New Books in Jewish Studies

The word “ghetto” has taken on different meanings since its coinage in the 16th century. The uses of this term have varied considerably, from its original understanding as a compulsory Jewish quarter in Venice to its appropriation by black Americans to describe racial segregation in the United States. Daniel Schwartz traces this fascinating history in Ghetto: The History of a Word (Harvard University Press, 2019) and examines how “ghetto” has come to occupy different meanings to different people in a variety of historical and cultural contexts. Daniel Schwartz is Associate Professor of History and Judaic Studies at George Washington University. Lindsey Jackson is a PhD student at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Acclaimed after the Second World War as England's greatest historian, Sir Lewis Namier was an eastern European immigrant who came to idealise the English gentleman and enjoyed close friendship with leading figures of his day, including Winston Churchill. Today, Namier is associated with the belief that the thoughts and actions of elites matter most, and with a view of politics in which those who enter public life do so only in pursuit of personal and material advantage. This exaggerated view has made him a hero to social and political conservatives, and a demonic figure to the Left. Preoccupied by nationalism, empire, and human motivation, Namier also remains famous in academic circles for supposedly declaring that any reference to ideas in political discourse was nothing more than 'flapdoodle'. In this comprehensive biography, the first in over thirty years, Emeritus Professor of History at Queen’s University, Belfast, David Hayton, examines these manifold issues. Based on a vast range of sources, including rich new archival material, Conservative Revolutionary: The Lives of Lewis Namier (Manchester University Press, 2019) will no doubt prove to be the definitive study for the next generation of scholars. According to acclaimed Professor of History, Michael Bentley, Hayton’s book is: “an important and compelling study. The product of many years of research, this scholarly and well-written biography goes beyond a familiar English environment to expand Namier's significance as a major figure in European and Jewish historiography.” Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written recently for Chatham House’s International Affairs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Millions of tourists visit Holocaust museums and memorials every year. Holocaust tourism is a thriving industry and plays a crucial role in Holocaust memorialization and remembrance. However, Holocaust tourism is not without criticism. Some argue that sightseeing at sites of genocide is cringeworthy, offensive, inappropriate, and superficial. In Postcards from Auschwitz: Holocaust Tourism and the Meaning of Remembrance (NYU Press, 2018), Daniel Reynolds examines the phenomenon of Holocaust tourism, its implication on Holocaust remembrance, and what we can learn from tourists taking selfies at Auschwitz. Postcards from Auschwitz transports the reader to a variety of museums and memorial sites around the world to unpack the phenomenon of Holocaust tourism. Daniel Reynolds is Seth Richards Professor in Modern Languages in Department of German Studies at Grinnell College. Lindsey Jackson is a PhD student at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Carlo Bonomi's two-volume set dreams the foundation of psychoanalysis as it writes its history. The work animates the reader's imagination, inviting them to journey the interwoven paths of Sigmund Freud's associations, anxieties and conflicts. These books tackle what has often remained hidden both in the historical writing about psychoanalysis and in Freud's explicit account of castration: the practice of female genital mutilation, pervasive in major European cities as treatment for hysteria in the end of 19th century. In this interview we discussed the first volume of work, The Cut and the Building of Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud and Emma Eckstein (Routledge, 2017). We talked about Freud's reaction to the practices of medical castration of women and children, as well as his attempts to cope with the demands of his father that Sigmund, following the orthodox Jewish custom, circumcise his own sons. We begin to introduce the complex imagistic structure of Bonomi's analysis: the dreams that form the backbone of this study, particularly the dream of Irma's Injection. In the next part, we will speak about the relationship between Freud, his trauma, and Sándor Ferenczi, and discuss Ferenczi's legacy in the history of psychoanalysis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trade books in that most of them are what you might called "fundamental research." Their authors--dedicated researchers one and all--provide the scholarly stuff upon which many non-fiction trade books are based. So when you are reading, say, a popular history, you are often reading UP books at one remove. Of course, some UP books are also bestsellers, and they are all well written (and, I should say, thoroughly vetted thanks to the peer review system), but the greatest contribution of UPs is to provide a base of fundamental research to the public. And they do a great job of it. How do they do it? Today I talked to Kathryn Conrad, the president of the Association of University Presses, about the work of UPs, the challenges they face, and some terrific new directions they are going. We also talked about why, if you have a scholarly book in progress, you should talk to UP editors early and often. And she explains how! Listen in. Marshall Poe is the editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Samuel Goldman, who teaches political science at George Washington University, Washington DC, has written a powerfully impressive new book on the long history of the political theology that he describes as “Christian Zionism.” God’s Country: Christian Zionism in America takes some very unexpected routes through a subject that, in some respects, is well-known. Beginning his account with English puritans in the early seventeenth century, and tracing the impact of their expectation of the future restoration of Jewish people to the Promised Land, he shows how this discourse became increasingly and then distinctively American, and until some new religious movements, such as the Mormons, came to imagine the new world as itself the location within which end-times prophecies would be fulfilled. Only since the 1980s has the term “Christian Zionism” entered the political lexicon as a neologism that obscures as much as it reveals about the agendas of those it is used to describe. God’s Country is an expansive, often surprising and always insightful account of a political theology that continues to resonate in discussions of modern American politics and foreign policy. Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. His research interests focus on the history of puritanism and evangelicalism, and he is the author most recently of John Owen and English Puritanism (Oxford University Press, 2016). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude that developing expertise requires -- do not necessarily make us good teachers. Jessamyn Neuhaus’s Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers (West Virginia University Press, 2019) helps us to identify and embrace that geekiness in us and then offers practical, step-by-step guidelines for how to turn it to effective pedagogy. It’s a sharp, slim, and entertaining volume that can make better teachers of us all. Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics & Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A Peoples History of Poverty in America (New Press, 2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award, and Ghettos, Tramps and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen (Oxford, 2017). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

