The political upheavals, the leadership crisis, and the ideological frustration which the Israeli Labour party went through in the first two decades of the 21st century led it to an unprecedented electoral decline. What happened to the formerly dominant party which established the state? What kind of intrinsic changes did it undergo in the late modernity and due to new sociological generations? What kind of new or old ideological discourses were formed within it? And how can we characterize its renewed ideological discourse? These questions stood at the background of this ethnographic study. The study focuses on young, idealistic activists who joined the Israeli Labour Party during 2006-2009 and asked to promote a social-democratic agenda. The book is based on multi-arena fieldwork and it enables a rare ethnographic reflection on the way macro level political changes take shape and are embodied in interpersonal interactions on the micro level.

Prof. Shraga Abramson was the most important scholar of his time in the field of Geonim literature and the teacher of most of the proceeding generation in this field of study. This book is the third collection of his studies pertaining to the Geonim period. The two others are considered mandatory for those interested in this formative and fascinating period. It contains studies published in his lifetime, which were not included in other compilations, as well as some studies found in his estate. The articles deal with various aspects of the Geonim literature.

This book describes the increasing interactions between wildlife and people in human settlements in Israel and beyond.

The Babylonian Talmud is the Jewish composition of greatest scope, and its influence on Jewish life is decisive. Jewish sages have devoted more time and energy to its study and halakhic interpretation than to any other book, including the Bible, to the extent that "talmud Torah," Torah study, is mainly perceived as the study of the Babylonian Talmud. Its academic study, in contrast, is still in its initial stages. Critical editions, with the text based on the best manuscripts and an exhaustive and thorough critical commentary, have been published of only a few of the thirty-seven tractates of the Babylonian Talmud. Central questions pertaining to the manner of the formulation of the Talmud, its redaction, and its transmission are still unresolved. This is different from the state of research of other Rabbinic works, the study of which has taken significant strides in recent decades. Critical, balanced, and cautious interpretation of talmudic sugyot (discursive units) will likely illustrate the treasures to be revealed by a scholarly reading of the Babylonian Talmud: illuminating new facets of which traditional study is unaware; the consistent presentation of its meticulous literary fashioning, its contentual depth, and the creative force embodied in this corpus. All these find expression even in sugyot that seem tenuous and bothersome to the traditional student. Tiqqun Olam (Repairing the World) seeks to advance the research of the Babylonian Talmud with an annotated edition of the fourth chapter of Tractate Gittin, which contains various regulations that were enacted "for tiqqun olam." This chapter was chosen for the wide variety of its topics and the redactive methods employed, and for the benefit to be gained from their critical analysis. The widespread study of this chapter in high schools and yeshivot also influences its selection, in the hope it will aid both students and scholars in highlighting his difficulties and in exposing the overt and covert trends of the Amoraim and the redactors of the sugyot. The first chapter of this book examines the meanings of the term "tiqqun olam" in the Mishnah and the Tosefta, along with the structure of the tannaitic units containing regulations "for the repairing of the world" in these two tannaitic works. The main body of the book contains a systematic discussion of these mishnayot and sugyot, using philological-historical methodology, alongside the literary analysis, which has not been sufficiently developed in talmudic research to now. The talmudic text is divided into forty-nine sugyot. For each the book offers a new text based on MS. Firkovich 187, a list of parallels, a selection of textual variants and discussion of their originality, and a commentary. The commentary includes a detailed explanation of the sugyot and an analysis of their strata. A unique attempt is made to glean from within the traces of the difficulties within the sugyot and the dissonance they exhibit the aims of the redactors, who frequently formulated new laws, while devoting sophisticated literary effort in order to mask these innovations, and to impart to the sugyah a harmonious composition. In this book, much effort was invested to reveal the plain meaning of the Talmud, employing the tools of scholarly research - which, for various reasons, are not integrated into the widespread study of the Talmud today. The book undertakes to open a window to the academic world and its methodology, to enable Talmud students to come to know the world of Babylonian Talmud scholarship that is both demanding and profound, but also intriguing, while offering new insights.

Isaac ben Samuel of Dampierre, often known as Ri ha-Zaken, was a leading figure in the Tosafist movement. The Tosafists were active in Northern France during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Their dialectical approach to interpretation of the Talmud and other classic rabbinic texts created a revolution in Jewish intellectual life. This volume gathers, for the first time, 140 responsa written by Isaac of Dampierre in response to questions of practical law and legal interpretation. Each responsum was edited according to the most accurate manuscripts, with a critical apparatus and extensive historical and textual notes. The introduction explores Isaac of Dampierre’s life and thought as they emerge from the responsa.

This book sheds new light on the history of the sanctity of Jerusalem in Islam. It is noticed already in the Quran which describes Muhammad's vision of a nocturnal journey from the "sacred mosque" (al-masjid al-ḥarām) in Mecca to the "far-off mosque" (al-masjid al-aqṣā) namely, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. In his night journey to the site of the demolished Temple, Muhammad signaled to his contemporary Jews the course of salvation in which already Moses had led the Children of Israel to their promised land. On the other hand, the Quran praises also the Abrahamic sanctity of Mecca, especially in sūras which reflect the polemical rift with the Jews who eventually refused to recognize Muhammad as their messianic savior. After the death of Muhammad, when the first Muslims came from Arabia to Palestine, their awareness of the Quranic sanctity of al-Masjid al-Aqṣā resurfaced. This book elucidates major aspects of the renewed and growing sanctity of Jerusalem and al-Sham at large, as reflected in the available Islamic traditions. These traditions show also how patterns of the sanctity of Jerusalem were eventually adapted to Mecca in reaction to the growing prestige of Jerusalem, especially during the Umayyad period.

The Yoṣerot of Rabbi Šelomo Suleiman Al-Sinjari for the Annual Cycle of Torah Reading is the earliest and most complete known Cycle of the Yoserot from the first century ACE, written by one of the most prominent Hebrew poets in the ninth century. This edition is based on hundreds of manuscripts originating in the Cairo Geniza. Its comprehensive scientific introduction presents the Yoser systems, discusses questions pertaining to the importance of the piyyutim and their designation, and describes the poet’s style and language. Further discussed in the introduction are early rituals of prayer and Torah reading, both Babylonian and Erez Israeli.

The book deals with challenges to the identity and stability of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. The first part of the book deals with the challenges that arise from all cultural groups in Israeli society: Arabs, migrant workers, religious Zionists, ultra-Orthodox, traditionalists, Olim from the former Soviet Union, Jews of Ethiopian origin, secular Jews. The second section deals with the ideological challenges that arise from the radical left and the religious and secular nationalist right. The third section deals with the significant issues in which there is a conflict between the Jewish and democratic identity of the State of Israel: the minority status of Arab Israeli citizens; Israeli control of Judea and Samaria; religious and state relations in Israel and the possibility of presenting an outline to strengthen Israel's Jewish and democratic identity at the same time.

The Quran is the holy scripture of a religion that has changed the world. It contains the speech of God unto Muhammad the prophet, and through him unto his entire generation -- Idolatrous Arabs, Jews and Christians. This book delineates the major issues which are discovered as one reads through the Quran: How God was revealed to the prophet; in what manner he speaks to him; how he guides the prophet to enlarge the community of believers and face his opponents; how he defines the community of believers; what are the moral and ethical codes which he lays down for them; what is the image of God; what is the religion of Islam which God calls the people to follow; what are the practical ways for expressing the belief in the unity of God; the Abrahamic faith to which one must adhere so as to become a true Muslim. The present book also reviews God's polemics with Jews, Christians and idolaters; the status of the scriptures of the Jews and the Christians; the conditions of war and peace with the unbelievers at large; the descriptions of the resurrection and the day of judgment, as well the colorful descriptions of paradise and hell.

The Hebrew Bible is the cornerstone of Judaism and Jewish culture; as such, it also provides the foundation for the other two monotheistic religions, Christianity and Islam. It is a book that embodied numerous revolutions, the most prominent of which was the Monotheistic Revolution, the replacement of polytheism with the belief in one all-powerful God who both created the world and governs it. Among the other revolutionary ideas that are put forward by the Bible we find the establishment of the Sabbath, the granting of one city — Jerusalem — a monopoly over holiness, the opposition to human kingship, and the moral dimensions of prophecy, to name just a few. Over the centuries and millennia, these revolutionary ideas have continued to attract and inspire readers, believers, interpreters and artists.

David Biale’s Gershom Scholem traces Scholem’s tumultumous life, tying together his scholarly studies with his political activism and cultural criticism. By mining a rich trove of diaries, letters and other writings, Biale shows how Scholem’s inner life must be understood as the necessary background to understanding his most important writings. Far from a dry, ivory-tower scholar, Scholem emerges as a passionately engaged man of his times, whose life encompassed the most significant events of the Jewish twentieth-century: World War I, the rise of Nazism, World War II and the Holocaust, and the creation of the state of Israel.

This book describes the natural history, behavior, ecology and conservation of the Nubian ibex. This endangered species is one of the great successes of nature conservation in Israel.