In a broken world, in which even God Himself is in a state of deep crisis, what is required in order to mend the rupture? How can one heal God and His world? Moreover, what might allow our actions to be effective? These questions stand at the heart of the Lurianic Kabbalah, the apex of the Safedian intellectual and religious renaissance of the sixteenth century, and one of the constituting phenomena of Modern Jewish thought. God as Patient presents medical discourse – the knowledge, language, and practice of medicine – as a significant key to our understanding of the Lurianic search for a way to mend reality, and first and foremost the Godhead. The book reads together the Lurianic texts alongside the medical writings of R. Hayyim Vital, R. Isaac Luria's chief disciple, and a medical practitioner. Consequently, the book analyzes how medicine becomes the model for the Lurianic language of action. In its final part, the book shows how God becomes in this Kabbalah the ultimate patient of the Lurianic Kabbalist, who in turn becomes the private court physician of the King of Kings, and needs, like every physician, the proper modes of healing to accomplish his task.

In this issue: Shira Shmidman | The Dispute between Rami bar Hama and Rava – New Perspectives Ariel Malachi | David Ben Saꜥad Al-Saꜥadi and the Intense Polemic Regarding Allegory in Yemen Oded Yisraeli | Keter Shem Tov of R. Shem Yov Ibn Gaon: A Chapter in the History of Nahmanides’ Kabbalah in the 13th–14th Centuries Oz Bluman | Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin and the Recontextualization of Hasidic Innovation Gideon Freudenthal | 'Maꜥasseh Nissim'. Salomon Ben Joshua (Maimon)’s Commentary on The Homilies of Haran (R. Nissim Ben-Reuben Gerundi)

For Louis Jacobs, the quest—the process of engaging with and thinking about Jewish faith—was a lifelong pursuit. He offered a model in the 1960s, a period characterized by general religious crisis, of an observant, committed, but intellectually curious Judaism that empowered individual seekers to address challenges to faith. In Orthodox Judaism at the time a battle was under way for religious control. Generating a widespread controversy in British Jewry known as the "Jacobs Affair", his thought offers a lens for examining the trajectory of Orthodoxy. In a contemporary context marked by the changing cultural and intellectual concerns of a "post-secular" age, the focus of some of these debates over religious control has shifted. Yet Jacobs' emphasis on a personal quest is as relevant as ever, perhaps more so. This first book-length analysis of his theology unpacks the building blocks of his thought. It argues that, despite its particularities and limitations, his approach can provide a powerful model for contemporary religious seekers in the context of a growing impetus away from established, denominationally bound forms of religion. Many orthodox believers across a range of faiths continue to prefer the certainty of unquestionable religious truth claims rather than pursuing a subjective search for religious meaning. For those seeking alternative models for the contemporary Jewish quest, a reconsideration of Jacobs’ theology can offer valuable tools.

A jubilee volume in honor of Prof. Menahem Ben-Sasson. The book, which contains 22 articles written by Prof. Ben-Sasson's colleagues, students, friends, and family members is dedicated to phenomena of leadership in the Jewish world . The various articles examine conceptions, practices and ways of Jewish leadership from diverse perspectives and in varied times and places. They are based on variegated sources: historical and judicial documents, biblical exegeses, poetry, letters, Responsa, polemical and philosophical writings. The volume is a tribute to Prof. Ben Sasson's extensive academic and public activity.

This fascinating tour of the Jewish communities of the Ottoman Middle East, on the eve of the changes that would come to unsettle the Ottoman territories, reveals a surprisingly varied world. Visiting Istanbul, Damascus, Acre, Jerusalem, Aleppo, Basra, and Cairo, we see different landscapes, meet diverse Jewish societies, and encounter the range of their economic activities. We also see how Christians and Jews struggled with each other to establish their position in the Muslim world and secure their livelihood. In the process, the author reconsiders fundamental questions: What is a "diaspora"? To what extent did the surrounding culture impact the Jewish communities of the area? And, most interestingly, how did these communities respond to the onset of modernity? Though relating to Jewish society in its entirety, the main focus is on its most powerful members: the notables, who were close to the ruling elite or involved in international trade. Tsur discusses their strengths and weaknesses, considers the relationship between their position and that of the rest of the Jewish community, and analyses their eventual downfall. His study offers new insights into the social mechanisms that enabled them to establish close ties with the ruling elite and to function within it.

A new paradigm for relations between religions, one of acceptance and collaboration, requires not only a willingness to move beyond a tradition of hostility and competition but also significant theological rethinking. Within Jewish Orthodoxy there have been very few voices that have advanced and justified a vision of other faiths in this light: to this day, the reigning paradigm is one of practical collaboration while avoiding theologically based engagement or reflection. Two of the most important Orthodox Jewish voices advocating change have been those of Irving Yitz Greenberg and Jonathan Sacks. This book presents the theological, moral, and social views of these two leading rabbis. It focuses on the significance of covenant for both, and how they adapt this concept to enable the development of a Jewish view of other religions. In considering how they may have influenced each other, it also studies the limitations and internal contradictions that characterize their work as they attempt to point the way forward, in a spirit of dialogue, to continuing theological reflection on Judaism’s approach to world religions.

Ever Turning Blows the Wind examines the cultural world of Rabbi Chaim Yosef David Azulay - Hida (Jerusalem 1724 - Livorno 1806). This book explores the cultural and intellectual figure of Hida, a native of Jerusalem, who spent many years traveling in North Africa and Europe until he settled in Livorno, Italy. It examines several of his numerous works, representing various genres. The defining aspects of his character, emerge from Hida's writings. The expressions of his self-image, his attitude towards different societies and cultures and different bodies of knowledge, influenced by the cultural spaces he crossed in his travels, are discussed here. Examination of Hida’s writings, with their various genres, shows that Hida’s figure contains some of the old, traditional world where he was born and raised and formed his personality, and the modern world which was discovered to him in his travels and which aroused his interest and its effects on him are clearly evident in his writings. Therefore, the research of Hida’s figure enables an examination of the influence of the new inside the traditional surroundings and the existence of these two entities side by side.

In the preface to his book Emek Hamelech Rabbi Naftali Bacharach lists his ten books, noting that the first is Emek Hamelech , and the second is Gan ha-Melekh , his commentary on the Zohar printed here for the first time. Bacharach's style in Emek Hamelech is similar to his style in Gan Hamelech , however, while Emek Hamelech was written according to the order of Emanation, Gan Hamelech was written as a commentary to the Zohar. In general, the Kabbalistic writing of Bacharach is characterized by the fact that it is full of messianic tension, and unlike most descriptions of the Emanation in Lurianic Kabbalah that we are familiar with, Bacharach also describes the first stages of the Emanation in Messianic terms.

Problems of Discipline explores the social and cultural function of the state system of secondary education in the Russian empire’s north-western provinces in the second half of the nineteenth century. It shows how schools facilitated socialization into informal, yet non-radical forms of political and social activism, and demonstrates, furthermore, how ideas of civil activism and communal commitment, typical to the contemporary Russian critical public discourse, led to the creation of a distinctive Jewish student subculture which contributed, subsequently, to the emergence of a new socially committed Jewish-Russian elite. Thus Problems of Discipline suggests a new conceptualization of the emergence of local – Jewish and other – elites and, in a broader view, a new understanding of the modes of Russian imperial socialization.

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 issue: Yeruḥam Aviad Goldman | The Secret of The levirate Marriage and Ḥalitzah : A Kabbalistic Text Attributed to Rabbi Yosef Gikatilla Naʿama Ben-Shaḥar and Tzaḥi Weiss | Ten Holy Sefirot, and their Inverse : A Commentary on the Ten Sefirot alongside the Left Emanation Eliezer Baumgarten and Uri Safrai | Some Traces from R. Isaac of Acre’s early draft of Otzar Ḥaim Eli Gurfinkel | Commentary on Lamentations (1:1–6) by Rabbi David ben Yehuda Messer Leon Yohanan Kapaḥ | Rabbi Joseph Ḥayyun’s Commentary on the Book of Malachi

The spread of the Assyrian Empire over the entire Fertile Crescent in the second half of the 8th century BC introduced various forms of cooperation between the neighboring nomadic Arabs and the imperial authorities. The geographical conditions and resultant lifestyle of the Arabs facilitated a mutual dependence and delicate equilibrium between themselves and the Assyrian rulers, eager to capitalize on their unprecedented regional might. Henceforth, the Arabs appear as an organic component of the Fertile Crescent history rather than mere desert raiders.

The book explores the representations and depictions of old age in the rabbinic Jewish literature of late antiquity. Through close literary readings and cultural analysis, the book reveals the gaps and tensions between idealized images of old age on the one hand, and the psychologically, physiologically, and socially complicated realities of aging on the other hand. The authors argue that while rabbinic literature presents various statements on the qualities and activities that make for good old age, on the respect and reverence that the elderly should be awarded, and on harmonious intergenerational relationship, it also includes multiple anecdotes and narratives that portray aging in much more nuanced and poignant ways. These anecdotes and narratives relate, alongside fantasies about blissful or unnoticeable aging, a host of fears associated with old age: from the loss of physical capability and beauty to the loss of memory and mental acuity, and from marginalization in the community to being experienced as a burden by one’s own children. Each chapter of the book focuses on a different aspect of aging in the rabbinic world: bodily appearance and sexuality, family relations, intellectual and cognitive prowess, honor and shame, and social roles and identity.