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.

The book traces contested visions and representations of al-Andalus/Sepharad in modern Jewish discourse through an in-depth analysis of the work of Sephardi intellectual network in the turn of the twentieth century Palestine/Land of Israel. Against the backdrop of the tumultuous political and social events of that period, and processes of national, ethnic, and religious partitions, the book explores the ways in which these Sephardi intellectuals fundamentally challenged the nationalistic and monolingual ideologies and looks at their efforts to establish a shared Jewish-Arab society based on a symbolic return to the Sephardi/Andalusian medieval legacy of Hebrew-Arabic bilingualism and a Judeo-Muslim joint cultural heritage. By exploring these contested representations of Sephardi identity and culture the book re-examines some fundamental issues that emerged at the turn of the twentieth century and which still accompany us to this day: the national conflict between Jews and Palestinians, the contacts and splits between Hebrew and Arab culture and the formation of ethnic hierarchies between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim. The book aims to contribute to the growing interest in modern Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jewish history and to broaden the scope of “Jewish studies” beyond the European Jewish experience.

These two collections of Yiddish letters date from the second half of the 17th century and are being published here in full for the first time. The opening five-letter collection was archived together with extensive information about three Jews from Hamburg-Altona, who had been arrested and investigated in Copenhagen in August 1666. The second collection consists of eighteen letters exchanged between Hamburg-Altona and Copenhagen in January 1678. They concern the family and business affairs of a range of people, among them some of Glikl Hamel’s relatives, business associates and acquaintances. Together, the two collections provide a wealth of illuminating new details about the economic, cultural, social, and family life of early modern Ashkenazi Jews in Northern Europe, and also shed light on the practice of Yiddish letter-writing at the time. The English section consists of an introduction followed by a synopsis of each letter, while the Hebrew section comprises a transcription of the original texts as well as their facsimile images.

This study delves into Israeli political life in 1947–1952, focusing on several main emphases: the crucial moment when statehood was decided upon, the election campaign for the Constitutional Assembly (which transformed itself into the First Knesset), Israel’s struggle for de facto and de jure American recognition, and Chaim Weizmann’s term as Israel’s first president.

Contiruptance: Poetical Fluctuations in Naomi Frankel’s Work is the first book dedicated to Frankel's literary work, which offers an in-depth reading of her entire fictional oeuvre. The concept of "Contiruptance," which indicates ruptures and continuity, provided insight into Frankel's poetics; suggesting that it may serve to further the analysis of the works of other authors.

Aron Menczer (1917-1943) was an active member of the Zionist youth movement Gordonya. After the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in March 1938, he became deeply involved in the efforts of the Youth Aliyah to enable Jewish youngsters to emigrate from Austria to Palestine. Menczer postponed his own Aliyah in order to continue to work for the exit of Jewish youth from Nazi Austria, and became in September 1939 the director of the Youth Aliyah in Vienna. His absolute devotion to the emigration efforts and to the educational work with the remaining Jewish youngsters in Vienna made him their recognized leader. Menczer was deported to Ghetto Theresienstadt in September 1942, where he continued his educational work. In October 1943 he was transported to Birkenau with a group of 1196 children, who were brought to Theresienstadt from Bialistok, and with 52 adults who, like him, volunteered to take care of them. They were all murdered there. The personality and deeds of Aron Menczer are the center of the book. A couple of chapters deal with the historical background: the Nazi policy of pressuring Jews to exit the country, prior to the phase of deportation and murder, and the efforts by the Youth Aliyah and other organizations to rescue them. The book is based on the original German version edited by Joanna Nittenberg und Benjamin Kaufmann. Two new parts were added to the current Hebrew edition. One is a comprehensive introduction which examines Menczer’s activity in light of some general issues raised in the research literature. The other part consists of archival sources which were added to the book for additional insights.

This is a book on one of Buenos Aires's neighborhoods, Villa Crespo, considered by many a Jewish district, and its football team Club Atletico Atlanta. Through the lens of this neighborhood institution, Rein offers an absorbing social history of Jews in Latin America. Since the end of World War II, there has been a conspicuous Jewish presence among the fans, administrators and presidents of the Atlanta football club. For the first immigrant generation, belonging to this club was a way of becoming Argentine. For the next generation, it was a way of maintaining ethnic Jewish identity. Now it is nothing less than a family tradition for third generation Jewish-Argentines to support Atlanta. The book offers a rare window into the rich culture of everyday life in the city of Buenos Aires, created by Jewish immigrants and their descendants.

The articles in this volume originated, in large part, as papers presented at a conference convened by the Melton Coalition for Creative Interaction in December 2014 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The Melton Coalition is a consortium of the three Melton Centers established over the years by the visionary philanthropist Samuel Mendel Melton: at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Ohio State University. The conference was devoted to the various forms of interaction that obtain between the oral and the textual modes of discourse in Jewish history and contemporary Jewish life. Some of the essays dwell on oral and textual media in historical context – while others place more emphasis on the contemporary educational implications of the phenomena under discussion. All the essays in this volume articulate patterns of oral and written discourse that can greatly enrich our knowledge of both the history of Jewish culture and the theory and practice of Jewish education.

In this book, the complicated relationship between religion and nation, as well as the relationship between nationalism and the process of secularization are discussed from a multidisciplinary perspective. In the last decades these issues attracted considerable research and public interest throughout the world. The book consists of articles from renowned scholars dealing with the relations between religion, secularism and nationalism in general, in prominent historical patterns as expressed in German, English, American, Turkish, Polish and Russian nationalism, and in the Jewish-Israeli context . The book's articles shed light on the phenomena of nationalism and secularization, in light of contemporary research on these two fascinating fields .

In this issue we have articles, in Hebrew, by Professor Avi Ohry, on sanatoria in the Land of Israel, and by Reuven Gafni, on Russian-born Olga Feinberg who served the Arab and Jewish communities in Jericho during the British Mandate until forced to leave, with the destruction of her home, during the riots of 1936–1939. Dror Hubara looks at the example of providing quality medical care in a poor neighborhood in Israel, that of the old Yemenite settlement of Kfar Shiloaḥ close to the Mount of Olives, which came to an end in 1939. Moshe Pinchuk considers Hippocratic and Mesopotamian medicine in the texts of the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds. In her intriguing article Adaya Hadar looks at how the human pulse and its rhythms were understood by the early Hassidic masters, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi and Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, in different spiritual and metaphysical ways. Zipora Shehory-Rubin and Shifra Shvarts contribute an important addition to our understanding of school doctors from the Ottoman period till the end of the British Mandate. This saw the beginnings of provision of health services to students, pioneered by physicians like Dr. Hillel Yaffe (1864–1936) and Dr. Mordechai Brachyahu (1882–1959), first hygienist physician in Israel. In the English section Samuel Kottek also looks at medicine in the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, reviewing several texts on medicine and hygiene, while Edward Reichman features an unusual medical halachic case tried many times as a ritual murder and focusing, partly, on the religious practices of Jews regarding removing a fetus at the time of death, or soon after. Much has been written about Mordechai Gumpel (Gumpertz) Schnaber Leviso(h)n and his role in the early Haskalah movement but Kenneth Collins’ paper concentrates on the years he spent in London and the links he established there with Christian Hebraists and freemasons, as well as on his medical studies with the famed Hunter brothers and his London medical practice and writings. His short Historical Note examines the question whether the early enlightenment rabbi, Baruch Schick of Shklov, was in London in the early 1770s during the time of Levisohn’s period there. Ephraim Nissan looks at the life and death of the Polish-Jewish neurologist Maksymilian Rose (1883–1937), considering the causes of his sudden death in prewar Vilna, which still has significance some eighty years later. Prof. Avi Ohry offers an important account of the career of Berthe Neoussikine (Batia Nose-Chen), a largely forgotten figure from rehabilitation medicine and electro-physiology in France and Israel. Korot has been carrying articles from the regular workshops and conferences on Medicine and the Shoah organized by Boaz Cohen, Miriam Offer and Shmuel Reis and, following the international event held in Akko last year, we plan to publish several papers on this topic in our next issue.

The dictionary mainly covers the Hebrew component in languages that have not been documented or that have been documented less than that of the prestigious Judeo-languages, Yiddish and Latino. Thus, it encompasses the different dialects of Judeo-Arabic from North Africa, Yemen and Iraq, and to some extent from Syria, Judeo-Georgian and Judeo-Persian. Other languages are included sporadically. It also includes Haketiya (Moroccan Judeo-Spanish), Judeo-Italian and others.

This book surveys the development of Jewish religious law and practice in relation to healthcare, with an emphasis on their influence on Israeli medical law. It contains discussions on the nature of Jewish law and and ethics, especially in comparison to Catholic moral theology and the Western political traditions . The book is divided into key themes: approaches to health, illness and the body; medical nursing and social services; doctor-patient relationships; the uses of the dead and living body; fertility, genomics and infertility; Jewish sexual ethics and the medicalization of religion; abortion; care for neonates; the timing of death and organ transplantation from the brain-dead, and end-of-life care . The book should be of interest to students and scholars of bioethics, Jewish religious law, history of Israeli law, and the interactions between social history of medicine and biomedical law . This is a much expanded and revised Hebrew version of the 2014 book Jewish Medical Ethics published by Cambridge University Press.