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.

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.

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.

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 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.

The full edition of the secular poems of Yehudah Halevi is published here for the first time, based on the original collection of his poems edited by his contemporary Haya the Maghribean, who met the poet in Egypt. The poems follow Judaeo-Arabic incipits, which are discussed and translated into Hebrew by the modern editor. Variants, as well as a full modern Hebrew translation have been added.

Preludes is the story of the composer and conductor Noam Sheriff (1935-2018), whose life was dedicated to art and music almost from the moment he could think of it. In the first person Sheriff recounts a personal initiation story, which begins in the small Tel Aviv of the days of the British Mandate and the divided Jerusalem of the first years of the State of Israel, followed by the most renown and magnificent concert halls in Israel and around the world. In doing so, he describes some of the personalities who stood at the heart of world of music: Leonard Bernstein, Gary Bartini, Paul Ben-Haim, Arik Einstein and others. This is a story of pioneering musical activity, part of an enterprise of building Israeli culture. This is also the story of an artist who, looking back from a sober, unapologetic and unselfish perspective - recounts his achievements, doubts and personal and artistic choices.

Although Jews were at the centre of commercial activity in medieval Europe, a talmudic ban on any wine touched by a Gentile prevented them from engaging in the lucrative wine trade. Wine was consumed in vast quantities in the Middle Ages, and the banks of the Rhineland hosted some of the finest vineyards in northern Europe. German Jews were, until the thirteenth century, a merchant class. How could they abstain from trading in one of the region’s major commodities? In time, they ruled that it was permissible to accept wine in payment of debt, but forbade trading in it, and they maintained that ban throughout the Middle Ages. Further study in the twelfth century, however, led Talmudists to discover that Jews were only forbidden to profit from trading in Gentile wine if they dealt with idolaters, but that trade with Christians and Muslims was permitted. Nevertheless, the German community refused to take advantage of this clear licence. Using Jewish and Gentile sources, this study probes the sources of this powerful taboo. In describing the complex ways in which deeply held cultural values affect Jews’ engagement in the economy of the surrounding society, this book also illustrates the law of unintended consequences—how the ban on Gentile wine led both to a major Jewish contribution to German viticulture and to the involvement of Jews in moneylending, with all its tragic consequences. *** The second chapter is intended for those familiar with the eleventh-century halakha in Ashkenaz. The general reader can skip this chapter, reading only the concluding paragraph (on p. 63) and proceed to Chapter III.

In this issue: Moti Benmelech | From the Sambatyon to Tiberias: An Unknown Version of ‘MaꜤaseh Akdamut’ Rella Kushelevsky | Affinities between Orality and Literacy in Medieval Folktales in Western Europe: ‘The Tale of a Rich Man who used to seat Himself among the Poor’ David Manrique | Yohanan ben Zakkai meets Vespasianus: A Study of Midrashic History according to ‘MeꜤam Loez’ by Argüete Zeev Kitsis | The Baal Shem Tov’s Neighbor in the Garden of Eden ‒ A story from ‘Once There Was a Hasidic Man’ and its Connection to the Hasidic-Israeli Identity

Examining the convergence of cafés, their urban milieu, and Jewish creativity, Shachar Pinsker shows how cafés anchored a silk road of modern Jewish culture. He uncovers a network of interconnected cafés that were central to the modern Jewish experience in a time of migration and urbanization, from Odessa, Warsaw, Vienna, and Berlin to New York City, Tel Aviv, as well as cities in the Arab world. A Rich Brew explores the Jewish culture created in these social spaces, drawing on a vivid collection of newspaper articles, memoirs, archival documents, photographs, caricatures, and artwork, as well as stories, novels, and poems in many languages set in cafés. Pinsker shows how Jewish modernity was born in the café, nourished, and sent out into the world by way of print, politics, literature, art, and theater. What was experienced and created in the space of the coffeehouse touched thousands who read, saw, and imbibed a modern culture that redefined what it meant to be a Jew in the world.

This book deals with the cultural and emotional world of Jewish schoolchildren in the “Tarbut” school network in Poland between the two World Wars. It is based on a unique corpus of about 80 letters, written between 1934-1935 by 10-11-year-old fifth graders in the Tarbut school in the town of Nowi Dwόr in Poland to their beloved teacher who had immigrated to Eretz Israel – the place and destination they too dreamed about. In these letters – all composed in Hebrew – the children write about their class, their school, but also about themselves and their families. The pupils’ letters are analyzed in light of the educational practice of pen-pal culture which was developed in and encouraged by “Tarbut” schools, especially between pupils in the Diaspora and their cohorts in Palestine. The letters are also examined as ego-documents that reveal personal stories about the intimate and private world of children, their experiences, fears and hopes, their relationship with their teacher, their families and their friends. Studied as a corpus, they reflect the complexities of the educational experience in a Hebrew Zionist school in Poland. The uniqueness of this book is that it is attentive to children – not teenagers or adults – in their own voice and in real time, telling about their lives, and not from a place of retrospection or later memory. Sources that allow us to hear the authentic voice of a child in real time are very rare indeed. The letters, which were critically edited and published in full next to a clear photograph of the letter, are discussed from various perspectives including Jewish, Hebrew and Zionist education, the history and culture of the child, and the relationship between the Diaspora and Eretz Israel. The book also offers a short history of the influential, now almost forgotten, school network – Tarbut. Finally, the book presents a detailed history of one class in one town in Poland a few years before this world vanished.