Aron Menczer (1917-1943) was an active member of the Zionist youth movement Gordonya. After the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in March 1938, he became deeply involved in the efforts of the Youth Aliyah to enable Jewish youngsters to emigrate from Austria to Palestine. Menczer postponed his own Aliyah in order to continue to work for the exit of Jewish youth from Nazi Austria, and became in September 1939 the director of the Youth Aliyah in Vienna. His absolute devotion to the emigration efforts and to the educational work with the remaining Jewish youngsters in Vienna made him their recognized leader. Menczer was deported to Ghetto Theresienstadt in September 1942, where he continued his educational work. In October 1943 he was transported to Birkenau with a group of 1196 children, who were brought to Theresienstadt from Bialistok, and with 52 adults who, like him, volunteered to take care of them. They were all murdered there. The personality and deeds of Aron Menczer are the center of the book. A couple of chapters deal with the historical background: the Nazi policy of pressuring Jews to exit the country, prior to the phase of deportation and murder, and the efforts by the Youth Aliyah and other organizations to rescue them. The book is based on the original German version edited by Joanna Nittenberg und Benjamin Kaufmann. Two new parts were added to the current Hebrew version, edited by Jacob (Kobi) Metzer. One is a comprehensive introduction which examines Menczer’s activity in light of some general issues raised in the research literature. The other part consists of archival sources which were added to the book for additional insights.

In this book, the complicated relationship between religion and nation, as well as the relationship between nationalism and the process of secularization are discussed from a multidisciplinary perspective. In the last decades these issues attracted considerable research and public interest throughout the world. The book consists of articles from renowned scholars dealing with the relations between religion, secularism and nationalism in general, in prominent historical patterns as expressed in German, English, American, Turkish, Polish and Russian nationalism, and in the Jewish-Israeli context . The book's articles shed light on the phenomena of nationalism and secularization, in light of contemporary research on these two fascinating fields .

The Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie (1892-1975) was one of the most fascinating and mysterious figures of the twentieth century; a potent man of small dimensions, a cruel and generous leader, abstinent yet extravagant, a petty politician and statesman who took part in one of the most important junctions in history – the battle against Mussolini. He was a young revolutionist and aging reactionary, worshipped by many as the son of god. He sought asylum in Jerusalem, only to betray it later. A ruthless leader whose life ended in solitude, humiliation, and murder. Time Magazine named Haile Selassie “Man of the Year” in 1935, and he was among the “Top 25 Political Icons in History” in 2011.

This book offers a new theoretical approach to the practice of organization consulting. Following Pierre Bourdieu's Theory of Practice, the new approach, "habitus-oriented organizational consulting", sees thinking and behavior a result of social dispositions (habitus) which develop in the interaction between practice and social structures such as culture, organizing metaphors, power relations and practical knowledge. The habitus-oriented organizational consulting incorporates the social with the individual through habitus .

The charm of Agnon’s work lies in an inebriating combination of the funny and the serious, in his famous irony that knocks down every unquestionable certainty and even its very self. Agnon’s humor eludes rhetoric borderlines, does not tolerate confines of a genre and disobeys simple interpretative solutions. In his new book, Roman Katsman suggests a new literary-anthropological method to break down Agnon’s complicated ‘laughter code’—a method based upon the cultural and semiotic interpretation of symbols. His reading of a wide selection of Agnon’s works, including his four major novels, reveals an entire world of his laughter symbols—a world of violence and sacredness, tragic bewilderment and eruption of new possibilities. In this world, arks fly, princes disappear, serpents eat their own tails, angels and demons dance, illusion turns into reality, and other foolish and cruel miracles occur. The research looks for a solution to the riddle: should Agnon's stories be considered serious or ironic, religious or secular, scornful or emphatic, archaic or modernist; or perhaps the reader is intended to swell with pathos or burst into laughter—and how come Agnon always has the last laugh?

Napoleon’s invasion of the Middle East and Palestine marks the beginning of the modern era in the region. The aim of this book is to trace the developments that led to the making of a new and separate geographical-political entity in the Middle East known as Eretz Israel, and to the establishment of the State of Israel within its boundaries. Thus, the time frame of this study spans from Napoleon’s invasion of Eretz Israel/Palestine in 1799 to 1948-1949, the years in which Israel was established. 'Eretz Israel' as the formal term for a separate geographical territory in the modern era first appeared in the early translations into Hebrew of the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, while in the original document the country was referred to as 'Palestine'. During the period of Ottoman rule the territory that would in time be called Eretz Israel/Palestine was not a separate political unit. For hundreds of years it was known as Terra Sancta, the Holy Land, or Palestine, a historical name stemming from that of the Roman province of Palaestina. Among Jews, the most widespread name during the first eight decades of the nineteenth century was 'Eretz Hakodesh' (the Holy Land). Use of 'Eretz Israel' increased only after the beginning of Zionist Aliyot. Had the Zionist movement not arisen, it is doubtful whether the development to which this study is devoted would have occurred at all. The motivating force behind that process is without doubt the Jewish Zionist element. That explains why Jews are the major protagonists in this book. Based on many written sources, it focuses on the major developments and events during a 150-year period that culminated in the establishment of Israel. Click here for the English edition, published by De Gruyter in collaboration with Magnes Press

The idea behind the book After the Bell: The World of Leisure for Children and Teenagers was born following a national case study, which was funded by the Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Education. Reviewing the literature for that study revealed a necessity for a comprehensive picture of children and adolescents' leisure world. This book was written to address this need. The uniqueness of the book lies in the fact that it combines theory, data and research findings from international and local settings related to children and adolescents. This book presents the essence of the literature regarding the nature of leisure, relevant theories, motives and factors that affect leisure choices, and perceptions of incentives and rewards obtained from participating in leisure activities. It concludes with a chapter on leisure education summarizing the knowledge on this topic as well as suggesting methods and means for effective leisure education. This book is intended for educational researchers, educators, student teachers, and school teachers. It is also suitable for decision-makers and educators in general as well as for anyone related to children and teenagers' well-being (e.g., educational counselors, social workers, psychologists, youth mentors, youth movement and community leaders).

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.

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.

This book is the first attempt to review the history and the fall of the Jewish community that existed in Beit She' an from the late 19th century until the outbreak of the Arab Revolt in 1936. The story of the community, which has been almost completely forgotten by the public and academic consciousness, is based on an initial study of several public and local archives, as well as a thorough study of dozens of primary and secondary sources of various types: press clippings, academic and autobiographical sources, oral interviews and others. Beside presenting the history of the community itself, which includes the unique challenges it experienced during its fifty years of existence and the organizational and ideological processes which characterized it, the study is also a base for a better assessment and understanding of the several small Jewish communities that existed during this period in a number of Arab cities and towns: Be'er Sheva, Ramle, Nazareth, Samakh, Jericho and others. This is accomplished by comparing the events in Beit She' an to those which took place in other communities, while trying to identify the factors that led to the collapse of these communities during the Mandate period, and to the withdrawal of the Zionist movement from its substantial support to their continued existence. The book also deals with different questions of ethnic and national Jewish identity, the relations between marginal communities and the leading national institutions, and issues relating to Zionist historiography over the past century.