I’m Back on the Saddle Again!

Here’s the deal: while I thought that it was oh, so cool to abandon the blog in favor of Facebook’s charming shtiks, the growing heap of new arrivals piling up on my desk and every other useable surface in my office corresponded with the growing suspicion that I jumped ship too soon. Let’s face it (pun intended) – Facebook is great for snippets, cute applications, and free storage for shared photo albums. What it isn’t good for is delivering - to a well defined consumer group (you, not my “friends”) - regular highlights of our most recent acquisitions.
Who else can I tell about our steadily growing collection of Jewish/Israeli art: exhibit catalogs, monographs, portfolios – (courtesy of the late Rabbi William Kramer’s art library, via the Skirball Cultural Center)?
Where else will you find non-committal book reviews, gleaned from superficial glances at tables of content, title pages, and colorful covers?
How else will you be directed to my absolutely subjective picks-of-the week articles from recently received journals & magazines?
What else do I need to do to get a piece of your very-divided attention span, and, “literally”, force your gaze towards the Land of our Ancestors and its incredible print output?
Four Questions, and it isn’t even close to Passover! And here are this week’s answers (all in Hebrew):

Sephardica and Mizrahi Jewish studies:

Between Intrigues and Revolution: the Appointment & Dismissal of Chief Rabbis in Baghdad, Damascus and Aleppo, 1744-1914, by Yaron Harel (Ben-Zvi Institute, 2007)

You Were Born Zionists: the Sephardim in Eretz Israel in Zionism and the Hebrew Revival During the Ottoman Empire, by Yizhak Bezalel (Ben-Zvi Institute, 2007)

Blanka Flor (White Flower): Un Viage en los Kaminos de la Romansa (A journey on the routes of Romance poetry), by Avner Perez (Sefarad & Ben Gurion University, 2007)

Hebrew Literature & Cultural Studies:

Women Authors Write for Children: Postcolonial and Feminist Readings in Hebrew Children’s Literature, by Dana Keren-Yaar (Resling, 2007)

Guards in Israeli Prose, by Yosef Oren (Yahad, 2008)

Weighty Questions, by Arnold Band (Kinneret, Zmora –Bitan, Dvir, 2007)

Silences: Silence in Culture and Interpersonal Relations, edited by Michal Ephrat (Resling, 2007)

Do You Know the Land Where the Lemon Blooms: Human Engineering and Landscape Conceptualization in Hebrew Literature, by Yigal Schwartz (Kinneret, Zmora –Bitan, Dvir, 2007)

The Lexicon of Life: Israeli Sociolects & Jargon, by Ruvik Rosenthal (Keter, 2007)

Pink Life: GLBT Youth, by Guy Shilo (Resling, 2007)

Israeli Thoughts, by Menahem Brinker (Karmel 2007)

Religion Defies Its Creators, by Yaron Yadan (Gvanim, 2007)



Hasidism:

Gog and Magog, by Martin Buber (Yediot, Aharonot, 2007)

A Bibliography of Hasidic Literature, by Yoav Elstein (Bar Ilan University, 2007?)

Sefer Hasidim: A Lost Anti-Hasidic Polemic, by Uriel Gellman (Merkaz Dinur & Merkaz Shazar, 2007)


Bible & Responsa:

Shai le-Sara Japhet: Studies in the Bible, its Exegesis and its Language (Bialik Institute, 2007)

The Prophetic Halakhah: Rabbi A.I.H. Kook’s Philosophy of Halakhah, by Avinoam Rosenak (Magnes Press, 2007)

Malki Bakodesh Responsa, by Hayyim Hirschensohn (Shalom Hartman Institute, 2006)


I am running out of steam, and I hope you run to the catalog and our new books display & check one of these books out. Don’t bother to look for The Lexicon of Life – I checked it out so I can catch up with my Israeli friends…but I will bring it back, soon!