Finalist for the 2021 Best Book in Israel Studies presented by the Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies and Concordia University Library Flesh of My Flesh looks at one of the most silenced and repressed aspects of Israeli culture by examining the trope of sexual violence in modern Hebrew literature. Ilana Szobel explores how sexual violence participates in, encourages, or resists concurrent ideologies in Jewish and Israeli culture, and situates the rhetoric of sexual aggression within the contexts of gender, ethnicity, disability, and national identity. Focusing on writings of incest survivors, Sepharadi authors, wounded soldiers, and Hebrew authors such as Shoshana Shababo, Gershon Shofman, Hayim Nahman Bialik, Yoram Kaniuk, Amalia Kahana-Carmon, and Tsvia Litevsky, Szobel unveils the various roles of sexual violence in destabilizing hegemonic notions or reinforcing norms and modes of conduct. Thus, while the book looks at poetic and social possibilities of action in relation to sexual violence, it also exposes the Gordian knot of sexualized gender-based violence and the interests of patriarchy, heteronormativity, nationalism, racism, and ableism.

Yiddish and Hebrew writer I. L. Peretz (1852–1915) was a major leader of Eastern European Jewry in the years prior to World War I, and was deeply involved in Jewish politics and communal life throughout his lifetime. In The Radical Isaac, Adi Mahalel examines a central part of his life and art that has often been neglected, namely, his close alignment with the needs of the Jewish working-class and his deep devotion to progressive politics. Although there have been numerous studies of Peretz and his work, this very central component of his life nonetheless remains severely understudied. By offering close readings of the "radical" Peretz, Mahalel recasts the way political activism is understood in scholarly evaluations of the writer's work. Employing a partly chronological, partly thematic scheme, Mahalel follows Peretz's radicalism from its inception and then through the various ways in which it was synchronically expressed during this intense period of history.

Jewcy: Jewish Queer Lesbian Feminisms for the Twenty-First Century presents the rich diversity of Jewish life from perspectives that center lesbian and queer Jewish feminist people and issues. Blending scholarship with poetry, memoir, and other genres, it reopens the field of Jewish lesbian writing that has been largely dormant since the early 2000s. The contributors illustrate the diversity of Jewish lesbian experience through a range of topics, voices, and genres and explore how this experience intersects with Black, Mizrahi, Sephardi, Indigenous, and trans identities. Opening timely new dialogues between the various fields of Jewish, feminist, queer, trans, decolonial, and critical race studies, Jewcy encourages readers both inside and outside the academy to rethink narrow conceptions of Jewishness.

The veteran contributors to this volume take as their central drama, and their essential task for analysis, the enduring literary and political legacy of Israel Prize laureate Amos Oz (1939–2019). Born a decade prior to the establishment of the state of Israel, in what was then Palestine under British rule, Oz's life spanned the country's entire history, and both his fiction and nonfiction restlessly probe and illuminate its fraught conflicts, contradictions, and ambivalences. Throughout his career, Oz grappled frankly with the often-painful realities of Israeli life while also celebrating the ebullience of the Israeli spirit, and his sophisticated understanding of the sociopolitical turmoil of his society was always accompanied by intensely lyrical language and deep penetrations into the vulnerabilities of the human psyche. The volume's twenty contributors bring an exciting diversity of concerns and perspectives to Oz's most celebrated novels (including his powerfully resonant final novel, Judas) as well as to overlooked facets of his oeuvre, illuminating the breathtaking scope of his literary legacy. Together, they offer gripping analyses of his urgent and profoundly universal works about political and romantic dreamers whose heartfelt struggles with both their own human frailties and those of the state ultimately resonate far beyond Israel itself.

Astute analysis of the work of a great Israeli poet through the lens of psychoanalysis, gender, nationalism, and trauma theory

I. L. Peretz (1852–1915), the father of modern Yiddish literature, was a master storyteller and social critic who advocated a radical shift from religious observance to secular Jewish culture. Wisse explores Peretz’s writings in relation to his ideology, which sought to create a strong Jewish identity separate from the trappings of religion.

In this six week video study, Adam Hamilton explores the key points in his new book, Making Sense of the Bible. With the help of this Leader Guide, groups learn from Hamilton as his video presentations lead groups through the book, focusing on the most important questions we ask about the Bible, its origins and meaning.