the Kibbutzim: Secular Religiosity Narmina Abdulaev | Narration Surfing: Folklore Published on the Internet and Its Analysis Shany Kotler-Fux | ‘Hitler-Pants’ Parodies: Folklore in Israel’s Virtual Sphere Reviews: Aharon Maman | [Review of:] Yosef Tobi and Tsivia Tobi, Judeo-Arabic Literature in Tunisia, 1850–1950, Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2014, 367 pp. Jacqueline Laznow | [Review of:] Tsivia Tobi, From Bride to Daughter-in-Law: The World of Jewish Women in Southern Tunisia and Its Reflection in Popular Literature, Jerusalem 2016, 344 + [iv] pp. [Hebrew] Tzila Zan-Bar Zur | [Review of:] Idit Pintel-Ginsberg, The Angel and the Tcholent: Food Representations in Folktales, Haifa 2016, 176 pp. [Hebrew] English Abstracts

Folk-culture is typically associated with continuity; how can one engage folk-culture in situations of destruction and extermination - the reality Zionist folklorists confronted facing the Shoah? With the first bits of information regarding the destruction in Europe, many of them assembled in Tel Aviv to form the Yeda Am folklore society; in tandem, the Institute for Jewish Folklore was formed in Jerusalem. The two competing organizations dealt with fragmentary lives in the Diaspora in different ways, in their quest to find new meanings from them. This book examines Zionist folkloristics at this dire hour from a perspective that views fractured reality as a fundamental principle in studying cultures in general, by combining approaches from folklore studies and science and technology studies. This book undermines the distinction between individualist scholarly knowledge and collective folklore by examining everyday scholarly habits: Archival practices, the use of letterheads, jubilee celebrations of scholars as well as practices of editing and laying out scholarly publications. The tension between national culture and ethnic cultures is revealed in new ways, as is the relationship between avant-garde and folklore studies.

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.

There over 1,300 species of bats in the world, which constitute one-third of the total sum of mammals in Israel. Most people are not aware of them and their fantastic ways of living, because contrary to other mammals, bats do not walk or swim (although they are capable of doing both), but rather fly actively. They are also nocturnal, and unlike most mammals and birds their main sense is not sight but hearing. In order to find their way around, bats omit calls and listen to the echoes they produce in order to navigate. This is also how they find their prey, which is comprised of a variety of animals such as insects, scorpions, fish, frogs, and toads, as well as nectar and fruit. Each species of bats has a special diet and unique behavioural , anatomical and physiological adaptations for this purpose. Bats are beneficial to people by pollinating flowers of many plants, consuming enormous quantities of insects that spread malaria and damage agricultural crops and producing valuable fertilizer-guano. In spite of these benefits, people around the world have created many superstitious beliefs and legends about bats and their behavior. This book describes the biology of bats and their complex relationships with humanity.

The heroes of this book are the rabbis of small and medium-sized communities in Eastern Europe. Who were these rabbis? What were their training processes? Did they get their job because of their scholastic or rhetorical skills, because of their family ties, or because they had the capital to buy this position? Did they win "permanence" or was the threat of dismissal constantly hovering over their heads? How were their terms of employment and wages determined, and what was their economic situation? Were they perceived as spiritual leaders? What was their relationship with the community's power centers? How did they navigate between their duties as halakhic authorities and their desire to engage in learning and teaching? The book attempts to answer these questions based on an examination of the world of over a thousand rabbis. Click here for the English edition, published by De Gruyter in collaboration with Magnes Press

The book includes articles, documentation and a catalog of the Ethnographic Department of the Museum of the Contemporary. It is the fruit of a long-term project carried out at the Mamuta Art and Research Center and curated by the Sala-Manca Group. It contains articles by Yoram Bilu, Rachel Elior, Freddie Rokem and Diego Rotman on the Dybbuk; by Galit Hasan-Rokem and Daphna Ben-Shaul on Sukkot, and on the Eternal Sukkah project; by Shalom Sabar on electric Shabbat candles, and by Lea Mauas and Diego Rotman on different art projects. The book also includes documentation of artworks and a project by Itamar Mendes-Flohr, Yeshaiahu Rabinowtz, Ktura Manor, Hannan Abu Huseein, Reuven Zehavi, Sala-Manca, Samuel Rotman, Shira Borer, Nir Yahalom, Chen Cohen, Pessi Komar, Adi Kaplan, and Shahar Carmel, among others.

Articles Dina Stein - Rabbinic Tales in the Israel Folktale Archives: Holy Men and Tricksters Osnat Sharon - Elephant, Leviathan and Nineveh the Great City: Sibbuv Rabbi Petachia and Midrash Yonah, Printed Side by Side Nina Pinto-Abecasis - The Piropo as a Bridge between Cultures in Tetuan (Northern Morocco) Adam Ratzon - Al ma yismash kbiru , ya alt tadbiru [Whoever would not listen to elders will not manage in life]: A Literary-Cultural Reading of the Proverbs and Personal Narratives of an Egyptian-Israeli Woman Jacqueline Laznow - ‘I didn’t know I wanted to be a rabbi, there was no name for what I wanted to be’: Life Stories of Women Rabbis Living in Israel Towards a History of Folklore Meir Nizri - Israel and the Sabbath as Bride and Groom in Various Sabbath Hymns

An exorcism which took place in 1696 in Nikolsburg, Moravia (today Mikulov, Czech Republic) is the focus of this book. The description of this grandiose magic event reached us in two different versions: one well-known, in Hebrew became a model for this folk-genre in the 18th century; the other in Yiddish, remained unknown until now and is published here in full for the first time .The analysis includes a thorough comparison between these two competing descriptions, the identification of the participants – with special emphasis on their Sabbatean background and connections, as well as an identification of the specific ‘manual for exorcism’ used in this event (also published here in full, along other esoteric manuals of its kind). Through a thorough examination of the paradigmatic exorcism which took place in Moravia in 1696 and of its deep influence on the exorcism tales of the following generations, this book sheds new light on the central role magic in general and exorcism in particular played in the rich and multi-faceted cultural life of Ashkenazic Jews in the early modern period.