New Books in Jewish Studies
- Episódios
- 600
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- várias vezes por semana
- Último episódio
- 11 nov 2026
Sobre o podcast
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies
Episódios 600
Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews
In the West, World War II is commonly understood as the Allies’ struggle against Nazism. Often elided, if not simply forgotten, is the Soviet Union’s crucial role in that fight. With World Enemy No. 1: Nazi …
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In the West, World War II is commonly understood as the Allies’ struggle against Nazism. Often elided, if not simply forgotten, is the Soviet Union’s crucial role in that fight. With World Enemy No. 1: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews, Jochen Hellbeck rectifies this omission by relocating the ideological core of the conflict. It was not the Western powers but Communist Russia that Nazi Germany viewed as an existential threat. Jewish revolutionaries, the Nazis believed, had seized power in 1917 and were preparing the Soviet state to destroy Germany and the world. And so, on June 22, 1941, a German army of three million attacked the Soviet Union to exterminate “Judeo-Bolshevism,” Hitler’s cardinal obsession. While Europe’s Jews were expelled, exiled, and persecuted by the Nazis, Soviet Jews were immediately slated for elimination. The Soviet lands thus became ground zero for systematic extermination, which was only later extended to all Jews, igniting the Holocaust.
Join YIVO for a discussion with Hellbeck about this book, led by historian Jeffrey Veidlinger.
Purchase World Enemy No. 1: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews here
This lecture originally took place on March 26, 2026.
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Ritual: An Ancient Jewish Perspective with Naftali S. Cohn (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)
A comprehensive study of the Mishnah that argues it manifests an implicit theory of what performing rituals accomplishesJews are known for having many ritual practices. Many of these come from the Bible, but …
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A comprehensive study of the Mishnah that argues it manifests an implicit theory of what performing rituals accomplishes
Jews are known for having many ritual practices. Many of these come from the Bible, but Jewish ritual practice as we know it today is as much a product of the earliest rabbis who lived in the late-second and early-third centuries. These rabbis created the text known as the Mishnah, which collects, develops, and records in great detail rules about the proper way to carry out traditional rituals, what the text terms mitsvot. Naftali S. Cohn’s book Ritual: An Ancient Jewish Perspective (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026) is a comprehensive study of ritual in the Mishnah, focused especially on the fundamental questions of the nature of ritual, what ritual does or accomplishes, and what motivates people to do rituals, all according to the Mishnah’s authors.
Reading the text of the Mishnah closely and drawing widely from the analytic toolbox of ritual studies, Cohn argues that ritual, in the perspective of the Mishnah’s authors, has multiple effects. Performing mitsvot—and refraining from the mitsvot “not to do”—shapes individual bodies by choreographing a person’s interactions with the objects, spaces, times, and other bodies that form the environment in which they act. It shapes collective bodies by enabling social life and creating group identity, even as it establishes differences between people and social hierarchy. Doing mitsvot also activates cultural ideas, connecting the people of Israel to their God, their past, their place, and each other. Repeated ritual action, further, forges body habits and generates the powerful feelings of obligation and, at times, even joy and love, which move people to continue to carry out these rituals. Mitsvot, according to the Mishnah, have the power to shape Israeliteness, or Jewishness, in its every facet. By focusing so much attention on ritual behavior, Cohn shows how the Mishnah can also be understood as a rumination on the fundamental nature of activity itself, of doing, being, moving, and engaging with the world.New Books in Late Antiquity is Presented by Ancient Jew Review
Naftali Coen is chair of religions and cultures at Concordia University in Montreal
Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston
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The Concept of Tolerance in Judaism, Christianity and Islam with Catharina Rachik and Georges Tamer (de Gruyter, 2025)
Is tolerance an achievement of secular modernity that religion has always resisted? The Concept of Tolerance in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (De Gruyter, 2026), the seventh volume in the Key Concepts in …
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Is tolerance an achievement of secular modernity that religion has always resisted? The Concept of Tolerance in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (De Gruyter, 2026), the seventh volume in the Key Concepts in Interreligious Discourses series, says the answer is more complicated. Edited by Catharina Rachik and Georges Tamer of FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg, the book gives one substantial chapter to each tradition and closes with an epilogue in which the editors compare the three.
Menachem Kellner draws on Maimonides to build a Jewish account of tolerance grounded in epistemological humility. The Torah is true, but no human mind, not even Moses’s, grasps that truth completely. Christian Polke treats tolerance as a virtue practiced in the habits of a community, especially in the confession of sin and in reading scripture critically. Anna Akasoy declines to ask whether Islam is “essentially” tolerant or intolerant. She asks instead why that question keeps being put to Islam, and then traces how Muslims have handled difference across scripture, law, theology, Sufism, and political rule.
In this conversation, Tamer and Rachik discuss the series’ “archaeology of religious knowledge.” They explain why “tolerance” works as an analytical category rather than a historical one, and why the limits of tolerance require public justification. Finally, they argue that naming irreconcilable differences gives interreligious life a sturdier foundation than a manufactured consensus. Taking a cue from Goethe, they make the case for moving beyond tolerance toward recognition.
Iqbal Akhtar teaches in the Departments of Religious Studies and Politics & International Relations at Florida International University and is the Executive Director of The East-West Foundation. He is the author of Covenantal Pluralism: The Geopolitics of Interfaith Religious Freedom (Springer, 2026), available open access at this link.
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In Search of the Perfect Romanian with Marius Turda (CEU Press, 2026)
In this episode of the CEU Press Podcast host Andrea Talabér talked to Marius Turda about his new book, In Search of the Perfect Romanian: National Specificity, Racial Degeneration, and Social Selection in …
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In this episode of the CEU Press Podcast host Andrea Talabér talked to Marius Turda about his new book, In Search of the Perfect Romanian: National Specificity, Racial Degeneration, and Social Selection in Modern Romania. We discussed the importance of the social and medical sciences in understanding Romanian nationalism, the intellectual sources of Romanian nationalist thought, and the various discussions surrounding biopolitical debates in interwar Romania amongst other topics.
You can purchase a copy here. The book is also available Open Access here.
The CEU Press Podcast delves into various aspects of the publishing process: from crafting a book proposal, finding a publisher, responding to peer review feedback on the manuscript, to the subsequent distribution, promotion and marketing of academic books. We also talk to series editors and authors, who will share their experiences of getting published and discuss their series or books.
Interested in CEU Press’s publications? Click here to find out more: https://www.aup.nl/en/imprint/ceu-press
Stay tuned for future episodes and subscribe to our podcast to be the first to be notified.
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Almost True: Stories from Jerusalem
Most people know Israel through headlines. In Almost True: Stories From Jerusalem, Tal Shalev invites readers to discover it through stories.Set in Jerusalem and across Israel, these twenty-two stories …
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Most people know Israel through headlines. In Almost True: Stories From Jerusalem, Tal Shalev invites readers to discover it through stories.
