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New Books in Jewish Studies

958 episodes - English - Latest episode: 4 months ago - ★★★★ - 63 ratings

Interview with Scholars of Judaism about their New Books
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Episodes

Julia Watts Belser, "Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole" (Beacon Press, 2023)

December 12, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour

A transformative spiritual companion and deep dive into disability politics that reimagines disability in the Bible and contemporary culture. "What's wrong with you?" Scholar, activist, and rabbi Julia Watts Belser is all too familiar with this question. What's wrong isn't her wheelchair, though--it's exclusion, objectification, pity, and disdain. Our attitudes about disability have such deep cultural roots that we almost forget their sources. But open the Bible and disability is everywhere. ...

Martin C. Dean, "Investigating Babyn Yar: Shadows from the Valley of Death" (Lexington Books, 2023)

December 11, 2023 09:00 - 36 minutes

Investigating Babyn Yar: Shadows from the Valley of Death (Lexington Books, 2023) pieces together the story of the destruction of Kyiv's Jews using history's shattered fragments. Martin Dean traces their journey out of the city, using discarded clothing and distinctive terrain as a trail of breadcrumbs to identify the killing site in the ravine. Shadowy figures in photographs and escape stories from the mass grave reveal the suffering of many that is documented by the survival of just a few. ...

Jeffrey S. Gurock, "Marty Glickman: The Life of an American Jewish Sports Legend" (NYU Press, 2023)

December 09, 2023 09:00 - 39 minutes

For close to half a century after World War II, Marty Glickman was the voice of New York sports. His distinctive style of broadcasting, on television and especially on the radio, garnered for him legions of fans who would not miss his play-by-play accounts. From the 1940s through the 1990s, he was as iconic a sports figure in town as the Yankees’ Mickey Mantle, the Knicks’ Walt Frazier, or the Jets’ Joe Namath. His vocabulary and method of broadcasting left an indelible mark on the industry, ...

Raquel Ukeles et al., "101 Treasures from the National Library of Israel" (Scala Arts, 2022)

December 09, 2023 09:00 - 39 minutes

101 Treasures from the National Library of Israel (Scala Arts, 2022) provides a thematic journey through the rich and diverse collections of the National Library of Israel and the Jewish people worldwide. Selected by the Library's curators and collections experts, this fine-art volume presents 101 of the most precious items in the Library's collections, from 5th century Babylonia to modern-day Tel Aviv, and shares illuminating stories and anecdotes about these significant works and the intrig...

Sasha Goldstein-Sabbah et al., "Life & Legacy: A Window into Jewish Life Across the Islamic World" (U Groningen Press, 2023)

December 08, 2023 09:00 - 50 minutes

Through stunning images, maps and insightful commentary, Life & Legacy: A Window into Jewish Life Across the Islamic World (U Groningen Press, 2023) offers a glimpse into the diversity, historical legacy, and rich culture of Jewish communities within the Muslim world. From the growing Jewish community of Dubai to ancient synagogues and shrines, these photographs capture the beauty and complexity of Jewish life around North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. Above all, this photographi...

"Order" in Joseph's Extraordinary Dreams

December 07, 2023 09:00 - 33 minutes

In this week's episode, Modya and David read Vayeshev (Genesis 37:1-40:23) and consider what can be learned about the character trait of Order from Joseph's extraordinary dreams, the deep antipathy his brothers feel toward him, and from the episode of Judah and Tamar. How might we best control our appetites and deploy our natural gifts to build a disciplined life without hurting others? The hosts explore these and other questions with examples from other readings, and from their own lives. Mo...

Guy Miron, "Space and Time Under Persecution: The German-Jewish Experience in the Third Reich" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

December 06, 2023 09:00 - 46 minutes

The rapid and radical transformations of the Nazi Era challenged the ways German Jews experienced space and time, two of the most fundamental characteristics of human existence.  In Space and Time Under Persecution: The German-Jewish Experience in the Third Reich (U Chicago Press, 2023), Guy Miron documents how German Jews came to terms with the harsh challenges of persecution-from social exclusion, economic decline, and relocation to confiscation of their homes, forced labor, and deportation...

J. Christopher Edwards, "Crucified: The Christian Invention of the Jewish Executioners of Jesus" (Fortress Press, 2023)

December 02, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour

In his book Crucified: The Christian Invention of the Jewish Executioners of Jesus (Fortress Press, 2023), J. Christopher Edwards explores the early Christian teachings regarding who actually killed Jesus. Historians of early Christianity unanimously agree that Jesus was executed by Roman soldiers. This consensus extends to members of the general population who have seen a Jesus movie or an Easter play and remember Roman soldiers hammering the nails. However, for early Christians, the detail ...

Joshua Skarf, "ArchitecTorah: Architectural Ideas in Judaism and the Weekly Torah Portion" (Urim, 2023)

December 02, 2023 09:00 - 45 minutes

Joshua Skarf's book ArchitecTorah: Architectural Ideas in Judaism and the Weekly Torah Portion (Urim, 2023) is a collection of 178 short essays that investigate the Torah through the lens of architecture. Each essay briefly introduces a piece of architectural theory, a building, or a section of building code and then reexamines a well-known topic in the Torah to uncover new and insightful interpretations. Matthew Miller is a graduate of Yeshivat Yesodei HaTorah. He studied Jewish Studies and...

Loving Acts Through Patience: On the VaYishlach

November 30, 2023 09:00 - 40 minutes

David and Modya complete their four episode exploration of patience by looking at the Torah portion of VaYishlach. The focus in this episode is on the role of patience in managing internally-motivated desires and external temptations. They explore how using patience can lead to healthier decisions made from a place of love rather than fear. Modya Silver is an author and psychotherapist based in Toronto. David Gottlieb is Director of Jewish Studies at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning ...

On “Henry Kissinger and His World” with author Barry Gewen

November 30, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour

In my talk with Barry Gewen on his 2020 book, The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World (W. W. Norton, 2020), we explore the disparate influences that shaped Kissinger as both an intellectual and as a practitioner of power.  Our conversation touches on Kissinger’s upbringing in a German-Jewish community in Bavaria at the time of Hitler’s rise to power and pivots to an understanding of Kissinger’s Realism as his pessimistic yet unwavering approach to foreign affairs and exige...

Ian Probstein, trans., "Centuries Encircle Me with Fire: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam" (Academic Studies Press, 2022)

November 29, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour

Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938) is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century's most influential poets. This collection, compiled, translated, and edited by poet and scholar Ian Probstein, provides Anglophone audiences with a powerful selection of Mandelstam's most beloved and haunting poems. Both scholars and general readers will gain a deeper understanding of his poetics, as Probstein situates each poem in its historical and literary context.  The English translations presented in Centurie...

Roslyn Weiss, "Hasdai Crescas: Collected Writings" (Library of the Jewish People, 2023)

November 27, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour

Today I talked to Roslyn Weiss, editor of Hasdai Crescas: Collected Writings (Library of the Jewish People, 2023). Hasdai Crescas spent his life in public service - as a rabbi and community leader in desperate times in 14th-century Spain. Despite having limited time for writing, he produced several important works, which Collected Writings presents in their entirety. The first of these, Epistle to the Jews of Avignon, he wrote in the immediate aftermath of the anti-Jewish riots in Aragon in 1...

Dan Senor and Saul Singer, "The Genius of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World" (Simon and Schuster, 2023)

November 26, 2023 09:00 - 27 minutes

How has a small nation of 9 million people, forced to fight for its existence and security since its founding and riven by ethnic, religious, and economic divides, proven resistant to so many of the societal ills plaguing other wealthy democracies? Why do Israelis have among the world’s highest life expectancies and lowest rates of “deaths of despair” from suicide and substance abuse? Why is Israel’s population young and growing while all other wealthy democracies are aging and shrinking? How...

