The bridge that enables the annual traversal from the ending of the Torah back to its beginning is the anticipation of new questions. Prof. James A. Diamond " After [Abraham] was weaned, while still an infant, his mind began to reflect. By day and night he was thinking and wondering, " How is it possible that this sphere should continuously be guiding the world and have no one to guide it … his mind was busily working and reflecting until he attained the way of truth, and apprehended the correct line of thought. He knew that there was one God who guides the celestial sphere and created everything… " (Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot ʿAvodah Zarah 1:3) According to Maimonides the catalyst for the discovery of monotheism and its eventual development into the religion of Judaism is a question rooted in a child's pristine moment of wonder, awe, and reflection. That same wonder inspired by nature is mirrored in the perplexity stimulated by biblical and rabbinic texts. Both world and text are encountered in a web of persistent questioning. The canonical scriptures of Judaism perpetually engage because they perpetually intrigue both by the questions they raise and the questions raised by their protagonists. Every year, the cluster of holidays concentrated at the beginning of the Jewish calendar climaxes with a celebration of an ending that anticipates a new beginning of annual Torah readings. Suspense is not what holds our attention; as we conclude the Torah, we all know well what happens next. What drives us back into the text again and again are

The years spent in Berlin by Hebrew poet Lea Goldberg (1911–1970) on the eve of the Nazis’ rise to power were a formative period in her creative and personal life. Nevertheless, she rarely mentions Berlin explicitly in her poetry. In this article, I argue that ekphrasis (in this case, poems on paintings) served Goldberg as she worked through her Berlin experience, as an act of transmutation, translation, interpretation, and identity-building. Poems written during her stay in Germany recently discovered in the poet’s archive shed new light on the role ekphrasis played in her poetry, on her affinity with woodcut artist Frans Masereel, and on her approach to primitivist and modernist visual arts. Ekphrasis is revealed here as a mechanism of encryption in poetry that turned Berlin in the Götterdämmerung of the Weimar Republic into the Berlin of European and Jewish enlightenment, modernism into classicism, and the male gaze into female expression.

Bilingual catalogue of books issued by the Dov Sadan Publishing Project of the Hebrew University. The catalogue contains information about books dealing with Yiddish cultural history of the Jewish people in modern times, issued and sponsored by the Dov Sadan Publishing Project. Edited by Szonja Ráhel Komoróczy and Yechiel Szeintuch.

In this study of over 101 pages, the author illustrates the new discoveries made on Isaac Lampronti (Ferrara 1679-1756) daily life, rabbi, physician and the first Jewish encyclopaedist of the Modern times. These new data emerged from the study of the register containing the minutes of the council meetings of the Scola Levantine in Ferrara, from which it emerges that Lampronti for forty years of his life, as well as having always been a massaro or officer in charge take turns, he was also the scribe of the minutes of council sessions. For example, we find out that, in a council the officers and the other members of the Wa‘ad defended Lampronti against the accusation turned by three Jews of having sold to the Ferrara Municipality funeral steles of Jewish cemeteries to be reused for secondary purposes, such as strengthening river embankments of the river Po, and other needs. The defence claims that the decision was taken by the Council, but obviously, this sale was compulsory, that is, if the tombstones had not been sold, the city authorities would have expropriated them anyway. We learn that Lampronti finances the opening of kosher Butchers shop in the Ghetto of Ferrara and that he did prepare his coffin from the benches no longer used on which his disciples sat in the school. Of considerable interest is the long poem he composed in 1710, - here published for the first time with an Italian version and the biblical quotations - when Lampronti donated a new Aron and a Dukan, or pulpit, in precious stones and marbles to the Levantina Synagogue. This Aron, after being devastated by the Nazi-fascists in 1943, was transported from Ferrara to Livorno in the 1960s of 20th century and there reassembled in the Oratory Lampronti. The author also publishes some of Lampronti many unpublished letters, which he has copied and included in his great encyclopaedic work on Judaism the Pachad Yitzchak or “The Terror of Isaac”. These letters should be studied, because they constitute a precious source on the life of Lampronti not yet examined. The author also clarifies some discrepancies in the dates of Lampronti life, often erroneous and repeated from author to author, replicating the errors, such as the date of birth and of death. Moreover, the author offers an accurate study of the voice on the river Sambation, with a collation of the various editions in the three critical edition of the long voice included by Lampronti in his work. Perani points out some strange changes and deletions in the introduction of the voice present in the three handwritten editions of Pachad Yitzchak, getting the conclusion that the author of this encyclopaedia’s entry is not Lampronti but the Mantua rabbi and his friend Shimshon Kohen Modon.

The story of Ehud and Eglon king of Moab is considered to be one of the early North Israelite tales in the Book of Judges (3:12-30), known in biblical scholarship as the Book of Saviors (Richter 1966). 2 It is broadly agreed that this tale is more coherent and includes a smaller number of redactions than other Saviors stories in Judges. 3 Scholars have deliberated the genre of the story. Almost all have labeled it a political/ethnic satire (e.g., Alter 1981: 37-41; Brettler 1991, 2002: 28-39; Handy 1992). It has also been described as ironic, macabre, grotesque and a parody and farce (but see Stone 2009)-a tale aimed to mock Moab and its king. The question is whether this satire is pure fiction invented to serve the goal of the author and hence has no historical value (e.g., Alter 1981; Soggin 1984: 175; Hübner 1987; Brettler 2002: 37-38), or, whether, behind the entertaining story there is a germ of history. For the latter, some scholars have sought a memory of events that took place in pre-monarchic times (Noth, 1960: 156; Mayes 1977: 312; Rösel 1977; Miller and Hayes 1986: 96; Halpern 1988: 67; Stone 2009: 656-657), while a few have looked for a later stage-setting, after Moab under Mesha expanded to the north, including the plains of Moab (the lower Jordan Valley facing Jericho) and pointed to the 8th century BCE (Knauf 1991, 2010; Gass 2008; the Assyrian period for Schmid 2012: 78-79). Without dismissing the nature of the story as political/ethnic satire (for a recent commentary, see Sasson 2014: 221-242), following Noth (1981) and others (e.g., Stone 2009: 657; Neef 2009) I see it as belonging to the genre of heroic tales. This fits the character of the other Saviors 1 Benjamin Sass and I have been friends for over 40 years. We have cooperated in field work (in Sinai in the 1970s and many years later at Megiddo) and in other aspects of research, have co-authored several papers and conducted innumerable discussions on matters of archaeology, history and, in recent years, biblical studies. Benny's vast knowledge, sound logic and scholarly integrity have always been mainstays in these deliberations.