Set in Jerusalem and across Israel, these twenty-two stories introduce unforgettable characters navigating friendship, marriage, family, love, loss, and the quiet absurdities of everyday life. A wedding guest faces an impossible social dilemma. A husband struggles to save his marriage. Neighbors misunderstand one another, while parents and children search for common ground.
With humor, compassion, and keen observation, Shalev captures the moments that reveal who we are-not only as Israelis, but as human beings. Beyond the headlines are ordinary people confronting extraordinary choices, finding grace in unexpected places, and discovering that life's deepest truths often arrive disguised as its smallest moments.
Warm, witty, and deeply humane, Almost True: Stories from Jerusalem offers a rarely seen portrait of Israel while celebrating the complexity, resilience, and quiet beauty of everyday life.
Host: Renee Garfinkel
Guest: Tal Shalev
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Holocaust Distortion in Poland: A Comparative European Perspective
Holocaust distortion in Poland involves reshaping or minimizing facts about the Holocaust, often emphasizing Polish victimhood while obscuring instances of local collaboration, participation, or indifference …
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Holocaust distortion in Poland involves reshaping or minimizing facts about the Holocaust, often emphasizing Polish victimhood while obscuring instances of local collaboration, participation, or indifference. It appears in political rhetoric, memory laws, public commemorations, and attacks on critical scholarship. YIVO’s Poland vs. Holocaust History series examines these dynamics and situates the Polish case within a broader European context.
This lecture by Jan Grabowski will examine the phenomenon of Holocaust distortion in Poland within a broader comparative European framework. It explores how historical narratives about the Holocaust are reshaped, minimized, or selectively reinterpreted in public discourse, politics, education, and law. Particular attention will be paid to the interaction between state-sponsored memory policies, nationalist narratives, and scholarly research, as well as to the pressures faced by historians and educators. By comparing developments in Poland with those in other European countries—including Hungary, Lithuania, Germany, and Russia—the lecture highlights both shared patterns and national specificities in confronting difficult pasts. The discussion addresses legal instruments, public controversies, commemorative practices, and the role of civil society in shaping Holocaust memory. Ultimately, the lecture asks how and why Holocaust distortion emerges, what distinguishes distortion from legitimate historical debate, and what the consequences are for democratic culture, academic freedom, and Europe’s collective understanding of the Holocaust.
Purchase Whitewash: Poland and the Jews by Jan Grabowski here
This lecture originally took place on March 24, 2026.
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I Am The Other: Debating the Role of Islam in a Divided America with Imam Azhar Subedar and Robert Gary (Liminal Space, 2025)
What happens when a devout imam and a secular Jewish former federal prosecutor decide to talk about the things that divide them rather than the things they share? In I Am the Other: Debating the Role of Islam …
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What happens when a devout imam and a secular Jewish former federal prosecutor decide to talk about the things that divide them rather than the things they share? In I Am the Other: Debating the Role of Islam in a Divided America (Liminal Space Publications, 2025), Imam Azhar Subedar and Robert Gary offer an unusual model of dialogue. It is not a search for common ground but a sustained, candid engagement with disagreement. Their collaboration began when Gary, attending one of Subedar’s talks at a Florida church, asked a deliberately provocative question about a difficult Qur’anic passage. Subedar answered it directly rather than deflecting, and a friendship and five-year writing partnership followed.
In this conversation, Subedar and Gary reflect on how September 11 reshaped the place of Muslims in American public life. They discuss how selectively quoted scripture and the actions of extremist groups have sustained Islamophobia, and what Subedar sees as the American Muslim community’s own failures of silence and disengagement. They describe how the book, nearly finished on October 7, 2023, had to be reopened. Even so, their dialogue survived a moment when many Jewish–Muslim partnerships collapsed. Subedar argues that much interfaith work failed because it was built on agreement alone. Gary contends that Jews and Muslims, so often targeted by the same forces, have a shared stake in the survival of American democracy.
The conversation closes on their proposals for rebuilding trust through engagement and fact-checking. It also addresses the resistance their public dialogues have met, and why they believe that differing without demonizing is the work this moment requires.
Imam Azhar Subedar is a Canadian-raised Islamic scholar and has served as an imam in American Muslim communities since 2002. Robert Gary is a former prosecutor in the Organized Crime Section of the U.S. Department of Justice and teaches on the Qur’an and geopolitics at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
Iqbal Akhtar is teaches in the Departments of Religious Studies and Politics & International Relations at Florida International University and is the Executive Director of The East-West Foundation. His recent book is Covenantal Pluralism, an open-access book published by Springer Nature. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-032-31479-6
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Sacred Betrayal: How the French Catholic Church Broke Its Pledge to Protect Jews During the Holocaust (Harvard UP, 2026)
When German occupiers rolled into Paris in June 1940, they arrived wary of the French Catholic Church. In a country where more than 80 percent of citizens were Catholic, bishops held enormous moral sway. During …
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When German occupiers rolled into Paris in June 1940, they arrived wary of the French Catholic Church. In a country where more than 80 percent of citizens were Catholic, bishops held enormous moral sway. During the 1930s, many used their positions to forcefully condemn the rise of Nazism. But as the persecution of Jews escalated during the Occupation, every bishop in France maintained a deafening silence. In fact, the Church stood publicly alongside Marshal Pétain’s collaborationist Vichy regime. Even when bishops famously broke silence to protest the deportation of Jews in 1942—a moment long remembered as one of moral awakening—they quickly retreated, discouraging further defiance.
The French Church’s public silence during the Holocaust is no secret. But as Aliza Luft shows, private interactions between bishops, French Jewish leaders, and Vichy officials were just as consequential. Turning to letters, diaries, and records of private conversations, Luft traces the moral dilemmas and calculated choices that shaped these hidden negotiations. As Jewish leaders turned to the Church for information and protection, bishops repeatedly assured them of the Church’s sympathy and support. These guarantees from the nation’s highest moral authorities, combined with the false promises of Vichy officials, encouraged French Jews to place their faith in relationships and republican ideals that proved tragically hollow.
Drawing on years of archival research, Sacred Betrayal: How the French Catholic Church Broke Its Pledge to Protect Jews During the Holocaust (Harvard UP, 2026) is a harrowing account of how genocide unfolds day by day—not only through spectacular violence, but also through misleading assurances, quiet capitulations, and broken promises.
