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. Contents Avishai Bar Asher Isaac b. Shelomo Ibn Sahula Commentary on Psalms Leore Sachs-Shmueli The Beginning of Sefer Toldot Adam by Joseph of Hamadhan Eric Lawee and Doron Forte The Book of Strictures on Rashi's Torah Commentary Ascribed to Rabad Ofer Elior R.Shalom 'Anabi's Commentary on the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah Yohanan Kapah R. Joseph Hayyun's Commentary on Amos

This issue contains the following essays : Menahem Kahana - The Good in the Sight of Heaven and Right in the Sight of Man Yair Furstenberg - From Tradition to Controversy: New Modes of Transmission in the Teachings of Early Rabbis Gideon Bohak - A New Genizah Fragment of Toledoth Yeshu in Aramaic Yehoshua Granat - To Alexandria, with the sound of bell and pomegranate: Yehuda Halevi’s Arrival in Alexandria in Light of a Newly Identified Poem by Aaron Ibn Al-ʿAmmānī Shulamit Elizur - Between Poetic and Statutory Formulations: A Note on the History of the Ha-Maʿariv ʿAravim Benediction Menahem Kister - ‘The Lord of Hosts is His Name in Ha-Maʿariv ʿAravim Benediction: Metamorphoses and Erosion of Benediction Formulae Joshua Blau - Review of: W. Randall Garr and Steven Ellis Fassberg (eds.), A Handbook of Biblical Hebrew , I: Periods, Corpora, and Reading Traditions (xii + 228 pp.); II: Selected Texts (vi + 136 pp.), Winona Lake, IN 2016

Articles: Haim Weiss | ‘From That Hour the Doom Was Sealed’: On Class Reversals in the ‘Legends of Destruction’ Vered Tohar | ‘Rabbi Hanina and the Frog’: An Ancient Ashkenazi story Adapted for Children by Asher Barash Lital Lieberman-Avital | ‘Take the Illness and Give the Medicine’: Removal by Salt – Traditional Women’s Healing Practice on a Socio-Cultural Borderline Yuval Harari | Wonders and Sorceries in Yeruham: A Magical-Political Rashomon Dalia Marx | Welcoming the Sabbath in the Kibbutzim: Secular Religiosity Narmina Abdulaev | Narration Surfing: Folklore Published on the Internet and Its Analysis Shany Kotler-Fux | ‘Hitler-Pants’ Parodies: Folklore in Israel’s Virtual Sphere Reviews: Aharon Maman | [Review of:] Yosef Tobi and Tsivia Tobi, Judeo-Arabic Literature in Tunisia, 1850–1950, Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2014, 367 pp. Jacqueline Laznow | [Review of:] Tsivia Tobi, From Bride to Daughter-in-Law: The World of Jewish Women in Southern Tunisia and Its Reflection in Popular Literature, Jerusalem 2016, 344 + [iv] pp. [Hebrew] Tzila Zan-Bar Zur | [Review of:] Idit Pintel-Ginsberg, The Angel and the Tcholent: Food Representations in Folktales, Haifa 2016, 176 pp. [Hebrew] English Abstracts

This issue contains the following essays: Ariel Seri-Levi | Sělîḥâ in the Priestly Literature David Henshke | ‘It is Joy for Him’: On Additions to the Mishnah and Their Developments Ella Tovia | A Different Version of Bavli Sabbath and Its Implication for the Final Stage of Its Redaction Mordechai Akiva Friedman | Repetition of the Evening ʿAmida on Festivals and Special Sabbaths in the Custom of Eretz Israel Uri Safrai and Uri Ehrlich | The Ancient Version of the Maʿariv ʿAravim Blessing in Cairo Genizah Prayer-Books Mosh Idel | R. Nehemiah ben Shlomo’s Commentaries on the Alphabet of Metatron – Additional Inquiries English Abstracts

This volume contains the following essays: Adiel Schremer | Parvanka: The Mandaean Context of an Anti-Heretical Polemic in the Babylonian Talmud Shlomi Efrati | A Quire of Chapters of Sanhedrin and Megillah, Part II: A Unique Textual Tradition of the Babylonian Talmud Shulamit Elizur | Ke-ha- yom ha-ze bi-Yerushalayim: The Origins, Distribution and Evolution of a Prayer Marking the Conclusions of Ceremonies Vered Raziel-Kretzmer | How Late was the Palestinian Rite Practiced in Egypt? New Evidence from the Cairo Genizah Joshua Blau | Review of: Alexey Eliyahu Yuditsky, A Grammar of the Hebrew of Origen’s Transcriptions, Jerusalem: The Academy of the Hebrew Language, 2017 [Hebrew] English Abstracts

This volume presents twelve scholarly chapters by Prof. Ilan Eldar, discussing ancient Hebrew vocalization methods and reading traditions (pronunciation and configuration) among Jewish communities, especially among ancient Ashkenazi communities. These chapters have been published over the years as separate essays, and are compiled here for the first time. This volume contains the following chapters: Chapter 1: The Palestino-Tiberian Vocalization Chapter 2: The Vocalization of the Passover Haggada in Mahzor Vitry Chapter 3: The Sources of the Hebrew Reading Traditions in the Middle Ages Chapter 4: The Research of Oral Reading Traditions of Hebrew Chapter 5: The Hebrew Reading Traditions of the Baghdadi Community Chapter 6: Doublets in the Language Traditions of Hebrew Chapter 7: The Pre-Ashkenazi Reading Tradition Chapter 8: The Sources of Ashkenazi Reading Tradition Chapter 9: Vocalization Systems and Pronunciation Traditions of Hebrew Chapter 10: The Contribution of Prof. Shlomo Morag to the Study of the Hebrew Language Heritage of the Yemenite Jews Chapter 11: Neologisms in the Piyyutim of the Ashkenazi Mahzorim Chapter 12: Post-Biblical Forms in the Ashkenazi Tradition as Reflected by the Vocalization of the Worms Mahzor

This issue contains the following essays: Ronnie Goldstein | YHWH’s Inheritance and His Enthronement Shraga Bar-On and Yakir Paz | The Land of God to the Sons of God: Deuteronomy 32: 8-9 and the Inheritance of the Land of Israel Shlomi Efrati | A Quire of Chapters of Sanhedrin and Megillah, Part 1: A Unique Textual Tradition of the Babylonian Talmud Mordechai Akiva Friedman | The Shabbat Evening Prayer in the Palestinian Congregation of Fustat in Abraham Maimonides’ Times

The eighteen studies presented here originated in a symposium held at Yale in 2014, attended by scholars from Europe, Israel, and North America. The papers approach the subject of Mishnaic Hebrew from many different angles and directions, including grammar, from morphology to syntax to pragmatics; the relationship between the literary dialect and epigraphic evidence; manuscripts; questions of language contact, lexicography, social history, and medieval traditions; and the problem of translating Mishnaic Hebrew into modern languages. The contributors to this volume are among the leading scholars in the field and the collection represents both the current state of research and the cutting edge of future work. This volume includes the following essays: Chanan Ariel | Deviations from Mishnaic Hebrew Moshe Bar-Asher | Problems in the Description of the Morphology of Mishnaic Hebrew Elitzur A. Bar-Asher Siegal | Towards a Reconsideration of the Tense-Aspect-Mood System of Tannaitic Hebrew Gabriel Birnbaum | Phonological and Morphological Studies in MS Antonin 262 (Mishnah Seder Teharoth) Steven E. Fassberg | The Language of the Bet Amar Papyrus in Light of Other Judean Desert Documents Steven D. Fraade | The Innovation of Nominalized Verbs in Mishnaic Hebrew as Marking an Innovation of Concept Aaron Koller | The Social and Geographic Origins of Mishnaic Hebrew Aharon Maman | Rabbinic Hebrew in the Eyes of Medieval Hebrew Philologists Emmanuel Mastey | Cases of Semantic Variation in Mishnaic Hebrew: The Verbs hillek and qaras Michael Ryzhik | The Language of the Mishnah from the Late Manuscripts to the Printed Editions Bernard Septimus | The Face of Shame: Between Palestinian Blushing and Babylonian Blanching Rivka Shemesh-Raiskin | Towards a Description of Halakhic Give-and-Take Conversations in the Mishnah Nurit ShovalDudai | Identical Lemmata of Greek and Latin Loanwords in the Historical Dictionary of the Hebrew Language: Classes and Criteria Ruth Stern | The Noun haluq and Its Variant Forms in Rabbinic Hebrew Daniel Stokl Ben Ezra | The Mishnah into French: Translation Issues Ofra Tirosh-Becker | The Relative Pronoun Se- Rabbinic Hebrew as Reflected in Karaite Sources Doron Ya'akov | The Relation between Maimonides and the Yemenite Tradition in Mishnaic Hebrew Alexey (Eliyahu) Yuditsky | qosin and qorpayot To view the other volumes please press here

