264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger than a matchbox: potter Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in the Tokyo apartment of his great uncle Iggie.

This long-awaited reprint of Avi-Yonah's landmark work covers a period of historical geography in the land of Israel that has seen little additional comparable research. Spanning the Exilic, Intertestamental, New Testament, and later Roman periods, this volume is invaluable for Old Testament, Early Judaism, New Testament, and Talmudic studies. Professor Anson Rainey adds a useful toponymic index as well as text revisions. A new foreword is presented by Yoram Tsafrir, director of the Jewish National and University Library.

A tragic family history told in a collection of imaginary letters to a famed collector, Moïse de Camondo. 63 rue de Monceau, Paris Dear friend, As you may have guessed by now, I am not in your house by accident. I know your street rather well. Count Moïse de Camondo lived a few doors away from Edmund de Waal’s forebears, the Ephrussi, first encountered in his bestselling memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes . Like the Ephrussi, the Camondos were part of belle epoque high society. They were also targets of antisemitism. Camondo created a spectacular house and filled it with the greatest private collection of French eighteenth-century art for his son, Nissim, to inherit. But when Nissim was killed in the First World War, it became a memorial and, upon the Count’s death, was bequeathed to France. The Musée Nissim de Camondo has remained unchanged since 1936. De Waal explores the lavish rooms and detailed archives and uncovers new layers to the family story. In a series of haunting letters addressed to the Count, he tells us what happened next.

Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Film. Jewish Studies. Edited by Julian Kabza. Translated by Ian Thompson, Anna O'Meara, Julian Kabza, Nadege LeJeune, and Charles Penwarden. Introduction by Adrian Martin. Forward by Frédérique Devaux. Interview with Isou by Roland Sabatier. Afterword by Erik Bullot. "Who is Isou? Some may know that he was the founder and leader of a movement in art and thought named Lettrism. Some may know the remarkable film he made a year before he wrote his manifesto, the Treatise on Slime and Eternity, a breakthrough work of feature-length experimentation that was to win fans including Stan Brakhage--Isou himself would coldly remark, many years later, that Jean-Luc Godard and Guy Debord (to name only two luminaries whom he considered his mortal enemies) stole everything from it. Some might have come to the legend of Isou through the fond passage devoted to him in Greil Marcus' book on the distant origins of punk, Lipstick Traces--a book whose subtitle evokes 'a secret history of the 20th century.' In that book, Marcus tells the fine story of his teenage niece stumbling upon the photos on his desk of a young Isou in the late 1940s, and mistaking the artist for a contemporary pop star. And Isou did indeed look the part--especially in a self-portrait which was an example of what the Lettrists called hypergraphics, a work mixing the media of photography, painting, drawing, and Lettrist poetry."--Adrian Martin, from the introduction "Isou chipped language down to the bone that it might build its flesh up again, fresh and new. It is one of the grand aesthetic visions of the late twentieth century. His cinema, in particular, is a marvelous document of the secret history of our times. Here at last is the book that, for Anglophone readers and beyond, cements his fleeting presence for all time."--McKenzie Wark "Long-overdue, this translation of Isou's masterpiece--together with its contextual essays and interviews by Martin, Devaux, Sabatier, and Bullot--will be a monumental resource for international research into the origins of the Lettrist movement along with postwar Experimental Film and Media Art."--Andrew V. Uroskie

Two central themes run through this new collection of authoritative and undogmatic essays: the Jewish experience and that of the work of art as a toy to be used for dreaming and playing rather than as a window to the world. The collection includes three essays on the Bible, as well as pieces devoted to Twelfth Night, Rembrandt's self-portraits, Tristram Shandy, Kafka's stories and aphorisms, Borges, Kierkegaard, and painter Andrez Jackowski. The title essay examines the relationship of the artists' works and their ideas, and the book concludes with personal meditations on memory, the Holocaust, Jewishness, and being a writer-teacher.

This book of photographs, accompanied by poetic insights, shed light on our search for meaning in the contemporary world. The backdrop is exile, that ancient and modern reality that afflicts many in our search for justice and compassion. Whether our leave-taking is geographic, political, cultural or religious, exile is our plight. The prophetic, our difficult guide, is also our companion. Those in exile find hope in what the author calls the New Diaspora, the community whose exiles gather and find new life. The New Diaspora seeks a vision of beauty amid the ruins, hope among despair. Walking the beach of Cape Canaveral and traveling to troubled spots around the world, the author's images of the New Diaspora are startling. We are encouraged to reflect on our own journey and join our prophetic exile with others around the world.

This volume contains Rifat Bali's study of the Jewish place in Istanbul's nineteenth-century sex trade as well as three contemporary accounts of the practice.