Haskalah and Beyond deals with the Hebrew Haskalah (Enlightenment) - the literary, cultural, and social movement in the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe. It represents the emergence of modernism and perhaps the budding of some aspects of secularism in Jewish society, following the efforts of the Hebrew and Jewish enlighteners to introduce changes into Jewish culture and Jewish life, and to revitalize the Hebrew language and literature. The author classifies these activities as a "cultural revolution." In effect, the Haskalah was a counter-culture intended to modify or replace some of the contemporary rabbinic cultural framework, institutions, and practices and adopt them for its own envisioned "Judaism of the Haskalah." The pioneering work of the "founding fathers" of the early Haskalah had greatly impacted the later developments of the Haskalah in the 19th century. Its reception in that century is studied as is the reception of one of the major figures of the early Haskalah, Isaac Euchel, and of one of the important German Enlightenment poets and philosophers, Johann Gottfried Herder, in the 19th-century Haskalah. The study of reception continues on the language of the sublime and the poetic imagery used in Haskalah, melitzah, as well as on the three major journals of Haskalah as instruments of change and of disseminating the Haskalah ideology. Finally, the aftermath of the Haskalah is addressed.

The Shadow of Death: Letters in Flames is an analytical study of eight major Jewish and Israeli writers who wrote about the experience of the Shoah (Holocaust). The book is divided into two main sections. The first section "The Holocaust Experience from Within" analyzes literary works by the writers Aharon Appelfeld, Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Ka-tzetnik, and Jerzy Kosinski - who experienced the Holocaust firsthand. The second section is devoted to "After the Holocaust - Experience from Without," concentrating mainly on the literary analysis of works by writers who responded to the Holocaust after the event. They are the Israeli writers Hanoch Bartov, Hayim Gouri, and Yehuda Amichai. The book is literary oriented with a prominent focus on textual and literary analysis of major examples of Holocaust literature. It purports to examine the texts under study and analyze them by pointing out literary devices that indicate the writers' perception of the Holocaust and their attempt to convey the meaning and significance of the Holocaust to the modern reader.

The Age of Haskalah is a seminal study of the beginnings of the Haskalah (Hebrew Enlightenment) in Germany in the last quarter of the 18th century. The Haskalah was a literary and cultural movement that reshaped and re-formed Judaism and the Jews in accordance with the needs of modern times, i.e. the European Enlightenment. Leaders of the movement were known as Maskilim and included the poet and grammarian, Naphtali Herz Wessely; the physician, Mordechai Gumpel Schnaber; the writer, Isaac Satanow; the rabbi, Saul Berlin; and the editor and writer Isaac Euchel. With detailed textual and historical evidence, author Moshe Pelli examines the backdrop of the Hebrew Enlightenment and the impact of the European Deism on the pundits of Haskalah. He further probes into early intimations of religious reform, the methodology of reform seen in the first reform temple controversy of 1818, and the attitude of the Maskilim toward the Talmud and the revival of the Hebrew language.

In Search of Genre is an innovative study of the beginning of modernity in Hebrew and Jewish letters, which reflected the emerging changes in Jewish society toward the end of the 18th century in Germany. Young intellectual Jews aspired to revitalize the Jewish people by reviving the Hebrew language and Jewish culture through literature. Their use of new and renewed literary genres mark the transition from traditional Hebrew letters to modern Hebrew literature. Modernity in Hebrew letters is thus defined as the endeavor to emulate the contemporary European literatures and their prevailing aesthetics and poetics. This study also explores major criteria for identifying and evaluating Hebrew modernism exemplified by attempts to redefine Judaism.