New Books in Jewish Studies

Professor Cathleen Chopra-McGowan examines some the incongruities of our Bible in the context of the Ancient Near East, showing how the stories and traditions of Israel resembled and borrowed from those of Babylon and Assyria. She compares the Genesis narrative to two others, the epics of Gilgamesh and Atra-Hasis, especially discussing the universal flood narrative and rationale for sacrifice to s...

A century after being expelled from Portugal, cryptoJews in Mexico, false converts to Christianity, could not speak of their beliefs for fear of becoming embroiled in the imprisonment, torture, and death in flames that characterized the Inquisition. Without written texts, the Jewish liturgy lost, clans of cryptoJews created a unique body of religious poetry, connecting them to the Laws of Moses, s...

Historian John Jeffries Martin traces narratives of the Apocalypse over the last 500 years in the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions in his new book, A Beautiful Ending. This discussion about the culture of Apocalypse follows (and is the second part of) an interview we began on the New Books in History Podcast which was a historical discussion. Professor Martin is an Early Modern Historian a...

Menachem Brod's In Search of Truth: Three Yeshiva Students on a Spiritual Journey (BSD Publishers, 2022) describes the struggle of yeshiva students searching for a path in serving Hashem. Examining various paths within Torah tradition reveals challenging new concepts and exposes them to the fascination of Chassidism. Today I talked to the book's translator, Shprintza Goldberg. Learn more about you...

The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Roma Under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022), Radu Ioanid explores in great detail the physical destruction of Romania's Jewish and Roma communities, including the pogroms of Bucharest and Iaşi as well as the deportations and the massacres from Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transnistria. Based on thousands of archival doc...

Maimonideanism, the intellectual culture inspired by Maimonides’ writings, has received much recent attention. Yet a central aspect of Maimonideanism has been overlooked: the formal reception of the Guide of the Perplexed through commentary. In Rewriting Maimonides: Early Commentaries on the Guide of the Perplexed (de Gruyter, 2018), Igor H. De Souza offers a comprehensive analysis of six early ph...

Jewish Flavours of Italy: A Family Cookbook (Green Bean Books, 2022) is a culinary journey through Italy and a deep dive into family culinary heritage. With more than 100 kosher recipes, Silvia offers readers a unique collection of authentic and traditional Italian-Jewish dishes, combined with stunning photography, practical tips, and clear explanations. With a delicious mix of recipes, family sto...

Frank Wolff's ground-breaking Yiddish Revolutionaries in Migration: The Transnational History of the Jewish Labour Bund (Haymarket Books, 2021) investigates how this social movement transformed itself from one of the most important revolutionary protagonists in early twentieth-century Russia to a socialist institution of secular Jewish life and yidishkayt for Jews in North and South America. By fo...

Religious people have played an important role in progressive politics in the US for its entire history. Contemporary leftists should look to build bridges and include religious voices in the pursuit of a more just and sustainable society. (Part Two of Two) Guests: Elizabeth Bruenig, Washington Post columnist EJ Dionne, Washington Post columnist and Professor at Georgetown University Dan McKanan,...

Religious people have played an important role in progressive politics in the US for its entire history. Contemporary leftists should look to build bridges and include religious voices in the pursuit of a more just and sustainable society. Guests: Elizabeth Bruenig, Washington Post columnist EJ Dionne, Washington Post columnist and Professor at Georgetown University Dan McKanan, Professor at Harva...

Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, firstly in 1969 for The Armies of the Night and again in 1980 for The Executioner's Song, Norman Mailer's life comes as close as is possible to being the Great American Novel: beyond reason, inexplicable, wonderfully grotesque and addictive. The Naked and the Dead was acclaimed not so much for its intrinsic qualities but rather because it launched a brutally rea...

Between the Buddhist doctrine of ‘emptiness,’ the Jewish idea of Ayin, and the quantum mechanical zero-point energy of a vacuum, it turns out there’s quite a lot to be said about Nothing. Guests Janet Gyatso, Professor of Buddhist Studies at Harvard Divinity School Daniel Matt, Scholar of Jewish Mysticism Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a...

Fort Breendonk was built in the early 1900s to protect Antwerp, Belgium, from possible German invasion. Damaged at the start of World War I, it fell into disrepair . . . until the Nazis took it over after their invasion of Belgium in 1940. Never designated an official concentration camp by the SS and instead labeled a "reception" camp where prisoners were held until they were either released or tr...

