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.

Ateret Zekenim is a work of historical research into the lives of several well-known medieval halakhists from France, Germany, and Spain. The primary focus of the book is biographical, and it attempts to resolve difficult questions that have puzzled the scholarly community for many years. Its author seeks to rely on the writings of his predecessors, but he first substantiates that these foundations were properly laid and that he is not adding to an edifice that is destined to collapse. Thus, for example, the author re-examines the story of Rabbi Asher b. Yeḥiel (Rosh)’s migration from Germany to Spain in the early 14th century, a migration that had a dramatic impact on the culture of Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jewry alike. Is the scholarly consensus – according to which Rosh meticulously planned his flight to distant Toledo, in an entirely different cultural realm, over the course of two decades – correct? After methodical examination of the sources, a very different story emerges. Rosh, and with him the Ashkenazi halakhic tradition, moved from Germany to Spain at the last moment, when there were no other options.

In The Barbed-Wire College Ron Robin tells the extraordinary story of the 380,000 German prisoners who were brought to the USA during WWII and kept in camps throughout the country. Using personal narratives, camp newspapers, and military records, Robin re-creates in arresting detail the attempts of prison officials to mold the minds of their prisoners. From 1943 onward, despite the Geneva Convention, prisoners were subjected to an ambitious re-education program designed to turn them into American-style democrats. Under the direction of the Pentagon, liberal arts professors pushed through a program of arts and humanities that stressed only the positive aspects of American society. The American educators censored popular books and films in order to promote democratic humanism and downplay class and race issues, materialism, and wartime heroics. However, by the war's end, the curriculum was more concerned with combating the appeals of communism than with eradicating the evils of National Socialism. The re-education program, overall, failed to make these POWs shed their Nazi beliefs and become supporters of a liberal- democratic ethos. It succeeded less than the policies of other nations in indoctrinating prisoners of war or internees. In The Barbed-Wire College Ron Robin shows how this intriguing chapter of military history was also tied to two crucial episodes of twentieth- century American history: the battle over the future of American education and the McCarthy-era hysterics that awaited postwar America.

Rabbi Moses ben Nahman (c. 1194-1267), rabbi, commentator, Kabbalist, and public leader, was one of the most prominent and influential Jewish figures in the Middle Ages. His diverse works reflect the history of Jewish communities in Western Europe in the thirteenth century and particularly the story of his own life. This book seeks to illuminate Nahmanides' works and beliefs, on the background of the challenges during his life. How was his thought formed, and what were its sources? In what stage of his life was he acquainted with the Kabbalah? To what extent was his immigration to Eretz Israel the consequence of Barcelona disputation? This book offers a new – historical-biographical – perspective for understanding Nahmanides' religious and intellectual world.

The dictionary is the fruit of a three-decade long research on the vocabulary distinctive of the contemporary Georgian-Jewish language, and especially its Hebrew component. This research is based on ongoing field work performed in various places in Georgia and in Israel. The vocabulary reflects the uniqueness of the language and culture, and to a large extent also the anthropology and history of the community of Georgian Jews.

In the history of halakhah, the treatment of uncertainty became one of the most complex fields of intense study. In his latest book, Moshe Halbertal focuses on examining the point of origin of the study of uncertainty in early rabbinic literature, including the Mishnah, Tosefta, and halakhic midrashim. The book explores instructions concerning how to behave in situations of uncertainty ranging from matters of ritual purity, to lineage and marriage, to monetary law, and to the laws of forbidden foods. This examination of the rules of uncertainty introduced in early rabbinic literature reveals that these rules were not aimed at avoiding but rather at dwelling in the midst of uncertainty, thus rejecting the sectarian isolationism that sought to minimize a community's experience of and friction with uncertainty.

This research project tries, for the first time, to analyze and compare all the key Spanish Jewish apostates, especially Petrus Alfonsi, Abner of Burgos, Geronimo de Santa Fe, Pablo de Santa Maria and Pedro de la Caballeria. The aim of this research is to understand the ideological background of the mass conversion of the Spanish Jewish community from the perspective of the intellectual elite involved in the conversion itself and not – as has usually been the case in modern scholarship – according to the rabbis who decided to stay Jewish. In the first part of the book, the author explains the impact of the conversion of a part of the Jewish intellectual elite on the Spanish Jewish population. In the second part, he examines the opinion of the various ideological converts regarding Christianity (especially the dogmas of the Trinity and Incarnation). In the third part, he analyzes their criticisms of Judaism. The main conclusion of this research is that there is a very important difference between the various converso intellectuals regarding the essence of Christianity. The conversos who were philosophers or kabbalists before their conversion continued with a similar approach even after their conversion, using their former philosophical/kabbalistic knowledge to try to convince their fellow Jews to convert as they had. The common denominator of the different writings of these apostates is not their opinions on Christianity but rather their similar criticisms of Judaism, and especially with regard to keeping Jewish religious obligations.

