Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Academic Studies Press is pleased to announce the publication of nine new titles! With Both Feet on the Clouds: Fantasy in Israeli Literature By Danielle Gurevitch, Elana Gomel, and Rani Graff ISBN 978-1-936235-83-4 250 pp. (cloth) $75.00 Why do Israelis dislike fantasy? Put so bluntly, the question appears frivolous. But, in fact, it stems from the deepest sources of Israeli historical identity and literary tradition. Uniquely among developed nations, Israel's origin is in a utopian novel, Theodor Herzl's Altneuland (1902), which predicted the future Jewish state. Though Jewish writing in the Diaspora has always tended toward the fantastic, the mystical, and the magical, from its very inception Israeli literature has been stubbornly realistic. The present volume challenges this stance. Originally published in Hebrew in 2009, With Both Feet on the Clouds is the first serious, wide-ranging, and theoretically sophisticated exploration of fantasy in Israeli literature and culture. Its contributors jointly attempt to address the question posed at the book's beginning: why do Israelis, living in a country whose very existence is predicated on the fulfillment of a utopian dream, distrust fantasy? Series: Israel: Society, Culture, and History Personal Theology: Essays in Honor of Neil Gillman By William M. Plevan ISBN 978-1-618111-68-5 275pp. (cloth) $85.00 During the nearly five decades he served as a teacher at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi Dr. Neil Gillman influenced a generation of rabbis, educators, scholars, and Jewish leaders by helping them to relate to Jewish teachings about God in a personal way. In this volume, Gillman's colleagues and students celebrate the contributions he made through essays that explore a variety of themes related to his central concerns, such as revelation and the basis of religious knowledge, the role of myth and ritual in Jewish thought, and Jewish understandings of suffering. Several contributors also respond to Gillman's recent claims about the future of theology and law in Conservative Judaism. Review: "A worthy tribute of substance, esteem, and affection to the master teacher and fearless theologian of our day, who has given a lifetime of service and thought to the welfare of the Seminary and the cause of Conservative Judaism."-Ismar Schorsch, Professor and Former Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary Series: New Perspectives in Post-Rabbinic Judaism Return of the Jew: Identity Narratives of the Third Post-Holocaust Generation of Jews in Poland By Katka Reszke ISBN 978-1-618112-46-0 230 pp. (cloth) $79.00 Return of the Jew traces the appearance of a new generation of Jews in Poland that followed the fall of the communist regime. Today more and more Poles are discovering their Jewish heritage and beginning to seek a means of associating with Judaism and Jewish culture. Reszke analyzes this new generation, addressing the question of whether there can be authentic Jewish life in Poland after fifty years of oppression. Based on a series of interviews with Jewish Poles between the ages of 18 and 35, her work provides an illuminating window into the experience of being, and for many, becoming Jewish in these unique circumstances. This book will appeal to scholars, students, and general readers interested in Jewish history and culture, Polish studies, social anthropology, religion, ethnicity, sociology and the Holocaust. Review: "Uniquely positioned as both an insider and an acute outside observer, Katka Reszke provides an insightful analysis of a controversial and still developing phenomenon that has bemused, perplexed and sometimes enraged the outside Jewish world. In doing so, she gives rare - and welcome -- voice to the actual protagonists, Poland's "new Jews," and sets in complex context their unprecedented, and often poignant, quest for place, identity and selfhood amid the brave new Jewish realities of post-communist Poland."-Ruth Ellen Gruber Series: Jews of Poland Faith, Reason, and Politics: Essays on the History of Jewish Thought By Michah Gottlieb ISBN 978-1-936235-87-2 260pp. (cloth) $85.00 The past decade has witnessed renewed interest in the faith-reason debate. Yet, all too often, the debate is treated in generic terms without attention to the distinctions between or historical developments of different religious traditions. In Faith, Reason, and Politics, Michah Gottlieb explores Jewish approaches to the faith-reason debate through detailed analyses of Jewish thinkers from the twelfth to the twentieth century, including Judah Halevi, Maimonides, Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn, Samson Raphael Hirsch, and Leo Strauss. This study of the Jewish perspective, with its emphasis on religious law, yields insights into the political ramifications of the debate, which differ greatly from Christian approaches. It will appeal to scholars and students interested in the problem of faith versus reason and the relationship between religion and politics. Review: "With Faith and Freedom: Moses Mendelssohn' Theological Political Thought, Michah Gottieb has established himself as a top scholar of modern Jewish philosophy. The current collection of essays is another superb contribution to the field."-Yitzhak Y. Melamed, Johns Hopkins University Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History Judaism Examined: Essays in Jewish Philosophy and Ethics By Moshe Sokol ISBN 978-1-618111-65-4 500pp. (cloth) $85.00 Are there theoretical grounds for tolerance in the classical Jewish tradition? Is human autonomy endorsed by Judaism? What is the range of attitudes towards pleasure that have found their expression in Jewish sources? What does Maimonides have to say about joy, and what does Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik teach about human suffering? This volume of essays examines these and many other key questions about Judaism from the rigorous perspective of philosophical analysis. Unlike most scholarship in Jewish philosophy, which approaches the field primarily from the perspective of intellectual history, this volume also engages in active philosophical dialogue with the texts and thinkers it analyzes. Judaism Examined is a much needed voice to the perennial questions of Jewish philosophy. Review: "In one of the many felicitous expressions in this wide-ranging book, Moshe Sokol says that Rabbi Soloveitchik, the subject of several penetrating essays here, made Brisk (the town of his Talmudic origin and tradition) speak in the language of Berlin (where Rabbi Soloveitchik studied philosophy). Similarly, through the subtle application of the tools of analytic philosophy, Moshe Sokol makes both Maimonides and Soloveitchik speak in the accents of Oxford. Analytic philosophy often runs the risk of triviality; in the hands of a masterful practitioner such as Moshe Sokol, it becomes a supple tool for clarifying the obscure. The Examined Life is well-worth examining - closely!"