Nathan Rotenstreich wrote that understanding the world is a precondition for changing it. Since his years in the youth movement "Gordonia", he was loyal to bringing together thoughts and ideas with the twisted road to their realization. His writings influenced and inspired, and still do so, the existential struggles of the Jewish world and of Israel in the turmoil of times. The present collection of papers aims to be a link to the interaction between thoughts and deeds, and between intellectual heritage and what he called: "The tempo of action and events" . Many of his writings bear very clear interpretations, so much so that it seems they were written in the present. These papers are hidden in periodicals, protocols of conventions and newspapers. Therefore it is appropriate they should be partly exposed in the new volume so that they are available and challenging for future generations. Moreover, his special contributions will illuminate aspects of the renewable sides of his work. The collection marks Nathan Rotenstreich 100 birthday and 20 years since he passed away.

This book describes the urban, academic, and political causes that led to the establishment of Tel Aviv University and to its consolidation as a research university before the independence of the state of Israel and during the first two decades after its independence. The attempts to establish a stable academic framework to the residents of Tel Aviv and its surroundings took shape when Chaim Levanon, the Mayor of Tel Aviv, announced the establishment of Tel Aviv University on 1 June 1956. This included the merger of three academic institutions that acted in the city: the University Institute for Natural Sciences, which replaced the Biological-Pedagogical Institute under the management of Dr. Heinrich Mendelssohn and Dr. Yaacov Galil, the Institute for the Israeli Culture under the management of Professor Israel Efrat who was appointed Rector of the University, and The School for Law and Economics of Tel Aviv which was managed by Dr. Augusto Levi and Judge Ze’ev Zeltner. In time there would be a discussion whether to determine the day of the establishment of the University as the date when the Urban University was formed or when it became an independent institute with the appointment of George Wize as President of the University in 1963. An expression for that could be found in the words of Professor Shlomo Simonsohn, the Rector of the University between 1971 and 1977: “It is inconceivable [to understand] the development of the university in its second decade without the infrastructure of the first decade and even of the period beforehand. The academic and public breakthrough which was achieved then entailed much work by the founders of the university. Despite this, there is no doubt that in the second decade the pace of development of the university was accelerated compared to the first decade.” Tel Aviv University was constructed as a ‘bottoms-up university’ – a local university that grew out of urban entrepreneurship with civil characteristics, which had to conduct a long struggle in order to achieve academic and state-wide legitimacy. This struggle led the academic personnel, including academics that were still in their early stages of their academic career, to become more involved in the management of the institute, involvement which led to dramatic decisions and moves, including the removal of the first Rector, Professor Israel Efrat. The leading academic personnel included Ben-Zion Katz, Zvi Yavetz, Shlomo Simonsohn, Meshulam Grol, Andre De Vries, Chaim Sheba, Heinrich Mendelssohn, Yaacov Galil, Alfred Klopstock, Joshua Jortner, and Yuval Ne’eman. These intellectuals were the creators, distributors and those that implemented the academic culture that developed in the new institute, as well as those who struggled for legitimacy from the Israeli political establishment.

The historian Willy Cohn kept a diary from his youth till his death in 1941. The book contains the entries written from 1933 till 1941, which had been hidden in Berlin by family members. This is a comprehensive document containing deep, serious descriptions. The diary was written from a subjective point of view, but also from the point of view of a professional historian. Cohn described the initial shock felt when the Nazis came into power, and the deep disappointment with the disappearance of the humanistic and democratic values he believed in which collapsed right in front of his eyes, as well as the move of many acquaintances to ‘the other side’. This reality created an ongoing conflict with the German patriotism which was part of his personality and became empowered even more during his military service in World War I . The diary includes much documentation of the Jewish community’s life: the efforts made and actions taken in dealing with the economic collapse which resulted from Nazi policy; the serious debate between the Orthodox and the Liberals, between Zionists and non-Zionists, regarding the objectives of the community youth's education; the cultural renaissance which took place within German-Jewish society in the first years of the Nazi regime, which Cohn was a part of by lecturing in his town and in many other communities on topics of Jewish history and Zionism. The stronghold which tightened around the Jewish community after the November 1938 pogrom (Kristallnacht), the isolation which was even more hurtful than the life-threatening economic hardship, the relationships between Jews and non-Jews during these times of crisis, the hope that the German people still has positive forces which will overcome evil, and the desperate efforts to leave Germany and immigrate to Israel – all these are expressed in a unique manner in the diary .

The Land of the Bible, cradle of Judaism and Christianity, is a world of wonders. Here Abraham was asked by God to sacrifice his first born son Isaac, returning from decades of exile in Egypt the Israelites established a nation, and Jesus with the Twelve Apostles founded what would be known as Christianity. Due to its strategic position and spiritual significance, this small piece of land attracted kings, emperors, and sultans who throughout thousands of years claimed it in their quest to dominate the world. It is also a land of unique topographical phenomena: most notably the world's lowest spot, the Dead Sea, the largest Makhtesh, the Great Rift Valley, the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. Michael Medina’s three dimensional photos accompanied by Professor James H. Charlesworth’s descriptions walk you in Jesus’ footsteps as well as through some of the Holy Land’s most significant and spectacular historical, archeological, and topographical wonders.

Nuclear Weapons in the Middle East 1948-2013 is an in depth description and analysis of the nuclear dimension of Israel's wars and politics since its birth until mid 2013. Born as the main lesson of the Holocaust and of the extremely high casualties of its War of Independence, the search for nuclear equalizer to the immense Arab conventional superiority in the longer run is a key to Israel's unofficial alliance with France during and after the Suez-Sinai War of 1956. Arab reactions and superpower intervention on the way to completion of the nuclear option, missiles included, explain the road to the Six Day War of 1967. Domestic politics and controversies regarding the viability of Israeli nuclear deterrence, American and Soviet inputs were studied along the adoption by Israel of a unique, undeclared status of a fully fledged nuclear power. Further developments of Israel's nuclear behavior, including the bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor Osiraq in 1981 are discussed until Israel's current campaign against Iran's nuclear program. Finally, the role of the Israeli nuclear option, undeclared as it was and remained, is discussed in terms of limiting the Arab war aims of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and leading, in due course, to the Israeli-Egyptian (and Jordanian later on) peace treaty of 1979, tested now since the ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood and the takeover by Egyptian Army .

This book deals with the social history of workers in Ofakim, since the time of its founding (1955) and up to the partial closing of its biggest factory in 1981. The book traces the development of a new town in the middle of the desert, from the decision to establish and populate the town, to the harsh social and economic vacuum faced by the new inhabitants, and on to the shaping of the local labor market. With industrialization, Ofakim became permanently characterized as a place where labor was a matter of national priority, often lacking a solid economic rationale. The state 'guaranteed' the residents full employment, and therefore came to be perceived as responsible for their social and economic degradation. The book describes the dynamics of the relationships of the town's residents with each other and with the outside: encounters with bureaucrats, capitalists and factory managers; the relationship between local workers and workers from the Gaza strip; and the relationship between groups within the town, such as men and women. Through their emergence and reshaping, these relationships gave rise to social boundaries that influenced the status of workers in the labor market and beyond. The book also sets forth a collective biography of residents and local leadership coming together to create a community for themselves. This project was at times limited and shaped by decisions and actions of national leaders and external institutions, but ultimately this local community came to provide the people of Ofakim with a sense of pride and belonging. This discussion highlights the tight interrelationships between community, labor and the economy. The last part of the book tells the story of labor struggles waged by local workers against the closing of factories, which may be termed 'closure strikes'. It describes the unfolding of a closure strike, and the factors that influence it by way of a comparative analysis. This form of workers' protest illustrates the power of communities, with their internal coherence, to provide solidarity for the workers. This leads to a discussion of economically-motivated popular protests and the struggle of Israeli citizens against economic liberalization.

Mount Carmel of Graf von Mülinen is a translated, edited and annotated edition of the monumental Beiträge zur Kenntnis des Karmels , written by Graf Eberhardt von Műinen, a well-known Swiss researcher and diplomat. His book was first published in Leipzig by Baedeker Publishing in 1908 . The work constitutes a meticulous and professional exploration of Mount Carmel in the beginning of the twentieth-century, and an important stepping stone in the chronology of the field. This Interdisciplinary study of the mountain covers a range of fields such as Arabic dialectology, botany, zoology, general geography, geology, climate, anthropology, religion, archaeology and folklore . This book is dedicated to the 44 casualties of the devastating fire on Mount Carmel in December 2010 .

A 100 years after the Zionist congress decided to establish the university in Jerusalem (Vienna, 1913), this volume, the 4th in the series, is being published. The first three volumes were dedicated to the roots of the idea to establish a cultural and spiritual infrastructure of a national entity in the state of Israel and the founding of the university and it's progress during the steps towards an Israeli state. The first chapter in the history of this establishment ended when it was brought down from Mt. Scopus in 1948. The first volume of this series revealed to the reader the complexity of establishing this university through detailed and in-depth studies that dealt with the scientific, organizational and political aspects of the process. Only a small part of these studies were dedicated to the people behind the process. This volume lays before us the biographies of the first founders and professors of this university to make their mark on the establishment and development of the university during the mandate years. There are three parts to the book. The first part tells about the founders and designers of this institution and includes the people of action who accompanied it's setting up and enabled it's functioning. The second part is dedicated to the theoretical sciences: Humanities, Jewish Studies and the first researchers in the law and society fields. The third part brings us the biographies of the teachers and researches in the Mathematics and Experimental sciences fields. This book is dedicated to the people who arrived in Jerusalem under different circumstances from around the world. Thanks to their cooperation on Mt. Scopus, they enabled the fulfillment of an idea, first conceived in the second half of the 19th century, and turned into a successful reality during the settlement period.

FORMTEXT This study examines the Pentateuchal account of Israel’s preparations for entering Canaan, appearing within the concluding section of the Book of Numbers. Literary-critical analysis reveals that each of the passages that comprise this account is the product of several stages of composition, with each literary stratum reflecting the ideological tendencies of the authors responsible for its creation. It emerges that ideological disputes that raged in Judea of the Persian period, when these texts were composed, manifested themselves in historiographical accounts describing a much earlier time – that just prior to the entry into Canaan. The wilderness period, seen as decisive for Israel’s past, and the notion of the Mosaic Torah believed to have been given during this formative era, along with the obvious parallel to these Judean authors’ own days, those of the return from exile, led them to depict the events at the end of Moses’ time in ways that addressed the burning questions of Yehud of the Persian period. The textual and historical analysis reveals that a previously unrecognized substratum, running throughout the account, has been augmented by several editorial additions. This recognition in turn sheds new light on the Pentateuch’s formation and on the historical circumstances reflected in its composition . FFFFFFFF000100000000060054006500780074003200300000000000000000000000000000004E00D605D4052000D405D805DB05E105D8052000E905D905D505E405D905E2052000D105EA05D905D005D505E8052000D405E105E405E8052000D105D005EA05E8052000D405D005D905E005D805E805E005D8052E002000D105E805D905E805EA052000D405DE05D705D305DC052000D405D905D0052000D405DB05D905EA05D505D1052000E205DC052000D205D1052000D405E205D805D905E405D40500000000000000000000

The kibbutz and the moshav are two collective democratic forms of settlement inspired by the socialist ideology prevalent within the Jewish national movement in Palestine at the end of the 19th beginning of the 20th century. As was the case in a number of other voluntary forms of association such as communes, social movements, political parties and some trades union which, from the beginning of the modern age, were influenced by the socialist utopia, the promise of gender equality in the kibbutz and the moshav became one of the fundamental principles of these communities. This promise was part of an attempt to establish a new egalitarian society, in which inequality in the distribution of rights and obligations between men and women will be abolished through transforming the boundaries between the private and the public spheres. As this division forms a central institutional mechanism which, for centuries, has produced and re-produced an unequal gender order, it was by attacking this mechanism that equality was meant to be achieved. This book presents the historical development of gender boundaries in the kibbutz and the moshav. It underscores their dynamic nature and sheds light on the changing private and public spheres that evolved during decades. This is accomplished through giving space to the multi-faceted and multi-cultural voices of the women members of the kibbutz and the moshav, secular and religious women, old-timers and new comers, situated at the center or at the periphery of their communities. It brings into sharper focus many issues related to gender boundaries and to the private and public spheres that have rarely or even never been raised. By doing so, this book contributes to our understanding of the social mechanisms that (re)produce gender inequality in modernity, be it in its socialist, capitalist or post-industrial version. It also provides additional evidence to the limits of any attempt to achieve gender equality by focusing only on the transformation of women without challenging hegemonic masculinities.