How the kibbutz movement thrived despite its inherent economic contradictions and why it eventually declined The kibbutz is a social experiment in collective living that challenges traditional economic theory. By sharing all income and resources equally among its members, the kibbutz system created strong incentives to free ride or—as in the case of the most educated and skilled—to depart for the city. Yet for much of the twentieth century kibbutzim thrived, and kibbutz life was perceived as idyllic both by members and the outside world. In The Mystery of the Kibbutz, Ran Abramitzky blends economic perspectives with personal insights to examine how kibbutzim successfully maintained equal sharing for so long despite their inherent incentive problems. Weaving the story of his own family’s experiences as kibbutz members with extensive economic and historical data, Abramitzky sheds light on the idealism and historic circumstances that helped kibbutzim overcome their economic contradictions. He illuminates how the design of kibbutzim met the challenges of thriving as enclaves in a capitalist world and evaluates kibbutzim’s success at sustaining economic equality. By drawing on the stories of his pioneering grandmother who founded a kibbutz, his uncle who remained in a kibbutz his entire adult life, and his mother who was raised in and left the kibbutz, Abramitzky brings to life the rise and fall of the kibbutz movement. The lessons that The Mystery of the Kibbutz draws from this unique social experiment extend far beyond the kibbutz gates, serving as a guide to societies that strive to foster economic and social equality.

Who set the time in eighteenth-century Istanbul and how? When did government officials arrive at their offices? How did new technologies like the train and the steamer affect conventions of punctuality and lateness and what were the social and political implications of waiting? This book analyzes the "temporal culture" of the late Ottoman Empire and follows its transformation from the late eighteenth century to the establishment of the Turkish Republic. In an attempt to cope with the rapid changes that swept the region during that period, various bodies of the Ottoman state began to subject work routines to mechanical clocks and schedules in order to achieve higher levels of regularity, punctuality and efficiency. A new time web gradually spread from governmental facilities such as military bases, bureaus and schools to traffic arteries and city centers, subjecting more and more people to clock time and the new conventions linked to it. These changes, in turn, raised difficulties, tensions and even resistance, which were related not only to practical problems of coordination, but also to questions of identity, ideology and cultural orientation. The clocks of the early twentieth century thus showed Ottoman time with all its complexity.

Two focal points are at the center of this book: the history of German Jews during the Holocaust and the involvement of the Foreign Ministry of Nazi Germany. The process of "solving the problem of the German Jews" consisted of stages of escalation that are exemplified in 175 translated documents written by or addressed to German diplomats. The narrative that is placed in the historical context, demonstrates the course that began with the deprivation and dispossession of German Jews of their civil and economic rights, continues with their forced immigration and finally with their deportation and extermination. Included are the reactions of the German Jews, the responses that came from outside Germany, and the role of the Foreign Ministry, who was eager to participate in “solving the Jewish Question”. The book opens with a preface by Prof. Moshe Zimmermann.

Between Hitler and Churchill reveals an unknown facet in the history of World War II - an attempt by a senior Polish government official to contact the leadership of the Third Reich and a successful effort by British intelligence agencies to thwart this dialogue in its infancy. This surprising and fascinating event is described in the book through the personal stories of its two main protagonists, Jews born in Poland. One of them mediated the said contacts, while the other assisted the British in capturing the mediator, bringing him to Palestine and killing him there without trial. Using this fascinating story, the book challenges the traditional perception of the Nazi occupation of Poland as a sure prologue to World War II. It claims that in the first year and a half after September 1, 1939, European leaders, including Polish and British senior officials, were engaged in feverish diplomatic maneuvers and could actually end the war on the continent before it became the greatest disaster in human history. Due to its ability to shed new light on this topic, the book adds great value to those interested in the theory and practice of international relations.

The Adventurous Simplicissimus , the great literary monument of the Thirty-Years War (1618–1648) published in nearly real time – 20 years after it took place – combines a picaresque, historical, satirical, autobiographic, realistic and fantastic novel. This war which devastated Europe was the first example of a 'world war' in history. The author, Hans Jacob Christoffel Grimmelshausen (1622–1676),experienced it in person and also took part in it at a young age. As author, he avoids taking sides with anyone of the fighting parties or. He declares: "For the future generations I will describe the atrocities that were committed again and again in our German war." The strange adventures of the hero are depicted sometimes with lurid detail, but always with a pinch of humor, ridiculing any admiration of heroes or personality cult. Thus Simplicissimus has become one of the most powerful anti-war literary works of all times.

The Jewish Haskalah movement heralded a profound, unprecedented cultural-spiritual revolution in the Jewish world. Beginning in the German lands in the second half of the eighteenth century and subsequently spreading to central Europe, it called for reconstituting traditional Jewish society in line with maskilic values. This volume spotlights the early-nineteenth-century Galician Haskalah. Although a backwater annexed to the Austrian Empire from Poland but two generations earlier, Galicia’s impressive gallery of outstanding individuals and literary activity has granted the Galician Haskalah its place as one of the most productive, influential centers of the Haskalah movement. This collection of articles is based on lectures delivered at the "Revealers of Secrets—200 Years of Galician Haskalah" Conference. Held in Jerusalem in 2013, this fifth annual conference for the study of the Haskalah movement aimed to submit the Galician Haskalah to renewed scholarly examination. Organized in five sections, the volume’s twenty-three essays by outstanding scholars portray the variegated aspects of this movement, which ranged from attempts to preserve Jewish identity by nurturing modern Jewish culture in Hebrew to radical attempts to reform traditional Jewish society.

This study focuses on one medieval manuscript of the Palestinian Talmud, that served as a printer's copy for the first edition of the composition, printed in Venice (1523). A detailed philological examination of the preparation of the text for print, drives a comprehensive description of transition of Talmudic literature from manuscript culture to print culture.

In the current book two of the most prolific authors in the area of Medieval Judeo-Arabic and poetic Hebrew Medieval texts go back to its basic theses on the relations between Hebrew literature and its parallel Arabic and Judeo-Arabic texts. By re-establishing an up-to-date picture they are attacking the field of encounters from new and different angles.

Le 17 juin 1940, l’écrivain français Jean Guéhenno prit une double résolution après avoir entendu la déclaration radiophonique du maréchal Pétain annonçant aux Français la fin des combats et la demande d’armistice: tenir un journal, mais ne rien publier tant que durerait l’occupation allemande. Le récit de cette période trouble parut en 1947 sous le titre éloquent de Journal des années noires. Si le livre a été quelque peu oublié, la formule, par contre, est passée à la postérité. Dans l’esprit de Guéhenno, elle signifiait que ces années-là furent un tunnel, sinon un cauchemar: noires pour les victimes civiles et militaires disparues; noires pour les errements et les égarements des élites gouvernant la France; noires encore et surtout pour le déshonneur infligé à la conscience historique d’une grande nation; l’envers des Lumières, lesquelles se confondaient pour lui avec l’idée qu’il se faisait de la France.

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.

The Shaolin Monastery charts, for the first time in any language, the history of the Shaolin Temple and the evolution of its world-renowned martial arts. In this meticulously researched and eminently readable study, Meir Shahar considers the economic, political, and religious factors that led Shaolin monks to disregard the Buddhist prohibition against violence and instead create fighting techniques that by the twenty-first century have spread throughout the world. He examines the monks’ relations with successive Chinese regimes, beginning with the assistance they lent to the seventh-century Emperor Li Shimin and culminating more than a millennium later with their complex relations with Qing rulers, who suspected them of rebellion. He reveals the intimate connection between monastic violence and the veneration of the violent divinities of Buddhism and analyzes the Shaolin association of martial discipline and the search for spiritual enlightenment.

This book collects rewritten articles and essays by the author related first and foremost, but not exclusively, to the catastrophe of the Holocaust as an epistemic crisis – qualified as a “rupture in civilization”, i.e. the destruction of concepts deeply rooted in a common anthropology of humankind, while focusing on methodological as well as conceptual questions. The composition of the volume runs roughly chronologically along several layers of interpretation – embracing questions of German constitutional law, the formation of Continental expansionist geopolitical thinking, the epistemology of the Holocaust, the assertion and transformation of paradigms of historical interpretation in the second half of the 20th century, especially the turn from social history to memory studies, as well as the turn from a Western- and Eurocentric approaches into the direction of colonial and global history.