With the social and cultural upheavals of early modern Europe, rabbis were constantly struggling to preserve Jewish tradition. Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi (1658—1718), the independent-minded chief rabbi of Amsterdam, came to be regarded as one of the leading halakhic authorities of this tumultuous era. The battles he waged changed Jewish practice in his lifetime and came to define rabbinic norms in the decades that followed, with relevance to the present day. The challenges for a leading rabbi in a time of ferment were many. With advances in communication and the early stirrings of political emancipation in Jewish and secular society, how could one establish halakhic authority? How were rabbis to navigate the new reality in which mystical texts—once the exclusive province of the elite—became accessible to the masses? As geographical boundaries shifted and cultural barriers crumbled, how could one build a bridge between the worlds of Ashkenaz and Sepharad? How were the keepers of tradition meant to respond to the religious laxity that accompanied acculturation? And how could the religious establishment engage sectarians in general, and crypto-Sabbatians in particular? Hakham Tsevi didn’t always win the battles he fought, but his arguments have endured. Products of his fierce independence, some of his responsa have attained near-canonical status., Today’s halakhic discussions of such contemporary issues as brain death and artificial intelligence often begin with the words he committed to posterity. Hundreds of years after his death, Hakham Tsevi and his work remain at the frontier of halakhic discourse.

A Ramble in the Hive is an eco-philosophical text that deals with the relationship between humans and honeybees from the dawn of humanity to the present day, interlinking mythology, folklore, literature, art and science from different historical periods. A Ramble in the Hive works as both popular science and philosophy, combining a study of the history of beekeeping and its multitude of inventions, with a philosophical and poetic view of the human encounter with honeybees as reflected in the imagination of our culture. It suggests approaching the hive as an archetype of living mythology that works on our collective imagination. A Ramble in the Hive presents the planetary honeybee crisis as a fascinating window through which to observe wide-ranging ecological issues. How did the honeybee get such a lofty and critical role – holding responsibility for both the future of humanity and the earth? What do the bees tell us in their current state? This book is an attempt to answer these questions.

The book relates the story of the Jewish movement in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s as perceived by its participants. On the basis of interviews with almost 300 activists from over 60 cities, it portrays the movement's evolution in all its facets. It examines the activist's personality and background and the path he or she took prior to becoming active, including the presentation of documents to the authorities, that branded him or her as a social pariah and potential traitor. The book discusses the emergence of a refusenik community that enabled their struggle with the all-powerful regime to leave the country while maintaining a "normal" existence for an unpredictable duration. Two chapters view the variety of instruments to which the activists had recourse as they developed the tactics and strategy of that struggle, while three final chapters review specific topics that were an inseparable part of the movement's story. They cover the confrontation with the KGB – the persistent shadowing, interrogations, arrests, trials and camps; the return to Judaism in the search for roots and identity; and the movement's links with the Jewish and non-Jewish world outside.

The book traces the changes that have taken place in the world views of Josef Zelkowicz, a modern Jewish intellectual, after he was imprisoned for more than four years in the Lodz ghetto under extreme living conditions. The book follows Zelkowicz and a fascinating group of intellectuals who struggled to understand life in the ghetto. The book presents the events as perceived by those intellectuals at the time of their occurrence. The readers get to know Zelkowicz's work through stories that were translated into Hebrew for the first time and are included in the book.

Can literature be given a concrete home? The story of the establishment of the Gnazim Archive of Modern Hebrew Literature recounts the attempt to institutionalize this body of literature in the context of the founding of the State of Israel—while simultaneously challenging its demands. This book reveals the persistent tension between the “Republic of Letters” and the nation-state, as well as the painful cost of realizing the ideal and embodiment of the metaphor of “a home for literature” within the “national home.” The Stitches of Hebrewness traces the history of the Gnazim Archive both in its own right and as a mirror of the formation of the canon of modern Hebrew literature. Like any mirror, the archive reflects reality as it is—and in reverse: The canon is thus revealed in a new light, with its erasures, rewritings, and repressions. Perhaps more than anything, the book unfolds the story of a culture and society grappling with a moment of crisis between three overlapping yet conflicting temporal frameworks: Jewish time, Hebrew time, and Israeli time.

The Devil's Renaissance describes the early modern period in Europe as a time of terrible bloodshed and persecution of minorities such as the Moriscos, the Gypsies, heretics, the Cagots and the imaginary sect of satanic witches. It was the age of fear of conspiracies and of the devil undermining the Christian commonwealth.

The thirteenth-century Franciscan pilgrim Philip of Savona wrote that “the whole Trinity has declared that river [Jordan] to be fortunate and most worthy, above which the Father was heard, the Holy Spirit was seen in the form of a dove, and the Son was baptized in human nature.” Since the Middle Ages, Christian pilgrims from many countries have traveled to the Holy Land in order to immerse themselves in the Jordan River and to take some of its water back to their homelands. Hundreds described their experiences from the blessed river, and in the nineteenth century also began exploring and documenting its history. This volume contains a selection of the accounts of pilgrims and tourists, who describe their impressions, expectations, and sometimes also their disappointments when encountering the Jordan River. It includes descriptions of pilgrims from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, amongst them well-known authors such as Mark Twain, François-René de Chateaubriand and Gustave Flaubert. The book also contains chapters on the geography of the Jordan River, historical events associated with it, and the literature that developed around it.

Korot publishes original articles related to medical history covering medicine in Jewish and Hebrew sources, the history of Jewish physicians, medicine in Palestine and Israel and medicine during the Nazi era. There are shorter historical notes on these topics, book reviews and comments on important developments in medical history. Articles are mainly in English but with a significant Hebrew section.

The treatise Scechina is a manifesto of Renaissance Christian-Kabbalistic messianism. The author, Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo (1469-1532), was a preeminent Christian Kabbalist, both in terms of his position within the ecclesiastical hierarchy and in what concerns the depth and breadth of his acquaintance with Hebrew sources. The treatise was composed in exquisite Renaissance Latin and is hereby rendered for the first time into a modern language. The text articulates the voice of the Jewish Shekinah herself, expounding in first person and with profound insight the doctrine of Kabbalah, fervently calling for the completion of the final stage of universal redemption. This redemption commences with the discovery of distant lands and foreign cultures, and its protagonist is Emperor Charles V, whose motto - plus ultra [further beyond] - refers to surpassing the Strait of Gibraltar and medieval knowledge (the Emperor and Pope Clement VII are among the book's addressees). While this redemption is Christian in nature, it emphasizes integration and synthesis with Greek and Roman wisdom, and particularly Judaism. Despite sharp condemnations of Jews for their non-acceptance of Jesus, Egidio's Shekinah lavishes love upon them, especially the Kabbalists, whom she refers to as "my Arameans" and considers as latent Christians. This even extends to support for Solomon Molkho, the Jewish messiah who apostatized from Christianity. Such an attitude towards Judaism did not survive in the Catholic Church in the generation following Egidio, the era of the Counter-Reformation. The translation is richly annotated by the translators, providing extensive commentary and explication. Furthermore, the volume is prefaced by comprehensive introductory chapters authored by Judith Weiss, elucidating the life, intellectual contributions, and literary corpus of Egidio da Viterbo.

The Emergence of the Mizrahi Middle Class in Israe l focuses on the historical and social conditions that gave rise to the Mizrahi academic mobility movement, with attention to some of its cultural effects and political costs, which socially construct the boundaries of mobile Mizrahi’s’ ethnic behavior. The book deals with the historical and social conditions in which this mobility movement takes place, with an emphasis on the stories of agencies that were involved in blocking mobility or in trying to effect a breakthrough.

The emergence of the Yiddish and Hebrew press in the United States was one of the great cultural enterprises of the Jewish immigrants from the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires in the last third of the nineteenth century, and its influence on the lives of individuals and communities was enormous. From the Cellar to the Top Floor traces the journey of the Hebrew Alphabet press across the Atlantic following the Jewish mass migration. Against the background of the American press, the book discusses the development of the Hebrew and Yiddish press from an economic, cultural and political point of view. It traces the ongoing negotiations between the Jewish immigrant society and the American majority society at the end of the nineteenth century. Based on personal correspondence, legal documents, archival evidence, and contemporary press materials ,the book offers the first comprehensive analysis in Hebrew of the formative decades in the emergence of one of the leading cultural institutions in modern Jewish society.

This book investigates Ezekiel's restoration program and the way he describes Israel's future restoration. In addition to new readings of the prophecies and an evaluation of the influence of biblical and Mesopotamian literature on the prophet's message, the book deals with the exiles' daily life, their ideologies, and the way they perceived the exile and its theological role in the history of the People of Israel.