How might a poem acquire divine forgiveness? Ariel Zinder’s book Arise and Sing follows medieval Jewish poets from Iraq and al-Andalus as they seek answers to this pressing question. The book presents close readings of liturgical poems (piyyutim) written in the 10th and 11th centuries, and brings them into contact with contemporary literary theory as well as modern philosophical discussions of the possibility of forgiveness.

Armenian Manuscripts of the David and Jemima Jeselsohn Collection is devoted to the five Armenian codices in the Jeselsohn collection in Zurich. Of great importance for Armenian studies and the history of art more generally, they represent various literary types, including biblical, hagiographic, homiletic, and liturgical texts. They also reflect an array of visual and artisanal traditions, connected to artistic centres in the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, Constantinople, and New Julfa, and span a period of over 300 years. A newly identified Sargis Picak manuscript is of exceptional importance for the study of medieval Armenian art, for its images, for Sargis’ colophons, and for a a hitherto unstudied ivory plaque of the Transfiguration. A Ritual of 1586 holds particular importance for scholars of the Armenian liturgy and its development in sixteenth-century Jerusalem. Also presented is a beautiful parchment leaf of the opening of the Gospel of John, studied and published previously by Michael and Nira Stone, and likely originating from a Bible produced in seventeenth-century New Julfa. Two Gospel Books complete this study: one from New Julfa, dated to 1695, and another likely produced in late seventeenth or early eighteenth-century Constantinople. This book was initiated and supported by David Jeselsohn, avid and longtime collector of archaeological artifacts, manuscripts, and Judaica. It was written jointly by Michael Stone and Christina Maranci. Maranci is an art historian and Stone is a specialist in Armenian philology, palaeography and codicology. Maranci bears primary responsibility for research on the miniatures – their art-historical analysis and iconography as well as their attribution, date, and context. Stone contributed the textual, codicological and palaeographical research, including translation of the colophons from the Classical Armenian (Grabar) into English, and catalogued the contents of all five manuscripts.

In 1491 the renowned goldsmith Salomone da Sesso converted to Catholicism. Born to a Jewish family in Florence, Salomone later settled in Ferrara, where he was regarded as a virtuoso artist. But rumors circulated about Salomone’s behavior, scandalizing the Mantuan Jewish community, who turned him over to the civil authorities. Salomone was condemned to death for sodomy but agreed to renounce Judaism to save his life. He was baptized, taking the name Ercole “de’ Fedeli” (“One of the Faithful”). Drawing on newly discovered archival sources, Tamar Herzig traces the dramatic story of his life, half a century before ecclesiastical authorities made Jewish conversion a priority of the Catholic Church. The book explores the Jewish world in which Salomone was raised; the glittering objects he crafted, and their status as courtly hallmarks; and Ercole’s relations with his wealthy patrons. Herzig also examines the response of Jewish communities and Christian authorities to allegations of sexual crimes, and attitudes toward homosexual acts among Christians and Jews. In Salomone/Ercole’s story we see how precarious life was for converts from Judaism, and how contested was the meaning of conversion for both the apostates’ former coreligionists and those tasked with welcoming them to their new faith.

An Internal-External Journey presents an interdisciplinary educational approach, a toolbox and lesson plans developed by the author on the topic of creative education: integrating the arts in teaching and education. The approach was developed following many years of experience in the field of education, and the lesson plans were passed on to teaching students at Kibbutzim College. The book is intended for educators engaged in guidance, teaching and training of teachers. Creative education and the integration of arts in teaching allow students to embark on a two-way journey: inward to themselves, and outward to the cultural and academic texts. The book describes an initiation process using paint, newspaper clippings, glue and plasticine, and a combination of meditation, writing, reading and the play, knowing that it is important for future teachers to experience the springs of creativity up close. "This is an educational gem. It is a very unusual book with a lot of pedagogical understanding, a very interesting work, based on the wisdom of the field and a lot of experience." - Prof. Anat Zohar, School of Education, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Uri Zvi Greenberg’s early poetry, composed between 1912 and 1923, offers both a key to understanding his later work, and a means for re-conceptualizing modern lyrical discourse in general and modern Jewish lyrical discourse in particular. Often callow, this early work testifies to the poet’s quest for a way of writing poetry that would give voice to the Jewish experience in Europe just before and after World War I. Like many other Jewish poets of the period, Greenberg was aware of the pressing need to express Jewishness in a way that would allow for the continued existence of Jewish national identity, among nations jostling for independence in a Europe rife with tensions. Similar to many of these poets, Greenberg also knew that this expression would have to be, of necessity, grounded in modern subjectivity. Paying attention to the various literary, historical, and political contexts of Greenberg's writing, Green Mountain and Love traces the poet’s valiant attempt to come to terms with modern subjectivity, and in so doing, reinvestigate the mechanisms of modern lyrical discourse. It yields fresh insights into the nature of poetry; its aims and functions in the cultural, political, and historical arenas; and the reader’s relationship with the poetic word.

This beautiful volume is the fruit of almost 40 years of collecting by Vivienne Silver-Brody, one of Israel's few photography collectors. She has written and edited a book, which narrates the shared history of photography in a land that in the last century has seen development alongside war and destruction, and that remains divided and conflicted by the two peoples that call it home. The text is accompanied by some 200 exquisite photographs from Silver-Brody’s collection, and includes a special section inspired by the 1983 volume published by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Personal Choice: A Celebration of Twentieth-Century Photographs . In this section, Silver-Brody invited some 60 writers – photographers, scholars, artists, curators, collectors, lovers of photography and others with a special connection to the land – from different religions, national and political tendencies, to choose a single photograph from her collection and to write a short essay relating to it. The result is a fascinating selection of texts that contributes to the overall narrative in the book. This book could speak to a diversified readership; those interested in photography and its history or in the Middle East and Israel / Palestine, especially in light of the ongoing conflict and public debate surrounding it around the world, and in light of the unique voice that attempts to reach beyond politics and religion, and to present a photographic history of the Land of Israel as a shared place rather than as disputed territory. Translated by Daphna Levy

It is not an easy task to find in any creative field a person who is both an original and groundbreaking artist and a profound thinker-interpreter, who is well versed in the broad scope of the entire culture. Such is Michael Gurevitch – the playwright of "Happiness", "A Fleeting Shadow", "A Word of Love" and "The Dragon's Beloved" (out of more than eighteen plays) – who presented new, local and extremely challenging concepts about the context of a theatre play within the contemporary Israeli existence. Gurevitch designs a new local theatrical language in his plays and in the way he directs. He is an unforgettable director of classics such as "The King's Clothes" by Nissim Aloni, "Life is a Dream" by Calderón de la Barca, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by Shakespeare, "Uncle Vanya" by Chekhov or "War on the House" by Aristophanes (adaptation by Ilan Hatsor). His theatrical insights are interwoven to the most contemporary Israeli issues without so much as a sensational wink. His theater is a "passing shadow" in the full sense of the word because it is based on one-time work with certain actors, at certain moments in their lives, and in the life of the country at a certain moment, and for that reason it is profoundly unique to theater alone, because it lives only when it is actually performed, hence it is poignant and unforgettable. Gurevitch was born (1951) and raised in Tel Aviv. He lived, breathed and studied local and international theater all his life, but his main strength is in the depths of the emotional, involving his childhood, his parents and his unique personality. In Two Children in The Field: Reflections on Theatre and Life Gurevitch manages to refine, from his rich experience, a series of lucid insights on the relation between theatrical conceptions and the contexts from which they stem.

Yaakov Shabtai is best known for his path-breaking novel Zichron Devarim (1977; translated into English as Past Continuous ), one of the most important works of prose in Hebrew if not in world literature due to its original structure. Shabtai discovered his gift for the theater in his twenties, and moved from Kibbutz Merchavia to Tel Aviv where he made his living authoring and translating plays and writing songs for entertainment evenings. In 1972 he published a collection of short stories entitled Uncle Peretz Takes Off . His novel-memoire Sof Davar (1984; Past Perfect ) was published posthumously. This biography interweaves a detailed description of Shabtai's life, his ideological evolution, and an analysis of his difficult path to literary achievement. His plays, though considered mediocre by some, emerge as essential for the crystallization of his novels.

The book examines the psychodynamic significance of body and movement and offers a comprehensive dance movement psychotherapy theory. In its practical part, the book presents for the first time diagnosis and interventions in dance-movement couple psychotherapy. The couple's dance reveals the dynamics of the relationship, the body-mind stories of the partners and the expressions of sexuality, intimacy, communication, power relations, dependency, control and more. In addition, conflicts, needs, wishes in relationship, consequences, transfer from childhood and body defense are also presented. The book is interweave with descriptions from therapies which expose the readers to the complex mental experiences and processes in couple therapy.

Jacques Lacan’s teaching lasted about three decades. Like Freud before him, Lacan was profoundly interested in the arts, particularly in painting. Lacan not only turned to specific artworks to clarify psychoanalytic concepts but also addressed theoretical aspects of painting. Like scholars from other fields, such as philosophy or cultural studies, who have turned to Lacan’s thinking throughout his career, art scholars often make use of Lacan’s teaching while analyzing various notions in art. These arguments deal mostly with Lacan’s early teaching or his seminars from the sixties. Yet, his late teaching and its relation to the visual arts remains relatively unknown, even though Lacan’s most radical views are presented for the first time during his late teaching of the seventies, and these conceptualizations carry immense value for theoretical discourse on contemporary art. Lacan’s late teaching and its relation to art fashions the cornerstone of this book, it is the wrap thread that runs through it. The other thread, the woof, which this book weaves into the psychoanalytic discourse, is of a different kind and nature: the discourse of art which analyzes specific instances of the works of art of contemporary Israeli artists: Michal Na’aman, David Ginton, Joshua Borkovsky and Shahar Yahalom.

This book examines the nature, methods, and contribution of Jewish feminist art to the various spheres of art, society, and religion and proposes a theoretical framework for its understanding. The Jewish religious feminist art movement has developed since the late 1990s in the two major Jewish centers—the United States and Israel. This is the first book to treat this phenomenon in a broad and systematic manner and discuss its critique of Jewish tradition, Halakha (religious law), and Jewish religious institutions. The works are analyzed in light of Jewish feminist thought and in comparison with religious Jewish feminist activist practices. The main tool for examining the social effect of the art works is analysis of their reception and of the public discussion that followed. Devoted Resistance focuses on the works of a number of prominent women artists who critique the Jewish religious text, establishment, and rituals. The religious text is the subject of the work of Helène Aylon (US, b. 1931), who marked problematic biblical passages with a pink highlighter, and Nechama Golan (Israel, b. 1947), whose work is critical of the Talmudic debate over women as property in the contraction of marriage (kiddushin). Nurit Jacobs Yinon (Israel, b. 1972) and Hila Karabelnikov Paz (Israel, b. 1984) confront the religious establishment and in particular the exclusion of women from the religious court that oversees the ritual immersion of women converts. The work of Andi Arnovitz (born in the US, 1959, immigrated to Israel, 1999) points up the pornographic dimensions of the extreme modesty laws as interpreted by contemporary halakhic decisors. Hagit Molgan (Israel, b. 1972) demonstrates the male structuring of religious laws regarding menstruation, and Mierle Laderman Ukeles (US, b. 1939) breaches the religious taboo by presenting ritual immersion following menstruation as a dignified ritual to be embraced. The combined study of Jewish feminist art created in the United States and in Israel and the comparison of these artists with other feminist artists, both Jewish and non-Jewish, illuminates local contexts, similarities and differences in the development of Jewish feminist art in Israel and in the US, and the influences of globalization, diasporism, and immigration on the art.

This wide-ranging book shows how, since the first centuries of the Christian era, gentiles have associated Jews with noise. The study focuses on a “musical libel" - a variation on the Passion story that recurs in various forms and cultures in which an innocent Christian boy is killed by a Jew in order to silence his “harmonious musicality.” In paying close attention to how and where this libel surfaces, Ruth HaCohen covers a wide swath of Western cultural history. The author combines in her analysis the perspectives of musicology, literary criticism, philosophy, psychology, and anthropology, tracing the tensions between Jewish “noise" and idealized Christian “harmony” and their artistic manifestations from the high Middle Ages through Shakespeare, Bach, Wagner, George Eliot, Kafka, Schoenberg and others. She explores testimonies by outsider visitors of synagogues, operas, caricatures, and Nazi movies. Her analysis shows how entrenched aesthetic-theological assumptions have persistently defined European culture and its internal moral and political orientations. Following the publication of the book, the author received two prestigious awards: the Polonsky Award for Creativity and Originality in the Humanities, and the Kinkelday Award from the American Musicological Society for the best book in musicology published in 2011 .