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Tiberian Hasidism provides a model of an intensive contemplative life that is particularly appealing to contemporary spiritual seekers for many reasons, including its deep focus on mystical theology; devotional practice; and the ecstasy of deep friendship rather than allegiance to an institutionalized religion.

In a balanced way reflecting upon past and present, tradition and modernity, individual and collective, and employing modern research methodologies to dissect and analyze popular subjects and themes, the eight separate essays comprising the book present a condensed view of the popular Lithuanian culture and mentality.

This study moves the acclaimed Turkish fiction writer Bilge Karasu (1930-1995) into a new critical arena by examining his poetics of memory, as laid out in his narratives on Istanbul's Beyoglu, once a cosmopolitan neighborhood called Pera. Karasu established his fame in literary criticism as an experimental modernist, but while themes such as sexuality, gender, and oppression have received critical attention, an essential tenet of Karasu's oeuvre, the evocation of ethno-cultural identity, has remained unexplored: Excavating Memory brings to light this dimension. Through his non-referential and ambiguous renderings of memory, Karasu gives in his Beyoglu narratives unique expression to ethno-cultural difference in Turkish literature, and lets through his own repressed minority identity. By using Walter Benjamin's autobiographical work as a heuristic premise for illuminating Karasu, Gokberk establishes an innovative intercultural framework, which brings into dialogue two representative writers of the twentieth century over temporal and spatial distances.

Is Judaism essentially a religion of laws and commandments? Or do its sources reflect significant attempts at addressing the individual's inner life, existential crises and spiritual experiences?Inner Religion in Jewish Sources offers a comprehensive exploration of inner life in the Jewish sources from the Bible to rabbinic literature, from Medieval Jewish philosophy to Kabbalistic writings and the Hasidic world, where it gained particularly potent expressions. Addressing the issue from the perspective of comparative religion, it seeks to emphasize the commonality of processes of interiorization in various religious traditions, suggesting an innovative angle both in the study of religion and of religious thought. In doing so, it sheds new light on the inner aspect of Jewish religious life, which is all too often hidden behind the external and institutional aspects of the Jewish religion.

Presents a collection of essays celebrating the career and achievements of Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, an influential leader in the Los Angeles and wider American Jewish community. These articles, like the honoree, challenge intellectual convention and accepted wisdom by breaking new ground in how they approach their subjects.

Debora Vogel (1900-1942) wrote in Yiddish unlike anyone else. This ground-breaking collection presents the work of a strikingly original yet overlooked author, art critic and intellectual, and resituates Vogel as an important figure in the constellation of European modernity.

Debora Vogel (1900-1942) wrote in Yiddish unlike anyone else. This ground-breaking collection presents the work of a strikingly original yet overlooked author, art critic and intellectual, and resituates Vogel as an important figure in the constellation of European modernity.

Yuri Lotman was one of the most prominent and influential scholars of the twentieth century working in the Soviet Union. This collection provides a stand-alone primer to his intellectual legacy in both semiotics and cultural history. It includes new translations of some of his major pieces as well as works that have never been published in English.

The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have been a period of mass production and proliferation of Jewish ideas, and have witnessed major changes in Jewish life and stimulated major debates. The New Jewish Canon offers a conceptual roadmap to make sense of such rapid change.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, tens of thousands of Yiddish speaking immigrants actively participated in the American Socialist and labour movement. They formed the milieu of the hugely successful daily Forverts (Forward). This book focuses on the newspaper's reaction to the political developments in the home country.

The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have been a period of mass production and proliferation of Jewish ideas, and have witnessed major changes in Jewish life and stimulated major debates. The New Jewish Canon offers a conceptual roadmap to make sense of such rapid change.

Showcases the accomplishments and triumphs of women in Russian animation and reveals their past contributions to not only animation, but also world cinema. Through archival research, historical analysis, and close readings of animated films this book recuperates the often-overlooked contributions women made to Russian animation.

Explroes the complicated relationship between religion and national consciousness in the modern world, highlighting various cases in Central and Eastern Europe. Through those analyses, the authors show how religion, far from disappearing, strongly impacted the emerging national consciousness.

Offers a theoretical reconsideration of the concept of the ""tragic"" combined with detailed analyses of Japanese literary texts. Inspired by contemporary critical discourse, the author challenges both exotic and postmodern representation of Japanese culture as ""the other"" of the West.

Explains the major jurisprudential factors driving the halakhic jurisprudence of Rabbi Yehiel Mikhel Epstein, twentieth-century author of the Arukh Hashulchan - the most comprehensive, seminal, and original modern restatement of Jewish law since Maimonides.

Presents a study of the life and work of one of the most interesting, original and creative Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century. Among its various goals, this work is intended to familiarize the English reading public with Gordon's philosophy, which was developed at the beginning of the twentieth century in Hebrew.

The fifteen essays of Performing History glimpse the diverse ways music historians ""do"" history, and the diverse ways in which music histories matter. Diverse lines of evidence and manifold methodologies are represented here, ranging from traditional historical archival research to interviewing, performing, and composing.

Explores fundamental questions of how human concepts arise in a child, why concepts appear in a child before words, the genesis of language, and why there are so many languages.

Analyses the history of the Lithuanian Metrica from the mid-fifteenth century until now. The book reveals how the first Metrica books emerged in the second half of the fifteenth century, discussing the titles given to them in different periods in history, and explains why the Metrica should be considered the state archive of early Lithuania.

Explains why pre-modern Judaism opted to privilege consensus around Jewish behaviour (halakhah) over belief. The stresses of modernity have conspired to reveal the incoherence of that traditional approach. In our post-Darwinian and post-Holocaust world, theology must be able to withstand the challenges of science and history.

A bilingual collection of essays that celebrates Marko Pavlyshyn's contribution to the study of modern and contemporary Ukrainian literature and culture. With its many methodological approaches and the variety of periods and authors, the book reflects and builds on Pavlyshyn's willingness to modernize our understanding of Ukrainian literature.

A lyrical and riveting coming of age story set among early twentieth-century settlers brought to an almost unknown Jewish farming experiment in an isolated corner of Brazil. This autobiographical novel is filled with drama, joy, disasters, romance, and humour.

The political and social turmoil of the twentieth century took Magda Nachman from a privileged childhood in St. Petersburg to a refugee existence during the Russian Civil War, then with her husband to the hardships of emigre Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s, and finally to Bombay, where she established herself as an important artist.

The first work in any language that offers both an overarching exploration of the flight and evacuation of Soviet Jews viewed at the macro level, and a personal history of one Soviet Jewish family. It is also the first study to examine Jewish life in the Northern Caucasus, a Soviet region that history scholars have rarely addressed.

While the Soviets could affect Tajiks' social status substantially, they failed in changing their ideology. Instead, they became involved in a conflict that pitted Soviet Tajiks against radical Muslim Tajiks. This volume traces the conflict from its roots in Bukhara to the establishment of an independent secular Tajik state (1997).