-Menachem Kellner, University of Haifa Series: Touro College Hats in the Ring: Choosing Britain's Chief Rabbis From Alder to Sacks By Meir Persoff ISBN 978-1-618111-77-7 400pp. (cloth) $69.00 Prior to the latest Chief Rabbinical selection process, seven eminent rabbis were appointed to British Jewry's highest ecclesiastical post. In the end, only six were installed to see out their terms of office. The manner of these appointments was invariably colored by intrigue, in-fighting, and a host of other competing influences. Not the least was an increasingly potent input by the dayanim of the London Beth Din, themselves not immune to strategic self-interest. Meir Persoff's scholarly yet accessible account of these seven appointments draws on a profusion of hitherto unavailable and unpublished material, and on the personal stories of many of the protagonists involved. Including, in fascinating detail, those who by means fair and foul, failed to gain (or chose to reject) the coveted prize. Review: "Historians sharply focused on Anglo-Jewry will have reason to be grateful to Dr. Persoff for the choice fare that he has here set before them. Whatever their views, and however they understand the personalities and interpret the events, they will find themselves in his debt for having drawn attention to such a wealth of source material and for having made available to them many items that were hitherto unknown or inadequately exploited." - Stefan C. Reif, Emeritus Professor of Medieval Hebrew and Fellow of St John's College, University of Cambridge Series: Judaism and Jewish Life Mystical Vertigo: Contemporary Kabbalistic Hebrew Poetry Dancing Over the Divide By Aubrey Glazer ISBN 978-1-618111-66-1 320pp. (cloth) $59.00 Mystical Vertigo immerses readers in the experience of the contemporary kabbalistic Hebrew poet, serving as a gateway into the poet's quest for mystical union, known as devekut. This journey oscillates across subtle degrees of devekut-causing an entranced experience for the Hebrew poet, who is reaching but not reaching, hovering but not hovering, touching but not touching in a state of mystical vertigo. What makes this journey so remarkable is how deeply nestled it is within the hybrid cultural networks of Israel, from both inside and outside of contemporary Hebrew sub-cultures that cross over boundaries of haredi, secular, national-religious, and agnostic beliefs among others. This volume makes a unique contribution to understanding and experiencing the mystical renaissance in Israel, through its multi-disciplinary focus on Hebrew poetry and its philosophical hermeneutics. Series: New Perspectives in Post-Rabbinic Judaism "I am a phenomenon quite out of the ordinary": The Notebooks, Diaries, and Letters of Daniil Kharms By Anthony Anemone and Peter Scotto ISBN 978-1-936235-96-4 600pp. (cloth) $69.00 "I am a Phenomenon Quite out of the Ordinary" offers a fascinating look into the life and mind of poet and prose miniaturist Daniil Kharms (1905-1942). One of the legendary figures of the "Last Soviet Avant-Garde," Kharms was the tutelary spirit of "Russia's lost literature of the absurd." His work, rescued from oblivion by a dedicated group of friends and scholars, has attained an almost cult-like status among present-day Russia's literary elite. In this volume Anemone and Scotto translate a wide-ranging selection of materials from Kharms' private notebooks, diaries, letters, and even documents from the KGB archives detailing Kharms' tragic end in a psychiatric prison hospital-most of these documents never before published in English. This is essential reading for anyone interested in Russian literature, Soviet culture, and the inner workings of the mind of a quirky genius. Series: Cultural Revolutions: Russia in the 20th Century "I Saw It": Ilya Selvinsky and the Legacy of Bearing Witness to the Shoah By Maxim D. Shrayer ISBN 978-1-618111-69-2 340pp. (cloth) $59.00 In this ground-breaking book, based on archival and field research and previously unknown historical evidence, Maxim D. Shrayer introduces the work of Ilya Selvinsky, the first Jewish-Russian poet to depict the Holocaust (Shoah) in the occupied Soviet territories. In January 1942, while serving as a military journalist, Selvinsky witnessed the immediate aftermath of the massacre of thousands of Jews outside the Crimean city of Kerch, and thereafter composed and published poems about it. Shrayer painstakingly reconstructs the details of the Nazi atrocities witnessed by Selvinsky, and shows that in 1943, as Stalin's regime increasingly refused to report the annihilation of Jews in the occupied territories, Selvinsky paid a high price for his writings and actions. This book features over 60 rare photographs and illustrations and includes translations of Selvinsky's principal Shoah poems. Review: "In I Saw It, Maxim D. Shrayer meticulously and unflinchingly chronicles the Nazi massacre of Jews in Kerch, Crimea, and its reflection in Ilya Selvinsky's extraordinarily powerful poems. Selvinsky, a convinced communist generally willing to compromise, suffered considerably for his stubborn attempts to bring the Shoah to the attention of the Soviet reading public. Shrayer brings together social, political, historical, and poetic questions, producing a memorable book that will fascinate a broad range of readers."-Michael Wachtel, Princeton University Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures, and History **To order, please visit our website at <http://www.academicstudiespress.com/> www.academicstudiespress.com, alternatively you can always order online at Amazon or through most major retailers including Ingram and Baker &Taylor** Please note that if you order directly from us you will receive a 20% discount! Please use promo code March20. Have a wonderful week! Best, Lauren Taylor Sales and Marketing Coordinator Academic Studies Press 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135 t: 617.782.6290 e: [email protected] <http://www.academicstudiespress.com/> www.academicstudiespress.com
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