Smocza is the biography of a street in Warsaw that was completely destroyed in World War II. The book reveals the story of a Jewish microcosm between two world wars. It is based on historical and literary sources that piece together a multicultural mixture of a society in transition, where orthodox Jews, Bundists, Zionists, shoemakers, tailors, poets, actors, prostitutes, and others lived side by side.

The characters of the Yanuka (the Zoharic Wunderkind) and the Sava (the wise old man), appear in various Zoharic stories, revealing themselves to the sages of the Zohar (Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai and his disciples). These two figures are among the most meaningful and complex mythical figures in Zoharic literature. The main argument in this work is that the Sava and Yanuka characters are portrayed as the embodiment of God and his Son (and the Messiah). This book is the first attempt to grasp the full extent and depth of these mythical figures and the close ties that exist between them. At the same time, the book reveals an important chapter in the history of Jewish myth and contributes to the understanding of the messianic consciousness that characterizes the stories of the Sava and Yanuka in the Zohar and exposes their hidden and polemical ties with Christianity. The book is currently available as an ebook. A print edition will be available soon.

Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī’s Mishkat al-Anwar (The Niche of Lights) is justly included in the Hall of Fame of world mysticism as an immortal masterpiece for generations to come. Its subject matter is an arcane mystical interpretation of the Light Verse, sura An-Nur (Qur’an, verse 35), whose text has become a central symbol for the mainstream of Sufi mysticism. The book centres on the light and the mystery of light within a Sufi’s world. Its central importance caused The Niche of Lights to be translated to Hebrew twice in the Middle Ages, and for many generations it provided a source of inspiration in the realm of Judaism for philosophers and Kabbalists alike. This essay has now been re-translated to contemporary Hebrew. This classic inspirational text, a guide for the perplexed of the internal journey to the mystery of Divine Light, is an important, central chapter in the history of human spirituality; and occupies centre stage in the endeavour to establish prophesy, divine inspiration and a new Israeli spirituality.

The book Praise of Fools , which was printed twice - in 1880 and 1910 - is an unusual satire/parody in Hebrew satiric literature. It is intended not only for certain circles or people in the Jewish context, but also has a universal character: it makes fun of and derides a long list of philosophers, writers, intellectuals and scholars a nd others , presenting them as useless, plagiarists and fools. All this i s done in order to supposedly praise ignorance and stupidity and to propose finding within them security and peace. The book accorded to Rubin the title "the Jewish Erasmus," however, the introduction places the book within the extensive European "fool literature".

Articles: Haim Weiss | ‘From That Hour the Doom Was Sealed’: On Class Reversals in the ‘Legends of Destruction’ Vered Tohar | ‘Rabbi Hanina and the Frog’: An Ancient Ashkenazi story Adapted for Children by Asher Barash Lital Lieberman-Avital | ‘Take the Illness and Give the Medicine’: Removal by Salt – Traditional Women’s Healing Practice on a Socio-Cultural Borderline Yuval Harari | Wonders and Sorceries in Yeruham: A Magical-Political Rashomon Dalia Marx | Welcoming the Sabbath in the Kibbutzim: Secular Religiosity Narmina Abdulaev | Narration Surfing: Folklore Published on the Internet and Its Analysis Shany Kotler-Fux | ‘Hitler-Pants’ Parodies: Folklore in Israel’s Virtual Sphere Reviews: Aharon Maman | [Review of:] Yosef Tobi and Tsivia Tobi, Judeo-Arabic Literature in Tunisia, 1850–1950, Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2014, 367 pp. Jacqueline Laznow | [Review of:] Tsivia Tobi, From Bride to Daughter-in-Law: The World of Jewish Women in Southern Tunisia and Its Reflection in Popular Literature, Jerusalem 2016, 344 + [iv] pp. [Hebrew] Tzila Zan-Bar Zur | [Review of:] Idit Pintel-Ginsberg, The Angel and the Tcholent: Food Representations in Folktales, Haifa 2016, 176 pp. [Hebrew] English Abstracts

Folk-culture is typically associated with continuity; how can one engage folk-culture in situations of destruction and extermination - the reality Zionist folklorists confronted facing the Shoah? With the first bits of information regarding the destruction in Europe, many of them assembled in Tel Aviv to form the Yeda Am folklore society; in tandem, the Institute for Jewish Folklore was formed in Jerusalem. The two competing organizations dealt with fragmentary lives in the Diaspora in different ways, in their quest to find new meanings from them. This book examines Zionist folkloristics at this dire hour from a perspective that views fractured reality as a fundamental principle in studying cultures in general, by combining approaches from folklore studies and science and technology studies. This book undermines the distinction between individualist scholarly knowledge and collective folklore by examining everyday scholarly habits: Archival practices, the use of letterheads, jubilee celebrations of scholars as well as practices of editing and laying out scholarly publications. The tension between national culture and ethnic cultures is revealed in new ways, as is the relationship between avant-garde and folklore studies.

In a brief historic moment in the nineteenth century, printing presses, publishing ventures, a periodical press, circulation networks, and a mass readership came into being all at once in the Middle East, where none had previously existed. The shift had ramifications in every sphere of the community's life. Among other outcomes, it facilitated the cultural and literary movement known as the Arab nahḍa ('awakening'). Ayalon's study offers a critical inquiry into the formative phase of that grand change in Arab societies, from 1800-1914. It explores the advent of printing and publishing, the formation of mass readership, and the creation of distribution channels, the vital and often overlooked nexus linking the former two processes. The book considers questions of cultural and religious tradition, social norms and relations, and concepts of education, thus shedding new – and often surprising – light on crucial facets of the emerging print culture in the Middle East.

Bearing Witness to the Witness examines the different methods of testimony given by trauma victims and the ways in which these can enrich or undermine the ability of the reader to witness them. Years of listening to both direct and indirect testimonies on trauma have lead Dana Amir to identify four modes of witnessing trauma: The “metaphoric mode”, the “metonymic mode,” the “excessive mode”, and the “Muselmann mode.” The author thus demonstrates the importance of testimony in understanding the nature of trauma, and therefore how to respond to trauma more generally in a clinical psychoanalytic setting. In order to follow these four modes of interaction with the traumatic memory, the various chapters of the book present a close reading of three genres of traumatic witnessing: Literary accounts by Holocaust survivors, memoirs (situated between autobiographic recollection and fiction) and ‘raw’ testimonies given by Holocaust survivors. Since every traumatic testimonial narrative contains a combination of all four modes with various shifts between them, it is of crucial importance to identify the singular combination of modes that characterize each traumatic narrative, focusing on the specific areas within which a shift occurs from one mode to another. Such a focus is extremely important, as illustrated and analysed throughout this book, to the rehabilitation of the psychic metabolic system which conditions the digestion of traumatic materials, allowing a metaphoric working through of traumatic zones that were so far only accessible to repetition and evacuation.

Many tend to think of post-Zionism Jerusalem as a forsaken provincial Ottoman town, entangled in a net of hatred originating in its various religions. This image coincided with the Zionist redemption vision, which sought to revive the deserted land. Lemire, studying Jerusalem of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century from within its own context – the writings of its inhabitants, documents of its governing bodies, maps, and economic reports – depicts a completely different picture. For over seventy years, members of the different religions - Jews, Christians, and Muslims - lived a life of incredible coexistence. Mutual respect and reciprocation dominated the city and its enlightened Ottoman rulers were aware of the needs of its various communities. Only the rise of nationalism and the city’s partition into quarters destabilized its unique social fabric. Vincent Lemire did not write a nostalgic document about a long-lost past, but rather illustrated an important political outlook, demonstrating that the national and religious animosity in Jerusalem is not necessarily inherent to the city.