This book focuses on space, borders and ethics in contemporary Hebrew prose written in the shadow of the Occupation and the Intifadas and reads a corpus of works written between 1987 and 2007. Israeli literary representations of the Occupation and the two Intifadas raise critical ethical questions about militarism, humanism, the nature of the State of Israel as a democracy, national identity and its borders, the nature of Zionist education, and the acknowledgment of the Other. The book deals with the portrait of the Israeli soldier, depicts the settings of the Occupied Territories, but also describes life in cities such as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It examines realistic writing as well as fantastic-grotesque, in the works of A. B. Yehoshua, David Grossman, Ronit Matalon, Asher Kravitz, Michal Govrin, and Orly Castel-Bloom and many others.

During the last decades there have occurred significant upheavals in the political and military position of many religious and ethnic communities in the Middle East and North Africa. Communities which had been rejected and discriminated for decades rose to power or strengthened their political position in their countries by means of military struggles. Meanwhile, in Israel/Palestine, the ethnical-religious Jewish minority has become a ruling majority, while excluding the former Arab-Muslim-Sunni majority, following the wars of 1948 and 1976. This book examines these processes.

The book The State of Israel and Its Institutions in the Halachic Thought of Rabbi Shlomo Goren reviews the diverse subjects with which Rabbi Goren dealt as a halakhic ruler: the halakhic status of the State of Israel, the concept of sovereignty, military and war laws, immigration absorption, changes in prayer and blessings, and others. The book describes his original, and sometimes unusual, positions within the history of Israel, and his desire to take part in shaping this history.

The book seeks to understand resistance as a meeting point among various political streams that operate in Lebanon and the development of resistance from military action into a project which is beyond culture in the narrow sense, into a hegemony that encompasses all sides of life. The book links the historical development of the Lebanese political system together with the many years of radical Shi'ite political thought in the entire Middle East region, with an emphasis on the influence of leftist and revolutionary secular thought on Shi'ite radical thought in general and that of Hezbollah in particular. The book reviews the various "hegemonic mechanisms" through which Hezbollah rules its hegemony over Lebanon. A hegemony that is not (only) a result of coercion by force, but also (mostly) the result of dominating the discourse of resistance on the Lebanese and regional arena in general.

Therapeutics and Salvation: Freud and Schelling on Freedom proposes a new conceptual perspective on the history of the philosophy of freedom. The book focuses on Sigmund Freud’s theory of freedom, and its fundamental, yet uncharted, connection with the groundbreaking philosophy of the unconscious of F.W.J Schelling. The analysis radically challenges conventional liberal and rationalistic conceptions of freedom in psychoanalysis. The main argument of the book is that Freud formulated his theory of human nature with Schelling’s basic philosophical architecture, in particular Schelling’s concept of freedom, but, at the same time, subverted Schelling’s search for a new theology at the end of the latter's philosophical career. The detailed comparison of Freud’s work with the philosophy of Schelling backtracks a momentous shift from Schelling’s late theo-philosophy, at the endpoint of German Idealism, to the secular system of Freud, in which human reality ousted godly revelation and therapeutics replaced divine salvation. By delineating the move from Schelling’s God-subject relations to Freud’s human-subject relations, the book offers a new perspective on the historical evolution of German Idealism into modern secular thought.

Ateret Zekenim is a work of historical research into the lives of several well-known medieval halakhists from France, Germany, and Spain. The primary focus of the book is biographical, and it attempts to resolve difficult questions that have puzzled the scholarly community for many years. Its author seeks to rely on the writings of his predecessors, but he first substantiates that these foundations were properly laid and that he is not adding to an edifice that is destined to collapse. Thus, for example, the author re-examines the story of Rabbi Asher b. Yeḥiel (Rosh)’s migration from Germany to Spain in the early 14th century, a migration that had a dramatic impact on the culture of Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jewry alike. Is the scholarly consensus – according to which Rosh meticulously planned his flight to distant Toledo, in an entirely different cultural realm, over the course of two decades – correct? After methodical examination of the sources, a very different story emerges. Rosh, and with him the Ashkenazi halakhic tradition, moved from Germany to Spain at the last moment, when there were no other options.

Studies in Talmudic Literature contains the scientific writings of Eliezer Shimshon Rosenthal published during and after his lifetime. They were written from 1957 until his death in 1979. Volume I contains articles on the various periods of the Talmudic literature. Volume II is composed of studies on the various languages used in Talmudic literature and the elements and principles of the Halakha. This compilation will benefit those who wish to learn from his theory and understand his unique contribution to Talmudic research.

In the history of halakhah, the treatment of uncertainty became one of the most complex fields of intense study. In his latest book, Moshe Halbertal focuses on examining the point of origin of the study of uncertainty in early rabbinic literature, including the Mishnah, Tosefta, and halakhic midrashim. The book explores instructions concerning how to behave in situations of uncertainty ranging from matters of ritual purity, to lineage and marriage, to monetary law, and to the laws of forbidden foods. This examination of the rules of uncertainty introduced in early rabbinic literature reveals that these rules were not aimed at avoiding but rather at dwelling in the midst of uncertainty, thus rejecting the sectarian isolationism that sought to minimize a community's experience of and friction with uncertainty.

This research project tries, for the first time, to analyze and compare all the key Spanish Jewish apostates, especially Petrus Alfonsi, Abner of Burgos, Geronimo de Santa Fe, Pablo de Santa Maria and Pedro de la Caballeria. The aim of this research is to understand the ideological background of the mass conversion of the Spanish Jewish community from the perspective of the intellectual elite involved in the conversion itself and not – as has usually been the case in modern scholarship – according to the rabbis who decided to stay Jewish. In the first part of the book, the author explains the impact of the conversion of a part of the Jewish intellectual elite on the Spanish Jewish population. In the second part, he examines the opinion of the various ideological converts regarding Christianity (especially the dogmas of the Trinity and Incarnation). In the third part, he analyzes their criticisms of Judaism. The main conclusion of this research is that there is a very important difference between the various converso intellectuals regarding the essence of Christianity. The conversos who were philosophers or kabbalists before their conversion continued with a similar approach even after their conversion, using their former philosophical/kabbalistic knowledge to try to convince their fellow Jews to convert as they had. The common denominator of the different writings of these apostates is not their opinions on Christianity but rather their similar criticisms of Judaism, and especially with regard to keeping Jewish religious obligations.

Many books have been written about the Baal Shem Tov; his extensive work and influence have drawn the attention of prominent researchers in the past and present. Tsippi Kauffman has a fresh outlook: she does not attempt to reconstruct the historical Baal Shem Tov, but rather to trace reflections of traditions pertaining to his in essays and writings related to Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, his famous great-grandchild. Rabbi Nahman saw himself not only as a preserver, but also as someone who continued and developed the tradition of the Baal Shem Tov, within struggles in new and different fronts. One of these new fronts was the inner sphere; the dilemmas of self-awareness. The tension between Rabbi Nachman's desire to imitate the Baal Shem Tov, his sense of guilt for not being worthy, and the effort to find a solution for the conflicted psychological state, are ways in which the Baal Shem Tov's figure and traditions shaped his great-grandchild, but also in which the latter shaped the figure of the former in the eyes of generations to come.

Galit Hasan-Rokem | Dov Noy – A Centennial Anniversary Amos Noy | Three Variants of a Riddle and a Solution: In Memory of Dov Noy Few articles in this issue : Avishar Har-Shefi | On the Beginnings of the Hasidic Story Itamar Dagan | Written New Year’s Greetings According to Texts from the Cairo Geniza and Rabbinic Literature Haya Bar-Itzhak z”l | The Dead and the Survivors: Historical Legends about Women during the1648/49 Pogroms as a Female Site of Memory Hanna Cohen-Perez and Esther Schely-Newman | Sainte Laktar (el Guettar) in Tunisia and Israel: Passages through Time and Space Michael Lukin | The Traditional Yiddish Lullaby as an East-Ashkenazi Phenomenon

This book focuses on a cycle of some thirty “praise” stories ( Shvachim ) whose heroes are Rabbi Shmuel the Pious and his son, the famous Rabbi Judah the Pious (died 1217; author of Sefer Hasidim ) – the two main figures of the medieval mystical circle known as Hasidut Ashkenaz. The narrative cycle in praise of these luminaries portrays them as extremely virtuous, as mystics with supernatural knowledge, and as masters of magical practices ( ba’alay shem ). Originating orally in Yiddish, these stories were first written down in Hebrew, the sacred language, and then translated “back” into Yiddish – the more widely understood language of the Ashkenazic community. The book presents all versions of these “praise” narratives, extant in manuscripts and print, both in Hebrew and Yiddish, side by side. A thorough introduction traces the growth of this narrative treasure from its embryonic oral beginnings to its fully developed bilingual written manifestations. A detailed analysis of individual stories sheds light on the cultural mentality of medieval Jewry in general and of Ashkenazic Jewry in particular.