For thousands of years, people pictured the sky as a giant dome surrounding the Earth. The stars were thought to be fixed to this dome, which slowly turned above us, much like the motion of the Sun, the Moon and the planets. This book tells the story of the scientific revolution that changed that picture forever—the moment humanity realized that the motions we see in the sky are only apparent motions, created by the Earth spinning on its axis and traveling around the Sun. The “celestial dome,” it turned out, was an illusion. It is the Earth—and the heavens—that move. This revolution began with Nicolaus Copernicus’s book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres , published in 1543, just as the author was nearing the end of his life. The bold ideas in that book sent shockwaves through the scientific world and helped lay the foundations of modern physics. They also transformed the way people thought about nature—and about humanity’s place in the universe. This book follows the dramatic story of the Copernican Revolution and the long struggle to convince the world of its truth, from Galileo’s telescopic discoveries—made with a telescope he built himself—to the fierce scientific and religious debates that followed. The Copernican Revolution opened the door to an even bigger idea: The universe is vast, stretching far beyond our solar system. The “fixed stars,” we learned, are actually distant suns, so far away that they appear as tiny points of light. From there, it was only natural to wonder whether some of those stars might have planets of their own. At the end of the twentieth century—more than 400 years after Copernicus—astronomers finally discovered that planets are everywhere, orbiting stars across the galaxy. And who knows—perhaps some of those distant worlds may even host life.

MA‘ARAG: The Israel Annual of Psychoanalysis is a democratic, refereed annual publication, evaluated and edited by academicians, intellectuals in related fields, and clinicians. The journal, dedicated to research in psychoanalytic theory, practice and criticism, is the fruit of the initiative and cooperation of the Sigmund Freud Center for the Study and Research in Psychoanalysis of the Hebrew University, the Israeli Association for Self Psychology and the Study of Subjectivity, Israel Society for Analytical Psychology, Israel Psychoanalytic Society, Clinical Division of the Israel Psychological Association, Israel Institute for Group Analysis, Israel Institute of Jungian Psychology, The Sigmund Freud Chair of Psychoanalysis of the Department of Psychology, The Hebrew University, Tel-Aviv Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, The Winnicott Center in Israel and the New Israeli Jungian Association. From this issue: Anat Tzur Mahalel | "THE STILL-TENDER MEMORY OF CHILDHOOD": SIGMUND FREUD AND WALTER BENJAMIN ON IMAGES OF CHILDHOOD Orit Yushinksy | THE ETHICS OF MEMORY AND FORGETTING Merav Roth | LIVING AFTER DEATH: FROM MELANCHOLIC DEADLOCK TO SYMBOLIC CONTINUITY Yael Khenin | CONTAINMENT CREATED THROUGH SPIRAL MOTION: THE COMPLEX INTERACTION BETWEEN EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL REALITY IN TIMES OF WAR, LOSS AND TURMOIL Nilly Szor | INSCRIBING PAIN: THE PHENOMENON OF OCTOBER 7 TATTOOS AS AN EXPRESSION OF PERSONAL AND COLLECTIVE TRAUMA Michal Bat Or | PSYCHOANALYTIC THOUGHTS ON WRAPPING AS A PSYCHIC MOVEMENT IN ART AND ART THERAPY IN THE CONTEXT OF COLLECTIVE TRAUMA Basmat Klein | "MEMORY FREEZE-FRAMES": ON PHOTOGRAPHY AND PSYCHIC PROCESSING Tammuz Aflalo | THE HOME NESTING METAPHOR: PHANTASY, THE UNCANNY, AND THE PSYCHIC POSITION Shai Levinger and Nurit Perl | REFLECTIONS ON TRANSFORMATIVE PROCESSES OF THE SELF IN PSYCHOANALYTICALLY-ORIENTED MUSIC THERAPY Alon Roe | THE ROLE OF MOVEMENT IN ESTABLISHING THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL IN FREUD

At the heart of this book’s ten chapters stands the rich, multifaceted figure of the mother. Are the Jewish mother and the Israeli mother one and the same, or does each have her own distinct identity? What are the enduring and evolving hallmarks of this maternal figure, and how are they reflected in songs in Hebrew and Yiddish? This is a guided journey through the fascinating, dizzying transformations of beloved and half-forgotten songs and melodies. The book's close readings bring these songs to life, offering a window into the worlds of their creators and shedding light on the events and processes that have shaped the Jewish people and Israeli society across the generations. Brimming with information, insights, and delightful curiosities, and accompanied by dozens of illustrations, this book is the fruit of meticulous research, written in clear, fluid, and utterly engaging prose. It is a book every mother will want to read, and that every son and daughter will want to give her as a gift of love.