The Book of Lamentations is comprised of six laments for the national catastrophe, which fundamentally changed the course of the history of the Jewish people: the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple followed by the exile of a large part of the Jewish people to Babylon. An examination of the exegeses and research on the Book of Lamentations after World War II shows that most exegeses refer in one way or another to the Holocaust as an event similarly tragic - and perhaps even more so - to the destruction and suffering described in Lamentations. However, one mustn't forget that the Holocaust is only one link, albeit unique, in the chain of the catastrophes and disasters known by the Jews over their 5,000-year history.

This volume contains the following essays: Yitzhak Avishur | Names of Jewish Holidays in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic Ilan Eldar | The Hebrew of Dutch Sepharadim in Seventeenth Century Amsterdam David M. Bunis | The Iberian Judeo-Arabic Roots of the Ladino Bible-Translation Tradition Joshua Blau | Remarks on the Biblical Dictionary of David Alfasi Joshua Blau and Joseph Yahalom | The Typology of Palestinian Vocalization Systems Preserved in Manuscripts from the Last Quarter of the First Millennium Dror Ben-Arié | Miqneh Abram of Abraham de Balmes: A New Reading of a Sixteenth Century Hebrew Grammar in the Light of Hebrew and Latin Treatises Nasir Basal | On the Comparison between Languages in Tafsīr al-̓Alfāẓ by ̓Abū al-Faraj Hārūn: Comparisons to Rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic Moshe Bar-Asher | The Limitations of Orthography, Script, and Morphology: A Problem of Mishnaic Hebrew Grammar Elitzur Bar-Asher | Siegal Rhetorical Questions in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic Yochanan Breuer | Rabba and Rava, ’Abba and ’Ava - Spelling, Pronunciation, and Meaning Chanoch Gamliel | Lexical Definitions in Menaḥem’s Maḥberet and Rashi’s Commentary Santiago García-Jalón | Manuscripts that Preceded the Introductiones of Alfonso de Zamora Aron Dotan | The Double Pronunciation of the Ancient Resh Jonathan Howard | Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek: The List of Languages in Me’or ‘Ayin and the Transmission of Diqduqe ha-Miqra Yehudit Henschke | On the Language of the Musta‘arabi Jews of Peqi‘in: between Jewish Arabic and Local Arabic – A Look at the Names of the Holidays Doron Yaakov | Remarks on a Verbal Form in the Yemenite Tradition of Mishnaic Hebrew Geoffrey Khan | The Pronunciaton of Dageš in the Tiberian Tradition of Biblical Hebrew Asher Laufer | Contemporary Realizations of Qameṣ: The Pronunciation of Qameṣ before a Ḥaṭef-Qameṣ José Martinez Delgrado | The Making of Accumulative Lists in the Maḥberet of Menaḥem ben Saruq Hananel Mirsky | The Maḥberet Menaḥem According to the Critical Edition of Sáenz-Badillos Yosef Ofer | Two Masoretic Notes about Words Vocalized with a Qameṣ and Their Metamorphosis Steven E. Fassberg | Perfect Third Masculine Singular בעו and Related Forms in Samaritan Aramaic Yona Sabar | Hebrew in the Shadow of Neo-Aramaic: Mizraḥi Hebrew as Reflected in the Report of a Kurdish Hakham Traveling in Kurdistan in 1932 Moshe Kahan | The Transformation of Ellipsis from an Exegetical Rule to a Logical Theorem in Kaspi’s Work Michael Ryhzik | Orthographic Differences between Orders of the Mishnah in MS Kaufmann Yael Reshef | Distinctive Lexical Features in the Written Hebrew of the Revival Period Ora (Rodrigue) Schwarzwald | The Common Denominator Principle in the Formation of Israeli Hebrew Joseph Chetrit | Representations of the Jewish Community and Communal Ethos: A Socio-Pragmatic and Linguistic Analysis of a Hebrew Elegy by R. Shemuel Haliwa (Meknes, 1790) Joseph Tedghi | Neologism and Rare Forms in the Spiritual Works of the Sages of Morocco Ofra Tirosh-Becker | Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic of Bar Mitzva Homilies from Ghardaïa English Abstracts

Given the availability of literal commentaries to the Bible, including those of Rashi, R. Joseph Kara, Samuel Ben Meir (Rashbam), R. Abraham Ibn Ezra and others, one of the key questions that vexed R. Joseph Bekhor Shor and his contemporaries was whether there was a need for yet another additional Bible commentary. The argument put forward here suggests that R. Joseph Bekhor Shor chose a path that combined continuity and innovation. The fluid movement between the familiar and the novel is the main contribution of R . Joseph Bekhor Shor's exegesis. While remaining committed to the traditional approach to interpretation, R. Joseph Bekhor Shor succeeded in paving new pathways and introducing original methods that had not previously been developed by his predecessors . This book serves as a vital tool for researchers of the Bible commentaries of Northern France, for those who study the teachings of R. Joseph Bekhor Shor and for all who enjoy studying the Bible and its commentaries .

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 volume: Vered Raziel Kretzmer and Uri Ehrlich - Additional Leaves from the “Tetragrammaton Siddur” Eden HaCohen - Fragments of Yoṣer Compositions for the Day of Atonement by Shelomo Sulayman al-Sinjary Yehoshua Granat - A Yoṣer Composition for Simḥat Torah, based on Psalm 119, by Yosef ibn Abitur Avi Shmidman - Fragments of Weekday Qerovot Attributed to Yosef ibn Abitur Ariel Zinder - New Seliḥot by Yosef ibn Abitur and Yiṣhaq ben Levi ibn Mar Shaul Michael Rand - Hoshaʿna El meriaḥ ʿarugat ganni – A Qedushta for 18 Benedictions for Hoshaʿna Rabba by Dosa he-Ḥazan be-Rabbi Yehoshuaʿ in Imitation of the Qillirian Qedushta: Hoshaʿna El emuna Sarah Cohen - The Piyyutim of Yaʿakob al-Aʿyan Tova Beeri - The Poems of Yeḥezkel ha-Kohen ben Eli Mordechai Akiva Friedman - A Letter to Abraham the Pious in Praise of the Prayer Ritual in Fustat Simcha Emanuel - Supplement to Arugat HaBosem, the Piyyut Commentary of Abraham ben Azriel Benjamin Bar-Tikva - Tehillah: A Letter-Decorated Baqqasha by Yehosef ha-Ezovi Shulamit Elizur - A Collection of Medieval Wisdom Proverbs from Ashkenaz