By 1917 the European war seemed to be endless. Both sides in the fighting looked to new weapons, tactics and ideas to break a stalemate that was itself destroying Europe. In the German government a small group of men had a brilliant idea: why not sow further confusion in an increasingly chaotic Russia by arranging for Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the most notorious of revolutionary extremists, currently safely bottled up in neutral Switzerland, to go home? Catherine Merridale's Lenin on the Train recreates Lenin's extraordinary journey from harmless exile in Zürich, across a Germany falling to pieces from the war's deprivations, and northwards to the edge of Lapland to his eventual ecstatic reception by the revolutionary crowds at Petrograd's Finland Station. With great skill and insight Merridale weaves the story of the train and its uniquely strange group of passengers with a gripping account of the now half-forgotten liberal Russian revolution and shows how these events intersected. She brilliantly uses a huge range of contemporary eyewitnesses, observing Lenin as he travelled back to a country he had not seen for many years. Many thought he was a mere 'useful idiot', others thought he would rapidly be imprisoned or killed, others that Lenin had in practice few followers and even less influence. They would all prove to be quite wrong.

Elijah the Prophet is a remarkably impressive figure whose life is full of dramatic moments: the decree to stop the rain, the fierce tension with King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, the war on idolatry which had its climax on Mount Carmel with the killing of the prophets of Baal, God’s revelation at Horeb, the ascent to heaven in a chariot of fire, etc. These episodes sparked the imagination of readers and commentators, thinkers and artists, who continued to study the figure of Elijah throughout the generations. The book Until Elijah Comes: The Portrayal of Elijah the Prophet in Tannaitic Literature is an examination of Elijah’s multi-faceted character as reflected in Tannaitic sources, the earliest stratum of rabbinic literature. Adiel Kadari presents an in-depth analysis of the major issues related to Elijah the Prophet in the intellectual world of the sages, such as the principles and limits of halakhic discourse, messianism and eschatology, religious and political zealotry, the phenomenon of prophecy and the question of its persistence in the post-biblical era, and the relationship to history, religious piety and asceticism. The analysis of Elijah in this volume is rooted in philological studies concerning the origin and transmission of the text, and branches out to an examination of ideological aspects and worldviews. The synthesis of various approaches employed in the study of rabbinic literature yields a rich and variegated discourse. The book’s various chapters reveal the tremendous importance of Elijah in the eyes of the sages, as well as the exegetical and ideological struggles over the shaping of his image.

This book offers a cultural biography of Maimonides as a product of his multi-cultural and multi-religious background. It studies “the great eagle” in his multi-faceted historical and cultural context, and highlights the deep impact on him of Islamic culture as a whole: not only his philosophy, but also his legal and scientific writings as well as his correspondences. The aim of the book is twofold. On the one hand, it highlights universal patterns in Maimonides’ thought. On the other hand, it shows Maimonides’ relevance to the study of Medieval Islam. The presentation of Maimonides as a Mediterranean thinker elucidates his consistent interpretation of his own Jewish tradition in contemporary terms, as they were shaped by his Mediterranean legacy.

The book Shamanism and Literary Criticism deals with the unique attention that scholars of art and literature pay to the object of their study. This specific attention is based on a communitarian approach, a special type of research empathy, and a contemplation radically focused on literature, art, and the community of its readers. What do scholars of literature do in a community where literature is created, read, and interpreted by them? What is the attitude of these scholars to literature and its readers? What is the role entrusted to them by their community? This book offers a new theory about the attitude of the study of literature toward literature, art, and communality. It illustrates the theory and its features as a method of research and interpretation in the works of Uri Nissan Gnessin, Micha Yosef Berdyczewski, Shimon Halkin, A. B. Yehoshua, Aharon Appelfeld, Dahlia Ravikovitch, Ronit Matalon, Orly Castel-Bloom, and Anna Hermann.

Life crises present before the person experiencing them an opportunity to embark on a philosophical journey that is not detached from everyday life. This book provides philosophical guidance which could help a person define their own basic questions, as well as support in the process of creative, autonomous, critical and authentic development of a newly generated world view. It aims to enable a person to realize ideas from the history of human thought and to make their life more meaningful.

The book examines the relations between Oriental, local Jews and Palestinian Arabs in Mandatory Palestine. It focuses on the role of Oriental Jews as possible mediators from a cultural, political and social perspective, as those who sought to bridge Jewish-Arab culture, Jewish-Arab nationalism, and Jewish-Arab identity. Examining these relations from the perspective of Oriental and local Jews sheds new light on the history and historiography of Zionism, the Yishuv, and the Jewish-Arab conflict.