Galit Hasan-Rokem | Dov Noy – A Centennial Anniversary Amos Noy | Three Variants of a Riddle and a Solution: In Memory of Dov Noy Few articles in this issue : Avishar Har-Shefi | On the Beginnings of the Hasidic Story Itamar Dagan | Written New Year’s Greetings According to Texts from the Cairo Geniza and Rabbinic Literature Haya Bar-Itzhak z”l | The Dead and the Survivors: Historical Legends about Women during the1648/49 Pogroms as a Female Site of Memory Hanna Cohen-Perez and Esther Schely-Newman | Sainte Laktar (el Guettar) in Tunisia and Israel: Passages through Time and Space Michael Lukin | The Traditional Yiddish Lullaby as an East-Ashkenazi Phenomenon

This book focuses on a cycle of some thirty “praise” stories ( Shvachim ) whose heroes are Rabbi Shmuel the Pious and his son, the famous Rabbi Judah the Pious (died 1217; author of Sefer Hasidim ) – the two main figures of the medieval mystical circle known as Hasidut Ashkenaz. The narrative cycle in praise of these luminaries portrays them as extremely virtuous, as mystics with supernatural knowledge, and as masters of magical practices ( ba’alay shem ). Originating orally in Yiddish, these stories were first written down in Hebrew, the sacred language, and then translated “back” into Yiddish – the more widely understood language of the Ashkenazic community. The book presents all versions of these “praise” narratives, extant in manuscripts and print, both in Hebrew and Yiddish, side by side. A thorough introduction traces the growth of this narrative treasure from its embryonic oral beginnings to its fully developed bilingual written manifestations. A detailed analysis of individual stories sheds light on the cultural mentality of medieval Jewry in general and of Ashkenazic Jewry in particular.

The author of Sefer Emeq Ha-Bakha (The Vale of Tears), Yosef ha-Cohen, was a sixteenth-century Jewish doctor of Spanish origin who lived in Italy. This book was not printed in his lifetime. A few copies of the manuscript copied by hand survived. In this volume, Yosef ha-Cohen collected essays written about pogroms against the people of Israel during the Second Temple period and the loss of political independence in Eretz Israel.

Chronicle of French and Ottoman Kings was written by a sixteenth-century Jewish doctor of Spanish origin living in Italy. According to the writer, his intention was to document the hardships and injustices suffered by Jews in the Diaspora - especially the expulsion of Jews from Spain and France - and include them in the history of the conflict between the French kinds and Ottoman Empire over the rule in "the land of Judea and Jerusalem." In effect, this is a story, set in chronological order, of selected events in world history, similar in structure and content to hundreds of writings published at the time. It was written in fine biblical Hebrew, and as such was aimed at an audience who knew the language and could appreciate the conflict between the French kings and the Ottoman Empire as representing world history.

A bullet misses its target in Sarajevo, a would-be Austrian painter gets into the Viennese academy, Lord Halifax becomes British prime minister in 1940 instead of Churchill: seemingly minor twists of fate on which world-shaking events might have hinged. Alternative history has long been the stuff of parlor games, war-gaming, and science fiction, but over the past few decades it has become a popular stomping ground for serious historians. The historian Richard J. Evans now turns a critical, slightly jaundiced eye on a subject typically the purview of armchair historians. The book’s main concern is examining the intellectual fallout from historical counterfactuals, which the author defines as “alternative versions of the past in which one alteration in the timeline leads to a different outcome from the one we know actually occurred.” What if Britain had stood at the sidelines during the First World War? What if the Wehrmacht had taken Moscow? The author offers an engaging and insightful introduction to the genre, while discussing the reasons for its revival in popularity, the role of historical determinism, and the often hidden agendas of the counterfactual historian. Most important, Evans takes counterfactual history seriously, looking at the insights, pitfalls, and intellectual implications of changing one thread in the weave of history. A wonderful critical introduction to an often-overlooked genre for scholars and casual readers of history alike.