New Books in Jewish Studies

What is the significance of Jew? How has this word come to have such varied and charged meanings? Who has (and has not) used it, and why? Cynthia Baker explores these questions and more in her new book Jew, part of the “Key Words in Jewish Studies” series at Rutgers University Press. In a set of absorbing case studies, Baker tracks the history of the word Jew from antiquity to the present. Among other topics, she writes about the debates concerning the terms Jews, Ioudaioi, and Judeans; the uses of yid in Yiddish; the emerging discourses about new Jews; and the genealogics of the twentiethcentury. In the course of her study, Baker exposes a number of problems that pertain to this key word, including the troubled relation between ethnicity and religion, the implications and impasses of translation, and the responsibility of the scholar in the face of the complex and often painful history of Jew. A compelling intervention in Jewish Studies, the book also opens provocative new avenues for research across the humanities and social sciences. For more information about Jew, a collection of fascinating responses can be read in the Marginalia Forum organized by Shaul Magid and Annette Yoshiko Reed for the LA Review of Books. Cynthia M. Baker is Professor of Religious Studies at Bates College, where she is also Chair of the Religious Studies Department. In addition to Jew, she is the author of Rebuilding the House of Israel: Architectures of Gender in Jewish Antiquity (Stanford University Press, 2002). Mendel Kranz is a PhD student in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. Matthew Johnson is a PhD student in Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Eddie Cantor was once among the most popular performers in the United States. He was influential and innovative on stage, radio, and film from the early twentieth century though the early 1960s. He is not widely known today, however, despite his importance in his time. In a new biography, David Weinstein discusses Cantor, his work, his times, and his politics. The Eddie Cantor Story: A Jewish Life in Performance and Politics (Brandeis University Press, 2017) explains the many ways Cantor’s work was representative of the period, but also the ways he pushed the boundaries of entertainment during his career. Cantor was Jewish and unlike many of his Jewish contemporaries in the business, he did not hide or shy away from his background either in performance or in politics. In this episode of New Books in History, Weinstein discusses his biography of Cantor. He talks about Cantor’s career and his anti-Nazi activism and the importance of his Jewish heritage is shaping his career and political activism. Weinstein also discusses some of the more contradictory aspects of Cantor’s career, particularly his use of blackface. Christine Lamberson is an Assistant Professor of History at Angelo State University. Her research and teaching focuses on 20th-century U.S. political and cultural history. She’s currently working on a book manuscript about the role of violence in shaping U.S. political culture in the 1960s and 1970s. She 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

Benedito/Baruch/Benedict Spinoza (1623-1677) lived at the crossroads of Dutch, scholastic, and Jewish worlds. Excommunicated from the Jewish community of Amsterdam at 23, his works would later be put on the Catholic Church’s Index of Forbidden Books. He was a heretic. And yet, he was and continues to be seen by many as perhaps the hero of the early modern period. A figure alienated by the structures that defined his life, Spinoza has been understood, by Jews and non-Jews alike, to have expressed a powerful self-definition that echoes to the present day, where biographies, plays, “guides”, and academic works continue to abound. In place of a simplistic origin story or master narrative of a modernity that begins with Spinoza, The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image (Princeton University Press, 2012), tells the story of how Spinoza came to be understood as a cultural hero, a reception history of his image at many crucial junctures in Modern Jewish history. Rather than probing his philosophy or strictly philosophic influence, Schwartz studies a malleable “Spinoza” as a symbol that captures the ways in which Jews have sought to understand and define themselves. Beginning in 17th-century Amsterdam before moving to 18th-century Berlin, 19th-century Eastern Europe, and Israel and America in the 20th century, The First Modern Jew is a chronological narrative of modern Jewish history that moves seamlessly between a larger thematic thread and local histories of both the famous (Moses Mendelssohn, David Ben-Gurion, and Yitzhak Bashevis Singer) and the forgotten (Berthold Auerbach, Salomon Rubin, and Yosef Klausner). In so doing, it probes the porous boundary between history and memory: the history of Spinoza and the history of the memory of Spinoza. And thereby we can see Spinoza as the “first modern Jew,” both because he was often projected as such and because he was a means by which people have asked the quintessential modern question: what does it mean to be me? Professor Daniel B. Schwartz is an associate professor of history and the director of the Judaic Studies program at George Washington University. Moses Lapin is a graduate student in the departments of History and Philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, he is a crypto-Spinozist and his hero is Blinky the Ghost. 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 Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017 (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017), Ian Black, the former Middle East Editor of the Guardian, offers a comprehensive view of the past and present of what would ultimately become known as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Drawing on a range of sources, the book aims to offer a balanced and clear narrative of a history that has become infamously contested. Yaacov Yadgar is the Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies at the University of Oxford. His most recent book is Sovereign Jews: Israel, Zionism and Judaism (SUNY Press, 2017). You can read more of Yadgar’s 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

Who, or what, are Hasidim? A movement that was once mysterious and inaccessible has recently risen to the forefront of popular consciousness. Whether it be in last years acclaimed film Menashe, the Netflix documentary One of Us, or the latest episode of HBO’s High Maintenance, in addition to many popular memoirs, online forums, there is a new fascination with Hasidism. In a sense, this discourse centers around questions of religion and state, community and family, and “traditional life” in a modern context—larger themes that touch some of our most pressing problems. Hasidism: A New History (Princeton University Press, 2018) is the result of a monumental collaborative effort by seven scholars over the course of four years to compose the first total history of Hasidism. The team included David Biale, David Assaf, Benjamin Brown, Uriel Gellman, Samuel Heilman, Moshe Rosman, Gadi Sagiv, and Marcin Wodzinski. It shows the ways in which this movement, in its many distinct flavors, was fluid enough to adapt to its many geographies and new social, cultural, and political contexts. The book is structured chronologically in three sections (the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries), and tracks the movement as it unfolded, covering its origins and early figures, growth and variation, institutionalization, decay and destruction during the Holocaust, and subsequent resurrection in post-war Israel and America. Particular attention is paid to the social history of the local communities that arose around charismatic leaders (Rebbes and Tsadikim) and their courts, as well as Hasidic beliefs and practices. In today’s episode I had the opportunity to speak with Professor David Biale about the book and the research effort behind it. We discussed the theology, praxis, family life and communal structures of many Hasidic dynasties, and their relationship with the “outside world.” The volume is a treasure trove of stories and histories, filled with fascinating figures and political intrigues, that covers not only Hasidism but modern Jewish history more generally. Provocatively, we are left wondering: is piety compatible with modern life? David Biale is the Emanuel Ringelblum Distinguished Professor of Jewish History and the Director of the Jewish Studies Program at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of many other acclaimed books including Not in the Heavens: The Tradition of Jewish Secular Thought also published by Princeton University Press and a forthcoming biography of Gershom Scholem in the Jewish Lives series by Yale University Press. Moses Lapin is a graduate student in the departments of History and Philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He is currently inventing a squirrel internet. 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 are the American Jews behind many of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank? This is the question that Dr. Sara Hirschhorn, Research Lecturer at the University of Oxford, seeks to answer in her new book City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement (Harvard University Press, 2017). By analyzing archival documents along with periodicals, internet sources, and a wealth of self-conducted interviews, Hirschhorn concludes that many American-Israeli settlers are not the messianic, ultra-right-wing fanatics that stereotypes suggest. Instead, the majority come from liberal American backgrounds, are highly-educated, and have conservative—but rarely Orthodox—Jewish backgrounds. What is more, she argues, their actions, motives, and self-conceptualizations are reflective of the evolution of American and Israeli Jewish identities over time. Sara Hirschhorn is University Research Lecturer in Israel Studies at the University of Oxford and Sidney Brichto Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. Robin Buller is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of North Carolina at 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

How do technological advances and changing archival practices alter historical memory? In what ways have developments in the preservation and dissemination of historical material already impacted how scholars and the public engage with the past? These are questions that Jeffrey Shandler, Professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University, grapples with in his new book, Holocaust Memory in the Digital Age: Survivors Stories and New Media Practices (Stanford University Press, 2017) Shandler’s thought-provoking and skillfully written book addresses these problems through the lens of the Holocaust and Holocaust memory. Specifically, he examines the wealth of material curated by the Shoah Foundations Visual History Archive, which houses a wealth of over 50,000 newly-digitized videos of interviews conducted with survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides. Shandler analyzes this footage by reading “against the grain” and using the testimonies for purposes other than those intended by the Archive’s creators when it was founded in 1994. In addition to considering the collection in its entirety, Shandler underscores the significance of focusing on individual testimonies, as well. By guiding the reader through a captivating selection of case studies, he reveals how narrative, language, and spectacle have influenced, and been influenced by, new media practices. Jeffrey Shandler is Chair and Professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University. Robin Buller is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of North Carolina at 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

Alfred Ivry‘s book, Maimonides’ ‘Guide of the Perplexed’: A Philosophical Guide (University of Chicago, 2016) is the only modern commentary in English to explicate Maimonides’ summa The Guide of the Perplexed in its entirety. In so doing, it stands as a monument to both The Guide and to a career spent studying it. The book begins with an introduction that outlines its main arguments and method, and with chapters on Maimonides biography and intellectual context. It then divides the Guide into eight thematic sub-sections and provides a paraphrase and analysis of each in turn; it tackles the way Maimonides read the bible, synthesized physics and metaphysics, and espoused a new understanding of the Jewish tradition. The sections cover Maimonides’ philosophy of language and anti-anthropomorphic reading of the bible, his opposition to Kalām (Islamic theology) and theory of creation, and his theories of prophecy, metaphysics, providence and theodicy. The work ends with chapters on the Law, on politics, and True Knowledge. Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) was born in Cordoba, Spain and lived his mature life in Fustat, Egypt, he was a Jewish communal leader and legal scholar, physician and philosopher. The Guide is his philosophic masterwork, undoubtably one of the most influential and perplexing works of any faith written in the Middle Ages. Tucked away in Professor Ivry’s analysis is a rich reflection on Maimonides’ intellectual milieu and a genealogy sourced in both the Jewish tradition and Greek thought. Uniquely, he uses Maimonides’ biography and psychology as analytical tools and sees the book as a reflection of a Maimonides’ torn in his loyalties, seeking guidance as much as offering it, as a “mature spiritual and intellectual autobiography.” While others may read The Guide strictly as a work of exegesis or politics, Professor Ivry takes Maimonides’ metaphysical claims seriously, and sees him as neither a total skeptic nor a strictly orthodox thinker. Rather, this commentary understands The Guide in the mode of a confession, as a tool to tease out and come to terms with the eternal tensions between Reason and Revelation, and to see “Maimonides [as] indebted to a philosophical tradition that contradicted his inherent faith.” Rarely has a summa, the mature reflections of a career steeped in philosophic thought, been made so accessible. Alfred Ivry is emeritus professor in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies as well as in the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. He is renowned worldwide as both a scholar and a teacher, combining rich philological skills with a deep knowledge of Classical and Medieval philosophy; his career is now in its sixth decade. Moses Lapin is a perplexed graduate student in the departments of History and Philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Leon Wiener Dow’s most recent work The Going: A Meditation on Jewish Law (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017) offers readers intimate, informative, and at times provocative reflections on halakha, or Jewish law. The author makes nuanced philosophical and theological observations on the ideas and actions that define a halakhic life, and grounds his ideas with rich personal anecdotes that are woven throughout. Wiener Dow’s lively, captivating style of writing draws the reader into his powerful discussion of the roles that community, language, tradition, and evolution play in the halakhic journey. Leon Wiener Dow received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Bar-Ilan University and rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Professor David Hartman. He is currently a research fellow and faculty member of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, Israel. Robin Buller is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at the University of North Carolina at 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

