The influence on Jewish thinking of Rashi’s commentaries on the Bible and the Talmud remains unsurpassed. This biographical study presents a masterly survey of the social and cultural background of Rashi’s work, his personality, his reputation, and his influence, while also considering his sources, his interpretative method, his innovations, and his style and language. The central contribution, however, is the in-depth analysis of Rashi’s world-view, which leads to conclusions that are likely to stimulate much debate.
The influence on Jewish thinking of Rashi’s commentaries on the Bible and the Talmud remains unsurpassed. This biographical study presents a masterly survey of the social and cultural background of Rashi’s work, his personality, his reputation, and his influence, while also considering his sources, his interpretative method, his innovations, and his style and language. The central contribution, however, is the in-depth analysis of Rashi’s world-view, which leads to conclusions that are likely to stimulate much debate.
The Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. was a watershed event in the history of Judah, the end of the monarchy and the beginning of the exilic period, during which many of the biblical texts were probably written. The conquest left clear archaeological marks on many sites in Judah, including Jerusalem, and the Bible records it as a traumatic event for the population. Less clear is the situation in Judah following the conquest, that is, in the sixth century, a period with archaeological remains the nature and significance of which are disputed. The traditional view is that the land was decimated and the population devastated. In the last two decades, archaeologists arguing that the land was not empty and that the exile had little impact on Judah’s rural sector have challenged this view. This volume examines the archaeological reality of Judah in the sixth century in order to shed new light on the debate. By expanding research into new avenues and examining new data, as well as by applying new methods to older data, the author arrives at fresh insights that support the traditional view of sixth-century Judah as a land whose population, both urban and rural, was devastated and whose recovery took centuries.
Modern-day Israel, and the Jewish community, are strongly influenced by the memory and horrors of Hitler and the Holocaust. Burg argues that the Jewish nation has been traumatized and has lost the ability to trust itself, its neighbors or the world around it. He shows that this is one of the causes for the growing nationalism and violence that are plaguing Israeli society and reverberating through Jewish communities worldwide. Burg uses his own family history--his parents were Holocaust survivors--to inform his innovative views on what the Jewish people need to do to move on and eventually live in peace with their Arab neighbors and feel comfortable in the world at large. Thought-provoking, compelling, and original, this book is bound to spark a heated debate around the world.
Referring to several important introductory books written about the archaeology of the land of Israel, William Dever once stated: “However adequate these may be as introductions to the basic data, none makes any attempt to organize the data in terms of social structure. . . . This is a serious deficiency in Syro-Palestinian and biblical archaeology, when one considers that the general field of archaeology has been moving toward social archaeology for 20 years or more. (Dever, “Social Structure in Palestine in the Iron Age II Period on the Eve of Destruction,” in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land [ed. T. E. Levy, London, 1995, p. 416]). Lack of discussion of social questions has characterized the archaeology of the land of Israel for some time, even though around the world these questions constitute an important component of archaeological research (see, for instance, the work of Renfrew, Flannery, Gibbon, Blanton, Dark, Bahn, Hodder, Trigger, and many others). The Archaeology of Israelite Society in Iron Age II fills this gap and analyzes the structure of society in the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah from an archaeological viewpoint. It also applies models and theories from the field of social and cognitive archaeology, using the tools of various social-science disciplines (anthropology, sociology, economics, geography, and so on). Due to his ability to use what is probably the largest archaeological data set in the world—hundreds of planned excavations, thousands of salvage excavations, and extensive surveys, all from the small region that was ancient Israel—Avi Faust contributes not only to the study of ancient Israelite society but to the most fundamental questions about ancient societies. These questions include the identification of socioeconomic stratification in the archaeological record, the study of family and community organization, the significance of pottery, small finds and architecture as indicators of wealth, and more. This groundbreaking monograph is one of the first attempts at a large-scale study of Israelite society based primarily on the archaeological evidence. The following acknowledgments were inadvertently omitted from the front matter of the volume: Amihai Mazar: figure 31 Amnon Ben-Tor: figures 40, 41 Israel Antiquities Authority: figures 21, 24, 25, 26, 29, 30., 32, 33, 36, and Photo 5 Israel Exploration Society: figures 11, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 27, 42 Israel Finkelstein: figure 28 Izhak Beit Arieh: figures 34, 35 Shimon Dar: figures 22, 23 The Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University: figures 7, 8 The Institute of Archaeology, the Hebrew University: figures 40, 41 Zeev Herzog: figures 6, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16, 20
Using one of the world's richest archaeological datasets, Avraham Faust reconstructs the outcomes of the Assyrian conquest in the southwestern region of the empire. In doing so, he sheds new light on the nature of Assyrian domination and the transformations of the diverse political and ecological zones the imperial take-over brought in its wake.
The Asian Development Review is a professional journal for disseminating the results of economic and development research carried out by staff and resource persons of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The Review seeks high-quality papers with relevance to policy issues and operational matters done in an empirically-rigorous way. Articles are intended for readership among economists and social scientists in government, private sector, academia, and international organizations. In this issue---Creating Good Employment Opportunities for the Rural Sector; Winners and Losers of Multinational Firm Entry into Developing Countries: Evidence from the Special Economic Zones of the People's Republic of China; Rural-Urban Migration and Employment Quality: A Case Study From Thailand; ADB Forum on the Use of Capital Controls.
This remarkable chronicle of life and death in the Jewish Ghetto of Kovno, Lithuania, from June 1941 to January 1944, was written under conditions of extreme danger by a Ghetto inmate and secretary of the Jewish Council. After the war, in order to escape from Lithuania, the author was forced to entrust the diary to leaders of the Escape movement; eventually it made its way to his new home in Israel. The diary incorporates Avraham Tory’s collections of official documents, Jewish Council reports, and original photographs and drawings made in the Ghetto. It depicts in grim detail the struggle for survival under Nazi domination, when—if not simply carted off and murdered in a random “action”—Jews were exploited as slave labor while being systematically starved and denied adequate housing and medical care. Through it all, Tory’s overriding purpose was to record the unimaginable events of these years and to memorialize the determination of the Jews to sustain their community life in the midst of the Nazi terror. Of the surviving diaries originating in the principal European Ghettos of this period, Tory’s is the longest written by an adult, a dramatic and horrifying document that makes an invaluable contribution to contemporary history. Tory provides an insider’s view of the desperate efforts of Ghetto leaders to protect Jews. Martin Gilbert’s masterly introduction establishes the authenticity of the diary, presents its events against the backdrop of the war in Europe, and considers the crucial questions of collaboration and resistance.
Behind Media Marginality examines the considerations and decisions that have resulted in the distorted and negative media coverage of minority groups in the Israeli media. Author Eli Avraham looks closely at media portrayals of those living in the geographic margins of Israeli kibbutzim, Jewish settlements in the West Bank, development cities, and the Israeli-Arab community from the 1960s through the 1990s. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis of newspaper articles; interviews with reporters, editors, and government spokespeople; and statistical and demographic data, Avraham isolates and explores five factors that influence the way the media covers these social groups: the group's characteristics and location, their proximity to foci of power, their social-political environment, the media's policy toward covering the group, and the group's public relations strategies in response to coverage. An analysis both of media operations and of Israeli society, this book provides important insights into the role of the media in the formation of national identity.
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