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. In this issue: Merav Roth | FROM “FUNES THE MEMORIOUS” TO FORGETFUL AGNES: ON DEAD REMEMBERED MEMORIES AND THE ALIVE FORGOTTEN Emmanuel Amrami | ON SEXUALITY IN PSYCHOANALYSIS: TWO PHASES, THREE FACES, AND A BRIEF GLANCE TOWARD LOVE Anat Tzur-Mahalel | “WRITING LIKE A DOG DIGGING A HOLE; A RAT DIGGING ITS BURROW:” NARRATIVES OF SEPARATION THROUGH THE PERSPECTIVE OF FREUD’S PATIENTS Rakefet Efrat (Levkovich) Holzer | “YOUR ENDLESS UNRETURN”: MELANCHOLY AND ABYSMAL DOUBLE NEGATION Ayelet Naeh | THE SELF THAT IS NOT ONE: ON THE REFLECTIVE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THE SELF AND AWARENESS THROUGH A KABBALISTIC PERSPECTIVE Yifat Eitan-Persico | OEDIPAL CONFIGURATIONS IN SAME-SEX FAMILIES Omri Blum | THE UNCANNY: A STUDY OF THE UNCANNY IN LITERATURE AND PSYCHOANALYSIS Ruth Netzer | MYTHS AND REALITIES: ON INCEST, SIN AND REDEMPTION Moshe Alon | TRANSFERENCE, COUNTERTRANSFERENCE AND THE WOUNDED HEALER: A JUNGIAN ANALYTIC-PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC RELATIONSHIP Tziki Cohen | BETWEEN MONAD AND DYAD: THE MULTIFACETED NATURE OF SELF-CONSTITUTION Alina Schellekes | SENTENCED TO LIFE: REFLECTIONS ON THE INABILITY TO SUSTAIN VITALITY, FOLLOWING THE MOVIE “TURTLES CAN FLY” Dafna Ben-Zvi | HOW DOES THE ‘ISLAND OF MAYBE’ HEAL? REPETITION AND REPARATION IN “THE JOURNEY TO THE ISLAND OF MAYBE” BY MIRIAM YALAN-STEKELIS

Was Niccolò Machiavelli really the cynical schemer of legend - or was he a profound ethical thinker, who tried to save the democratic freedom of Renaissance Florence as it was threatened by ruthless dynasties? This revelatory biography shows us a man of fox-like dissimulation: a master of disguise in dangerous times.

In October 2018, results of a randomized controlled trial showed an excess mortality mainly from cancer, among “healthy” people over the age of 70 who took aspirin, in contrast to many clinical studies previously published. This event was another record in the crisis in scientific medicine that has been unfolding before our eyes in recent decades. In this book the author tries to trace the causes of the shocks that afflict the medical knowledge base, and to offer solutions to strengthen and stabilize it. This book includes four parts. The first part discusses aspirin as a test case for development of clinical research. The second part is devoted to a discussion of the seven foundations of modern clinical research while revealing the pros and cons of each and their relative contribution to the pursuit of scientific truth. In the third part, five groundbreaking discoveries are examined. In each of them, the process that led to the discovery is deciphered, emphasizing the findings making clinical research, on the way from bench to bedside, redundant. In the fourth part the author exposes the rules of the competition among scientist, and determines its impact on the conduct of research and its results.

The Western Wall—Judaism’s holiest site—occupies a prominent position in contemporary Jewish and Israeli discourse, current events, and local politics. In The Western Wall: The Dispute over Israel's Holiest Jewish Site, 1967–2000 , Kobi Cohen-Hattab and Doron Bar offer a detailed exploration of the Western Wall plaza’s evolution in the late twentieth century. The examination covers the role of archaeology, attempts to design the space, the Wall’s transformation as an Israeli and Jewish symbol, and the movement to open it to a variety of Jewish denominations, studying the central processes and shifts that took place at the Western Wall during the three decades that followed the Six-Day War, a relatively short yet crucial chapter in Jerusalem's extensive history.

This volume offers rich accounts of pioneering leadership development projects and other education-related programs operated or supported by the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation over the last thirty years - initiatives designed to advance the Foundation’s mission to enhance the vitality of the Jewish people and to strengthen Israel as a just, compassionate and inclusive society. Scholars, educational leaders and philanthropists will find much to ponder in this book. It offers multiple perspectives on the qualities needed for effective leadership; on leadership development, with attention to the role of the humanities and policy studies in this process; on ways to foster educational and social change; on philanthropic engagement; and on the role of research and profound ideas in efforts to strengthen educational practice and communal life.

This book focuses on space, borders and ethcis in contemporary Hebrew prose written in the shadow of the Occupation and the Intifadas and reads corpus of works written between 1987 and 2007. Israeli literary representations of the Occupation and the two Intifadas, raise critical ethical questions about militarism, humanism, the nature of the State of Israel as a democracy, national identity and its borders, the nature of Zionist education, and the acknowledgment of the Other. The book deals with the portrait of the Israeli soldier, depicts the settings of the Occupied Territories, but also describes life in cities such as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It examines realistic writing as well as fantastic-grotesque, in the works of A. B. Yehoshua, David Grossman, Ronit Matalon, Asher Kravitz, Michal Govrin, and Orly Castel-Bloom and many others.