“Moderation in times of extremism is a revolutionary idea. It is a positive, courageous value, as opposed to a defeatist attitude. It is swimming against the tide, rather than following the crowd on a path obviously leading to the abyss. We need to create our own vision rather than just copy the vision of others.” -Professor Mohammed Dajani Daoudi In a time when Islam is increasingly identified by violent extremism and hostility towards Christians and Jews, Professor Mohammed Dajani Daoudi and his colleagues advocate for an Islam that is true to its Koranic foundations, which call for coexistence and cooperation with other religions. Daoudi took a group of Palestinian students to visit Auschwitz – a courageous assertion against the Holocaust denial rampant in Palestinian society, and an effort toward cultivating empathy. Daoudi paid a harsh price for the peaceful journey: he lost his job at Al Quds University in East Jerusalem as head of the libraries and director of the American Studies Institute, his car was torched, and his life was threatened multiple times. Nevertheless, with his peace-affirming work on behalf of empathy and reconciliation, he – along with others - continues to promote an alternative to the destructive forces of anti-normalization, pro-boycott and violence in the Palestinian community…and beyond. Today I talked to Daoudi about his book, co-edited with Prof. Munther S. Dajani Daoudi, Prof. Martin Leiner, Dr. Zeina M. Barakat, Teaching Empathy and Reconciliation In Midst Of Conflict (Wasatia Press, 2016). Renee Garfinkel is a Jerusalem-based psychologist, writer, and Middle East commentator for the nationally syndicated TV program, The Armstrong Williams Show.. Write her at [email protected] or tweet @embracingwisdom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

In the late Enlightenment, a new imperative began to inform theories of interpretation: all literary texts should be read in the same way that we read the Bible. However, this assumption concealed a problem—there was no coherent "we" who read the Bible in the same way. In Secularism and Hermeneutics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), Yael Almog shows that several prominent thinkers of the era constituted readers as an imaginary "we" around which they could form their theories and practices of interpretation. She argues that this conception of interpreters as a universal community established biblical readers as a coherent collective. In the first part of the book, Almog focuses on the 1760s through the 1780s and examines these writers' works on biblical Hebrew and their reliance on the conception of the Old Testament as a cultural, rather than religious, asset. She reveals how the detachment of textual hermeneutics from confessional affiliation was stimulated by debates on the integration of Jews in Enlightenment Germany. In order for the political community to cohere, certain religious practices were restricted to the private sphere––while textual interpretation, which previously belonged to religious contexts, became the foundation of the public sphere. As interpretive practices were secularized and taken to be universal, they were meant to overcome religious difference. Turning to literature and the early nineteenth century in the second part of the book, Almog demonstrates the ways in which the new literary genres of realism and lyric poetry disrupted these interpretive reading practices. Literary techniques such as irony and intertextuality disturbed the notion of a stable, universal reader's position and highlighted interpretation as grounded in religious belonging. Yael Almog is an Assistant Professor of German Studies at Durham University. Her research focuses on the interdependence of literary theory, literary production, and theology––more specifically, she looks at secularism, Jewish-Christian encounters, the German-Jewish tradition, and Hebrew literature. Carrie Lynn Evans is a PhD student at Université Laval in Quebec City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Balaam plays a prominent role in the book of Numbers, but who was he? Where did he come from? What was his religion? What was his occupation? The mystery of Balaam has interested exegetes and scribes for millennia. Join us as we talk to Jonathan Miles Robker about his book Balaam in Text and Tradition (Mohr Siebeck, 2019), which explores the figure of Balaam in the Hebrew Bible, Qumran, the New Testament, and beyond. Robker studied History and Philosophy, with a concentration in Religious Studies at LSU, received a Master of Theological Studies from Duke Divinity School, and earned his PhD from the Faculty of Protestant Theology at the FAU Erlangen, Germany, and his post-doctoral Habilitation at the Faculty of Protestant Theology of the WWU Münster, Germany. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus (Peeters, 2012), and Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015). He can be reached at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Perhaps there’s something in the air in the Middle East, something that elevates spirituality. The Middle East, particularly Israel, is the legendary home of spiritual searching, of prophecy and religious expression. And in this historical birthplace of monotheism – of Judaism and its daughter religions, Christianity and Islam – religious vitality is as vibrant today as ever. Although traditional forms of religious practice dominate throughout the Middle East, not everyone finds their spiritual needs satisfied by these practices. To some, traditional religious practices just don’t feel genuine. Yearning for authenticity and meaning in their religious lives, they are left frustrated. We live in what has been called an “age of authenticity,” where the pervasive background belief maintains that individuals have their own particular way of being human - and of seeking transcendence - to which they can be true or untrue. In Jews In The Age Of Authenticity: Jewish Spiritual Renewal In Israel (Peter Lang, 2016, Rachel Werczberger examined two Israeli communities of spiritual seekers in Israel. Under the guidance of charismatic leadership, these communities tried to effect Jewish spiritual renewal by integrating Jewish tradition – especially Kabbalah and Hasidism – with New Age spirituality. Seeking authenticity, the two communities tried to construct a new Jewish spiritual identity with re-invented rituals. This is their story. Renee Garfinkel is a clinical psychologist, writer, and Middle East commentator for The Armstrong Williams Show. Write her at [email protected] or tweet @embracingwisdom Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

American Judaism: A History (Yale University Press; second edition, 2019) chronicles the 350-year history of the Jewish religion in America. Tracing American Judaism from its origins in the colonial era through the present day, Jonathan Sarna explores the ways in which Judaism adapted in this new context. How did American culture―predominantly Protestant and overwhelmingly capitalist―affect Jewish religion and culture? And how did American Jews shape their own communities and faith in the new world? Jonathan Sarna, a preeminent scholar of American Judaism, tells the story of individuals struggling to remain Jewish while also becoming American. He offers a dynamic and timely history of assimilation and revitalization, of faith lost and faith regained. The first comprehensive history of American Judaism in over fifty years, this book is both a celebration of 350 years of Jewish life in America and essential reading for anyone interested in American religion and life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

What makes some people aid the persecuted while others just stand by? Questions about rescue and resistance have been fundamental to the field of genocide studies since its inception. Mark Roseman offers a sophisticated and deeply human exploration of this question in his new book Lives Reclaimed: A Story of Rescue and Resistance in Nazi Germany (Metropolitan Books, 2019). The book is a careful examination of a small organization called “League: Community for Socialist Life.” Generally referred to by its German shorthand, the Bund was founded in the 1920s to inspire Germans to create a new, more ethical and more communal world. But the emergence of Nazi rule forced the Bund to consider how it could achieve its goals and even survive in a much different political climate than it faced originally. As they did so, its members strove to discern what living their ideals meant in a Nazi world and how to do so safely. Members of the Bund responded in a complicated, contingent ways. Prominent among them were a variety of attempts to help those suffering around them. These ranged from moments of kindness (offering flowers to Jews whose houses had been wrecked) to efforts to hide Jews from police and deportation for months or years at a time. It’s an extraordinary story that reads like a novel. From it, Roseman draws from it lessons about human behavior and decisions that are rooted in the particular context of the holocaust but ring true in a wide variety of moments and conflicts. Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. He’s the author of four modules in the Reacting to the Past series, including The Needs of Others: Human Rights, International Organizations and Intervention in Rwanda, 1994, published by W. W. Norton Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

How did minorities fit into the new Greek state during the country’s transition from imperial rule to national sovereignty? How did the relationship between Greece and its Jewish minorities, in particular, shift as definitions of national belonging expanded, shrunk, and transformed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? These are the questions that Dr. Evdoxios Doxiadis, Associate Professor in History at Canada’s Simon Fraser University, seeks to answer in his new book, State, Nationalism, and the Jewish Communities of Modern Greece (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). Grounding his arguments in Greek political and popular sources, as well as material from the local and international Jewish press, Doxiadis shows that the Greek state’s treatment of their Jewish minorities was anything but predictable. Rather, he paints a notably ambivalent picture of a state whose policies did not necessarily conform to the desires of the popular majority, and that treated Jews and other minorities differently depending on their perceived ability to conform to national goals of Hellenization and homogenization. Geographically centered in the Balkans, Doxiadis’ book has broader significance, and speaks to the larger issues surrounding statehood, identity, and the age of nationalism that historians are commonly grappling with today. Robin Buller is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1888-1970) was born in Buczacz, Eastern Galicia (now part of Ukraine). Yiddish was the language of his home, and Hebrew the language of the Bible and the Talmud which he studied formally until the age of nine. His knowledge of German literature came from his mother, and his love of the teachings of Maimonides and the Hassidim came from his father. In 1908 he left for Palestine, where, except for an extended stay in Germany from 1912 to 1924, he lived until his death. Agnon began writing stories when he was quite young. His first major publication, Hakhnasat Kalah (The Bridal Canopy), 1922, re-creates the golden age of Hassidism, and his apocalyptic novel, Oreach Nata Lalun (A Guest for the Night), 1939, depicts the ruin of Galicia after WWI. Much of Agnon’s other writing is set in Palestine. Israel’s early pioneers are portrayed in his epic Temol Shilshom (Only Yesterday), 1945, considered his greatest work, and in the surreal stories of Sefer Hamaasim (The Book of Deeds), 1932. Agnon also published work on the Jewish holy days Yamin Noraim (Days of Awe), 1938, on the giving of the Torah, Atem Reitem (Present at Sinai), 1959, and on the gathering of Hassidic lore, Sifreihem Shel Tzadikim (Books of the Righteous) and Sippurei HaBesht (Stories of the Baal Shem Tov), 1960-1961. Considered one of the greatest Hebrew writers, in 1966, Agnon was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Rabbi Jeffrey Saks is the Director of Research at the Agnon House in Jerusalem and served as the Series Editor of The S.Y. Agnon Library at The Toby Press, now complete in 15 volumes. He is the founding director of The Academy for Torah Initiatives and Directions in Jewish Education, in Jerusalem, and its WebYeshiva.org program. Rabbi Saks was recently appointed as Editor of Tradition, the premier journal of Orthodox Jewish thought published in English. After earning his BA, MA, and rabbinic degrees from Yeshiva University, Rabbi Saks moved to Israel and has served on the faculties of several high schools and yeshivot, edited several books, and published widely on Jewish thought, education, and literature. Rabbi Saks lives in Efrat with his wife Ilana Goldstein Saks and their four children. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Can there be a political science of the Holocaust? Evgeny Finkel, in his new book Ordinary Jews: Choice and Survival during the Holocaust(Princeton University Press, 2017), answers Charles King's question with a resounding yes. Finkel is interested in a very specific question: What made individual Jews choose from a variety of different strategies in responding to the threat posed by German violence. He lays out several possible strategies for survival, ranging from cooperation and collaboration to coping and compliance to evasion and resistance. Each of these strategies offered very real possibilities and risked very real dangers. Jews in every location adopted some combination of these strategies. But the mix of strategies adopted varied widely from place to place. Finkel's research helps us understand why specific communities tended to employ a distinctive mix of strategies. He argues that the nature of the prewar environment in which Jews lived--the way local governments treated Jews, the degree of assimilation and interaction between Jews and non-Jews, the historical experiences of violence and oppression, all shaped wartime choices. By doing so, he argues, we remember that Jews had choices (even though ones with significant constraints and with limited possible outcomes) and it is important for us to understand how individuals made these choices. Beyond this, though, FInkel hopes to show that a political science of the Holocaust is not simply possible, but that it offers new and important answers. It's a important and persuasive claim, one that all researchers should wrestle with and respond to. Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. He’s the author of four modules in the Reacting to the Past series, including The Needs of Others: Human Rights, International Organizations and Intervention in Rwanda, 1994, published by W. W. Norton Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Once upon a time, or so we’ve been told, medical ethics were confined to the patient-doctor relationship. As long as doctors were true to their Hippocratic oaths, as long as they acted with compassion and wisdom, then all expectations were met. Life is more complicated today, and so is healthcare: an undertaking, like all others, that is influenced by social, political, legal and cultural factors. Nothing is value-free. In Bioethics and Biopolitics in Israel: Socio-legal, Political and Empirical Analysis (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Professor Shai Lavi and his colleagues have produced a groundbreaking work that offers a novel understanding of Israeli bioethics. It is a milestone in the comparative literature of bioethics. Bringing together a range of experts, the book's interdisciplinary structure employs a contemporary, sociopolitical-oriented approach to bioethics issues, with an emphasis on empirical analysis, that will appeal not only to scholars of bioethics, but also to students of law, medicine, humanities, and social sciences around the world. Its focus on the development of bioethics in Israel serves as a template for cross-cultural and transcultural research into the moral, ethical, political and social aspects of bioethics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

The great writer Jorge Luis Borges said, “Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.” Time is the topic of a new book by Lynn Kaye, Assistant Professor of Rabbinic Literature and Thought at Brandeis University and Visiting Library Fellow at The Van Leer Institute Jerusalem. With insights gleaned from art and literature, as well as a close reading of Talmud texts, Lynn Kaye examines how rabbis of late antiquity thought about time through their legal reasoning and storytelling, and what these insights mean for thinking about time today. In Time In The Babylonian Talmud: Natural and Imagined Times in Jewish Law and Narrative (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Kaye demonstrates that temporal flexibility in the Babylonian Talmud is a means of exploring and resolving legal uncertainties, as well as a tool to tell stories that convey ideas effectively and dramatically. Her book, the first on time in the Talmud, makes accessible complex legal texts and philosophical ideas. It also connects the literature of late antique Judaism with broader theological and philosophical debates about time. Renee Garfinkel is a Jerusalem-based psychologist, writer, and television & radio commentator. Write her at [email protected] or tweet @embracingwisdom Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Who is the Suffering Servant? The book of Isaiah is one of the most beloved and well-known prophetic books among both Jews and Christians, but its references to the ‘Suffering Servant’ have been a source of controversy in scholarship. In today’s show, we speak with Dr. Markus Zehnder about the book he edited, New Studies in the Book of Isaiah: Essays in Honor of Hallvard Hagelia (Gorgias Press, 2014), which contains twelve articles that shed new light on the Book of Isaiah, covering a wide array of historical, linguistic and theological topics. The collection is marked by a broad diversity in approaches and theological background, and is a useful tool especially for scholars, students, and pastors. In his own contribution to this volume, Zehnder looks at the enigmatic figure of the ‘Servant of the Lord.’ Join as we take a deeper look into the book of Isaiah and the Suffering Servant. Markus Zehnder is Professor for Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. He grew up in Switzerland and is an ordained minister of the Reformed Church of Switzerland. After the completion of his doctorate, he moved to Jerusalem and then to Boston for postdoctoral studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at Harvard University. He has held teaching positions in Switzerland, Germany, Norway, and Belgium—including being Chair for the Old Testament Department at The Evangelical Theological Faculty, Leuven. He has a passion to connect the Bible both with personal and societal issues. In addition to many book chapters and edited works, Zehnder has published the following monographs: Umgang mit Fremden in Israel und Assyrien (BWANT 168; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2005); Wegmetaphorik im Alten Testament - Eine semantische Untersuchung der alttestamentlichen und altorientalischen Weg-Lexeme mit besonderer Berücksichtigung ihrer metaphorischen Verwendung (BZAW 268; Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 1999). Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus (Peeters, 2012), and Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015). He can be reached at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

In Sing This at My Funeral: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons (Wayne State University Press, 2019), David Slucki, Assistant Professor in the Yaschik/Arnold Jewish Studies Program at the College of Charleston, gives us a very different type of history book. Slucki’s memoir blends the scholarly and literary, grounding the story of his grandfather and father in the broader context of the twentieth century. Based on thirty years of letters from Jakub to his brother Mendel, on archival materials, and on interviews with family members, this is a unique story and an innovative approach to writing both history and family narrative. Students, scholars, and general readers of memoirs will enjoy this deeply personal reflection on family, Jewish history and grief. Max Kaiser is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. He can be reached at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Is love between man and woman the source of wisdom and the cornerstone of moral life? Naftali Rothenberg says it is, based on the works and life of the first century Jewish scholar and sage, Rabbi Akiva. In Rabbi Akiva’s Philosophy of Love (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) Rothenberg explores the philosophy of love through the thought and life of Rabbi Akiva whose life was transformed by the love of his wife, Rachel. From this starting point, Naftali Rothenberg conducts a thorough examination of the harmonious approach to love in the obstacle-laden context of human reality. Discussing the deterioration of passion into simple lust, the ability to contend with suffering and death, and so forth, Rothenberg addresses the deepest and most pressing questions about human love. The readings and observations offered here allow readers to acquire the wisdom of love—not merely as an assemblage of theoretical arguments and abstract statements, but as an analysis of the internal contradictions and difficulties revealed in the context of attempts to realize and implement harmonious love. Renee Garfinkel is a Jerusalem-based psychologist, writer, and television & radio commentator. Write her at [email protected] or tweet Renee Garfinkel@embracingwisdom Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

The Holocaust was and remains a central trauma in Israel’s national consciousness. It has found ample expressions in Israeli documentary cinema from 1945 until the present. Third-generation Holocaust survivors were born between the late 1960s and the early 1980s. They grew up in a society which acts out the trauma and since the 1990s they have related to the Holocaust in a range of cultural fields. Remaking Holocaust Memory aims to paint the first comprehensive portrait of third-generation Holocaust documentaries phenomenon. It takes a cinematic, cultural, and sociohistorical comparative approach to examine how third-generation filmmakers have responded to previous narratives and representations. Liat Steir-Livny analyzes 19 prominent films that reflect the key tendencies of third-generation Holocaust documentaries. These films are compared to 16 Holocaust documentaries by second-generation survivors. The book explores how third-generation filmmakers are both affected by and deviate from earlier Holocaust representations. They create a new layer of commemoration that coexists with the former, while constructing new thematic, moral, and aesthetic recollections of the trauma. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

The story of where we come from is such an important aspect of our personal sense of self, the forefront of many conversations about national identity, community, and belonging. In a country like the United States, where so many of us are or are descended from immigrants, the answer to this question of heritage can be a complicated one that takes us back generations. And, with proliferation of home genealogy tests like AncestryDNA and 23andMe, people are learning more about their family histories than was ever thought possible. But what happens when the questions we have about our identities and parentage can’t be answered by a simple test? For writer Sophia Shalmiyev, the question was never “who is my mother,” but rather, “where has she gone?” Mother Winter: A Memoir (Simon & Schuster, 2019) traces Shalmiyev’s journey from early childhood in Leningrad, Russia to parenthood in Portland, Oregon as she comes to terms with the ambiguous loss of the most important relationship in her life. Finding inspiration in great feminist thinkers like Audre Lorde, Rita Ackermann, Sappho, Anaïs Nin, and so many others, Shalmiyev masterfully weaves philosophy, literature, and art history with personal memory to craft a reading experience unlike any other. Zoë Bossiere is a doctoral student at Ohio University, where she studies nonfiction and teaches creative writing classes. She is also the managing editor of Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction. For more NBn interviews, follow her on Twitter @zoebossiere or visit her online at zoebossiere.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Nearly every consumer today is familiar with the name Levi Strauss thank to the jeans that bear his name. As Lynn Downey explains in her book Levi Strauss: The Man Who Gave Blue Jeans to the World (University of Massachusetts Press, 2016), to understand the man behind the brand requires sorting through decades of popular legends created to fill a vacuum of knowledge. Born Löb Strauß, he changed his name to Levis Strauss when he emigrated as a young man from Bavaria to the United States. Once in New York City he joined the dry goods firm established by his brothers, moving to California in 1853 to establish a branch of the firm in San Francisco. There Strauss prospered with the gold rush-era boom, becoming a leading Bay Area businessman and civic philanthropist. It was this status that led Jacob Davis, a Nevada tailor, to seek his help in patenting his design for riveted pants. Together they succeeded in establishing a patent that became the foundation for the brand known today throughout the world, thanks to Strauss’s decision to trademark the brand prior to the patent’s expiration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

For twenty years, 47-year-old Isabel Toledo has been ghostwriting the stories of Holocaust survivors. It's the mid 1990's, Isabel is divorced from the father of her three children and in precarious relationships with three different men. Now, for the first time since she began ghosting, she’s having trouble finishing a book. This Holocaust survivor’s story brings up the angst she feels about not knowing how her own mother survived the war. And how much of Isabel’s inability to love just one man comes from the trauma of being raised by broken parents, also divorced? Miryam Sivan is the author of Make it Concrete (Cuidono Press, 2019). She is a former New Yorker who has lived in Tel Aviv for over 20 years. Miryam teaches literature and writing at the University of Haifa and has published scholarly work on numerous Israeli authors and American writers Cynthia Ozick, James Baldwin, and Jane Bowles. Her short fiction has appeared in various journals in the US and UK, and two of her short stories were adopted for the stage in London and New York. A collection, ANAFU and Other Stories, was published by Cuidono Press in 2014. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Throughout the 20th century, especially during and immediately after WWII, New York Jews changed their names at rates considerably higher than any other ethnic group. Representative of the insidious nature of American anti-Semitism, recognizably Jewish names were often barriers for entry into college, employment, and professional advancement. College and job application forms were intentionally used as a means to “control” the Jewish population in a given college or institution. As such, many Jewish families legally changed their names in an effort to thwart pervasive anti-Semitism and discrimination. In A Rosenberg by Any Other Name: A History of Jewish Name Changing in America (New York University Press, 2018), Kirsten Fermaglich nuances the misconceptions and common assumptions made about name-changers and engages in a rich and meticulously researched study examining this trend. Kirsten Fermaglich is Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Michigan State University. Lindsey Jackson is a PhD student at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

It’s quite common these days to hear young people being urged to collect and record the stories of their grandparents or parents in order to learn and preserve their family’s history. For a few fortunate folks, like Robbin Légère Henderson, such a record already exists. Henderson’s maternal grandmother, Matilda Rabinowitz, penned her own memoir before her passing in 1963 so that her grandchildren would know her history. With candor and wit, Rabinowitz, born in 1887 in Ukraine, described her experiences as an immigrant, factory worker, single mother by choice, and union organizer. In Immigrant Girl, Radical Woman: A Memoir from the Early Twentieth Century (ILR Press 2017), Henderson has expanded her grandmother’s memoir with her own commentary and original black-and-white scratchboard drawings that illustrate Rabinowitz’s early life, journey to America, political awakening, work as an IWW organizer, turbulent romance to Henderson’s grandfather, and her struggle to support herself and her child. To hear more about this unique collaboration across generations, listen to my interview with artist, curator, and author Robbin Légère Henderson. Interested listeners can also learn more about Rabinowitz through a new exhibit at the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University in Detroit, where Rabinowitz once organized a Studebaker strike. Carrie Lane is a Professor of American Studies at California State University, Fullerton and author of A Company of One: Insecurity, Independence, and the New World of White-Collar Unemployment (Cornell University Press, 2011). Her research concerns the changing nature of work in the contemporary U.S. She is currently writing a book on the professional organizing industry. To contact her or to suggest a recent title, email [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

In 1647, the French author Étienne Cleirac asserted in his book Les us, et coustumes de la mer that the credit instruments known as bills of exchange had been invented by Jews. In The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells Us about the Making of European Commercial Society (Princeton University Press, 2019), Francesca Trivellato draws upon the economic, cultural, intellectual, and business history of the period to trace the origin of this myth and what its usage in early modern Europe reveals about contemporary views of both commerce and Judaism. Trivellato begins by explaining the development of bills of exchange in the Middle Ages as a means of transferring funds across long distances, ones which helped the expansion of international trade. Though used by both Christians and Jews, concerns about crypto-Judaism among converted Christians in the town of Bordeaux where Cleirac lived may have been key to his belief in their association with the bills. From Cheirac’s book the myth then spread throughout much of western and central Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries, where it was used both to support anti-Semitic views and as examples by philo-Semitic writers such as Montesquieu of the superior commercial ability of Jews. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

For some two hundred years now, Pentateuchal scholarship has been dominated by the Documentary Hypothesis, a paradigm made popular by Julius Wellhausen. Recent decades, however, have seen mounting critiques of the old paradigm, from a variety of specializations, not only in Biblical Studies, but also in the fields of Assyriology, Legal History, and Linguistics. In a recent international meeting, scholars across these fields came together and presented papers, each one calling for a paradigm change in Pentateuchal research. Join us as we speak with one of those scholars, Richard Averbeck, about his contribution to Paradigm Change in Pentateuchal Research, edited by M. Armgardt, B. Kilchör, M. Zehnder (Harrassowitz Verlag, 2019)—his chapter is titled ‘Reading the Torah in a Better Way.’ Richard Averbeck teaches at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. His areas of expertise include Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch, ancient Near Eastern history and languages, Old Testament criticism, Hebrew, and biblical counseling. He is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society, the Institute for Biblical Research, the American Oriental Society, the American Schools of Oriental Research, and the Society of Biblical Literature. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus(Peeters, 2012), and Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015). He can be reached at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Julie Zuckerman’s moving and engrossing debut novel-in-stories, The Book of Jeremiah (Press 53, 2019), tells the story of awkward but endearing Jeremiah Gerstler—the son of immigrants, brilliant political science professor, husband, and father. Jeremiah has yearned for respect and acceptance his entire life, and no matter his success, he still strives for more. As a boy, he was feisty and irreverent and constantly compared to his sweet and well-behaved older brother, Lenny. At the university, he worries he is a token hire. Occasionally, he’s combative with colleagues, especially as he ages. But there is a sweetness to Gerstler, too, and an abiding loyalty and affection for those he loves. When he can overcome his worst impulses, his moments of humility become among the best measures of his achievements. Spanning eight decades and interwoven with the Jewish experience of the 20th century, Julie Zuckerman charts Jeremiah’s life from boyhood, through service in WWII, to marriage and children, a professorship and finally retirement, with compassion, honesty, and a respect that even Gerstler himself would find touching. Julie’s fiction and non-fiction has appeared in a variety of publications, including The SFWP Quarterly, The MacGuffin, Salt Hill, Sixfold, The Coil, Ellipsis, MoonPark Review and others. A native of Connecticut, she lives in Modiin, Israel, with her husband and four children. The Book of Jeremiah was the runner-up for the 2018 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Countless sociological studies and surveys present a rather bleak picture of religion and religious engagement in the United States. Attendance at worship services remains very low and approximately one quarter of Americans indicate that they are not affiliated with any religion. This trend extends to the Jewish community, and American Jews are also experiencing decreasing synagogue attendance and low levels of adherence. However, Jack Wertheimer presents an alternative reading of American Jewish life in his new book, The New American Judaism: How Jews Practice their Religion Today (Princeton University Press, 2018). Wertheimer argues that American Jews are indeed engaging with Judaism, albeit in unique and unorthodox ways. Wertheimer analyses how certain American values and phenomena, such as hyper-individualism and “do-it-yourself” religion, are impacting the ways in which American Jews practice their religion and have paved the way for new forms and expressions of Judaism. Wertheimer also demonstrates how synagogues and congregational rabbis are responding to the shifting needs of American Jews. Although many Jews do not attend synagogue on a regular basis and do not observe many traditional commandments, or mitzvot, American Jews are not necessarily abandoning Judaism; rather, they are engaging with their religion in ways that are conducive with their unique values, beliefs, and lifestyles and by extension are creating a new form of American Judaism. Jack Wertheimer is Joseph and Martha Mendelson Professor of American Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. Lindsey Jackson is a PhD student at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

In Strange Cocktail: Translation and the Making of Modern Hebrew Poetry(University of Michigan Press, 2018), Adriana X. Jacobs offers a translation-centered reading of twentieth-century modern Hebrew poetry. Through close readings of poems by Esther Raab, Leah Goldberg, Avot Yeshurun, and Harold Schimmel, Jacobs shows how an intertwined poetics and praxis of translation shaped the work of these poets and became synonymous with the act of writing itself. Yaron Peleg is the Kennedy-Leigh Reader in Modern Hebrew Studies at the University of Cambridge. His most recent book is Directed by God: Jewishness in Contemporary Israeli Film and Television (University of Texas Press, 2016). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

In his book, Fegelein’s Horsemen and Genocidal Warfare: The SS Cavalry Brigade in the Soviet Union (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), Dr. Henning Pieper, examines the conduct of the SS Cavalry Brigade during World War II. The SS Cavalry Brigade was a unit of the Waffen-SS that differed from other German military formations as it developed a dual role: SS cavalrymen both helped to initiate the Holocaust in the Soviet Union and experienced combat at the front. Pieper’s book highlights an understudied aspect of both the Holocaust and World War II. Craig Sorvillo is a PhD candidate in modern European history at the University of Florida. He specializes in Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust. He can be reached at [email protected] or on twitter @craig_sorvillo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

In Whitechapel Noise: Jewish Immigrant Life in Yiddish Song and Verse, London, 1884-1914 (Wayne State University Press, 2018), Vivi Lachs, social and cultural historian, Yiddishist, performer, and associate research fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, looks at London's Yiddish popular culture. She positions it in historical perspective within Anglo-Jewish history, English socialist aesthetics, and music-hall culture. This book breaks lots of new ground, and is an exciting, entertaining and revealing peek into this vibrant and noisy world. Max Kaiser is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. He can be reached at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Does Genesis function merely as the beginning of the Bible’s larger story, or can Genesis be read as its own book? Does Genesis have its own plot that moves from complication to dénouement? Todd L. Patterson, in his recent book The Plot-structure of Genesis (Brill 2018), says, ‘Yes!’ The book of Genesis, Patterson argues, turns on the question: ‘Will the righteous seed survive?’ Tune in as we talk with Todd Patterson about the plot of Genesis. Todd L. Patterson earned his PhD in 2012 from Trinity International University, and is assistant professor of Old Testament at Matej Bel University in Slovakia. He is also a co-chairman of the Pentateuch research group for the Institute for Biblical Research. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus(Peeters, 2012), and Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015). He can be reached at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Michael R. Cohen is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Tulane University, where he holds a Sizeler Professorship. He is the author of the newly published Cotton Capitalists: American Jewish Entrepreneurship in the Reconstruction Era from NYU Press (2017), as well as The Birth of Conservative Judaism: Solomon Schechter's Disciples and the Creation of an American Religious Movement from Columbia University Press (2012). He earned his Ph.D. from Brandeis University. Greg Soden is the host “Classical Ideas,” a podcast about religion and religious ideas. You can find it on iTunes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Jewish women have consistently played a vital and significant role in American history more broadly, and American Jewish history specifically. Through a variety of different ways, from engaging in social activism, working outside the home, creating women’s organizations, or managing their households, Jewish women forged their own path and inserted themselves in the fabric of American life and history. In her new book, America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today (W. W. Norton and Company, 2019), Pamela S. Nadell tells the stories of America’s Jewish women, from the first Jewish women who arrived in the United States in 1654 to the very well-known Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the many women in between. Nadell’s study utilizes a variety of archival sources and oral histories to stitch together the rich history of America’s Jewish women. Lindsey Jackson is a PhD student at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

