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.

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.

Replacing Myself with Myself is the fifth selection of Michael Handelzalts's weekly columns, written and published in the Haaretz newspaper between June 2005 and November 2008. Anchoring his amused musings in the headlines, he ponders, among other things, on the kind of fruit with which the Snake and Eve had tempted Adam in the Garden of Eden, on the virtues of good spirit, and on other matters, most of them highly immaterial. A selection of his columns, Histoires d’en lire, was published in French in 2001 by Gallimard.

There over 1,300 species of bats in the world, which constitute one-third of the total sum of mammals in Israel. Most people are not aware of them and their fantastic ways of living, because contrary to other mammals, bats do not walk or swim (although they are capable of doing both), but rather fly actively. They are also nocturnal, and unlike most mammals and birds their main sense is not sight but hearing. In order to find their way around, bats omit calls and listen to the echoes they produce in order to navigate. This is also how they find their prey, which is comprised of a variety of animals such as insects, scorpions, fish, frogs, and toads, as well as nectar and fruit. Each species of bats has a special diet and unique behavioural , anatomical and physiological adaptations for this purpose. Bats are beneficial to people by pollinating flowers of many plants, consuming enormous quantities of insects that spread malaria and damage agricultural crops and producing valuable fertilizer-guano. In spite of these benefits, people around the world have created many superstitious beliefs and legends about bats and their behavior. This book describes the biology of bats and their complex relationships with humanity.

Music, which speaks in the language of tones, tends to elude attempts at a description in words. Precisely for this reason, perhaps, it has always posed a great challenge to authors, who have been writing musical works and performances throughout the generations. Contrary to what might be expected, literature is far from unanimous in praising music. Frequently, it assigns it dark powers and presents it as dangerous. This two-volume study is the most massive attempt yet to survey the moment musicaux (musical moments) of world literature. Volume I contains a thematic mapping of some 250 literary representations of music; volume II offers an in-depth analysis of 30 of them .

This collection, already translated to many languages around the world, now appears in Hebrew for the first time. The Art and Science of Dance/Movement Therapy has proven to be a useful collection that explains the basic concepts of dance/movement therapy, written by practicing clinicians from several countries and perspectives. It develops these concepts into an understanding of practices, which are illustrated through case studies. The topics cover a range of human needs including children and oncology, problems such as eating disorders, brain trauma, psychiatric problems, dementia and more. Integral to the practice are systems of observation, understanding of cultural differences and research, which are also discussed. The breadth and depth will be of interest to those already practicing as well as to those new to the field or in related disciplines including education.

The Stage as a Temporary Home : On Dzigan and Shumacher's Theater (1927-1980) has been designated as the winner of the prestigious Shapiro Award for 2019 for the best book in Israel Studies The Stage as a Temporary Home takes us through the fascinating stages in the life and career of the duo Shimen Dzigan and Isroel Shumacher , over the course of half a century - from the beginning of their work at the Ararat avant-garde Yiddish theater in Łodz, Poland, and to their Warsaw theater, where they produced bold, groundbreaking political satire. The book further discusses their wanderings through the Soviet Union during the Second World War and their attempt to revive Jewish culture in Poland after the Holocaust, and finally describes their arrival in Israel, first as guest performers and later as permanent residents. Despite the restrictions on Yiddish actors in Israel, the duo insisted on performing in their own language and succeeded in translating the new Israeli reality into unique and timely satire. In the 1950s, they voiced a political and cultural critique of a kind that was not heard on any of the Hebrew stages. After they parted ways, and following the death of Shumacher in 1961, Dzigan continued to perform on his own and with other Israeli artists until his death in 1980 . The book is based on rare recordings, transcriptions, programs, personal diaries, letters, photographs, oral testimonies, and critical articles, all of which come together to create the first critical portrait of this extraordinary duo. The book also examines their art, the connection between theater and politics, and the complex relationship between majority culture and minority language . The study includes several valuable indexes: of titles of programs and plays, of the artists who participated in them, of writers and the drafts they wrote, of actors and the programs in which they participated, and a general name index. The book also includes a facsimile of the manuscript Der Nayer Dybbuk [The New Dybbuk]. Click here for the English edition, published by De Gruyter in collaboration with Magnes Press

The essay Lettre à d'Alembert sur les spectacles , first published in 1758, was written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau as a response to the essay Geneva by Jean d'Alembert which appeared in the Encyclopédie. d'Alembert proposed to establish a theatre in Geneva. Rousseau opposed the idea, arguing that the move would harm the city’s delicate social fabric.

The Carved Wooden Torah Arks found in eastern Europe from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries were magnificent structures, unparalleled in their beauty and mystical significance. The work of Jewish artisans, they dominated the synagogues of numerous towns both large and small throughout the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, inspiring worshipers with their monumental scale and intricate motifs. Virtually none of these superb pieces survived the devastation of the two world wars. Bracha Yaniv’s pioneering work therefore breathes new life into a lost genre, making it accessible to scholars and students of Jewish art, Jewish heritage, and religious art more generally. Making use of hundreds of pre-war photographs housed in local archives, she develops a vivid portrait of the history and artistic development of these arks, the scope and depth of her meticulous research successfully compensating for the absence of physical remains. In this way she has succeeded in producing a richly illustrated and comprehensive overview of a classic Jewish religious art form. Professor Yaniv’s analysis of the historical context in which these arks emerged includes a broad survey of the traditions that characterized the local workshops of Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. She also provides a detailed analysis of the motifs carved into the Torah arks and explains their mystical significance, among them representations of Temple imagery and messianic themes—and even daring visual metaphors for God. Fourteen arks are discussed in particular detail, with full supporting documentation; appendices relating to the inscriptions on the arks and to the artisans’ names will further facilitate future research. This seminal work throws new light on long-forgotten traditions of Jewish craftsmanship and religious understanding.

The heroes of this book are the rabbis of small and medium-sized communities in Eastern Europe. Who were these rabbis? What were their training processes? Did they get their job because of their scholastic or rhetorical skills, because of their family ties, or because they had the capital to buy this position? Did they win "permanence" or was the threat of dismissal constantly hovering over their heads? How were their terms of employment and wages determined, and what was their economic situation? Were they perceived as spiritual leaders? What was their relationship with the community's power centers? How did they navigate between their duties as halakhic authorities and their desire to engage in learning and teaching? The book attempts to answer these questions based on an examination of the world of over a thousand rabbis. Click here for the English edition, published by De Gruyter in collaboration with Magnes Press