New Books in Jewish Studies
1,034 episodes - English - Latest episode: 6 days ago - ★★★★ - 67 ratingsInterview with Scholars of Judaism about their New Books
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Episodes
Steven B. Bowman, "Sepher Yosippon: A Tenth-Century History of Ancient Israel" (Wayne State UP, 2022)
November 15, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourToday 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 minutesIn 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 hourFive 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 minutesThe 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 minutesThe 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 minutesIn 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 minutesThe 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 minutesIn 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 hourIn 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 minutesIn 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 hourIn 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 minutesIn 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 minutesIn 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...
Equanimity and Noaḥ
October 24, 2023 08:00 - 40 minutesIn 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 ...
The Israeli Defense Force (IDF)'s Ethical Code
October 24, 2023 08:00 - 52 minutesIn 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...
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 minutesYanki 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...
Equanimity and Bereshit
October 23, 2023 08:00 - 43 minutesIn 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...
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 hourWhen 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...
Matthew Thiessen, "A Jewish Paul: The Messiah's Herald to the Gentiles" (Baker Academic, 2023)
October 22, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourExcavating 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 hourIn 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 hoursIn 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 minutesIn 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 hourHarriet 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 hourIn 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 minutesIn 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 minutesThe 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 hourIn 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 hourRachel 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 ...
Hammertime and Hanukkah (with Matthew and Leeanne Thomas)
September 28, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourBetween 167 and 160 BC, Judas Maccabeus and his brothers led a revolt against the Greek tyrant who desecrated the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Miraculously victorious, the Jews rededicated the Temple in a festival of lights that became the first Hannukah. A bloody tale of oppression, war, and ancient diplomacy, these books (Maccabees 1 and 2) are a bridge between the Old and New Testaments and are the first places that the Jewish Bible speaks of life after death, intercessory prayer, and purga...
Ruth Schwertfeger, "A Nazi Camp Near Danzig: Perspectives on Shame and on the Holocaust from Stutthof" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
September 22, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourWithin the vast network of Nazi camps, Stutthof may be the least known beyond Poland. This book is the first scholarly publication in English to break the silence of Stutthof, where 120,000 people were interned and at least 65,000 perished. A Nazi Camp Near Danzigoffers an overview of Stutthof's history. It also explores Danzig's significance in promoting the cult of German nationalism which led to Stutthof's establishment and which shaped its subsequent development in 1942 into a Concentrati...
Katarzyna Person and Johannes-Dieter Steinert, "Przemysłowa Concentration Camp: The Camp, the Children, the Trials" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)
September 21, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourKatarzyna Person and Johannes-Dieter Steinert's book Przemysłowa Concentration Camp: The Camp, the Children, the Trials (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023) explores one of the most notorious aspects of the German system of oppression in wartime Poland: the only purpose-built camp for children under the age of 16 years in German-occupied Europe. The camp at Przemysłowa street, or the Polen-Jugendverwahrlager der Sicherheitspolizei in Litzmannstadt as the Germans called it, was a concentration camp for ...
Anthony Gad Bigio, "A Sephardi Turkish Patriot: Gad Franco in the Turmoil of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic" (Hamilton Books, 2023)
September 17, 2023 08:00 - 52 minutesIn A Sephardi Turkish Patriot: Gad Franco in the Turmoil of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic (Hamilton Books, 2023), Anthony Gad Bigio explores the life of Gad Franco (1881–1954), a prominent Sephardi journalist, then a lawyer and a jurist, who worked relentlessly for the Jewish community’s belonging to the national Turkish polity, and for the consolidation of the rule of law. This historical biography, written by his grandson, takes the reader from fin-de-siècle Izmir, to the Ista...
Nathan Bills, "A Theology of Justice in Exodus" (Eisenbrauns, 2020)
September 16, 2023 08:00 - 17 minutesWhat does the LORD's deliverance of Israel out of Egypt to worship and serve him have to do with justice? Quite a lot, it turns out. Join us as we speak with Nathan Bills about his recent book, A Theology of Justice in Exodus (Eisenbrauns, 2020) Nathan Bills is Lecturer at Heritage Christian University College in Accra, Ghana, and is a scholar with the Theological Education Initiative. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the au...
Avigdor Hameiri, "Under a Bloodred Sky: Avigdor Hameiri’s War Stories and Poetry" (Academic Studies Press, 2023)
September 15, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourUnder a Bloodred Sky: Avigdor Hameiri’s War Stories and Poetry (Academic Studies Press, 2023) represents an anthology of Avigdor Hameiri’s ten most compelling war stories and poetry. His war stories are unique, and different from his Hebrew writer contemporaries in that they mix the supernatural and macabre with war, pogroms, and antisemitism. These stories and poems reflect like no other the unique complexity of the Jewish soldier’s experience of the most vicious and shocking war the world h...
