Prayer in Israel is not only a personal and occasional expression of man's relationship with his God, but a complete way of life, organized around a set of daily prayers, on weekdays, on Shabbat and on holidays. But many questions hover around the genesis of this system: When was it designed? At what stages? What is the relationship between its different parts and between its different ways - blessing, reading and prayer? What is the difference between public prayer and individual prayer? Extensive literature has already been written on the history of the prayer, but since the main design of the prayer emerged from the Talmudic literature - Tanna'im and Amora'im - it is essential to place the study of the prayer on the basis of a detailed analysis of the Talmudic material, according to the ways of updated Talmudic science. From this a reliable picture of the prayer in Israel may be drawn from within the literature of the Sages. This essay seeks to present basic chapters from this task.

Sabbatian Songs of Faith: Ritual, Community, and Interreligious Encounters in the Late Ottoman Empire unveils the hidden world of the Ma’aminim—followers of the 17th-century Jewish messianic figure, Sabbatai Tzvi. After Tzvi’s dramatic conversion to Islam in 1666, many of his followers returned to mainstream Judaism. However, a dedicated group followed in his footsteps, converted to Islam, and established a new path, blending Sabbatian, Jewish, and Islamic elements within a distinct Ottoman-Sephardi cultural framework. For centuries, the Ma’aminim maintained secrecy, forming distinct communities (known as the Dönme) and playing a multifaceted role in Jewish and Ottoman histories. This book sheds new light on their social life and esoteric traditions through a comprehensive, interdisciplinary analysis of previously mostly unexamined mystical manuscripts in Ladino, Hebrew, and Ottoman Turkish. It explores their sacred songs, radical theology, rituals, folklore, and musical practices as reflections of communal reality and developments. By placing the Ma’aminim within a broader historical and cross-cultural perspective, Sabbatian Songs of Faith offers fresh insights into religious transformation, intercommunal exchanges, and the interplay between faith, ritual, and popular culture in the late Ottoman world and beyond.

In The Taste of Hidden Things Sara Sviri weaves a tapestry in which Sufi motifs and images are highlighted: the perfume of Attar's and Rumi's poetry, the boldness of Ibn al-Arabi's mystical speculation, the ecstatic experiences and dreams of old and modern seekers, and the richness of the Naqshbandi masters, past and present. A special place is given to al-Hakim at-Tirmidhi, a ninth century mystic from Central Asia. Many passages from his work, including his wife’s teaching dreams, are published here for the first time in Hebrew.

The Devil's Renaissance describes the early modern period in Europe as a time of terrible bloodshed and persecution of minorities such as the Moriscos, the Gypsies, heretics, the Cagots and the imaginary sect of satanic witches. It was the age of fear of conspiracies and of the devil undermining the Christian commonwealth.

The thirteenth-century Franciscan pilgrim Philip of Savona wrote that “the whole Trinity has declared that river [Jordan] to be fortunate and most worthy, above which the Father was heard, the Holy Spirit was seen in the form of a dove, and the Son was baptized in human nature.” Since the Middle Ages, Christian pilgrims from many countries have traveled to the Holy Land in order to immerse themselves in the Jordan River and to take some of its water back to their homelands. Hundreds described their experiences from the blessed river, and in the nineteenth century also began exploring and documenting its history. This volume contains a selection of the accounts of pilgrims and tourists, who describe their impressions, expectations, and sometimes also their disappointments when encountering the Jordan River. It includes descriptions of pilgrims from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, amongst them well-known authors such as Mark Twain, François-René de Chateaubriand and Gustave Flaubert. The book also contains chapters on the geography of the Jordan River, historical events associated with it, and the literature that developed around it.

The treatise Scechina is a manifesto of Renaissance Christian-Kabbalistic messianism. The author, Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo (1469-1532), was a preeminent Christian Kabbalist, both in terms of his position within the ecclesiastical hierarchy and in what concerns the depth and breadth of his acquaintance with Hebrew sources. The treatise was composed in exquisite Renaissance Latin and is hereby rendered for the first time into a modern language. The text articulates the voice of the Jewish Shekinah herself, expounding in first person and with profound insight the doctrine of Kabbalah, fervently calling for the completion of the final stage of universal redemption. This redemption commences with the discovery of distant lands and foreign cultures, and its protagonist is Emperor Charles V, whose motto - plus ultra [further beyond] - refers to surpassing the Strait of Gibraltar and medieval knowledge (the Emperor and Pope Clement VII are among the book's addressees). While this redemption is Christian in nature, it emphasizes integration and synthesis with Greek and Roman wisdom, and particularly Judaism. Despite sharp condemnations of Jews for their non-acceptance of Jesus, Egidio's Shekinah lavishes love upon them, especially the Kabbalists, whom she refers to as "my Arameans" and considers as latent Christians. This even extends to support for Solomon Molkho, the Jewish messiah who apostatized from Christianity. Such an attitude towards Judaism did not survive in the Catholic Church in the generation following Egidio, the era of the Counter-Reformation. The translation is richly annotated by the translators, providing extensive commentary and explication. Furthermore, the volume is prefaced by comprehensive introductory chapters authored by Judith Weiss, elucidating the life, intellectual contributions, and literary corpus of Egidio da Viterbo.