Benjamin R. Gampel‘s award winning volume Anti-Jewish Riots in the Crown of Aragon and the Royal Response, 1391-1392 (Cambridge University Press, 2016) is the first total history of a lesser known period in Jewish history, overshadowed by the Spanish expulsion of 1492 which it would come to foreshadow. Over the course of ten months, Jews across large parts of the Iberian peninsula were murdered or forced to convert to Christianity, and entire communities were decimated—the intensity and duration of this period mark it as the most devastating attack on the Jews of pre-modern Christian Europe. While many historians have written studies about 1391-92 from isolated perspectives, in the face of an overwhelming number of local archives found throughout the peninsula, and the complexity of those sources, a unified narrative has, until now, remained a desideratum. In this methodological tour-de-force, Professor Gampel tells the story of Spanish Jewry and their relationship to royal power by reading state records and the almost daily correspondence of the royal family against the grain, telling the story of the subjects of these sources imbedded in the thick context of their composers. The book is divided into two sections that mirror its title. The first is a detailed study of the violence of 1391-92 arranged according to the geographic regions of the peninsula—the Kingdoms of Castile, Valencia, and Aragon, Catalonia and the island of Majorca. Using a rich array of archival sources and in dialogue with contemporary historiography, Professor Gampel painstakingly sets out the limits of what we can know about the riots, both of the victims and the perpetrators, detailing each episode chronologically, in order to form a picture of the period as a whole. Central to the book is the question of how and why those tasked with protecting the Jewish communities failed to do so. To this end the second section is centered around three members of the Aragonese royal family—King Joan, Queen Iolant, and Duke Marti—and their response to the violence as it unfolded. Here we see the Jewish community as one of many competing interests the royal family faced, and thereby can better appreciate the contingencies of history. The two sections together provide both a deep macro and micro study of this crucial time in Jewish and Spanish history, exposing us not only to the story and context of the too often voiceless victims, but the lives of those in power as well. Its a narrative of tragic violence and the failure of the Royal Alliance, grounded in extensive historical research stripped of none of its drama. Professor Benjamin R. Gampel is the the Dina and Eli Field Family Chair in Jewish History at The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. You can hear more from him in his video lecture series on the history, society, and culture of medieval Sephardic Jewry. Moses Lapin is a graduate student in the departments of History and Philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; his friends call him young Farabi. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

One of the most important developments in Holocaust Studies over the past couple decades has been one of scale. Rather than focus on decision making at the national or regional level, scholars are immersing themselves in the deep history of a small town or camp. In doing so you may miss the debates of diplomats and politicians. But you get a much better idea of how people actually experienced the Holocaust. Omer Bartov’s new book Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz (Simon and Schuster, 2018) is a superb example of this trend. Bartov spent two decades immersed in archives across the world. He knows his characters, Polish, Jewish, German and Ukrainian, inside and out. His explanations for their actions and descriptions are fully convincing because they are so fully imagined and described. It is because of this attention to detail that his conclusions are so sobering. He describes policeman, soldiers, neighbors and victims living lives that were intertwined. The killers here were not engaged in some anonymous, industrial process. Instead, they killed maids, and seamstresses, former classmates and colleagues. They lived in a world where the killing is only one aspect of their lives, one often subsumed in the routine of their jobs, in the community of card playing and drinking, and in their romantic adventures. They lived in a world where there was never a shortage of people willing to shoot to kill. It’s a wonderful book, one that I recommend highly. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Noam Zadoff begins his biography of Gershon Scholem, one of the 20th century’s greatest scholars and an equally perplexing intellectual, at the point where Scholem ends his own autobiography From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories of My Youth—with his arrival in Jerusalem in 1923. Gershom Scholem: From Berlin to Jerusalem and Back (Brandeis University Press, 2018) situates Scholem’s thought in the context of his biography, by skillfully reading Scholem’s self-fashioning against the grain and together with materials held in his archive. With particular focus on his conflicted and shifting relationship to Germany and German thought and language, Zadoff contributes to the ever-growing scholarship about Scholem. Zadoff moves beyond Scholem’s early ambivalence towards German culture as he sought a Jewish future in Israel during the inter-war years. Despite his early rejection of Jewish-German assimilation and his idiosyncratic Zionist dreams, we find that not only was his world-view framed in reference to Germany—of his youth, the Holocaust, and the after-war years—but this relationship becomes a barometer to understand his evolving thought. The book is divided into three sections, the first of which focuses on Scholem’s early period in Jerusalem, his political activities there, relationship to the Hebrew Language, and to the Hebrew University. The next section is about Scholem’s response to the Holocaust and his pivotal role in collecting and reclaiming manuscripts and books that were looted from the Jewish communities of Europe. The last, and perhaps most revealing section, focuses on Scholem’s “return to Germany,” during the last part of his life, particularly his involvement in the Eranos seminars. Zadoff begins the book by asking how the images of Scholem in Israel and Germany could be of the same person, at home he was known as a fiery intellectual, demanding German teacher, and scholar of the kabbalah, while in Germany he was a literary personality and a nostalgic link to German culture of the pre-War years. At its conclusion, we are left with a well argued narrative that does not strip its subject of its complexity. Noam Zadoff is an Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and of History, and the Director of Olamot Center at Indiana University, Bloomington. Moses Lapin is a graduate student in the departments of History and Philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and an avid lepidopterist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Spanning several decades, the work of Ella Shohat, a Professor of Cultural Studies and Middle Eastern Studies at New York University, has introduced conceptual frameworks that fundamentally challenged conventional understandings of Israel, Palestine, Zionism and the Middle East. On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements (Pluto Press, 2017) gathers together her most influential political essays, interviews, speeches, testimonies and memoirs, as well as previously unpublished material. Shohat’s transdisciplinary perspective illuminates the cultural politics in and around the Middle East. Juxtaposing texts of various genres written in divergent contexts, the book offers a vivid sense of the author’s intellectual journey. Yaacov Yadgar is the Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies at the University of Oxford. His most recent book is Sovereign Jews: Israel, Zionism and Judaism (SUNY Press, 2017). You can read more of Yadgar’s 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

