In this issue: Chaim Milikowsky | The Transformation of Traditions and the Creation of Variant Readings in Vayyiqra Rabba Chapter 25 Sections 1-2 – Preceding and Succeeding the Redactorial Moment Shulamit Elizur | 'The birth of poems' – Deliberations on the Conception of the Poem and Longings for Zion in a Previously Unknown Piyyut by R. Judah Halevi Judith Weiss | The Sefer Yetzira Commentary Attributed to Isaac the Blind: Evidence Supporting Its Early Dating, Its Central Status among Thirteenth century Kabbalists and the Validity of Its Attribution to Isaac the Blind Simcha Emanuel | Rashba’s Responsa to North African Sages Israel Ori Meitlis | The Place of Izhbitza-Radzin Thought in the Tekhelet writings of the Radziner Rebbe

Hasidism is one of the most important-influential movements in Judaism during the modern era. This book shows that the scholarly style of Hasidim abided by the rhetoric that was common within Jewish culture in Eastern Europe in the generations prior to Hasidism and in the generation of Hasidism itself among non-hasidic leaders.

Among the articles in this issue: Yair Lorberbau | On Rules and Reason on Law and Halakhah - A Fresh Conceptual Framework for the Study of the Rationale of the Commandments Shalom Zadik | The Status of the Tormented Heretic according to Rabbi Hsdai Crescas and his Relation to Abner of Burgos Hillel Ben-Sasson | The concept of Repentance in the Zohar Itzhak Brand | Commandments between Man and God and between Man and his Fellow: A Study in the Dualistic Thought of R. Isaac Abarbanel Eliezer Baumgarten and Uri Sfrai | Kabbalah and Marriage Customs in Early Modern Italy Dvir Warshavski | Zot Torat Ha-'Ola : The Belief in the Creation of the World in Rema's Thought

Articles in this issue: Menahem Kahana| 'וכולה מתניתין': Who were the Abbreviators of Mishnayot in the Tannaitic Midrashim? Robert Brody | How many editions of his book Oaths (Kitab al-Ayman) did R. Hayya Publish? Warren Zev Harvey | Did Ibn Gabirol Write Adon 'Olam? Adiel Breuer | Hidushim on Tractate 'Eruvin Attributed to Hame'iri Moshe Yagur | Shaving Hair and Pairing Nails: The Origins and Transmutations of a Unique Rite of Passage in Medieval Judaism

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 .

During the last decades there have occurred significant upheavals in the political and military position of many religious and ethnic communities in the Middle East and North Africa. Communities which had been rejected and discriminated for decades rose to power or strengthened their political position in their countries by means of military struggles. Meanwhile, in Israel/Palestine, the ethnical-religious Jewish minority has become a ruling majority, while excluding the former Arab-Muslim-Sunni majority, following the wars of 1948 and 1976. This book examines these processes.

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.

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.

Many books have been written about the Baal Shem Tov; his extensive work and influence have drawn the attention of prominent researchers in the past and present. Tsippi Kauffman has a fresh outlook: she does not attempt to reconstruct the historical Baal Shem Tov, but rather to trace reflections of traditions pertaining to his in essays and writings related to Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, his famous great-grandchild. Rabbi Nahman saw himself not only as a preserver, but also as someone who continued and developed the tradition of the Baal Shem Tov, within struggles in new and different fronts. One of these new fronts was the inner sphere; the dilemmas of self-awareness. The tension between Rabbi Nachman's desire to imitate the Baal Shem Tov, his sense of guilt for not being worthy, and the effort to find a solution for the conflicted psychological state, are ways in which the Baal Shem Tov's figure and traditions shaped his great-grandchild, but also in which the latter shaped the figure of the former in the eyes of generations to come.

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

The enigmatic kabbalist Samuel Falk, known as the Ba’al Shem of London, has piqued the curiosity of scholars for generations. Eighteenth-century London was fascinated by Jews, and as a miracle-worker and adventurer, well connected and well read, Falk had much to offer. Interest in the man was further aroused by rumours of his dealings with European aristocrats and other famous characters, as well as with scholars, Freemasons, and Shabbateans, but evidence was scanty. Michal Oron has now brought together all the known source material on the man, and her detailed annotations of his diary and that of his assistant give us rich insights into his activities over several years. We learn of his meetings and his travels; his finances; his disputes, his dreams, and his remedies; and lists of his books. We see London’s social life and commerce, its landed gentry and its prisons, and what people ate, wore, and possessed. The burgeoning Jewish community of London and its religious practices, as well as its communal divisiveness, is depicted especially colourfully. The scholarly introductions by Oron and by Todd Endelman and the informative appendices help contextualize the diaries and offer an intriguing glimpse of Jewish involvement in little-known aspects of London life at the threshold of the modern era.