Arnold Lustiger, "Before Hashem You Shall Be Purified: Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik on the Days of Awe" (Ohr Publishing, 2022)
September 15, 2023 08:00 - 52 minutesBetween the late 1950s through 1980, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik zt"l ("the Rav") annually delivered a two- to four-hour lecture (derashah) in Yiddish between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to the Rabbinical Council of America on the topic of repentance and the Days of Awe. Before Hashem You Shall Be Purified: Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik on the Days of Awe (Ohr Publishing, 2022) contains summaries of the derashos that the Rav delivered from 1973 through 1979, and includes two additional deras...
Matisyahu Shulman, "Reimagining Repentance: Experiencing the High Holidays Through the Lens of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy" (Kodesh, 2023)
September 14, 2023 08:00 - 56 minutesMatisyahu Shulman's Reimagining Repentance: Experiencing the High Holidays Through the Lens of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (Kodesh, 2023) is unique in its attempt to bridge Torah content on the High Holidays with modern psychological theory about change. The book reviews the major themes of each part of the High Holidays and explores psychological principles related to each theme. The text contains clinical anecdotes weaved with Torah ideas and will be both a meaningful and enjoyable re...
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, "Ancient Persia and the Book of Esther: Achaemenid Court Culture in the Hebrew Bible" (I. B. Tauris, 2023)
September 14, 2023 08:00 - 36 minutesThe Book of Esther, one of the historical books in the Torah and the Old Testament, is known as a story of community, discrimination, and human ingenuity. It’s core to the Jewish holiday of Purim, with singing, feasting, and other merriment. And it’s unique as one of the few books in the Bible that doesn’t mention God. At all. But it’s also useful as a historical document, as Lloyd Llewellyn Jones writes in his most recent book, Ancient Persia and the Book of Esther: Achaemenid Court Culture ...
Norman Ravvin, "Who Gets In: An Immigration Story" (U Regina Press, 2023)
September 13, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourIn 1930, a young Jewish man, Yehuda Yosef Eisenstein, arrived in Canada from Poland to escape persecution and the rise of Nazism in the hopes of starting a new life for himself and his family. Like countless others who made this journey from "non-preferred" countries, Eisenstein was only granted entry because he claimed to be single, starting his new life with a lie. He trusted that his wife and children would be able to follow after he had gained legal entry and found work. For years, he was...
Alma Rachel Heckman, "The Sultan's Communists: Moroccan Jews and the Politics of Belonging" (Stanford UP, 2020)
September 13, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourThe Sultan's Communists: Moroccan Jews and the Politics of Belonging (Stanford UP, 2020) uncovers the history of Jewish radical involvement in Morocco's national liberation project and examines how Moroccan Jews envisioned themselves participating as citizens in a newly-independent Morocco. Closely following the lives of five prominent Moroccan Jewish Communists (Léon René Sultan, Edmond Amran El Maleh, Abraham Serfaty, Simon Lévy, and Sion Assidon), Alma Rachel Heckman describes how Moroccan...
A Better Way to Buy Books
September 12, 2023 08:00 - 34 minutesBookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has already raised more than $27,000,000. In this interview, Andy Hunter, founder and CEO discusses his journey to creating one of the most revolutionary new organizations in the book world. Bookshop has found a way to retain the convenience of online book shopping while also supporting independent bookstores that are the backbones of many local communiti...
Jonathan Sandler, "The English GI: World War II Graphic Memoir of a Yorkshire Schoolboy's Adventures in the United States and Europe" (2022)
September 08, 2023 08:00 - 58 minutesJonathan Sandler’s The English GI: World War II Graphic Memoir of a Yorkshire Schoolboy’s Adventures in the United States and Europe, is an adaptation of his grandfather’s 1994 war memoir. His grandfather, Bernard Sandler, was a British citizen of Latvian Jewish descent who served in the American Army. The book is illustrated by Brian Bicknell. The English GI sheds light into the experience of average people caught up in extraordinary circumstances. Jonathan Sandler’s treatment of Bernard San...
Valerie Hébert ed., "Framing the Holocaust: Photographs of a Mass Shooting in Latvia, 1941" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)
September 07, 2023 08:00 - 56 minutesFraming the Holocaust: Photographs of a Mass Shooting in Latvia, 1941 (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023), edited by Valerie Hébert, compiles essays on the meaning of twelve photographs of a terrible atrocity. In December 1941, German police and their local collaborators shot 2,749 Jews at the beach in Sķēde, near Liepāja, Latvia. Twelve photographs were taken at the scene. These now-infamous images show people in extreme distress, sometimes without clothing. Some capture the very moments w...
Tomaz Jardim, "Ilse Koch on Trial: Making the 'Bitch of Buchenwald'" (Harvard UP, 2023)
September 06, 2023 08:00 - 56 minutesOn September 1, 1967, one of the Third Reich's most infamous figures hanged herself in her cell after nearly twenty-four years in prison. Known as the "Bitch of Buchenwald," Ilse Koch was singularly notorious, having been accused of owning lampshades fabricated from skins of murdered camp inmates and engaging in "bestial" sexual behavior. These allegations fueled a public fascination that turned Koch into a household name and the foremost symbol of Nazi savagery. Her subsequent prosecution re...
Nancy L. Segal, "The Twin Children of the Holocaust: Stolen Childhood and the Will to Survive" (Academic Studies Press, 2023)
September 05, 2023 08:00 - 59 minutesThe Twin Children of the Holocaust: Stolen Childhood and the Will to Survive (Academic Studies Press, 2023) is an annotated collection of original, informative, and moving photographs of the twins who survived the brutal medical experiments conducted at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp (1943-1945). The experiments were conducted by the infamous physician, Josef Mengele. These never-before-seen photographs were taken by the author (Segal) at the 40th anniversary of the camp’s liberation (Janu...
Andrew Hesketh, "Escape to Gwrych Castle: A Jewish Refugee Story" (U of Wales Press, 2023)
September 04, 2023 08:00 - 36 minutesIn 1939, a number of German Jewish refugee children, brought over on the Kindertransport, found themselves in Abergele, North Wales. Their temporary new home? Gwrych Castle, where a Hachshara was being set up: a residential 'training centre' aimed at preparing the Jewish children for life on a kibbutz in Israel, where they hoped to be reunited with their families. In Escape to Gwrych Castle: A Jewish Refugee Story (U of Wales Press, 2023), Andrew Hesketh explores the lesser-told history of th...
Heike Bauer et al., "Jewish Women in Comics: Bodies and Borders" (Syracuse UP, 2022)
September 02, 2023 08:00 - 55 minutesIn Jewish Women in Comics: Bodies and Borders (Syracuse UP, 2022), contributors draw upon a rich treasure trove of Jewish women’s comics to explore the representation of Jewish women’s bodies and bodily experiences in pictorial narratives. Spanning national, cultural, and artistic borders, the essays shine a light on the significant contributions of Jewish women to comics. The volume features established figures including Emil Ferris, Amy Kurzweil, Miriam Libicki, Trina Robbins, Sharon Rudahl...
Romina Yalonetzky, "Gente Como Uno: Class, Belonging, and Transnationalism in Jewish Life in Lima" (Academic Studies Press, 2021)
September 02, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourIn Gente Como Uno: Class, Belonging, and Transnationalism in Jewish Life in Lima (Academic Studies Press, 2021), Dr. Romina Yalonetzky introduces readers to a physical microcosm of the intersection between Peruvian and Jewish identity, elucidated through the varied voices and experiences of Peruvian Jews. This book presents a unique understanding of Jewish Peruvian-ness and in so doing sheds a novel light on both Jewish and Peruvian identities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megapho...
H. Norman Strickman, "The Secret of the Torah: A Translation of Abraham Ibn Ezra's Sefer Yesod Mora" (Kodesh Press, 2021)
August 30, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourRabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra is one of the most important Jewish personalities of all time. Aside from being a Bible commentator of great consequence, his works in Jewish philosophy - though less famous - impacted many of his successors, including Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed, Nahmanides, and Rabbi Joseph Albo, as well as the Jewish mystics and Kabbalists. The Yesod Mora is one of the first books of Jewish philosophy written in Hebrew, which blazed the trail for philosophy to enter those par...
Jane L. Kanarek and Marjorie Lehman, "Learning to Read Talmud: What It Looks Like and How It Happens" (Academic Studies Press, 2017)
August 29, 2023 08:00 - 51 minutesJane L. Kanarek and Marjorie Lehman's Learning to Read Talmud: What It Looks Like and How It Happens (Academic Studies Press, 2017) is the first book-length study of how teachers teach and how students learn to read Talmud. Through a series of studies conducted by scholars of Talmud in classrooms that range from seminaries to secular universities and with students from novice to advanced, this book elucidates a broad range of ideas about what it means to learn to read Talmud and tools for how...
Wolf Gruner, "Resisters: How Ordinary Jews Fought Persecution in Hitler's Germany" (Yale UP, 2023)
August 29, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourToday I talked to Wolf Gruner about his new book Resisters: How Ordinary Jews Fought Persecution in Hitler's Germany (Yale UP, 2023). Drawing on twelve years of research in dozens of archives in Austria, Germany, Israel, and the United States, this book tells the story of five Jewish people--a merchant, a homemaker, a real estate broker, and two teenagers--who bravely resisted persecution and defended themselves in Nazi Germany. These stories have not been told until now, and each case is one...