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, as 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

The Book Smugglers is the nearly unbelievable story of ghetto residents who rescued thousands of rare books and manuscripts—first from the Nazis and then from the Soviets—by hiding them on their bodies, burying them in bunkers, and smuggling them across borders. It is a tale of heroism and resistance, of friendship and romance, and of unwavering devotion—including the readiness to risk one’s life—to literature and art. And it is entirely true. Based on Jewish, German, and Soviet documents, including diaries, letters, memoirs, and the author’s interviews with several of the story’s participants, The Book Smugglers chronicles the daring activities of a group of poets turned partisans and scholars turned smugglers in Vilna, “The Jerusalem of Lithuania.” The rescuers were pitted against Johannes Pohl, a Nazi “expert” on the Jews, who had been dispatched to Vilna by the Nazi looting agency, Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, to organize the seizure of the city’s great collections of Jewish books. Pohl and his Einsatzstab staff planned to ship the most valuable materials to Germany and incinerate the rest. The Germans used forty ghetto inmates as slave-laborers to sort, select, pack, and transport the materials, either to Germany or to nearby paper mills. This group, nicknamed “the Paper Brigade,” and informally led by poet Shmerke Kaczerginski, a garrulous, street-smart adventurer and master of deception, smuggled thousands of books and manuscripts past German guards. If caught, the men would have faced death by firing squad at Ponar, the mass-murder site outside of Vilna. To store the rescued manuscripts, poet Abraham Sutzkever helped build an underground book-bunker sixty feet beneath the Vilna ghetto. Kaczerginski smuggled weapons as well, using the group’s worksite, the former building of the Yiddish Scientific Institute, to purchase arms for the ghetto’s secret partisan organization. All the while, both men wrote poetry that was recited and sung by the fast-dwindling population of ghetto inhabitants. With the Soviet “liberation” of Vilna (now known as Vilnius), the Paper Brigade thought themselves and their precious cultural treasures saved—only to learn that their new masters were no more welcoming toward Jewish culture than the old, and the books must now be smuggled out of the USSR.

In both these essays, "On the Indians" and "On The Laws of War", published here for the first time in Hebrew, Francisco de Vitoria lays down the foundations of international law as it is known today. De Vitoria develops for the first time concepts which will become the core of contemporary international law and international conventions, and in particular, participation in an unjust war, the ruler's personal responsibility for the decision about going to war, and the direct and indirect responsibility of subjects taking part in the hostilities. Both essays are firmly embedded in the debates of early modern Europe about the Law of Nature and the Law of Nations, and their impact on claims of European rulers to imperium and dominium (Imperial slugs and control) on overseas territories. In his wide-ranging Introduction to this book, Prof. Amos M egged places the two essays within the context and spectrum of the scholarly debates that were conducted at the major European universities during the early modern period, and provides the readers with a unique interpretation of the most distinctive themes in the essays, namely, the issue of human rights and international law, and presents personal insights on these aspects.

Walter (1887-1966) and his son Moshe (1922-2017) Wolf, both born in Hamburg, had very unusual life stories. Their autobiographies coalesce and intertwine in this powerful book - the father recounts his Jewish-bourgeoisie childhood in Germany, his military service with the German forces during World War I, his work as a banker and the building of his family; he tells of his escape from Nazi Germany and his new life in the United States. Meanwhile, his son pursues his point of view, continuing the family story from the moment he arrived in Israel, describing his own choices - working the land and joining the British Army in the war against Germany. This outstanding tale enriches even further the fascinating, multi-faceted image of German Jewry, offering a path, now more relevant than ever, into contemporary Israeli society.

Perspectives. Revue de l’Université Hébraïque de Jérusalem (auparavant HSLA, édition française), paraît une fois l’an. La Rédaction accepte des articles ayant trait aux sciences humaines et plus particulièrement à la littérature, la stylistique littéraire, les arts et l’histoire. Toute correspondance doit être adressée à la Rédaction de Perspectives, Université Hébraïque de Jérusalem, Mont Scopus, 91905 Jérusalem, Israël. La Rédaction se réserve le droit d’apporter de légères modifications aux mss. acceptés pour la publication. Perspectives. Revue de l’Université Hébraïque de Jérusalem ne publie pas de comptes rendus. L’ensemble des articles réunis dans ce 22e volume de Perspectives rendent hommage à Claude Vigée, à son œuvre poétique comme à sa pensée. Toutes deux traversent le siècle et lui laissent leur marque indélébile. C’est ce dont témoignent tous les auteurs qui ont accepté de participer à ce numéro.