Elia Meghnagi last saw his childhood home in Benghazi when he was only seventeen. A member of the endangered and fast-shrinking millennia-old Jewish community of Libya, in 1958 Elia was forced to flee, finding refuge in Cambridge as a foreign student. Elia built a new life for himself in England, finding friends, community, love, and a career in telecomms engineering that would take him across the...

Characterized by a search for meaning, Hirsch’s oeuvre connects psychological, scientific, and philosophical implications of form, bringing together ideas in art, science, ecology, and human consciousness. The artworks in multiple and mixed media provide an evolving history of Hirsch’s ideas and craft as they illustrate the progression of her original research on the origin of all alphabets. Her e...

Today I talked to Rabbi Dr. Mordechai Schiffman about his book Psyched for Torah (Kodesh Press, 2022). His writings on the weekly parsha exude complete fluency in both traditional Jewish sources like Talmud, Rishonim, and Acharonim, as well twentieth- and twenty-first-century psychological research. Most importantly, his writing presents a stunning and seamless integration between modern and tradi...

Wout J. van Bekkum's The Religious Poetry of El'azar Ben Ya'aqov Ha-Bavli (Baghdad, 13th C.) (Brill, 2022) is a comprehensive edition of Hebrew hymns composed by Eleazar the Babylonian, a prolific composer and scholar who lived in 13th-century Baghdad. His poetic language and style show much affinity with contemporary Sufism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support o...

In The Lives of Jessie Sampter: Queer, Disabled, Zionist (Duke UP, 2022), Sarah Imhoff tells the story of an individual full of contradictions. Jessie Sampter (1883-1938) was best known for her Course in Zionism (1915), an American primer for understanding support of a Jewish state in Palestine. In 1919, Sampter packed a trousseau, declared herself "married to Palestine," and immigrated there. Yet...

Every year before the holiday of Sukkot, Jews all around the world purchase an etrog―a lemon-like fruit―to participate in the holiday ritual. In Etrog: How A Chinese Fruit Became a Jewish Symbol (Palgrave Pivot, 2018), David Z. Moster tracks the etrog from its evolutionary home in Yunnan, China, to the lands of India, Iran, and finally Israel, where it became integral to the Jewish celebration of...

"Uncle Aron's compliments, which hadn't changed since the days of the Bible, didn't sound so great. One time, he told my mother that she was 'awesome like an army with flags.' Another time, he informed her that 'your nose is like the tower of Lebanon." Meet the village it took to raise Gil Hovav - colorful aunts and uncles hailing from one of the most respected lineages in the Jewish world (Hovav...

In Reconstructing the Talmud: An Introduction to the Academic Study of Rabbinic Literature (Hadar Press, 2014), Joshua Kulp and Jason Rogoff introduce the modern Talmud student to the techniques developed over the last century for uncovering how this literature developed. This work introduces the reader to the world of academic Talmudic research and opens new venues of exploration and understandin...

Seekers of the Face: Secrets of the Idra Rabba (the Great Assembly) of the Zohar (Stanford UP. 2021) opens the profound treasure house at the heart of Judaism's most important mystical work: the Idra Rabba (Great Gathering) of the Zohar. This is the story of the Great Assembly of mystics called to order by the master teacher and hero of the Zohar, Rabbi Shim'on bar Yochai, to align the divine face...

Jacob Neusner (born 1932) is one of the most important figures in the shaping of modern American Judaism. He was pivotal in transforming the study of Judaism from an insular project only conducted by--and of interest to--religious adherents to one which now flourishes in the secular setting of the university. He is also one of the most colorful, creative, and difficult figures in the American acad...

What does the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible have to say about nomads and nomadism in the ancient Near East? This episode explores nomadism in the Judaic religious tradition through the eyes of the authors of the Old Testament. Music in this episode: Desert City by Kevin MacLeod. License. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! http...

Among the Jewish writers who emigrated from Eastern Europe to France in the 1910s and 1920s, a number chose to switch from writing in their languages of origin to writing primarily in French, a language that represented both a literary center and the promises of French universalism. But under the Nazi occupation of France from 1940 to 1944, these Jewish émigré writers—among them Irène Némirovsky,...