The eighty-four years of Zalman Shazer, the third president of the State of Israel (1889-1974), encompass the great drama of Jewish life from the end of the nineteenth century to the second half of the twentieth century: the growth of the national and cultural movement in Eastern Europe and the Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel, and the establishment of the state and the struggle for its security and beauty. Along Shazer's journey he encountered famous figures such as Berel Katznelson, David Ben-Gurion, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and his three great loves: Rachel Katznelson, Rachel the poet and Golda Meir. Who was this man? A Hasid who disguised himself as a secularist or a secularist who became a Chabad Hasid? A romantic who met a beautiful goose herder and did not forget her for the rest of his life or a husband who distanced himself from his wife and loved to stay away from home? A deep researcher of the Sabbatarian movement or a politician? Since the founding of the state until the end of his life, Shazar acted as a public figure in the State of Israel, and at the end of his public career he became its number one citizen, its third president. The biography In Two Worlds unfolds the story of his life and discusses the internal tensions and his struggles - between religion and tradition and secularism, between politics and research, between the Diaspora and the Land of Israel, and between the women he loved. Together, these created a unique and fascinating character.

Prayer in Israel is not only a personal and occasional expression of man's relationship with his God, but a complete way of life, organized around a set of daily prayers, on weekdays, on Shabbat and on holidays. But many questions hover around the genesis of this system: When was it designed? At what stages? What is the relationship between its different parts and between its different ways - blessing, reading and prayer? What is the difference between public prayer and individual prayer? Extensive literature has already been written on the history of the prayer, but since the main design of the prayer emerged from the Talmudic literature - Tanna'im and Amora'im - it is essential to place the study of the prayer on the basis of a detailed analysis of the Talmudic material, according to the ways of updated Talmudic science. From this a reliable picture of the prayer in Israel may be drawn from within the literature of the Sages. This essay seeks to present basic chapters from this task.

Sabbatian Songs of Faith: Ritual, Community, and Interreligious Encounters in the Late Ottoman Empire unveils the hidden world of the Ma’aminim—followers of the 17th-century Jewish messianic figure, Sabbatai Tzvi. After Tzvi’s dramatic conversion to Islam in 1666, many of his followers returned to mainstream Judaism. However, a dedicated group followed in his footsteps, converted to Islam, and established a new path, blending Sabbatian, Jewish, and Islamic elements within a distinct Ottoman-Sephardi cultural framework. For centuries, the Ma’aminim maintained secrecy, forming distinct communities (known as the Dönme) and playing a multifaceted role in Jewish and Ottoman histories. This book sheds new light on their social life and esoteric traditions through a comprehensive, interdisciplinary analysis of previously mostly unexamined mystical manuscripts in Ladino, Hebrew, and Ottoman Turkish. It explores their sacred songs, radical theology, rituals, folklore, and musical practices as reflections of communal reality and developments. By placing the Ma’aminim within a broader historical and cross-cultural perspective, Sabbatian Songs of Faith offers fresh insights into religious transformation, intercommunal exchanges, and the interplay between faith, ritual, and popular culture in the late Ottoman world and beyond.

Rav Kook’s theological positions have moulded the attitudes and beliefs of generations of religious Zionists. Newly published writings reveal his innovative approaches to such key topics as non-Jewish religions, morality, heresy, and animal sacrifice. Lucidly presented here, these ideas will foment much discussion and shape new ideological directions among Rav Kook’s followers. Rav Kook (1865–1935), the first chief rabbi of pre-state Israel, was a revered thinker whose ideas were in the vanguard of religious Zionist ideology. His theological positions have continued to mould the attitudes and beliefs of successive generations. Newly published writings, however, reveal ideas that have not yet entered mainstream consciousness. Marc Shapiro has grappled with the complexity of the language of these difficult Hebrew texts and identified themes he sees as of critical importance for modern Jewish Orthodoxy. His study will be welcomed as an attempt to make these teachings more broadly accessible despite the complexity of Kook’s exposition. A key development in Kook’s thinking is that he points to the religious significance of non-Jewish religions, and even raises the possibility that non-Jews may also have experienced their own religious revelations. This is a major departure from the traditional rabbinic approach. Another innovative concept is "valorization of the masses," a view that recognizes that basic morality has been preserved in a purer form among the uneducated pious masses than among learned scholars. He similarly reconsiders the nature of heresy and dogma and develops the idea of the "unintentional heretic," a category that could be said to include many in the modern world who are no longer tied to traditional religious understandings. Perhaps most controversially for Orthodox Jewish circles, he also presents an innovative understanding of the animal sacrifice of Temple ritual that allows for its abolition in messianic times. Taken together, these ideas will reverberate, foment much discussion, and shape new ideological directions in the world of religious Zionism.