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Hidden Scrolls, Buried Bibles: How We Discover the Sacred Past with Eva Mroczek (Yale UP, 2026)
From the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Zohar, this is the untold story behind our enduring fascination with lost and found religious texts The Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest biblical manuscripts ever …
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From the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Zohar, this is the untold story behind our enduring fascination with lost and found religious texts The Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest biblical manuscripts ever found, were discovered in a cave by a shepherd and his goat. This story is mostly true, and it is not the first such tale about long-lost books. Legend has it that the Zohar--the foundational text of Jewish Kabbalah--was lost for centuries before being discovered in a cave by a farmer, who sold it to spice merchants as packing material. It was only when a scholar picked through a trash heap and joined the fragments together that the world recovered its mystical secrets. These are just two of many tales recounting the discovery of ancient religious manuscripts. Tracing a time-honored pattern of storytelling about lost and recovered sacred texts, in Hidden Scrolls, Buried Bibles: How We Discover the Sacred Past (Yale UP, 2026) Eva Mroczek reveals a surprising feature of Jewish and Christian thought: the idea that scripture is not complete--that it is partly lost, destroyed, or hidden--is not only the stuff of fantasy novels and conspiracy theories. Mroczek shows that modern scholarly mythmaking is more tightly bound with Jewish and Christian legends than we may think. Through the lens of discovery tales, this innovative book explores how traditions live in tension with the possibility of unknown pasts and surprising discoveries.
New books in late antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review
Eva Mroczek is Simon and Riva Spatz Chair in Jewish Studies; Professor; Religious Studies; Undergraduate Advisor for Religious Studies
Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston
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The Expanded Editions of Elie Wiesel with Rabbi Irving "Yitz" Greenberg and Ariel Burger
In this latest Books for Better Understanding video from Notre Dame Press, Jake Kildoo facilitates a conversation between Rabbi Irving "Yitz" Greenberg and Ariel Burger about the new introductions they wrote …
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In this latest Books for Better Understanding video from Notre Dame Press, Jake Kildoo facilitates a conversation between Rabbi Irving "Yitz" Greenberg and Ariel Burger about the new introductions they wrote for NDP's recently released expanded editions of two Elie Wiesel classics: Four Hasidic Masters and Their Struggle Against Melancholy and Five Biblical Portraits. Both Greenberg and Burger share illuminating insights about the works, as well as reflections on their friendships with Wiesel.
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Coming of Age As Syrian Jewish Mexicans: The Pragmatics of Diaspora with Evelyn María Dean-Olmsted (Brill, 2025)
Drora interviewed Dr. Eveyln Maria Dean-Olmsted about her book, Coming of Age as Syrian Jewish Mexicans: The Pragmatics of Diaspora (Brill, 2025), published by Brill in 2026. Dr. Dean-Olmsted is a linguistic …
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Drora interviewed Dr. Eveyln Maria Dean-Olmsted about her book, Coming of Age as Syrian Jewish Mexicans: The Pragmatics of Diaspora (Brill, 2025), published by Brill in 2026. Dr. Dean-Olmsted is a linguistic anthropologist who lived with the Jewish community in Mexico City for a time to research this book. The community includes four distinct groups: Ashkenazi, Aleppans, Damascenes, and Ottoman Sephardim. She explained how these communities formed in the early 20th century following migration from the Ottoman Empire and later Syria and Lebanon, with each group maintaining separate institutions for social and religious purposes. Evelyn noted that while these communities were once strictly separated, there is now more mixing between them, though specific ethnic and geographic identifications remain important within the community.
Dean-Olmsted discussed increased social mixing and institutional collaboration between different Jewish communities, noting that intermarriages between Ashkenazi and Syrian Jews have become more normal though family dynamics can still be tense. She explained that young people are actively navigating questions about religious practice and lifestyle choices, with many experiencing a "holy struggle" she terms "Le'heavec" - referencing Jacob wrestling with an angel - as they make personalized decisions about their Judaism. She described this as an ongoing process that counters stereotypes about Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews' religiosity, while noting that community pressure remains strong, particularly for those who don't fit traditional molds.
As an example, they discussed the tebilah ceremony of immersing in a mikveh before one's wedding. In the traditional Syrian communities this is cause for a large party and in the Ashkenazi community, which has been seeping in to all communities through ultra-orthodox Rabbis and classes, it is a very quiet private affair. This struggle to understand what is one's Judaism and how do we rethink our heritage while staying true to it and our community was a key part of the discussion.
Continue to struggle with the future of our heritage by following and participating in Jewish Tapestry talks and events.
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The Koren Tanakh Graphic Novel - Bereshit Volume 1: The Beginning with Jordan B Gorfinkel (Koren Publishers, 2026)
What if you could experience the opening chapters of the Torah as a graphic novel—without losing the depth, complexity, or ambiguity of the original text? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with writer …
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What if you could experience the opening chapters of the Torah as a graphic novel—without losing the depth, complexity, or ambiguity of the original text? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with writer and creator Jordan B. Gorfinkel to discuss The Koren Magerman Tanakh Graphic Novel: Bereshit, Volume 1: The Beginning (Koren Publishers, 2026), a visually stunning reimagining of Genesis.
From the first light of Creation through Eden, the Flood, and the Tower of Babel, the book brings the opening chapters of Bereshit to life in an entirely new way. But this is more than an illustrated Bible. Gorfinkel and his creative team ask a fundamental question: What kind of human being can become God's partner in creating a just and compassionate world?
Working alongside Israeli artist Yael Nathan, Gorfinkel combines cinematic storytelling with traditional Jewish interpretation, drawing on Tanakh, Midrash, archaeology, history, and centuries of Jewish commentary. The result preserves the full Hebrew biblical text while using the visual language of graphic novels to illuminate details, tensions, and layers of meaning that readers may have overlooked.
Together, Gorfinkel and Katz explore what happens when one of the world's oldest stories is told through one of its newest visual forms—and whether seeing Genesis differently can help us understand it differently, too.
About the Guest:
Jordan B. Gorfinkel (“Gorf”) is a cartoonist, musician, producer, and storyteller best known for his nearly decade-long career managing the Batman franchise at DC Comics, where he oversaw more than 2,000 stories across multiple media. His work has inspired comics, films, television, and games, including Birds of Prey and The Dark Knight Rises. He is also the creator of the bestselling Passover Haggadah Graphic Novel, which combines traditional Jewish text with the visual language of comics. Through his studio, Avalanche Comics Entertainment, Gorf creates and teaches storytelling across entertainment, education, and Jewish life. He is the writer and producer of The Koren Magerman Tanakh Graphic Novel, bringing his decades of experience in visual storytelling to the ancient stories of the Bible.About the Host:
Rabbi Marc Katz is the Senior Rabbi at Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, NJ. He is author of the books Yochanan’s Gamble: Judaism’s Pragmatic Approach to Life (JPS) chosen as a finalist for the PROSE award and The Heart of Loneliness: How Jewish Wisdom Can Help You Cope and Find Comfort (Turner Publishing) which was chosen as a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award.Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
The Kennicott Bible: A Masterpiece of Jewish Book Art with Katrin Kogman-Appel (Bodleian Library, 2023)
Katrin Kogman-Appel is a professor of Medieval Jewish history with research focusing on book culture, readers, and reading practices in medieval Europe and beyond. In The Kennicott Bible: A Masterpiece of …
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Katrin Kogman-Appel is a professor of Medieval Jewish history with research focusing on book culture, readers, and reading practices in medieval Europe and beyond. In The Kennicott Bible: A Masterpiece of Jewish Book Art (Bodleian Library, 2023) she discusses the text of the 24 canonized books of the Bible that is paired with David Kimchi's grammatical treatise “Sefer Miklol”. Katrin discussed the Kennecott Bible, a medieval Hebrew manuscript that contains unique illustrations and Masoretic text annotations. She explained that the manuscript draws inspiration from various sources including the Severa Bible and playing cards from the Rhineland and Netherlands, with some illustrations depicting animals in unusual positions and a political allegory involving hares, wolves, cats, and mice. Katrin described the Masoretic text as a lexical apparatus designed for precision in transmitting the canonical Hebrew text, and emphasized that the Bible served as a status symbol and public art piece for Jewish elites despite having no public art in synagogues.
A collection of reproduced images from the Kennicott Bible, a remarkable artifact from the Middle Ages. The Kennicott Bible is one of the most celebrated Hebrew Bibles that survives today, having delighted readers since its creation in 1476. Originating from La Coruña in northern Spain, it features lavish carpet pages, gold leaf silhouettes, and abundant marginal decorations. This extraordinary manuscript is a treasure trove of history, culture, devotion, art, and cross-cultural collaboration. This book features reproductions of the decorated pages of the stunning manuscript, accompanied by four chapters authored by experts in the fields of Bible study, book history, and medieval Jewish art. The authors discuss the Bible from several perspectives, explaining the Hebrew text of the Bible, the scribe who created the pages, the layout and paleography, and the illuminator who produced the Bible's decoration and its imagery. This volume also includes an analysis of the early medieval commentary on the Old Testament, the Masorah. Richly illustrated throughout, this beautiful book makes a treasure of Jewish art available for a new audience, alongside the latest scholarship on its origins, provenance, and creation.
Analyzing these ancient texts in historical context helps to enrich our understanding of the effects and reactions to historical and cultural events.
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Poles and Jews: A Call for Myth Reconstruction with Jennifer Stark-Blumenthal (Academic Studies Press, 2024)
Nationalism’s global resurgence has upended societies. With the rise of the Polish nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, and American Jewry’s swift reaction to its law punishing people who allege Polish …
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Nationalism’s global resurgence has upended societies. With the rise of the Polish nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, and American Jewry’s swift reaction to its law punishing people who allege Polish complicity in Holocaust crimes, both sides have revived old stereotypes. Stark-Blumenthal argues that American Jews’ disgust with Polish nationalism ought to be checked by America’s centuries-old embrace of white supremacy. Poles and Jews: A Call for Myth Reconstruction (Academic Studies Press, 2024) confronts both the anti-Polonism deeply embedded in the American Jewish community and Poland’s enduring relationship with antisemitism. Armed with two decades of research and in-depth interviews with scholars, community leaders, and laity in Poland and the U.S., Stark-Blumenthal dispels myths and considers new approaches to this relationship.
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Read This Over Shabbos: Reading Jewish History in the Parash with David Bashevkin (Maggid, 2026)
What happens when you read the weekly Torah portion alongside the strange, fascinating, and sometimes uncomfortable story of modern Jewish history? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with Rabbi David …
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What happens when you read the weekly Torah portion alongside the strange, fascinating, and sometimes uncomfortable story of modern Jewish history? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with Rabbi David Bashevkin to discuss I Read This Over Shabbos: Reading Jewish History in the Parasha (Maggid, 2026), a book that turns Shabbat reading into an intellectual journey through the Jewish past.
Bashevkin takes familiar Torah stories and places them in surprising conversation with the events and ideas that have shaped modern Jewish life. Noah’s ark leads to the Industrial Revolution. The biblical census opens a window onto the modern haredi draft debate. Korah’s rebellion becomes a lens for understanding the rise of Marxism. Along the way, Bashevkin explores questions that remain deeply relevant: Is the founding of Israel a messianic moment? How should we understand rabbinic authority centuries after its emergence? Can political disagreements justify divisions among Jews? And how did the revival of Hebrew transform Jewish identity?
The essays move freely between Jewish history, philosophy, psychoanalysis, literature, and traditional sources. They aren't conventional Torah sermons or academic lectures; instead, they are invitations to make unexpected connections and to see both the Torah and Jewish history with fresh eyes. Each essay also ends with suggested books, turning Bashevkin's own reading into an invitation for listeners to keep exploring.
Together, Bashevkin and Katz explore what happens when the weekly parasha becomes a doorway into the Jewish historical imagination—and why Shabbat might be the perfect time to slow down, pick up a book, and reconnect with the story of our people.
About the Guest:
David Bashevkin is founder of 18Forty, a media and educational platform leading conversations on Jewish faith, identity, and community, and host of its flagship podcast. He serves as Assistant Clinical Professor of Jewish Values at Yeshiva University’s Sy Syms School of Business and is a rebbe at Isaac Breuer College. David has been rejected from several prestigious fellowships and awards.
About the Host:
Rabbi Marc Katz is the Rabbi at Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, NJ. He is author of the books Yochanan’s Gamble: Judaism’s Pragmatic Approach to Life (JPS) chosen as a finalist for the PROSE award and The Heart of Loneliness: How Jewish Wisdom Can Help You Cope and Find Comfort (Turner Publishing) which was chosen as a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award.
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Yiddish Scholarship Comes to America: The YIVO Institute at 100 with Kalman Weiser (Wayne State UP, 2026)
This comprehensive history of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research—a groundbreaking American Jewish cultural organization, library, and research center—details its longstanding efforts to preserve eastern …
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This comprehensive history of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research—a groundbreaking American Jewish cultural organization, library, and research center—details its longstanding efforts to preserve eastern European Jewish culture during a century of genocide and mass emigration. Founded in 1925, YIVO was a global organization with headquarters in Vilna until World War II. It represented the symbolic pinnacle of building a modern, secular Yiddish culture.
Yet post-war, YIVO struggled to establish itself on a new continent, to reclaim what had survived of its Vilna collections, to document a lost world, and to impart the value of eastern European Jewish history and culture to new generations. Through the institute's steady commitment to establishing itself in New York and beyond, Yiddish language learning and scholarship became a crucial part of post-Holocaust Jewish life in a time when Hebrew was increasingly promoted in Jewish communities. Drawing on extensive archival research and oral histories, Weiser focuses on the transitional period of the YIVO Institute from 1940 to 1970 and showcases how the institute carved its own path toward scholarship and public engagement that remained true to its founding ethos—"from the folk, for the folk, and with the folk"—while acclimating to American society and mainstream Jewish culture.
Kalman Weiser is the Silber Family Professor of Modern Jewish Studies and director of the Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University.
Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.
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A Room of His Own: Joseph Brodsky and the Making of a Bilingual Poet with Daria S. Smirnova (Academic Studies Press, 2025)
A Room of His Own: Joseph Brodsky and the Making of a Bilingual Poet (Academic Studies Press, 2025) makes the original and persuasive claim that Brodsky’s force as a transnational poet derives paradoxically …
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A Room of His Own: Joseph Brodsky and the Making of a Bilingual Poet (Academic Studies Press, 2025) makes the original and persuasive claim that Brodsky’s force as a transnational poet derives paradoxically from an inward-looking stance that privileges “the trope of the room” and a practice of self-translation that is faithful to his own internal poetics rather than the poetic norms of the target tradition. The resulting bilingual poetics is one that, though not universally accepted by English readers, ultimately had a profound effect on the Anglo-American literary tradition and anticipated certain foreignizing tendencies that have become central to translation studies and theories of transnationalism. No less powerful than the book’s thesis is the elegant analyses, which encompass Brodsky’s Russian poetry, his translations from Russian to English, and his English-language essays.
Daria Smirnova holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Oregon and a degree in Linguistics from Russia. Inspired by years of traveling between languages and cultures, her research explores literary translation, bilingualism, and transmediation. Daria's current archival research examines the role of translation in shaping literary canons.
Amber Nickell is Assistant Professor of History at Louisiana State University, Editor at H-Ukraine, and Host at NBN Jewish Studies, Ukrainian Studies, and Eastern Europe.
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The Jew Who Would Be King: A True Story of Shipwreck, Survival, and Scandal in Victorian Africa with Adam Rovner (U California Press, 2025)
This vivid reconstruction of one man’s life reveals the harsh realities and moral ambiguities of colonial power.The Jew Who Would Be King: A True Story of Shipwreck, Survival, and Scandal in Victorian Africa …
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This vivid reconstruction of one man’s life reveals the harsh realities and moral ambiguities of colonial power.
The Jew Who Would Be King: A True Story of Shipwreck, Survival, and Scandal in Victorian Africa (U California Press, 2025) tells the story of Nathaniel Isaacs—a nineteenth-century British Jew who helped establish the Zulu kingdom only to become a ruthless warlord and slaveholder. Isaacs’ thrilling journey begins with his shipwreck on the shores of Zululand and proceeds to ports across West Africa, including Freetown, Sierra Leone. There, tasked by the colonial governor to end the local slave trade, Isaacs brokered deals that reinforced his own power.
Adam Rovner’s meticulous archival research in England, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and St. Helena, coupled with his own travels to the remnants of Isaacs’ island stronghold in Guinea, brings this complex figure to life. Through Isaacs’ story, Rovner exposes the entangled forces of Jewish emancipation and antisemitism, slavery and abolition, the stark dichotomies of civilization and “savagery,” and the creation of whiteness versus Blackness.Adam Rovner is Associate Professor of English and Jewish Literature at the University of Denver. He is the author of In the Shadow of Zion: Promised Lands Before Israel (New York University Press, 2014).
Geraldine Gudefin is a modern Jewish historian researching Jewish migrations, family life, and legal pluralism. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939.
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Who Gets to Write History? Wikibiases.org by Shlomit Aharoni Lir
Most of us use Wikipedia without thinking very much about it. A name comes up in conversation, an argument breaks out, or we suddenly need to know what happened in, for example, 1948—and within seconds …
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Most of us use Wikipedia without thinking very much about it. A name comes up in conversation, an argument breaks out, or we suddenly need to know what happened in, for example, 1948—and within seconds, Wikipedia offers us a clean, confident answer.
But who decided what that answer would be?
Who chose which facts belonged in the opening paragraph and which could wait until paragraph fifteen? Who determined which sources were authoritative?
My guest on this podcast is Dr. Shlomit Lir, a researcher at the University of Haifa and Bar-Ilan University who specializes in the politics of knowledge—the often invisible ways power influences what a society accepts as fact.
Dr. Lir’s research began with questions about gender and participation on Wikipedia. She found that although the platform presents itself as open to everyone, not everyone feels equally welcome—or possesses equal influence—inside its editorial culture.
Her latest project, WikiBiases, turns to English Wikipedia’s treatment of Israel, Zionism, Jewish history, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By examining revision histories, changes in terminology, patterns of sourcing, article structure, and the experiences of volunteer editors, she argues that bias rarely arrives as one spectacularly false statement. It develops gradually: a sentence disappears, a source is dismissed, a disputed interpretation moves into the opening paragraph, and a different account of history begins to look settled.
The stakes extend far beyond Wikipedia. Its articles shape search results and influence journalists. They supply information to artificial-intelligence systems. If distorted information passes from Wikipedia into AI-generated material, and that material eventually returns as a source, we may be creating a hall of mirrors in which repetition gradually acquires the authority of truth.
Who gets to write history? Who gets to challenge it? And when thousands of small edits accumulate, at what point does editing become a quiet rewriting of the past?
Host: Renee Garfinkel
Guest: Shlomit Lir
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Credit to the Nation: Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Bankers and the Shaping of American Finance, 1873–1930 with Rebecca Kobrin (Harvard UP, 2026)
From a leading historian, the story of how entrepreneurial Jewish immigrants transformed commercial banking and enabled the economic and social advancement of Jews in America.What are immigrants to do when …
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From a leading historian, the story of how entrepreneurial Jewish immigrants transformed commercial banking and enabled the economic and social advancement of Jews in America.
What are immigrants to do when business opportunities abound in their new home, but banks refuse essential financial support? How could they make the journey in the first place without helping hands? In this lively history, Rebecca Kobrin chronicles the turn-of-the-twentieth-century Jewish immigrants who stepped up by doing the lending themselves. Arriving from the Russian Empire and settling primarily in New York, they made livelihoods by assisting fellow Jews so they could purchase passage to the United States and, after arriving, obtain credit that other lenders would not dare provide.
Credit to the Nation: Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Bankers and the Shaping of American Finance, 1873–1930 (Harvard UP, 2026) traces the novel practices of bankers who not only enabled the flourishing of American Jewry but also revolutionized the US financial industry. Drawing on previously unexamined archival materials in Russian, Yiddish, German, and English, Kobrin tells a story that is also crucial to the history of New York, as immigrant bankers’ financing of real estate transformed wide swathes of the city. Lenders drove a boom in the prices of tenement buildings, but heavy speculation eventually precipitated the downfall of immigrant banking. Kobrin notes in particular the case of the Bank of United States—a private lender catering primarily to Jewish businessmen—which the Federal Reserve refused to bail out from bankruptcy in 1930.
Immigrants’ grasping for credit, and the rise and fall of immigrant banks, gave way to a contemporary banking industry that, ironically, refuses credit to today’s immigrants. Kobrin reminds us that now, as before, the denial of credit pushes entrepreneurial Americans into unregulated money-lending and the trap of endless debt.Rebecca Kobrin, author of Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora, is Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History at Columbia University, where she codirects the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies.
Geraldine Gudefin is a modern Jewish historian researching Jewish migrations, family life, and legal pluralism. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939.
The book can be purchased on the Harvard University Press website: Credit to the Nation. Use code CRE30 to receive a 30% discount.
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The Last of the Ellis Island Jews: A Brooklyn Memoir with Joel Dinerstein (SUNY Press, 2026)
Joel Dinerstein's The Last of the Ellis Island Jews (SUNY Press, 2026) is a tragicomic memoir of a dysfunctional, working-class Brooklyn Jewish family that illuminates both the vitality of urban life in the …
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Joel Dinerstein's The Last of the Ellis Island Jews (SUNY Press, 2026) is a tragicomic memoir of a dysfunctional, working-class Brooklyn Jewish family that illuminates both the vitality of urban life in the twentieth century and the social turmoil of white flight. As a child of immigrants born to older parents, Dinerstein has a unique perspective on four generations--from his grandparents escaping Russia's pogroms to his parents' embattled marriage to his older Boomer siblings (split between feminist and Republican politics) to his own hippie hopes. As a white teenager in majority Black public schools, Dinerstein's firsthand experience led to his academic career as a scholar of race and music. Yet his family fits no paradigm of Jewish success due to a father with rage and gambling problems, resulting in the four siblings escaping early to the Brooklyn streets. As a family growing up with a diasporic identity, the Dinersteins provide a primer of ethnic Jewish culture through iconic scenes: a selfish Seder, a chaotic Bar Mitzvah, a videotaped bris, an allergy attack at Dachau, a staring contest with the Rebbe. Most of all, The Last of the Ellis Island Jews is a chronicle of lost worlds.
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Antisemitism, an American Tradition with Pamela S. Nadell (Norton, 2025)
Pamela S. Nadell holds the Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender History and is Director of the Jewish Studies Program. A specialist in American Jewish history and women’s history, she teaches a variety …
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Pamela S. Nadell holds the Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender History and is Director of the Jewish Studies Program. A specialist in American Jewish history and women’s history, she teaches a variety of courses in Jewish civilization. Pamela Nadell’s books include America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today (W.W. Norton, 2019), named Jewish Book of the Year by the Jewish Book Council. Reviewed in the New York Times, America’s Jewish Women was praised as “a welcome addition to the American historical canon.”
A past president of the Association for Jewish Studies, Nadell’s other titles include Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women’s Ordination, 1889–1985 (Beacon Press, 1998).
She consults for museums including the Weizman National Museum of American Jewish History and the Tree of Life Humanity Center.
She lectures widely, frequently appears on podcasts, and has written for, among others, the Washington Post, The Conversation, and Hadassah Magazine. She has testified before Congress about antisemitism on college campuses several times, most recently in the December 2023 hearing with the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Pamela S. Nadell’s Antisemitism, an American Tradition (2025) argues that antisemitism is not a recent anomaly in the United States but a deep-rooted, recurring feature of American life from colonial times to the present. Nadell traces nearly four centuries of anti-Jewish hatred—from 17th‑century colonial prejudices and religious test oaths, through 19th‑century exclusion, the “high tide” of the 1930s, and into today’s surge—showing how old tropes about “evil Jews” keep reappearing in new forms. She foregrounds the experiences and voices of Jewish men, women, and children, documenting how antisemitism shaped everyday life, opportunities, and communal strategies.
The book stresses that antisemitism cuts across politics, race, and religion; it is not confined to one party or movement but has appeared on multiple sides of American society. Alongside chronicling hate, Nadell highlights how Jews fought back—through advocacy, legal action, institution-building, and solidarity with other groups. Rather than treating U.S. antisemitism as a side note to European history, Nadell makes it the central subject across 400 years, insisting it is an “American tradition” in its own right. She explicitly aims to tell the story “through the eyes of its victims,” using personal and communal memories to show impact, not just ideology. The book connects classic Christian anti-Judaism and older stereotypes to modern conspiracy theories, showing how they reinforce each other rather than replacing one another. Antisemitism is often described as a millennia-old hatred rooted in late antique and medieval Christian Europe.
Nadell’s contribution is to relocate and reframe that story within U.S. history. She demonstrates that when Europeans immigrated to America, they brought these ancient prejudices with them, and those ideas became embedded in American institutions and culture from the start. By documenting persistent patterns—test oaths, quotas, job discrimination, propaganda, violence—she challenges narratives of American exceptionalism that treat antisemitism as marginal or limited to extreme moments. Her work helps scholars and policymakers see contemporary spikes not as isolated outbreaks but as the latest phase of a long-standing American pattern.
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Matthew Montgomery, "An Intercessor Like Moses: A Key Component of the Psalter's Message" (European Hebrew Journal, 2026)
In this episode of the New Books Network, Željko Stanojević speaks with Matthew Montgomery about his article “An Intercessor Like Moses: A Key Component of the Psalter’s Message”, published in the European …
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In this episode of the New Books Network, Željko Stanojević speaks with Matthew Montgomery about his article “An Intercessor Like Moses: A Key Component of the Psalter’s Message”, published in the European Hebrew Journal.
Montgomery’s study asks how the final form of the Masoretic Psalter communicates hope after the collapse of Judah and the Babylonian exile. Building on the widely recognized observation that Book III of the Psalter engages the downfall of the Southern Kingdom while Book IV places unusual emphasis on Moses, he traces textual signals connecting these sections with Exodus 32–34. Particular attention is given to the introduction of Moses and Aaron, the clustering of references to them in Books IV and V, and repeated allusions to Moses’ intercession after Israel’s covenant-breaking at Sinai.
The central argument is that these features are not isolated reminiscences. Read together, they help shape the Psalter’s theological and literary message. Moses appears as the paradigmatic representative who can stand between God and a disobedient people, plead on their behalf, and turn away divine anger. Montgomery argues that, in the post-exilic horizon of the Psalter, this Mosaic pattern contributes to an emerging hope for an intercessory figure capable of mediating between God and a covenant-breaking community. The interview explores what this proposal contributes to final-form readings of the Psalter and why the arrangement of psalms can itself become a vehicle of meaning.
Matthew Montgomery is a scholar of the Hebrew Bible whose research includes Psalms, scriptural reuse, rhetoric, literary coherence, and the shaping of biblical collections. His article was published on 18 June 2026 after double-blind peer review, with Prof. em. Dr. Dr. h.c. Eckart Otto serving as Academic Editor. The article is freely available through its permanent DOI.
Montgomery will also speak at the EHJ International Scholarly Online Conference 2026, “New Discoveries and New Directions in Biblical, Hebrew, and Theological Studies”. On 8 November 2026 at 22:00 CET, he will present “Neither Story or Arbitrary: The Rhetoric of Juxtaposition in the MT Psalter”. The presentation develops a related concern with how the Psalter’s ordering creates rhetorical and theological effects without requiring readers to treat the collection either as one continuous story or as an arbitrary anthology.
The host, Željko Stanojević, is a Hebrew linguist, biblical philologist, lexicographer, translator, and scholar of Biblical and Modern Hebrew. He is President of the Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature in Belgrade, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the European Hebrew Journal, and a host on the New Books Network Biblical Studies channel. His work includes Biblical Hebrew, Semitic linguistics, textual criticism, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Bible translation, biblical onomastics, and Hebrew lexicography.
This episode will be of interest to readers and listeners working on Psalms, the Hebrew Bible, Moses and Aaron, Exodus traditions, intercession, post-exilic theology, ancient Hebrew, biblical allusion, textual criticism, and the literary shaping of Scripture.
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Giuseppe Motta, "Jewish Refugees and the International Community Between the Two World Wars: Beyond the State" (Routledge, 2026)
In this episode of New Books Network, Željko Stanojević speaks with historian Giuseppe Motta about Jewish Refugees and the International Community Between the Two World Wars: Beyond the State (Routledge, 2026) …
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In this episode of New Books Network, Željko Stanojević speaks with historian Giuseppe Motta about Jewish Refugees and the International Community Between the Two World Wars: Beyond the State (Routledge, 2026), a study of Jewish displacement, statelessness, humanitarian action, international law, and international institutions between the First and Second World Wars.
Drawing on extensive archival research in the records of the League of Nations and the Joint Distribution Committee, Motta reconstructs the political and legal environment in which Jewish refugees from East-Central Europe struggled to find protection after the collapse of empires and the redrawing of national borders. The book follows the refugee question from the aftermath of World War I through the rise of Nazism and the Évian Conference of 1938, asking how states, international organizations, humanitarian agencies, and Jewish institutions responded to people increasingly left outside effective national protection.
A central theme of the conversation is the tension captured in the subtitle, Beyond the State. The interwar refugee crisis exposed a basic contradiction: refugees required protection that crossed national borders, while international law remained dependent on the sovereignty and political choices of individual states. Motta explains how the Jewish refugee question became connected to statelessness, minority protection, humanitarian responsibility, migration control, legal identity, and international cooperation across Europe.
The discussion also explores the wider forces surrounding Jewish displacement: the legacies of World War I, new states in Central and Eastern Europe, nationalism, antisemitism, Bolshevism, Zionism, migration policy, and the restrictive political climate of the 1920s and 1930s. Particular attention is given to the League of Nations and the Joint Distribution Committee, whose archives reveal both institutional debates and the practical difficulties faced by refugees seeking safety and legal recognition.
Rather than treating Jewish refugees only as a prelude to the Holocaust, Motta places the interwar period in its own historical and legal context. This perspective helps explain how ideas later central to international refugee law and human rights developed through earlier crises, experiments, failures, and negotiations.
Giuseppe Motta is Associate Professor of History of International Relations at Sapienza University of Rome and a member of the Editorial Board of the European Hebrew Journal (EHJ).
Motta will also speak at the European Hebrew Journal International Online Conference, New Discoveries and New Directions in Biblical, Hebrew, and Theological Studies. On 7 November 2026 at 19:00 CET, he will lead a live scholarly debate based on this book. His biography, book information, presentation details, and conference session are available on Giuseppe Motta’s conference page.
The interview is hosted by Željko Stanojević, President of the Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature, Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor of the European Hebrew Journal, and a New Books Network host in Biblical Studies. The Belgrade-based Institute promotes international scholarship in Hebrew language, Jewish studies, Biblical studies, Semitic studies, history, religion, and related interdisciplinary fields.
Keywords and themes: Jewish refugees, interwar Europe, League of Nations, Joint Distribution Committee, statelessness, Jewish migration, Évian Conference, antisemitism, minority rights, humanitarianism, refugee law, international law, East-Central Europe, Jewish history, human rights, nationalism, international relations, refugee protection.
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Anthony Julius, "Abraham: The First Jew" (Yale UP, 2025)
Abraham: The First Jew (Yale UP, 2025) is the story of Abraham, the first Jew, portrayed as two lives lived by one person, paralleling the contradictions in Judaism throughout its history In this new biography …
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Abraham: The First Jew (Yale UP, 2025) is the story of Abraham, the first Jew, portrayed as two lives lived by one person, paralleling the contradictions in Judaism throughout its history
In this new biography of Abraham, Judaism’s foundational figure, Anthony Julius offers an account of the origins of a fundamental struggle within Judaism between skepticism and faith, critique and affirmation, thinking for oneself and thinking under the direction of another. Julius describes Abraham’s life as two separate lives, and as a version of the collective life of the Jewish people.
Abraham’s first life is an early adulthood of questioning the polytheism of his home city of Ur Kasdim until its ruler, Nimrod, condemns him to death and he is rescued, he believes, by a miracle. In his second life, Abraham’s focus is no longer on critique but rather on conversion and on his leadership over his growing household, until God’s command that he sacrifice his son Isaac. This test, the Akedah (or “Binding”), ends with another miracle, as he believes, but as Julius argues, it is also a catastrophe for Abraham. The Akedah represents for him an unsurpassed horizon—and in Jewish life thereafter. This book focuses on Abraham as leader of the first Jewish project, Judaism, and the unresolvable, insurmountable crisis that the Akedah represents—both in his leadership and in Judaism itself. Host: Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D.
Guest: Anthony Julius, Deputy Chairman, international law firm of Mishcon de Reya, and professor, University of London.
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Joseph G. Rosenstein, "Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers): The Big Picture" (Academic Studies Press, 2026)
What if Pirkei Avot has a bigger story to tell? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with Joseph G. Rosenstein to discuss Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers): The Big Picture (Academic Studies Press …
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What if Pirkei Avot has a bigger story to tell? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with Joseph G. Rosenstein to discuss Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers): The Big Picture (Academic Studies Press, 2026), a fresh approach to one of Judaism’s most beloved collections of rabbinic wisdom.
The 123 teachings of Pirkei Avot often seem to jump from one subject to another: Torah study, ethics, the afterlife, relationships, leadership, and the responsibilities of living a meaningful Jewish life. Rosenstein argues that beneath this seemingly disconnected collection is a larger conceptual framework. Instead of following the mishnayot in their traditional order, he groups them by theme, revealing connections that can be easy to miss when each teaching is studied on its own.
The result is a new way of seeing Pirkei Avot—not as a collection of isolated aphorisms, but as a coherent work that reflects how Judaism was reshaped in the generations following the destruction of the Temple. Rosenstein also turns the book’s ethical teachings into 90 concrete principles for living, organized into 16 themes and accompanied by kavvanot, short meditations designed to help readers put those ideas into practice.
Together, Rosenstein and Katz explore what Pirkei Avot is really trying to teach, why its teachings were assembled the way they were, and what happens when ancient rabbinic wisdom is read not simply as something to study, but as a guide for how to live.
About the Guest
Joseph G. Rosenstein is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Rutgers University. In addition to his careers in mathematics and mathematics education, he has written extensively on Jewish prayer and thought. He is the author of Reflections on Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers): Not Just What My Rebbe Taught Me and has published the traditional-yet-unconventional prayer books Siddur Eit Ratzon and Machzor Eit Ratzon – Memorable Verses in the Torah. His website, joerosenstein.com, reflects his wide-ranging work in mathematics, education, and Jewish life.
About the Host
Rabbi Marc Katz is the rabbi of Temple Ner Tamid and the author of several books on Jewish thought and the Talmud including Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life (JPS).