In Bad Rabbi And Other Strange But True Stories from the Yiddish Press (Stanford University Press, 2017), Eddy Portnoy, Academic Advisor and Exhibitions Curator at the YIVO Institute for Yiddish Research, delves into the archives of the Yiddish press to reveal the passionate and tumultuous world of Yiddish cultures in New York and Warsaw in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Portnoy describes this world as Yiddishland, a nation in which all the high and low expressions of culture not only occurred but were carefully and colorfully relayed by Yiddish journalists, including the young Isaac Bashevis Singer and his older brother, Israel Joshua Singer. A treasure for both researchers and general readership, Bad Rabbi brings to life the passionate, chaotic, and sometimes violent communal life of the Yiddish-speaking urban world that flourished prior to World War II on both sides of the Atlantic, and that was documented by some of Yiddish culture’s keenest eyes and finest writers. David Gottlieb is a PhD Candidate in the History of Judaism at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His research focuses on interpretations of the Binding of Isaac and the formation of Jewish cultural memory. 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 his most recent work, Trauma in First Person: Diary Writing during the Holocaust (Indiana University Press, 2017), Amos Goldberg examines Jewish diary writing during the Holocaust—a subject that is familiar to many within and without the academy—from bold, new angles. Rather than using the diary as a historical source, Goldberg’s book centers on the diary as its subject. In addition to closely analyzing the more well-known diaries of Victor Klemperer and Chaim Kaplan, Goldberg incorporates a wide variety of lesser-known first-person narratives into his work, showing the widespread nature of diary writing as a cultural phenomenon during the part. Combining the methods of history, literary studies, and psychology, this impressively interdisciplinary book asks: how did the unfolding of the Holocaust changed victims inner selves? His answers to this question expose the tensions between creation and destruction, and the duality of helplessness and agency, that characterize this genre. Amos Goldberg is Senior Lecturer and Chair of the History Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 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

In their new book Recharging Judaism: How Civic Engagement is Good For Synagogues, Jews and America (Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2017), Rabbi Judith Schindler and Judy Seldin-Cohen argue that social action and Jewish action go hand-in-hand. The book offers both inspiration and guidance, weaving together passages from Torah and Talmud, insights from contemporary Jewish and non-Jewish civic leaders, and practical advice drawn from the authors many years of advocacy, activism, and civic collaboration in their home community of Charlotte, North Carolina. In this episode, we discuss how the idea of minyan can work as a model for social movements; we discuss the stages congregations can follow to embark on a civic project; and, we discuss how to avoid community division while still encouraging healthy debate — which, along with supporting the needy, is as authentic and ancient a Jewish tradition as one can find. Daveeda Goldberg is a PhD candidate in the Department of Humanities at York University, in Toronto, 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 Across Legal Lines: Jews and Muslims in Modern Morocco (Yale University Press, 2016), Jessica Marglin skillfully narrates how Jews and Muslims navigated the complex and dynamic legal system of pre-colonial Morocco. The book, based on Marglin’s doctoral dissertation conducted at Princeton University, traces the history of a Moroccan Jewish family, the Assarafs, ultimately revealing that the boundaries surrounding the states Jewish and Islamic court systems were much more porous than previously thought. Drawing from a vast wealth of archival material from private and public collections across four continents (and in upwards of seven languages), the author shows how increased foreign intervention in this period dramatically changed how Jews engaged with Moroccan law and society. In doing so, Marglin inserts her study into major debates about legal practices and modernity taking place in the fields of North African History and Jewish History alike. Jessica Marglin is the Ruth Ziegler Early Career Chair in Jewish Studies and Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Southern California. 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

In Jews and Leftist Politics: Judaism, Israel, Antisemitism and Gender (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Jack Jacobs, Professor of Political Science at John Jay College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, has assembled a hugely impressive selection of scholars to delve into varied topics related to Jews and Leftists politics. The volume is characterised by judicious appraisals made by respected authorities and sheds considerable light on contentious themes. 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

In his new book, The Politics of Unreason: The Frankfurt School and the Origins of Modern Antisemitism (SUNY Press, 2017) , Lars Rensmann, Professor of European Politics and Society at the University of Groningen, argues that even scholars of the Frankfurt school have often treated the theme of antisemitism with scant attention. However, as Rensmann argues, the problem of antisemitism had been a central motivating dynamic for their interdisciplinary research, from the very early years of the Institute. In this episode, we begin by discussing the general silence surrounding the Holocaust that presided in Germany into the 1990s, and how this can be understood as part of a phenomenon that Critical Theory called “secondary antisemitism.” We then circle back to explore how the Critical Theorists explained the “primary” phenomenon of antisemitism as an interplay of psychological, social-historical, and economic dynamics. As we learn from this book’s rich analyses, the insights developed by the Frankfurt School on the authoritarian disposition, on hatred and racism, and on the pathologies of modernity retain deep relevance and applicability for the further understanding of today’s politics of unreason. Daveeda Goldberg is a PhD candidate at York University in Toronto, 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 The Charm of Wise Hesitancy: Talmudic Stories in Contemporary Israeli Culture (Academic Studies Press, 2017), David Jacobson, Professor of Judaic Studies at Brown University, offers an overview and detailed analysis of one of a most intriguing cultural phenomenon in contemporary Israel: A “return to the (supposedly religious) Jewish bookshelf” by both self-proclaimed secularist Israelis and orthodox Jews. Specifically, Jacobson is interested in Israeli readings of Talmudic narratives, and the way these readings reflect upon contemporary Jewish-Israeli identity. His book both situates the phenomenon in its socio-historical context, and offers a detailed analysis of the discourse on certain Talmudic narratives. Yaacov Yadgar is the Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies at the University of Oxford. His most recent book is Sovereign Jews: Israel, Zionism and Judaism (SUNY Press, 2017). You can read more of Yadgar’s 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

