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.

The book takes the reader on a journey of discovery ranging from the planets of our solar system to stars and distant solar systems in the Milky Way, our home galaxy, and beyond to the ends of the universe. It proposes a reader-friendly introduction to astrophysics and the physics of stars and planets, accompanied by over one hundred illustrations. The book explains concepts, distances and phenomena from other worlds, very different from our everyday experience. Throughout its journey through the universe the book introduces the science of astrobiology: the search for biological life in space. It also accompanies the course "Astrobiology and Life in the Universe" presented by the author and recorded for the benefit of the public in the "Cornerstones" program of the Hebrew University. The book deals with topics that have received widespread media coverage in recent years, such as NASA's research missions to Mars and their Kepler and James Web space telescopes. While the Kepler mission led in 2010-2015 to a breakthrough in discovering numerous worlds suitable for life outside the Solar System, James Web, whose launch is expected in 2021, will provide to humanity for the first time the ability to detect signs of life in these worlds.

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.

Was Niccolò Machiavelli really the cynical schemer of legend - or was he a profound ethical thinker, who tried to save the democratic freedom of Renaissance Florence as it was threatened by ruthless dynasties? This revelatory biography shows us a man of fox-like dissimulation: a master of disguise in dangerous times.

In October 2018, results of a randomized controlled trial showed an excess mortality mainly from cancer, among “healthy” people over the age of 70 who took aspirin, in contrast to many clinical studies previously published. This event was another record in the crisis in scientific medicine that has been unfolding before our eyes in recent decades. In this book the author tries to trace the causes of the shocks that afflict the medical knowledge base, and to offer solutions to strengthen and stabilize it. This book includes four parts. The first part discusses aspirin as a test case for development of clinical research. The second part is devoted to a discussion of the seven foundations of modern clinical research while revealing the pros and cons of each and their relative contribution to the pursuit of scientific truth. In the third part, five groundbreaking discoveries are examined. In each of them, the process that led to the discovery is deciphered, emphasizing the findings making clinical research, on the way from bench to bedside, redundant. In the fourth part the author exposes the rules of the competition among scientist, and determines its impact on the conduct of research and its results.

The Western Wall—Judaism’s holiest site—occupies a prominent position in contemporary Jewish and Israeli discourse, current events, and local politics. In Holiness in the Eye of the Storm: The Judaism and Israeliness of the Western Wall, 1967–2000 , Kobi Cohen-Hattab and Doron Bar offer a detailed exploration of the Western Wall plaza’s evolution in the late twentieth century. The examination covers the role of archaeology, attempts to design the space, the Wall’s transformation as an Israeli and Jewish symbol, and the movement to open it to a variety of Jewish denominations, studying the central processes and shifts that took place at the Western Wall during the three decades that followed the Six-Day War, a relatively short yet crucial chapter in Jerusalem's extensive history.

In 2000, the book The Incense Trade Route 2000 was published. Since then, many changes occurred in the terrain, knowledge, research and the geo-political situation, in light of the peace treaties between Israel and other counties in the Middle East. The most prominent researchers of the Incense Trade Route have come together to write a new and updated edition.

Zionists without Borders tells the story of the Halutz movement in Poland and its role in helping the Labor movement rise to the leadership of the Zionist Movement in the interwar period. It describes the founding of a mass national and socialist movement, which changed the face of the Zionist map. The leaders of the Labor movement in Israel established strong ties with pioneers from Poland, thus making the Halutz a cross-border movement, connecting Jews by means of politics, nationalism and socialism.