Katerina Lagos, "The Fourth of August Regime and Greek Jewry, 1936-1941" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)

November 26, 2023 05:00 - 1 hour

Delving into a traditionally underexplored period, this book focuses on the treatment of Greek Jews under the dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas in the years leading up to the Second World War. Almost 86% of Greek Jews died in the Holocaust, leading many to think this was because of Metaxas and his fascist ideology. However, the situation in Greece was much more complicated; in fact, Metaxas in his policies often attempted to quash anti-Semitism.  The Fourth of August Regime and Greek Jewry, 193...

Donating Books to Children: A Chat with Alex Zabolotsky of PJ Library

November 25, 2023 09:00 - 46 minutes

Alex Zablotsky is the Managing Director of PJ Library, a philanthropy that donates millions of books on Jewish themes to children around the world every year. We talk about the confluence of Jewish and universal themes, the similarities and differences between PJ Library and its Israeli sister, Sifriat Pajama, which shares hundreds of thousands of picture books in Arabic, as well as in Hebrew, the process by which books are chosen, and the importance of sharing books on Jewish themes with non...

Jacob, Leah, Rachel and the "Middah" of Patience

November 23, 2023 09:00 - 25 minutes

In this week's episode, Modya and David discuss parshat Va-Yetzei (Gen. 28:10-32:3) and its lessons for the middah (character trait) of patience. Is the patriarch Jacob a model of patience, or does his predilection for deceit suggest a person too eager to get what he wants? What does the matriarch Leah teach us about the relationship between patience and acceptance of what is? Does the matriarch Rachel provide her own lessons? Modya and David look to these tangled, archetypal personalities an...

Israel, Hamas, and American Jews in a Time of War

November 22, 2023 09:00 - 37 minutes

On today’s episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey speaks with Jodi Rudoren, editor-in-chief of the Forward magazine, about the situation in Israel and Gaza. She notes that Hamas’s incursion into Israel on October 7, 2023, shattered the paradigm of how Israel and even the Arab world understood what Hamas was all about. The result has been a deep sense of shock and mourning among Israelis for those who have lost loved ones or had them taken hostage. At the same time, some J...

Providence and Power: Rabbi Meir Soloveichik on Jewish Statesmanship from King David to David Ben Gurion

November 21, 2023 09:00 - 53 minutes

For thousands of years, the Jewish people lacked a political state; yet, what can we say about the Jewish tradition of statesmanship? What makes it distinctive, and what can we learn from it? In Providence and Power: Ten Portraits in Jewish Statesmanship (Encounter Books, 2023) , Rabbi Meir Soloveichik investigates ten Jews, from King David all the way to the foundation of Israel, what we can learn from their examples, and how history can provide hope amidst recent events in Israel. Rabbi Dr....

Nechama Price, "Tribal Blueprints: Twelve Brothers and the Destiny of Israel" (Maggid, 2020)

November 20, 2023 09:00 - 53 minutes

The Jewish nation begins with a collection of twelve brothers and half-brothers, linked through their father, Jacob. From these close familiar beginnings, each develops into a distinct tribe, with unique characteristics and destinies that have indelible imprints on the rest of Tanakh.  Tribal Blueprints: Twelve Brothers and the Destiny of Israel (Maggid, 2020) examines each of Jacob's sons, revealing their individual stories in Genesis and the impact of their shifting places within the family...

Maxim D. Shrayer, "I Saw It: Ilya Selvinsky and the Legacy of Bearing Witness to the Shoah" (Academic Studies Press, 2013)

November 19, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour

In I Saw It: Ilya Selvinsky and the Legacy of Bearing Witness to the Shoah (Academic Studies Press, 2013), based on archival and field research and previously unknown historical evidence, Maxim D. Shrayer introduces the work of Ilya Selvinsky, the first Jewish-Russian poet to depict the Holocaust (Shoah) in the occupied Soviet territories. In January 1942, while serving as a military journalist, Selvinsky witnessed the immediate aftermath of the massacre of thousands of Jews outside the Crime...

