New Books in Jewish Studies

Interview with Scholars of Judaism about their New Books

Religion & Spirituality
Judaism
1126
Mark Glickman, “Stolen Words: The Nazi Plunder ...
In Stolen Words: The Nazi Plunder of Jewish Books (The Jewish Publication Society, 2016), Rabbi Mark Glickman, of Temple Bnai Tikvah in Calgary, examines the massive theft of Jewish books by the Nazis. He offers a compelling account of the history of J...
34 min
1127
Ferenc Laczo, “Hungarian Jews in the Age of Gen...
For non-specialists, the Holocaust in Hungary is a history both familiar and murky. Many Americans have read memoirs like Elie Wiesel’s Night and Judith Magyar Isaacson’s Seeds of Sarah in high school or college and have some sense of their experience....
63 min
1128
Noah Lederman, “A World Erased: A Grandson’s Se...
Part detective story, part travelogue, Noah Lederman decided to write A World Erased: A Grandson’s Search for his Family’s Holocaust Secrets (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) to find answers to the questions he had since childhood about his grandparents e...
31 min
1129
Ellen Eisenberg, “The First to Cry Down Injusti...
The mass incarceration of Japanese Americans in the Pacific West is one of the most shameful episodes in our nation’s history. As the United States waged war against fascism, it removed tens of thousands of American citizens and their families from the...
79 min
1130
Dovid Katz, “Yiddish and Power” (Palgrave Macmi...
As described by Dovid Katz, Yiddish is an extraordinarily multifaceted language: a language that is at once acclaimed as sacred and dismissed as deficient, profoundly connected to centuries of religious and cultural history yet marketed superficially,
51 min
1131
Ellie Schainker, “Confessions of the Shtetl: Co...
In Confessions of the Shtetl: Converts from Judaism in Imperial Russia, 1817-1906 (Stanford University Press, 2016), Ellie Schainker, the Arthur Blank Family Foundation Assistant Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Emory University,
38 min
1132
David W. Stowe, “Song of Exile: The Enduring My...
On today’s program we will be speaking with David W. Stowe about his recent book Song of Exile: The Enduring Mystery of Psalm 137 (Oxford University Press, 2016). Song of Exile weaves together the 2,500-year history of one of the most famous psalms in ...
43 min
1133
Sharon Rotbard, “White City, Black City: Archit...
In White City, Black City: Architecture and War in Tel Aviv and Jaffa (MIT Press, 2015), Sharon Rotbard, Senior Lecturer in the Architecture Department at Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, examines the dual histories of Tel Aviv and Jaffa.
38 min
1134
Eva Mroczek, “The Literary Imagination in Jewis...
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls revealed a world of early Jewish writing larger than the Bible, from multiple versions of biblical texts to revealed books not found in our canon. Despite this diversity,
50 min
1135
Abigail Jacobson and Moshe Naor, “Oriental Neig...
Much of the existing literature on Mandatory Palestine adheres to a dual society model which assumes that the Palestinian Arab community and the Jewish Yishuv had separate economic, social, and cultural systems,
47 min
1136
Devin Naar, “Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottom...
In Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece (Stanford University Press, 2016) Devin Naar delves deep into the archives to produce this intimate and exciting portrait of Salonica’s Jewish community between the late 19th century unti...
44 min
1137
Dov Weiss, “Pious Irreverence: Confronting God ...
Judaism is often described as a religion that tolerates, even celebrates arguments with God. Unlike Christianity and Islam, it is said, Judaism endorses a tradition of protest as first expressed in the biblical stories of Abraham, Job, and Jeremiah.
57 min
1138
Bryan K. Roby, “The Mizrahi Era of Rebellion: I...
In The Mizrahi Era of Rebellion: Israel’s Forgotten Civil Rights Struggle, 1948-1966 (Syracuse University Press, 2015), Bryan K. Roby, fellow at the Centre for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, traces the early history of Mizrahi struggle f...
25 min
1139
Jennifer Glaser, “Borrowed Voices: Writing and ...
In Borrowed Voices: Writing and Racial Ventriloquism in the Jewish American Imagination (Rutgers University Press, 2016), Jennifer Glaser, Associate Professor of English and comparative literature and an affiliate faculty member in Judaic studies and w...
23 min
1140
Jeffrey Gurock, “The Jews of Harlem: The Rise, ...
In The Jews of Harlem: The Rise, Decline, and Revival of a Jewish Community (New York University Press, 2016), Jeffrey Gurock, Libby M. Klaperman Professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University, returns to the neighborhood he studied in his first sch...
36 min
1141
Fred Amram, “We’re in America Now: A Survivor’s...
In this lively memoir, We’re In America Now: A Survivor’s Stories (Holy Cow! Press, 2016), Fred Amram offers a series of stories documenting his childhood in 1930s Germany through his coming-of-age in New York City,
31 min
1142
Alisa Solomon, “Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural H...
In Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof (Metropolitan, 2013), Alisa Solomon, Director of the Arts and Culture concentration in the MA program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism,
44 min
1143
Jan Schwarz, “Survivors and Exiles: Yiddish Cul...
In Survivors and Exiles: Yiddish Culture after the Holocaust (Wayne State University Press, 2015), Jan Schwarz, Associate Professor of Yiddish studies at Lund University, Sweden, reveals that in the two and a half decades after the Holocaust,
38 min
1144
Carsten Schapkow, “Role Model and Countermodel:...
Why were German Jews so fascinated by Iberian Sephardic history? In Role Model and Countermodel: The Golden Age of Iberian Jewry and German Jewish Culture during the Era of Emancipation (Lexington Books, 2015), University of Oklahoma Professor Dr.
49 min
1145
Sarah Abrevaya Stein, “Extraterritorial Dreams:...
Sarah Abrevaya Stein’s rich new book, Extraterritorial Dreams: European Citizenship, Sephardi Jews, and the Ottoman Twentieth Century (University of Chicago Press, 2016) takes readers on a global journey in search of late 19th and early 20th century Se...
37 min
1146
Isabelle Hesse, “The Politics of Jewishness in ...
In The Politics of Jewishness in Contemporary World Literature: The Holocaust, Zionism and Colonialism (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), Isabelle Hesse, Lecturer in English at the University of Sydney, reads a wide range of novels from post-war Germany to I...
22 min
1147
Adam Rovner, “In the Shadow of Zion: Promised L...
In his book, In the Shadow of Zion: Promised Lands Before Israel (New York University Press, 2014), Adam Rovner, Associate Professor of English and Jewish Literature at the University of Denver, explores the possibilities for Jewish homelands before th...
29 min
1148
Roberta Rosenthal Kwall, “The Myth of the Cultu...
In The Myth of the Cultural Jew: Culture and Law in Jewish Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2015), Roberta Rosenthal Kwall, the Raymond P. Niro Professor of Intellectual Property Law at DePaul University College of Law,
28 min
1149
Jonathan Garb, “Yearnings of the Soul: Psycholo...
In Yearnings of the Soul: Psychological Thought in Modern Kabbalah (University of Chicago Press, 2015), Jonathan Garb, the Gershom Scholem Professor in the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
28 min
1150
Peter Trawny, “Heidegger and the Myth of a Jewi...
In Heidegger and the Myth of a Jewish World Conspiracy (University of Chicago Press, 2015), Peter Trawny, professor of philosophy and founder and director of the Martin Heidegger Institute at the University of Wuppertal,
19 min