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 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.

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.

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.

The book The State of Israel and Its Institutions in the Halachic Thought of Rabbi Shlomo Goren reviews the diverse subjects with which Rabbi Goren dealt as a halakhic ruler: the halakhic status of the State of Israel, the concept of sovereignty, military and war laws, immigration absorption, changes in prayer and blessings, and others. The book describes his original, and sometimes unusual, positions within the history of Israel, and his desire to take part in shaping this history.

The Second Commandment’s injunction against making graven images and likenesses resonates in all facets of Jewish visuality throughout the generations. Although Jews have always created and consumed art, the attitude to figural art –anthropomorphic and zoomorphic representations – has oscillated, like a pendulum, between strict prohibition and full permissibility. Figureless Art traces a lesser-known chapter in the history of Jewish art – a period governed by the swing to extreme stringency that left its mark on Late Antique synagogues in the Land of Israel. This anti-figural trend manifested in the avoidance of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic depictions and in the deliberate obliteration of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures on stone carvings and mosaic carpets that adorned the synagogues. What is the meaning of this strict trend? Did it emerge from within the Jewish world or was it stimulated, conversely, by external influences? Who was responsible for the effacement of the figures in the synagogues and when did these iconoclastic events occur? This book examines these phenomena through a broad historical, religious, and cultural perspective, based on visual and literary sources from Late Antique and early Muslim Palestine.

The book seeks to understand resistance as a meeting point among various political streams that operate in Lebanon and the development of resistance from military action into a project which is beyond culture in the narrow sense, into a hegemony that encompasses all sides of life. The book links the historical development of the Lebanese political system together with the many years of radical Shi'ite political thought in the entire Middle East region, with an emphasis on the influence of leftist and revolutionary secular thought on Shi'ite radical thought in general and that of Hezbollah in particular. The book reviews the various "hegemonic mechanisms" through which Hezbollah rules its hegemony over Lebanon. A hegemony that is not (only) a result of coercion by force, but also (mostly) the result of dominating the discourse of resistance on the Lebanese and regional arena in general.