Mira Balberg, "Fractured Tablets: Forgetfulness and Fallibility in Late Ancient Rabbinic Culture" (U California Press, 2023)

November 16, 2023 09:00 - 43 minutes

The Rabbinic Sages of the Tannaitic era were fixated on memory and terrified of forgetfulness. In promulgating their own interpretations of Jewish law, the Tannaim not only took seriously Moses’s admonitions to remember and not forget, they painstakingly constructed a system of laws thar recognized that helped create and enhance a powerful and dynamic memory form. The rabbis also knew, however, that people are fallible and they’re going to forget. To try to ensure communal coherence within th...

Steven B. Bowman, "Sepher Yosippon: A Tenth-Century History of Ancient Israel" (Wayne State UP, 2022)

November 15, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour

Today I talked to Steven B. Bowman about his book Sepher Yosippon: A Tenth-Century History of Ancient Israel (Wayne State UP, 2022). Sepher Yosippon was written in Hebrew by a medieval historian noted by modern scholars for its eloquent style. This is the first known chronicle of Jewish history and legend from Adam to the destruction of the Second Temple, this is the first known text since the canonical histories written by Flavius Josephus in Greek and later translated by Christian scholars ...

Building Wells of Patience

November 15, 2023 09:00 - 42 minutes

In this week's episode, David and Modya discuss where patience may be found within the Torah portion of Toldot. As they look into the text and are challenged to find examples, it brings them face to face with their own patience or at times lack thereof. Modya Silver is an author and psychotherapist based in Toronto. David Gottlieb is Director of Jewish Studies at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...

Dalia Kandiyoti, "The Converso's Return: Conversion and Sephardi History in Contemporary Literature and Culture" (Stanford UP, 2020)

November 14, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour

Five centuries after the forced conversion of Spanish and Portuguese Jews to Catholicism, stories of these conversos' descendants uncovering long-hidden Jewish roots have come to light and taken hold of the literary and popular imagination. This seemingly remote history has inspired a wave of contemporary writing involving hidden artifacts, familial whispers and secrets, and clandestine Jewish ritual practices pointing to a past that had been presumed dead and buried. The Converso's Return: C...

Walter A. Maier III, "1 Kings 12-22: Concordia Commentary" (Concordia, 2019)

November 12, 2023 09:00 - 16 minutes

The book of Kings tracks the division of Israel's kingdom into the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah, narrating each one's demise. Yet Kings is no mere history; the sacred record holds a message still relevant for God's people today. Tune in for part two of our interview with Walter Maier III, this time on volume 2 of his commentary on Kings, which covers chapters 12-22. Walter Maier III earned in his PhD from Harvard University in Near Eastern Languages, and is Pro...

Walter A. Maier III, "1 Kings 1-11: Concordia Commentary" (Concordia, 2018)

November 11, 2023 09:00 - 15 minutes

The book of Kings in the Bible records more than 380 years of the history of Israel and its monarchy, from the last part of David’s rule to the end of the kingship in Judah, and emphasizes the role of prophets along the way. Join us as we speak with Walter Maier III about the first of his two-volume commentary on 1 Kings, covering chapters 1-11, the rise and failures of Solomon’s kingship. Walter Maier III earned in his PhD from Harvard University in Near Eastern Languages, and is Professor o...

The Flow of Patience

November 09, 2023 09:00 - 38 minutes

In this week's episode, Modya and David discuss the Torah portion of Hayyei Sarah and what it teaches about the middah (trait) of patience. They note the kindness, generosity, and grace of the matriarch Rivkah, and the relationships between these traits and the trait of patience. They explore the water that plays a central role in this Torah portion, and water's fundamental link to patience: its ability to wear away, drop by drop over great spans of time, any obstacle before it. And they begi...

Austin Surls, "Making Sense of the Divine Name in the Book of Exodus: From Etymology to Literary Onomastics" (Eisenbrauns, 2017)

November 05, 2023 09:00 - 25 minutes

The obvious riddles and difficulties in Exodus 3:13-15 and 6:2-8 have attracted an overwhelming amount of attention and comment. These texts make important theological statements about the divine name and the contours of the divine character. In his book Making Sense of the Divine Name in the Book of Exodus: From Etymology to Literary Onomastics (Eisenbrauns, 2017), Austin Surls attempts to move beyond atomistic readings of individual texts and etymological studies of the divine name toward a...

