The encounter of Jews with the Enlightenment has so far been considered almost entirely from a masculine perspective. In shifting the focus to a group of educated Jewish women in Berlin, this engaging study makes an important contribution to German Jewish history as well as to gender studies. Natalie Naimark-Goldberg's study of these women's letters,literary activities, and social life reveals them as cultivated members of the European public. Their correspondence allowed them not only to demonstrate their intellectual talents but also to widen their horizons and acquire knowledge—a key concern of women seeking empowerment. Her descriptions of their involvement in the public sphere, a key feature of Enlightenment culture, offer important new insights: social gatherings in their homes served the purpose of intellectual advancement, while the newly fashionable spas gave them the opportunity to expand their contacts with men as well as with other women, and with non-Jews as well as Jews, right across Europe. As avid readers and critical writers, these women reflected the secular world-view that was then beginning to spread among Jews. Imbued with enlightened ideas and values and a new feminine awareness, they began to seek independence and freedom, to the extent of challenging the institution of marriage and traditional family frameworks. A final chapter discusses the relationship of the women to Judaism and to religion in general, including their attitude to conversion to Christianity—the route that so many ultimately took.

Israelis on the Move tells the story of young adults from the Former Soviet Union as they beat a path to Israeliness Based on analyses of their immigration stories, the book offers a new perspective in immigration studies that sees belonging as achieved not through the adoption of foundational national ethos of the new place, but rather through participation in local debates about this ethos . More particularly, the book examines the way in which the young immigrants shape their belonging to Israel through a reading of the homecoming ethos that awards them automatic citizenship. Based on an interpretation of instantiations of the homecoming ethos in everyday life, they form an affinity to their new home, construct their identity, and locate themselves within Israeli society. In doing so they are concerned with decoding, interpreting and critiquing the building blocks of the ethos: the memory of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, military service, the new Jew, and allegiance to their new place. The book shows how the immigrants hold onto an ethos that promises them recognition and inclusion within the ethno-religious nation. At the same time, they resist the total demands Imposed by the ethos, and criticize Zionist premises that are considered as taken for granted . We term this double, interrelated movement critical belonging, a concept that suggests that the immigrants’ belonging to the new place does not entail the unconditional acceptance of local ethos, while at the same time implying that their critique does not entail their rejection of the new place or a retreat into socio-cultural enclaves.

Based on four years of ethnographic research the book offers an intimate, textured and rich depiction of contemporary life in one marginalized development town in the Negev . Placing the stories of five women at the center, the author (herself a Mizrahi woman born in a development town) depicts the creative strategies used by each woman in dealing with the multiple exclusions - gendered, ethnic, class-based, geographic marginalization - that these women have to deal with. The five paths include daily struggles to make ends meet and escape social isolation by one single mother who raises two children without the help of her drug addict partner; the investment in an increasingly more religious-observant lifestyle by another woman. The life stories of two other women are dramatized using texts these women wrote about their own lives. Experimenting with a range of writing styles we get a closer understanding of patterns of feminist rebellion at the margins and of a way of life that resists, adopts and refashions centrist narratives of what it means to be Israeli woman today. Readable, engaging and at the same time theoretically informed the book is a sustained reflection about the ways in which gender, class, ethnicity, and religiosity are mutually produced in contemporary Israel and about how the center can be understood from its margins.

This is the story of a nearly forgotten chapter of the Holocaust—of over 16,000 Jewish women, girls and children, their origins, itineraries and fates, who suffered in the horrendous Nazi concentration camp for women, Ravensbrück. As a historian, Judith Buber Agassi was struck by the changing conditions, countries of origin, and fates of these women during 5 distinct periods during the 6 years of the camp's existence. As a sociologist, she studied the social relations of the Jewish prisoners among themselves as well as with the non-Jewish majority. After the mass murder of Jewish prisoners early in 1942, a larger group organization became impossible, but the Jewish women developed a special and effective form of small-group organization, the so-called camp-families. As a sociologist of gender, she surveyed the educational background and patterns of behavior specific to Jewish women, and has produced an impressive study.

