The Jewish Haskalah movement heralded a profound, unprecedented cultural-spiritual revolution in the Jewish world. Beginning in the German lands in the second half of the eighteenth century and subsequently spreading to central Europe, it called for reconstituting traditional Jewish society in line with maskilic values. This volume spotlights the early-nineteenth-century Galician Haskalah. Although a backwater annexed to the Austrian Empire from Poland but two generations earlier, Galicia’s impressive gallery of outstanding individuals and literary activity has granted the Galician Haskalah its place as one of the most productive, influential centers of the Haskalah movement. This collection of articles is based on lectures delivered at the "Revealers of Secrets—200 Years of Galician Haskalah" Conference. Held in Jerusalem in 2013, this fifth annual conference for the study of the Haskalah movement aimed to submit the Galician Haskalah to renewed scholarly examination. Organized in five sections, the volume’s twenty-three essays by outstanding scholars portray the variegated aspects of this movement, which ranged from attempts to preserve Jewish identity by nurturing modern Jewish culture in Hebrew to radical attempts to reform traditional Jewish society.

This study focuses on one medieval manuscript of the Palestinian Talmud, that served as a printer's copy for the first edition of the composition, printed in Venice (1523). A detailed philological examination of the preparation of the text for print, drives a comprehensive description of transition of Talmudic literature from manuscript culture to print culture.

In the current book two of the most prolific authors in the area of Medieval Judeo-Arabic and poetic Hebrew Medieval texts go back to its basic theses on the relations between Hebrew literature and its parallel Arabic and Judeo-Arabic texts. By re-establishing an up-to-date picture they are attacking the field of encounters from new and different angles.

Jacques Lacan’s teaching lasted about three decades. Like Freud before him, Lacan was profoundly interested in the arts, particularly in painting. Lacan not only turned to specific artworks to clarify psychoanalytic concepts but also addressed theoretical aspects of painting. Like scholars from other fields, such as philosophy or cultural studies, who have turned to Lacan’s thinking throughout his career, art scholars often make use of Lacan’s teaching while analyzing various notions in art. These arguments deal mostly with Lacan’s early teaching or his seminars from the sixties. Yet, his late teaching and its relation to the visual arts remains relatively unknown, even though Lacan’s most radical views are presented for the first time during his late teaching of the seventies, and these conceptualizations carry immense value for theoretical discourse on contemporary art. Lacan’s late teaching and its relation to art fashions the cornerstone of this book, it is the wrap thread that runs through it. The other thread, the woof, which this book weaves into the psychoanalytic discourse, is of a different kind and nature: the discourse of art which analyzes specific instances of the works of art of contemporary Israeli artists: Michal Na’aman, David Ginton, Joshua Borkovsky and Shahar Yahalom.

The starting point for any study of the Bible is the text of the Masora, as designed by the Masoretes. The ancient manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible contain thousands of Masora comments of two types: Masora Magna and Masora Prava. This book presents the way in which the Masoretic comments preserve the Masoretic Text of the Bible throughout generations and all over the world, providing comprehensive information in a short and efficient manner. The book describes the important manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, and the methods of the Masora in determining the biblical spelling and designing the forms of the parshiot and the biblical Songs. The effectiveness of Masoretic mechanisms and their degree of success in preserving the text is examined. A special explanation is offered for the phenomenon of qere and ketiv. The book discusses the place of the Masoretic text in the history of the Bible, the differences between the Babylonian Masora and that of Tiberias, the special status of the Aleppo Codex and the mystery surrounding it. Special attention is given to the comparison between the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex (B 19a). In addition, the book discusses the relationship between the Masora and other tangential domains: the grammar of the Hebrew language, the interpretation of the Bible, and the Halakha. The appendix to the book contains a description of books and computer software that are tools for researching the Masora. The book is based on the author's research and the research of the great scholars of the Masora in recent generations. It is a necessary tool for anyone interested in the text of the Bible and its crystallization.

Le 17 juin 1940, l’écrivain français Jean Guéhenno prit une double résolution après avoir entendu la déclaration radiophonique du maréchal Pétain annonçant aux Français la fin des combats et la demande d’armistice: tenir un journal, mais ne rien publier tant que durerait l’occupation allemande. Le récit de cette période trouble parut en 1947 sous le titre éloquent de Journal des années noires. Si le livre a été quelque peu oublié, la formule, par contre, est passée à la postérité. Dans l’esprit de Guéhenno, elle signifiait que ces années-là furent un tunnel, sinon un cauchemar: noires pour les victimes civiles et militaires disparues; noires pour les errements et les égarements des élites gouvernant la France; noires encore et surtout pour le déshonneur infligé à la conscience historique d’une grande nation; l’envers des Lumières, lesquelles se confondaient pour lui avec l’idée qu’il se faisait de la France.

Hasidism is one of the most important-influential movements in Judaism during the modern era. This book shows that the scholarly style of hasidim abided by the rhetoric that was common within Jewish culture in Eastern Europe in the generations prior to hasidism and in the generation of hasidism itself among non-hasidic leaders.

The Shaolin Monastery charts, for the first time in any language, the history of the Shaolin Temple and the evolution of its world-renowned martial arts. In this meticulously researched and eminently readable study, Meir Shahar considers the economic, political, and religious factors that led Shaolin monks to disregard the Buddhist prohibition against violence and instead create fighting techniques that by the twenty-first century have spread throughout the world. He examines the monks’ relations with successive Chinese regimes, beginning with the assistance they lent to the seventh-century Emperor Li Shimin and culminating more than a millennium later with their complex relations with Qing rulers, who suspected them of rebellion. He reveals the intimate connection between monastic violence and the veneration of the violent divinities of Buddhism and analyzes the Shaolin association of martial discipline and the search for spiritual enlightenment.

This book collects rewritten articles and essays by the author related first and foremost, but not exclusively, to the catastrophe of the Holocaust as an epistemic crisis – qualified as a “rupture in civilization”, i.e. the destruction of concepts deeply rooted in a common anthropology of humankind, while focusing on methodological as well as conceptual questions. The composition of the volume runs roughly chronologically along several layers of interpretation – embracing questions of German constitutional law, the formation of Continental expansionist geopolitical thinking, the epistemology of the Holocaust, the assertion and transformation of paradigms of historical interpretation in the second half of the 20th century, especially the turn from social history to memory studies, as well as the turn from a Western- and Eurocentric approaches into the direction of colonial and global history.

This collection of articles deals with the connection between the concept of death and the philosophy of the Halakha. Many would argue that recoil from death and flight from it underlie every culture, including the Halakha: To understand a culture one must examine its attitude toward death. The articles in this volume and its special symposium on the denial of death follow this assumption by studying what the Halakha has to say on this subject. Three themes that link death and Halakha lie at the heart of the book: the issue of fear of death and the tools for coping with it; the connection between human experience and Halakhic conceptualizations and tools pertaining to the issue of death; and the influence of meta-Halakhic views on Halakhic rulings and thought on the issue of death. This diverse collection presents the voices of the leading scholars and intellectuals in the field; it touches on existential issues whose sources lie in deep Halakhic and philosophic study, from the Sages and Maimonides to the Holocaust and the technological age. The book, whose foundation is the philosophical discourse of the Halakha, constitutes a cornerstone for broad study that encourages additional scholarship. It presents the Halakhic world’s deep insights on the end of life, coping with these moments, and the Halakhic implications of the concept of death, including all its derivatives in the Halakha and the Aggada.

The book examines the ideological motivations behind the selection of representations for Israeli banknotes and coins. The research is based on the proceedings and correspondence of the Bank of Israel Banknotes and Coinage Planning Committee from its inception in 1955 to 2012. The study reveals the mechanisms in which the legal tender is exploited as an expression of banal nationalism, implementing national emblems in an unnoticed manner. Banal nationalism is one of three theoretical frameworks we adopted. The other two are the long history of the Jewish people in the territory which today is the State of Israel; and selective tradition as a means for designing a nation. The book comprises eight chapters: theoretical overview; analytical portrayal of the working methods of the Bank of Israel Banknotes and Coinage Planning Committee; a study of the first designed “Allegoric Figures Series” (1959); analysis of the selection of human figures; the construction of the state borders through an array of landscape images; the reflection of the shifting boundaries in the changing representations Jerusalem; the selection of archaeological emblems as a proof for national continuity; and the symbolic role of flora as identification with the land.

Bilha Shilo unfolds the complex plot of the extraordinary success of the restitution of the collections of YIVO (Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut) – the prestigious research institution of the Yiddish language and culture. A Drama in Acts traces the fragments of post Second World War YIVO, which meanwhile moved from Vilna to New York - in restituting its cultural property in the West, in the American occupied zone, and documents its bitter failure in the Soviet occupied territory in the East. The book explores, through the question of cultural property ownership, a range of historical issues: the development of modern Jewish culture in Eastern Europe, the advance of Yiddish as a modern literary language, the history of Jewish culture under communist regime, and its extermination under Nazi rule. Other issues addressed are the demise of Jewish culture in Eastern Europe following the division of Europe and the Cold War, and lastly - the conflict between Israel and the Diaspora over the inheritance of Jewish European culture. The book is published in the series "Hefez", which presents the latest research on Jewish cultural property and its demise, in German by the Dubnow Institute, Leipzig, and in Hebrew - in collaboration with The Hebrew University Magnes Press, Jerusalem.

Nietzsche is not ordinarily considered a philosopher of law, and despite the voluminous literature on almost every other aspect of his thought, little has been written about his reflections on the role of law in the social, intellectual, and personal spheres. Yet careful reading of his works reveals a significant body of critical reflection on socio-jurisprudential questions regarding the nature of law, obedience to the law, the criminal mindset, punishment, and more. The book presents for the first time, a comprehensive collection of aphorisms gathered from the entire Nietzschean corpus that explicitly or implicitly addresses the subject of law, arranged thematically, along with contextualization, annotation, and commentary. The book contains six chapters - The self in the presence of law, The criminal: a profile, Causation, action, free will, Punishment, Rights and obligations, Religion and state. It thus provides a panoramic view of Nietzsche’s critical discourse on law and legal culture.

The World of Machiavelli explores his teaching by placing it squarely in its political and intellectual context. Based on a wide range of personal letters, diplomatic dispatches and administrative memoranda as well as on his treatises, plays and poems, it traces the development of his skills, mental habits and unique views from his youth, through his turbulent public career, to his last days. Alongside the formative historical and personal circumstances, the book explores the universal dimensions of Machiavelli’s thought, which forms an integral part of an ongoing conversation about our ability to organize our shared lives and shape our destiny. Thus, The World of Machiavelli differs from most biographies and studies of his thought: focusing on a cluster of themes that are central both in his works and in our modern public life, the book invites the readers to reflect on major issues of our time by engaging with Machiavelli.

The Intention of the Torah and the Intention of Its Readers surveys how traditional Jewish exegesis throughout the ages has coped with the literary and topical difficulties found in the Torah, in the context of the belief in the Torah’s divine source and sanctity. “All problems stem from expectations.” Readers and exegetes of the Torah throughout the ages supposed, and many continue to suppose, that the Torah is perfect and flawless. They expect the Torah to reflect superior and timeless standards of morality, as well as precise and eternal theological principles. They believe that everything written in the Torah is true, essential, and well thought out. The history of Torah scholarship from the end of the Second Temple period until our day can be conceived of as an uninterrupted continuum of challenges which this unique and, frankly, impossible level of expectations has imposed upon its readers and exegetes. These are glorious attempts to bring the Torah nearer the time and place of its devotees and to adapt its meaning to theirs. This book is the first attempt of its kind to examine the history of the enterprise of Torah exegesis from a distance. It contains an examination of dozens of key texts from the end of the Second Temple period, from Talmudic and Midrashic sources, dicta of medieval Sages, and the reflections and research penned by scholars of the Enlightenment (Haskalah) and the modern era. A bird’s eye view blurs the details which differentiate between these texts, enabling us to more easily focus upon the similarities; this point of view also allows us to note the central crossroads of change and development which characterize each period. This is an indispensable book for anyone interested in the changing nature of biblical exegesis over the generations.

Philo was the first Jewish philosopher who left behind one of the richest bodies of work from antiquity, yet his personality and intellectual development have remained a riddle. Maren Niehoff presents the first biography of Philo, arguing that his trip to Rome in 38 CE was a turning point in his life. He was exposed then not only to new political circumstances but also to a new cultural and philosophical environment. The Intellectual Biography traces Philo's trajectory from his early days as a Bible interpreter in the Jewish community of Alexandria to his diplomatic and intellectual activity in Rome, when he engaged Roman philosophy. Anticipating Sa'ada Gaon and Maimonides by almost thousand years, Philo creatively presents Jewish philosophy in the context of contemporary culture and thought.

Charles Perrault’s “Puss in Boots” was published in Paris at the end of the seventeenth century in his collection Stories or Tales from Times Past or, Tales of Mother Goose . Yigal Schwartz reveals how Perrault dresses the story in a new and colorful literary garment woven from the fairy tale and the contemporary story of the court of Louis XIV. Perrault’s story and the fairy tale both conceal and reveal things about each other and cruelly illuminate the nature of crowds and the royal court. Among the folds of this literary garment, a social, cultural, and political crossroads can be found. And what do the cat’s boots conceal? This question has excited Yigal Schwartz since childhood and is what sent him on a unique, sometimes perplexing, and multifaceted quest for “Puss in Boots.” In this in-depth literary study, Schwartz analyzes the well-known tale and determinedly examines each of its details, comparing style and content. Why does the cat wear boots? Why a miller’s son? Why the Marquis of de Carabas? And why the ogre’s castle? Schwartz draws his answers from a wide range of perspectives—those of psychoanalysis, phenomenology, sociology, and literary studies—all of which meet at the roots of the anxiety he identifies at the foundation of the tale: the anxiety involved in concealment, which is at the same time anxiety about the mask but also about what may not be concealed behind it at all.

Pesikta de-Rav Kahana (below: Pesikta ) is arguably the most structurally complex midrashic composition in the landscape of the classic midrashim . The Pesikta was probably composed in fifth century Palestine and consists of sermons on special Sabbath and festival Torah and Haftarah readings. The work was designed to influence the atmosphere of the synagogue during events of calendrical significance and is therefore of great importance for reconstructing the spiritual and cultural encounter that took place between the sages and their synagogue audience. The Pesikta , whose very discovery and reconstruction were beset by multiple obstacles, remains in some ways an unsolved mystery and many questions concerning the context in which it was created continue to occupy scholars to this day. Up until now, the scholarly world has produced only partial and incomplete studies of the Pesikta and its formation. This book, “My Children, Read this Passage Every Year”: Composition and Meaning in Pesikta De-Rav Kahana , is a comprehensive attempt to fill this gap and afford a glimpse into the workshop of the Pesikta's editor.

The book offers a fresh view on the life of Jews under National Socialism. Focusing on the spatial and temporal aspects of the changes brought about by the new regime, it highlights the “tactics” utilized by German Jews to cope with the new reality, make sense of it, and rethink their position vis-à-vis German nationality. Based on a rich theoretical framework from various fields in social and cultural studies (human geography, environmental psychology, sociology of time and so on) the book examines German Jews’ reflections on their new experiences through the paradigms of "lived space" and "lived time." In discussing two main types of sources—private (diaries, correspondences and memoirs) and public (Jewish press)—the book sheds new light on the topics of maintaining Jewish agency under Nazism; the possibility and forms of Jewish defiance; and scope (and limits) of Jewish awareness of the processes that reshaped Germany’s approach to its Jewish population. The book’s analysis of Jews’ reflections on the spatial and temporal aspects of life under Nazism portrays an intricate endeavor to understand the new reality, adjust to it, and answer its increasing challenges.

This book examines the nature, methods, and contribution of Jewish feminist art to the various spheres of art, society, and religion and proposes a theoretical framework for its understanding. The Jewish religious feminist art movement has developed since the late 1990s in the two major Jewish centers—the United States and Israel. This is the first book to treat this phenomenon in a broad and systematic manner and discuss its critique of Jewish tradition, Halakha (religious law), and Jewish religious institutions. The works are analyzed in light of Jewish feminist thought and in comparison with religious Jewish feminist activist practices. The main tool for examining the social effect of the art works is analysis of their reception and of the public discussion that followed. Devoted Resistance focuses on the works of a number of prominent women artists who critique the Jewish religious text, establishment, and rituals. The religious text is the subject of the work of Helène Aylon (US, b. 1931), who marked problematic biblical passages with a pink highlighter, and Nechama Golan (Israel, b. 1947), whose work is critical of the Talmudic debate over women as property in the contraction of marriage (kiddushin). Nurit Jacobs Yinon (Israel, b. 1972) and Hila Karabelnikov Paz (Israel, b. 1984) confront the religious establishment and in particular the exclusion of women from the religious court that oversees the ritual immersion of women converts. The work of Andi Arnovitz (born in the US, 1959, immigrated to Israel, 1999) points up the pornographic dimensions of the extreme modesty laws as interpreted by contemporary halakhic decisors. Hagit Molgan (Israel, b. 1972) demonstrates the male structuring of religious laws regarding menstruation, and Mierle Laderman Ukeles (US, b. 1939) breaches the religious taboo by presenting ritual immersion following menstruation as a dignified ritual to be embraced. The combined study of Jewish feminist art created in the United States and in Israel and the comparison of these artists with other feminist artists, both Jewish and non-Jewish, illuminates local contexts, similarities and differences in the development of Jewish feminist art in Israel and in the US, and the influences of globalization, diasporism, and immigration on the art.

How did a group of charismatic, apocalyptic Jewish missionaries, working to prepare their world for the impending realization of God’s promises to Israel, end up inaugurating a movement that would grow into the gentile church? Committed to Jesus’s prophecy—“The Kingdom of God is at hand!”—they were, in their own eyes, history’s last generation. But in history’s eyes, they became the first Christians. In this electrifying social and intellectual history, Paula Fredriksen answers this question by reconstructing the life of the earliest Jerusalem community. As her account arcs from this group’s hopeful celebration of Passover with Jesus, through their bitter controversies that fragmented the movement’s midcentury missions, to the city’s fiery end in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, she brings this vibrant apostolic community to life. Fredriksen offers a vivid portrait both of this temple-centered messianic movement and of the bedrock convictions that animated and sustained it.

Imagine 100 high school-aged teens – boys and girls, city and suburb dwellers, “heavy smartphone users” and regular users – disconnecting from their smartphones for one whole week. It may sound fictional, but this exactly is what occurred as part of a fascinating experiment that we recently conducted, which serves as the basis of this book. For a long and challenging week, these teenagers documented their experiences in personal diaries, and described them in personal and group interviews. They described their physical and psychological feelings about life without their devices, the effect that disconnecting from their devices had on their social life, their family life, and their management of time and routine tasks. The participants described how their lives looked without a smartphone in school and during their free time, how they missed their device and felt its absence upon waking in the morning and in the moments before falling asleep, and how they even felt it in their dreams, which were filled with longing for the digital friend that had been taken from them. This book provides deep insights into the role of the smartphone in the daily lives of teenagers, and the culture of “cellphones natives,” members of Gen Z. The book offers a new point of view on questions occupying researchers, parents, educators, and professionals: how and why did the smartphone become the dominant medium of communication in the lives and culture of teenagers? How does it shape and influence their daily lives? Can the relationship with the smartphone really be characterized as dependence and perhaps even as an addiction, as many claim, or is it relationship of a completely different nature? In a world full of technology, the aspiration to better understand teenagers and even ourselves requires acknowledging the ways in which these technologies are woven into every moment of our daily lives, for good and for bad.

This wide-ranging book shows how, since the first centuries of the Christian era, gentiles have associated Jews with noise. The study focuses on a “musical libel"—a variation on the Passion story that recurs in various forms and cultures in which an innocent Christian boy is killed by a Jew in order to silence his “harmonious musicality.” In paying close attention to how and where this libel surfaces, Ruth HaCohen covers a wide swath of Western cultural history. The author combines in her analysis the perspectives of musicology, literary criticism, philosophy, psychology, and anthropology, tracing the tensions between Jewish “noise" and idealized Christian “harmony” and their artistic manifestations from the high Middle Ages through Shakespeare, Bach, Wagner, George Eliot, Kafka, Schoenberg and others. She explores testimonies by outsider visitors of synagogues, operas, caricatures, and Nazi movies. Her analysis shows how entrenched aesthetic-theological assumptions have persistently defined European culture and its internal moral and political orientations.

The study of liturgy is intrinsically interdisciplinary and comprises elements of music, drama, theater and devotion that are of great consequence to believers and scholars far and wide. Liturgy is both history and theology, purporting to reflect and propagate values that inform individuals and communities alike, playing a vital role in the construction of sacred and lay memory and identity. As a multi-sensory experience, liturgy maintains a dynamic relationship with the surrounding space and its visual components, including art, artifacts and architecture. The essays in this book examine diverse aspects of liturgy and the arts, and were written by scholars working in the disciplines of musicology, social and cultural history, art history, material culture, and the history of the Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages and beyond. The articles engage in a comparative and interdisciplinary discourse, in order to contextualize the liturgical practices within the production of medieval cultural memory, and within the symbolic traditions expressed through liturgy and the arts. Primary sources include texts, rituals, music and visual media from Western Europe (Christian and Jewish) and the Latin Levant. The study of written, visual and musical constructs identifies the values and ideals conveyed and instilled through Jewish and Christian liturgical commemoration, and explores how these activated the faithful's idea of community and their place within it.

Korot is devoted to the study of the philosophical, sociological and ethical aspects of the history of medicine and Judaism. The topics covered by the Journal include: medicine in Jewish and Hebrew sources, the history of Jewish physicians, medicine in Palestine and Israel and medicine during the Nazi period. Each volume contains mostly English-language articles, together with some Hebrew contributions (abstracted in English). The "Historical Notes" and "Notes and Events" sections cover recent important developments and events in the above mentioned topics around the world. Each issue also includes several reviews of noteworthy books and contributions to the field. In this issue - Ethics and the Health Professions: Education of the Holocaust and Healthcare.

In the late fifteenth century, many of the Jews expelled from Spain made their way to Morocco and established a dynamic community in Fez. A number of Jewish families became prominent in commerce and public life there. Among the Jews of Fez of Hispanic origin was Samuel Pallache (circa 1550-1616), who served the Moroccan sultan as a commercial and diplomatic agent in Holland until Pallache's death in 1616. In Samuel Pallache , his world is viewed as a microcosm of early modern society, one far more interconnected, cosmopolitan, and fluid than is often portrayed. Pallache's missions and misadventures took him from Islamic Fez and Catholic Spain to Protestant England and Holland. Through these travels, the authors explore the workings of the Moroccan sultanate and the Spanish court, the Jewish communities of Fez and Amsterdam, and details of the Atlantic-Mediterranean trade. At once a sweeping view of two continents, three faiths, and five nation-states and an intimate story of one man's remarkable life, Samuel Pallache is history at its most compelling.

The book describes the Copernican Revolution, initiated by the publication of On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres by Copernicus until it was accepted by the Scientific Community. The book follows the dramatic turns of the plot of the struggle for scientific truth, along with the conflict between the church and Galileo. Finally, the book brings the modern proofs for the Copernican model, including the very recent discoveries of extra-solar planets.

The 33 essays in this book, most of which were published during 1965-1970 in La Stampa , are the diary Natalia Ginzburg never wrote. The essays depict everyday life, its randomness and chaos. Through them she discusses her own self, her literary passions, the thoughts she has while listening to music, watching an opera or a comedy, reading a book or newspaper, or while observing her children and grandchildren. She touches upon subjects like the loneliness of childhood, the dreariness of old age, the belief and disbelief in god. These essays portray an extraordinary portrait of the author as shy, quiet and fragile, but also as determined and aware of the significance of words. Mai devi domandarmi expresses the unique literary quality in Ginzburg's writing, which oscillates between autobiographical and testimonial.

By 1917 the European war seemed to be endless. Both sides in the fighting looked to new weapons, tactics and ideas to break a stalemate that was itself destroying Europe. In the German government a small group of men had a brilliant idea: why not sow further confusion in an increasingly chaotic Russia by arranging for Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the most notorious of revolutionary extremists, currently safely bottled up in neutral Switzerland, to go home? Catherine Merridale's Lenin on the Train recreates Lenin's extraordinary journey from harmless exile in Zürich, across a Germany falling to pieces from the war's deprivations, and northwards to the edge of Lapland to his eventual ecstatic reception by the revolutionary crowds at Petrograd's Finland Station. With great skill and insight Merridale weaves the story of the train and its uniquely strange group of passengers with a gripping account of the now half-forgotten liberal Russian revolution and shows how these events intersected. She brilliantly uses a huge range of contemporary eyewitnesses, observing Lenin as he travelled back to a country he had not seen for many years. Many thought he was a mere 'useful idiot', others thought he would rapidly be imprisoned or killed, others that Lenin had in practice few followers and even less influence. They would all prove to be quite wrong.

Elijah the Prophet is a remarkably impressive figure whose life is full of dramatic moments: the decree to stop the rain, the fierce tension with King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, the war on idolatry which had its climax on Mount Carmel with the killing of the prophets of Baal, God’s revelation at Horeb, the ascent to heaven in a chariot of fire, etc. These episodes sparked the imagination of readers and commentators, thinkers and artists, who continued to study the figure of Elijah throughout the generations. The book Until Elijah Comes: The Portrayal of Elijah the Prophet in Tannaitic Literature is an examination of Elijah’s multi-faceted character as reflected in Tannaitic sources, the earliest stratum of rabbinic literature. Adiel Kadari presents an in-depth analysis of the major issues related to Elijah the Prophet in the intellectual world of the sages, such as the principles and limits of halakhic discourse, messianism and eschatology, religious and political zealotry, the phenomenon of prophecy and the question of its persistence in the post-biblical era, and the relationship to history, religious piety and asceticism. The analysis of Elijah in this volume is rooted in philological studies concerning the origin and transmission of the text, and branches out to an examination of ideological aspects and worldviews. The synthesis of various approaches employed in the study of rabbinic literature yields a rich and variegated discourse. The book’s various chapters reveal the tremendous importance of Elijah in the eyes of the sages, as well as the exegetical and ideological struggles over the shaping of his image.

This book offers a cultural biography of Maimonides as a product of his multi-cultural and multi-religious background. It studies “the great eagle” in his multi-faceted historical and cultural context, and highlights the deep impact on him of Islamic culture as a whole: not only his philosophy, but also his legal and scientific writings as well as his correspondences. The aim of the book is twofold. On the one hand, it highlights universal patterns in Maimonides’ thought. On the other hand, it shows Maimonides’ relevance to the study of Medieval Islam. The presentation of Maimonides as a Mediterranean thinker elucidates his consistent interpretation of his own Jewish tradition in contemporary terms, as they were shaped by his Mediterranean legacy.

The book Shamanism and Literary Criticism deals with the unique attention that scholars of art and literature pay to the object of their study. This specific attention is based on a communitarian approach, a special type of research empathy, and a contemplation radically focused on literature, art, and the community of its readers. What do scholars of literature do in a community where literature is created, read, and interpreted by them? What is the attitude of these scholars to literature and its readers? What is the role entrusted to them by their community? This book offers a new theory about the attitude of the study of literature toward literature, art, and communality. It illustrates the theory and its features as a method of research and interpretation in the works of Uri Nissan Gnessin, Micha Yosef Berdyczewski, Shimon Halkin, A. B. Yehoshua, Aharon Appelfeld, Dahlia Ravikovitch, Ronit Matalon, Orly Castel-Bloom, and Anna Hermann.

Life crises present before the person experiencing them an opportunity to embark on a philosophical journey that is not detached from everyday life. This book provides philosophical guidance which could help a person define their own basic questions, as well as support in the process of creative, autonomous, critical and authentic development of a newly generated world view. It aims to enable a person to realize ideas from the history of human thought and to make their life more meaningful.

The book examines the relations between Oriental, local Jews and Palestinian Arabs in Mandatory Palestine. It focuses on the role of Oriental Jews as possible mediators from a cultural, political and social perspective, as those who sought to bridge Jewish-Arab culture, Jewish-Arab nationalism, and Jewish-Arab identity. Examining these relations from the perspective of Oriental and local Jews sheds new light on the history and historiography of Zionism, the Yishuv, and the Jewish-Arab conflict.

This book surveys the development of Jewish religious law and practice in relation to healthcare, with an emphasis on their influence on Israeli medical law. It contains discussions on the nature of Jewish law and and ethics, especially in comparison to Catholic moral theology and the Western political traditions . The book is divided into key themes: approaches to health, illness and the body; medical nursing and social services; doctor-patient relationships; the uses of the dead and living body; fertility, genomics and infertility; Jewish sexual ethics and the medicalization of religion; abortion; care for neonates; the timing of death and organ transplantation from the brain-dead, and end-of-life care . The book should be of interest to students and scholars of bioethics, Jewish religious law, history of Israeli law, and the interactions between social history of medicine and biomedical law . This is a much expanded and revised Hebrew version of the 2014 book Jewish Medical Ethics published by Cambridge University Press.

This is the first comprehensive introduction to India’s history and civilization in Hebrew. It reflects decades of teaching by both authors, often together, at the Hebrew University, as well as long periods of residence in India. The book is structured chronologically, from prehistoric times to the twenty-first century, and includes, within a historical framework, numerous anecdotes, stories, and poems never before translated into Hebrew. Taken together, these are meant to give the lay readers--backpackers, couch travelers, India lovers, and other curious minds--a savory taste of India’s rich cultural menu.

Rabbi Moses ben Nahman (c. 1194-1267), rabbi, commentator, Kabbalist, and public leader, was one of the most prominent and influential Jewish figures in the Middle Ages. His diverse works reflect the history of Jewish communities in Western Europe in the thirteenth century and particularly the story of his own life. This book seeks to illuminate Nahmanides' works and beliefs, on the background of the challenges during his life. How was his thought formed, and what were its sources? In what stage of his life was he acquainted with the Kabbalah? To what extent was his immigration to Eretz Israel the consequence of Barcelona disputation? This book offers a new – historical-biographical – perspective for understanding Nahmanides' religious and intellectual world.

The book brings to light, in a social-science framework, the various aspects of the process of social integration and cultural adaptation of the new immigrants arriving in Israel in large numbers in the 1950s. The integration of the new immigrants was well studied in social science research during the relevant years, especially by Israeli sociologists, but Professor Cohen's study is of a different quality and nature. The study surveys various literary works written in Hebrew by Israeli authors, many of them immigrants themselves. Its main subject matter is the meeting, and often the confrontation, between new-comers and old-timers in Israel, between the cultures of the Jewish Diaspora, and that which evolved among the Jewish population in the country in prior decades. The study of literary works as research materials is a new trend in social sciences, and particularly in the discipline of geography. Professor Cohen's book is a pioneering study in this new direction.

The caves Atlas portrays some of the most famous caves in the world, including the hiding sites of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It also includes most of the largest caves in Israel, and some of the most exiting arid zone caves in the world. The maps and the text are based on tens of years of studies by the Israel Cave Research Center of the Hebrew University, and other scholars. Research results on the geology, archaeology and biology of the caves are discussed with references to additional information. The atlas text is written in Hebrew, but its detailed maps, color illustrations and English references appeal to everybody, including scientists, hikers and speleologists alike.

The book Rashi’s Commentary on Tractate Megilla contains a critical edition of Rashi’s commentary to this tractate. Rashi’s commentary is the most important and well-known commentary on the Babylonian Talmud, and in this work, an attempt has been made to provide the student with a critical edition of the commentary, which presents a cleaner and more precise text, arrived at in light of the examination of the textual witnesses. The edition aims at the authentic text of the commentary through an investigation of the textual witnesses, as well as the many citations of it in the works of Medieval scholars. The book also contains an extensive introduction, which discusses different matters connected to Rashi’s commentary on Tractate Megilla.

This volume contains a wide range of essays dealing with the following: - The Fabric of Educational Experience - Curricular theory and pedagogic models in Jewish education - Jewish thought and Jewish teaching - American Jewish Education and Jewish identification in a changing world

The four volume series of the History of the Hebrew University Project is devoted to the development of the idea and of its implementation during the pre-state period. The previous three volumes expanded in a great number of scholarly articles on the complex stories which made up this history from a great variety of aspects – scientific and academic, political and organizational, economic and social. The present volume, the last part of the project, seeks to focus on the individuals, the personalities of the people who made the university become a reality; those who struggled for its foundation, and the pioneering scholars and scientists who laid the basis and shaped the Hebrew University. It opens a window for the wider public to become familiar with the story of the Hebrew University without the need to penetrate into the complexity of scientific and other issues dealt with in previous volumes. The story of the university is the story of the enormous efforts involved in bringing prominent scholars and scientists to Eretz Israel, then a remote and marginal corner in the Middle East. These efforts were accompanied with debates of principle and personal controversies within and outside of the university about academic and national considerations. Despite all difficulties, criticisms and doubts, the founders of the university succeeded in building an institution of intellectual excellence that would become a pillar in the project of Jewish national renaissance and prepared the basis for the Hebrew University academic leadership in Israel and in the Jewish world for many years to come.

Jubilees is a pseudepigraphical composition from the second century BCE, which was preserved among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The book rewrites the Pentateuch until the Sinaitic revelation, by means of additions, omissions and other changes. Scholars tend to the view it as a unified work, composed by one author. In light of numerous contradictions, both in narrative details and in issues of biblical interpretation, Michael Segal suggests a new approach towards understanding the literary development of the work: a redactor relied upon extant sources, generally rewritten biblical narratives, and incorporated them into a new literary framework. The redactor's unique contribution can be identified in the chronological framework and the legal passages. The internal contradictions between the different literary genres are the result of the literary development of the book. This source-critical analysis reveals a unified, complete worldview in the redactional layer of the book, which can be summarized by one fundamental principle: God established the entire world order at the time of creation. This is exemplified through the analysis of the question of the origin of evil in the world, perhaps the most pressing theological issue for any monotheistic religion. Throughout the book, one finds different approaches to this critical question, but when the redactional layer is examined by itself, a clear view emerges – God created both good and evil at the dawn of time as part of a cosmic, dualistic system. This book is intended for all those interested in Bible, Jewish literature of the Second Temple period, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, and Early Biblical Exegesis.

The author presents in this work, which is based on an exhaustive study of the sources by means of philological-historical methods, a vivid picture of the religious and social thoughts of the Tanna'im and Amora'im, their absorption and rejection of extraneous concepts, their spiritual struggles and the goals they sought to achieve. The intellectual ferment marking this era crystallized principles that fashioned the Jewish national and religious image for generations. The wisdom of the great Jewish teachers of antiquity is on display here like in no other book. Two indexes (one by topic, one by texts) mentioned help the reader make use of the many obscure texts that Urbach quotes, some of them virtually impossible to find in translation anywhere. The sheer wealth of material collected in this volume is amazing. The book is well organized by 'doctrine' or belief, and Urbach does an excellent job of quoting the texts that he uses to come to his conclusions.

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.

The standard study of Talmud is to accept the given as ultimate, that the sayings and the interpretations recorded therein are faithful to what was actually said. After having checked for the genuine version, for the right GIRSAH, eliminating the scribal errors, the text assumes reliability and serves as a starting point for further discussions and additional deductions. For over forty years, Prof. David Halivni has questioned the given as the authoritative text and argued for the necessity to go back in time and reexamine the veracity of the interpretations. Many of the given interpretations are forced, do not neatly fit the text they interpret and often attribute to the authors of the statements intentions that they did not necessarily share. As a consequence, substitute interpretations were necessary to which the multi volumes of "Sources and Traditions" were dedicated. While the books dealt mainly with the actual Talmudic interpretations, the introductions dealt with the causes responsible for the deviations from the original. It took the writings of a few volumes to become clear that the interpretations, unlike the apodictic statements were not officially transmitted by the Transmitters, the professional reciters and reached the later compilers which are referred to in the volumes as STAMMAIM, anonymous scholars, only through random survival which was not always complete. Sometimes it survived in a truncated form which the later compilers filled in, conjecturing what was missing. The present volume contains all of the introductions which provide the reader not only with the final conclusion but also with the developmental stages which led to that conclusion further strengthening its plausibility.

Question of Place: Architecture between the Poetic and the Ethical calls for a re-understanding of the foundations of the architectural act while exposing it to phenomenological thought. Through a return to the first - and failed - encounter in the late 1970s, between phenomenology depicting phenomena in the light of human experience and architectural discourse, Edna Langenthal offers a new reading of discourse, embracing the thought of philosopher Martin Heidegger and discussing the influence of the architectural theoretician Christian Norberg-Schulz, who in her opinion missed Heidegger's contribution to her understanding. To emphasize the potential inherent in Heidegger's thought in understanding the question of place and the possibilities of dwelling in it, the author discusses the meaning of the poetic as a constitutive axis in understanding key concepts in contemporary architectural discourse. But the poetic dimension, for her, cannot exist without the ethical dimension. Through a study of the thought of Heidegger's student and critic, the philosopher Emanuel Levinas, the structure that connects an affinity between the ethical and the home and the possibilities of settling in it.

Ethical dilemmas faced by teachers and the need to evaluate them with critical tools were the starting point of this study, which is based on stories collected in hundreds of interviews with educators from different sectors of Israeli society. Teachers and school principals recount how complicated it is to express in their work a variety of values and commitments, with pressure coming from different directions. Many educators are unhappy with the results of their work, but nevertheless keep ethical dilemmas to themselves, without consulting anyone.

Jewish settlement patterns in Palestine are of interest because of their cooperative forms, the Kibbutz and the Moshav. However, the Jews preferred a different type of pioneer settlement: the Moshavah. For over 30 years the early settlers chose the Moshavah as the type of settlement most suited to lead them to their basic goal: creating a Jewish village, and structuring a "new" Jew – a farmer who would live on his land and so lay the cornerstone of a renewed "national home". The cultural landscape of the Moshavah, its planning its design and development, constitute the subject of this book, which studies the ideological aspirations of Jewish pioneers in Palestine and illustrates the link between ideology and landscape in their settlement patterns.

The present volume charts ways that may allow a larger number of historians to experiment with the comparative method. It contains articles that deal with the history and problems of comparative history as well as studies that demonstrate the potential of symmetrical, asymmetrical, parallel and cross comparisons. The studies include comparisons of the Roman and Inca empires, of Muslim networks of renewal of the eighteenth century, of serfdom in Russia and slavery in the American South, of early modern European expansion and present-day globalization, of modern welfare states, and of multiple modernities. Comparative studies of feudalism exemplify some of the method’s pitfalls. The volume concludes with a report by three faculty members on the problems encountered while teaching a course in comparative history. Contributors: Peter Baldwin, Elisheva Baumgarten, Esther Cohen, Michael Confino, S.N. Eisenstadt, Tamar Herzog, Benjamin Kedar, Jürgen Kocka, Sabine MacCormack, Diego Olstein, Susan Reynolds and Ruth Roded.

For contents press on Sample pages which is located on the right of the cover photo.

This monograph originated in the Paley Lectures in American Civilization, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, May 1978. The lectures tackle one of the most powerful forces shaping American constitutional law, a notion deeply rooted in the county’s pre-constitutional history: the idea that there are natural, or fundamental, rights which take precedence over the enactments of legislatures.

Rich and multiform, French influence in the Levant and Palestine was predominant until the end of World War I. While conferring a particular importance upon its religious establishments, France has also always invested in the development of its economic, scientific, and technological relations with the countries in the region. Marking the beginning of France's political disengagement from the Holy Land, the British Mandate period saw, notably, the gradual disappearance of the French language from the cultural life of Palestine. France's return in force to the region would have to await the foundation and decolonization of the State of Israel, first as a close friend of Israel, then, after the Six-Day War, as Europe's most active political power in the Middle East. Series Editor: Amnon Cohen

"Image" and "reality" are polar terms within a conceptual continuum. The tension between the two polarities is a constant and permanent one, out of which the texture of human existence is generated. For states, as for men, the perception of self and of "other" is of paramount importance for taking any action. These perceptions must be constantly readjusted and restructured to achieve a view consistent with "reality" rather than "image". Such tests of reality in international politics, however, are infrequent and not particularly reliable; and despite all the advances in intelligence gathering and other objective means of assessing facts, the human mind still controls the ultimate decision making processes. Sixteen internationally recognized scholars, historians and political analysts examine perceptions and reality in the world of statecraft. The articles presented range from empirical analyses through philosophical discourses; they encompass the general, the regional and touch on the Middle East impasse.

The late Professor U. Cassuto had originally planned to write, in Hebrew, a monumental commentary on the Bible that would comprise a series of detailed expositions of the Book of Genesis, and less elaborate commentaries, consisting of one volume for each book, devoted to the remaining four books of the Pentateuch. It was also his intention to compose a compendious Introduction to the Torah as a whole, and a comprehensive commentary on the Book of Psalms. Unhappily the author died after completing only three of his commentaries (two on Genesis and one on Exodus). Cassuto's comments have a vivid quality seldom found in the exegetical writings of other Biblical expositors, who all too often prefer a jejune and lifeless approach to their subject. Cassuto succeeds in injecting a sense of dramatic excitement into his interpretations. Without neglecting the scientific data provided by archaeological and philological research, he makes us conscious of the literary attributes of the Bible. Unlike the volumes dealing with the first two pericopes of Genesis, the present work does not separate the annotations from the Biblical text, but forms a continuous, unified commentary in which the Scriptural citations are interlinked with the exposition. The elements are so closely and artistically interwoven as to form a new literary entity not a text with notes, but a homogeneous expository work, which must rank among the finest modern contributions to the treasury of Biblical learning.

This book represents a first attempt to assemble liturgical poems in a scientific edition according to their genre rather than according to authorship. All the Shiv‛atot cycles (liturgical poems for shabbat Amidah prayer) composed according to the order of the weekly Torah portion have been collected from the Genizah manuscripts. The book presents three main cycles, representing three stages in the history of liturgical poems: The remnants of an ancient Shiv‛atot cycle (composed around the sixth century) which was dedicated to the reading order of the Eretz-Israel triennial cycle, and two Shiv‛atot cycles for the annual cycle’s tractates – one of which was probably composed around the ninth or tenth century and remains loyal to the classical traditions of the genre, and the second, probably composed at the end of the tenth century or the beginning of the eleventh, which reflects a stage in which the later poets abandoned the ancient patterns or restricted them. Alongside these cycles, sections of other Shiv‛atot cycles whose remnants were found in the Genizah are included. The poems are printed in their entirety, with variant manuscripts readings and detailed notes. The book opens with an introduction that describes each cycle in detail and examines the development of the genre over the generations.

The selections in this volume, the fifteen prose poems of Griner akvarium (1953-54) and the eight entries in Meshiekes togbukh (1970-75) form a distinctive unit within Sutzkever's large poetic opus. Each of the narratives is a fragment of autobiography remembered and retold from a different perspective in space and time. The poet's lifeline has been severed by the holocaust and falls like a chasm between the past and the present. These works are an attempt to span the breach, creating in art an organic universe over which mutability and morality hold no sway.

Rashi w as the first Biblical Commentator in Northern France/Ashkenaz to compose a comprehensive commentary to the Book of Proverbs , and this commentary has survived in 55 manuscripts scattered in libraries throughout the world. For the first time we present a critical edition of this commentary to Proverbs. This critical edition is based on MS New York JTS Lutzki 778 . Variant readings from six other accurate manuscripts, the two earliest printed editions, and three later printed editions appear in the apparatus of variants . The edition also contains a “super-commentary” in which difficult words & sections in need of clarification are explained. The editor searched for Rashi’s sources - both those explicitly stated and those not . Preceding the critical edition is an introduction which analyzes important topics such as: interpolations to the commentary , Rashi’s exegetical approach, language & syntax and the Jewish-Christian debate.

The book Human Choice: Biblical Narrative and the Drama of Choice suggests, in contrast to the dominant position in the field of theology, that humanity and not God stands at the heart of biblical narrative. Underpinning many biblical narratives is a theology that may be termed a “theology of choice”, a theology predicated on the belief that human’s central task is to choose between good and evil. Theology of choice leads to biblical narratives' focus on the internal conflicts of characters, their struggles and the choices that they must make. The principle that a person’s choices determine one’s destiny lies at the foundation of biblical narrative and is one of the basic tenets of Israelite belief. In contrast to the belief in a predetermined destiny characteristic of idolatrous culture as evident in many ancient mythologies as well as Greek tragedy, the outlook underlying many biblical narratives is that a person is a free being and is responsible for one’s actions and one’s ultimate destiny. The book also argues against the belief that the books of the Bible reflect polarized thinking and a dichotomous worldview. A sophisticated literary analysis treating the different levels of the narrative – the syntagmatic, paradigmatic and dramatic – with a focus on the use of tripartite contrast – a literary device yet to be noticed in biblical research – reveals that the biblical perspectives are not polar in nature, but rather include complexity and a gray zone lying between the dichotomy of black and white. The doubts and wavering of middle-ground characters such as Lot, Saul and Ahab create a drama about choice and infuse the narratives with complexity and interest. Middle-ground characters in biblical narratives represent human complexity, characterized by internal conflict and struggles, and the need to decide between conflicting desires, values and beliefs. This tension creates the biblical drama of choice which focuses on human choice.

This Festschrifft for Prof. Yona Fraenel includes 23 articles on various aspects of the literary study of Rabbinic literature. The studies relate to the poetics of genre and the relationship of literature to history, including cultural dialogues with Christianity and questions of transmission and composition of the various rabbinic genres.

Zmaski's book "Processes and Mechanisms in Plants", is based on decades of teaching in the Hebrew University. It is designed for students studying biology and plant sciences and will be a great help for teaching staff in higher education. The book describes in a simple way, using spectacular images and drawings, the complicated processes of alternation of generations in plants and the relationship between the structure and function of plant tissues.

In 1915 Albert Einstein started writing this booklet in an attempt to provide readers who do not necessarily possess knowledge of theoretical physics with an accurate understanding of one of the highest intellectual achievements of the human mind, the theory of the relativity. This friendly brain-challenge is written in the form of a dynamic dialogue, yet it also requires a substantial intellectual effort from the reader. In this important scientific document, the reader is taken on a journey through Einstein’s special and general relativity theories.

The book Statutory Jewish Prayers is a collection of essays by Ezra Fleisher on the subject of prayer and synagogue rituals. The two volumes of this book include Fleishers fundamental essays about the essence and emergence of statutory prayer in Israel. This text is accompanied by ancient versions of Israelite prayer found in the Cairo Geniza Collection in Geneva. The book also includes descriptions of other rituals and customs exercised in Israelite synagogues such as Rosh Hodesh (new moon) customs and special ways to blow the shofar on the Sabath. Torah and Haftorah (additional reading from the prophets) reading are also referenced. The book ends with a detailed inspection of a few important Mahzorim.

This book contains the biographies of the Antonine Caesars (Aelius-Didius Iulianus) from the Manuscript P(alatinus) 899 in the Vatican Library. The manuscript was already known to men of letters in the late Middle Ages That its contents are essential to a better understanding of Imperial Rome is conventionally accepted by historians. It was published as early as the first generation of printers (Milano 1475). The biographies present a wide array of deeds and indecisions in the history of Rome during the IInd century AD. These were actually the days near the.end of the Pax Romana. The biographies present not only the characters of the Caesars, for they equally reveal the many patterns of Enlightment hovering over Rome during the years of the Antonine patronage. The tendency to base the life of citizens as well as those of the provincials not on the arbitrariness of imperial bureaucrats but law (Roman Law) inspired by philosophy (Hellenic and Hellenistic) is a remarkable signpost of this period Women were in those days considered more as juridical persons and less under the tutelage of men. Indeed the Antonines did not abolish slavery, but the attitude towards them more human. The tolerance these Caesars based on moral principles.aleviated the task of preaching in the name of Christ and winning followers. . Jews were freed by the Caesars from the danger and oppression of the edicts imposed by Hadrian. Their moderation enabled the Jews in Judaea (recently renamed Palaestina by Hadrian) to come close to a rcovery. The author of these biograpies had intentionally disguised his name and identity. Nevertheless (relying on internal evidence of his work) it seems most likely that he had compiled the SHA at the turn of the fifth century. Born as a scion of the old Roman aristocracy, the new religion aggresively imposed on Rome did not attract him. He rather felt close to the Rome of the days bygone, of the liberal temper, its literature and thought and freedom of belief. Aiming to avoid a confrontation on unequal terms with the contemporary authorities in Rome, he prefered to present his work under cover of six differerent pseudonyms. All this makes even the literary aspect of his work of greater interest and admiration Introduced,translated and annotated by David Golan

You now have before you this volume which contains an assemblage of popular Yiddish humor: jokes both folksy and racy, proverbs and colloquial curses which originated in the hundreds of towns and cities of Eastern Europe up to the Second World War. In recent decades interest in Yiddish has been growing in Israel and in many other countries. It expresses itself as a longing, a nostalgia, for the language that was spoken in people's parents' home, and that they heard from their grandparents. This volume reveals some of the treasures of Yiddish humor to the many lovers of Yiddish around the world. This sampler does not specify the origin of the jokes it contains, because "An anecdote and a cat have no master, they belong to whoever manages to catch them." (N. Stutchkoff, p. 571, see Bibliography.) In order to select the approximately 400 jokes and sayings appearing in this book, the collector spent many months searching through anthologies, joke books, lexicons etc. The most important sources are listed in the Bibliography. In their world of poverty, pogroms, persecutions and evil decrees, the Jewish masses of Eastern Europe were in dire need of spiritual support and psychological defence. They found this support in humor, which relieves tension and makes life more bearable. This book is organized by theme into 51 sections, each section exhibiting a particular aspect or feature of Jewish life in the cities, towns and townlets of Eastern Europe.

This is the eighth book in the "Sources and Traditions - Critical Commentary on the Talmud" series.

The first part of the book deals with the encounter between two traditions of esoteric writings of Maimonides: the philosophical esoteric tradition found in Greek thought and medieval Arab thought and Jewish esoteric tradition found in the Mishna and the Talmud. Maimonides combines these two traditions while interpreting the Jewish esotericism as philosophical esotericism. Solomon is described in the Jewish tradition as a king, builder of the Temple, wise, a judge and a prophet. Solomon has a special spot in the teachings of Maimonides. Maimonides sees him primarily as a prophet and a Sage. As a 'prophet' Solomon is considered a 'Divine inspiration speaker' which is a subclass in prophecy. As a 'Sage' Solomon is considered the prototype of the 'wise esotericist', who believes in hiding philosophical content from the masses, but is also aware of the limitations of human cognition. He guides his audience not to try achieving what is beyond human capacity and to reserve judgment on matters that cannot be proved in an exemplary manner.

This book is intended for Hebrew-as-a-second-language teachers and for advanced students trying to perfect and exact their use of the Hebrew language. This book emphasizes semantic accuracy. It is called "Syntax +" because it goes beyond pure syntax issues and deals with semantics as well.

For contents and sample pages press on Sample pages which is located on the right of the cover photo.

Against the background of Kristallnacht and Britain's retreat from the Jewish Mandate for Palestine, David Ben-Gurion shaped a new Zionist foreign policy based on the assumed rise of the United States as a world power that would determine the future of the Middle East. This book traces the evolution of the demand for a Jewish state into a central and specific aim of Zionist policy and the interrelated process by which Ben-Gurion became increasingly oriented toward the United States and American Jewry at the expense of Zionism's historical connection with Great Britain. Based on new documentary evidence, Allon Gal's study charts Ben-Gurion's ascent from the leadership of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) to prominence in the world Zionist and international diplomacy. The book also portrays the emergence of American Jewry as a political factor that strove to secure Jewish interests in an open and self-assured fashion. Distributed in North America by Indiana University Press.

Mishnah and Tosefta Ketubbot: Text, Exegesis and Redaction includes new editions of tractate Ketubbot in the Mishnah and Tosefta and offers a new model for presenting these interdependent texts. After an introduction which deals at length with some central topics in Mishnah and Tosefta research, especially with regard to textual criticism, the two editions are presented in parallel; each edition is accompanied by selected variants and explanatory notes. Please note : The book was typeset so there is a parallel between Mishna and the matching Tosefta. For this reason pages 76, 82, 97, 100, 124, 177, 180, 220, 240, 256, 298, and 300 are blank. These pages were left blank intentionally.

Many tend to think of post-Zionism Jerusalem as a forsaken provincial Ottoman town, entangled in a net of hatred originating in its various religions. This image coincided with the Zionist redemption vision, which sought to revive the deserted land. Lemire, studying Jerusalem of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century from within its own context – the writings of its inhabitants, documents of its governing bodies, maps, and economic reports – depicts a completely different picture. For over seventy years, members of the different religions - Jews, Christians, and Muslims - lived a life of incredible coexistence. Mutual respect and reciprocation dominated the city and its enlightened Ottoman rulers were aware of the needs of its various communities. Only the rise of nationalism and the city’s partition into quarters destabilized its unique social fabric. Vincent Lemire did not write a nostalgic document about a long-lost past, but rather illustrated an important political outlook, demonstrating that the national and religious animosity in Jerusalem is not necessarily inherent to the city.

Soviet camp speech is as old as the camps themselves. Examples of it began to appear in the writings of former prisoners as early as the 1920s. Prison camp speech is a substandard variety of Russian, used by Russian speakers of every geographical origin and social background who have been unfortunate enough to have learnt it at firsthand. The idiom comprises legal and administrative jargon, borrowings from non-Russian Soviet languages, criminal argot, proverbs, abbreviations, obscenities and elements of uneducated peasant speech. It is a jargon which expresses the unique and grim experience of its users.

The Journal of Rural Cooperation (JRC) is an interdisciplinary journal focusing on cooperatives and related rural organizations in developed and less developed countries. Topics of particular interest are cooperatives facing trends of globalization and privatization, the web of cooperative-community relationships, and cooperatives as part of such broader systems as mainstream economics, economies in transition, the social economy or related alternative paradigms. Journal of Rural Cooperation Home Page

The second part of this three-volume collection deals with chosen Kabbalistic questions of the 18 th -19 th century, focusing on Hassidism and its opposing movements.

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 and Uri Ehrlich - Additional Leaves from the “Tetragrammaton Siddur” Eden HaCohen - Fragments of Yoṣer Compositions for the Day of Atonement by Shelomo Sulayman al-Sinjary Yehoshua Granat - A Yoṣer Composition for Simḥat Torah, based on Psalm 119, by Yosef ibn Abitur Avi Shmidman - Fragments of Weekday Qerovot Attributed to Yosef ibn Abitur Ariel Zinder - New Seliḥot by Yosef ibn Abitur and Yiṣhaq ben Levi ibn Mar Shaul Michael Rand - Hoshaʿna El meriaḥ ʿarugat ganni – A Qedushta for 18 Benedictions for Hoshaʿna Rabba by Dosa he-Ḥazan be-Rabbi Yehoshuaʿ in Imitation of the Qillirian Qedushta: Hoshaʿna El emuna Sarah Cohen - The Piyyutim of Yaʿakob al-Aʿyan Tova Beeri - The Poems of Yeḥezkel ha-Kohen ben Eli Mordechai Akiva Friedman - A Letter to Abraham the Pious in Praise of the Prayer Ritual in Fustat Simcha Emanuel - Supplement to Arugat HaBosem, the Piyyut Commentary of Abraham ben Azriel Benjamin Bar-Tikva - Tehillah: A Letter-Decorated Baqqasha by Yehosef ha-Ezovi Shulamit Elizur - A Collection of Medieval Wisdom Proverbs from Ashkenaz

Emile , the greatest philosophical essay of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is considered a masterpiece not only in educational thought but also social and political philosophy.

Judah Halevi is the most prominent Hebrew poet of the Middle Ages. This book tells his life story, from the early publications of his poems in Toledo and until his tragic death, which occurred during his heroic journey to the Land of Israel. For the first time, the presentation of Halevi’s story is based on his entire oeuvre - his poem collections and dewans - written during different landmarks in the poet’s life in the east and west. In addition, this study compares and confronts his autographic letters with letters written by his contemporaries, unraveled upon the historic discovery of the Cairo Geniza.

Dr. Amitai Mendelsohn investigates the various appearances of the figure of Jesus in Israeli art as a significant, multifaceted and ever-present phenomenon. Through works by prominent artists from different generations, it discusses in depth the evolving attitudes of Jewish, Zionist pre-state, and Israeli art towards Jesus, from the second half of the nineteenth century until today: from artists laboring "In the shadow of the Cross" to artists who saw Jesus as a symbol of the rebirth of the Jewish people in the land of Israel, and artists whose engagement with Jesus is detached from the complex and fraught relations between Christianity and Judaism, and who see him as symbolizing the suffering artist. The book examines the different directions taken by Israeli artists in portraying the figure of Jesus, and proves the extent of this phenomena and its ever present importance.

Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī’s Mishkat al-Anwar (The Niche of Lights) is justly included in the Hall of Fame of world mysticism as an immortal masterpiece for generations to come. Its subject matter is an arcane mystical interpretation of the Light Verse, sura An-Nur (Qur’an, verse 35), whose text has become a central symbol for the mainstream of Sufi mysticism. The book centres on the light and the mystery of light within a Sufi’s world. Its central importance caused The Niche of Lights to be translated to Hebrew twice in the Middle Ages, and for many generations it provided a source of inspiration in the realm of Judaism for philosophers and Kabbalists alike. This essay has now been re-translated to contemporary Hebrew. This classic inspirational text, a guide for the perplexed of the internal journey to the mystery of Divine Light, is an important, central chapter in the history of human spirituality; and occupies centre stage in the endeavour to establish prophesy, divine inspiration and a new Israeli spirituality.

The book examines the ideological motivations behind the selection of representations for Israeli banknotes and coins. The research is based on the proceedings and correspondence of the Bank of Israel Banknotes and Coinage Planning Committee from its inception in 1955 to 2012. The study reveals the mechanisms in which the legal tender is exploited as an expression of banal nationalism, implementing national emblems in an unnoticed manner. Banal nationalism is one of three theoretical frameworks we adopted. The other two are the long history of the Jewish people in the territory which today is the State of Israel; and selective tradition as a means for designing a nation. The book comprises eight chapters: theoretical overview; analytical portrayal of the working methods of the Bank of Israel Banknotes and Coinage Planning Committee; a study of the first designed “Allegoric Figures Series” (1959); analysis of the selection of human figures; the construction of the state borders through an array of landscape images; the reflection of the shifting boundaries in the changing representations Jerusalem; the selection of archaeological emblems as a proof for national continuity; and the symbolic role of flora as identification with the land.

In 2018, some 770 health technology systems costing 3 billion shekels were submitted to the Israeli Health Basket Committee as candidates for public funding. The committee chose 107 of them, amounting to 460 million shekels, the total sum of its state budget. The need to prioritize medical technologies exists in most health systems worldwide. A Basic Course in Health Technology Assessment provide the tools for making tough decisions faced by such committees.

The book deals with challenges to the identity and stability of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. The first part of the book deals with the challenges that arise from all cultural groups in Israeli society: Arabs, migrant workers, religious Zionists, ultra-Orthodox, traditionalists, Olim from the former Soviet Union, Jews of Ethiopian origin, secular Jews. The second section deals with the ideological challenges that arise from the radical left and the religious and secular nationalist right. The third section deals with the significant issues in which there is a conflict between the Jewish and democratic identity of the State of Israel: the minority status of Arab Israeli citizens; Israeli control of Judea and Samaria; religious and state relations in Israel and the possibility of presenting an outline to strengthen Israel's Jewish and democratic identity at the same time.

This book is concerned with the question of the role of Jewish Religion in the development of the Zionist Movement, both theoretically, in respect to nationalist consciousness, and in the area of day to day activity. It traces the turnings of this interaction in Zionist history from the early 1860’s until 1930.

In what way is the German nation like all the other nations? Is there a unique path which German History took? And furthermore- To which people can we liken the German nation? To nations in the Western World or nations from all over the world? This book attempts to answer some of these and other questions about Germany.

El legado de Sefarad tanto para la España medieval, como para el resto de Europa y América, es una cuestión palpitante, ya que constituye un aporte fundamental, no solo para la espiritualidad, sino también para el desarrollo económico, científico y cultural. Por suerte, ese viaje de ida y vuelta que es la historia permite la revisión del pasado para apreciar en su dimensión y alcance una herencia que guarda un tesoro de ideas, creencias, vivencias y saberes. Su momento de esplendor se da en los siglos xi y xii , en que hace parte de esas tres culturas que convirtieron a ciudades de la Península como Toledo en ejemplo de convivencia, cuando hebreos, musulmanes y cristianos constituían una sociedad diversa y variada. Por todo ello, el CVC se complace en presentar este monográfico, El legado de Sefarad , que consta de cuatro apartados, el primero se dedica a «La España sefardita», el segundo fija una «Cartografía de la diáspora» y el tercero da cuenta de la «Memoria de Sefarad en América», a través de testimonios de escritores que evidencian sus vinculaciones con una tradición familiar. Estas vivencias que emergen en sus obras nos demuestran el peso de una herencia cultural que merece la pena ser tenida en cuenta; y el cuarto apartado es un glosario preparado por el fallecido medievalista Antonio Antelo Iglesias, que enriquece el contenido de este monográfico.

For the past 120 years, an Israeli culture has been created in Erez Israel. What is this culture? Can another kind of culture even be suggested? Does what is being created in this small Mediterranean land still belong to the Jewish heritage? This book compiles studies that present Israeli culture as a rich historical work, alive and vibrant, which reflects an essence full of contradictions, influences and battles, arising from encounters between immigrants and designed in the space between ideology and spontaneity.

Prof. Shraga Abramson was the most important scholar of his time in the field of Geonim literature and the teacher of most of the proceeding generation in this field of study. This book is the third collection of his studies pertaining to the Geonim period. The two others are considered mandatory for those interested in this formative and fascinating period. It contains studies published in his lifetime, which were not included in other compilations, as well as some studies found in his estate. The articles deal with various aspects of the Geonim literature.

The exercise book accompanying the textbook Hebrew: Take 2 was written in order to provide further exercises than those offered in the textbook. It contributes to the comprehension of the texts in the book and enriches the learning process with vocabulary exercises and oral and written capability exercises. The exercise book was written to serve both students and teachers, who expressed the need for such a book. The exercises are arranged by the order of the chapters and texts and by linguistic subject. Students and teachers can find further ideas for learning and teaching, as well as visual content for the different chapters on the Instagram account ivritb2hebrewbook.

The content of the articles in this book reflect the diversity of the areas researched by Professor Zev Harvey. The three key subjects covered in this collection are: the first focuses on the teachings of Maimonides, the second- the philosophy of Rabbi Hasdai Crescas and other philosophers in the Middle Ages, while the third includes essays on Jewish philosophers since the beginning of the modern era to the present.

This is the first attempt to gather all the known remnants of the Old Testament in the Syropalestinian version. This first volume contains Pentateuch and Prophets together with a short introduction.

The Holocaust is an unsolved problem for humanity. We are still trying to explain the causes and the origins of the hell of Nazi Europe and its impact on our understanding humanity and concept of Western civilization. For Jewish thinkers, the problem is even more urgent as it brings forward difficult questions about Jewish identity. The book " In the Beginning There was the Holocaust " brings a panoramic picture of the responses of Jewish Philosophy to the Holocaust, Theodicy, the meaning of Jewish existence after the Holocaust, struggle with nihilism and despair, and questions concerning Holocaust education and the culture of remembrance. The major claim in the book is the Holocaust is a major crossroad in our world; if we want to understand ourselves we have to explore the roads that go out of it.

This volume includes research papers in librarianship, archives and information studies, representing a multi-disciplinary range of topics, such as history of printing, the book and libraries, the sociology of books and reading, archives organization and such new fields as bibliometrics and information systems. Thus, the contributions published do not purport to represent a systematic exposition of a single field or problem. The variety of styles and approaches reflects the diversity of interest and training of the contributors.

The Shaolin Monastery charts, for the first time in any language, the history of the Shaolin Temple and the evolution of its world-renowned martial arts. In this meticulously researched and eminently readable study, Meir Shahar considers the economic, political, and religious factors that led Shaolin monks to disregard the Buddhist prohibition against violence and instead create fighting techniques that by the twenty-first century have spread throughout the world. He examines the monks’ relations with successive Chinese regimes, beginning with the assistance they lent to the seventh-century Emperor Li Shimin and culminating more than a millennium later with their complex relations with Qing rulers, who suspected them of rebellion. He reveals the intimate connection between monastic violence and the veneration of the violent divinities of Buddhism and analyzes the Shaolin association of martial discipline and the search for spiritual enlightenment.

Vardi and Weitz bring together wide-ranging scholarship to help us understand the roots, effects, and implications of misbehavior in organizations. The book covers key topics that have emerged in scholarly literature in the past decade, such as insidious workplace behavior, bullying and harassment in the workplace, information hiding, cyberbullying, and organizational spirituality. A thorough and up-to-date resource on this crucial and evolving topic in organizational studies, this book provides insights on misbehavior at the individual, position, group, and organizational levels.

This study describes the contribution of the British Administration to the development of Palestine between 1917-1929. It deals with the relation between a new modern government and changes in the landscape. The special character of the British Administration in Palestine helped to create a new state in the Middle East, a modern state with a geographic “iconography” that reflected British taste and input. This view differs from other works on the British in Palestine which deal mainly with the political history of the area rather than its historical geography.

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.

The book Rav Pe'alim focuses on the Modern Hebrew verb system and is intended for advanced level students of Hebrew as a second language (level Dalet according to the Division of Hebrew Language Instruction at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel). The book includes not only structured, gradual exercises of verb conjugations, but also includes verb exercises that aim to enrich the students' vocabulary and reinforce the mastery of the lexical meaning of the Hebrew roots (shorashim) and the semantic usage of the Hebrew stems (binyanim). In addition, the book provides the student with grammatical explanations and strategies to solve verb problems.

Penalty and Temptation: Hebrew Tales in Ashkenaz by Rella Kushelevsky , discusses thirteen tales copied in MS. Parma 2295 (thirteenth century, North France). The tales, which originated in Rabbinic Literature and in medieval story compilations from the East, were re-worked and re-formulated in Ashkenaz. A careful reading of these narrative versions, mostly published here for the first time, and an attentiveness to their unique characteristics compared to classic and modern versions, portrays a broad and panoramic view of Ashkenazi culture: concrete depictions of Paradise and Hell, martyrdom as a central value, repentance practices and other central topics in Ashkenazi piety, as well as images of women and religious symbols from the non-Jewish surroundings. The book offers a double perspective: literary, since these narratives are artistic works in every respect, and hermeneutic, since they trigger a multi-participant dialogue. The readings offered in Penalty and Temptation are the result of the interaction between narratives copied in North France – themselves readings of earlier narrative traditions – and the reader, who becomes acquainted with different modes of being while also similar to his or her own. Ashkenaz in this book is not a historical reality but a fictive entity that bestows this reality with significance, and in which the reader takes part in its establishment.

This is the fifth book in the series of monographs and annotated indices on periodicals of the Haskalah. It covers two major Hebrew periodicals Hehalutz (1852–1889) and Bikurim (1864–1865), and addresses major developments in the history of the Hebrew Haskalah in mid-century: the emergence of radical Haskalah in Galicia which found its mouthpiece in Hehalutz , and the contribution of its prolific editor, Joshua Heschel Schorr, who published 13 volumes of his journal. Bikurim , published in two volumes, was edited by Naphtali Keller, and represented the moderate Haskalah and Hochmat Israel (the scholarly study of Judaism). The Indices to the two journals published in this book are cross-referenced, annotated, Alphabetized, and author-and-subject listed. They cover all articles, essays, and scholarly studies on a variety of topics in Jewish Studies, such as Biblical and Talmudic criticism and commentary, questions regarding the Halachah (the religious code), and studies on the Hebrew language, Jewish history, and Jewish education. They also cite newly discovered medieval Hebrew manuscripts, their critique and studies of their authors. Also included are various genres in belles lettres : poems, stories, satires, biographies, and miscellaneous writings such as editorial comments and announcements. All these subjects are discussed and analyzed in the monographs of the two journals. Now, upon their publication, the annotated indices should serve as a reliable reference tool for viewing and reviewing the major topics and issues that occupied the minds of the editors and the writers of these journals in Galicia and elsewhere in Europe in mid-19 th century. Readers may now examine the scope and the character of the material published in these journals . Likewise, it is now convenient to assess the contribution of participating scholars, authors, and poets, to the Haskalah literature, and to explore their stand on various scholarly or Haskalah-related matters.

This research project tries, for the first time, to analyze and compare all the key Spanish Jewish apostates, especially Petrus Alfonsi, Abner of Burgos, Geronimo de Santa Fe, Pablo de Santa Maria and Pedro de la Caballeria. The aim of this research is to understand the ideological background of the mass conversion of the Spanish Jewish community from the perspective of the intellectual elite involved in the conversion itself and not – as has usually been the case in modern scholarship – according to the rabbis who decided to stay Jewish. In the first part of the book, the author explains the impact of the conversion of a part of the Jewish intellectual elite on the Spanish Jewish population. In the second part, he examines the opinion of the various ideological converts regarding Christianity (especially the dogmas of the Trinity and Incarnation). In the third part, he analyzes their criticisms of Judaism. The main conclusion of this research is that there is a very important difference between the various converso intellectuals regarding the essence of Christianity. The conversos who were philosophers or kabbalists before their conversion continued with a similar approach even after their conversion, using their former philosophical/kabbalistic knowledge to try to convince their fellow Jews to convert as they had. The common denominator of the different writings of these apostates is not their opinions on Christianity but rather their similar criticisms of Judaism, and especially with regard to keeping Jewish religious obligations.

The book discusses the development of the punishment theory of the Sages. The author traces the formulation course of this law by comparing a historical-philological study of Tannaitic writings and the writings of the Essenes sect .

Is the role of professional policy analysts and advisers simply to send their recommendations to political leaders? The authors of this book have a different outlook. Of course, in a democracy policy making is the responsibility of elected leaders, and therefore “politics” is a necessity of policy making. Indeed, “politics” has received a bad name in many countries, including Israel, due to unfulfilled expectations as well as the behavior of politicians. In this book the use of the term “politics” is completely neutral, based on familiarity with the difficult task that is placed upon the shoulders of dedicated politicians. At the same time, this book proposes that there is no need for policy analysts to transform themselves into politicians, or to see themselves as a sort of “political assistant” to elected leaders. On the contrary, because the fence that differentiates between the two domains of politics and policy analysis is not clearly marked, it is important to recognize the overlapping areas as well as those areas that remain clearly separate. A good understanding of these demarcations is necessary for the professional formation and implementation of policy, and for the strengthening of democracy. This book is intended for those who work in the separate but overlapping fields of policy analysis and policy implementation, as well as for those interested in improving processes of policy change in Israel. The book reviews skills for analyzing the political environment which impact upon the formation of public policy and upon the identification of common areas of agreement that balance between professional recommendations and legitimate political constraints. The ultimate goal of this book is to provide analysis and training so that recommendations for creative policy solutions will not simply remain on paper. The chapters of this book are based on selected case studies about policy making Israel. Learning through the case method is widespread in leading universities in the study of law, business, medicine, and, more recently, in public policy as well. This approach provides an opportunity to learn from the experience of others – real-world successes and failures alike – in order to avoid repeating the same mistakes, and to search for alternate solutions. The book is based on cases developed for the interactive teaching of graduate students at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Ben Gurion University.

The present comprehensive and orderly collection of texts from the Babylonian Talmud allows a deep insight into the knowledge of the rabbis about the importance and decryption of dream experiences and dream messages. It covers, inter alia, the emergence of dreams and their healing power, mysterious Atonement and possibilities of influencing the content of a dream, nightmares, dream and prophecy, sexual dreams, rules and techniques of dream interpretation. The Talmudic texts are added through detailed explanations and contemporary Jewish and non-Jewish parallels. This book was first published in Vienna in 1923. It is Kristianpollers' thesis, written in his 20s. The thesis was finished as a book in 1914 but publication was delayed due to the first world war. The Hebrew translation was initiated by the authors' son, Professor Nahum Kristianpoller, in memory of his parents who perished in the Holocaust.

The Early Ashkenazic Prayer: Literary and Historical Aspects describes the historical and literary foundations of the Ashkenazic prayer book in the first part. The second part examines prayers and Ashkenazic rituals against rituals of cultures in other areas.

According to its Declaration of Independence, the State of Israel "will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex". However, the equality between men and women in Israel was not de facto. What did Israeli women have to say about that? The book presents views and opinions of Israeli women in the 1950s and the early 1960s about their roles and duties in the public and the domestic spheres, based on contemporary women's sections in the press and women's magazines. It shows what women said about women in the Israeli parliament (Knesset) and about Golda Meir; women's service in the Israeli Defense Force and the exclusion of women from the public sphere; motherhood and parenthood, woman's right to choose to have an abortion and women's struggle for peace; women's duties as housewives and the discrimination of women as employees. The book also uncovers a forgotten feminist journal, sheds light on a famous adoption story of a Yemenite baby and discusses a protest of female cadets in the Israeli Air Force flight course that was ignored and silenced for many years. The book unveils Israeli women's voices from the past, which show that in an era of many fateful decisions, Israeli women also made choices that affected their status in society. Readers might find these decisions relevant vis-à-vis women's status in Israeli society nowadays.

The exercises in this book are intended for advanced students and for level 6 students in the Hebrew University Ulpan. There is a short explanation before almost every grammar section. Some of the subjects exercised in the book are noun gender, noun conjugation, copulative, Prepositions, gerunds, etc.

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is the central figure in modern philosophy. He synthesized early modern rationalism and empiricism, set the terms for much of nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy, and continues to exercise a significant influence today in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, and other fields. The fundamental idea of Kant's “critical philosophy” — especially in his three Critiques: the Critique of Pure Reason (1781, 1787), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790) — is human autonomy. He argues that the human understanding is the source of the general laws of nature that structure all our experience; and that human reason gives itself the moral law, which is our basis for belief in God, freedom, and immortality. Therefore, scientific knowledge, morality, and religious belief are mutually consistent and secure because they all rest on the same foundation of human autonomy, which is also the final end of nature according to the teleological worldview of reflecting judgment that Kant introduces to unify the theoretical and practical parts of his philosophical system. The book was originally published in English by Princeton University Press.

The book Mah Nishtannah: The Passover Night in the Sages' Discourse seeks to provide novel answers, based upon up-to-date methods of scholarly Talmud analysis, to ancient questions raised by the Seder Night, a night at the focus of Jewish culture from time immemorial. The book analyzes the focal points of this night – the Passover meal and its commandments on one hand, and the foundation of the Haggadah and the development of its design and history of its structure on the other.

This book contains a selection of the historical and methodological articles of Isaac Julius Guttman (1880-1950), a Jewish philosophy scholar and one of the first of the Hebrew University. Guttman was one of those thinkers who did much thinking and little writing. Each article emphasizes his spiritual character and his knowledge of Judaism as well as ancient Greek, Christianity, Islam and European cultures.

It is rarely noticed, Joan Robinson wrote half a century ago, that "the very nature of economics is rooted in nationalism." This book seeks to examine the relationship between economics and nationalism in the Israeli political economy in its formative years. The book focuses on two aspects of this relationship: the link between national interest and economic ideas and between the state and the markets Two questions are at the core of the book. The first, what was the role of economic ideas in shaping the national interests? A common argument holds that the realization of national interest contradicts behavior in accordance to economic rationales. The book rejects this view and it shows that as early as the 1930s the Zionist organizations shaped national interest on the basis of imported and translated economic ideas. The second question deals with the relationship between the state and the market: how state actors mediated between, on the one hand, the goal of constructing of a market economy in Israeli, and on the other hand the strategy of mobilizing market-actor to state-building project? The book rejects the common argument that state intervention prevented the consolidation of a market economy in Israeli. Rather, it argues that the state intervened, among other things, to create a market economy as a national project of the state. A significant contribution of the book is the analysis of the financial aspects of the Israeli developmental strategy, a topic that so far has not been studied thoroughly. The book traces that the effect of the establishment of the Bank of Israel on the structure of the banking system and the development strategy. It argues that the establishment of the Bank of Israel was a significant milestone in the economic history of Israel, as it provided an effective tool to control the allocation of credit.

In Ha-halakhah ha-nevu’it , the author traces the halakhic philosophy of Rabbi Abraham Isaac ha-Kohen Kook, one of the preeminent Jewish thinkers of modern times. Rabbi Kook was called upon to offer his opinions on the raging issues of the day within the Jewish world—enlightenment, secularization, and the Zionist movement—and his influence on Israeli public life was and remains enormous. His complex, poetically formulated pronouncements resonated with the community and gave rise to varied, sometimes contradictory interpretations. Although regarded as philosophically daring and a source of intellectual ferment, he is also recalled as a stringent halakhist. Not surprisingly, most of the literature on Rabbi Kook thus far has concentrated on his thought and has tended to disregard his halakhic rulings. This book is the first to examine the full extent of Rabbi Kook’s philosophical and halakhic writings, taking account of all the contradictions and tensions they embody. At the same time, it illustrates the linkage among halakhah, aggadah, and prophecy. The study shows that there can be no halakhah without aggadah; that every ruling is illuminated by an underlying philosophy. To elucidate Rabbi Kook’s halakhic writings, the book introduces the reader to the areas of his thinking and philosophy that encompass human thought in general as well as the hidden recesses of Jewish literature in all its forms: aggadah and halakhah; poetry and legal decisions; esoteric and exoteric teachings. Against that comprehensive background, the meta-halakhic principles that underlie his halakhic rulings clearly emerge. Rabbi Kook’s jurisprudence touches on the realm of prophecy, and his journals—extensively cited in this book—convey his prophetic sensibility. The sense of prophecy is tied to the experience of the return to the Land of Israel, and it plays a central role in understanding his halakhic writings. The book examines the problematic interplay between prophecy and halakhah in general and Rabbi Kook’s prophetic-halakhic world in particular, along with its wealth of implications.

Moshe Caspi is the founder of the first Experimental School in Jerusalem and of the Chofen Institute for Open Experimental Education at the David Yellin Academic College of Education, Jerusalem. He was among the first to draw up the guiding principles for experimental education in Israel. Caspi teaches a different way of learning. He envisions a process where the student - the Self-Remaker - opens up to personal change, and moves along this path with curiosity, love of learning, creativity and humor. In order to do so, Caspi explains how to combine the refreshing and innovative vision of the child with adult qualities such as discipline and control. In this way, the Self-Remaker can achieve a greater degree of independence, and a whole new level in applying and implementing his ideas in all areas of human activity. The work of Self-Remaking can be carried out within a group framework or on an individual basis. This book offers practical suggestions which can be applied within learning frameworks, for individuals or groups, in order to enrich the learning encounter, and to change the way the student (and the facilitator) perceives the world. The reader is invited to investigate professional and personal wishes and preferences, and to develop a unique "User's Manual," a handbook which will accompany him throughout his life's journey. The material is explained with Professor Caspi's characteristic blend of insight and humor. The book presents elements of Caspi's teaching which have been published in the past in his many books in Hebrew, together with newer ideas developed by the author more recently. Self-Remaking reflects Caspi's entire life's work in this field. The wisdom of children is demonstrated through examples presented in the final section of the book, translated from Moshe Caspi's work: Children’s Wisdom - Cosmic Starlight: - from the gray world of adults to the magical journey of the child, published in Hebrew by Mofet in 2013.

This book by Irvin Yalom was named as one of the 10 most influential books in the realm of pyschotherapy today. The book includes the main ideas and the practical systems of the group guidance and also describes, in detail the recent developments in group psychotherapy.

Homer's Odyssey is a grand epic poem of voyage and adventure. It recounts Odysseus' return to his native island of Ithaca after twenty years of war and wandering. We also encounter his son Telemachus, who has just come of age, as well as his wife, Penelope, sorrowful for her absent husband yet cunningly avoiding her boisterous and arrogant suitors. Having overcome the man-eating Cyclops Polyphemos, the bewitching Circe and the harrowing phantoms of the Underworld, as well as other perils, Odysseus finally arrives in Ithaca to reclaim his kingdom. Yet the Odyssey is not merely a tale of high adventure and a hero's triumphant return, it is also a story of man's inner confrontations and his encounter with the vicissitudes of fate. As with Arouetty's previous translation of the Iliad, the new prose translation of the Odyssey aims at precision and clarity. It strictly adheres to the Greek original, attempting to retain its nobility of language and style.

Distinguished philosopher Hilary Putnam, who is also a practicing Jew, questions the thought of three major Jewish philosophers of the twentieth century – Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas – to help him reconcile the philosophical and religious sides of his life. An additional presence in the book is Wittgenstein, who, although not a practicing Jew, thought about religion in ways that Putnam juxtaposes to the views of Rosenzweig, Buber and Levinas. Putnam explains the leading ideas of each of these great thinkers, bringing out what, in his opinion, constitutes the decisive intellectual and spiritual contributions of each of them. Although the religion discussed is Judaism, the depth and originality of these philosophers, as incisively interpreted by Putnam, make their thought nothing less than a guide to life. Origonally published by Indiana University Press.

The Iliad of Homer is a powerful poem of force and heroism. It is the earliest of epics in Western Civilization and, since its appearance in the 8 th century BCE, has inspired subsequent literary works. It tells of the final year of the Trojan War, one of the central stories in Greek mythology, and of the wrath of Achilles and its horrendous consequences. This is the first Hebrew prose translation of this great work. It has been done with meticulous care both to accuracy and style, aiming to preserve as far as possible the literary richness and charm of the original. As the Iliad belongs originally to the oral tradition, it is meant rather to be listened to than read; hence the translation aims at a greater musicality of Hebrew and simplicity of expression – both important characteristics of the Greek original. The translator has added a concise introduction and comprehensive notes to enhance readers’ understanding of this timeless poem. An index was added in the second edition.

The book Biblisch- talmudische Medizin , first published in Berlin, in 1911, is a unique life's work bringing together a comprehensive knowledge in medicine, Jewish and general sources. The various chapters include a broad review of the world of medicine in the Bible and the Talmud in light of Jewish law, a detailed description of the biological organs, diseases of body and mind, deformities, gynecological and sexual. There are chapters on legal medicine, preventative medicine, health cures and dietetics. The material is also based on in-depth study of Bible, Mishnah, Talmudic and Rabbinic literature, Midrash, the External Books, the works of Joseph Ben Matityahu, the New Testament, as well as ancient and modern legal literature, Likewise illuminating sources from Greek and Latin literature, western medical literature, referencing hundreds of publications from the eighteen and nineteen hundreds were used. The writer Dr. Julius Preuss (1861-1913) was born in a small town in Prussia, in which his parents' house was the only Jewish family. He studied medicine in Berlin and was close to the orthodox Jewish community, where he acquired much of his extensive knowledge in Judaism. Over the years Preuss published over thirty articles on medicine and Judaism in various scientific journals, all the while maintaining a medical practice in the town of his birth and afterward in Berlin. He passed away two years after publishing his book in German, based on his articles. Preuss' book was translated into English by Dr. Fred Rosner (Biblical and Talmudic Medicine ) and was published in the United State in 1978. At a conference on Jewish and medical law, which took place in Jerusalem in 1998, the book was quoted and it was indicated that a translation into Hebrew was sorely needed. The translator into Hebrew, Uri Wurzburger , remained loyal to the original German, at the same time expanding the quoted references appearing in the book and adding modern interpretations.

L a Divina Commedia (Devine Comedy) is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between c. 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative and allegorical vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped establish the Tuscan dialect, in which it is written, as the standardized Italian language. It is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso . On the surface, the poem describes Dante's travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven; but at a deeper level, it represents, allegorically, the soul's journey towards God. At this deeper level, Dante draws on medieval Christian theology and philosophy, especially Thomistic philosophy and the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. Consequently, the Divine Comedy has been called "the Summa in verse ". (Wikipedia) This new Hebrew translation presents the three parts of the Devine Comedy where opposite to every Hebrew line its original Italian equivalent. Each page contains annotations relevant to the verses printed in that page. Translated and annotated by Reuven Cohen.

In 1915 Albert Einstein started writing this booklet in an attempt to provide readers who do not necessarily possess knowledge of theoretical physics with an accurate understanding of one of the highest intellectual achievements of the human mind, the theory of the relativity. This friendly brain-challenge is written in the form of a dynamic dialogue, yet it also requires a substantial intellectual effort from the reader. In this important scientific document, the reader is taken on a journey through Einstein’s special and general relativity theories.

One of the world's most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt has crafted both an innovative work of history and a thrilling story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it. Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things , by Lucretius—a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in new directions. The copying and translation of this ancient book-the greatest discovery of the greatest book-hunter of his age-fueled the Renaissance, inspiring artists such as Botticelli and thinkers such as Giordano Bruno; shaped the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein; and had a revolutionary influence on writers such as Montaigne and Shakespeare and even Thomas Jefferson.

Smocza is the biography of a street in Warsaw that was completely destroyed in World War II. The book reveals the story of a Jewish microcosm between two world wars. It is based on historical and literary sources that piece together a multicultural mixture of a society in transition, where orthodox Jews, Bundists, Zionists, shoemakers, tailors, poets, actors, prostitutes, and others lived side by side.

The book presents a broad and varied picture of Islam. It covers a wide range of topics, including faith and jurisprudence, theology and philosophy, mysticism, culture and society, from the dawn of Islam in the seventh century to contemporary times. Geographically, the book encompasses such regions as the Middle East, North Africa, the Indian subcontinent, East Asia and Europe/West . The book traces lines of continuity and change in Islam throughout the ages on such complex and sensitive issues as religion and state, the concept of jihad, Islamic attitudes to religious minorities or to Western Christian culture. These issues became hotly debated in the modern era, especially from the late 18th century, when Muslim societies were forced to contend with European colonialism, political upheavals, social and economic schisms, and identity crises . There is a clear need for a comprehensive and up-to-date introduction book in Hebrew for students and readers alike so that the appearance of the book is timely. Apart from containing new materials, the book also contains many insights, and in some cases reexamines and revisits prevailing scholarly approaches.

The book breaks with Nietzsche's previous essay style (as in The Birth of Tragedy). It is a collection of aphorisms, largely concerned with human psychology. He criticizes social Darwinism in it: Wherever progress is to ensue, deviating natures are of greatest importance. Every progress of the whole must be preceded by a partial weakening. The strongest natures retain the type, the weaker ones help to advance it. Something similar also happens in the individual. There is rarely a degeneration, a truncation, or even a vice or any physical or moral loss without an advantage somewhere else. In a warlike and restless clan, for example, the sicklier man may have occasion to be alone, and may therefore become quieter and wiser; the one-eyed man will have one eye the stronger; the blind man will see deeper inwardly, and certainly hear better. To this extent, the famous theory of the survival of the fittest does not seem to me to be the only viewpoint from which to explain the progress of strengthening of a man or of a race.§224 Nietzsche also distinguishes in this work the obscurantism of the metaphysicians and theologians from the more subtle obscurantism of Kant's critical philosophy and modern philosophical skepticism, claiming that obscurantism is that which obscures existence rather than obscures ideas alone: "The essential element in the black art of obscurantism is not that it wants to darken individual understanding but that it wants to blacken our picture of the world, and darken our idea of existence" (Vol. II, Part 1, 27).