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.

The book Habima in Berlin delineates the net of interconnections between Habima, a Hebrew theater troupe, and the German Jewish cultural and economical elite, that were woven together in the years 1926-1931. It analyzes how Berlin Jews, among them renowned theater artists, Zionist activists, intellectuals, wealthy businessmen, industrialists and bankers, formed a coalition to support Habima and how they shaped its Hebrew-Zionist artistic profile.

An exorcism which took place in 1696 in Nikolsburg, Moravia (today Mikulov, Czech Republic) is the focus of this book. The description of this grandiose magic event reached us in two different versions: one well-known, in Hebrew became a model for this folk-genre in the 18th century; the other in Yiddish, remained unknown until now and is published here in full for the first time .The analysis includes a thorough comparison between these two competing descriptions, the identification of the participants – with special emphasis on their Sabbatean background and connections, as well as an identification of the specific ‘manual for exorcism’ used in this event (also published here in full, along other esoteric manuals of its kind). Through a thorough examination of the paradigmatic exorcism which took place in Moravia in 1696 and of its deep influence on the exorcism tales of the following generations, this book sheds new light on the central role magic in general and exorcism in particular played in the rich and multi-faceted cultural life of Ashkenazic Jews in the early modern period.

The book deals with the formative years of Israel's evolving symbolic landscape. The research covers the story of a few dozen Jews who passed away in the Diaspora and later their remains were taken to be buried for the second time (and sometimes for the third) in Israel. These were Zionists and politicians, writers and poets, heroes and public activists whose common denominator was that they all passed away in the Diaspora, far and detached from the national homeland that they fought for before their tragic death. Only later, in an act of repair, their coffins were sent to be buried in the "sacred" Zionist soil, in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv or Dgania. These graves became pilgrimage sites and contributed to the design of Israel's symbolic landscape. The book was published in English in cooperation with De Gruyter Oldenbourg and can be found here .

Among the masses of immigrants that turned New York into the largest Jewish city in the world in the early twentieth century , grew a spectacular Yiddish culture - journalism, theater and literature. Dozens of artists designed varied life experiences linking the Old World to their new country. It was a one-time, one of a kind fusion between 'East' - Jewish Eastern Europe - and the 'West' - the vastness of the United States, and especially the dizzying life of a big city. The chapters in "Here Dwells the Jewish People: A Century of American Yiddish Literature" are connected to each other. They describe a rich and complex array that functioned for three generations and more, and went through major changes: from poetry brimming with emotion and pathos and the melodramatic plays written by the first generation immigrants, literature ascended to the modernist writings of Moshe Leib Halpern, A. Liles, Jacob Glatstein, Anna Margolin and the dazzlingly rich prose of Yitzhak Bashevis.

This play is a love story in the shape of a parody. The god Jupiter, father of the gods and humans, a relentless womanizer who never grew up and has a never ending stock of passion. He desired the wife of the warlord Amphitruo who left the city to fight in a war. Jupiter takes Amphitruos' shape and makes love to his wife. When Amphitruo comes back from battle then starts a comedy of mistakes which ends in Amphitruos' wife giving birth to two sons - one for each man.

The articles in this volume: Naama Alfasi-Weiss The Biblical Story of the Announcement of Isaac’s Birth : A Structural Analysis Avraham (Rami) Reiner On the Origins of the Expression Amen, amen, amen sel Rella Kushelevsky Between the Heritage of the Middle Ages and the Winds of the Renaissance: The Midrash of the Ten Commandments in the Parma Manuscript 2269 (De Rossi 473) Tal Goitein Elijah’s Cup: An Unknown Fifteenth-Century Depiction of the Custom in the Erna Michael Haggadah Noga Rubin ‘ The Legend of Three and Four’: An Account of Jewish Story-Telling Tradition in Prague of the Seventeenh Century Tsila Zan-Bar Tsur ‘ A woman is like a stew, warm and nourishing’: Kitchen and Femininity in the Folk Culture of Afghan Jews Yael Zilberman ‘ I would have died had God not sent me Elijah the Prophet’: Class, Body, and Sexuality in the Life Stories of Elderly Oriental (Mizrahiot) Women of Beer Sheva Noga Libi Cohen ‘ In the merit of a woman – the miracle happened’: Conformism and Subversion in the Story of Judith as Told by an Ultra-Orthodox Woman Towards a History of Folkloristics Rina Benari Blessing Scrolls and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: The Case of the Blessing Scroll from Mława – 1925 Book Reviews Yael Guilat Material-Culture Research in Israel [On: Aviva Muller-Lancet, Garments with a Message: Ethnography of Jewish Wear in Islamic Lands, Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2010, 389 + 67 pp. (in Hebrew)] Haim Weiss Current Aspects of Folklore Research [On: Regina F. Bendix & Galit Hasan-Rokem (eds.), A Companion to Folklore (Blackwell Companions to Anthropology, 15), Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, 660 pp. (Paper edition, 2014)] Dani Schrire Encyclopedic Knowkege and Jewish Folklore [On: Raphael Patai & Haya Bar-Itzhak (eds.), Encyclopedia of Jewish Folklore and Traditions, Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2013, 2 volumes, 680 pp.] English abstracts at the end of the book.

This book focuses on a perspective that relatively has been neglected from of study on the history of Polish Jewry: The aspect of coexistence between Jews and Poles, their common history and multicultural influences. The articles in this collection present the complexity of the Polish-Jewish encounter throughout the ages. They examine the various directions that have developed in the study of Polish-Jewish relations since the renewed dialogue between Polish researchers and scholars from the West restarted in the 1990's.

A collection of war stratagems selected from ancient historians, arranged according to their content in four books, with an introduction and a commentary, and an appendix of selected passages from the books of Julius Caesar and Livius. Frontinus, an outstandingly talented man, made his name and career under five Roman emperors (1st and 2nd century AD), he fought with distinction in Britania, was a senator, managed provision of water for Rome, was a writer and intellectual. He wrote several books, but only two of them survived entirely, The Aqueducts of Rome and The Stratagems , a sequel to his technical book on warfare that was lost. In the preface to Stratagems he writes: 'I feel obliged, in order to complete the task, to summarize excelent operations of generals, examples of wisdom and foresight, to serve and foster the generals' power to conceive and execute stratagems of their own, and not to fear their result , if they could be compared with achievements already successful. Introduced, translated from Latin and annonated by Prof. Dwora Gilula.

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

This book is dedicated to a comprehensive study of two subjects: crossing the boundaries between earth and heaven, between the visible and invisible realm. The first subject - dreams and their meanings in the literature of the classical world. The second subject - ghosts, daemons and haunting possessions in the culture of the Jewish culture and other religions. In twenty one articles the authors spread for the reader a diverse and Multidisciplinary image which shows how human beings have been attempting to peer behind the curtain and to give a lingual-literal expression to the experience of meeting unreachable worlds.

Volume one: A List of Galit Hasan-Rokem's Publications Intimate Dialogue: A Personal View of Galit Hasan-Rokem's Poetry On the Three 'Who is She...' Questions in the Song of Songs Rabbi Meir, the Babylonian Talmud, and Menippean Satire From Narrative Practice to Cultural Poetics: Literary Anthropology and Rabbinic Sense of Self Noah, his Family, and Other Animals: Midrash, Folklore and the Interpretation of a Biblical Story (or: Homage to Structuralism) 'The Earthquake in the Valley of Arbel': A Galilean Apocalyptic Tradition and its Historical-Liturgical Context The Literary-Parable in Seder Eliyahu Raba, in Light of the Homiletic-Parable in Rabbinic Literature 'Unto the Voice of the Girl's Songs': On Singing Women in Medieval Hebrew Poetry (The Andalusian School and it Offshoots) Intertextual Appropriation as Code: Between Palestine and Spain Jewish and Christian Dispute Poems on the Relationship between the Body and the Soul The Sorcerer Balaam According to Midrash Me'am Lo'ez The Plebeian and the Cultivated Proverb in Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote 'Irme Kero Madre' (Mother, I Wsih to Go): The Concept of Jerusalem in a Judeo-Spanish Folk Song as a Movement between Myth and Praxis Indescribable Female Beauty: Sephardic Wasfs, the Song of Songs, and Baffled Readers The Image of the Jew in Yiddish Proverbs Midrash Eliyahu, Mendelssohn's Version Freud and the Topos of the Wandering Jew The Retum of the Wandering Jews(s) in Samuel Hirszenberg's Art List of Contributors List of Abbreviations English Abstracts Volume two: Mitzvot Hannah: Visual Depictons of the 'Three Women's Commandments' among the Jews of Europe from the Middle Ages to Late Nineteenth Century Magic Dress of Jewish Groom from Rada'A' - a Town in Yemen Trousseaus of Jewish Brides from Izmir: Biographical Objects The Study of Folklore and the Process of Secularization of Modern Jewish Culture The Power of a Proverb - the Role of a Proverb in Agnon's Story Four Sages Who Were in Our Town: The Social Milieu in the Rabbinic Study Hall - from the Babylonian Talmud to S.Y. Agnon Source and Oblivion - Story, Folk and Folktale in Agnon's Writing Agnon's Biblical Ethnographies: Edo and Enam and the Quest for the Ultimate Song The Narrative Sub-Structures of S.Y. Agnon's 'The Lady and the Peddler' Leah Goldberg Meets Brenner 'Deportation Does no Solve Anything' - on 'Khirbet Khizeh' by S. Yizhar Purim in Sheinkin-Carnival in Tel Aviv of the Eighties A Yid Gefint an Eytse (Yiddish: A Jew Gets Advice) - A Reading in the Life History and Proverbs and Sayings of an Israeli Man of Transylvanian Origin in His Life in Communist Romania 'To Make Many More Menachem Mendels': Childlessness, Parturiton, and Creation in Messianic Habad Men and Women Narrating the Myth of the Creation of Woman - Hegemonic and Subversive Message 'Gobelin' Needlepoint: Introducing the Concept of 'Transitional Object; to the Study of Material Culture Jews in the Arabic Map: Hebrew Place Names Spoken by Local Arabbs - a Literary-Cultural Reading The Identity of Israeli Arabs as Reflected in Hebrew-Bases Nicknames The 'Bible Now': Contemporization, Political Satire and National Memory 'The Princess in the Rock': A South Indian Tale 'He That Travels Far Knows Much' English Abstracts