This book represents a first attempt to examine in a systematic manner televised humor in Israel. It focuses on the Israeli “comic canon” – a bunch of sketches, characters and programs that were produced between the early 1970’s and late 1990’s. In the course of the years, these texts have accuiraed a unique status and became part of the cultural DNA of many Israelies. The analysis investigates the interrelationship between humor and six prominent social cleavages in Israeli society: national, ethnic, class, political, religious and gender. A close reading of the texts shows that “a joke is never just a joke” – the social, political and economic dramatic transformations that Israel has undergone in the last three decades are capsulated in televised humor. Moreover, humor has served as a sensitive seismograph, capturing processes in early formative stages and sometimes even functioned as an actor in socio-political transformations. The book uncovers the polysemic, or multi-meaning, qualities of popular televised humor, which make it unifying and dividing, conservative and subversive. These qualities enable the “comic canon” to contain the set of paradoxes underlying the Israeli society without resolving them. This polysemity also allows the comic texts to serve as a “cultural core” – shared by different, opposing groups, each of which interprets the texts according to its own needs and perspective.

This book examines the place of the Temple and its rituals in early Rabbinic (Tannaitic) discourse, through a specific case study: the reconstruction of the ritual of the suspected adulteress (Num 5:11-32) in Mishna Sotah. Numbers chapter five describes a ritual performed to test suspicions raised by a husband regarding his wife’s sexual fidelity. The jealous husband is required to bring his wife to the priest in the Temple, where she is subjected to an ordeal of a character unparalleled in Biblical law. The Mishnaic ritual differs significantly from the Biblical one, both in detail and overall character. The private priestly ritual becomes, in the Mishna, a grand public event (in which the Mishna invites “whoever wants to stare at her” to come and stare) directed by the Rabbis themselves. A new demand for objective evidence, to comply with standard Talmudic rules of evidence, is introduced. A number of procedures have been added at the beginning and during the course of the ritual. Even the conclusion of the ritual, the actual result of the test, has been radically altered. Why were these measures added to the Sotah ritual? Where were they taken from? How do they function in the context of Mishna Sotah as a whole? How do they relate to the Biblical ritual, on the one hand, and to the reality of the temple on the other? And, finally, what led the Rabbis to reinvent a ritual already described at length in the Bible? Through specific textual engagement with these questions the book suggests a new look at the Tannaitic discourse and the place of the temple in it.

What is Philosophy of Halakhah? Can the Halakhah be understood philosophically? Is the Halakhah influenced by factors external to it? This book, New Streams in Philosophy of Halakhah points to new directions of research by outstanding scholars in this field. This book has four sections: delineating the field of inquiry; study of the role and function of philosophy in Halakhic discourse; formalism and realism in Halakhic interpretation; sociological, anthropological and gender orientated readings of the Halakhah. In these sections fundamental issues will be clarified including defining the discourse of philosophy of Halakhah, the diverse elements within Halakhah, and the contribution of the Halakhic philosopher to an understanding and clarification of the Halakhah and its significance. Also treated in this book is the issue, whether the Halakhah is characterized only by factors inherent in it or whether also by valuative and philosophical worlds outside of it. What is the weight of external considerations in the shaping of the Halakhah and its decision makers? Can the tools of Sociology and Anthropology enrich our understanding of the Halakhic process? In examining these questions the authors deal with the Philosophy of the Halakhah through critical but also normative lenses. This book lays before the readers the cutting edge of research in Philosophy of Halakhah, and it gives the reader a fascinating point of entry into philosophical-Halakhic discourse.

Hebrew from Scratch is also known as 'Ivrit min hathahala '. It is a comprehensive textbook, grammar and exercise book for the beginner adult student. Widely used by high school and university students. The instructions for the exercises as well as the translations of the vocabulary lists are in English. Otherwise, the course is based on Hebrew-only instruction. One of the best, friendliest, Hebrew teaching books, this book immerses the student in Hebrew, but without overwhelming the English speaker who is trying to learn a language that is so very different than English. An audio CD with listening exercises organized to match the lessons in the book is available here .

JUDGES AND LAWYERS IN ERETZ-ISRAEL tells the story of the local Judicial System – Judges, Courts, Lawyers – in the last 18 years of the Ottoman rule (1900-1918) and the first 12 years of the British rule (1918-1930) in Eretz-Israel (Palestine). The book answers, amongst others, the following questions: • Why is the Israeli Judicial System built in its present structure? • Who was the first Jewish lawyer in Eretz-Israel (Palestine)? • Was the Ottoman Judicial System really so infested with corruption? What were the relations between David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharett (Shertok) when they were Law students in Constantinople before the First World War? • Who established the new Judicial System in Jerusalem after the British conquest of Eretz-Israel (Palestine) in 1918? • How were “Native” judges – Arabs and Jews – nominated for the first time in Eretz-Israel (Palestine)? • Who was the first President of the Supreme Court of Eretz-Israel (Palestine) and why he was forced to resign? • How did the Judicial System of Eretz-Israel (Palestine) fight for its independence? • Who was the Jewish judge that was dismissed from the Judiciary in 1930? • What is the connection of the Eretz-Israel (Palestine) Judicial System and the love-affair between an elderly millionairess from Philadelphia (U.S.A.) and a dashing farmer-politician from Zichron-Yaakov who was 25 years youngrer than her ? The book is based mainly on primary sources – letters, documents, protocols etc. - discovered by the author in public and private archives in Israel and England.

There are abstracts of all the articles in English For contents and article abstracts please press " Sample pages " by the cover photo.

Studies in Language and Language Education – Essays in Honor of Elite Olshtain is a collection of state-of-the-art articles on current issues in language education, examined from individual and societal perspectives. The chapters address these issues by exploring empirical evidence from written and spoken forms of language, following a variety of communicative, educational, developmental and cultural research agendas. Together, the works in this volume create a continuum ranging from infancy to adulthood, in mono- or multilingual contexts and among native and immigrant populations. This book is a tribute to Elite Olshtain's wide array of academic endeavors, and will be of great interest to researchers, pre- and post-qualifying practitioners and students at the graduate and post-graduate levels, in the domains of language acquisition, multilingualism, discourse analysis, language and education, learning and teaching, language planning and language policy.

The Jewish National and University Library came into being in the years of the British mandate. Its mission was to collect preserve and centralize the spiritual treasures of the Jewish people. Eventually, it would contribute to the fulfillment of the Zionist objective of nation building. The Tel Aviv municipality brought the literary remains of national poets and writers like Bialik and Ahad Ha-Am into its library system. Their collections were developed into public municipal libraries. The Histadrut established a central library and supplied the settlement movement with library services. In that way it contributed to the realization of political, social and ideological aspirations of establishing a socialist society. Simultaneously, with these efforts to collect centralize and preserve the Jewish spiritual heritage in Palestine, the evil Nazi regime became active in destroying Jewish culture by book burning, cleansing German libraries of Jewish books and scattering Jewish libraries and collections in ghettos and concentration camps. Nevertheless and paradoxically, the Nazis have secured and preserved some of the more valuable Jewish library collections for future research in order to be able, post factum to legitimize the destruction of the Jewish people and its spiritual heritage. The two sections of the book document and describe conflicting processes: building and destruction, collecting and dispersion, securing and destroying, plunder and restitution of private and public Jewish book collections and libraries. In the first part, "Libraries and book collections during the British mandate in Palestine" the creation and shaping of a national library and public libraries are described. In the second part "Burning scrolls and flying letters" the negative processes of confiscation and plundering of Jewish libraries throughout Europe are delineated. The salvaging activities of libraries and books by Hebrew University emissaries after the Holocaust and the transfer of the remnants to Jerusalem are discussed. In the last section of the book, the reader may find some historical documents that lend support to the two sections of the book and have never been published so far.