Megan Nutzman, "Contested Cures: Identity and Ritual Healing in Roman and Late Antique Palestine" (Edinburgh UP, 2022)

November 05, 2023 09:00 - 52 minutes

In the ancient Mediterranean world, individuals routinely looked for divine aid to cure physical afflictions. Contested Cures: Identity and Ritual Healing in Roman and Late Antique Palestine (Edinburgh University Press, 2022) by Dr. Megan Nutzman argues that the inevitability of sickness and injury made people willing to experiment with seemingly beneficial techniques, even if they originated in a foreign cultural or religious tradition. With circumstances of close cultural contacts, such as ...

Carson Bay, "Biblical Heroes and Classical Culture in Christian Late Antiquity" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

November 04, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour

In this volume entitled Biblical Heroes and Classical Culture in Christian Late Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2023), Carson Bay focuses on an important but neglected work of Late Antiquity: Pseudo-Hegesippus' On the Destruction of Jerusalem (De Excidio Hierosolymitano), a Latin history of later Second Temple Judaism written during the fourth century CE. Bay explores the presence of so many Old Testament figures in a work that recounts the Roman-Jewish War (66–73 CE) and the destruction of Jerusale...

Equanimity in Dark Times

November 02, 2023 08:00 - 50 minutes

In concluding their focus on the trait of equanimity, Modya and David are joined in conversation by Alan Morinis, founder of the Mussar Institute and the author of several books on Mussar, the Jewish ethical self-development discipline. Modya, David, and Alan focus on the Torah portion of Vayera in the Book of Genesis, especially in light of the difficult times being experienced as this episode was recorded. They address numerous questions, including: How do you practice equanimity in dark ti...

Marat Grinberg, "The Soviet Jewish Bookshelf: Jewish Culture and Identity Between the Lines" (Brandeis UP, 2023)

October 29, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour

In The Soviet Jewish Bookshelf: Jewish Culture and Identity Between the Lines (Brandeis UP, 2023), Marat Grinberg argues that in an environment where Judaism had been all but destroyed, and a public Jewish presence routinely delegitimized, reading uniquely provided many Soviet Jews with an entry to communal memory and identity. The bookshelf was both a depository of selective Jewish knowledge and often the only conspicuously Jewish presence in their homes. The typical Soviet Jewish bookshelf ...

Linda Kinstler, "Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends" (PublicAffairs, 2023)

October 26, 2023 08:00 - 43 minutes

In 1965, five years after the capture of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, one of his Mossad abductors was sent back to South America to kill another fugitive Nazi, the so-called “butcher of Riga,” Latvian Herberts Cukurs. Cukurs was shot. On his corpse, the assassins left pages from the closing speech of the chief British prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg: “After this ordeal to which mankind has been submitted, mankind itself . . . comes to this Court and cries: ‘T...

Equanimity and Abraham

October 26, 2023 08:00 - 43 minutes

In this episode, Modya and David dive into Lekh Lekha, the Torah portion in which the story of the patriarch Abraham begins to unfold, and consider what lessons this narrative holds for developing our equanimity. Here we see Abraham as both a flawed and faithful person, as a wanderer and a warrior, and as someone who follows the command to embark on a journey whose destination is unknown. In what ways are we like Abraham? How does he instruct us on how to identify what is consequential and wh...

Yanki Tauber, "The Book of Genesis with Commentary and Insights from 500 Sages and Mystics" (Open Book Press, 2022)

October 24, 2023 08:00 - 56 minutes

Yanki Tauber's The Book of Genesis with Commentary and Insights from 500 Sages and Mystics (Open Book Press, 2022) features a new foundational English translation of the first book of the Bible, an anthology of commentaries representing the full spectrum of Jewish learning spanning 33 centuries, and an abundance of illustrations, maps, and infographics. Never before has the English reader been given direct, unmediated access to this wealth of moral, legal, philosophical, mystical, and psychol...

The Israeli Defense Force (IDF)'s Ethical Code

October 24, 2023 08:00 - 52 minutes

In the past week, the entire world has been focusing on the murderous attack by the Hamas organization against the State of Israel and Israel's response to these actions. Hamas has killed 1,300 civilians and soldiers, including children, the elderly, and women. Furthermore, the methods used by Hamas in their killings have displayed an unprecedented level of cruelty, including acts of desecration of the living and the dead, sexual violence, and harming children. Additionally, they have abducte...

Equanimity and Noaḥ

October 24, 2023 08:00 - 40 minutes

In this episode, psychotherapist and author Modya Silver and scholar David Gottlieb explore parshat Noaḥ, seeking wisdom in the story of the Flood, and the conduct of both God and Noah, about how one can develop and maintain equanimity under even the most difficult circumstances. The hosts also discuss what the narrative of the Tower of Babel, and how selfishness and overreach can undermine our ability to rise above events that are inconsequential, whether good or bad. See also: The Heart of ...

Sebastian Huebel, "Fighter, Worker, and Family Man: German-Jewish Men and Their Gendered Experiences in Nazi Germany, 1933–1941" (U Toronto Press, 2022)

October 23, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour

When the Nazis came to power, they used various strategies to expel German Jews from social, cultural, and economic life. Fighter, Worker, and Family Man: German-Jewish Men and Their Gendered Experiences in Nazi Germany, 1933–1941 (U Toronto Press, 2022) focuses on the gendered experiences and discrimination that German-Jewish men faced between 1933 and 1941. Sebastian Huebel argues that Jewish men's gender identities, intersecting with categories of ethnicity, race, class, and age, underwent...

Equanimity and Bereshit

October 23, 2023 08:00 - 43 minutes

In this first episode, author and psychotherapist Modya Silver, and David Gottlieb, Director of Jewish Studies at Spertus Institute, begin a yearlong project of seeking guidance on self improvement in the Torah, the Five Books of Moses, with the help of R. Menahem Mendel Lefin's Cheshbon haNefesh: A Guide to Self-Improvement Through Character Refinement. This book, one of the classics of the Jewish practice of Mussar, or ethical self-improvement, provides guidance on how to methodically devel...

Matthew Thiessen, "A Jewish Paul: The Messiah's Herald to the Gentiles" (Baker Academic, 2023)

October 22, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour

Excavating and interpreting Paul’s thought, belief, ideas, and mission from his authentic letters and those otherwise attributed to him remains an ongoing effort in scholarship, with several competing perspectives vying for prominence. Matthew Thiessen advances an important reading of Paul within first-century Judaism, which he conceives not as a monolith of theological positions but rather as a spectrum of ideas that comfortably included Paul’s new belief in Jesus as Israel’s Messiah and Pau...

Melissa Weininger, "Beyond the Land: Diaspora Israeli Culture in the Twenty-First Century" (Wayne State UP, 2023)

October 21, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour

In her book, Beyond the Land: Diaspora Israeli Culture in the Twenty-First Century (Wayne State University Press, 2023), Melissa Weininger theorizes a new category of "diaspora Israeli culture" that is formed around and through notions of homeland and complicates the binary between diaspora and Israel. The works addressed here inhabit and imagine diaspora from the vantage point of the putative homeland, engaging both diasporic and Zionist models simultaneously through language, geography, and...

Stefan C. Ionescu, "Jewish Resistance to ‘Romanianization’, 1940-44" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)

October 20, 2023 08:00 - 2 hours

In Jewish Resistance to ‘Romanianization’, 1940-44 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), Stefan C. Ionescu examines the process of economic Romanianization of Bucharest during the Antonescu regime that targeted the property, jobs, and businesses of local Jews and Roma/Gypsies and their legal resistance strategies to such an unjust policy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

The Unquiet Legacy of Jewish Radical Meir Kahane

October 19, 2023 08:00 - 45 minutes

In the wake of the massacre of Israeli civilians by Hamas in October, 2023 I spoke with Shaul Magid, author of Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical (Princeton University Press, 2021). A visiting professor of modern Jewish studies at Harvard Divinity School, Magid also is rabbi of the Fire Island Synagogue in Sea View, N.Y. Kahane, the founder of the Jewish Defense League in the late 1960s, was assassinated in New York in 1990 yet, as Magid told me, ...

Harriet Murav and Gennady Estraikh, "Soviet Jews in World War II: Fighting, Witnessing, Remembering" (Academic Studies Press, 2018)

October 07, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour

Harriet Murav and Gennady Estraikh's book Soviet Jews in World War II: Fighting, Witnessing, Remembering (Academic Studies Press, 2018) discusses the participation of Jews as soldiers, journalists, and propagandists in combating the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War, as the period between June 22, 1941, and May 9, 1945 was known in the Soviet Union. The essays included here examine both newly-discovered and previously-neglected oral testimony, poetry, cinema, diaries, memoirs, newspapers, ...

Seth L. Sanders, "From Adapa to Enoch: Scribal Culture and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylonia" (Mohr Siebeck, 2017)

October 06, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour

In From Adapa to Enoch: Scribal Culture and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylonia (Mohr Siebeck, 2017), Seth L. Sanders offers a history of first-millennium scribes through their heavenly journeys and heroes, treating the visions of ancient Mesopotamian and Judean literature as pragmatic things made by people. He presents each scribal culture as an individual institution via detailed evidence for how visionary figures were used over time. The author also provides the first comprehensive sur...

Ronna Detrick, "Rewriting Eve: Claiming Women's Sacred Stories As Our Own" (She Writes Press, 2023)

October 03, 2023 08:00 - 53 minutes

In Rewriting Eve: Rescuing Women’s Stories from the Bible and Reclaiming Them as Our Own (She Writes Press, 2023), Ronna Detrick invites us into the presence and power of ten sacred, biblical women, revealing the endlessly relevant ways in which they speak today and showing how they can heal, embolden, and transform our stories. Trapped in patriarchy and theological argument, dismissed as irrelevant, or viewed as unchangeable even as times change, these women’s voices, desires, and hearts hav...

Adolph L. Harstad, "Deuteronomy: Concordia Commentary" (Concordia Publishing House, 2022)

October 02, 2023 08:00 - 16 minutes

The Book of Deuteronomy, the Fifth Book of Moses, is foundational for both Judaism and Christianity. What makes Deuteronomy so significant? How does one apply its message today? Tune in as we speak with Adolph Harstad about his recent Concordia Commentary on Deuteronomy. You’re listening to New Books in Biblical Studies, a channel of the New Books Network, and I’m your host, Michael Morales. Rev. Dr. Adolph Harstad served as a pastor for many years and was a professor at Bethany Lutheran Theo...

Martina Mampieri, "Living Under the Evil Pope: The Hebrew Chronicle of Pope Paul IV by Benjamin Neḥemiah Ben Elnathan from Civitanova Marche (Brill, 2020)

September 30, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour

In Living under the Evil Pope (Brill, 2020), Martina Mampieri presents the Hebrew Chronicle of Pope Paul IV, written in the second half of the sixteenth century by the Italian Jewish moneylender Benjamin Neḥemiah ben Elnathan (alias Guglielmo di Diodato) from Civitanova Marche. The text remained in manuscript for about four centuries until the Galician scholar Isaiah Sonne (1887-1960) published a Hebrew annotated edition of the chronicle in the 1930s. This remarkable source offers an account ...

Rachel Elior, "The Unknown History of Jewish Women Through the Ages: On Learning and Illiteracy, On Slavery and Liberty" (de Gruyter, 2023)

September 29, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour

Rachel Elior's book The Unknown History of Jewish Women: On Learning and Illiteracy, On Slavery and Liberty (de Gruyter, 2023) is a comprehensive study on the history of Jewish women, which discusses their absence from the Jewish Hebrew library of the "People of the Book" and interprets their social condition in relation to their imposed ignorance and exclusion from public literacy.  The book begins with a chapter on communal education for Jewish boys, which was compulsory and free of charge ...

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The Final Solution
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Fathers and Sons
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