What is the relationship between the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern myths? Combining theories of metaphor and narrative, Paul Cho argues that the Hebrew Bible is more deeply mythological than previously recognized. Tune in as we talk with Paul Cho about the Sea Myth in the Hebrew Bible, the subject addressed in his recent book: Myth, History, and Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge University Press, 2019). Paul K.-K. Cho is assistant professor of Hebrew Bible at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC. His articles have been published in Catholic Biblical Quarterly and in the Journal of Biblical Literature. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus (Peeters, 2012), and Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus(IVP Academic, 2015). He can be reached at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Mickey and Dick Flacks' new book Making History/Making Blintzes: How Two Red Diaper Babies Found Each Other and Discovered America (Rutgers UP, 2018) is a chronicle of the political and personal lives of progressive activists Richard (Dick) and Miriam (Mickey) Flacks, two of the founders of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). As active members of the Civil Rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement in the 1960s, and leaders in today’s social movements, their stories are a first-hand account of progressive American activism from the 1960s to the present. Throughout this memoir, the couple demonstrates that their lifelong commitment to making history through social activism cannot be understood without returning to the deeply personal context of their family history—of growing up “Red Diaper babies” in 1950s New York City, using folk music as self-expression as adolescents in the 1960s, and of making blintzes for their own family through the 1970s and 1980s. As the children of immigrants and first generation Jews, Dick and Mickey crafted their own religious identity as secular Jews, created a critical space for American progressive activism through SDS, and ultimately, found themselves raising an “American” family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

You’ve heard them all before. “Religions are Belief Systems.” “Religion is a Private Matter.” “I'm spiritual but not religious.” Our culture is full of popular stereotypes about religion, both positive and negative. Many people uncritically assume that religion is intrinsically violent, or that religion makes people moral, or that it is simply “bullshit.” In Stereotyping Religion: Critiquing Clichés (Bloomsbury, 2017), edited by Brad Stoddard, Assistant Professor at McDaniel College, and Craig Martin, Associate Professor at St. Thomas Aquinas College, several clichés are understood within a social and historical context, which enables us to see how they are produced and what makes them effective. In our conversation we explore several of these stereotypes, what makes them possible and desirable for communities that reproduce and curate them, secularization theory, the role of atheism, liberal political discourse about religion, critical thinking, and how “Stereotyping Religion” works in the classroom. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. He is the author of Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in the Han Kitab (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is currently working on a monograph entitled The Cinematic Lives of Muslims, and is the editor of the forthcoming volumes Muslims in the Movies: A Global Anthology (ILEX Foundation) and New Approaches to Islam in Film (Routledge). You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Over the past decade, and especially in the last several years, anti-Semitic crimes have increased significantly. According to FBI Statistics, hate crimes against Jews in the US spiked 37% between 2016 and 2017. We are witnessing similar trends in Canada, where anti-Semitic crimes increased by 60% since last year, according to Statistics Canada. Why is it that anti-Semitism continues to thrive? Why won’t this irrational hatred die? What factors contribute to the rise of anti-Semitism? Deborah E. Lipstadt addresses these, and many other questions, in her book, Antisemitism: Here and Now(Schocken, 2019). The number 1 best-seller in Human Rights Law on Amazon, Lipstadt’s book is a provocative page-turner about this ancient and persistent form of hatred and prejudice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic. How can publishers and authors contribute to this process? This podcast addresses this issue. We interview Professor Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, whose book, The Good Drone: How Social Movements Democratize Surveillance (forthcoming with MIT Press) is undergoing a Massive Online Peer-Review (MOPR) process, where everyone can make comments on his manuscript. Additionally, his book will be Open Access (OA) since the date of publication. We discuss with him how do MOPR and OA work, how he managed to combine both of them and how these initiatives can contribute to the democratization of knowledge. You can participate in the MOPR process of The Good Drone through this link: https://thegooddrone.pubpub.org/ Felipe G. Santos is a PhD candidate at the Central European University. His research is focused on how activists care for each other and how care practices within social movements mobilize and radicalize heavily aggrieved collectives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

What does it mean to consider trauma and media from the perspective of technology and not from that of the subject of trauma, the clinician or the witness? In Transmitted Wounds: Media and the Mediation of Trauma (Oxford University Press, 2019), Amit Pinchevski carries out this thought experiment to great effect. By bringing media theory to bear on trauma theory, this book reveals the technical operations that inform the understanding of traumatic impact on bodies and minds. Under consideration is not the way trauma and traumatic memory figure in the media (film, television, photography and other popular culture portrayals of traumatic experience), but rather media as partaking in the very construction of the traumatic itself. Pinchevski conducts an erudite and innovative exploration through a series of case studies: the radio broadcasts of the Eichmann trial; the videotaping of Holocaust testimonies; recent psychiatric debates about trauma through media following the 9/11 attacks; current controversy surrounding drone operators' post-trauma; and digital platforms of algorithmic-holographic witnessing and virtual reality exposure therapy for PTSD. Each of these cases makes a compelling argument about how media technology and logic shape the social life of trauma both clinically and culturally. Transmitted Wounds takes us from mid-twentieth century to our current moment, moving us from an analogue world of trauma to the digital ecosystem that promises to transcend trauma all together. This temporal set-up demands ethical considerations of past and current systems of memory, witnessing and therapy, which Pinchevski does exceptionally well. Transmitted Wounds offers fresh and thought-provoking contributions to the fields of trauma and memory, media theory, and the history of science and technology. It will also be of relevance to theoreticians and practitioners interested in digital culture and digital humanities. Amit Pinchevski is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. He is the author of By Way of Interruption: Levinas and the Ethics of Communication (Duquesne University Press 2005) and coeditor of two books, Media Witnessing: Testimony in the Age of Mass Communication (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and Ethics of Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). His research interests are in philosophy and theory of communication and media. Tal Zalmanovich is a cultural historian of modern Britain. She’s a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Haifa. Prior to being an academic, Tal was a journalist. Podcasting is the fruitful convergence of the two. You can contact Tal at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Joyce Antler is the Samuel J. Lane Professor Emerita of American Jewish history and culture at Brandeis University. Jewish Radical Feminism: Voices from the Women’s Liberation Movement (New York University Press, 2018) provides richly detailed biographies of known and unknown Jewish women from Shulamith Firestone to Aviva Cantor, who were the backbone of the movement. Their backgrounds hidden from historical view, and unrecognized, are brought to light. Many Jewish radical women emerged from the New Left and went on to create local women-centered groups such as the Gang of Four, Boston Women’s Health Collective, and Bread and Roses. How they navigated their experiences of being both Jewish and feminists provides insight into Jewish life and the relationship between religion, ethnic identity and feminism. In their diversity, from holding on to a traditional faith making room for feminism, to those who pulled away to lead secular lives, they encountered anti-Semitism, stereotypes, and connections across differences. The book demonstrates the rich contribution of Jewish values and identity had on the women’s liberation movement and how in turn they changed Jewish life in America. Lilian Calles Barger is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her recent book is entitled The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology (Oxford University Press, 2018). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

In The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press 2018), Geraldine Heng collects a remarkable array of medieval approaches to race that show the breadth and depth of the kinds of racial thinking in medieval society. In creating a detailed impression of the medieval race-making that would be reconfigured into the biological racism of the modern era, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages reaches beyond medievalists and race-studies scholars to anyone interested in the long history of race. Throughout the study, Heng treats race-making as a repeating tendency to demarcate human beings through differences that are selectively essentialized as absolute and fundamental. Thus constituted, these categories are then used to guide the differential apportioning of power. Scholars working in critical race studies have clearly demonstrated that culture predisposes notions of race. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages reaffirms that insight by examining the era before the dominance of biological discourses. Race has always been about strategically creating a hierarchy of peoples for differential treatment. By exploring race in the European middle ages, Heng lays bare the skeleton of racial thinking as a sorting mechanism, a structural relationship for the management of human differences. In Heng's hands, the tools of critical race studies make it possible to name the systems and atrocities of the Middle Ages for what they were, revealing race-making before the modern vocabulary of race coalesced. Bringing together a group of specialized archives that aren't usually in conversation, Heng in many cases allows the medieval past to powerfully testify to the pre-modern history of race-formation, racial administration, and racist exploitation and oppression. Beginning with the violent and sweeping anti-Semitism of thirteenth century England, showing the ways that Jews became the template by which other races were measured, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages launches a careful exposure of the way that minority groups were (and are) manipulated to create the sense of a national majority. A short but potent comparison to the English treatment of Irish subjects drives the analysis home. A researcher, writer, editor, and educator, Carl Nellis digs in archives and academic libraries for the critically-acclaimed Lore Podcast and as research lead for Unobscured Podcast. Studies on both sides of the Atlantic left him chasing the tangled colonial history that threads the culture of the Middle Ages into today’s United States. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Daniel Unowsky's book isn't about a genocide or other incident of mass violence. Instead, The Plunder examines a series of riots against Jews in Habsburg Galicia in the year 1898. Unowsky tries to understand how, in an Empire built around the idea of the rule of law, anti-Jewish violence could erupt so quickly and then fade away almost as rapidly. Unowsky examines the riots in detail, exploring their background, the personalities and the background of the perpetrators, and the responses of the victims and the state. His research is careful and thorough and his narrative captivating. In particular, his examination of the trials that followed the violence and the light they shed on the Habsburg state and world view is fascinating. But saying his book isn't about a genocide isn't the same as saying it isn't about genocide. The question he lays out, why 'normal' people commit racialized violence, is at the core of the discipline. Unowsky's book has important implications for the way violence erupted again in the region after World War One. And it adds another case study to the growing body of literature examining the microcauses of mass violence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Martin Buber is known as one of the 20th century's greatest Jewish scholars and thinkers, but he is less well known for his political theory and activism. In Martin Buber's Theopolitics (Indiana University Press, 2018), Samuel Hayim Brody demonstrates how Buber sees the bible as providing a blueprint for a state in which leadership ultimately belongs to God, and association through the (significantly reduced) mechanisms of state is voluntary. Brody's book provides a significant new perspective on Buber's Life and work. David Gottlieb receive his PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School in 2018. He is the author of the forthcoming Second Slayings: The Binding of Isaac and the Formation of Jewish Memory (Gorgias Press, 2019). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

It was a delight to catch up with Kevin Ingram, professor of history at Saint Louis University, Madrid, to discuss his very impressive new book. Converso Non-Conformism in Early Modern Spain: Bad Blood and Faith from Alonso de Cartagena to Diego Velázquez (Palgrave, 2018) sets out to account for the experience of those Spanish Jews, perhaps one-third of the total Spanish Jewish population, who converted to Catholicism after the Reconquista. Professor Ingram’s work shows how these converts struggled to assimilate into mainstream Spanish society, and how laws were passed to ensure that only those who could demonstrate “pure blood” could enter the highest echelons of Spanish life. But conversos found other ways to participate in community, identifying with the cause of virtue that was popularised in Renaissance humanism, developing new mystical strains of religious practice, and participating in the many competing agendas for religious reform. Conversos exercised a much greater influence on the Spanish golden age than a great deal of historical writing has noticed. An outstanding study of its subject, Converso Non-Conformism in Early Modern Spain looks to be advancing an agenda-setting argument. Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. His research interests focus on the history of puritanism and evangelicalism, and he is the author most recently of John Owen and English Puritanism (Oxford University Press, 2016). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

In On the Mediterranean and the Nile: The Jews of Egypt (Indiana University Press, 2017), Aimée Israel-Pelletier, Professor and Head of French at the University of Texas at Arlington, looks at the work of five Egyptian Jewish writers. She confronts issues of identity, exile, language, immigration, Arab nationalism, European colonialism, and discourse on the Holocaust. Israel-Pelletier's volume is a hugely important part of the project recovering and transmitting Egyptian Jewish life and thought. Max Kaiser is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. He can be reached at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century (Verso, 2017) introduce readers to important work in Anglophone cultural studies, psychoanalysis, political theory, media theory, speculative realism, science studies, Italian and French workerist and autonomist thought, two “imaginative readings of Marx,” and two “unique takes on the body politic.” There are significant implications of these ideas for how we live and work at the contemporary university, and we discussed some of those in our conversation. This is a great book to read and to teach with! Carla Nappi is the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh. You can learn more about her and her work here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies