How does the past remain present in the urban landscape—in houses, streets, and public squares—even after the culture that once sustained it has been destroyed? What happens when history is not merely an abstract memory but a material reality that continues to shape and unsettle the present? In Bloody Wednesday , Yechiel Weizman traces the ghostly presence of the Jews of Olkusz, a town in south-central Poland whose large Jewish community flourished for centuries, until the Holocaust. Despite their total physical absence, from the end of the war until today the memory of the Jews is palpable and persistent—and at the same time silenced and repressed—in every street corner: in empty houses, in abandoned cemeteries and synagogues, in plaques and monuments, and through the ongoing public debates about property, heritage, and commemoration. Using the case study of a single Polish town, the book shows how the urban topography of Eastern Europe was continuously reshaped and redefined in relation to the legacy of the Second World War, the question of Jewish property, and the politics of Holocaust memory during the Communist period and after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Adopting a microhistorical lens and examining the smallest details of everyday life and urban history, the book reveals how the persistent debate over the presence of the dead Jews in the concrete and imagined spaces of one small town became a dramatic arena for a painful, intimate, and nostalgic confrontation with the violent fingerprints of the twentieth century and with pressing questions of responsibility, ethics, and guilt.

The book sheds light on the aims and achievements of the twelve first female members, who served in the first Israeli Knesset, and in particular on the perception of the status of women in the early years of the state. This study examines the heated debates that arose with the legislation of the following laws: the Marriage Age Law; the Income Tax Ordinance, which serves as a mirror of the status of the married woman; the Security Service Law, which can contribute to the understanding of Israeli society; and the Women’s Equal Rights Law of 1951, whose enactment concluded the work of the first Knesset. The influence of this legislation is felt to this day.

Immediately upon the establishment of the State of Israel, Israel welcomed approximately 720,000 as part of the Great Aliyah. More than one third of these newcomers, immigrants and refugees, were housed in immigrant camps and later in transit camps known as maabarot . Some were later removed from them or left on their own accord; others remained in the maabarot for many years, and the maabarot remained within them. In their early years, the maabarot played an important social role and gave rise to new interethnic relations and new identities. Within a short period of time, and in a space intended to serve as a temporary way station, a shared form of existence emerged in the maabarot. It established principles of organization, fostered cooperation that crossed boundaries of ethnic and communal origin, and created communal cohesion that developed despite the limitations imposed by the absorbing establishment. This book reexamines life in the maabarot through a division into three distinct subperiods that reflect profound changes in social composition, in patterns of power, and in the immigrants’ consciousness of identity. The elimination of the heterogeneity that had characterized the social fabric not only changed the status of the residents in the eyes of the state and society, but also narrowed the social and future possibilities that had opened before them. Through an examination of diverse sources, a detailed depiction of everyday life, and a thematic analysis of language, religion, and education, a formative chapter in the social history of Israel is revealed through the world of the immigrants as they themselves shaped it. From a charged encounter among diasporas, social groups, and a harsh, brutal, and impossible daily routine, a society emerges that has until now remained at the margins of historical research.

The Italian commedia dell’arte troupes roamed across Europe for two hundred years, captivating wide and diverse audiences. The performances of the commedia dell’arte were improvised, as the actors executed on stage a concise outline of a play, called "scenario". This book presents, for the first time in Hebrew translation, complete scenarios written by one of the greatest men of the Italian Renaissance theater, Flaminio Scala. The scenarios are accompanied by annotations and a comprehensive essay that reviews Scala’s life and work, and presents his scenario as a perfect recipe for comic improvisation. The book will therefore be of interest to theatre enthusiasts and scholars alike, and will provide directors, actors, and acting students with new and refreshing tools for staging comedies.

Muslim beliefs have inspired charitable giving for over fourteen centuries, yet Islamic history has rarely been examined from this perspective. In Charity in Islamic Societies , Amy Singer explains the basic concepts and institutions of Muslim charity: the obligatory annual payment of zakat together with voluntary donations of all sizes, undertaken at every level of society, and across the span of individual lifetimes. Charitable endowments – established by rulers, wealthy individuals, and even those of more modest means – shaped Muslim societies, cultures, and landscapes in ever era. This book demonstrates how historical circumstances, social status, gender, age, and other factors interacted with religious ideals to produce a vast array of charitable practices, from the early days of Islam to the present. Relying on evidence from written texts, buildings, images, and objects to anchor the discussions in each chapter, the author explores the motivations for charity, its impact on the rich and the poor, and the politicization of giving, arguing that the study of philanthropy affords a unique prism through which to examine the past.

