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While he is widely acknowledged as the most important Russian thinker of the nineteenth century, Vladimir Soloviev's place in the landscape of world philosophy nevertheless remains uncertain. Approaching him through a single synoptic lens, this book foregrounds his unique envisioning of the interaction between humanity and the material world. By investigating the development of a single theme in his work-his idea of the "e;spiritualization of matter"e;, the "e;task"e; of humanity-Smith constructs a rounded picture of Soloviev's overall importance to an understanding. If nineteenth-century thought, as well as to modern theology and philosophy. The picture that emerges is of a writer whose contribution to a Christian philosophy of matter resonates with many of the religious debates of modernity.

Major statements by the celebrated Russian poet Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) about poetry, inspiration, the creative process, and the significance of artistic/literary creativity in his own life as well as in human life altogether, are presented here in his own words (in translation) and are discussed in the extensive commentaries and introduction. The texts range from 1910 to 1946 and are between two and ninety pages long. There are commentaries on all the texts, as well as a final essay on Pasternak's famous novel, Doctor Zhivago, which is looked at here in the light of what it says on art and inspiration.Although universally acknowledged as one of the great writers of the twentieth century, Pasternak is not yet sufficiently recognized as the highly original and important thinker that he also was. All his life he thought and wrote about the nature and significance of the experience of inspiration, though avoiding the word "e;inspiration"e; where possible as his own views were not the conventional ones. The author's purpose is (a) to make this philosophical aspect of his work better known, and (b) to communicate to readers who cannot read Russian the pleasure and interest of an "e;inspired"e; life as Pasternak experienced it.

In the new second volume of Brodsky Through the Eyes of His Contemporaries, the collection of interviews features eye-witness accounts of Joseph Brodsky's friends and family members, publishers, editors, translators, students, and fellow poets including John Le Carre, Oleg Tselkov, Petr Vail, Bengt Jangfeldt, Susan Sontag, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, and others. This collection of 40 interviews illuminates an intriguing contemporary phenomenon and affords a fascinating insight into the American literary scene. Continuing the discussion begun in the first volume, this series of interviews contains important discussions on the style, ideas, and personality of one of the most brilliant and paradoxical poets of our time. Subtle, incisive, and rigorous in its critical evaluation, each discussion significantly advances our understanding of Brodsky's complex poetic world. All discussions are linked by core questions that are carefully and sometimes provocatively formulated. The interviews are published together with many unique photographs from the private archives of the author and the interviewees.

Examines the rabbinic thought as exemplified by Maimonides. This work is in the Hebrew rhetorical tradition of melisa. The main text in five sections - The God of Israel, The Books of Israel, The Governance of Israel, The Memory of Israel, and The Folly of Israel. It includes numerous references to orient the reader.

Challenging the notion that Jewish mysticism ceased to exist in the Hassidic enclaves of early nineteenth century Europe, Hamutal Bar-Yosef delves into the mystical elements of twentieth-century Israeli literature. Exploring themes such as unity, death, and sex, Bar-Yosef traces the influence and the trends towards secular mysticism found in Russian, Yiddish, and early Hebrew writers, and examines the impact of Zionism in creating a modern, living mystical literature.

Dr. Kessler, a Jewish attorney from Lwow, Poland, gives an eye-witness account of the Holocaust through the events recorded in his diary between the years 1942 and 1944. In vivid, raw, documentary style, he describes his experiences in the Lwow Ghetto, in the Janowska Concentration Camp, and in an underground bunker where he and twenty-three other Jews were hidden by a courageous Polish farmer and his family. The book includes a chapter written by Kazimierz Kalwinski, who as a teenager was a caretaker for the hidden Jews on his family's farm. Edmund's daughter, Renata Kessler, coordinated the book and has written an epilogue about her search for the story, which has taken her to Israel, Poland, and Lviv, Ukraine. Renowned scholar Antony Polonsky contributes an insightful historical overview of the times in which the book takes place. This volume is a tremendous resource for historians, scholars, and those interested in the Holocaust.

Developed as a reader for upper division undergraduates and beginning graduates, From Symbolism to Socialist Realism offers broad variety of materials contextualizing the literary texts most frequently read in Russian literature courses at this level. These approaches range from critical-theoretical articles, cultural and historical analyses, literary manifestos and declarations of literary aesthetics, memoirs of revolutionary terrorism and arrests by the NKVD, political denunciations, and "literary vignettes" capturing the spirit of its particular time in a nutshell. The voices of this "polyphonic" reader are diverse: Briusov, Savinkov, Ivanov-Razumnik, Kollontai, Tsvetaeva, Shklovsky, Olesha, Zoshchenko, Zhdanov, Grossman, Evtushenko, and others. The range of specialists on Russian culture represented here is equally broad: Clark, Erlich, Grossman, Nilsson, Peace, Poznansky, Siniavskii, and others. Together they evoke and illuminate a complex and tragic era.

A Partisan of Vilna is the memoir of Rachel Margolis, the sole survivor of her family, who escaped from the Vilna Ghetto with other members of the FPO (United Partisan Organization) resistance movement and joined the Soviet partisans in the forests of Lithuania to sabotage the Nazis. Beginning with an account of Rachel's life as a precocious, privileged girl in pre-war Vilna, it goes on to detail life in the Vilna Ghetto, including the development of the FPO and its struggles against the Nazis. Finally, the book chronicles the escape of a group of FPO members into the forest of Belarus, where Rachel became a partisan fighter. Rather than "e;keep house"e; back at their bunker like other female partisans, Rachel demanded assignments to active duty alongside the men. Going on military assignments, she burned down a bridge, blew up railroad tracks, and helped bring in food supplies for her fellow partisans. The book opens with an introductory essay by renowned historian Antony Polonsky.

Concealed for two centuries and known only to a select individual in each generation, the Scroll of Secrets is the hidden Messianic vision of R. Nachman of Breslav. Despite its being written in an encoded language, with acronyms and abbreviations, after a clarification and cautious reconstruction of what can be decoded, the author has prepared a volume that presents the reader with an exalted Messianic vision. The book marks a turning point in our understanding of R. Nachman's spiritual world and initiates a renewed discussion of an intriguing Hasidism that excites scholars and broad circles within the Jewish and Israeli publics. The reader is presented with a sublime and enticing vision of the eschatological End of Days that contains song and prayer, Torah, melodies, longings, and love and compassion for every man.

Twenty-one leading scholars explore the roots and manifestations of antisemitism and anti-Zionism and the efforts to combat them at American, British, and South African colleges and universities in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Zionist Arabesques is an ethno-historical account of the landscape of the Jezreel Valley in Israel and explores how the modern landscape of the valley has been created, both physically and symbolically, from the perspective of both local and large-scale processes. It addresses not only the guiding principles of modern Israeli agriculture, its connection to Zionist settlement and ideology, and the evolvement of the Arab-Jewish conflict, but also examines the relevance of law, State policies and sector based politics, being a mixture of archival and ethnographic material composed with a unique textual structure. The book is useful for those interested in Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well in experimental writing styles.

Persecution, Polemic, and Dialogue follows the interaction between Jews and Christians through the ages in all its richness, complexity, and diversity. This collection of essays analyzes anti-Semitism, perceptions of the Other, and religious debates in the Middle Ages and proceeds to consider modern and contemporary interactions, which are marked by both striking continuity and profound difference. These include controversies among historians, the promise and challenge of interfaith dialogue, and the explosive exchanges surrounding Mel Gibson's film on the passion. This volume will engage scholars, students, and any reader intrigued by one of the longest and most fraught inter-group relationships in history.

A group of second generation religious Zionist West Bank settlers have turned away from the collectivist political messianic ideology of the first generation of settlers. This title tells the story of how they revolutionized the religious Zionist settler culture by moving poetry writing into the mainstream of that culture.

Early Modern Russian Letters: Texts and Contexts brings together twenty essays by Marcus C. Levitt, a leading scholar of eighteenth-century Russian literature. The essays address a spectrum of works and issues that shaped the development of modern Russian literature, from authorship and philosophy to gender and religion in Russian Enlightenment culture. The first part of the collection explores the career and works of Alexander Sumarokov, who played a formative role in literary life of his day. In the essays of the second part Levitt argues that the Enlightenment's privileging of vision played an especially important role in eighteenth-century Russian self-image, and that its "e;occularcentrism"e; was profoundly shaped by Orthodox religious views. Early Modern Russian Letters offers a series of original and provocative explorations of a vital but little studied period.

One of the most controversial novels of the twentieth century, Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" is renowned for its innovative style and notorious for its subject matter and influence on popular culture. This book guides readers through the intricacies of Nabokov's work and helps them achieve an understanding of his rich artistic design.

Covering a wide variety of topics, including science, citizenship, gender, and anti-Semitism, the author demonstrates how sin which rhetoric tied to blood and vampires permeated political discourse and transcended the disparate cultures of Great Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, forming a cohesive political and cultural metaphor.

