Sefer B'rit ha-Menuḥa is an anonymous Kabbalistic book from the late 13th century or the beginning of the 14th century. The content of the book is best described by the alternative name - "The Book of Lights," given to it due to its central descriptions of the journeys of Israel in the desert, and the images of the vowels of the Name of God, that are portrayed as journeys of divine lights. The treatise describes the complete set of divine theosophical and angelologic powers in a coherent system, in order to relate and unite each name of an angel with its source, and to allow magic acts by the application of the full cosmological and divine unity. This eclectic critical annotated edition provides, for the first time, a clear and coherent text from the book's forty four manuscripts and eight previous prints (from 1648 till recent), presents supplements and relics of the book from additional manuscripts, along with an early treatise by the same unknown author - Sefer ha-Gevura (Book of Enhancement) .

Samuel b. Judah ibn Tibbon (c. 1165-1232) is most famous for his translation of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed into Hebrew. He translated other writings as well and produced original works of philosophy and biblical exegesis. This book makes available for the first time ever Ibn Tibbon’s Perush Qohelet, a sprawling adaptation of Maimonides’ method of exegesis to the complete verse-by-verse explication of a biblical book. The edition is presented with full annotation -- identifying Ibn Tibbon’s sources and explaining his ideas and terminology -- and analytical introduction, which presents the life and writings of the author, describes the commentary itself in detail, explains the method and philosophy of the commentary, and charts its historical influence. In later medieval Jewish thought, few figures were unaffected by this foundational work of Maimonideanism.

The publication of the commentary on the book of Deuteronomy is a moment for students of the Bible and for the educated Hebrew reader to celebrate. Now, for the first time, we have a critical Hebrew commentary on the book of Deuteronomy. The author, Jeffrey Tigay, is emeritus professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The commentary is part of the series Mikra Leyisrael (Bible for Israel), a series of critical commentaries on the Bible whose authors are recognized scholars at universities in Israel and abroad. The commentaries make extensive use of the best of traditional Jewish exegesis of the Bible and modern Biblical scholarship and the disciplines that contribute to understanding the Bible in the context of the cultures of the ancient Near East – philology and the history and archaeology of the region – and literary scholarship. The book of Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Torah, is also known as “the Repetition of the Torah.” It is essentially a lengthy speech that Moses delivered to the Israelites on the Plains of Moab just before they entered the land of Canaan. But the book is not simply a review of the four preceding books. It sometimes adds to what they say or presents their contents from a different perspective, or even presents a contradictory version of what they say. According to 2 Kings chapter 22, the book was found in the course of renovations to the Temple during the reign of Josiah, king of Judah, in 622 BCE. Deuteronomy contains the most fully developed expression of the Torah’s concern for law and justice and for the welfare of the poor and disadvantaged. What is unique about Deuteronomy is its absolute demand for centralization of worship in the Temple in Jerusalem, that is, the abolishment of all local places of worship elsewhere – a demand that would be the equivalent of abolishing all synagogues and limiting the worship of God to single central synagogue in Jerusalem. A truly revolutionary demand! Jewish scholars throughout the generations sought to resolve the contradictions between the commandments and ideas of the first four books of the Torah and Deuteronomy. This kind of harmonizing exegesis is already found in the Bible itself, in the book of Chronicles, from the end of the Persian period. The present commentary deals with these contradictions, evaluates the traditional explanations, explains the contradictions in the light of modern critical scholarship, and explains how the laws of Deuteronomy developed in later Jewish tradition. The commentary deals with the historical background of Deuteronomy, its language and literary form, and explains the text in accordance with its peshat, or original/intended, plain meaning. Prof. Tigay’s commentary is a must for all who wish to study the book of Deuteronomy and deepen their understanding of it. This new commentary benefits from Biblical research that has taken place during more than 20 years since the first edition of this commentary (by the same author) published in English by the Jewish Publication Society of America as the final volume of their Torah Commentary, and it deals with numerous additional matters of interest to Hebrew readers. Regretfully page 447 is missing from the second volume. The missing page appears in the " Preview " link that appears above. Volume one starts with chapter 1 verse 1 and continues through chapter 16 verse 17; volume two starts with chapter 16 verse 18 and continues through the end of the book, chapter 34 verse 12.

