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.

The New Arabic-Hebrew Dictionary is a comprehensive reference of the Arabic language throughout history, with a focus on its use in spoken and written media. Given Arabic's rich literary tradition spanning over 1,400 years, the language naturally incorporates words and expressions rooted in ancient literary strata, including the Qur'an, classical poetry, proverbs, the Hadith, jurisprudential literature, Adab literature, and historical texts. Terms and expressions from the realm of Islamic theology and jurisprudence, which were considered archaic 50 or 60 years ago, have regained prominence with the rise of fundamentalist Islam in the 1970s. This dictionary offers translations and explanations for these terms as well. After publishing the full dictionary in a large, 700-page edition, we decided it would be useful to publish a more concise version—smaller, portable, and easier to handle. This edition differs from the full dictionary in that it omits examples and comments, as well as archaic entries from ancient poetry, the Hadith, and jurisprudential literature. To the full edition of The New Arabic-Hebrew Dictionary

In The Taste of Hidden Things Sara Sviri weaves a tapestry in which Sufi motifs and images are highlighted: the perfume of Attar's and Rumi's poetry, the boldness of Ibn al-Arabi's mystical speculation, the ecstatic experiences and dreams of old and modern seekers, and the richness of the Naqshbandi masters, past and present. A special place is given to al-Hakim at-Tirmidhi, a ninth century mystic from Central Asia. Many passages from his work, including his wife’s teaching dreams, are published here for the first time in Hebrew.

A New Orient is an in-depth historical study on the history of Zionist and Israeli Oriental Studies, particularly the study of Arabic, Islam, and Middle Eastern history, as a field of knowledge rooted in 19th and early 20th century German universities. Most of its founders in Israel were German-Jewish scholars who emerged from the Central European Orientalist tradition, and introduced this field of knowledge to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem – and subsequently to the entire Israeli academic system. Through the analysis of rich archival documentation, the book outlines the complex process of migrating Orientalist knowledge. It focuses on what happened to the research and the researchers themselves when their encounter with the Orient shifted from a textual-philological one, following the traditions of German academia, to an actual encounter, fraught with contradictions and tensions, against the backdrop of the intensifying Arab-Jewish conflict. The book sheds new light on the development of academic research as a whole in Mandate Palestine and the early years of Israel, serving as a rich case study for analyzing the complex relationship between 'pure' scientific work and political, social, and cultural issues. It also offers a new perspective on the roots of the Arab-Jewish conflict and the role scientific knowledge played in shaping it. The book won the Mordechai Ish Shalom Prize for a debut book in the history of the Land of Israel in 2025, and the book received commendation from the Shazar (2024) and Am Veolam (2025) award committees.

The book contains the first-ever Hebrew translation of a collection of medieval Arabic stories, entitled The Hundred and One Nights . The chapters of the book deal with a variety of issues, for instance, the work’s origins and history, extant versions and manuscripts, language, material culture, poetics, the ideas and themes reflected in the stories, and Jewish background elements that can occasionally be discerned in some of the stories.

In his two masterworks, Mishneh Torah and The Guide for the Perplexed , Maimonides explicitly articulates a dual crisis: the disintegration of the Halakhic tradition and the erosion of the esoteric knowledge of the Torah. This study presents a novel interpretation of Maimonides’ crisis proclamations and the narratives linked to them. It primarily analyzes how Maimonides crafted a discourse of crisis, illuminating this through a comparison with earlier discourses in the Jewish canon and parallel crisis narratives in Islamic sources. The key question it seeks to answer is: why did Maimonides prominently employ this discourse in his works? The exploration of crisis discourse in Maimonides’ work reveals how he introduces a marked internal tension in each of his two major works. On the one hand, he declares his commitment to both the halakhic tradition and the esoteric knowledge tradition, even as he retrospectively reshapes them. On the other hand, he emphasizes the urgent need for reforming these traditions to confront the rupture they have undergone. This study demonstrates that in both Mishneh Torah and The Guide for the Perplexed , Maimonides portrays the process of breaking and refashioning tradition as an act of loyalty to these traditions during a time of crisis.

This book delves into the narrative of Fethullah Gülen and his movement, which essentially encapsulates the broader story of Turkey. The book explores the origins of this movement that undeniably left an unprecedented impact on Turkey, surpassing the influence of any preceding religious movement. This movement, centered around the figure of Gülen, born in 1938, gained prominence mainly during the 1990s when it unfurled its banner of inter-religious tolerance. Gülen actively advocated for the establishment of a global network of schools and even universities, aiming to cultivate a new generation of devout Muslims who were educated and inclined towards Western ideals. By the late 1990s, Gülen's health issues led him to relocate to the United States, ostensibly. With the ascent of the AKP party to power, connections burgeoned between the movement's members and the party, particularly its leader Erdoğan. This mutually beneficial relationship faced turbulence at the onset of the second decade of the 2000s, culminating in the attempted religious coup in 2016, during which Gülen and his movement were accused. Subsequently, Gülen emerged as the foremost adversary of Turkey, rendering his return to the country implausible.This book illuminates the intricacies of the Gülenist movement and endeavors to unravel the persona of its leader. The text delves into the origins of the Gülenist movement, its underlying ideology, and its enduring significance within Turkey. By employing comprehensive research techniques and utilizing archival materials in various languages Dr. Aviv provides insight in an objective as possible way into the dynamic interplay between religion and state in Turkey, as well as the ascent and decline of religious movements within the nation.

The New Arabic-Hebrew Dictionary is a dictionary of the Arabic language across the ages, with focus on the language of the spoken and written media. The dictionary also reflects the rich literary history of the Arabic language, of more than 1,400 years, including the Qur'an, ancient poetry, proverbs, the Hadith and jurisprudential literature, Adab literature and historical literature. Terms and expressions from the sphere of Islamic theology and jurisprudence, which were considered archaic 50 or 60 years ago, have come back into use following the rise of fundamentalist Islam in the 1970s, and this new dictionary provides translations and explanations for these terms as well. With over 44,000 entries, this dictionary is today the most comprehensive, up-to-date and reliable dictionary of contemporary Arabic. User-friendly: full vocalization of all Arabic and Hebrew entries. About 6,000 examples from Arabic literature of all eras and from the press clarify the use of words. Over 4,000 grammatical and historical notes. The New Arabic-Hebrew Dictionary is intended for university students and scholars, school pupils and teachers and anyone interested in the Arabic language. To the concise edition of The New Arabic-Hebrew Dictionary

The book seeks to examine Trust as a culture-dependant concept, offers a definintion for it, places it within a general framework of the pair of the Overt and the Hidden, and characterises it within Arabic-speaking Islamic culture. The book reviews the expressions of trust in a variety of fields in Arabic-speaking Islamic cultures, distills from them their common principles, compares them to their counterparts in Western cultures, chiefly American, and makes suggestions for making decision about it.

Who set the time in eighteenth-century Istanbul and how? When did government officials arrive at their offices? How did new technologies like the train and the steamer affect conventions of punctuality and lateness and what were the social and political implications of waiting? This book analyzes the "temporal culture" of the late Ottoman Empire and follows its transformation from the late eighteenth century to the establishment of the Turkish Republic. In an attempt to cope with the rapid changes that swept the region during that period, various bodies of the Ottoman state began to subject work routines to mechanical clocks and schedules in order to achieve higher levels of regularity, punctuality and efficiency. A new time web gradually spread from governmental facilities such as military bases, bureaus and schools to traffic arteries and city centers, subjecting more and more people to clock time and the new conventions linked to it. These changes, in turn, raised difficulties, tensions and even resistance, which were related not only to practical problems of coordination, but also to questions of identity, ideology and cultural orientation. The clocks of the early twentieth century thus showed Ottoman time with all its complexity.

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.

During the last decades there have occurred significant upheavals in the political and military position of many religious and ethnic communities in the Middle East and North Africa. Communities which had been rejected and discriminated for decades rose to power or strengthened their political position in their countries by means of military struggles. Meanwhile, in Israel/Palestine, the ethnical-religious Jewish minority has become a ruling majority, while excluding the former Arab-Muslim-Sunni majority, following the wars of 1948 and 1976. This book examines these processes.