In The Haredim: A Guide to their Beliefs and Sectors (Am-Oved and the IDI, 2017, in Hebrew), Benjamin Brown, a professor of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University, offers a mapping of the various sects that compose Jewish Israeli Ultra-Orthodoxy. He aims to provide his readers with a “respectful yet critical approach” to a rather diverse community, which in many senses has become an Israeli “Other.” Yaacov Yadgar is the Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies at the University of Oxford. His most recent book is Sovereign Jews: Israel, Zionism and Judaism (SUNY Press, 2017). You can read more of Yadgar’s 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

Normally, we feature books, but this time we’re highlighting an independent press making waves in academic works on the ancient Near East, Syriac, Islam, Jewish studies, and more: Gorgias Press. Based in New Jersey, the press has grown since its inception in 2001 to include the publication of journals, open-source projects, and countless monograph and handbook series. We talk to the founder, George Kiraz, also director of the Beth Mardutho (The Syriac Institute) about how the press came about, what goes into running such a press, the press’ philosophies, and future plans. George Kiraz himself is a tremendous scholar of Syriac and a pioneer in digital humanities, among whose many publications include The Syriac Dot and many linguistic texts. NA Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Not very many intellectuals really change their minds about anything. They have a big idea, often become well known because of it. Then their big idea becomes an integral part of their identity and they just never let it go. Evidence that doesn’t “fit” is either ignored or contorted in such a way as to make it “fit.” Too bad, that. But, as you’ll read in Adi Gordon‘s terrific book Toward Nationalism’s End: An Intellectual Biography of Hans Kohn (Brandeis University Press, 2017), not Hans Kohn. He had a several big ideas, most notably one about nationalism. But he never stopped evolving it to, well, reality. Kohn lived in several different worlds—a Habsburg one, a Zionist one, an American one—and in each of them he witnessed how nationalism played out in different ways. Kohn adapted as he moved from one world to another, and so did his thought. Very good, that. Listen in to our fascinating conversation. 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 new book, Jewish Anzacs: Jews in the Australian Military (New South Press, 2017), author, journalist and historian Mark Dapin explores the little-known story of the thousands of Jews that have fought in Australia’s military conflicts. Through archival research, military records, private letters, and interviews, Dapin tells the story of the Jewish servicemen and women that have fought—and died—for Australia in all of the nation’s wars. 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 a career spanning several decades, James L. Kugel has illuminated the Hebrew Bible from the perspectives of both a biblical scholar of enormous skill and eloquence and as an engaged and imaginative reader. In The Great Shift: Encountering God in Biblical Times (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), Kugel, Starr Professor Emeritus of Hebrew Literature at Harvard University, consults not only biblical scholarship but neuroscience and anthropology to examine the relationship between conceptions of self and conceptions of God. The way these conceptions shift over time, and the way biblical text itself reflects on these changes, shed new light on changing notions of self and God, and the relationship between these changes. David Gottlieb is a PhD Candidate in the History of Judaism at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His research focuses on interpretations of the Binding of Isaac and the formation of Jewish cultural memory. 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 Narratives from the Sephardic Atlantic: Blood and Faith (Indiana University Press, 2016), Ronnie Perelis, Chief Rabbi Dr. Isaac Abraham and Jelena (Rachel) Alcalay Chair and Associate Professor of Sephardic Studies at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies of Yeshiva University, looks at three autobiographical texts by New World crypto-Jews. Perelis presents the fascinating stories of three men who were caught within the matrix of inquisitorial persecution, expanding global trade, and the network of crypto-Jewish activity. There is no other book quite like this sensitive, fascinating and penetrating look at identity, family and community. 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

In her new book, Max Liebermann: Modern Art and Modern Germany (Routledge 2015), Marion Deshmukh, the Robert T. Hawkes Professor of History Emeritus at George Mason University, examines the life and career of the prolific German artist Max Liebermann. Liebermann, a pioneer of German modernism, portrayed scenes of the Dutch countryside and rural life, along with portraits of Germany’s cultural and political elites. Deshmukh describes Liebermann’s life and career in wonderful detail, while also demonstrating how the art world in Germany impacted and was impacted by the wider events of German history. 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 there one principal avenue of exploration that could lead to the very heart of the religious experience? For David L. Weddle, professor emeritus of Religion at Colorado College, that way in is the practice of ritual sacrifice. In his new book, Sacrifice in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (New York University Press, 2017) Weddle conducts a comparative study of the practice and the social significance of sacrifice in the three “religions of Abraham.” Weddle’s book draws extensively on theology, history, and cultural theory to view the ways in which sacrifice has shaped, and continues to shape, the cultures of these religious traditions, and he proposes ways in which the traditions can work to overcome the violent sacrificial impulses still evident in extremist theology and practice. David Gottlieb is a PhD Candidate in the History of Judaism at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His research focuses on interpretations of the Binding of Isaac and the formation of Jewish cultural memory. 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

Messiah ben Joseph, the slain Galilean messiah, is the most enigmatic figure in Rabbinic Judaism. David C. Mitchell‘s Messiah ben Joseph (Campbell Publications, 2016) proposes that this messiah is not a rabbinic invention at all, however, and convincingly details Messiah ben Joseph’s emergence as early as the Pentateuch. Join us as we talk with Mitchell about his fascinating book. David C. Mitchell is a biblical scholar, musicologist, and Hebraist. He is Precentor and Director of Music at Holy Trinity Pro-Cathedral, Brussels. L. 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 What is Modern Israel? (University of Chicago/Pluto Press, 2016), Yakov Rabkin, a professor of history at the University of Montreal, discusses some of the most fundamental issues pertaining to the history and socio-politics of Israel. He does not shy away from dealing with some of the most sensitive and controversial issues, such as the Christian roots of Zionist ideology, the commemoration and political uses of the Holocaust in Israel, and the problematic stance of Zionist ideology towards Jewish tradition. Rabkin’s earlier work has charted some of the main streams of Jewish opposition to Zionism. In this book, he offers a coherent Jewish critique of his own. Yaacov Yadgar is the Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies at the University of Oxford. His most recent book is Sovereign Jews: Israel, Zionism and Judaism (SUNY Press, 2017). You can read more of Yadgar’s 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

Born in the Land of Israel around the year 50 C.E., Rabbi Akiva was the greatest rabbi of his time and one of the most important influences on Judaism as we know it today. Traditional sources tell how he was raised in poverty and unschooled in religious tradition but began to learn the Torah as an adult. In the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 C.E., he helped shape a new direction for Judaism through his brilliance and his character. Mystic, legalist, theologian, and interpreter, he disputed with his colleagues in dramatic fashion yet was admired and beloved by his peers. Executed by Roman authorities for his insistence on teaching Torah in public, he became the exemplar of Jewish martyrdom. Drawing on the latest historical and literary scholarship, Barry W. Holtz‘s Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud (Yale University Press, 2017) goes beyond older biographies, untangling a complex assortment of ancient sources to present a clear and nuanced portrait of Talmudic hero Rabbi Akiva. Phillip Sherman is Associate Professor of Religion at Maryville College in Maryville, TN. 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 Strangers in Berlin: Modern Jewish Literature between East and West, 1919-1933 (University of Michigan Press, 2016), Rachel Seelig, Visiting Scholar in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Toronto, works against the prevailing tendency to view German and East European Jewish cultures as separate fields of study. Looking at four writers, Seelig presents Jewish literature in the Weimar Republic as the product of a dynamic encounter between East and West. This is a very interesting and groundbreaking work of scholarship. 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

​​Witnessing Unbound: Holocaust Representation and the Origins of Memory (Wayne State University Press, 2017) is a ​collection of essays and interviews that offer fresh ​insight on the last of the primary witnesses to the Holocaust​. The book interrogates the stylization of the ​narrative ​account of the primary witness, and it offers significant new scholarship on the Halakhic witness​ — Orthodox Jewish prisoners of German concentration camps, who attempted to confront their experience through the framework of Halakhic thought and praxis​. ​The book also provides analysis of the different methods and aims of collecting witness testimony between the Soviet-dominated East and the ​Allies of the West. Through the testimony of survivors of and witnesses to the atrocities, and the work of those who seek them out, the book unveils new insights at a critical moment in the documentation and commemoration of the Holocaust. David Gottlieb interviews co-author and co-editor Henri Lustiger-Thaler, professor of cultural sociology at Ramapo College of New Jersey. David Gottlieb is a PhD Candidate in the History of Judaism at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His research focuses on interpretations of the Binding of Isaac and the formation of Jewish cultural memory. 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 Denying Her Voice: The Figure of Miriam in Ancient Jewish Literature (Vandenhock and Ruprecht, 2016) Hanna Tervanotko first analyzes the treatment and development of Miriam as a literary character in ancient Jewish texts, taking into account all the references to this figure preserved in ancient Jewish literature from the exilic period to the early second century C.E.: Exodus 15:20-21; Deuteronomy 24:8-9; Numbers 12:1-15; 20:1; 26:59; 1 Chronicles 5:29; Micah 6:4, the Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q365 6 II, 1-7; 4Q377 2 I, 9; 4Q543 1 I, 6 = 4Q545 1 I, 5; 4Q546 12, 4; 4Q547 4 I, 10; 4Q549 2, 8), Jubilees 47:4; Ezekiel the Tragedian 18; Demetrius Chronographer frag. 3; texts by Philo of Alexandria: De vita contemplativa 87; Legum allegoriae 1.76; 2.66-67; 3.103; De agricultura 80-81; Liber antiquitatum biblicarum 9:10; 20:8, and finally texts by Josephus: Antiquitates judaicae 2.221; 3.54; 3.105; 4.78. These texts demonstrate that the picture of Miriam preserved in the ancient Jewish texts is richer than the Hebrew Bible suggests. The results provide a contradictory image of Miriam. On the one hand she becomes a tool of Levitical politics, whereas on the other she continues to enjoy a freer role. People continued to interpret earlier literary traditions in light of new situations, and interpretations varied in different contexts. Second, in light of poststructuralist literary studies that treat texts as reflections of specific social situations, Tervanotko argues that the treatment of Miriam in ancient Jewish literature reflects mostly a reality in which women had little space as active agents. Despite the general tendency to allow women only little room, the references to Miriam suggest that at least some prominent women may have enjoyed occasional freedom. Phillip Sherman is Associate Professor of Religion at Maryville College in Maryville, TN. 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 Right To Difference: French Universalism and the Jews (University of Chicago Press, 2016), Maurice Samuels, Betty Jane Anylan Professor of French and director of the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism at Yale University, demonstrates that Jewish difference has always been essential to the elaboration of French universalism. Looking at novelists, philosophers, filmmakers and political figures Samuels recovers the forgotten history of a more open, pluralistic form of French universalism. This is sure to become a classic and essential text. Max Kaiser is a Ph.D. 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

The work of Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), one of Judaism’s great philosophers and defenders, has nonetheless defied easy categorization or definitive depiction. While advocating for the granting of full rights to the Jews of Germany, Mendelssohn also was cast in the role of defender of the faith and advocate for continued obedience to what he termed “ceremonial law” or “divine legislation.” In his new book, Moses Mendelssohn’s Living Script: Philosophy, Practice, History, Judaism (Indiana University Press, 2016), Elias Sacks, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, delves into Mendelssohn’s Hebrew and German works to develop a comprehensive perspective on Jewish practice, Jewish citizenship, and Jewish history. Professor Sacks pays careful attention to Mendelssohn’s historical context and the influence on his work of late Enlightenment philosophy, Christian theology, and emerging scientific models of thought. David Gottlieb is a PhD Candidate in the History of Judaism at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His research focuses on interpretations of the Binding of Isaac and the formation of Jewish cultural memory. 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