This is a groundbreaking book in the field of inner biblical allusion. Using methodologies from the field of literary studies the book examines the Song Ha'azinu (Deut 32) and the Book of Isaiah and uncovers the fascinating connections between the two. The recognition of this relationship sheds new light on the subject of inner biblical allusion, the Song Ha'azinu and the Book of Isaiah.

This book examines the overt and covert engagement with the immigrant experience in American cinema in the decade preceding World War II. It presents the story of a gallery of creators, mostly Jewish, who had emigrated to the United States, some by force and others by choice. An examination of the films they created reveals their attitudes towards their countries of origin, the nation that gave them a new home, and the Jewish identity they were forced to rediscover. This Jewish identity was at times a burden, sometimes a painful reminder of their past, and at other times a source of great inspiration and hope.

With the social and cultural upheavals of early modern Europe, rabbis were constantly struggling to preserve Jewish tradition. Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi (1658—1718), the independent-minded chief rabbi of Amsterdam, came to be regarded as one of the leading halakhic authorities of this tumultuous era. The battles he waged changed Jewish practice in his lifetime and came to define rabbinic norms in the decades that followed, with relevance to the present day. The challenges for a leading rabbi in a time of ferment were many. With advances in communication and the early stirrings of political emancipation in Jewish and secular society, how could one establish halakhic authority? How were rabbis to navigate the new reality in which mystical texts—once the exclusive province of the elite—became accessible to the masses? As geographical boundaries shifted and cultural barriers crumbled, how could one build a bridge between the worlds of Ashkenaz and Sepharad? How were the keepers of tradition meant to respond to the religious laxity that accompanied acculturation? And how could the religious establishment engage sectarians in general, and crypto-Sabbatians in particular? Hakham Tsevi didn’t always win the battles he fought, but his arguments have endured. Products of his fierce independence, some of his responsa have attained near-canonical status., Today’s halakhic discussions of such contemporary issues as brain death and artificial intelligence often begin with the words he committed to posterity. Hundreds of years after his death, Hakham Tsevi and his work remain at the frontier of halakhic discourse.

The book traces the changes that have taken place in the world views of Josef Zelkowicz, a modern Jewish intellectual, after he was imprisoned for more than four years in the Lodz ghetto under extreme living conditions. The book follows Zelkowicz and a fascinating group of intellectuals who struggled to understand life in the ghetto. The book presents the events as perceived by those intellectuals at the time of their occurrence. The readers get to know Zelkowicz's work through stories that were translated into Hebrew for the first time and are included in the book.

This volume of Hispania Judaica Bulletin presents the first collection of studies dedicated to the impact of the Iberian converso crisis on the interpretation of Paul’s life and teachings. We believe this to have been a significant historical phenomenon—one which we may call Converso Paulinisms. By way of introduction, we briefly present the main developments from which this concept derives its rationale and the productive end we hope it can serve. We begin with the lessons we learned from recent developments in Pauline studies and thereadings of Paul by Church authorities, theologians, and contemporary thinkers. Then, we move on to consider their implications in Late Medieval and Early Modern setting of the converso phenomenon.

Rabbi Eleazar be-Rabbi Qilar was the most prominent and prolific poet during the heyday of Hebrew liturgical poetry in Eretz Israel: between the sixth and eight centuries ACE. Some of the thousands of poems he wrote was preserved in the Ashkenaz, France and Italy machzorim, while a small part is recited in synagogues even today. This book compiles all his poems that survived for all prayers, with an attempt reproduce the full compositions.

Can literature be given a concrete home? The story of the establishment of the Gnazim Archive of Modern Hebrew Literature recounts the attempt to institutionalize this body of literature in the context of the founding of the State of Israel—while simultaneously challenging its demands. This book reveals the persistent tension between the “Republic of Letters” and the nation-state, as well as the painful cost of realizing the ideal and embodiment of the metaphor of “a home for literature” within the “national home.” The Stitches of Hebrewness traces the history of the Gnazim Archive both in its own right and as a mirror of the formation of the canon of modern Hebrew literature. Like any mirror, the archive reflects reality as it is—and in reverse: The canon is thus revealed in a new light, with its erasures, rewritings, and repressions. Perhaps more than anything, the book unfolds the story of a culture and society grappling with a moment of crisis between three overlapping yet conflicting temporal frameworks: Jewish time, Hebrew time, and Israeli time.

The Devil's Renaissance describes the early modern period in Europe as a time of terrible bloodshed and persecution of minorities such as the Moriscos, the Gypsies, heretics, the Cagots and the imaginary sect of satanic witches. It was the age of fear of conspiracies and of the devil undermining the Christian commonwealth.