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Daniela Gerson, "The Wanderers: A Story of Exile, Survival, and Unexpected Love in the Shadow of World War II" (Grand Central Publishing, 2026)
In The Wanderers: A Story of Exile, Survival, and Unexpected Love in the Shadow of World War II (Grand Central Publishing, 2026), an immigration journalist and her wife trace their family’s intertwined past to …
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In The Wanderers: A Story of Exile, Survival, and Unexpected Love in the Shadow of World War II (Grand Central Publishing, 2026), an immigration journalist and her wife trace their family’s intertwined past to unearth a history of how hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews survived Hitler’s Holocaust at the brutal hands of Stalin—a story that sheds light on the enduring power of hope and love.
Daniela Gerson and her wife, Talia Inlender, met at a picnic in Los Angeles, not knowing that 75 years earlier, their grandparents had left homes only blocks away from each other in a small Polish town, and fled east to Ukraine. The Gersons and the Inlenders would go on parallel odysseys of 5,000 miles to survive the Holocaust—journeys that would, after a deceitful loyalty test from Stalin, put them on cattle cars to a Soviet Gulag, trap them for years in limbo in Central Asia, and would end, after a decade on the run, with new lives built on secrets and lies.
For years, Daniela and Talia simply accepted this painful shared history as a sign that they were b’shert, meant to be. Their families’ refugee past fueled their work: Daniela as an immigration journalist; Talia an immigration attorney. But as Daniela uncovered more, she realized that their grandparents shared this escape path in the Soviet Union with most Polish Jews who survived; a group—sometimes collectively called “the Wanderers”—that is almost entirely absent from popular understanding of World War II. And unlike most Holocaust sagas that focus on the exceptionality of the Nazi genocide, theirs was also a universal story of refugees making impossible decisions when forced to seek safety, protect their children, and find new homes.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies
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An Unchosen People: Jewish Political Reckoning in Interwar Poland
The story of Polish Jewry, pre-Holocaust Europe’s largest Jewish community, is often told as one of creativity and contestation. In his new book, An Unchosen People: Jewish Political Reckoning in Interwar …
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The story of Polish Jewry, pre-Holocaust Europe’s largest Jewish community, is often told as one of creativity and contestation. In his new book, An Unchosen People: Jewish Political Reckoning in Interwar Poland, University of Chicago professor Kenneth B. Moss traces instead a complex and painful story of Polish Jewish reckoning with diasporic vulnerability, nationalism’s terrible potencies, Zionism’s promises, and the necessity of choice. Moss examines the works of Polish Jewry’s most searching thinkers as they confronted political irrationality, state crisis, and the limits of resistance. He reconstructs the desperate creativity of activists seeking to counter despair where they could not redress its causes. And he recovers a lost grassroots history of critical thought and political searching among ordinary Jews, young and powerless, as they struggled to find a viable future for themselves – in Palestine if not in Poland, individually if not communally.
Join Kenneth Moss in conversation with Stanford professor Steven Zipperstein for a discussion on this new publication and the history it unveils.
Buy the book: here
This book talk originally took place on March 2, 2022.
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Agnes Mueller, "Holocaust Migration in German Jewish Literatures" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
In Holocaust Migration in German Jewish Literatures (Cambridge UP, 2026), analysing the past two decades of literature on Holocaust memory and migration stories, Agnes Mueller engages with writers such as …
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In Holocaust Migration in German Jewish Literatures (Cambridge UP, 2026), analysing the past two decades of literature on Holocaust memory and migration stories, Agnes Mueller engages with writers such as W.G. Sebald, Thomas Bernhard, Edgar Hilsenrath, Benjamin Stein, Mirna Funk, Fred Wander, Barbara Honigmann, Julia Franck, Sasha Marianna Salzmann, Olga Grjasnowa, and Kat Kaufmann to explore current debates on Israel, the German Democratic Republic, gender, Jewish and Muslim identity, and antisemitism.
Her new readings of German-language texts by younger authors present robust challenges to entrenched ideas concerning the singularity of the Holocaust, multidirectional memory, and a range of other memory debates. Jewish identity and Muslim identity are shown in direct conversation with other migrants' experiences, and literature is revealed to be a brave space where Holocaust memory is newly imagined. Mueller's study invites a radically new way to think about the Holocaust and sheds new and valuable light on adjacent contemporary discourses.
Agnes Mueller (M.A., LMU Munich, Germany; Ph.D., Vanderbilt U), Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of South Carolina, is an expert on recent and contemporary German literature. She is core faculty in Jewish Studies and affiliated with Women's and Gender Studies. Her essay publications are on German American relations, contemporary literature, German Jewish studies, and Holocaust memory. Her 2004 anthology German Pop Culture: How "American" Is It? (U of Michigan P) is still widely used for teaching and research. Her 2015 monograph is entitled The Inability to Love: Jews, Gender, and America in Recent German Literature, (Northwestern UP), available in German translation as Die Unfähigkeit zu lieben (Königshausen & Neumann, 2017). With Katja Garloff she edited German Jewish Literature After 1990 (Camden House, 2018). In Spring of 2025 she was the Carol Kahn Strauss Fellow in Jewish Studies at the American Academy in Berlin. Her new book, Holocaust Migration in German Jewish Literatures (Cambridge UP, 2026) reveals how, in recent German Jewish literature, Jewish and Muslim migration stories converge to shape the future of Holocaust memory. She is currently at work on a new monograph entitled The Family’s Fight: Resisting State Control, where she investigates how families deal with loved ones who are or were political prisoners, and how that relationship reflects back on authoritarian regimes.
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"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" in Court: The Bern Trial (1933-1935) and the "Antisemitic International"
Between 1933 and 1935, a trial was held in Bern against members of the Swiss extreme right-wing National Front who had distributed “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a widely disseminated antisemitic …
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Between 1933 and 1935, a trial was held in Bern against members of the Swiss extreme right-wing National Front who had distributed “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a widely disseminated antisemitic publication that spread lies about Jews. The real target of the Jewish organizations that initiated the trial, however, was the pamphlet itself, its origin, its dissemination, and its use in Europe's fascist movements.
During the course of the trial, both sides received ample support in the form of material assistance and propaganda. The defendants and their supporters in Nazi Germany were able to rely on an extensive network that had been established in the early 1920s to combat “Judaeo-Bolshevism.” This conspiratorial “Antisemitic International” united German völkisch circles, Italian fascists, Russian monarchists, and French conspiracy theorists. On the other side, the plaintiffs actively sought to expose the “Protocols” as a forgery in the hope that this would counteract their impact.
In this lecture, Michael Hagemeister will use the Bern trial as a case study of Jewish legal self-defense in order to shed light on both the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and the concerted efforts against the “Antisemitic International” in the 1930s, which have received little attention from historians.
Read more about Michael Hagemeister's research on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
This lecture originally took place on April 10, 2024.
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Aqui estão os 42 episódios mais recentes de 600. Os mais antigos estão no feed do podcast.
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