The book examines the ideological motivations behind the selection of representations for Israeli banknotes and coins. The research is based on the proceedings and correspondence of the Bank of Israel Banknotes and Coinage Planning Committee from its inception in 1955 to 2012. The study reveals the mechanisms in which the legal tender is exploited as an expression of banal nationalism, implementing national emblems in an unnoticed manner. Banal nationalism is one of three theoretical frameworks we adopted. The other two are the long history of the Jewish people in the territory which today is the State of Israel; and selective tradition as a means for designing a nation. The book comprises eight chapters: theoretical overview; analytical portrayal of the working methods of the Bank of Israel Banknotes and Coinage Planning Committee; a study of the first designed “Allegoric Figures Series” (1959); analysis of the selection of human figures; the construction of the state borders through an array of landscape images; the reflection of the shifting boundaries in the changing representations in Jerusalem; the selection of archaeological emblems as a proof for national continuity; and the symbolic role of flora as identification with the land.

Karaite Judaism emerged in the ninth century in the Islamic Middle East as an alternative to the rabbinic Judaism of the Jewish majority. Karaites reject the underlying assumption of rabbinic Judaism, namely, that Jewish practice is to be based on two divinely revealed Torahs, a written one, embodied in the Five Books of Moses, and an oral one, eventually written down in rabbinic literature. Karaites accept as authoritative only the Written Torah, as they understand it, and their form of Judaism therefore differs greatly from that of most Jews. Despite its permanent minority status, Karaism has been an integral part of the Jewish people continuously for twelve centuries. It has contributed greatly to Jewish cultural achievements, while providing a powerful intellectual challenge to the majority form of Judaism. This book is the first to present a comprehensive overview of the entire story of Karaite Judaism: its unclear origins; a Golden Age of Karaism in the Land of Israel; migrations through the centuries; Karaites in the Holocaust; unique Jewish religious practices, beliefs, and philosophy; biblical exegesis and literary accomplishments; polemics and historiography; and the present-day revival of the Karaite community in the State of Israel.

Bilha Shilo unfolds the complex plot of the extraordinary success of the restitution of the collections of YIVO (Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut) – the prestigious research institution of the Yiddish language and culture. A Drama in Acts traces the fragments of post-Second World War YIVO, which meanwhile moved from Vilna to New York - in restituting its cultural property in the West, in the American occupied zone, and documents its bitter failure in the Soviet occupied territory in the East. The book explores, through the question of cultural property ownership, a range of historical issues: the development of modern Jewish culture in Eastern Europe, the advance of Yiddish as a modern literary language, the history of Jewish culture under communist regime, and its extermination under Nazi rule. Other issues addressed are the demise of Jewish culture in Eastern Europe following the division of Europe and the Cold War, and lastly - the conflict between Israel and the Diaspora over the inheritance of Jewish European culture. The book is published in the series "Hefez", which presents the latest research on Jewish cultural property and its demise, in German by the Dubnow Institute, Leipzig, and in Hebrew by Magnes Press.

The World of Machiavelli explores his teaching by placing it squarely in its political and intellectual context. Based on a wide range of personal letters, diplomatic dispatches and administrative memoranda as well as on his treatises, plays and poems, it traces the development of his skills, mental habits and unique views from his youth, through his turbulent public career, to his last days. Alongside the formative historical and personal circumstances, the book explores the universal dimensions of Machiavelli’s thought, which forms an integral part of an ongoing conversation about our ability to organize our shared lives and shape our destiny. Thus, The World of Machiavelli differs from most biographies and studies of his thought: focusing on a cluster of themes that are central both in his works and in our modern public life, the book invites the readers to reflect on major issues of our time by engaging with Machiavelli.

Philo was the first Jewish philosopher who left behind one of the richest bodies of work from antiquity, yet his personality and intellectual development have remained a riddle. Maren Niehoff presents the first biography of Philo, arguing that his trip to Rome in 38 CE was a turning point in his life. He was exposed then not only to new political circumstances but also to a new cultural and philosophical environment. The Intellectual Biography traces Philo's trajectory from his early days as a Bible interpreter in the Jewish community of Alexandria to his diplomatic and intellectual activity in Rome, when he engaged Roman philosophy. Anticipating Sa'ada Gaon and Maimonides by almost a thousand years, Philo creatively presents Jewish philosophy in the context of contemporary culture and thought.

The book offers a fresh view on the life of Jews under National Socialism. Focusing on the spatial and temporal aspects of the changes brought about by the new regime, it highlights the “tactics” utilized by German Jews to cope with the new reality, make sense of it, and rethink their position vis-à-vis German nationality. Based on a rich theoretical framework from various fields in social and cultural studies (human geography, environmental psychology, sociology of time and so on) the book examines German Jews’ reflections on their new experiences through the paradigms of "lived space" and "lived time." In discussing two main types of sources—private (diaries, correspondences and memoirs) and public (Jewish press)—the book sheds new light on the topics of maintaining Jewish agency under Nazism; the possibility and forms of Jewish defiance; and scope (and limits) of Jewish awareness of the processes that reshaped Germany’s approach to its Jewish population. The book’s analysis of Jews’ reflections on the spatial and temporal aspects of life under Nazism portrays an intricate endeavor to understand the new reality, adjust to it, and answer its increasing challenges.

