One of the most visible aspects of Orthodox Judaism in present-day Israel is the ubiquity of the "Gdoilim" – "the great ones" - the luminary spiritual leaders whose presence dominates orthodox politics, media and the public space. However, these individuals, whose lives are constantly canonized in hagiographies, have largely remained unknown outside the Orthodox Jewish communities, and have generally been overlooked by the academic research. The 'Gdoilim': Individuals who shaped Haredi Judaism in Israel is a pioneering attempt to fill this gap by offering a comprehensive collection of articles by Israeli and American leading scholars of Orthodox Judaism striving to elucidate the lives and theologies of these extraordinary individuals and explain the secret of their lasting power.

The articles in this volume: Nili Samet - New Light on the Administrative Term bēn bayît in Biblical and Rabbinical Sources Bezalel Bar-Kochva - The Religious Persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes as a Historical Reality David Henshke - Between Blessings and Prayer: On the History of the Amidah Prayer Mordechai Sabato - On the Inclusion of the ‘Mikan Ameru’ Homilies in the Halakhic Midrashim Michael Rand - Surviving Fragments of the Qillirian Heritage in Provence/Catalonia and in Spain: In the Wake of New Materials from the Genizah Jonathan Vardi - Between Shemuel Ha-Nagid and the Poets of Zaragoza For contents and article abstracts in English press on Sample pages which is located on the right of the cover photo.

Articles in this volume: Emanuel Tov - The Development of the Text of the Torah in Two Major Text Blocks Michael Segal, Emanuel Tov, William Brentת Seales, Clifford Seth Parker, Pnina Shor, Yosef Porath, with an Appendix by Ada Yardeni - An Early Leviticus Scroll from En-Gedi: Preliminary Publication Kristin De Troyer - Reconstructing the Older Hebrew Text of the Book of Joshua: An Analysis of Joshua 10 Armin Lange - 4QXIIg (4Q82) as an Editorial Text Gary A. Rendsburg - How Could a Torah Scroll Have Included the Word זעטוטי Nancy Benovitz - Psalm 91:1 and the Rabbinic Shemaʿ in Greek on a Byzantine Amuletic Armband Yosef Ofer - A Fragment of the Aleppo Codex (Exodus 8) that Reached Israel Rachel Hitin-Mashiah - Main Division in the Verse in the 21 Prose Books: Syntactic Study Jordan S. Penkower - An Esther Scroll from the 15th Century: Determining its Type among Five Traditions (Oriental, Sefardi, Ashkenazi, Italian, Yemenite)

A groundbreaking work, this book brings together philosophy of science and language, conceptual dynamics and the Babylonian Talmud. The work asks: what philosophy of natural language lies at the basis of the Halakhic dynamic in the Amoraic discourse of the Talmud? Calling upon two post-Wittgenstein philosophies, the book undertakes a search for a philosophical account of the discursive culture that appears in the Talmud. It unearths the normative infrastructure that lies at its core. Thus, this study articulates what can be termed the Talmudic philosophy of language. On the other hand, it reveals the limits and weaknesses of central philosophical frameworks in coping with a profound traditional discourse like the Talmud, in which the past has a deep and integral role in the present, while at the same time, the present has its own natural and creative dynamic.