In this issue: Diego Rotman | The Sukkah and Its Double: Copies, Variants, and the Stereoscopic Image Shani Tamari Matan | The First Hebrew Dance-Gathering at Kibbutz Dalia (1944): Decoding of an Archival and Choreographic Event Hagar Salamon and Carmela Abdar | Glory of the “Sets”: Praxis and Meaning of Dressing Children in Haredi Families in Israel Ravit Raufman | The October 7 Massacre in Light of the Folktale “The Wolf and Kid”: A Realization of Primal Fantasy Ronni Shaked | Commemoration and Conflict: How the Palestinian Calendar Shapes Identity and Resistance

The Last Trial deals with the trial of Ivan Demjanjuk, who was tried in the State of Israel in 1986 on charges of being "Ivan the Terrible," the operator of the gas chambers at the Treblinka extermination camp, and was acquitted after a seven-year legal process. The book is based on in-depth archival research and reveals for the first time a rich collection of historical documents from the legal authorities in Israel, the United States, and Germany. The book is also based on in-depth interviews with senior members of the legal system who were involved in the trial – judges, attorneys, and witnesses. The Demjanjuk case was considered both a case with a high chance of conviction and a potential for severe punishment, and a case that was expected to bring the memory of the Holocaust back onto the public agenda, some half a century after the Eichmann trial. It was chosen from among the cases of other suspects to be the first test case for the possibility of extraditing Nazi criminals from the United States to Israel. The results of the trial therefore had a decisive impact on the continued activity of the State of Israel in bringing Nazi criminals to justice. When Demjanjuk was acquitted, it became clear that not only had the prosecution failed to achieve the desired result of convicting the defendant, but also that the legal process in his case had failed to fulfill the educational, documentary, and historical goals that were attached to it. In the final analysis, this resounding failure brought the prosecution of the Nazis and their accomplices in the State of Israel to an end. The tension between the legal field and the historical field, and between legal judgment and factual truth, runs throughout the book. The greatest danger of blurring the lines between "law" and "history" lies in the fact that the legal outcome of a criminal proceeding – "guilty" or "not guilty" – may mistakenly be linked to the historical determination of "did happen" or "did not happen." A misunderstanding of legal acquittal as historical acquittal is one of the biggest obstacles to the influence of criminal law, which ends in acquittal, on collective memory. As the book shows, the case of Demjanjuk's extradition and trial in Israel illustrates the difficulties inherent in dealing with the Holocaust within the courtroom, and also sharpens the problematic nature of using criminal law tools to establish historical truths.

Usury: Moneylending, Money and Society in Rabbinic Literature is a study of the moneylending norms in the early stratum of rabbinic literature. It shows how these norms use the language of legal formalism to construct a community of status-equals, into which rabbinic adherents can buy their entry by making the correct investment choices. Placing these norms in a broad historical and intercultural context, it is a fresh look at Jewish moneylending norms, the first in over 30 years.

Yehuda Jud Ne'eman's latest book, Auschwitz Capital of the 20th Century , presents the work of one of the most important scholars of Israeli cinema, who was also a groundbreaking director and creator. In this book, Ne'eman shares with his readers his involvement as a creator and intellectual in the establishment of Israeli cinema as a space for central artistic, cultural, and political discourse, whose significant contribution to Israeli culture and society is beyond doubt. The book includes two parts that complement each other. The first part contains an innovative and original discussion that maps the history of Israeli cinema by comparing it to cinema that began during the yishuv period. During this period, cinema was committed to the Zionist narrative, and the work is characterized as a continuous conflict between avant-garde and ideology, similar to Soviet avant-garde cinema. Within the framework of this comparison, Ne'eman emphasizes the preoccupation with modernist cinema of the "New Sensibility," a term coined years ago, and refers to films created by Israeli directors following the French "New Wave," including his own films. In doing so, he claims that between Israeli folk film and the modernism of the "New Sensibility" films, there was in fact cooperation in opposition to the establishment and Zionist ideology. The second part of the book discusses films made in the State of Israel and during the yishuv period that deal with the representation of the Holocaust as a central test case. Among other things, Ne'eman shows that the attempt to heal the horrors of the Holocaust in a simplistic national way expresses feelings of guilt and offers a limited solution to the problems of the survivors.

We are pleased to present readers with volume 23 of the journal Massorot: Studies in Language Traditions and Jewish Languages . The present volume contains nine articles focusing on diverse facets of Jewish Languages, and on the traditions and features of Hebrew reflected in the varied genres cultivated in that language. Five of the articles deal with translations. Two of them concern Bible translations into Judeo-Arabic. Moshe Bar-Asher, who has analyzed and published widely on the Western šarḥ – that is, the Jewish Maghrebi translation of the Bible – examines euphemism and language refinement "in the face of danger" with respect to the šarḥ of the Pentateuchal books of Numbers and Deuteronomy. Tamar Zewi examines alternative translations in the Judeo-Arabic Tafsīr of R. Saadia Gaon on Exodus, on the basis of the excellent manuscript of the commentary, Yevr. II C1, housed in the National Library of Russia in Saint Petersburg. Nahem Ilan discusses the Judeo-Arabic translation of the second part of the Hebrew work Pele Yo‘eṣ by Rabbi Eliezer Papo (Bulgaria, 1786–1827), composed in the middle of the 20th century by Rabbi Makhlouf Idan of Djerba. Yaffa Yisraeli analyzes the translation into the Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Saqqiz (Iranian Kurdistan) of the noted piyyuṭ (liturgical poem) “Yashen al teradam,” by Rabbi Yehudah Halevy. Ora (Rodrigue) Schwarzwald offers readers a comparative analysis of six Ladino translations of the description of the lover in Song of Songs, Chapter 5, representing both the Eastern and Western Ladino traditions, from the 16th–20th centuries. Assaf Ben-Moshe draws our attention to the linguistic diversity of the Jews of Iraq by comparing the divergences between the Judeo-Arabic variety used by the Jews of ˁĀna and that used by the Baghdad Jewish community. Dalit Assouline examines the Hebrew used by Mizrahi rabbis who joined the Breslav Hasidic sect, originally of Ashkenazic origin. Efraim Hazan and Rachel Hitin-Mashiah zooms in on another genre, the epistles exchanged by rabbinic scholars concerning books. Kedem Golden deals with Hebrew poetic riddles.

This book examines Israeli-German relations after the fall of the Berlin Wall and during the reigns of three chancellors: Helmut Kohl, Gerhard Schröder, and Angela Merkel. The book is the product of research based on various sources, and primarily on dozens of interviews the author conducted with key figures involved in the relations between the countries. The generational change in Germany and the internal and international normalization process that the Federal Republic underwent following the German unification did not harm the special relations with Israel. On the contrary: At their peak, in 2008, against the backdrop of the worsening nuclear threat from Iran, Chancellor Merkel declared that Israel's security was part of Germany's national interest. The book describes the contribution of the relations between the countries to the development of the State of Israel and its strengthening in vital areas, and even to its close ties with the European Union. These relations have been put to the test in recent decades, after controversy surrounding foreign policy issues between the two countries increased and the negative trend towards Israeli policy in German public opinion polls strengthened. All of this has raised question marks about the future of the special relationship between the two countries.

Martin Buber aroused passionate, often contradictory opinions, both regarding his personality and his thought. Gershom Schocken, editor of Haaretz , said that one day he was walking with S. Y. Agnon: "We were walking around Talpiot and I asked him what his attitude was towards Buber. Agnon stopped in his walk and said: 'I want to tell you something. There are people about whom you have to decide once: do you love them or do you hate them. I decided to love Buber.'" Buber's philosophical and theological writings, including the famous I and Thou , have contributed greatly to religious and Jewish thought, as well as to biblical studies, political theory, and Zionist thought. In this new biography, Paul Mendes-Flor situates Buber's legacy at the crossroads between the intellectual and cultural life of German Jewry and European life in the first half of the twentieth century. This is the first full biography of the groundbreaking modern Jewish philosopher. The book is organized around several key events in his life, such as his mother suddenly abandoning him when he was three years old—a formative trauma that left Buber with a lasting sense of sensitivity to the fragility of human relationships and the need to nurture them with what he would later call "dialogical attention."