This book presents three hundred pieces added by Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman (Nachmanides) to his commentary on the Torah when he made aliyah to Israel at the end of his life. The added segments were identified according to update lists sent by Nachmanides himself and others to the Diaspora, as well as on the basis of extensive comparative examination of all the hand-written transcripts of Nachmanides’ interpretation of the Torah found today in the world (about fifty in number). There is a comprehensive introduction at the beginning of the book, that discusses the phenomenon of the additions and analyzes the findings of the hand-written transcripts and surveys the reasons and for these additional pieces. The bulk of the book is comprised of interpretive discussions detailed in every piece, whose purpose is to clarify Nachmanides’ motives when making additions to what he first wrote. In the book itself – and the website that accompanies it – detailed information is presented about the additions and the evidence of them in the list of additions and the hand-written transcripts. The awareness of the commentary’s formation by those who studied the commentary, both at large and specifically for each particular piece, adds a new dimension to the commentary, and is a significant contribution to understanding the way of Nachmanides, to solving problems in his sayings and clarifying his intent. To this end, the book is a very important tool for scholars of Nachmanides, Torah learners and lovers. The book won the Yad Ben-Zvi prize, 2017

The book 'Temple Portals: Studies in Aggadah and Midrash in the Zohar' deals with the Zohar, the most important book of Kabbalah, and discuss it as a latest strata of the Midrashic literature. The book concentrates on the 'expanded' biblical story in the Zohar, and especially on the relationship between it and the ancient Talmudic Aggadah. The book examines the Zohar as a collection of many late and developed versions of the ancient Talmudic stories. Each of its chapters discusses one of the biblical tale traditions in the Zohar. Among other things discussed here issues such as: the sin of Adam, the binding of Isaac, Esau's character, the status of Elijah, and others. By analytical and critical examination of each of these traditions, the composition reveals - the first time systematically - Aspects of continuity and change in the history of the old Aggadic story and its way into the Zoharic corpus. Moreover, the detailed description of this literary process also reveals the world of the authors of the Zohar, their spiritual distresses, mystical orientations , and self-consciousness. Some chapters of this book has been published during the past years, and to these chapters were added several new topics, as well as conceptual and methodological introduction to the Midrash and Aggadah in the Zohar .

Volume one: A List of Galit Hasan-Rokem's Publications Intimate Dialogue: A Personal View of Galit Hasan-Rokem's Poetry On the Three 'Who is She...' Questions in the Song of Songs Rabbi Meir, the Babylonian Talmud, and Menippean Satire From Narrative Practice to Cultural Poetics: Literary Anthropology and Rabbinic Sense of Self Noah, his Family, and Other Animals: Midrash, Folklore and the Interpretation of a Biblical Story (or: Homage to Structuralism) 'The Earthquake in the Valley of Arbel': A Galilean Apocalyptic Tradition and its Historical-Liturgical Context The Literary-Parable in Seder Eliyahu Raba, in Light of the Homiletic-Parable in Rabbinic Literature 'Unto the Voice of the Girl's Songs': On Singing Women in Medieval Hebrew Poetry (The Andalusian School and it Offshoots) Intertextual Appropriation as Code: Between Palestine and Spain Jewish and Christian Dispute Poems on the Relationship between the Body and the Soul The Sorcerer Balaam According to Midrash Me'am Lo'ez The Plebeian and the Cultivated Proverb in Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote 'Irme Kero Madre' (Mother, I Wsih to Go): The Concept of Jerusalem in a Judeo-Spanish Folk Song as a Movement between Myth and Praxis Indescribable Female Beauty: Sephardic Wasfs, the Song of Songs, and Baffled Readers The Image of the Jew in Yiddish Proverbs Midrash Eliyahu, Mendelssohn's Version Freud and the Topos of the Wandering Jew The Retum of the Wandering Jews(s) in Samuel Hirszenberg's Art List of Contributors List of Abbreviations English Abstracts Volume two: Mitzvot Hannah: Visual Depictons of the 'Three Women's Commandments' among the Jews of Europe from the Middle Ages to Late Nineteenth Century Magic Dress of Jewish Groom from Rada'A' - a Town in Yemen Trousseaus of Jewish Brides from Izmir: Biographical Objects The Study of Folklore and the Process of Secularization of Modern Jewish Culture The Power of a Proverb - the Role of a Proverb in Agnon's Story Four Sages Who Were in Our Town: The Social Milieu in the Rabbinic Study Hall - from the Babylonian Talmud to S.Y. Agnon Source and Oblivion - Story, Folk and Folktale in Agnon's Writing Agnon's Biblical Ethnographies: Edo and Enam and the Quest for the Ultimate Song The Narrative Sub-Structures of S.Y. Agnon's 'The Lady and the Peddler' Leah Goldberg Meets Brenner 'Deportation Does no Solve Anything' - on 'Khirbet Khizeh' by S. Yizhar Purim in Sheinkin-Carnival in Tel Aviv of the Eighties A Yid Gefint an Eytse (Yiddish: A Jew Gets Advice) - A Reading in the Life History and Proverbs and Sayings of an Israeli Man of Transylvanian Origin in His Life in Communist Romania 'To Make Many More Menachem Mendels': Childlessness, Parturiton, and Creation in Messianic Habad Men and Women Narrating the Myth of the Creation of Woman - Hegemonic and Subversive Message 'Gobelin' Needlepoint: Introducing the Concept of 'Transitional Object; to the Study of Material Culture Jews in the Arabic Map: Hebrew Place Names Spoken by Local Arabbs - a Literary-Cultural Reading The Identity of Israeli Arabs as Reflected in Hebrew-Bases Nicknames The 'Bible Now': Contemporization, Political Satire and National Memory 'The Princess in the Rock': A South Indian Tale 'He That Travels Far Knows Much' English Abstracts