The present volume 23 of Korot has as main topics, first, embryology in Jewish and ancient Middle Eastern sources, and second, medicine in the Holocaust. The section on embryology consists of six articles, four of which were presented in a symposium entitled “On Fetuses, Infants and everything in-between through the Ages,” which was held at the Van Leer Institute on March 30, 2015. The meeting was sponsored by the Israel Society for the History of Medicine and by Korot, and organized by Dr. Israela Nili. Three of the papers concentrate on ancient Mesopotamia: Dr. Couto-Ferreira describes embryological data in Akkadian and Sumerian texts, Prof. Klein expounds embryological issues in the omen literature, and Prof. Fleishman discusses some of the legal aspects of parenthood. Prof. Cohen analyzes the influence of Septuagint translation in the debate concerning abortion. Two additional papers deal with later Hellenistic sources: Prof. Kottek and Dr. Paavilainen discuss the contribution of Philo the Alexandrian and Prof. van der Horst examines Hellenistic Christian sources, respectively. The section on the Holocaust includes three studies. Dr. van den Ende’s paper describes the ethical dilemmas faced by the Jewish doctors in Holland during the Nazi occupation. It was first presented in the workshop of the 15th Nahariya Conference on Medicine and the Holocaust (May 6, 2015), convened by Prof. Shaul Shasha. Dr. Schwoch deals with the same issue from the point of view of the Jewish Krankenbehandler in Germany. Dr. Offer’s bibliographical review, the first part of which has been published in Korot, volume 22, describes the development of academic research in Jewish medicine in the Holocaust from the third decade after the Holocaust until the first decade of the 21st century. The rest of the articles presented in this volume concentrate on the life and work of several Jewish physicians, the only exception being Prof. Nissan’s paper on hybrid animals in Jewish sources. Prof. McDonald analyzes the story of the Jewish personal physician of Charles the Bald, accused by later authors of having poisoned the king. Prof. Gath discusses a similar topic: Jan III Sobieski and his Jewish physician, who was later blamed for having caused his death. Dr. Nevins casts new light on the mystery of Vesalius’ Jewish friend and adviser in Hebrew medical terms. Prof. Shḥori-Rubin’s work on Dr. Fanny Lvova continues her series of articles on Jewish pioneer women doctors. Dr. Paavilainen describes Isaac Israeli’s way of diagnosing the complex symptoms of consumption. Prof. Freudenthal summarizes the different pressures affecting medieval Jewish physicians and explains on the basis of a contemporary source why science did not thrive among the Jewish scholars of Provence. The volume is, as usual, bilingual (12 articles in English, 4 in Hebrew), with contributions from Spain, Holland, Germany, Britain, USA, France, and of course Israel.

Samuel b. Judah ibn Tibbon (c. 1165-1232) is most famous for his translation of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed into Hebrew. He translated other writings as well and produced original works of philosophy and biblical exegesis. This book makes available for the first time ever Ibn Tibbon’s Perush Qohelet, a sprawling adaptation of Maimonides’ method of exegesis to the complete verse-by-verse explication of a biblical book. The edition is presented with full annotation -- identifying Ibn Tibbon’s sources and explaining his ideas and terminology -- and analytical introduction, which presents the life and writings of the author, describes the commentary itself in detail, explains the method and philosophy of the commentary, and charts its historical influence. In later medieval Jewish thought, few figures were unaffected by this foundational work of Maimonideanism.

The publication of the commentary on the book of Deuteronomy is a moment for students of the Bible and for the educated Hebrew reader to celebrate. Now, for the first time, we have a critical Hebrew commentary on the book of Deuteronomy. The author, Jeffrey Tigay, is emeritus professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The commentary is part of the series Mikra Leyisrael (Bible for Israel), a series of critical commentaries on the Bible whose authors are recognized scholars at universities in Israel and abroad. The commentaries make extensive use of the best of traditional Jewish exegesis of the Bible and modern Biblical scholarship and the disciplines that contribute to understanding the Bible in the context of the cultures of the ancient Near East – philology and the history and archaeology of the region – and literary scholarship. The book of Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Torah, is also known as “the Repetition of the Torah.” It is essentially a lengthy speech that Moses delivered to the Israelites on the Plains of Moab just before they entered the land of Canaan. But the book is not simply a review of the four preceding books. It sometimes adds to what they say or presents their contents from a different perspective, or even presents a contradictory version of what they say. According to 2 Kings chapter 22, the book was found in the course of renovations to the Temple during the reign of Josiah, king of Judah, in 622 BCE. Deuteronomy contains the most fully developed expression of the Torah’s concern for law and justice and for the welfare of the poor and disadvantaged. What is unique about Deuteronomy is its absolute demand for centralization of worship in the Temple in Jerusalem, that is, the abolishment of all local places of worship elsewhere – a demand that would be the equivalent of abolishing all synagogues and limiting the worship of God to single central synagogue in Jerusalem. A truly revolutionary demand! Jewish scholars throughout the generations sought to resolve the contradictions between the commandments and ideas of the first four books of the Torah and Deuteronomy. This kind of harmonizing exegesis is already found in the Bible itself, in the book of Chronicles, from the end of the Persian period. The present commentary deals with these contradictions, evaluates the traditional explanations, explains the contradictions in the light of modern critical scholarship, and explains how the laws of Deuteronomy developed in later Jewish tradition. The commentary deals with the historical background of Deuteronomy, its language and literary form, and explains the text in accordance with its peshat, or original/intended, plain meaning. Prof. Tigay’s commentary is a must for all who wish to study the book of Deuteronomy and deepen their understanding of it. This new commentary benefits from Biblical research that has taken place during more than 20 years since the first edition of this commentary (by the same author) published in English by the Jewish Publication Society of America as the final volume of their Torah Commentary, and it deals with numerous additional matters of interest to Hebrew readers. Regretfully page 447 is missing from the second volume. The missing page appears in the " Preview " link that appears above. Volume one starts with chapter 1 verse 1 and continues through chapter 16 verse 17; volume two starts with chapter 16 verse 18 and continues through the end of the book, chapter 34 verse 12.

