Blending memories and family myths, Mary McCarthy takes us back to the twenties, when she was orphaned in a world of relations as colourful, potent and mysterious as the Catholic religion. There were her grandmothers: one was a blood-curdling Catholic who combined piousness and pugnacity; the other was Jewish and wore a veil to hide the disastrous effects of a face-lift. There was wicked Uncle Myers who beat her for the good of her soul and Aunt Margaret who laced her orange juice with castor oil and taped her lips at night to prevent unhealthy 'mouth-breathing'. 'Many a time in the course of doing these memoirs,' Mary McCarthy says, 'I have wished that I were writing fiction.' But these were the people, along with the ladies of the Sacred Heart convent school, who helped to inspire her devastating sense of the sublime and ridiculous and her witty, novelist's imagination.

The legendary correspondence between the critic Walter Benjamin and the historian Gershom Scholem bears indispensable witness to the inner lives of two remarkable and enigmatic personalities. Benjamin, acknowledged today as on of the leading literary and social critics of his day, was known during his lifetime by only a small circle of friends and intellectual confreres. Scholem recognized the genius of his friend and mentor during their student days in Berlin, and the two began to correspond after Scholem’s emigration to Palestine. Their impassioned exchange draws the reader into the very heart of their complex relationship during the anguished years from 1932 until Benjamin’s death in 1940.

In this book, the world's foremost scholar of Kabbalah explores the understanding of erotic love in Jewish mystical thought. Encompassing Jewish mystical literatures from those of late antiquity to works of Polish Hasidism, Moshe Idel highlights the diversity of Kabbalistic views on eros and distinguishes between the major forms of eroticism. The author traces the main developments of a religious formula that reflects the union between a masculine divine attribute and a feminine divine attribute, and he asks why such an "erotic formula" was incorporated into the Jewish prayer book. Idel shows how Kabbalistic literature was influenced not only by rabbinic literature but also by Greek thought that helped introduce a wider understanding of eros. Addressing topics ranging from cosmic eros and androgyneity to the affinity between C. J. Jung and Kabbalah to feminist thought, Idel's deeply learned study will be of consuming interest to scholars of religion, Judaism, and feminism.

It is for his poetry that A.M. Klein is best known and most warmly remembered. This collection includes all Klein's poetry, both original works and translations from Hebrew, Yiddish, Aramaic, and Latin. Many of them, coming from all periods of his careers, have never been published. The poems are arranged chronologically according to date of composition. This makes possible, for the first time, an appreciation of Klein's poetic development. The editor's introduction places this development in the perspective of Klein's life and time, and in particular explores Klein's lifelong struggle to reconcile his dual vocations as both a Jewish and a modernist writer. The textual apparatus identifies all authoritative versions for each poem and lists all emendations and all substative variants in both published and mauscript versions. The explanatory notes gloss obscure terms and references. They also provide a rich context for appreciation and interpretation by drawing connections with Klein's life, his wide reading, and his work as a whole. Wherever possible, Klein's own numerous, but scattered, comments on his poems have been cited.

The Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library and in the College Libraries of Oxford is a comprehensive reference book written by Adolf Neubauer. The book provides a detailed and systematic catalogue of all the Hebrew manuscripts that are held in the Bodleian Library and the College Libraries of Oxford. The author has meticulously researched and documented each manuscript, providing a brief historical background and detailed descriptions of their contents, including the language, script, and binding. The book is an invaluable resource for scholars and researchers interested in the study of Hebrew manuscripts, Jewish history, and culture. It is an essential reference work for anyone studying or researching the rich cultural heritage of the Jewish people.1886. Including MSS. in other languages, which are written with Hebrew characters, or relating to the Hebrew language or literature; and a few Samaritan MSS. With forty facsimiles. Partial Contents: Works Quoted; Concordances of the Old and New Numbers; Biblical MSS; Translation of the Bible; Midrash and its Commentaries; Commentaries and Super-Commentaries; Thalmud, Halakhah; Thalmud, Agadah; Liturgies and their Commentaries; Theology, Philosophy and Ethics; Masorah, Grammar and Lexicography; Kabbalah; Poetry and Rhymed Prose; Mathematics, Astronomy, Astrology, Magic and Cosmography; Medicine; Miscellaneous; Additional MSS and Omissions; College MSS; MSS written in Roman Characters in Connection with Hebrew Literature; Latest Acquisitions; and Additional Samaritan MSS. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

This volume contains the lectures delivered at an international conference in Israel devoted to the topic of Franz Kafka (1883-1924) and Zionism. Kafka's interests in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Jewish Nationalism and his various relationships to his Zionist friends and his participation in Jewish national and Zionist-related activity are explored from a number of different critical vantage points. Likewise, his writings are considered within the specific framework of Jewish nationalism and Zionism.

Kinship, the new collection of poetry by the bilingual author, Boston College professor Maxim D. Shrayer, weaves together some of the principal themes in modern Jewish history: ancestry in Eastern Europe, the Shoah, antisemitism, exile, displacement and immigration, Zionism and Israel. Shrayer's richly orchestrated and formally elegant verse captures with poignancy and passion what it feels like to be a Jewish poet with Soviet roots, living in America during Russia's brutal war in Ukraine. Kinship is, ultimately, a pained and inspiring meditation on writing between languages and cultures.

In this illuminating philosophical book, Jabes, who died in 1991 and lived in France after being forced to leave Egypt with other native-born Jews during the Suez War, ruminates on the link between being Jewish and being mislabeled as a foreigner. It is also an indictment of bigotry. Jabes writes, "the basic racist is the man who refuses himself as he is. . . . The antisemite can never forgive the Jews for being capable of self-realization . . . . " Elsewhere he observes in verse on his own experience of exile: "I left a land not mine / for another, not mine either. / I took refuge in a word of ink with the book for space, / word from nowhere, obscure word of the desert. " His seamless style brings to mind both religious and French existential writings, although some musings reach heights too abstract to follow: "We must from now on grant citizen's rights to the foreigner's new name: the foreign I . / Foreign Me, foreign You designated by the I. " Here, too, Jabes ( The Book of Questions ) evokes powerful images of the desert to underscore a mood of isolation and comments wisely about aging and power. --