This fascinating work represents the peak of philosophical , allegorical interpretation of the Middle Ages. The book by Rabbi Levi rests on Talmudic , midrashic , halakhic , rich philosophical and scientific sources , and evokes admiration in its readers, who are left impressed by the scope of the author's knowledge and fertile imagination . Towards the end of the thirteenth century,the Provençal Jewish philosopher R. Levi ben Avraham wrote aunique treatise – an in-depth Hebrew encyclopedia of the sciences and of Judaism entitled LivyatḤen. R. Levi was known already in his lifetime as a leading exponent of the philosophical-allegorical interpretation of the Torah and of rabbinic midrash. In the Jewish part of his encyclopedia he deals with a myriad of topics, including Jewish ethics, prophecy, the reasons for the commandments, the stories of Moses and the patriarchs, the principles of faith, the Work of Creation, the Work of the Chariot, and the interpretation of rabbinic midrash and aggadah. Prior to LivyatḤenR. Levi wrote an encyclopedic poem of over 1000 stanzas in rhymed meter entitled Batei ha-Nepheshve-ha-Laḥashim. This poem is devoted to the same topics in science and Judaism that are later discussed in great detail in his treatise.

The book Biblisch- talmudische Medizin , first published in Berlin, in 1911, is a unique life's bringing together a comprehensive knowledge in medicine, Jewish and general sources. The various chapters include a broad review of the world of medicine in the Bible and the Talmud in light of Jewish law, a detailed description of the biological organs, diseases of body and mind, deformities, gynecological and sexual. There are chapters on legal medicine, preventative medicine, health cures and dietetics. The material is also based on in-depth study of Bible, Mishnah, Talmudic and Rabbinic literature, Midrash, the External Books, the works of Joseph Ben Matityahu, the New Testament, as well as ancient and modern legal literature, Likewise illuminating sources from Greek and Latin literature, western medical literature, referencing hundreds of publications from the eighteen and nineteen hundreds were used. The writer Dr. Julius Preuss (1861-1913) was born in a small town in Prussia, in which his parents' house was the only Jewish family. He studied medicine in Berlin and was close to the orthodox Jewish community, where he acquired much of his extensive knowledge in Judaism. Over the years Preuss published over thirty articles on medicine and Judaism in various scientific journals, all the while maintaining a medical practice in the town of his birth and afterward in Berlin. He passed away two years after publishing his book in German, based on his articles. Preuss' book was translated into English by Dr. Fred Rosner (Biblical and Talmudic Medicine) and was published in the United State in 1978. At a conference on Jewish and medical law, which took place in Jerusalem in 1998, the book was quoted and it was indicated that a translation into Hebrew was sorely needed. The translator into Hebrew, Uri Wurzburger, remained loyal to the original German, at the same time expanding the quoted references appearing in the book and adding modern interpretations.

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 Contents From the Responsa of Rabbenu Migash from the Cairo Genizah published by Amir Ashur A Series of Paronomasia Poems by R. Berechiah ha-Nakdan published by Aviyah Una Baruchi "Ha-She'eilah ve-ha-Teshuvah" by R. Judah ibn Rokesh published by Doron Forte Philosophical Writings of R. Shemariah Ikriti: Sefer Amazyahu, Sefer ha-Mora, and Ra'ayah al Hisharut ha-Nefesh (A Proof for the Immortality of the Soul) published by Dov Schwartz Peri ha-Gan by R. Shalom ben R. Joseph Anabi published by Ofer Elior R. Isaac Aboab's Commentary to the Hermeneutic Principle of Kal va-Homer published by Aviram Ravitsky Quntres Pereq be-Shir by Joshua Benveniste: Hebrew Poetics in the Transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque published by Joseph Yahalom and Naoya Katsumata

This is the eighth book in the Sources and Traditions - Critical Commentary on the Talmud series.

Halakhah: Overt and Implicit Conceptual and Ideological Contexts , is a collection of articles by leading scholars in the field of halakhah and the philosophy of halakhah. The articles uncover the overt and implicit worldviews of a number of halakhic decisors and examine how they coped with extra-halakhic cultures and ideas. Some of them internalized “outside” concepts, while others dealt with the outside world by making new use of the internal notions of the world of halakhah. The articles also consider the link between ideology and the issuance of halakhic rulings. Readers will encounter examples of the influence of ideology on halakhah, alongside arguments that categorically deny that ideology plays any part in halakhic thinking. The volume proposes answers to questions such as whether halakhah derives its power from its anti-ideological character and what underlies the assertion that halakhah is an ideological text.

Meir of Rothenburg (c. 1215 – 2 May 1293) was a German Rabbi and poet, a major author of the tosafot on Rashi's commentary on the Talmud. He is also known as Meir Ben Baruch, the Maharam of Rothenburg His responsa are of great importance to advanced students of the Talmud, as well as to students of Jewish life and customs of the 13th Century. This book is in Hebrew only.

This collection of articles is the fruit of over sixty years of teaching and research by Professor Avraham Goldberg, one of the most prominent Talmud scholars of our generation. Professor Goldberg taught for decades in the Talmud department at the Hebrew University and was awarded the Israel Prize in Talmudic studies in 2000. In earlier years he was a student of Professors Louis Ginzburg and Saul Lieberman during his studies in New York , and later a student of Professors Y. N. Epstein and Hanoch Albeck in Israel .

For Jewish cultural studies, the analysis of changes in ritual content, and of the responses of both participants and non-participants to those changes, is critical to illuminating what is Jewish about Jewishness. This volume shows ritual action to be key to the maintenance of identity and to the expression of world-view. Often overlooked as routine or dismissed as bizarre abnormality, ritual in its many forms, conflicts, and guises is shown to be a central strategy for embodying experience that is lived, imagined, and even negated. Often overlooked as routine or even dismissed as odd customs, ritual in its many guises demands attention as a central strategy for embodying experience. Like other groups, Jews rely on ritual to provide an inventory of social meanings and a context for negotiating the challenges of everyday life. Ritual for Jews has historically carried special meanings for conveying what is Jewish about Jewishness. It is not enough, however, simply to document customs: for a full understanding of ritual and its meaning for participants we need to analyse how ritual expressions such as liturgies, holidays, life-cycle events—even political rallies—change in response to developments in the wider society, or are adapted to meet new needs. The innovative studies of adapted, invented, and evolving rituals presented in this volume, that include the Tunisian Jewish celebration of Se’udat Yitro, liturgical prayers for Israel Independence Day, shiva observance in an old-age home, transplanted Ethiopian Jewish wedding events, and same-sex marriage rituals. thus interpret the Jewish enactment of ritual and uses of tradition in everyday life against the background of modernity and community. It is the complexities of ritual—the dynamics of negotiating the religious and the secular, the traditional and the modern, the social and the political, performance and practice—that form the core of the book. Together, the contributors show ritual action to be key to the maintenance of Jewish identity and to the expression of a distinctive world-view. Contributors to this volume: Simon J. Bronner, Alanna E. Cooper, Jean R. Freedman, Sander L. Gilman, Harvey E. Goldberg, Jillian Gould, Michael Hoberman, Agnieszka Jagodzińska, Shaul Kelner, Irit Koren, Gail Labovitz, Vanessa L. Ochs, Hagar Salamon, Rachel Sharaby, Nina S. Spiegel, Seth Ward