The articles in this volume: Shlomo Naeh - שם משמר and שם שבת : A Further Study of the Temple ‘Seals’ Menahem Kahana - The Relations between Exegeses in the Mishnah and Halakhot in the Midrash Shimon Fogel and Uri Ehrlich - On the History of the Ancient Version of the ‘Hashkivenu’ Blessing Eran Viezel - Medieval Bible Commentators on the Question of the Composition of the Bible: Research and Methodological Aspects Aviram Ravitsky - Saʿadya Gaʾon and Yaʿqūb al-Qirqisānī on the Logical Structure of the Rational and Traditional Laws: Logic and Kalām in the Karaite-Rabbanite Controversy Avishai Bar-Asher - Kabbalah and Minhag: Geonic Responsa and the Kabbalist Polemic on Minhagim in the Zohar and Related Texts For contents and article abstracts in English press on Sample pages which is located on the right of the cover photo.

When were the books of the "Former Prophets" written? Who wrote them? Who are the editors that made these books the most important source; describing the continuous history of the Jewish People in their land, from the time of the conquest of the Land of Canaan through the destruction of the Holy Temple and the Babylonian exile? These questions are at the center of this book. The name of the book, "From Settlement to Exile" reflects the sequence of events described in the books of the Former Prophets. The book discusses whether a failure could have been predicted from the events described, or whether there were also successful and tranquil periods prior to the destruction that brought hope to the hearts of the people and realistic expectations of establishing a lasting kingdom. Although the impression is that the Former Prophets describe a continuous history that leads inevitably to destruction, research proves that the Former Prophets were written by a number of authors during successful periods as well as difficult ones. The text actually includes several chapters or individual verses that were added after the destruction in order to find an explanation for the disastrous destruction event.

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

Kobez al Yad , an annual of the Mekize Nirdamim Society, is a forum for the publication from manuscript sources of ancient texts in Jewish studies that are shorter than book-length. The articles in this volume: Vered Raziel-Kretzmer, The Palestinian Morning Service in Fragments of an Early Liturgical Rotulus Amitai Harroch, The Liturgical Poems of Khalaf Bar Sa ʿ īd Ella Tovia, An Anonymous Exegesis of the Sifrei from the Europian Geniza Yacov Fuchs, Completing Leqaḥ Ṭov on the Qillirian Qerova ‘Zekhor Eikha Anu’ Y. Tzvi Langermann, ‘The Topic of Rosh Ḥodesh’— Chapter 18 of ‘Īssūr we-Hetēr’, an unpublished pre-Maimonidean Judeo-Arabic Halakhic Compendium Aviram Ravitsky, ‘The Principles of Qal va-Ḥomer’—New Material from the School of Rabbi Isaac Canpanton Dov Schwartz, A Philosophic and Kabbalistic Commentary on Psalm 29 by Rabbi Michael b. Shabtai Balbo Eli Gurfinkel, Rabbi David Ibn- Yaḥya’s Commentary to Maimonides’s Introduction of The Guide for the Perplexed