A New Orient is an in-depth historical study on the history of Zionist and Israeli Oriental Studies, particularly the study of Arabic, Islam, and Middle Eastern history, as a field of knowledge rooted in 19th and early 20th century German universities. Most of its founders in Israel were German-Jewish scholars who emerged from the Central European Orientalist tradition, and introduced this field of knowledge to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem – and subsequently to the entire Israeli academic system. Through the analysis of rich archival documentation, the book outlines the complex process of migrating Orientalist knowledge. It focuses on what happened to the research and the researchers themselves when their encounter with the Orient shifted from a textual-philological one, following the traditions of German academia, to an actual encounter, fraught with contradictions and tensions, against the backdrop of the intensifying Arab-Jewish conflict. The book sheds new light on the development of academic research as a whole in Mandate Palestine and the early years of Israel, serving as a rich case study for analyzing the complex relationship between 'pure' scientific work and political, social, and cultural issues. It also offers a new perspective on the roots of the Arab-Jewish conflict and the role scientific knowledge played in shaping it. The book won the Mordechai Ish Shalom Prize for a debut book in the history of the Land of Israel in 2025, and the book received commendation from the Shazar (2024) and Am Veolam (2025) award committees.

This is the story of an adventurous journey into a magical, unknown and incomprehensible world where nature is alive and has a psyche, including trees. Do trees have a spirit? Does a tree have a soul? Scientists may question the notion that trees have a mind, soul or spirit, but there are cultures where trees have a soul and a mind of their own. The book describes the mind-blowing experience of entry into a world of spirits and trees, a world of animism – the field of anthropology that ascribes a psyche to all natural elements. Written in the form of travel log accompanied by illustrations, the book reveals the wisdom and sensitivities of villagers in northern Burma, who opened their home, their trees and their hearts to the author, allowing him to touch and understand their beliefs, and through them understand his own self.

The book contains the first-ever Hebrew translation of a collection of medieval Arabic stories, entitled The Hundred and One Nights . The chapters of the book deal with a variety of issues, for instance, the work’s origins and history, extant versions and manuscripts, language, material culture, poetics, the ideas and themes reflected in the stories, and Jewish background elements that can occasionally be discerned in some of the stories.

In his two masterworks, Mishneh Torah and The Guide for the Perplexed , Maimonides explicitly articulates a dual crisis: the disintegration of the Halakhic tradition and the erosion of the esoteric knowledge of the Torah. This study presents a novel interpretation of Maimonides’ crisis proclamations and the narratives linked to them. It primarily analyzes how Maimonides crafted a discourse of crisis, illuminating this through a comparison with earlier discourses in the Jewish canon and parallel crisis narratives in Islamic sources. The key question it seeks to answer is: why did Maimonides prominently employ this discourse in his works? The exploration of crisis discourse in Maimonides’ work reveals how he introduces a marked internal tension in each of his two major works. On the one hand, he declares his commitment to both the halakhic tradition and the esoteric knowledge tradition, even as he retrospectively reshapes them. On the other hand, he emphasizes the urgent need for reforming these traditions to confront the rupture they have undergone. This study demonstrates that in both Mishneh Torah and The Guide for the Perplexed , Maimonides portrays the process of breaking and refashioning tradition as an act of loyalty to these traditions during a time of crisis.

In 1491 the renowned goldsmith Salomone da Sesso converted to Catholicism. Born to a Jewish family in Florence, Salomone later settled in Ferrara, where he was regarded as a virtuoso artist. But rumors circulated about Salomone’s behavior, scandalizing the Mantuan Jewish community, who turned him over to the civil authorities. Salomone was condemned to death for sodomy but agreed to renounce Judaism to save his life. He was baptized, taking the name Ercole “de’ Fedeli” (“One of the Faithful”). Drawing on newly discovered archival sources, Tamar Herzig traces the dramatic story of his life, half a century before ecclesiastical authorities made Jewish conversion a priority of the Catholic Church. The book explores the Jewish world in which Salomone was raised; the glittering objects he crafted, and their status as courtly hallmarks; and Ercole’s relations with his wealthy patrons. Herzig also examines the response of Jewish communities and Christian authorities to allegations of sexual crimes, and attitudes toward homosexual acts among Christians and Jews. In Salomone/Ercole’s story we see how precarious life was for converts from Judaism, and how contested was the meaning of conversion for both the apostates’ former coreligionists and those tasked with welcoming them to their new faith.

A jubilee volume in honor of Prof. Menahem Ben-Sasson. The book, which contains 22 articles written by Prof. Ben-Sasson's colleagues, students, friends, and family members is dedicated to phenomena of leadership in the Jewish world . The various articles examine conceptions, practices and ways of Jewish leadership from diverse perspectives and in varied times and places. They are based on variegated sources: historical and judicial documents, biblical exegeses, poetry, letters, Responsa, polemical and philosophical writings. The volume is a tribute to Prof. Ben Sasson's extensive academic and public activity.