Israel Celebrates is about the intersection where Israeli inventiveness and Jewish tradition meet: the holidays. It employs the anthropological history of four Jewish holidays as celebrated in Israel in order to track the naturalization of Jewish rituals, myths, and symbols in Israeli culture throughout “the long twentieth century” of Zionism and on to the present, and to demonstrate how a new strand of Judaism developed in Israel from the grassroots.…
The Scientification of the “Jewish Question” in Nazi Germany describes the attempt of a considerable number of German scholars to counter the vanishing influence of religious prejudices against the Jews with a new antisemitic rationale. As anti-Jewish stereotypes of an old-fashioned soteriological kind had become dysfunctional under the pressure of secularization, a new, more objective explanation was needed to justify the age-old danger of Judaism in the present. In the…
Papers Read at the Sixteenth Joint Meeting of the Society for Old Testament Study and the Oudtestamentisch Werkgezelschap, Edinburgh, 2015 The proceedings of the sixteenth joint meeting presented in this volume will show the fruits of the ongoing cooperation between the members of the British Society for the Study of the Old Testament and the Dutch Oudtestamentische Werkgezelschap. The theme of the conference was ‘Torah and Tradition’. The volume brings…
Attitudes to the Temple in Second Temple Judaism and in Hebrews In Hebrews and the Temple Philip Church argues that the silence of Hebrews concerning the temple does not mean that the author is not interested in the temple. He writes to encourage his readers to abandon their preoccupation with it and to follow Jesus to their eschatological goal. Following extensive discussions of attitudes to the temple in the literature…
From Nahal Bezeq to the Sartaba This book presents the results of a complete detailed survey of the north-eastern region of Samaria, mainly the northern area of the Jordan Valley, in the territory of Israel/Palestine. It is Volume 4 of the Manasseh Hill Country Survey publications. This project, in progress since 1978 and covering 2500 sq. km, is a thorough, metre-by-metre mapping of the archaeological-historical area between the River Jordan…
Volume 1: Edition and Introduction. Karaite Texts and Studies Volume 8 This volume contains a critical edition and an introduction to the Arabic translation and commentary on the book of Proverbs by one of the most acclaimed, innovative, and prolific exegetes of the Karaite “Golden Age” (10th-11th centuries), Yefet ben ‘Eli ha-Levi. Yefet’s commentary on Proverbs attests to his rationalistic and revisionist ideology and to his egalitarian approach. His work…
In “Haredi Masculinities between the Yeshiva, the Army, Work and Politics: The Sage, the Warrior and the Entrepreneur,” Hakak takes us on a fascinating journey into the world of young Haredi men who dare to leave Jewish Haredi religious seminaries (Yeshivas and Kollels) and explore new territories. Through extensive participant observations in a Haredi army basic training course, an occupational training program in Hi-Tech professions and the Haredi Headquarter of…
Aspects of the Intellectual Life of Christians and Jews in Early Modern Europe “Jewish Books and their Readers” discusses the transformative effect of the circulation and readership of sacred and secular texts written by Jews on Christian as well as Jewish readers in early modern Europe. Its twelve essays challenge traditional paradigms of Christian Hebraism and undermine simplistic visions of the unchanging nature of Jewish cultural life. They ask what…
Jews and Christians under the Roman Empire shared a unique sense of community. Set apart from their civic and cultic surroundings, both groups resisted complete assimilation into the dominant political and social structures. However, Jewish communities differed from their Christian counterparts in their overall patterns of response to the surrounding challenges. They exhibit diverse levels of integration into the civic fabric of the cities of the Empire and display contrary…
In “The Second Jewish Revolt: The Bar Kokhba War, 132-136 C.E.,” Menahem Mor offers a detailed account on the Bar Kokhba Revolt in an attempt to understand the second revolt against the Romans. Since the Bar Kokhba Revolt did not have a historian who devoted a comprehensive book to the event, Mor used a variety of historical materials including literary sources (Jewish, Christian, Greek and Latin) and archaeological sources (inscriptions,…