From his first book, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto, to his well-known volume on Jewish memory, Zakhor, to his treatment of Sigmund Freud in Freud’s Moses, Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (1932–2009) earned recognition as perhaps the greatest Jewish historian of his day, whose scholarship blended vast erudition, unfettered creativity, and lyrical beauty. This volume charts his intellectual trajectory by bringing together a mix of classic and lesser-known essays from the whole of his career. The essays in this collection, representative of the range of his writing, acquaint the reader with his research on early modern Spanish Jewry and the experience of crypto-Jews, varied reflections on Jewish history and memory, and Yerushalmi’s enduring interest in the political history of the Jews. Also included are a number of little-known autobiographical recollections, as well as his only published work of fiction.

When first published in 1979, Haim Be’er’s Feathers was a critical and commercial success, ushering in a period of great productivity and expansiveness in modern Hebrew literature. Now considered a classic in Israeli fiction the book is finally available to English readers worldwide. In this, his first novel, Be’er portrays the world of a deeply religious community in Jerusalem during the author’s childhood and adolescence in the 1950s and 60s. The novel is filled with vivid portraits of eccentric Jerusalem characters, chief among them the book’s main character, Mordecai Leder, who dreams of founding a utopian colony based on the theories of the nineteenth-century Viennese Jewish thinker Karl Popper-Lynkeus. Similar high-flying dreams inspire the family of the narrator, strict Orthodox Jews with impractical minds and adventurous souls—men such as the narrator’s father, who periodically disappears from home on botanical expeditions meant to prove that the willow tree of Scripture is in fact the Australian eucalyptus. Experimental in structure and mood, Feathers features kaleidoscopic jumps in time, back and forth in the narrator’s memories from boyhood to adulthood. Its moods swing wildly from hilarity to the macabre, from familial warmth to the loneliness of adolescence. Jerusalem and its inhabitants, as well as the emotional life of the narrator, are splintered and reconstituted, shattered and patched. This fragmentation, combined with a preoccupation with death and physical dissolution and dreamlike flights of imagination, evokes an Israeli magical realism. Feathers was chosen one of the 100 Greatest Works of Modern Jewish Literature by the National Yiddish Book Center.

This book offers a fresh perspective on classical Jewish literature by providing a gender-based, feminist reading of rabbinical anecdotes and legends. Viewing rabbinical legends as sources that generate perceptions about women and gender, Inbar Raveh provides answers to questions such as how the Sages viewed women; how they formed and molded their characterization of them; how they constructed the ancient discourse on femininity; and what the status of women was in their society. Raveh also re-creates the voices and stories of the women themselves within their sociohistorical context, moving them from the periphery to the center and exposing how men maintain power. Chapter topics include desire and control, pain, midwives, prostitutes, and myth. A major contribution to the fields of literary criticism and Jewish studies, Raveh’s book demonstrates the possibility of appreciating the aesthetic beauty and complexity of patriarchal texts, while at the same time recognizing their limitations.

This book presents, from the perspective of feminist jurisprudence and feminist and liberal bioethics, a complete study of Jewish law (halakhah) on contemporary reproductive issues such as birth control, abortion, and assisted fertility. Irshai examines these issues to probe gender-based values that underlie the interpretations and determinations reached by modern practitioners of halakhah. Her primary goal is to tell, through common halakhic tools, a different halakhic story, one that takes account of the female narrative and its missing perspective.

Designed both to encourage beginning naturalists and to challenge more experienced observers to look at the familiar in new ways, A Field Guide to the Familiar offers an introduction to common plants, animals, and natural phenomena. Beautiful drawings add to the book's refreshing approach to nature study. Organized by the seasons of the year, each chapter focuses on one subject and one learning objective. From fall’s first frost to the field crickets of high summer, this innovative guide explores in depth such familiar sights as bumblebees, rainbows, acorns, blueberries, and shooting stars. Each chapter includes descriptive information to help readers identify each subject, as well as life cycle information that shows how a subject functions within a grander scheme. Readers learn that every plant and animal – even the atmosphere – has its own story, and they begin to perceive the natural world as whole, interconnected, and continuous. Whether read sequentially or used as a field companion or handy desk reference, A Field Guide to the Familiar gives every reader a sense of the natural world as an accessible – and endlessly fascinating – place.

Twenty-one writers document the diverse representations and roles of Jewish women in American literature and culture.

This book addresses a central question in the study of Jewish mysticism in the medieval and early modern periods: why are there no known female mystics in medieval Judaism, unlike contemporaneous movements in Christianity and Islam? Sharon Faye Koren demonstrates that the male rejection of female mystical aspirations is based in deeply rooted attitudes toward corporeality and ritual purity. In particular, medieval Jewish male mystics increasingly emphasized that the changing states of the female body between ritual purity and impurity disqualified women from the quest for mystical connection with God. Offering a provocative look at premodern rabbinical views of the female body and their ramifications for women’s spiritual development, Koren compares Jewish views with medieval Christian and Muslim views of both female menstruation and the possibility of female mystical experience.

The noted historian Richard Cobb presents an engaging synthesis of research, combined with highly original observations and analyses of the war years in France. The reader is given access to a unique private chronicle of the relations between occupants and occupés, which provides the “I was there” understanding that is a hallmark of Cobb’s well-known ability to humanize history. The author characterizes this work as “an essay in interpretation and imagination, an evocation drawing heavily on literary, or semi-literary, sources and even on autobiography, rather than a straight piece of history. The book is about people, individuals, rather than about institutions and administration.” A recognized classic is now back in print.

Essays examining the emergence of Jewish scholarship during the period 1818 - 1919, concentrating on the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement.