Contents: The Publisher as Activist / Robert L. Bernstein. Poems / Azriel Kaufman. Book Publishing in Israel / Asher Weill. Poems / Amira Hess. The Russian Press in Israel / Mikhail Hefetz. Fred Pauker, Calligrapher / Leila Avrin. Aliya / Aliza Auerbach. "Mountains Round About": Jerusalem in Israeli Printmaking / Mordechai Omer. Soul-Mate / Yehoshua Bar-Yosef. Book Reviews: Mr. Mani. Without a Single Answer.

Originally written in 1913 for serial publication, the papers collected in this volume were designed with some unity of plan. Branching off the main line of Hebraic development. The writer has turned his attention chiefly to his own favorite items, choosing books or parts of books which appealed to him in a long course of reading, and which came back to him with fragrant memories as he sat about reviewing some of the former intimates of his leisure hours. The review is not formal; the method is that of a causerie, not of the essay.  From the Table of Contents: The Story of Ahikar; Josephus Against Apion; Nathan of Rome's Dictionary; The Sarajevo Haggadah; Ibn Gebirol`s Royal Crown; Menasseh and Rembrandt; Lessing`s First Jewish Play; Mendelssohn`s Jerusalem; Byron`s Hebrew Melodies; Longfellow`s Judas Maccabeus; Conder`s Tent Work in Palestine; and many more.

We are happily passing out of the critical obsession, under which it was a sign of ignirance to attribute a venerable age to the records of the past. All the old books were written yesterday, or at earliest the day before! Facts, however, are stubborn; and facts, as they come to light, justify and re-affirm our father` faith in the antiquity of the world`s literature. The story of Ahikar is a good illustration.

George Eliot's novel Daniel Deronda had a tremendous impact on Jews twenty years before the Basle Congress. How did George Eliot come to write a Zionist novel? What were her motives and what did she achieve?. With a forword by Abba Eban.

158 pages, hardcover with dust jacket, good condition: jacket is a bit rubbed, bookstore label on inner backboard. Inscribed by the author.

These "doggerel lines, the crude fruit of a lonely walk last evening when the words of one of our martyrs occured to me" were the words of one of England's greatest novelist, George Eliot. They were printed in the Christian Observer in 1840 - the young 20-year old poetess signed herself M.A.E. for Marian Ann Evans. The "blest volume" from which she refuses to separate in this poem of ten stanzas is the Bible.

Articles in English, Hebrew, and a few in French and German. From the Table of Contents: The Christian Legislation on the Synagogue / Samuel Krauss. Suggestions for further Studies in Judaeo-Arabic Literature / Solomon L. Skoss. Testimonial Compulsion in Jewish, Roman, and Moslem Law / Boaz Cohen. Beitrage zur islamischen Literaturgeschichte / Martin Plessner. Eliezer Ben Hyrcanus - a Shammaite? / Alexander Guttmann. Ibn Khaldun: On the Bible, Judaism and the Jews / Walter Fischel. Sur la doctrine du Mahdi Ibn Tumart / Robert Brunschwig. Hebrew Section: Edition of the Arabic Text of the "Seventy Words" by Saadia Gaon / Nehemia Allony. The Renewal of the Controversy over the Prayer for the Head of the Community at Abraham Maimuni's Time / S.S. Goitein. On the Development of the Agunah-Problem / Ernest Roth. The 613 Commandments among the Samaritans / Abraham S. Halkin. Remarks on the Arabic Text of the Kuzari / D.Z. Baneth.

A study of major trends in Hebrew fiction during the modern era. The book deals with the works of Mendele Mokher Sefarim, Shalom Aleikhem, Itzhak Leib Peretz, Mordekhai Ze'ev Feierberg, Uri Nissan Gnessin, Yosef Hayim Brenner, Hilel Zeitlin, Gershon Shoffman, Mikha Yosef Berdichevsky, Itzhak Dov Berkovitz, Hayim Hazaz, Shmuel Yosef Agnon. . Translated from the Hebrew.

In discussing the renaissance of Hebrew literature toward the end of the nineteenth century, critics tend to concentrate on the poetry of that era, even though the rebirth of modern Hebrew fiction took place at the same time. Nor is this tendency surprising, for poetry was perhaps more responsive than fiction to the changing climate of the day.

The book describes the development of modern Hebrew literature as a record of the historical and social forces which have motivated Jewish life in modern times. From the table of contents: The Quest for a New Life; The Dilemma of Haskalah Literature; The Individual and the \group; Halutziut in Palestine Literature; Hebrew Literature in the War Years; Premonitions of Disaster; Religious Motifs in Modern Hebrew Poetry; and more.

Hebrew literature is the product of the last two hundred years of Jewish life; and two hundred years are a relatively brief span in a history that encompasses three years of growth and development, of inner and outer struggle.

Shylock the Jew, a villain who makes his appearance in five scenes of Shakespear's The Merchant of Venice, has captured the imagination of the world. As a stereotype, he has undergone countless mutations, and for nearly two hundred years there have been claims that he is much more than a stereotype, that he is meant to engage our sympathies in ways that would have once seemed inconceivable. In he first part of this book the author discusses Shylock's origins, and his development within the play itself. He also looks at him in the light of Jewish history. Part II is devoted to Shylock's interpreters in Britain and America, down to the Second World War. Part III ranges through his role in English culture at large and his history outside the English-speaking world.

Shylock has a long ancestry, and a short one. In creating him, Shakespeare drew on ancient traditions, but he also made use of more immediate sources.
It is generally agreed that the plot of The Merchant of Venice derives in large part from a story in the fourteenth-century Italian collection Il Pecorne (The Simpleton), the tale of Giannetto. No English translation of Il Pecorone was published until long after Shakespear's death, which means that he must either have read the tale of Giannetto in Italian (assuming he knew enough of the language) or in a translation circulating in manuscript; but the similarities between tale and play, first pointed out by the eighteenth-century scholar Edward Capell, are too great to be coincidence.

In this collection of essays, Amos Oz analyzes the opening sections of novels and short stories by such writers as Agnon, Gogol, Kafka, Chekhov, García Márquez, and Raymond Carver. Translated from the Hebrew ("Matchilim Sipur") by Ruth Achlama.

This study examines the rich and complex changes in the image of the Arab as seen through the eyes of Hebrew writers from the turn of the century to the late 1980s. Ramras-Rauch explores numerous literary works within their cultural and biographical contexts, and points to an evaluation in the literary depiction of the Arab that is linked to major historical developments. The authors whose works are examoned are Moshe Smilansky, Yehuda Burla, Yitzhak Shami, Yosef Haim Brenner, S. Yizhar, Moshe Shamir, Aharon Megged, Nargan Shaham, A.B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz, Benjamin Tammuz, Sammy Michael, David Grossman, and more.

227 pages, hardcover with dust jacket, good condition: foxing on edges. Inscribed by the author in Hebrew.

Through two thousand years of exile, the idea of return to the Land of Israel has been integral to Jewish dreams, to Jewish hopes. The Bible, the Talmud, the prayer book, liturgy, and poetry, all were interlaced with thoughts of the Holy Land, Zion, Jerusalem, the site of the destroyed Temple. The Passover seder echoes with the words "Next year in Jerusalem!" And after the reading of the Scriptural passage that concludes the Sabbath portion of the Torah, a prayer is heard: "Have compassion on Zion, for it is the source of our life, and mayest thou soon in our day save the city that is grieved in spirit. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who makest Zion rejoice in her children." At various points in prayer, the plea is heard: "Renrew our days as of old..." - and all of this expresses the unbroken continuation of a redemptive hope.

The story of the Jew as a character in the literature of England. It will be seen, as the story unfolds itself, that invariably the poet, the novelist, and the dramatist reflect the attitude of contemporary society in their presentation of the Jewish character, and that the portrayal changes with the economic and social changes of each decade.
 

It is difficult to say when the Jews first came to England. If, as some historians maintain, there were Jews in England in Saxon times, their numbers could not have been great. But, with the advent of the Normans, the situation changed. According to Holinshed, William the Conqueror (1066-1087) himself ``brought the Jews into the land from Rouen`` in 1070, and ``appointed them a place to inhabit and occupy in London, and in Oxford.`` The words ``appointed them a place to inhabit and occupy`` are significant. Their religion set the Jews apart from the rest of the inhabitants of the country, all of whom were members of one organized Christian church whichj not only exercised spiritual control throughout the realm, but also concerned itself with the most ordinary aspects of a churchman`s life. Birth, marriage, death, the inheritance of property, and the organization of industry and government, all came within the sphere of church influence. Under the circumstances, the Jews could not be fitted into the framework of the body politic.

62 Hebrew poems presented in both Hebrew and in English transcription. Each poem is accompanied with an extensive prose commentary which offers literal rendering of the poem interwoven with an explanatory discussion. The book includes poems by Chaim Nachman Bialik, Saul Tchernichovsky, Uri Zvi Greenberg, Yonatan Ratosh, Nathan Alterman, Lea Goldberg, Amir Gilboa, Yehuda Amihai, and more.

In this book, Maurice Samuel tells of a pilgrimage through Sholom Aleichem's world, visiting the townlets and villages of the famous Pale of Settlement, recounting the adventures of the chief characters in the works of Sholom Aleichem.

331 pages, hardcover with dust jacket, good condition: bookstore label on inner backboard.

This book is a sort of pilgrimage among the cities and habitants of a world which only yesterday— as history goes — harboured the grandfathers and grandmothers of some millions of American citizens. As a pilgrimage it is an act of piety; on the other hand it is an exercise in necromancy, or calling up of the dead, which was the sin of Saul. For that world is no more.