This book is about ways in which the land of Israel, the homeland of the most paradigmatic of all diasporas, was envisioned in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages in the literature of the sages. It is about the Land according to the redefined Judaism that emerged in the centuries following the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE. This Judaism replaced the temple cult with Torah study - a study that pertained in part to that very temple cult, that became a portable homeland, and that reconfigured the Land.

Originally published in Hebrew in 1991, The Changing Land presents a unique aerial view of the changes in Israel's topography from the second decade of the twentieth century to the present. Aerial photographs taken during World War I of Israel by German, British, and Australian aviators, showed the topography of a land fought over for many centuries. Having examined and identified the WWI photographs preserved in German, Australian, Israeli, and British public archives and German private collections, Benjamin Z. Kedar gathered 70 of the photographs to form the book's core. Kedar then collected color aerial photos taken between 1930 and 1990 of the same 70 sites. The result is an unusual and fascinating record of the physical changes in the region during this period of modernization and urban expansion. Changing the Land is more than a topographical view of Israel. Glimpses of the hills, valleys, towns, and villages of Israel provide the reader with a compelling history that words alone cannot describe. This book offers a complete portrait of Israel for anyone who has traveled to the Holy Land or has studied any of its inhabitants.

Comprised of contributions from scholars across the globe, The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Narrative is a state-of-the-art anthology, offering critical treatments of both the Bible's narratives and topics related to the Bible's narrative constructions. The Handbook covers the Bible's narrative literature, from Genesis to Revelation, providing concise overviews of literary-critical scholarship as well as innovative readings of individual narratives informed by a variety of methodological approaches and theoretical frameworks. The volume as a whole combines literary sensitivities with the traditional historical and sociological questions of biblical criticism and puts biblical studies into intentional conversation with other disciplines in the humanities. It reframes biblical literature in a way that highlights its aesthetic characteristics, its ethical and religious appeal, its organic qualities as communal literature, its witness to various forms of social and political negotiation, and its uncanny power to affect readers and hearers across disparate time-frames and global communities.

7.2.1. Input data and model initialization -- 7.2.2. Geographic distribution of vascular plant diversity -- 7.2.3. Estimation of area potentials for agriculture and their spatial correlation to regions with high vascular plant diversity -- 7.2.4. Assessment of land-use and land-cover change impacts -- 7.2.5. Scenario drivers -- 7.3. Results -- 7.3.1. Area potentials for agricultural activities -- 7.3.2. Scenario analysis -- 7.4. Discussion -- 7.5. Conclusions -- 8. Synthesis -- 8.1. Summary of findings -- 8.1.1. Modeling the feedback between stocking density and biomass productivity -- 8.1.2. Quantifying the environmental impact of grazing in Jordan -- 8.1.3. Future land-use and land-cover change scenarios for the Jordan River region -- 8.1.4. Assessment of future conflicts between agricultural land use and biodiversity in Africa -- 8.2. Outlook on further research -- 9. Bibliography -- A. Nonlinear correlation functionsbetween stocking density andbiomass productivity -- B. Input specification -- C. Land-use and land-cover maps for the simulation experimenton future conflicts between agricultural land use and biodiversity in Africa -- Back cover

This book is about the homeland of the most paradigmatic of all diasporas. It is about ways in which the land of Israel was envisioned in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages in the literature of the sages.

After Zionism brings together some of the world's leading thinkers on the Middle East question to dissect the century-long conflict between Zionism and the Palestinians, and to explore possible forms of a one-state solution. Time has run out for the two-state solution because of the unending and permanent Jewish colonisation of Palestinian land. Although deep mistrust exists on both sides of the conflict, growing numbers of Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Arabs are working together to forge a different, unified future. Progressive and realist ideas are at last gaining a foothold in the discourse, while those influenced by the colonial era have been discredited or abandoned. Whatever the political solution may be, Palestinian and Israeli lives are intertwined, enmeshed, irrevocably. This daring and timely collection includes essays by Omar Barghouti, Jonathan Cook, Joseph Dana, Jeremiah Haber, Jeff Halper, Ghada Karmi, Saree Makdisi, John Mearsheimer, Ilan Pappe, Sara Roy and Phil Weiss.

When the Hebrew edition of this groundbreaking book came out, it provoked a stormy public debate. The author has now up-dated "Israeli Cinema", adding a substantial new postscript that reflects on the book's initial reception and points to exciting new trends in the cinematic representation of Israel and Palestine. Ella Shohat explores the cinema as a productive site of national culture, dating back to the early Zionist films about turn-of-the-century Palestine. She offers a deconstructionist reading of Zionism, viewing the cinema as itself participating in the 'invention' of the nation. Unthinking the Eurocentric imaginary of 'East versus West', Shohat highlights the paradoxes of an anomalous national/colonial project through a number of salient issues, including the Sabra figure as a negation of the 'Diaspora Jew', the iconography of the land of Israel as a denial of Palestine, and the narrative role of 'the good Arab'. The new postscript examines the emergence of a richly multiperspectival cinematic space that transcends earlier dichotomies through a palimpsestic and cross-border approach to Israel/Palestine.