This issue contains the following essays: Amit Gvaryahu | The Tannaitic Laws of Battery: Scripture and Halakhah Uzi Leibner | The End of the Amoraic Period in the Land of Israel: Periodization, History and Archaeology Yoel Kretzmer-Raziel | The Talmudic Stam as an Evolutionary Phenomenon: The Opening Sugyot of Tractate Nedarim in the Talmud Yerushalmi and the Talmud Bavli Gal Sofer | Lover, Son and Prophet: Magic and Kabbalah in the Autobiography of Yohanan Alemanno English Abstracts

With its five thematic sections covering genres from cantorial to classical to klezmer, this pioneering multi-disciplinary volume presents rich coverage of the work of musicians of Jewish origin in the Polish lands. It opens with the musical consequences of developments in Jewish religious practice: the spread of hasidism in the eighteenth century meant that popular melodies replaced traditional cantorial music, while the greater acculturation of Jews in the nineteenth century brought with it synagogue choirs. Jewish involvement in popular culture included performances for the wider public, Yiddish songs and the Yiddish theatre, and contributions of many different sorts---technical and commercial as well as creative---in the interwar years. Chapters on the classical music scene cover Jewish musical institutions, organizations, and education; individual composers and musicians; and a consideration of music and Jewish national identity. One section is devoted to the Holocaust as reflected in Jewish music, and the final section deals with the afterlife of Jewish musical creativity in Poland, particularly the resurgence of interest in klezmer music. The essays in this collection do not attempt to to define what may well be undefinable---what ‘Jewish music’ is. Rather, they provide an original and much-needed exploration of the activities and creativity of ‘musicians of the Jewish faith’.

This issue contains the following essays: Assaf and Ishay Rosen-Zvi | Tannaitic Halakhic and Aggadic Methodology Yakir Paz | ‘Binding Crowns to the Letters’ – A Divine Scribal Practice in Its Historical Context Avishai Bar-Asher | Illusion versus Reality in the Study of Early Kabbalah: The Commentary on Sefer Yeṣirah Attributed to Isaac the Blind and Its History in Kabbalah and Scholarship Ariel Zinder | The Siluq in Hebrew Liturgical Poetry from Al-Andalus: New Discoveries Gideon Freudenthal | Maimon the Kabbalist Boris Kleiner | Gradation of the Disjunctive Accents in the Bible Recitation of Jews of Yemen and in Other Jewish Traditions: On the Prosodic Hierarchy in the Recitation Books Received English Abstracts

Articles: Svetlana Natkovich | Maskil and the City: Representations of the Maskilic Subjectivity and Urban Habitus in the Literature of Russian Maskilim, 1862-1888 Natasha Gordinsky | ‘Sideways from Moscow: Uri Nissan Gnessin’s Provincial Writing’ Dina Berduchewsky | Brenner’s London as a Crossroads in the Story of Early Hebrew Modernism Lilach Nethanel | Literary Modernism: The Retreat. Shklov by Zalman Shneour Allison Schachter | Elisheva Bikhovksy’s Novel Side-Streets Representing a Non-national, Minority Hebrew Culture Rafi Tsirkin-Sadan | The Curse of the Forbidden City: Haim Lensky’s St. Petersburg Sonatas and the Images of St. Petersburg in Russian and Hebrew Literature Maya Barzilai | The Lost German City: Berlin of Leah Goldberg

Articles: Yona Sabar | Grandpa Ephraim and Grandpa Menashe: Two Opposite Characters, Based on Personal and Communal Childhood Memories Dov Cohen | ‘The Holy Island of Chios’: New Findings Concerning the Purported Burial Place of R. YaꜤakov ben Asher (BaꜤal Ha-Turim) on the Island of Chios and Pilgrimages to His Gravesite Itamar Drori | Rabbi Israele Costa’s ‘Miḳweh Yisrael’ (1851): The Beginning of the Adapted Jewish Story for Youth Carmela Abdar | Reflections on Magical Texts on Jewelry and Amulets of Jewish Women and Children from Yemen and Habban Tom Fogel | JaꜤle – Yemenite Nostalgia in a Jerusalem Café Jacqueline Laznow | ‘I Recognized the Holidays According to the Food’: Tradition and Memory in the Jewish Community of Argentina Reviews: Eli Yassif | The First Book of Jewish Jokes: The Collection of L. M. Büschenthal, ed. Elliott Oring, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2018 Dudu Rotman | Vered Tohar, The Book of Tales, Sermons and Legends. Anthology of Hebrew Stories from the Print Era: An Annotated Edition, Tel Aviv: Hakibbuz Hameuchad 2017, 201 pp.

In this issue we have articles, in Hebrew, by Professor Avi Ohry, on sanatoria in the Land of Israel, and by Reuven Gafni, on Russian-born Olga Feinberg who served the Arab and Jewish communities in Jericho during the British Mandate until forced to leave, with the destruction of her home, during the riots of 1936–1939. Dror Hubara looks at the example of providing quality medical care in a poor neighborhood in Israel, that of the old Yemenite settlement of Kfar Shiloaḥ close to the Mount of Olives, which came to an end in 1939. Moshe Pinchuk considers Hippocratic and Mesopotamian medicine in the texts of the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds. In her intriguing article Adaya Hadar looks at how the human pulse and its rhythms were understood by the early Hassidic masters, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi and Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, in different spiritual and metaphysical ways. Zipora Shehory-Rubin and Shifra Shvarts contribute an important addition to our understanding of school doctors from the Ottoman period till the end of the British Mandate. This saw the beginnings of provision of health services to students, pioneered by physicians like Dr. Hillel Yaffe (1864–1936) and Dr. Mordechai Brachyahu (1882–1959), first hygienist physician in Israel. In the English section Samuel Kottek also looks at medicine in the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, reviewing several texts on medicine and hygiene, while Edward Reichman features an unusual medical halachic case tried many times as a ritual murder and focusing, partly, on the religious practices of Jews regarding removing a fetus at the time of death, or soon after. Much has been written about Mordechai Gumpel (Gumpertz) Schnaber Leviso(h)n and his role in the early Haskalah movement but Kenneth Collins’ paper concentrates on the years he spent in London and the links he established there with Christian Hebraists and freemasons, as well as on his medical studies with the famed Hunter brothers and his London medical practice and writings. His short Historical Note examines the question whether the early enlightenment rabbi, Baruch Schick of Shklov, was in London in the early 1770s during the time of Levisohn’s period there. Ephraim Nissan looks at the life and death of the Polish-Jewish neurologist Maksymilian Rose (1883–1937), considering the causes of his sudden death in prewar Vilna, which still has significance some eighty years later. Prof. Avi Ohry offers an important account of the career of Berthe Neoussikine (Batia Nose-Chen), a largely forgotten figure from rehabilitation medicine and electro-physiology in France and Israel. Korot has been carrying articles from the regular workshops and conferences on Medicine and the Shoah organized by Boaz Cohen, Miriam Offer and Shmuel Reis and, following the international event held in Akko last year, we plan to publish several papers on this topic in our next issue.

The dictionary mainly covers the Hebrew component in languages that have not been documented or that have been documented less than that of the prestigious Judeo-languages, Yiddish and Latino. Thus, it encompasses the different dialects of Judeo-Arabic from North Africa, Yemen and Iraq, and to some extent from Syria, Judeo-Georgian and Judeo-Persian. Other languages are included sporadically. It also includes Haketiya (Moroccan Judeo-Spanish), Judeo-Italian and others.

This issue contains the following essays : Guy D. Stiebel | ʻBurns Like Fireʼ - Mustard and Viniculture in Roman Palestine Jonathan Vardi | Song-Cycles in the Dīwān of Samuel Ha-Nagid Hillel Ben-Sasson | Transgressions and Punishments. The Special Contribution of Rabenu Yonah Gerondi’s Shaʿarei Teshuvah Kedem Golden | Addenda to the Poetry of Yosef Ben Tanḥum Hayerushalmi Avishai Bar-Asher | ‘Berikh Shemehʼ: The History of an Anonymous Aramaic prayer that Found its Way into Sefer ha-Zohar and the Prayer Book

Un véritable courant de vie parcourt ces pages que Perspectives consacre au cinéaste Marcel Ophuls. La vie, le vivant dominent. Il n’est pas étonnant qu’une des contributions de ce numéro s’intitule “Liberté, vitalité, spectacle” (Sophie Brunet). Dès lors, la division du volume s’est faite d’elle-même: 1-Un homme vivant; 2-Une oeuvre vivante. Au départ, le portrait d’un homme se dessine. Dans une “interview imaginaire.” On savoure son franc-parler, non que l’on adhère à toutes ses idées – en particulier en ce qui concerne Israël – mais on admire l’aisance et la liberté totale qui anime ses propos. Le comportement professionnel du cinéaste, son comportement tout court, trouvent leur place dans cette première partie. Parfois même, l’homme est saisi dans le feu de l’action. Les grands problèmes qui occupent le coeur et la pensée d’un homme de notre temps se retrouvent dans la seconde partie du volume. Là encore, au plus près de la vie . Le cinéaste interpelle les spectateurs lorsqu’il traite de la Shoah, de l’Occuption, ou de la Résistance, de la place que ces sujets tiennent dans la mémoire d’un Français ou d’un Allemand. On s’interroge avec le cinéaste : se doit-il d’être objectif? Mais “dès le début de sa carrière, remarque Pierre Beylot, un style documentaire original fondé sur la parole de témoignage et le montage des sources dont il assume de plus en plus ostensiblement le caractère subjectif” marque son oeuvre. C’est dire aussi que souvent le regard s’attarde sur le traitement esthétique des sujets abordés. Ecoutons François Niney:“Cette remise en question de nos manières de voir et de nos dilemmes, à la fois politiques et personnels, par le jeu et le poids des mots, différencie radicalement le documentaire selon Marcel, du panel d’opinions tel que l’expose en permanence l’étal médiatique”. L’important est que son public réfléchisse. Il s’agit, selon Valérie Carré, de “mettre en mouvement la réflexion du spectateur”. Qu’attendre de l’avenir? Encore une oeuvre surprenante? Vincent Lowy, à l’écoute, note: “Boulimique de projets virtuels, l’infatigable MO junior annonce déjà les quatre titres d’ […] improbables best-sellers…” [futurs romans policiers }. Il convient enfin de souligner le rôle déterminant qu’a joué Stéphane Kerber dans l’élaboration de ce numéro de Perspectives. Nos vifs remerciements vont à lui. Laissons-lui maintenant la parole.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Jewish communities of Poland and Hungary were the largest in the world and arguably the most culturally vibrant, yet they have rarely been studied comparatively. Despite the obvious similarities, historians have mainly preferred to highlight the differences and emphasize instead the central European character of Hungarian Jewry. Collectively, these essays offer a different perspective. The volume has five sections. The first compares Jewish acculturation and integration in the two countries, analysing the symbiosis of magnates and Jews in each country’s elites and the complexity of integration in multi-ethnic environments. The second considers the similarities and differences in Jewish religious life, discussing the impact of Polish hasidism in Hungary and the nature of ‘progressive’ Judaism in Poland and the Neolog movement in Hungary. Jewish popular culture is the theme of the third section, with accounts of the Jewish involvement in Polish and Hungarian cabaret and film. The fourth examines the deterioration of the situation in both countries in the interwar years, while the final section compares the implementation of the Holocaust and the way it is remembered. The volume concludes with a long interview with the doyen of historians of Hungary, István Deák.

This issue contains the following essays : Menahem Kahana - The Good in the Sight of Heaven and Right in the Sight of Man Yair Furstenberg - From Tradition to Controversy: New Modes of Transmission in the Teachings of Early Rabbis Gideon Bohak - A New Genizah Fragment of Toledoth Yeshu in Aramaic Yehoshua Granat - To Alexandria, with the sound of bell and pomegranate: Yehuda Halevi’s Arrival in Alexandria in Light of a Newly Identified Poem by Aaron Ibn Al-ʿAmmānī Shulamit Elizur - Between Poetic and Statutory Formulations: A Note on the History of the Ha-Maʿariv ʿAravim Benediction Menahem Kister - ‘The Lord of Hosts is His Name in Ha-Maʿariv ʿAravim Benediction: Metamorphoses and Erosion of Benediction Formulae Joshua Blau - Review of: W. Randall Garr and Steven Ellis Fassberg (eds.), A Handbook of Biblical Hebrew , I: Periods, Corpora, and Reading Traditions (xii + 228 pp.); II: Selected Texts (vi + 136 pp.), Winona Lake, IN 2016

Articles: Haim Weiss | ‘From That Hour the Doom Was Sealed’: On Class Reversals in the ‘Legends of Destruction’ Vered Tohar | ‘Rabbi Hanina and the Frog’: An Ancient Ashkenazi story Adapted for Children by Asher Barash Lital Lieberman-Avital | ‘Take the Illness and Give the Medicine’: Removal by Salt – Traditional Women’s Healing Practice on a Socio-Cultural Borderline Yuval Harari | Wonders and Sorceries in Yeruham: A Magical-Political Rashomon Dalia Marx | Welcoming the Sabbath in the Kibbutzim: Secular Religiosity Narmina Abdulaev | Narration Surfing: Folklore Published on the Internet and Its Analysis Shany Kotler-Fux | ‘Hitler-Pants’ Parodies: Folklore in Israel’s Virtual Sphere Reviews: Aharon Maman | [Review of:] Yosef Tobi and Tsivia Tobi, Judeo-Arabic Literature in Tunisia, 1850–1950, Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2014, 367 pp. Jacqueline Laznow | [Review of:] Tsivia Tobi, From Bride to Daughter-in-Law: The World of Jewish Women in Southern Tunisia and Its Reflection in Popular Literature, Jerusalem 2016, 344 + [iv] pp. [Hebrew] Tzila Zan-Bar Zur | [Review of:] Idit Pintel-Ginsberg, The Angel and the Tcholent: Food Representations in Folktales, Haifa 2016, 176 pp. [Hebrew] English Abstracts