In the volume Kabbalah, Mysticism and Poetry: A Journey to the End of Vision , top researchers from a variety of disciplines generate a thrilling encounter between Jewish, Christian and Islamic texts, drawing on poetic, religious and mystical interpretation tools in an interdisciplinary feast of aesthetics, literature and poetics on the one hand, and mysticism and theology on the other. In this fascinating, complex, and entangled journey to the end of vision we meet some of the leading authors who made a crucial contribution to human world culture, and who were deeply interested in Kabbalah and mysticism, such as the Zohar Kabbalists, Israel Najara, Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Paul Celan, Jorge Luis Borges, Julia Kristeva, Al-Hallaj, Ibn Arabi, Dante, Cervantes, John Donne, and Marcel Proust.

This book, stemming from a PhD dissertation under the advising of Prof. Moshe Bar Asher, offers a description of the traditional Hebrew of the Jews of southern Yemen. The description is based on a lengthy and intensive field work consisting of recording their reading of biblical, rabbinic, and liturgical literature. As S. Morag's The Hebrew Language Tradition of the Yemenite Jews (Jerusalem, 1963) focuses mainly on central Yemen, especially the city of Sanaa, the study of the southern Yemen phonological tradition remained a desideratum, which the current book aims at fulfilling. Thus, the first part of the book includes addenda et corrigenda to the description of the southern Yemen phonological system. One major innovation in this regard is the different pronunciations of the holam, along with several phonological matters missing in Morag's book, such as the principles of the mobile shewa and the primary and secondary accents (the ga'aya). The second part consists of a description of the traditional reading of the Mishna in southern Yemen, including a very meticulous comparison to the mainstream tradition of central Yemen, and to some other non Yemenite traditions. In chapter 2, some phonological matters concerning the Tiberian Hebrew are discussed, such as the conditions for gemination (doubling), different issues related to the gutturals, and the principles of the dagesh lene in the bgdkpt consonants. The largest chapter of this book, chapter 3, consists of a detailed description of over 1200 Mishnaic nominal forms as realized traditionally. Organized alphabetically, this list includes post-biblical nouns, biblical nouns pronounced differently in their Mishnaic occurrence, and inflections of biblical nominal forms not attested in the Bible. The entries offer oral information based on six main informants and vocalized manuscripts from southern Yemen. Every entry has been compared to the data available from reliable informants, existing recordings, vocalized manuscripts and printed editions from central Yemen, along with other circumstantial. evidence. The material was systematically compared to other linguistic traditions, such as the Babylonian, and to almost all the vocalized manuscripts and printed editions ever used in southern Yemen. In chapter 4, several topics are discussed with regard to the traditional reading of the Mishnah: Various participle forms, the punctuation of relative ש, pausal forms, the definition of nominal forms, ketiv and qere in Mishnaic reading, and the like. The database analysis reveals that the southern Yemen tradition is certainly a Yemenite one, correlating very well with the central Yemen tradition. Yet, in some details it rather correlates with ancient traditions of Mishnaic Hebrew on the one hand, and with vocalized printed editions, including mistakes and inconsistency, on the other. A fundamental outcome of this work is that the Yemenite Rabbinic Hebrew tradition should be examined within its regional backdrop and variations. Needless to say, that this work has been a rescue mission of a tradition not extensively recorded and of which the number of individuals familiar with is rapidly decreasing. This work, based on recordings and vocalized manuscripts from southern Yemen, ensures that the memory of this tradition is perpetuated for future generations. Introduction The Research on the Language Traditions The Research on the Yemenite Tradition The Research on the Southern Yemenite Tradition The Communities in this Paper Shar'ab Aden The Jews of Southern Yemen and the Printed Books Research Methods The Corpus The Informants Presentation of the Results and an Analysis Phonology in the Reading of the Bible Preface The Sound System The Consonants The Vowels Stress in the Reading of the Bible Primary Stress Secondary Stress Secondary Stress in Closed Syllables Gemination Furtive Patah Phonology in the Reading of the Mishnah Gemination ר Gemination in אהח"ע Gemination in In shva and in מ in shva י Gemination in מה Gemination after Gemination of Dehik The Influence of the Gutturals The Vocalization of a Prefix before a Guttural The Gutteral Vowel Furtive Patah Changes in Verbs with Gutturals The Vocalization of Definiteness before Gutturals and before ר Fricative and Plosive בגדכפ"ת Letters Plosive בגדכפ"ת Letters Not Following the Tiberian Tradition Fricative בגדכפ"ת Not Following the Tiberian Tradition Analysis and Conclusions Stress in the Reading of the Mishna The Noun in the Tradition of Mishnaic Hebrew Some Participial Forms The Vocalization of the Relative Pronoun ש The Vocalization of ובכ"ל in Pretonic Position Pausal Forms Participles with First Person Pronouns Feminine Participles with Object Suffixes Absolute Forms in Construct State Construct Forms in Absolute State Joining של to the Following World Second Person Suffixes Definiteness of Nouns Ketiv and Qere in the Reading of the Mishna The Southern Yemenite Tradition – A Summary Phonetics The Reading Tradition of Mishnaic Hebrew Some Notes on Noun Morphology Characteristics of the Southern Yemenite Tradition Insights on the Central Yemenite Traditions Conclusive Remarks Bibliography and Abbreviations Index of Words

The articles in this volume: Ilan Eldar Language Nationalism, Language Revival, and Language Planning Miri Bar-Ziv Levy The Cinematic Representation of Hebrew Speech in the 1930s Ariel Gabbay פּועֶֹלֶת or פּועָֹלֶת ? Feminine Participle Forms in Pausal Inflection in the 1644 Constantinople Edition of the Mishna Mitka Ratzaby Golub Ethnic Characteristics in Theophoric Personal Names Found in Archaeological Excavations in the Land of Israel during the First Temple Period Einat Gonen Grammatical Variation in Israeli Hebrew in the Light of the Formation of Early Modern Hebrew Ephraim Bezalel Halivni Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar in the Light of the Aleppo and Leningrad Codices Ohad Cohen The Syntactic Status of Verbal Forms Ending with Final Nun in First Temple Prose Chava Farstey “Reverse Calques” and Languages in Contact Rivka Shemesh-Raiskin From Biblical Hebrew to Mishnaic Hebrew: The Use of an Inner Object Forward and contents can be seen in PDF form, just press "SAMPLE PAGES".

When the speaker has "no words" she may utilize silence to communicate (opposed to stillness, pauses, the unsaid, empty-speech or silencing). Such silence speaks alongside words composing language structures. Our book studies (eloquent) silence: its functions and forms, as it emerges in Hebrew texts and genres aural and written (from the Bible, literary works, commercials, psychotherapy discourse, personal and public).

MS Zurich, Jeselsohn 5, is the first half of a Sefardi Masoretic Bible completed by Moshe Ibn Zabara in 1477, which was later heavily glossed, especially in the Pentateuch, by Menahem de Lonzano. The other half of the manuscript is preserved in MS Sassoon 1209. This study first examines Zabara’s work in the manuscript, in comparison with his other manuscripts. The main part of this study is devoted to Menahem de Lonzano: his biography and bibliography, his wide-ranging text critical work, and his detailed work on the Zabara Bible. The volume is illustrated with approximately 150 color photos, with a concentration of 32 photographs in appendix 1 of folios in MS Jeselsohn 5 with micrography. Two other appendices by specialists are devoted to the decoration program and to the palaeography and codicology of MS Jeselsohn 5; the former by Andreina Contessa, the latter by Tamar Leiter and Shlomo Zucker.

This book is Part III of the Foundations of Standard Arabic series . It is direct continuation of the first two parts, builds upon them, and begins from the point reached by the student at the end of part II . This part aims to provide the student with the skill to read advanced texts from the Arabic press and with the tools to read other texts as well. It addresses grammatical issues encountered in modern texts more complex than political press reports, and provides a broad and varied vocabulary, covering a range of fields beyond the political domain. Advancing gradually but rapidly through a range of grammatical and syntactic issues, the book furnishes the student with the ability to tackle complex texts and read them quickly and smoothly. It stresses throughout the inculcation of standard modern Arabic as used today in the printed and electronic media . As in the first two parts, the study method is based on learning Arabic in Arabic in order to develop the full complement of skills (reading, writing and speaking), deepen the student's familiarity with the language and inculcate the vocabulary. The grammatical explanations are precise and stress the learning of correct standard usage, but are sensitive to the changing and dynamic nature of contemporary Arabic . The structure of the book is modular, making it possible to study the various grammatical issues in any order, independently of the texts .

We are pleased to present the readers with a new, double issue of Massorot , volumes 16–17, published through the collaboration of the Center for Jewish Languages and Literatures and the Jewish Oral Traditions Research Center of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The present volume offers ten articles devoted to Hebrew and Jewish language studies, some by veteran researchers, others by younger scholars. Half of them were originally presented as lectures at the Fourth International Conference of the Center for Jewish Languages and Literatures, convened to mark the 25th anniversary of the Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The theme of the conference, held in Tammuz 5770 / June 2010, was “Original Compositions and Translated Works in Jewish Languages”. The articles published in this volume deal with a range of Jewish languages, the majority of them Jewish languages of Romance stock: the articles by Shmuel Refael, Ángel Berenguer Amador, and Omer Shafran focus on Judeo-Spanish (or Judezmo, Ladino); the articles by Cyril Aslanov and Doron Modan are devoted to Jewish varieties of French; and the article by Michael Ryzhik concentrates on Judeo-Italian. Jewish Malayalam, the study of which is still in its infancy, is discussed in the article by Ophira Gamliel. Issues relating to the study of languages in contact, which frequently arise in Jewish language analysis, come to the fore in several of the articles in the present volume: the article by Esther Adamit analyzes the ways in which multiple languages influenced the selection of Jewish toponyms appearing on the title pages of Hebrew-letter works published in Europe; and the contribution by Doron Modan analyzes the influence of several European languages on the Hebrew component incorporated in a collection of communal regulations written in the language of the Jews of Bordeaux and Bayonne.Two of the articles in this volume discuss Hebrew language traditions. The article by Moshe Bar-Asher analyzes the Hebrew that emerges from tombstone inscriptions from Meknes as reflected in the volume Avne Zikkaron, by Rabbi Yosef Messas. The contribution by Ilan Eldar discusses the origins of the traditional Ashkenazic pronunciation of Hebrew. The book features article summaries in English.