Interpretation & Culture - Old Series

This book takes an innovative approach to psychoanalysis. Instead of following well known and predictable Oedipal themes, it offers to investigate the practice used by psychoanalysts in therapy.

This book connects existentialism and romanticism. Its aim is to show that at the heart of Sartre’s philosophy is a cohesive core of romantic ideas that influenced his existentialist thought.

This book offers the first comprehensive research discussion of the meeting of music and Judaism in theology.

Is there really Freedom? By following the philosophical debate on this issue, the book probes the ethical and existential aspirations of opposing theoretical views, and advances an inspiring vision of human freedom firmly embedded within nature.

The book presents a description of Purim celebrations in Tel-Aviv and their development from the end of Ottoman period until their cessation in 1936 and highlights the unique role of the concept of tradition in the creation of the new nation.

This book questions the meaning of moral discourse and of the place of literature and philosophy in the context of the inner moral domain, and aims to expose the therapeutic possibilities found in reading and writing literature and philosophy.

The “optional cinema model” that is revealed in this book allows the author to present a unique interpretative-philosophical view of the films discussed in the book.

In the book A Question of Time, Joel Pearl proposes a new interpretation of the basis of psychoanalytical thought that reveals the basic deficiency in psychoanalysis since its inception. Pearl returns to the moment of the birth of psychoanalysis and shows

It is a widespread conception that prayer is the essence of religious fulfillment. In the eyes of many, prayer can be understood only on the assumption that it is an appeal to God. Moreover, even the prayers of non-believers are perceived as a search for

This book presents Chomsky as a first rate philosopher. Chomsky's linguistic theory is interpreted (in a Dworkian constructivist sense of the term ''interpretation'') as expressing three substantial and grounded philosophical contentions that are also int

Jacques Lacan is known not only as a revolutionary and significant psychoanalyst, but also as the most controversial psychoanalyst since Freud. His psychoanalytical theory, founded on the basic Freudian concepts, introduces a new and unique set of ideas a

This book offers a comprehensive reading of Hegel's philosophical project, tracing this project from its moment of conception as a critical reaction to Kant's philosophy, through its first theological formulation, to the discovery of the Idea of Spirit, u

This book offers a close feminist reading of contemporary Israeli women's literature based on current theories. The texts, written by Amalia Kahana-Carmon, Hanna Bat-Shahar, Michal Govrin, Ronit Matalon, Dorit Peleg and Rivka Rass, are analysed as texture

This book focuses on A Comedy of Betrothal (Tzahut Bedihuta DeQiddushin), the earliest known Hebrew play. The study of this Renaissance comedy, dated to the mid-16th century, and attributed to Leone de' Sommi (Yehudah Sommo), a multi-talented Jewish theat

Modern Hebrew Literature is engaged overtly and covertly, consciously and unconsciously, with moral issues. Historical upheavals – wars, immigration, the establishment of the independent country, the formation of an old-new culture – have brought about th

This book explores models of avodah be-gashmiyut in nascent Hasidism and aims to determine how it provides a response to the tension between the halakhic demand for a certain manner of religious conduct and the immanentistic trends in the Hasidic masters’

The search for the meaning of life is one of man's deep passions. Humans are not content to merely exist. The want to understand their existence, to weave the different events, conditions and affinities of their lives into one complete, comprehensible

How might one think about narrative painting in the present era, in the wake of modernism and post-modernism? What picture-viewer relations does narrative painting postulate in exceeding two-dimensionality towards the domain of the fictional? How can pain

This study deals with Baruch Kurzweil as a hero of the Hebrew Israeli cultural scene of the 1950s and '60s. Kurzweil's critical corpus known mainly for his work on S.Y. Agnon's fiction is treated here not only as literary criticism, but first and foremo

This book is based on translated articles by Hungarian Jewish writers and thinkers as well as interviews with them. The articles express different views on Jewish identity in Hungary. The attitudes articulated in the articles reflect a’variety of position

This book sets out to understand the phenomenon of the law by using the concept of culture.

This study presents Merleau-Ponty's theory of the ''field of perception'' as a key concept through which we may reach a more comprehensive understanding of ourselves in the world. This concept can enable us to bypass the subject-object dualism characteris

This book examines the way in which Rabbi Ovadya Yosef deals with the challenges of modern life. His halakhic solutions are characterized by two guiding principles: inclusion and exclusion. Rabbi Yosef strives to encompass a broad public, including people

Scroll of Secrets (Megillat Setarim) is the hidden Messianic vision of R. Nahman of Bratslav. The Scroll was concealed for two centuries, and was known only to a select individual in each generation. Despite its being written in encoded language, with acr

This book presents a new interpretation of the major essays of the German Jewish philosopher, Walter Benjamin, by emphasizing the underlying visual elements in his writings. The visual aspect, and particularly photography, interfere with one's understandi

This book traces the thought of the German philosopher Karl Jaspers, from his early writings as a young psychiatrist to his mature thinking as an existentialist.