A masterful intersection of Bible Studies, Gender Studies, and Rabbinic law, Diane Kriger explores the laws pertaining to female slaves in Jewish law. Comparing Biblical strictures with later Rabbinic interpretations as well as contemporary Greco-Roman and Babylonian codes of law, Kriger establishes a framework whereby a woman's sexual identity also indicates her legal status. With sensitivity to the nuances in both ancient laws and ancient languages, Kriger adds greatly to our understanding of gender, slave status, and the matrilineal principle of descent in the Ancient Near East.

Founded in 1841, the London-based Jewish Chronicle is the world's oldest continuously circulating Jewish newspaper. Since 2002 its prestigious flagship "e;Comment"e; column has been written by Oxford-educated Dr. Geoffrey Alderman, the leading authority on the Jews of modern Britain, a prolific and controversial scholar whose views have attracted warm support and sweeping condemnation in equal measure. This anthology brings together over a hundred of his Jewish Chronicle op-eds on subjects as diverse as Jewish Orthodoxy, Ultra-Orthodoxy, Non-Orthodoxy, Islamic Judeophobia, Islamophobia and Jewish approaches to politics and sex. "e;I have tried to be funny,"e; Alderman declares, "e;when occasion has seemed to me to warrant the deployment of a certain humour, which can be a valuable didactic tool and a powerful medium of communication. I have on occasion employed sarcasm and irony. But I have always tried to be scrupulously accurate as to facts, and to locate my comment within that groundwork. Above all, true to my vocation as a rebel who has refused to toe the communal line, I have always presented a point of view that is unashamedly mine."e;

This carefully crafted collection of essays, Jewish Thought in Dialogue, offers creative interpretations of major Jewish texts and as well as original treatments of significant issues in Jewish theology and ethics. The collection includes philosophical readings of biblical narratives, analyses of topics in the thought of Maimonides, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and critical and constructive examinations of divine providence, religious anthropology, free will, 9/11, evil, Halakhah and morality, altruism, autonomy in Jewish medical ethics, and the epistemology of religious belief. The author frequently brings Jewish philosophy and law into dialogue with contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. The book serves scholars and students of Jewish philosophy and law and is suitable for inclusion in syllabi of undergraduate and graduate courses.

This collection of essays on Turgenev, Goncharov, Conrad, Dostoevsky, Blok, Briusov, Gor'kii, Pasternak and Nabokov represents diverse voices but is also unified. One invariant is the recurring distinction between "e;culture"e; and "e;civilization"e; and the vision of Russia as the bearer of culture because it is "e;barbaric."e; Another stance advocates the synthesis of "e;sense and sensibility"e; and the vision of "e;Apollo"e; and "e;Dionysus"e; creating a "e;civilized culture"e; together. Those voices that delight in the artificiality of civilization are complemented by those apprehensive of the dangers inherent in barbarism. This collection thus adds new perspectives to the much-debated opposition of vital Russia and a declining West, offering novel interpretations of classics from Oblomov to Lolita and The Idiot to Doctor Zhivago.

Three Jewish Journeys Through an Anthropologist's Lens provides an overview of the ethnographic works carried out by a leading Israeli anthropologist over the course of his career. It presents Moshe Shokeid's explorations, discoveries, and feelings about the vicissitudes of social life, which he closely observed in three major arenas of contemporary Jewish life: Moroccan Jews who immigrated from the Atlas Mountains to become farmers in the semi-arid Negev fields; Israeli-born citizens who left their homes to start a new life in America; and, finally, American gay Jews who chose to preserve their cultural heritage and remain involved in synagogue life as part of the mosaic of New York Jews. The panoramic view of Shokeid's ethnographic journeys ends with a discussion of his methods of research and his personal experiences as a participant observer among his fellow Jews in their unique paths to promote their social and spiritual aspirations.

Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra, poet, philosopher, mathematician, was one of the outstanding personalities produced by medieval Jewry. His chief claim to fame, however, is his commentary on the Bible. This work is suitable for students of Scripture at all levels.

Now available for the first time in English, Oleg Lekmanov's critically acclaimed Mandelstam presents the maverick Russian poet's life and work to a wider audience and includes the most reliable details of the poet's life, which were recently found and released from the KGB archives. Through his engaging narrative, Lekmanov carries the reader through Mandelstam's early life and education in pre-revolutionary Petersburg, at the Sorbonne in Paris, and in Heidelberg and his return to revolutionary Russia. Bold and fearless, he was quoted as saying: "e;Only in Russia do they respect poetry. They even kill you for it."e; Osip Mandelstam compared a writer to a parrot, saying that once his owner tires of him, he will cover his cage with black cloth, which becomes for literature a surrogate of night. In 1938, Mandelstam was arrested and six months later became a statistic: over 500,000 political prisoners were sent to the Gulags in 1938; between 1931 and 1940, over 300,000 prisoners died in the Gulags. One of them was the poet Osip Mandelstam. This is the tragic story of his life, pre-empted by the black cloth of Stalinism.

Contains sixteen essays covering fields as disparate as the history of the Jewish vote in the UK, the true story of the British Chief Rabbinate, and the uneasy tenure of Sir Jonathan Sacks in that office. This work also considers the role of the historian in Anglo-Jewish life, and the troubled careers of some of its leaders and scholars.

For several decades David Bethea has written authoritatively on the "e;mythopoetic thinking"e; that lies at the heart of classical Russian literature, especially Russian poetry. His theoretically informed essays and books have made a point of turning back to issues of intentionality and biography at a time when authorial agency seems under threat of "e;erasure"e; and the question of how writers, and poets in particular, live their lives through their art is increasingly moot. The lichnost' (personhood, psychic totality) of the given writer is all-important, argues Bethea, as it is that which combines the specifically biographical and the capaciously mythical in verbal units that speak simultaneously to different planes of being. Pushkin's Evgeny can be one incarnation of the poet himself and an Everyman rising up to challenge Peter's new world order; Brodsky can be, all at once, Dante and Mandelstam and himself, the exile paying an Orphic visit to Florence (and, by ghostly association, Leningrad).This sort of metempsychosis, where the stories that constitute the Ur-texts of Russian literature are constantly reworked in the biographical myths shaping individual writers' lives, is Bethea's primary focus. This collection contains a liberal sampling of Bethea's most memorable previously published essays along with new studies prepared for this occasion.

A Roadmap to the Heavens challenges readers to rethink prevailing ideas about the social map of Jewish society during the Tannaitic period (70 C.E. - 220 C.E.). New insights were made possible by applying anthropological theories and conceptual tools. In addition, social phenomena were better understood by comparing them to similar social phenomena in other cultures regardless of time and space. The book explores the rich and complex relationships between the Sages, Priests, and laymen who competed for hegemony in social, cultural, and political arenas. The struggle was not simply a case of attempting to displace the priestly elite by a new scholarly elite. Rather, in the process of constituting a counter-hegemony, the attitude of the Sages towards the Priests entailed ambivalent psychological mechanisms, such as attraction - rejection, imitation - denial, and cooperation - confrontation. The book further reveals that to achieve political and social power the Sages used the established hegemonic priestly discourse to undermine the existing social structure. The innovative discovery of this monograph is that while the Sages professed a new social order based on intellectual achievement, they retained elements of the old order, such as family attribution, group nepotism, endogamy, ritual purity and impurity, and secret knowledge. Thus, social mobility based on education was available only to privileged social classes. The conclusion of the book is that even though the Sages resisted the priestly hegemony and attempted to disengage from it, they could not free themselves from the shackles of the priestly discourse and praxis.

Victor Zhivov's Language and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia is one of the most important studies ever published on eighteenth-century Russia. Historians and students of Russian culture agree that the creation of a Russian literary language was key to the formation of a modern secular culture, and this title traces the growth of a vernacular language from the "e;hybrid Slavonic"e; of the late seventeenth century through the debates between "e;archaists and innovators"e; of the early nineteenth century. Zhivov's study is an essential work on the genesis of modern Russian culture; the aim of this translation is to make it available to historians and students of the field.

Features a systematisation of the main available data on Nabokov's complex Russian novel, "The Gift" (1934-1939). This title outlines the basic properties of "The Gift" ( plot, characters, style, and motifs) and reconstructs its internal chronology. It describes the creation of the novel and the history of its publication.

The vast majority of intellectual, religious, and national developments in modern Judaism revolve around the central idea of "e;Jewish culture."e; This book is the first synoptic view of these developments that organizes and relates them from this vantage point. The first Jewish modernization movements perceived culture as the defining trait of the outside alien social environment to which Jewry had to adapt. To be "e;cultured"e; was to be modern-European, as opposed to medieval-ghetto-Jewish. In short order, however, the Jewish religious legacy was redefined retrospectively as a historical "e;culture,"e; with fateful consequences for the conception of Judaism as a humanly- and not only divinely-mandated regime. The conception of Judaism-as-culture took two main forms: an integrative, vernacular Jewish culture that developed in tandem with the integration of Jews into the various nations of western-central Europe and America, and a national Hebrew culture which, though open to the inputs of modern European society, sought to develop a revitalized Jewish national identity that ultimately found expression in the revival of the Jewish homeland and the State of Israel.