The Jewish communities of Speyer, Mainz, and Worms (known collectively as ShUM), the ancient center of Torah scholarship in Ashkenaz, produced many generations of scholars who wrote glorious chapters in the history of Jewish culture. Particularly prominent was the distinguished circle of sages active there at the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, including Rabbi Yehudah ben Kalonymos of Speyer, Rabbi Yehudah ben Kalonymos of Mainz, Rabbi Shmuel the Pious and his son Rabbi Yehudah the Pious, Rabbi Simcha of Speyers and Rabbi Eleazar of Worms. Even though the names of the sages of ShUM appear countless times throughout rabbinic literature, only a very small portion of their work in the fields of Talmud and halakhah has come down to us. For centuries, the only works available in print were Sefer ha-Rokeach by R. Eleazar of Worms and Sefer Raban. Even the great surge in the critical publication of texts from the nineteenth century onwards has only slightly increased that number. The present volume seeks to fill this gap to some extent. It presents the full text of Rabbi Eleazar of Worms’s Sermon for Passover , and the introduction describes two additional halakhic works by him that have been discovered in manuscript. The Sermon provides the earliest evidence for several well-known Ashkenazic customs—among them the dripping of sixteen drops of wine during the Passover Seder, the prohibition of eating legumes (kitniyot) on Passover, and the eating of dairy foods on Shavuot. A first edition of the Sermon was published twenty years ago; it is now republished with additions and corrections.

Over the past two decades, advanced technologies and space missions have completely transformed our understanding of potential life beyond Earth. The resulting field, astrobiology, has become a multidisciplinary scientific discipline, encompassing many of the natural sciences and having implications for many areas of research. This book presents an introduction and overview of astrobiology. It deals with a wide range of fields, from the search for signs of life on planets in our solar system, to the discovery of exoplanets in distant solar systems and assessing the potential for life there. The book is based on the course of the same name that the author taught for more than two decades at the Hebrew University, and the course recorded on YouTube in the Cornerstones program , which has accumulated tens of thousands of views. The book is accessible not only to students of natural sciences, but to any reader who wants to learn about and understand the fascinating possibilities of life on other worlds.

Islamic Enlightenment in a Radical Age opens a window to trends of innovation and openness in modern Islam in the mid-twentieth century, a period marked by decolonization, the rise of centralized regimes, and the emergence of Jihad organizations. Important agents in the development of the reformist discourse were Mustafa al-Saba'i and the "Muslim Brotherhood" in Syria from 1946 to 1964. Under al-Saba'i's leadership, the Muslim Brotherhood strove to establish an Islamic Enlightenment that sought to elevate the stature of believers and integrate them into the wider world, while preserving their indigenous identity. Al-Saba'i's rich intellectual and public work has been neglected in the scholarly literature, and this book brings him to the forefront and does him historical and historiographical justice. Al-Saba'i called for the revival of the heritage of Islam and its connection to universal values ​​of freedom and justice, humanism and brotherhood, democracy and nationalism. He served as a voice for the voiceless in society through a commitment to public education, social legislation, and support for women's rights, subject to moral reservations. By promoting a dynamic version of Islam—attentive and responsive to key issues on the public agenda—Al-Saba'i and his movement contributed to preserving the diversity of Islamic thought in an era of puritanism, radicalization, and violence.

Tarbiz is the only Hebrew academic journal devoted to the entire range of Jewish studies. Appearing quarterly, this journal is the principal forum for the expression of the most important developments in Jewish studies in our generation, and among its contributors are the leading scholars in the various fields of Jewish studies in Israel and the world, as well as young scholars who are beginning to make their mark. Tarbiz was first published in 1930 by the Institute of Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, under the editorial pen of Prof. Jacob Nachum. Purchase of the subscription online includes domestic shipping via registered mail of the Israel Post. Other delivery options are available in the online form . International subscriptions include shipping via Fedex.

Prof. Heinrich Mendelssohn was a young student of medicine and zoology in Berlin, where he was born in 1910. When the Nazis came to power, he immigrated to Israel with his family, completed his studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he also wrote his doctoral thesis in zoology. Mendelssohn invested great efforts to expand zoological knowledge in Israel, and later became the director of the Zoological Institute, one of the cornerstones of Tel Aviv University. He served as vice president of the university and dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences. His extensive research earned him the title of "the father of zoology" in Israel and one of the founding fathers of the field of nature conservation. From the beginning of his studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mendelssohn kept a journal in which he recorded his observations of flora and fauna throughout the country and neighboring countries. The Journal was recorded in many notebooks from the year of his immigration, 1933, until 1958. He made many drawings of birds and other animals. In his wonderful drawings, he "captured" the character of the subjects and their behavior in a unique way. Many of them accompany the pages of this book. The journals are a document of enormous importance for the study of nature in our country, a basis and source of information that provides contemporary researchers with the possibility of understanding and researching many processes that have occurred since then and to the present day. Those who peruse the book will learn a lot about Mendelssohn's path and will be able to learn firsthand about the character of our rich animal world in the first half of the twentieth century.

A refugee crisis of huge proportions erupted as a result of the mid-seventeenth-century wars in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Tens of thousands of Jews fled their homes, or were captured and trafficked across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Rescue the Surviving Souls is the first book to examine this horrific moment of displacement and flight, and to assess its social, economic, religious, cultural, and psychological consequences. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources in twelve languages, Adam Teller traces the entire course of the crisis, shedding fresh light on the refugee experience and the various relief strategies developed by the major Jewish centers of the day. Teller pays particular attention to those thousands of Jews sent for sale on the slave markets of Istanbul and the extensive transregional Jewish economic network that coalesced to ransom them. He also explores how Jewish communities rallied to support the refugees in central and western Europe, as well as in Poland-Lithuania, doing everything possible to help them overcome their traumatic experiences and rebuild their lives. Rescue the Surviving Souls offers an intimate study of an international refugee crisis, from outbreak to resolution, that is profoundly relevant today.

Kobez Al Yad , an annual of the Mekize Nirdamim Society, is a forum for the publication from manuscript sources of ancient texts in Jewish studies that are shorter than book-length. The articles in this issue: Menahem Eisenberg | Qerovot for the 17th of Tammuz Attributed to Rabbi El’azar berabbi Qillir Sarah Cohen | Tokhehah poems according to the model of ‘Shikḥi yegonekh’ by Shelomo ibn Gabirol Simcha Emanuel | Additional Glosses of Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam) to Alfasi Chen Maaravi and Adam Afterman | A Unique Version of the Kabbalistic Collections Ascribed to the Unpublished Fourth Part of ‘Sha‘arei Kedushah’

On Friday, March 11, 1026, Yoshiyahu, the only son of the Dayan of the Jewish community in Gaza City, Rabbi Yeshua HeHaver berrebi Nathan, passed away suddenly at the age of six. The bereaved father, who found it difficult to console himself, wrote a comprehensive Qedushta in memory of his son. The Qedushta is a set of piyyutim that was recited during the Amida of Shacharit on Shabbat, and was written according to fixed rules. The father conformed to the technical rules of the form of the Qedushta, but infused unique content into the piyyutim: He expressed in them his great pain and illustrated it with his repeated cries, and also included detailed descriptions of his son, who studied Torah all day. On the other hand, he also tried to deal with his grief in traditional ways, out of faith in God who brought this disaster upon him because of his sins. In one passage he even gave a list of bereaved fathers mentioned in the Bible, starting with Adam, who mourned his son Abel, and tried to convince himself that he was no better than they. The Qedushta was discovered in the Cairo Genizah almost in its entirety, in a unique manuscript which is the author’s autograph, its pages scattered among various libraries. These pages were discovered bit by bit over decades. In this book, all the parts of the Qedushta that have come down to us are printed together for the first time, accompanied by a commentary and a detailed introduction. The introduction discusses the unique contents of the Qedushta and the methods of its design. Rabbi Yeshua’s Qedusuta is compared to the works of several contemporary poets who dealt with disasters: on the one hand, to poems written in Spain, most notably the laments of Rabbi Samuel HaNagid over the death of his brother; and on the other hand, to the poems of Rabbi Samuel the Third, written in the wake of the pogrom against the Jews of Egypt, in which he was arrested and saved at the last moment from execution; and a man named Abraham HaCohen, who wrote piyyutim while imprisoned due to a financial dispute. In light of these comparisons, the purpose of the Qedushta is also discussed, with an attempt to clarify whether it was intended to be recited in public prayer, and when such a prayer could have taken place. Furthermore, the Qedushta is a fascinating human document, full of fatherly love and pain over loss. The struggle to cope with bereavement, unfortunately, is not over. The fact that these events took place a thousand years ago in Gaza also takes on special significance in these days.

This commentary lay hidden for centuries in a single manuscript that eventually made its way to the British Library in London. This edition consists of three parts: 1. A lengthy introduction , which, in addition to bibliographic and historiographic details about the author of the commentary and an account of the manuscript’s journey to the library where it is now housed, also contains a detailed analysis of his exegetical method and a discussion of his sources. 2. The body of the commentary by Rabbi Isaac ben Samuel, which includes an exegetical translation of the verses of II Samuel and their interpretation, both in Judeo-Arabic. Alongside these appear the Hebrew translation of the verses and their commentary, prepared by the editor. The layer of annotations , comprising notes that address the explanation of the commentary, its textual variants (including those found in a partial manuscript preserved in the St. Petersburg Library), its language, the sources on which it draws, and the scholarship related to it.