For one hundred years, the kibbutz was an undisputed model of an agricultural and industrial collective that implemented sharing, equality and direct democracy. Since the mid-1980s, however, the majority of the kibbutzim have undergone far-reaching changes (FRC). Differential salaries, privatization of property rights on apartments, or absorbing non-members as residents or “partial” members penetrate numerous settlements. This book tackles the question whether all this means that the kibbutz is gone. To answer this question, it investigates the dynamics of the new kibbutz reality, in this post-FRC era when some kibbutzim go as far as adopting all or nearly all FRCs possible while others still assert their loyalty to the “old regime. What comes out from this investigation definitely sets kibbutzim in the category of what Beck calls a “risk society”. The risk concerns the fact that for kibbutzniks, to remain a kibbutz or to step out from what a kibbutz still represents is a matter of choice that can be decided at any moment. The primary cost of this freedom is that kibbutzniks undergo a change of position vis-à-vis the society. While in the past, kibbutzim felt they represent a segment of the society that is appreciated for its contribution to national and societal challenges, today, they come to realize that in the eyes of the public, they are just “like anyone else” who pursues its own well-being. On the other hand, the pluralism that reigns today in many a kibbutz was studied, under the light of the Harvardian model with a research carried out from 2008 to 2010. This research focused on fourteen kibbutzim - some more “collective” and others more innovative. The investigation reveals many new actors and a reality that is far from reaching a point of “tranquility”. The depiction obtained of kibbutz reality is anything but homogeneous and unified or clearly dichotomous and divided. Though, the singularity of the kibbutz, even when it adopts the most extreme FRCs, consists in its retaining attachment to two basic codes - mutual responsibility (‘arevut hadadit’) and decision by consensus. What kibbutzim still have in common is that they depend on the wishes and hopes of kibbutzniks themselves. The general picture that comes out is not that of an “exemplary non-failure” as Martin Buber described it more than two generations ago. The kibbutz now appears as a non-failure that has apparently lost something of its “exemplarity”. Its main achievement is that it is still with us. Only the future will say for how long.

In crucial decision-making moments during the struggle of the Zionist Movement for obtaining sovereignty, the Jewish members of the Communist Movement in Israel presented an opposition. They made an attempt to undermine the Zionist narrative and Zionism itself as a value. In the public eye, its activists were tied to treason and turning their back to the national struggle. The conduct of the Jewish communists in Eretz Yisrael is a case study for the ability of ideological commitment to keep its seniority when facing opposite its members' national loyalty. The book A Red Star in the Israeli Flag presents a complex relationship between the Zionist Movement and the approach to it by members of the Communist Movement. The latter brought together various ideological streams and perceptions regarding Zionism, and its leadership did not always express the ideological variety that was common amongst its members. The Labor Movement was initially a home to members of the Communist Movement and they took part in acts of settlement and protection, but following their split and the establishment of a separate movement, its members' positions became more radical and this climaxed with their renouncement of the Zionist ethos. The attempts to recreate a dialogue with the Zionist Movement were led by the Jewish section of the Communist Movement. Its Jewish members recruiting to serve in the Second World War alongside Yishuv people, despite the objection of its Arab leaders, accelerated the splitting. The War highlighted the connection with the Yishuv and a Zionist stream was forming in the Movement. The events of the Second World War and the establishment of the State of Israel faced the leaders of the Communist Movement with the need to define their relations with the newly-formed state, its socialist-like actions and the value of Zionism. Jewish communist leadership continued denying Zionism as a value and attempted to replace it with values such as patriotism and nationalism. The Communist Movement tested the willingness of Israeli society and political system to accept an ideological group that takes part in Zionist causes and yet refrains from siding the value of Zionism.

The Roman Republic in the Perspective of Political Thought deals with the Roman Republic and the ways in which it was perceived as a political system. It appeals to a wide audience of historians, writers, political science researchers and educated readers interested in the political thought of the west in antiquity, the Middle Ages and modern times. The book is based on the lectures given by Professor Miller in 1997 as a guest of the Menachem Stern Jerusalem Forum for History, on behalf of the Israel Historical Society.

À la fois populaire et énigmatique, Samson n’a pas fini d’interroger les hommes. Cette interrogation se découvre au centre de la réflexion qui se poursuit au long de ces pages de Perspectives. Un parcours où l’on s’arrêtera tour à tour sur le héros de la Bible, sur les œuvres littéraires et artistiques qu’il a inspirées, mais aussi sur la métamorphose du personnage, sa postérité, comme les manifestations de divers super-héros à travers d’autres cultures.

“Halakhic marriage perpetuates a person’s status as property… This form of control over a woman’s sexuality is a type of terrorism that does not apply to men .” This statement expresses a modicum of the discomfort felt by modern religious women with respect to the traditional wedding ceremony. This book follows the efforts by these women to alter the traditional ceremony, challenging it and opposing it even while remaining a part of it. These women choose to express their agreement with and opposition to various elements of the tradition in a manner that reflects a worldview that values both equality and Orthodoxy. The social power relations between these women and their environment describe the revolution taking place in religious society, in the shadow of the intersections of tradition with modernity, and of Orthodoxy with feminism. Non-religious women who nevertheless struggle to accept various aspects of the Jewish wedding ritual will likewise find in this book an echo of the whispers in their hearts.

The book Research Ethics , was written by leading researchers from different faculties and departments of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The chapters illuminate various ethical issues in research and their theoretical and practical implications. Among the subjects discussed in the book are human personal rights versus the public's wellbeing, academic freedom and research financed by industries, ethics of scientific publications, and directions and current trends in research ethics. The book includes also chapters which discuss various applications of research ethics such as psychology, genetics and the use of animals and stem cells for research. In addition, six practical illustrative ethical case examples in research practice are analyzed. The book is a challenging reading for researchers and students in universities and other high education institutes, and for whoever thinks that scientific work should be carried out with responsibility and transparency.