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 | | One Mount, Two Religions, Three Proposals | | The controversy over the Temple Mount is again threatening to ignite the region. Three Israeli and Jewish viewpoints suggest a different perspective on the holiness of the site and the meaning of sovereignty over it. Professor Israel Knohl relates to the partial fulfillment of Yeshayahu’s vision; Professor Elhanan Reiner explains the idea behind aliyah le’regel; and Professor Menachem Fisch explains that the holiness of place is not connected to ownership. | | Read More | |  | | | |
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 | | The Talmudic Comedy: Romance, Masks and Traditional Texts | | The oldest known Hebrew play is a romantic comedy full of sexual innuendo, which makes use of quotes and references from classic Jewish texts as raw comic and dramatic material. Yair Lipshitz researched the play and found that it allowed its audience, Italian Jewry in the 16th century, to view the ancient texts in a new way, which in all likelihood was not possible within the synagogue or the Beit Midrash. | | Read More | | | | |
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 | | Nurturers, Emasculators or Competitors? | | On the Relation of Jewish Studies to Jewish Thought: Should Jewish Studies strive to affect public discourse or should it focus only on research? Do the high standards that must be met for good research stifle philosophical creativity? And is it possible that scientific discourse is itself, this fact being the source of its power? Dr. Moshe Meir and Professor Adiel Schremer offer conflicting answers to these questions and express doubts as to the assumptions on which the questions are based. | | Read More | | | | |
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 |  | | Between a Legal Inquiry and a Discussion of Ethics | | The Spirit of the IDF Document and the Investigation of Operation Cast Lead: Professor Avi Sagi, one of the authors of the Spirit of IDF document which replaced the army’s Code of Ethics, explains that one of the document’s objectives is to block the attempt by terrorists to undermine the moral values of Israeli society. He writes that Israel needs to determine whether from this point of view the behavior of its soldiers during Operation Cast Lead gave terror a victory. | | Read More | | | | | |
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 | | Revenge | | ‘Inglourious Basterds,’ the new movie by the director Quentin Tarantino, describes a Jewish campaign of revenge against the Nazis at the peak of World War II which leads to a change in the course of history. This is a brutal, scathing, baseless and breathtaking fabrication and its sweeping cinematic manifestation raises questions regarding the gap between the fantasy of revenge in the cultural sense and the desire to fulfill it. Yoske Ahitov examines these questions and describes how Jewish culture deals with the issue of revenge and its place in the space between the text and the idea, on the one hand, and the act and execution, on the other. He further examines the question of whether grandiose fantasizing about revenge can free a person from the longing for revenge, or whether it in fact intensifies the desire to fulfill the fantasy. | | Read More | |  | | | |
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 | | What Did Poetry Give Ibn Gvirol That Philosophy Could Not? | | Shlomo Ibn Gvirol is known as a wonderful poet and an influential philosopher, writes Menachem Lorberbaum. However, while his philosophical writing deals with the importance of the human journey towards perfection using the intellect, poetry allowed him to relate to the materiality of the human body. On the tension between writing philosophy and writing poetry, and the complexity of the author’s world. | | Read More | | | | |
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