Trusting the Process offers a fresh approach for anyone working or dealing with older individuals by employing new and exciting custom methodologies in psychodrama, particularly for clients with Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia. This book offers a general explanation of the use of psychodrama by giving an overview of the therapeutic use of drama in all its forms, clearly explaining the concepts and methods and describing the rationale of every intervention while also following a group over six years with precious documentation of the group process. It addresses the main concerns of those who suffer from dementia - adjusting to a new and changing level of functioning, fostering a sense of belonging, preserving their innate dignity and redefining relationships and roles. This practical guide will help therapists, social-workers, family and other care-givers, teachers and medical professionals working with older clients seeking comfort from the loneliness of old-age and dementia.

Selected articles from current issue: Amir Banbaji | More Figurative than all Other Songs. A Study of the Pre-Maskilic History of the Hebrew Melitsah Nurit Barnea-Bernheim | ‘Total Love’: The Story of Miriam in ‘The Tale of the Scribe’ by S.Y. Agnon Neta Stahl | ‘How Come I Love the Ugav?’: The Ugav in Uri Zvi Grinberg’s Poetry Roy Greenwald | Kin of Dust: On Al Hakhmot Derakhim by Avot Yeshurun

Within the Babylonian Talmud are dozens of stories depicting sharp confrontations between the Amoraim, the Talmudic sages. These narratives portray the charged relationships among the sages, the emergence of conflict, and the profound emotional harm that results from it. Why do conflicts among the creators of Talmudic literature occupy such a central literary place? This book examines these stories as a distinct literary corpus. The analysis shows that the conflicts consistently center on one domain: injury to personal honor. They are also marked by a characteristic plot structure, in which conflict develops unintentionally and escalates uncontrollably, leading to a rupture between the characters. Using tools from narrative theory and comparative poetics, the book explores how these stories operate. They draw the reader into a web of misunderstandings and communicative failures, making simple moral judgment difficult. Instead, they direct attention to the inner and interpersonal worlds of the characters, and to the literary construction of the Talmudic study house as a space of mutual dependence and identity formation.

MA‘ARAG: The Israel Annual of Psychoanalysis is a democratic, refereed annual publication, evaluated and edited by academicians, intellectuals in related fields, and clinicians. The journal, dedicated to research in psychoanalytic theory, practice and criticism, is the fruit of the initiative and cooperation of the Sigmund Freud Center for the Study and Research in Psychoanalysis of the Hebrew University, the Israeli Association for Self Psychology and the Study of Subjectivity, Israel Society for Analytical Psychology, Israel Psychoanalytic Society, Clinical Division of the Israel Psychological Association, Israel Institute for Group Analysis, Israel Institute of Jungian Psychology, The Sigmund Freud Chair of Psychoanalysis of the Department of Psychology, The Hebrew University, Tel-Aviv Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, The Winnicott Center in Israel and the New Israeli Jungian Association. From this issue: Anat Tzur Mahalel | "THE STILL-TENDER MEMORY OF CHILDHOOD": SIGMUND FREUD AND WALTER BENJAMIN ON IMAGES OF CHILDHOOD Orit Yushinksy | THE ETHICS OF MEMORY AND FORGETTING Merav Roth | LIVING AFTER DEATH: FROM MELANCHOLIC DEADLOCK TO SYMBOLIC CONTINUITY Yael Khenin | CONTAINMENT CREATED THROUGH SPIRAL MOTION: THE COMPLEX INTERACTION BETWEEN EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL REALITY IN TIMES OF WAR, LOSS AND TURMOIL Nilly Szor | INSCRIBING PAIN: THE PHENOMENON OF OCTOBER 7 TATTOOS AS AN EXPRESSION OF PERSONAL AND COLLECTIVE TRAUMA Michal Bat Or | PSYCHOANALYTIC THOUGHTS ON WRAPPING AS A PSYCHIC MOVEMENT IN ART AND ART THERAPY IN THE CONTEXT OF COLLECTIVE TRAUMA Basmat Klein | "MEMORY FREEZE-FRAMES": ON PHOTOGRAPHY AND PSYCHIC PROCESSING Tammuz Aflalo | THE HOME NESTING METAPHOR: PHANTASY, THE UNCANNY, AND THE PSYCHIC POSITION Shai Levinger and Nurit Perl | REFLECTIONS ON TRANSFORMATIVE PROCESSES OF THE SELF IN PSYCHOANALYTICALLY-ORIENTED MUSIC THERAPY Alon Roe | THE ROLE OF MOVEMENT IN ESTABLISHING THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL IN FREUD

Simon Bernfeld (1860–1940) was one of the most popular Jewish European writers of the early twentieth century. A prolific bestselling author in a broad range of fields of history and Jewish studies, and a pivotal figure in the renaissance of Jewish national culture. His oeuvre encompassed dozens of books, hundreds of essays, and thousands of daily columns published in Hebrew and German. Yet despite his vast influence, Bernfeld remained outside the mainstream. His prominent presence until the late 1920s stands in stark contrast to his subsequent obscurity. This gap prompts for an examination of whether his “forgetting” was deliberate and connected to the historical narrative he sought to promote. His political views, expressed in his sermons as a modern rabbi in Belgrade, in his polemic essays criticizing both the rabbinate and the Zionist Congress, were similarly marginalized. On The Margins: A Biography of Simon Bernfeld unfolds a biography woven into the history of the Jewish intelligentsia circles in Galicia, his birthplace, and Berlin, where he lived for many years until his death. His correspondence with a wide array of figures reviles the emergence of Hebrew mass media and a national canon. Through spatial and cultural analysis, exploring themes of Jewish imperial relations and intra-European migration, the book maps the Jewish intellectual networks of Galicia and the Pale of Settlement, examining their impact on the formation of Jewish cultural and intellectual power centers at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

A Guide to Jewish Warsaw 1938 is an extraordinary book, describing a place that no longer exists: Jewish Warsaw was, as is well known, utterly destroyed in World War II. And yet, the book seeks to pretend as if everything is still intact, and it is possible to go on a tour following it or embark on an imaginary journey. Every detail is based on information pertaining to Jewish Warsaw in 1938 from countless sources: newspapers, literature, travel guides, written and oral memoirs, archives, interviews, films, and exhibitions. A Guide to Jewish Warsaw 1938 seeks to reveal the beauty hidden from the eye in the largest Jewish city in Europe before the war. The acquaintance with Jewish Warsaw is made through general and useful introductions, describing its history, its beliefs and opinions, its unique language, and its tastes and smells. At the center of the book are seven walking tours, revealing the city's delights: the antique bookstores on Świętokrzyska Street; the buffet at the Writers and Journalists Association at Tłomacka 13; the "Maccabi" swimming pool and the Bund's sports field; cantorial music at the Great Synagogue and Hasidic melodies in the Modrzyc courtyard in the resort town of Otwock; the summer terrace at the Rubinchik cafe, opening onto Krasiński Garden, "the Jewish Garden"; modern marble sculptures in the cemetery; the "Tel Aviv" cafe on Nowolipie Street; the treasures in the Jewish Museum; courtyards that are a world of their own on Nalewki Street and its surroundings, and much more.

The Italian commedia dell’arte troupes roamed across Europe for two hundred years, captivating wide and diverse audiences. The performances of the commedia dell’arte were improvised, as the actors executed on stage a concise outline of a play, called "scenario". This book presents, for the first time in Hebrew translation, complete scenarios written by one of the greatest men of the Italian Renaissance theater, Flaminio Scala. The scenarios are accompanied by annotations and a comprehensive essay that reviews Scala’s life and work, and presents his scenario as a perfect recipe for comic improvisation. The book will therefore be of interest to theatre enthusiasts and scholars alike, and will provide directors, actors, and acting students with new and refreshing tools for staging comedies.

Muslim beliefs have inspired charitable giving for over fourteen centuries, yet Islamic history has rarely been examined from this perspective. In Charity in Islamic Societies , Amy Singer explains the basic concepts and institutions of Muslim charity: the obligatory annual payment of zakat together with voluntary donations of all sizes, undertaken at every level of society, and across the span of individual lifetimes. Charitable endowments – established by rulers, wealthy individuals, and even those of more modest means – shaped Muslim societies, cultures, and landscapes in ever era. This book demonstrates how historical circumstances, social status, gender, age, and other factors interacted with religious ideals to produce a vast array of charitable practices, from the early days of Islam to the present. Relying on evidence from written texts, buildings, images, and objects to anchor the discussions in each chapter, the author explores the motivations for charity, its impact on the rich and the poor, and the politicization of giving, arguing that the study of philanthropy affords a unique prism through which to examine the past.

In this issue: Diego Rotman | The Sukkah and Its Double: Copies, Variants, and the Stereoscopic Image Shani Tamari Matan | The First Hebrew Dance-Gathering at Kibbutz Dalia (1944): Decoding of an Archival and Choreographic Event Hagar Salamon and Carmela Abdar | Glory of the “Sets”: Praxis and Meaning of Dressing Children in Haredi Families in Israel Ravit Raufman | The October 7 Massacre in Light of the Folktale “The Wolf and Kid”: A Realization of Primal Fantasy Ronni Shaked | Commemoration and Conflict: How the Palestinian Calendar Shapes Identity and Resistance

Usury: Moneylending, Money and Society in Rabbinic Literature is a study of the moneylending norms in the early stratum of rabbinic literature. It shows how these norms use the language of legal formalism to construct a community of status-equals, into which rabbinic adherents can buy their entry by making the correct investment choices. Placing these norms in a broad historical and intercultural context, it is a fresh look at Jewish moneylending norms, the first in over 30 years.

Yehuda Jud Ne'eman's latest book, Auschwitz Capital of the 20th Century , presents the work of one of the most important scholars of Israeli cinema, who was also a groundbreaking director and creator. In this book, Ne'eman shares with his readers his involvement as a creator and intellectual in the establishment of Israeli cinema as a space for central artistic, cultural, and political discourse, whose significant contribution to Israeli culture and society is beyond doubt. The book includes two parts that complement each other. The first part contains an innovative and original discussion that maps the history of Israeli cinema by comparing it to cinema that began during the yishuv period. During this period, cinema was committed to the Zionist narrative, and the work is characterized as a continuous conflict between avant-garde and ideology, similar to Soviet avant-garde cinema. Within the framework of this comparison, Ne'eman emphasizes the preoccupation with modernist cinema of the "New Sensibility," a term coined years ago, and refers to films created by Israeli directors following the French "New Wave," including his own films. In doing so, he claims that between Israeli folk film and the modernism of the "New Sensibility" films, there was in fact cooperation in opposition to the establishment and Zionist ideology. The second part of the book discusses films made in the State of Israel and during the yishuv period that deal with the representation of the Holocaust as a central test case. Among other things, Ne'eman shows that the attempt to heal the horrors of the Holocaust in a simplistic national way expresses feelings of guilt and offers a limited solution to the problems of the survivors.

The Two Mekhiltot on the Jethro Portion (Exodus 18) is, in a sense, a complement to Menahem Kahana's previous book, The Two Mekhiltot on the Amalek Portion . The book is based on new text editions of Mekhilta d'Rabbi Ishmael and Mekhilta d'Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai on the Jethro portion. It includes a systematic and detailed commentary on the exegeses of the Mekhiltot, shedding new light on many exegeses – their literal meaning, their real and historical context, and the worldviews reflected in them. The book reviews the previous editions of The Two Mekhiltot on the Jethro Portion and presents the important contribution of fragments from the Cairo Geniza that were discovered after the previous editions were published. It compares the traditions of the two Mekhiltot in their language, style, and content, and establishes the insight that in the Jethro portion, as in the Amalek portion, the tradition of Mekhilta d'Rabbi Ishmael generally takes precedence.