In the past, prayers in the synagogue were adorned with many liturgical poems, piyyuṭim, in all the various Jewish communities, both on the major festivals and on many Sabbaths over the course of the year. Manuscripts preserve thousands of piyyuṭim, only some of which are familiar today, and some of which have never been published until our generation. This book collects more than two hundred piyyuṭim, which the Jews of Ashkenaz (German-speaking lands) and Northern France used to recite on wedding Sabbaths and Sabbaths on which circumcisions occurred. Dozens of poets wrote piyyuṭim for these festive occasions. Most of the piyyuṭim were written by German or French poets (between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries), but some of them were written by poets in the Land of Israel, Italy, or Spain. Some of the compositions were written in honor of lifecycle celebrations occurring in the families of the poets themselves. Aside from the major popular genres of Ashkenazic piyyuṭ (yoẓer, ofan, and zulat, in the blessings surrounding the morning Shema), the corpus in this volume also contains representatives of many unusual genres of piyyuṭ; this prominently demonstrates that on Sabbaths of family celebrations, the poets of Ashkenaz and Northern France wanted to include piyyuṭim in many different positions in the liturgy, more varied than usual. Especially prominent is the large unit of piyyuṭim that were recited surrounding the bridegroom’s ‘aliyya to the Torah: reshut (“invitation”) poems for the bridegroom and his groomsmen to go up for their ‘aliyyot, songs in honor of the bridegroom after his ‘aliyya, poems surrounding the reading of Ve’avraham Zaqen (a passage from the Torah that is read in honor of the bridegroom — today only in Sephardic synagogues, but in the past also in Ashkenazic), and Mi Shebberakh poets blessing the bridegroom after his ‘aliyya. Some of the poems are in Aramaic. The book includes also piyyuṭim that were recited (not specifically on the Sabbath) at the actual wedding and circumcision rituals, and piyyuṭim designated for the Grace After Meals of the festive meals in honor of the wedding and circumcision. The Ashkenazic poets were extremely learned, and they included large amounts of material from the lore (aggada) of the Talmud and Midrash. The late Prof. Jonah Fraenkel was the one that gathered the piyyuṭim for the Sabbaths of the year recited in the Ashkenazic and Northern French communities, as a continuation of his series of Ashkenazic maḥzorim for the Three Festivals and those for the High Holidays edited by Dr. Daniel Goldschmidt. This volume of Piyyuṭim for Wedding and Circumcision Sabbaths is the first in a series whose purpose is to publish all piyyuṭim for all Sabbaths that were recited in the lands of Ashkenaz and Northern France. Dr. Gabriel Wasseman, a scholar of piyyuṭ, completed Fraenkel’s work on this volume, indicating textual variants from many dozens of manuscripts, and writing a detailed commentary on the piyyuṭim. He also wrote a long introduction to the volume, which, among other things, offers a birds’-eye view of all the piyyuṭim, organized into their specific genres, and traces the development of the customs of reciting these piyyuṭim in the various communities over the course of centuries. Avraham Fraenkel added chapters to the introduction, which present a description of the customs of weddings and of circumcisions in Ashkenaz and Northern France, on the basis of books of minhagim (“customs”) and prayerbooks from the Ashkenazic and Northern French communities.

Kobez Al Yad , an annual of the Mekize Nirdamim Society, is a forum for the publication from manuscript sources of ancient texts in Jewish studies that are shorter than book-length. The articles in this issue: Shulamit Elizur | Rahitim and Siluk for Yom Kippur about the revelation of God to Elijah at Horeb Dan Greenberger and Y. Zvi Stampfer | ' On the Obligation of Prayer ' by Rav Saadia Gaon Eli Gurfinkel | The Reason for the Shew-Bread Table and the Candelbara ( Menora ) from Rabbi Samuel Ibn Tibon Yossef Elizur | Rabbi Joseph Hayyun's Commentary on the Book of Zephania Yohanan Kapah | Rabbi Joseph Hayyun's Commentary on the Book of Haggai Yaron Nisenholz | The Proclamations of the Great Rabbinical Court of Prague in the 18 th Century

A letter written during the destruction of the communities of Galicia in the spring of 1943 by Solomea Ochs, née Luft, found among the possessions of a Wehrmacht general and later featured in an exhibition in contemporary Berlin, transforms in the hands of historian Ram Ben-Shalom into a wide-ranging documentary novel. Solomea's letter, in her own handwriting, describes not only the horrors of the massacre and extermination but also touches on the depths of humiliation and devastation felt by the Jews kneeling before their killers. This is the voice of mighty force of nature that has been silenced; something stronger than poetry and lamentation, even if it will surely be remembered alongside the great Jewish laments of the Middle Ages and Bialik's "Upon the Slaughter." Ram Ben-Shalom discovered that this letter is none other than a letter from his aunt to her family before her murder, and that the letter was kept in the drawer of his father's desk at their home in Tel Aviv. From here, a complex search journey emerged, with surprising dimensions that accumulate into a picture of distinctly epic proportions. With craftsmanship, Ben-Shalom weaves a story that is at once a poetics of life, a cultural critique, and an unparalleled delicate analysis of the depths of the selfhood of Israeli Judaism.

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.

Polin , established in 1986 by the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies, has acquired a well-deserved reputation for publishing authoritative material on all aspects of Polish Jewry. Contributions are drawn from many disciplines—history, politics, religious studies, literature, linguistics, sociology, art, and architecture—and from a wide variety of viewpoints. Polin is published by the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. It is sponsored by the Institute of Polish–Jewish Studies, which is an associated institute of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and of the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University College London, and by the American Association for Polish–Jewish Studies, which is linked with the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University.

Rav Kook’s theological positions have moulded the attitudes and beliefs of generations of religious Zionists. Newly published writings reveal his innovative approaches to such key topics as non-Jewish religions, morality, heresy, and animal sacrifice. Lucidly presented here, these ideas will foment much discussion and shape new ideological directions among Rav Kook’s followers. Rav Kook (1865–1935), the first chief rabbi of pre-state Israel, was a revered thinker whose ideas were in the vanguard of religious Zionist ideology. His theological positions have continued to mould the attitudes and beliefs of successive generations. Newly published writings, however, reveal ideas that have not yet entered mainstream consciousness. Marc Shapiro has grappled with the complexity of the language of these difficult Hebrew texts and identified themes he sees as of critical importance for modern Jewish Orthodoxy. His study will be welcomed as an attempt to make these teachings more broadly accessible despite the complexity of Kook’s exposition. A key development in Kook’s thinking is that he points to the religious significance of non-Jewish religions, and even raises the possibility that non-Jews may also have experienced their own religious revelations. This is a major departure from the traditional rabbinic approach. Another innovative concept is "valorization of the masses," a view that recognizes that basic morality has been preserved in a purer form among the uneducated pious masses than among learned scholars. He similarly reconsiders the nature of heresy and dogma and develops the idea of the "unintentional heretic," a category that could be said to include many in the modern world who are no longer tied to traditional religious understandings. Perhaps most controversially for Orthodox Jewish circles, he also presents an innovative understanding of the animal sacrifice of Temple ritual that allows for its abolition in messianic times. Taken together, these ideas will reverberate, foment much discussion, and shape new ideological directions in the world of religious Zionism.

The Other War articulates the anatomy of World War II. For that purpose, it takes an unusual perspective: instead of following the conventional horizontal historical axis, from Nazi Germany eastwards and westwards, it directs the view from the global south to the north. Both axes, the continental and the colonial, were, of course, not disconnected; to expose their intersections, this book lays the focus on Jewish Palestine. The focus on Palestine, as part of a broad British defense parameter protecting the Indian subcontinent, reveals the entanglement of two conflicts: the European war, that escalated into a world war, and the Jewish-Arab-British war over Palestine. In their discreet competition, each of these conflicts remained, for its rival, a foreign war.

With the social and cultural upheavals of early modern Europe, rabbis were constantly struggling to preserve Jewish tradition. Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi (1658—1718), the independent-minded chief rabbi of Amsterdam, came to be regarded as one of the leading halakhic authorities of this tumultuous era. The battles he waged changed Jewish practice in his lifetime and came to define rabbinic norms in the decades that followed, with relevance to the present day. The challenges for a leading rabbi in a time of ferment were many. With advances in communication and the early stirrings of political emancipation in Jewish and secular society, how could one establish halakhic authority? How were rabbis to navigate the new reality in which mystical texts—once the exclusive province of the elite—became accessible to the masses? As geographical boundaries shifted and cultural barriers crumbled, how could one build a bridge between the worlds of Ashkenaz and Sepharad? How were the keepers of tradition meant to respond to the religious laxity that accompanied acculturation? And how could the religious establishment engage sectarians in general, and crypto-Sabbatians in particular? Hakham Tsevi didn’t always win the battles he fought, but his arguments have endured. Products of his fierce independence, some of his responsa have attained near-canonical status., Today’s halakhic discussions of such contemporary issues as brain death and artificial intelligence often begin with the words he committed to posterity. Hundreds of years after his death, Hakham Tsevi and his work remain at the frontier of halakhic discourse.

The book relates the story of the Jewish movement in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s as perceived by its participants. On the basis of interviews with almost 300 activists from over 60 cities, it portrays the movement's evolution in all its facets. It examines the activist's personality and background and the path he or she took prior to becoming active, including the presentation of documents to the authorities, that branded him or her as a social pariah and potential traitor. The book discusses the emergence of a refusenik community that enabled their struggle with the all-powerful regime to leave the country while maintaining a "normal" existence for an unpredictable duration. Two chapters view the variety of instruments to which the activists had recourse as they developed the tactics and strategy of that struggle, while three final chapters review specific topics that were an inseparable part of the movement's story. They cover the confrontation with the KGB – the persistent shadowing, interrogations, arrests, trials and camps; the return to Judaism in the search for roots and identity; and the movement's links with the Jewish and non-Jewish world outside.

This volume of Hispania Judaica Bulletin presents the first collection of studies dedicated to the impact of the Iberian converso crisis on the interpretation of Paul’s life and teachings. We believe this to have been a significant historical phenomenon—one which we may call Converso Paulinisms. By way of introduction, we briefly present the main developments from which this concept derives its rationale and the productive end we hope it can serve. We begin with the lessons we learned from recent developments in Pauline studies and thereadings of Paul by Church authorities, theologians, and contemporary thinkers. Then, we move on to consider their implications in Late Medieval and Early Modern setting of the converso phenomenon.

Can literature be given a concrete home? The story of the establishment of the Gnazim Archive of Modern Hebrew Literature recounts the attempt to institutionalize this body of literature in the context of the founding of the State of Israel—while simultaneously challenging its demands. This book reveals the persistent tension between the “Republic of Letters” and the nation-state, as well as the painful cost of realizing the ideal and embodiment of the metaphor of “a home for literature” within the “national home.” The Stitches of Hebrewness traces the history of the Gnazim Archive both in its own right and as a mirror of the formation of the canon of modern Hebrew literature. Like any mirror, the archive reflects reality as it is—and in reverse: The canon is thus revealed in a new light, with its erasures, rewritings, and repressions. Perhaps more than anything, the book unfolds the story of a culture and society grappling with a moment of crisis between three overlapping yet conflicting temporal frameworks: Jewish time, Hebrew time, and Israeli time.

Korot publishes original articles related to medical history covering medicine in Jewish and Hebrew sources, the history of Jewish physicians, medicine in Palestine and Israel and medicine during the Nazi era. There are shorter historical notes on these topics, book reviews and comments on important developments in medical history. Articles are mainly in English but with a significant Hebrew section.