New Books in Jewish Studies
Interview with Scholars of Judaism about their New Books
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- Update frequency
- every day
- Average duration
- 56 minutes
- Episodes
- 1339
- Years Active
- 2009 - 2025
Jeffrey S. Kopstein and Jason Wittenberg, "Intimate Violence: Anti-Jewish Pogroms on the Eve of the Holocaust" (Cornell UP, 2018)
Why do pogroms occur in some localities and not in others? Jeffrey S. Kopstein and Jason Wittenberg examine a particularly brutal wave of violence that occurred across hundreds of predominantly Polis…
01:12:07 |
Wed 19 Jul 2023
Béla Bodó, "Black Humor and the White Terror" (Routledge, 2023)
Béla Bodó's book Black Humor and the White Terror (Routledge, 2023) examines political humor as a reaction to the lost war, the post-war chaos, and antisemitic violence in Hungary between 1918 and 19…
01:16:55 |
Wed 19 Jul 2023
Ben Nadler, "The Jewish Deli: An Illustrated Guide to the Chosen Food" (Chronicle Books, 2023)
Beloved culinary and cultural institutions, Jewish delis are wonderlands of amazing flavors and great food—bright, buttery, briny, sweet, fatty, salty, smoky. . . . In The Jewish Deli: An Illustrated…
00:53:51 |
Tue 18 Jul 2023
Judith Roumani, "Jews in Southern Tuscany During the Holocaust" (Lexington Books, 2020)
The province of Grosseto in southern Tuscany shows two extremes in the treatment of Italian and foreign Jews during the Holocaust. To the east of the province, the Jews of Pitigliano, a four hundred-…
01:31:23 |
Sat 15 Jul 2023
David Curwin, "Kohelet: A Map to Eden" (Maggid, 2023)
The book of Kohelet or Ecclesiastes is one of the most challenging biblical books to comprehend, yet it is traditionally read on every Sukkot, the Feast of Booths. In a groundbreaking work, David Cur…
00:16:46 |
Thu 13 Jul 2023
Joseph Sassoon, "The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire" (Pantheon, 2022)
Today I talked to Joseph Sassoon about his book The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire (Pantheon, 2022)
They were one of the richest families in the world for two hundre…
01:04:57 |
Wed 12 Jul 2023
Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg, "The Closed Book: How the Rabbis Taught the Jews (Not) to Read the Bible" (Princeton UP, 2023)
Early Judaism is often described as the religion of the book par excellence—a movement built around the study of the Bible and steeped in a culture of sacred bookishness that evolved from an unrelent…
00:42:05 |
Sat 08 Jul 2023
Daniel Boyarin, "The No-State Solution: A Jewish Manifesto" (Yale UP, 2023)
Daniel Boyarin's new book The No-State Solution: A Jewish Manifesto (Yale University Press, 2023) is a provocative anti-Zionist manifesto pleading for a new understanding of Jewish peoplehood and ske…
00:55:09 |
Fri 07 Jul 2023
Lia Brozgal and Rebecca Glasberg, eds., "A Jewish Childhood in the Muslim Mediterranean: A Collection of Stories Curated by Leïla Sebbar" (U California Press, 2023)
A Jewish Childhood in the Muslim Mediterranean: A Collection of Stories Curated by Leila Sebbar (U California Press, 2023) brings together the fascinating personal stories of Jewish writers, scholars…
01:38:28 |
Tue 04 Jul 2023
Jennifer Caplan, "Funny, You Don't Look Funny: Judaism and Humor from the Silent Generation to Millennials" (Wayne State UP, 2023)
In this comprehensive approach to Jewish humor focused on the relationship between humor and American Jewish practice, Jennifer Caplan calls us to adopt a more expansive view of what it means to “do …
01:00:31 |
Tue 04 Jul 2023
Brad Stoddard and Craig Martin, "Stereotyping Religion II: Critiquing Clichés" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Building on the success of Stereotyping Religion: Critiquing Clichés, this follow up volume dismantles a further 10 widespread stereotypes and clichés about religion, focusing on clichés that a new g…
00:42:04 |
Sat 01 Jul 2023
Anna Müller, "An Ordinary Life?: The Journeys of Tonia Lechtman, 1918-1996" (Ohio UP, 2023)
With An Ordinary Life? The Journeys of Tonia Lechtman, 1918-1996 (Ohio University Press, 2023), historian Anna Müller has produced a beautifully written book that is part biography, part family ethno…
01:13:50 |
Fri 30 Jun 2023
Edward Kissi, "Africans and the Holocaust: Perceptions and Responses of Colonized and Sovereign Peoples" (Routledge, 2021)
This book is an original and comparative study of reactions in West and East Africa to the persecution and attempted annihilation of Jews in Europe and in former German colonies in sub-Saharan Africa…
01:54:14 |
Thu 29 Jun 2023
David Wenham, "Jesus in Context: Making Sense of the Historical Figure" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
Jesus changed our world forever. But who was he and what do we know about him? David Wenham's Jesus in Context: Making Sense of the Historical Figure (Cambridge UP, 2021) is a concise and wide-rangin…
00:35:08 |
Tue 27 Jun 2023
Yaakov Beasley, "Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah: Lights in the Valley" (Maggid, 2020)
What do we do when God is silent? This question was asked by the ancient Jewish people during their darkest era, the seventh century BCE. Assyrian armies had ransacked, looted, and burned their once-…
00:54:30 |
Mon 26 Jun 2023
Illuminations Episode 9: Rituals for a Dying World
Absorbing the full reality of climate change will require more than a scientific approach. Some American Jews are showing how religious ritual can help us metabolize catastrophic grief while also poi…
00:23:07 |
Thu 22 Jun 2023
W. Gil Shin, "The 'Exodus' in Jerusalem (Luke 9:31): A Lukan Form of Israel's Restoration Hope" (Brill, 2022)
There has been a dearth of study in Lukan scholarship on the transfiguration account and the enigmatic statement about Jesus' "exodus" in Jerusalem. Now Gil Shin has provided a model of new exodus ba…
00:33:42 |
Wed 21 Jun 2023
Daniel A. Klein, "Shadal on Numbers: Samuel David Luzzatto's Interpretation of the Book of Bemidbar" (Kodesh Press, 2023)
Samuel David Luzzatto (1800-1865), known by his Hebrew acronym, Shadal, was the leading Italian Jewish scholar of the 19th century. Now, for the first time, an all-English version of Shadal's text tr…
00:29:59 |
Sun 18 Jun 2023
Orit Avishai, "Queer Judaism: LGBT Activism and the Remaking of Jewish Orthodoxy in Israel" (NYU Press, 2023)
Until fairly recently, Orthodox people in Israel could not imagine embracing their LGBT sexual or gender identity and staying within the Orthodox fold. But within the span of about a decade and a hal…
00:50:14 |
Sun 18 Jun 2023
Pinchas Blitt, "A Promise of Sweet Tea" (Azrieli Foundation, 2021)
Today I talked to Pinchas Blitt about his Holocaust memoir A Promise of Sweet Tea (Azrieli Foundation, 2021).
In a village in prewar Eastern Europe, young Pinchas is surrounded by colorful characters…
01:35:37 |
Fri 16 Jun 2023
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