Prof. Ilan Eldar's study of linguistics and reading theory in the Middle Ages is brought to you in this publication. These twenty articles, written over thirty-three years and published in scientific journals, memorial publications and jubilee volumes, include unpublished texts from manuscripts and Genizah segments and deal with a variety of historiographical and linguistic issues: The beginnings of the glottology of the Hebrew language; The study of the Hebrew language among Jews of Germany, Italy, Spain, Yemen and France; Methods of structure and editing of dictionaries, derivation systems, concept of triliteral root, division of verbal stems, vowel length and substitution of letters.

When were the books of the "Former Prophets" written? Who wrote them? Who are the editors that made these books the most important source; describing the continuous history of the Jewish People in their land, from the time of the conquest of the Land of Canaan through the destruction of the Holy Temple and the Babylonian exile? These questions are at the center of this book. The name of the book, "From Settlement to Exile" reflects the sequence of events described in the books of the Former Prophets. The book discusses whether a failure could have been predicted from the events described, or whether there were also successful and tranquil periods prior to the destruction that brought hope to the hearts of the people and realistic expectations of establishing a lasting kingdom. Although the impression is that the Former Prophets describe a continuous history that leads inevitably to destruction, research proves that the Former Prophets were written by a number of authors during successful periods as well as difficult ones. The text actually includes several chapters or individual verses that were added after the destruction in order to find an explanation for the disastrous destruction event.

We are pleased to present the readers with volume 18 of Massorot , published through the cooperation of the Center for Jewish Languages and Literatures and the Jewish Oral Traditions Research Center of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The present volume contains nine articles and a review (with additional notes) of an unpublished Hebrew–Yiddish dictionary. The contributions include work by established authorities in the field of Jewish language research, as well as the fruit of younger researchers who have recently joined their ranks. The diversity of the scholarship in the present volume is to be seen in the wide variety of languages discussed, the varied linguistic and literary topics analyzed, as well as the diverse periods in which the sources studied were produced. In his article, Moshe Bar-Asher analyzes the Romance component in the varieties of Judeo-Arabic spoken in recent generations in Ksar Es-Souk, Morocco. Chava Turniansky focuses on the Hebrew component in literary Yiddish as an indicator of the level of traditional education of the writers incorporating it in works they composed in the second decade of the 18th century. Michal Held examines reflections of spoken Judeo-Spanish woven into the weave of a contemporary Hebrew novel. Ilil Baum analyzes the use of the productive suffix -ad̠a in Judeo-Spanish as compared with the use of its cognates in non-Jewish languages of Ibero-Romance stock. Hanoch Gamliel argues in his article that some of the lĕ‘azim (or Old Judeo-French explanatory elements) adduced in Rashi’s commentary on the Torah should be understood as examples of grammatical categories rather than as lexical correspondents. Two of the articles in the present volume deal with problems of translation. Michael Ryzhik examines how the Hebrew names of birds and fowl appearing in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 were rendered in Judeo-Italian Bible translations from the 15th and 16th centuries. Shay Matsa focuses on the linguistic characteristics of a modern Arabic translation of the Passover Haggadah produced in 2003 by a Jew from Syria, examined in the light of personal observations made to the author by the translator himself. Ora (Rodrigue) Schwarzwald compares the linguistic features of two texts in Ladino composed by the same author, Rabbi Meir Benveniste of mid-16th-century Salonika. Efraim Hazan presents and analyzes a letter of friendship in Hebrew verse from Morocco; the numerical value of the Hebrew letters of each stanza (except one) is 654, corresponding to the Hebrew year ([5]654 = 1894) in which the letter was written. The closing article focuses on an unpublished Hebrew–Yiddish dictionary written by Meir Berger in the 1970s. This article includes an introduction by Berger’s former student, Chava Turniansky, and personal notes by his son, Yitzhaq Berger. These are followed by Yitskhok Niborski’s review of Berger’s dictionary, in which it is compared with the 1960 Hebrew–Yiddish dictionary of Mordechai Tsanin. Niborski’s review was translated from Yiddish into Hebrew by Moshe Taube. The book features article summaries in English.

Articles Dina Stein - Rabbinic Tales in the Israel Folktale Archives: Holy Men and Tricksters Osnat Sharon - Elephant, Leviathan and Nineveh the Great City: Sibbuv Rabbi Petachia and Midrash Yonah, Printed Side by Side Nina Pinto-Abecasis - The Piropo as a Bridge between Cultures in Tetuan (Northern Morocco) Adam Ratzon - Al ma yismash kbiru , ya alt tadbiru [Whoever would not listen to elders will not manage in life]: A Literary-Cultural Reading of the Proverbs and Personal Narratives of an Egyptian-Israeli Woman Jacqueline Laznow - ‘I didn’t know I wanted to be a rabbi, there was no name for what I wanted to be’: Life Stories of Women Rabbis Living in Israel Towards a History of Folklore Meir Nizri - Israel and the Sabbath as Bride and Groom in Various Sabbath Hymns

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 volume: Vered Raziel-Kretzmer, The Palestinian Morning Service in Fragments of an Early Liturgical Rotulus Amitai Harroch, The Liturgical Poems of Khalaf Bar Sa ʿ īd Ella Tovia, An Anonymous Exegesis of the Sifrei from the Europian Geniza Yacov Fuchs, Completing Leqaḥ Ṭov on the Qillirian Qerova ‘Zekhor Eikha Anu’ Y. Tzvi Langermann, ‘The Topic of Rosh Ḥodesh’— Chapter 18 of ‘Īssūr we-Hetēr’, an unpublished pre-Maimonidean Judeo-Arabic Halakhic Compendium Aviram Ravitsky, ‘The Principles of Qal va-Ḥomer’—New Material from the School of Rabbi Isaac Canpanton Dov Schwartz, A Philosophic and Kabbalistic Commentary on Psalm 29 by Rabbi Michael b. Shabtai Balbo Eli Gurfinkel, Rabbi David Ibn- Yaḥya’s Commentary to Maimonides’s Introduction of The Guide for the Perplexed

Nili Wazana Preface Baruch J. Schwartz Professor Menahen Haran ז"ל Biblical Studies Yair Zakovitch The Concretization of Metaphors and Metaphoric Language in the Bible Leah Jacobsen The Meaning of Elisha’s Words: ‘I would like to kiss my father and mother and I will follow you’ (I Kings, XIX 20a) Chaim Cohen The Hapax Legomenon דיו (Ink) in the Context of ’ ואני כתב על הספר בדיו ‘ (Jeremiah 36:18): A ‘False Friend’ in Modern Hebrew Due to the Masoretes’ Misunderstanding of the Preposition בדי Meaning ‘To’ or ‘For’ Hava Shalom-Guy The Confessional Prayer in Nehemiah 9:6-37: A Literary-Historical Consideration The Bible in Relation to the Ancient Near East Uri Gabbay The Sumerian Cultic Laments: History, Remembrance and Theology Nili Samet Reading Literary Texts Historically: The Sumerian City Laments as a Test Case Edward L. Greenstein A Woman’s Voice in Lamentations 3 Jakob Klein Bat-Ṣiyyon in the Book of Lamentations and the ‘Lamenting Goddess’ in Mesopotamian Literature Shlomo Bachar Three Appearances of a Figure in Song of Song: Who is she that is ‘Coming up’, ‘Looking through’ and ‘Leaning on’? History of Exegesis Nahem Ilan Lamah/Lammah Meaning No/Don’t in Saadya Gaon’s Translations and Commentary David Shneor A Summary of the Study of Rashi’s Bible Maps and the Reasons for their Disappearance from the Printed Editions of Rashi’s Commenatry Eran Viezel God’s Revelation to the Biblical Authors in the Writings of R. David Kimhi Miriam Sklarz Anonymous Quotations from Ibn Ezra in Nachmanides’ Commentary on the Pentateuch Book Reviews English Abstracts For contents and article abstracts please press "Sample pages "

The book is intended to be used by Hebrew speakers as an updated linguistic introduction for the phonology and morphology of the Hebrew language. It is an enlarged and updated second edition of the "Grammar of Mouth and Ear" that was written and published in 1947 by the same author while kept in a British detention camp for the underground movement in former Palestine. The present edition includes the topics that have been dealt with in the original book, but with modern approach according to progress in linguistics and general science, with new explanations that could appear in modern time.