Mainstream readings of Numbers have tended to see the book as a haphazard junkyard of material that connects Genesis—Leviticus with Deuteronomy and Joshua, composed at a late stage in the history of ancient Israel. By contrast, Pekka Pitkanen reads Numbers as part of a wider work of Genesis—Joshua, a carefully crafted programmatic settler colonial document for a new society in Canaanite highlands in the late second millennium BCE—a document that seeks to replace pre-existing indigenous societies. On this show, we speak with Pekka Pitkanen about his new approach to Numbers in his recent book, A Commentary on Numbers: Narrative, Ritual and Colonialism (Routledge, 2017). Dr Pekka Pitkanen is a senior lecturer in the School of Liberal and Performing Arts at the University of Gloucestershire, UK. He also has an MDiv in theology from Chongshin University, Seoul, Korea, and a PhD on Old Testament studies from University of Gloucestershire. He is the author of Central Sanctuary and Centralization of Worship in Ancient Israel (2003) and Joshua (2010). His main area of specialization is the study of the sacred texts of Christianity (OT/HB) in the context of the ancient world and from a number of perspectives including archaeology, sociology, and anthropology. L. 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 Jewish Volunteers, the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), Gerben Zaagsma, Senior researcher at the centre for contemporary and digital history at the University of Luxembourg, discusses the participation of volunteers of Jewish descent in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, focusing particularly on the establishment of the Naftali Botwin Company, a Jewish military unit that was created in the Polish Dombrowski Brigade. Zaagsma analyses the symbolic meaning of the participation of Jewish volunteers and the Botwin Company both during and after the civil war. He puts this participation in the broader context of Jewish involvement and Jewish/non-Jewish relations in the Left, and asks to what extent Jewishness and Jewish concerns mattered in the International Brigades and why the Botwin Company was actually created. To this end, the book examines representations of Jewish volunteers in the Parisian Yiddish press (both communist and non-communist). In addition, he analyses the various ways in which the memory of the experiences of Jewish volunteers and the Botwin Company came to be constituted and constructed after the Second World War and the Holocaust. To that end the book traces how discourses about Jewish volunteers became decisively shaped by post-Holocaust debates on Jewish responses to fascism and Nazism, analyses how, and why, volunteers of Jewish descent eventually became Jewish volunteers after the war, and discusses claims that Jewish volunteers can be seen as ‘the first Jews to resist Hitler with arms’. 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

In Sharing the Burden: Rabbi Simḥah Zissel Ziv and the Path of Musar (SUNY Press, 2015), Geoffrey D. Claussen provides a thorough study of the life and work of one of the most influential figures in the history of Musar, the Jewish discipline for ethical development. Simḥah Zissel (1824-1898), also known as the Alter of Kelm, uniquely combined traditional Talmud study, contemplative exercises, Musar, and general studies curricula at his Talmud Torah in the Lithuanian town of Kelm. Professor Claussen, Lori and Eric Sklut Emerging Scholar in Jewish Studies, and Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Elon University, breaks new ground in tracing the development and legacy of one of Musar’s great masters. This book is a welcome and needed addition to the study of the Musar movement and its seminal figures. David Gottlieb is a PhD Candidate in the History of Judaism at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His research focuses on interpretations of the Binding of Isaac and the formation of Jewish cultural memory. 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 A Remembrance of His Wonders: Nature and the Supernatural in Medieval Ashkenaz (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), David I. Shyovitz, Associate Professor of History, and of Jewish and Israel Studies, at Northwestern University, plumbs the worldview and theology of the Hasidei Ashkenaz, the Jewish Pietists, who flourished in the Rhine Valley and in Regensburg in the 12th and 13th centuries. Professor Shyovitz marshals compelling evidence to show that the Pietists submitted both the natural world and the human body to close and disciplined empirical study. While they were fascinated by inexplicable phenomena, bodily transformation, spells and incantations, and even bodily and effluvia and excrement, the Pietists’ fascination was driven by their effort to forge links between the natural world and their theological worldview. David Gottlieb is a PhD Candidate in the History of Judaism at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His research focuses on interpretations of the Binding of Isaac and the formation of Jewish cultural memory. 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 The Jewish Revolution in Belorussia: Economy, Race, and Bolshevik Power (Indian University Press, 2017), Andrew Sloin, Assistant Professor of History at Baruch College of the City University of New York, gives us a compelling and complex account of the fundamental changes in Jewish Life set in motion by the Bolshevik revolution. Sloin has written a social history at the grassroots level of Jewish society in Belorussia focusing on the intersections between Jewish radicalism, race and identity formation and political economy. It’s a unique and fascinating contribution to this field of study and a highly readable and insightful account of the transformations in Belorussian Jewish life in this period 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

In her new book, Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism (Indiana University Press, 2017), Professor Sarah Imhoff explores the relationship between American identity and American Jewish depictions and definitions of masculinity. Professor Imhoff examines Jewish communal efforts to consciously create an American Jewish masculinity — one that is tied to the land, modeled on Protestant delimitations of masculine virtues — and she analyzes popular conceptions about and ambivalence toward the American Jewish male. Professor Imhoff explores the ways in which conscious efforts to forge a connection between the Jewish male body and the American land collide with anti-Semitic stereotypes, and with an emerging range of Jewish masculinities, in this multifaceted work. Sarah Imhoff is Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Religious Studies, and Director of Graduate Studies in the Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University. David Gottlieb is a PhD Candidate in the History of Judaism at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His research focuses on interpretations of the Binding of Isaac and the formation of Jewish cultural memory. 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 A Land Without Borders: My Journey Around East Jerusalem and the West Bank (Text Publishing Company, 2017), Nir Baram, award winning author and journalist, gives a fascinating account of his travels around the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Baram talks to a wide range of Palestinians living under occupation and Jewish settlers. It’s a unique book which gives attention to voices that upset dominant understandings of the conflict. It’s highly readable yet informative and involving and deserves a wide readership. 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

In Gershom Scholem: An Intellectual Biography (University of Chicago Press, 2017) , Amir Engel, a lecturer in the German Department at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, positions Gershom Scholem’s work and life within early twentieth-century Germany, Palestine and later the state of Israel. This book is an accessible and illuminating account of Gershom Scholem’s thought. It will become a very important reference for many years to come. 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

In Berlin for Jews: A Twenty-First Century Companion (University of Chicago Press, 2016), Leonard Barkan, the class of 1943 University Professor at Princeton, examines the complex histories of Jewish life in Berlin. He offers a nuanced and idiosyncratic account of Jewish lives, places and legacies in this city. This book is a highly readable contribution which will accompany Jews on their trips to Berlin for many years to come. Barkan brings to light little known figures, places and stories in a very personal journey. 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

This episode of New Books in Jewish Studies features Maya Barzilai, Assistant Professor of Hebrew Literature and Jewish Culture at the University of Michigan and the author of Golem: Modern Wars and Their Monsters (New York University Press, 2016). This timely book traces the evolution of the golem, a clay monster animated by a rabbi to serve and protect his community, from its presence in literature, drama, and cinema in the 1920s to its use as a reference in Israeli and American cultures during the second half of the 20th century. Barzilai has also published a short article in The Forward last November, in which she has shown how the golem was used as a metaphor in the recent US presidential elections to describe Donald Trump as well as the media that “created” him. Danielle Drori is a doctoral student at New York University. Her research focuses on the politicization of translation in early 20th century Hebrew literature. 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 Last Rabbi: Joseph Soloveitchik and Talmudic Tradition (Indiana University Press, 2016), William Kolbrener, professor of English at Bar Ilan University in Israel, explores the life and thought of Joseph Soloveitchik, the scion of the Brisk rabbinic dynasty, from both literary and psychoanalytic perspectives. The result is both a compelling critique of extant receptions of Soloveitchik’s thought and a nuanced exploration of the sources and struggles at the root of the Rav’s towering intellectual and halakhic achievements. The book will be of interest to students of rabbinic hermeneutics, modern Jewish thought, psychoanalysis, and the Western philosophical tradition — all intellectual realms in which Soloveitchik was well versed. David Gottlieb is a PhD Candidate in the History of Judaism at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His research focuses on interpretations of the Binding of Isaac and the formation of Jewish cultural memory. 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 recent years, several scholars of religion have moved away from the examination of discursive textual domains or the meaning of ritual practices towards analyzing the material worlds in which these practices and beliefs exists. S. Brent Plate, Visiting Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Hamilton College, has been one of the forerunners of this turn and provides an accessible staring point for novices in Key Terms in Material Religion (Bloomsbury, 2015). The collected set of short essays explores new perspectives on a number of familiar themes that have been historically important within the study of religion, such as belief, magic, fetish, words, sacred, or ritual. The volume also reveals the dominant themes in the field of material religion, such as objects, senses, time and space, and new horizons like sound, smell, and taste. Overall, the authors begin from the perspective that material forms shape how we understand the world and solidify identities through physical performance. In our conversations we discussed the long history of the collection and its beginnings in the Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art, and Belief, the selection of terms, what we privilege when thinking about material aspects of religion, creative ways to use the text in the classroom, material aesthetics, urban space and religion in the city, prayer as a site of materiality, exhibiting religion in museums, and where young scholars might take new research in material religion. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska Omaha. His research and teaching interests include Theory and Methodology in the Study of Religion, Islamic Studies, Chinese Religions, Human Rights, and Media Studies. 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

For this episode, New Books in Jewish Studies interviews Lewis Glinert, Professor of Hebrew Studies at Dartmouth College, where he is also affiliated with the Program in Linguistics. His book, The Story of Hebrew (Princeton University Press, 2017), can be defined as a biography of Hebrew language that spans Millenia. The book includes a chronological description of the use and perception of Hebrew in different communities across the world, addressing questions related to the ways in which Hebrew has been represented and utilized by Jews of different backgrounds, Christian scholars and colonials, and modern day Israelis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Rhiannon Graybill‘s Are We Not Men? Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets (Oxford University Press, 2016) offers an innovative approach to gender and embodiment in the Hebrew Bible, revealing the male body as a source of persistent difficulty for the Hebrew prophets. Drawing together key moments in prophetic embodiment, Graybill demonstrates that the prophetic body is a queer body, and its very instability makes possible new understandings of biblical masculinity. Prophecy disrupts the performance of masculinity and demands new ways of inhabiting the body and negotiating gender. Graybill explores prophetic masculinity through critical readings of a number of prophetic bodies, including Isaiah, Moses, Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. In addition to close readings of the biblical texts, this account engages with modern intertexts drawn from philosophy, psychoanalysis, and horror films: Isaiah meets the poetry of Anne Carson; Hosea is seen through the lens of possession films and feminist film theory; Jeremiah intersects with psychoanalytic discourses of hysteria; and Ezekiel encounters Daniel Paul Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. Graybill also offers a careful analysis of the body of Moses. Her methods highlight unexpected features of the biblical texts, and illuminate the peculiar intersections of masculinity, prophecy, and the body in and beyond the Hebrew Bible. This assembly of prophets, bodies, and readings makes clear that attending to prophecy and to prophetic masculinity is an important task for queer reading. Biblical prophecy engenders new forms of masculinity and embodiment; Are We Not Men? offers a valuable map of this still-uncharted terrain. Phillip Sherman is Associate Professor of Religion at Maryville College in Maryville, TN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies