Un véritable courant de vie parcourt ces pages que Perspectives consacre au cinéaste Marcel Ophuls. La vie, le vivant dominent. Il n’est pas étonnant qu’une des contributions de ce numéro s’intitule “Liberté, vitalité, spectacle” (Sophie Brunet). Dès lors, la division du volume s’est faite d’elle-même: 1-Un homme vivant; 2-Une oeuvre vivante. Au départ, le portrait d’un homme se dessine. Dans une “interview imaginaire.” On savoure son franc-parler, non que l’on adhère à toutes ses idées – en particulier en ce qui concerne Israël – mais on admire l’aisance et la liberté totale qui anime ses propos. Le comportement professionnel du cinéaste, son comportement tout court, trouvent leur place dans cette première partie. Parfois même, l’homme est saisi dans le feu de l’action. Les grands problèmes qui occupent le coeur et la pensée d’un homme de notre temps se retrouvent dans la seconde partie du volume. Là encore, au plus près de la vie . Le cinéaste interpelle les spectateurs lorsqu’il traite de la Shoah, de l’Occuption, ou de la Résistance, de la place que ces sujets tiennent dans la mémoire d’un Français ou d’un Allemand. On s’interroge avec le cinéaste : se doit-il d’être objectif? Mais “dès le début de sa carrière, remarque Pierre Beylot, un style documentaire original fondé sur la parole de témoignage et le montage des sources dont il assume de plus en plus ostensiblement le caractère subjectif” marque son oeuvre. C’est dire aussi que souvent le regard s’attarde sur le traitement esthétique des sujets abordés. Ecoutons François Niney:“Cette remise en question de nos manières de voir et de nos dilemmes, à la fois politiques et personnels, par le jeu et le poids des mots, différencie radicalement le documentaire selon Marcel, du panel d’opinions tel que l’expose en permanence l’étal médiatique”. L’important est que son public réfléchisse. Il s’agit, selon Valérie Carré, de “mettre en mouvement la réflexion du spectateur”. Qu’attendre de l’avenir? Encore une oeuvre surprenante? Vincent Lowy, à l’écoute, note: “Boulimique de projets virtuels, l’infatigable MO junior annonce déjà les quatre titres d’ […] improbables best-sellers…” [futurs romans policiers }. Il convient enfin de souligner le rôle déterminant qu’a joué Stéphane Kerber dans l’élaboration de ce numéro de Perspectives. Nos vifs remerciements vont à lui. Laissons-lui maintenant la parole.

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.

The Carved Wooden Torah Arks found in eastern Europe from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries were magnificent structures, unparalleled in their beauty and mystical significance. The work of Jewish artisans, they dominated the synagogues of numerous towns both large and small throughout the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, inspiring worshipers with their monumental scale and intricate motifs. Virtually none of these superb pieces survived the devastation of the two world wars. Bracha Yaniv’s pioneering work therefore breathes new life into a lost genre, making it accessible to scholars and students of Jewish art, Jewish heritage, and religious art more generally. Making use of hundreds of pre-war photographs housed in local archives, she develops a vivid portrait of the history and artistic development of these arks, the scope and depth of her meticulous research successfully compensating for the absence of physical remains. In this way she has succeeded in producing a richly illustrated and comprehensive overview of a classic Jewish religious art form. Professor Yaniv’s analysis of the historical context in which these arks emerged includes a broad survey of the traditions that characterized the local workshops of Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. She also provides a detailed analysis of the motifs carved into the Torah arks and explains their mystical significance, among them representations of Temple imagery and messianic themes—and even daring visual metaphors for God. Fourteen arks are discussed in particular detail, with full supporting documentation; appendices relating to the inscriptions on the arks and to the artisans’ names will further facilitate future research. This seminal work throws new light on long-forgotten traditions of Jewish craftsmanship and religious understanding.

Chaim Waxman, the pre-eminent sociologist of contemporary Orthodoxy, is one of the keenest observers of American Jewish society. Having written on various aspects of this subject over the past forty years, he now revisits his earlier work in the light of recent developments. His familiarity with the entire spectrum of the Orthodox world combined with his deep knowledge of halakhah and his rigorous command of statistical and demographic data enables him to articulate distinctive perspectives on the issues that he addresses. His focus is not only on the various directions in which Orthodox practice is moving but also on how this affects the community as a whole. Waxman’s range is wide. After reviewing the socio-economic changes in American Orthodox communities and examining the reasons for them, he goes on to consider the political patterns of contemporary American Orthodox Jews. Demographic changes are also explored, particularly those relating to family life. Moving to the communal level, he discusses the increasing Americanization of Orthodox Jews, taking special note of how developments in Orthodoxy in Israel are having an increasing impact on American norms as contact between the two communities grows. In illustration of how Orthodoxy is adapting to modernity, he then presents a detailed discussion of halakhic developments, particularly regarding women’s greater participation in ritual practices and other areas of communal life. He shows that the direction of change is not uniform: there is both greater stringency and greater leniency, and he discusses the many reason for this both in the Jewish community and in the wider society. Relations between the various sectors of American Orthodoxy over the past several decades are also considered. The result is a comprehensive analysis from an acknowledged expert that will be of interest to everyone concerned with developments within American Orthodoxy and with the sociology of religion more generally.

The ‘Jewish mother’ figure is a hallmark of Jewish culture, one which appears in the works of rabbis, artists, poets, and activists across time and place. While depictions of mothers and motherhood abound in Jewish writings, they vary significantly according to social context. These representations therefore offer important insights into the Jewish cultural imagination, and the ways in which writers resort to the figure of the Jewish mother to comprehend and construct their world. The contributors to this volume highlight the complex network of symbols and images associated with Jewish mothers and motherhood as well as the vast array of social, historical, and cultural patterns that characterizations of mothers reflect. Each essay treats the topic from a specific perspective, spanning from mother--daughter relationships in the Talmud to depictions of mothers in twentieth-century American Jewish children’s literature. Collectively, they present a provocative examination of the ways mothers shape and problematize Jewish identity. This volume seeks to give the figure of the mother a new and enhanced place at the heart of Judaism: not only as a central figure in family life, but also as a key agent in the transmission of Jewish religion and culture.

AMILAT se honra en presentar el séptimo volumen de su serie Judaica Latinoamericana , que incluye una amplia selección de los trabajos presentados en la Sección América Latina del XV Congreso Mundial de Estudios Judaicos (Jerusalén 2009), por investigadores establecidos en las Américas e Israel, especializados en diversas disciplinas de las humanidades y las ciencias sociales. El volumen enfoca una variedad de temas pertenecientes a las experiencias históricas, sociales y culturales del judaísmo en América Latina, tanto respecto de lo que poseen en común como en cuanto a sus diferencias debidas a los diversos contextos nacionales. A ello se suman renovadoras propuestas metodológicas, necesarias en vista de fenómenos socio-culturales recientes originados en la globalización y el transnacionalismo, que se proyectan hacia el futuro de las investigaciones en el área.

Given the availability of literal commentaries to the Bible, including those of Rashi, R. Joseph Kara, Samuel Ben Meir (Rashbam), R. Abraham Ibn Ezra and others, one of the key questions that vexed R. Joseph Bekhor Shor and his contemporaries was whether there was a need for yet another additional Bible commentary. The argument put forward here suggests that R. Joseph Bekhor Shor chose a path that combined continuity and innovation. The fluid movement between the familiar and the novel is the main contribution of R . Joseph Bekhor Shor's exegesis. While remaining committed to the traditional approach to interpretation, R. Joseph Bekhor Shor succeeded in paving new pathways and introducing original methods that had not previously been developed by his predecessors . This book serves as a vital tool for researchers of the Bible commentaries of Northern France, for those who study the teachings of R. Joseph Bekhor Shor and for all who enjoy studying the Bible and its commentaries .

The heroes of this book are the rabbis of small and medium-sized communities in Eastern Europe. Who were these rabbis? What were their training processes? Did they get their job because of their scholastic or rhetorical skills, because of their family ties, or because they had the capital to buy this position? Did they win "permanence" or was the threat of dismissal constantly hovering over their heads? How were their terms of employment and wages determined, and what was their economic situation? Were they perceived as spiritual leaders? What was their relationship with the community's power centers? How did they navigate between their duties as halakhic authorities and their desire to engage in learning and teaching? The book attempts to answer these questions based on an examination of the world of over a thousand rabbis. Click here for the English edition, published by De Gruyter in collaboration with Magnes Press

According to common opinion, in the research of Jewish law and in the Halakhic literature, transactions in incorporeal estates are non-valid. However, economic life and the business world are based on these transactions. As a result, a gap was created between Halacha and reality. The book " Out of Nothing" proposes resolving this problem through Talmudic research methods, various issues which are discussed in the Talmudic law, including Davar She'lo Ba La'olam , Tovat Hanaha , and bills sale. In the course of the discussion it turns out that the Tannaitic ruling recognized these transactions, but Talmudic Halakha refused to recognize them. However, the Amoraim suggest various ways of mediation in order to enable transferring of future estate, debt bonds and so on. The book proposes to take the bridges that the Amoraim proposed based on the Tannaitic law and to use them as tools for Halakhic validation of current market life.

One of the most visible aspects of Orthodox Judaism in present-day Israel is the ubiquity of the "Gdoilim" – "the great ones" - the luminary spiritual leaders whose presence dominates orthodox politics, media and the public space. However, these individuals, whose lives are constantly canonized in hagiographies, have largely remained unknown outside the Orthodox Jewish communities, and have generally been overlooked by the academic research. The 'Gdoilim': Individuals who shaped Haredi Judaism in Israel is a pioneering attempt to fill this gap by offering a comprehensive collection of articles by Israeli and American leading scholars of Orthodox Judaism striving to elucidate the lives and theologies of these extraordinary individuals and explain the secret of their lasting power.

Most of the nineteen essays presented in this book deal with tongues and traditions of Maghreb Judaism. The communities of Morocco are a central topic in this collection as well as essays dealing with documents from the Ghardaïa community in south Algeria. This collection also offers extensively studied records of practices and actions of other communities in the area. Most of the chapters are based on manuscripts and records from the collection of Jewish North-African manuscripts at the Yale University library. The first two parts of the appendix are dedicated to four Masoretes. Bar-Asher based quite a few of his researches on their spoken and written Masoretic texts.

The present volume 23 of Korot has as main topics, first, embryology in Jewish and ancient Middle Eastern sources, and second, medicine in the Holocaust. The section on embryology consists of six articles, four of which were presented in a symposium entitled “On Fetuses, Infants and everything in-between through the Ages,” which was held at the Van Leer Institute on March 30, 2015. The meeting was sponsored by the Israel Society for the History of Medicine and by Korot, and organized by Dr. Israela Nili. Three of the papers concentrate on ancient Mesopotamia: Dr. Couto-Ferreira describes embryological data in Akkadian and Sumerian texts, Prof. Klein expounds embryological issues in the omen literature, and Prof. Fleishman discusses some of the legal aspects of parenthood. Prof. Cohen analyzes the influence of Septuagint translation in the debate concerning abortion. Two additional papers deal with later Hellenistic sources: Prof. Kottek and Dr. Paavilainen discuss the contribution of Philo the Alexandrian and Prof. van der Horst examines Hellenistic Christian sources, respectively. The section on the Holocaust includes three studies. Dr. van den Ende’s paper describes the ethical dilemmas faced by the Jewish doctors in Holland during the Nazi occupation. It was first presented in the workshop of the 15th Nahariya Conference on Medicine and the Holocaust (May 6, 2015), convened by Prof. Shaul Shasha. Dr. Schwoch deals with the same issue from the point of view of the Jewish Krankenbehandler in Germany. Dr. Offer’s bibliographical review, the first part of which has been published in Korot, volume 22, describes the development of academic research in Jewish medicine in the Holocaust from the third decade after the Holocaust until the first decade of the 21st century. The rest of the articles presented in this volume concentrate on the life and work of several Jewish physicians, the only exception being Prof. Nissan’s paper on hybrid animals in Jewish sources. Prof. McDonald analyzes the story of the Jewish personal physician of Charles the Bald, accused by later authors of having poisoned the king. Prof. Gath discusses a similar topic: Jan III Sobieski and his Jewish physician, who was later blamed for having caused his death. Dr. Nevins casts new light on the mystery of Vesalius’ Jewish friend and adviser in Hebrew medical terms. Prof. Shḥori-Rubin’s work on Dr. Fanny Lvova continues her series of articles on Jewish pioneer women doctors. Dr. Paavilainen describes Isaac Israeli’s way of diagnosing the complex symptoms of consumption. Prof. Freudenthal summarizes the different pressures affecting medieval Jewish physicians and explains on the basis of a contemporary source why science did not thrive among the Jewish scholars of Provence. The volume is, as usual, bilingual (12 articles in English, 4 in Hebrew), with contributions from Spain, Holland, Germany, Britain, USA, France, and of course Israel.