Today, the term "natural reserve" is common in Israel. However, this wasn’t the case during the first years of its existence. A majority of the planning authorities did not understand what natural reserves were and why they were required, and the Hebrew language did not yet have a term for them. A small group of nature lovers struggled to preserve nature, leading battels, some of which continue to this day. The results of some of the successful battles can be seen across Israel today – in natural reserves, national parks and fields of wildflowers. The history of these battles is brought forth in this book by Dr. Uzi Paz, one of the pioneers of nature preservation in Israel. He also unfolds the changes formed in the country's landscape, flora and fauna, from ancient times to this day. The book contains a wealth of photographs taken by the author.

How did a group of charismatic, apocalyptic Jewish missionaries, working to prepare their world for the impending realization of God’s promises to Israel, end up inaugurating a movement that would grow into the gentile church? Committed to Jesus’s prophecy—“The Kingdom of God is at hand!”—they were, in their own eyes, history’s last generation. But in history’s eyes, they became the first Christians. In this electrifying social and intellectual history, Paula Fredriksen answers this question by reconstructing the life of the earliest Jerusalem community. As her account arcs from this group’s hopeful celebration of Passover with Jesus, through their bitter controversies that fragmented the movement’s midcentury missions, to the city’s fiery end in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, she brings this vibrant apostolic community to life. Fredriksen offers a vivid portrait both of this temple-centered messianic movement and of the bedrock convictions that animated and sustained it.

This wide-ranging book shows how, since the first centuries of the Christian era, gentiles have associated Jews with noise. The study focuses on a “musical libel" - a variation on the Passion story that recurs in various forms and cultures in which an innocent Christian boy is killed by a Jew in order to silence his “harmonious musicality.” In paying close attention to how and where this libel surfaces, Ruth HaCohen covers a wide swath of Western cultural history. The author combines in her analysis the perspectives of musicology, literary criticism, philosophy, psychology, and anthropology, tracing the tensions between Jewish “noise" and idealized Christian “harmony” and their artistic manifestations from the high Middle Ages through Shakespeare, Bach, Wagner, George Eliot, Kafka, Schoenberg and others. She explores testimonies by outsider visitors of synagogues, operas, caricatures, and Nazi movies. Her analysis shows how entrenched aesthetic-theological assumptions have persistently defined European culture and its internal moral and political orientations. Following the publication of the book, the author received two prestigious awards: the Polonsky Award for Creativity and Originality in the Humanities, and the Kinkelday Award from the American Musicological Society for the best book in musicology published in 2011 .

The study of liturgy is intrinsically interdisciplinary and comprises elements of music, drama, theater and devotion that are of great consequence to believers and scholars far and wide. Liturgy is both history and theology, purporting to reflect and propagate values that inform individuals and communities alike, playing a vital role in the construction of sacred and lay memory and identity. As a multi-sensory experience, liturgy maintains a dynamic relationship with the surrounding space and its visual components, including art, artifacts and architecture. The essays in this book examine diverse aspects of liturgy and the arts, and were written by scholars working in the disciplines of musicology, social and cultural history, art history, material culture, and the history of the Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages and beyond. The articles engage in a comparative and interdisciplinary discourse, in order to contextualize the liturgical practices within the production of medieval cultural memory, and within the symbolic traditions expressed through liturgy and the arts. Primary sources include texts, rituals, music and visual media from Western Europe (Christian and Jewish) and the Latin Levant. The study of written, visual and musical constructs identifies the values and ideals conveyed and instilled through Jewish and Christian liturgical commemoration, and explores how these activated the faithful's idea of community and their place within it.

Korot is devoted to the study of the philosophical, sociological and ethical aspects of the history of medicine and Judaism. The topics covered by the Journal include: medicine in Jewish and Hebrew sources, the history of Jewish physicians, medicine in Palestine and Israel and medicine during the Nazi period. Each volume contains mostly English-language articles, together with some Hebrew contributions (abstracted in English). The "Historical Notes" and "Notes and Events" sections cover recent important developments and events in the above mentioned topics around the world. Each issue also includes several reviews of noteworthy books and contributions to the field. In this issue - Ethics and the Health Professions: Education of the Holocaust and Healthcare.

In the late fifteenth century, many of the Jews expelled from Spain made their way to Morocco and established a dynamic community in Fez. A number of Jewish families became prominent in commerce and public life there. Among the Jews of Fez of Hispanic origin was Samuel Pallache (circa 1550-1616), who served the Moroccan sultan as a commercial and diplomatic agent in Holland until Pallache's death in 1616. In Samuel Pallache , his world is viewed as a microcosm of early modern society, one far more interconnected, cosmopolitan, and fluid than is often portrayed. Pallache's missions and misadventures took him from Islamic Fez and Catholic Spain to Protestant England and Holland. Through these travels, the authors explore the workings of the Moroccan sultanate and the Spanish court, the Jewish communities of Fez and Amsterdam, and details of the Atlantic-Mediterranean trade. At once a sweeping view of two continents, three faiths, and five nation-states and an intimate story of one man's remarkable life, Samuel Pallache is history at its most compelling.