New Books in Jewish Studies

In Second Slayings: The Binding of Isaac and the Formation of Jewish Cultural Memory (Gorgias Press, 2019), David N. Gottlieb explores the decisive - and, until now, under-appreciated - influence exerted on Jewish memory by the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac narrative in the Book of Genesis. Through the lenses of hermeneutics, literary and social theory, and history, Gottlieb reveals the ways in the Akedah narrative models the act of interpretation as a means of recovery from and commemoration of crisis - a strategy that has penetrated every aspect and era of Jewish life.Marshall Poe is the editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at marshallpoe@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

In Israel Has a Jewish Problem: Self Determination as Self Elimination (Oxford University Press, 2019), Joyce Dalsheim considers some of the surprising outcomes of the great Israeli experiment of re-imagining and reconstructing Judaism, Jewishness and the Jewish people as an ethno-national project focused on the state.Examining the production and assimilation of Jews as "the nation" in the modern state of Israel, this book shows how identity is constrained through myriad struggles over the meanings and practices of being Jewish. Based on years of ethnographic engagement, the book employs Franz Kafka's writing as a theoretical lens in order to frame the seemingly bizarre and self-contradictory processes it describes. While other scholars have explained Jewish identity conflicts in Israel in terms of a dichotomy between the secular and the religious, this book suggests that such an analysis is inadequate. Instead, it traces these struggles to the definition of "religion" itself. It suggests that the problem lies in the way modern identity categories at once disarticulate "religion" from "nation" and at the same time conflate those categories in the figure of the Jew. The struggles over Jewishness that are part of the process of producing the ethnos for the ethno-national state call into question the notion that self-determination in the form of the nation-state is a liberating process. Modern democratic nation-states are meant to liberate citizens because they are understood to be ruled by "the people" and for "the people." But if "the people" exists for the state and its projects, then there is little liberating about the formula of sovereign citizenship. Instead, self-determination becomes a form of self-elimination, narrowing the possible forms of Jewishness. The case of Israel demonstrates that the classic "Jewish Question" in Europe has been transformed but not answered by political sovereignty.Yaacov Yadgar is the Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies at the University of Oxford. His most recent books are Israel’s Jewish Identity Crisis: State and Politics in the Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and Sovereign Jews: Israel, Zionism and Judaism (SUNY Press, 2017). You can read more of Yadgar’s work here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

An intelligent, middle-aged feminist and pitch-perfect musician cannot recuperate from a brief affair with a narcissistic and possibly psychopathic married but famous music critic. By returning to the scene of the affair and listening to the world around her, Eve begins to recover memories of her past, which help her understand, and therefore move on from, her obsession. The Dead Man (Inanna Publications, 2016) a beautiful tale of love, loss, family, and the music of the world around us.Nora Gold is the prize-winning author of three books of fiction along with other widely published and praised articles and essays. Since 2000 when she left full-time academia, Gold has been affiliated (first as an Associate Scholar and then for six years as its Writer-in-Residence) with OISE/University of Toronto’s Centre for Women’s Studies in Education. This center closed in 2018, but Gold continues to coordinate the highly regarded reading series that she established there, the Wonderful Women Writers Series, now housed at the Toronto Public Library (Deer Park Branch). Gold is also involved in activism and community work, currently with the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute in Boston and JSpaceCanada. When she is not writing, editing, or actively trying to make the world a better place, she is listening to music.If you enjoyed today’s podcast and would like to discuss it further with me and other New Books network listeners, please join us on Shuffle. Shuffle is an ad-free, invite-only network focused on the creativity community. As NBN listeners, you can get special access to conversations with a dynamic community of writers and literary enthusiasts. Sign up by going to www.shuffle.do/NBN/joinG.P. Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series and a prolific baker of healthful breads and pastries. Please contact her through her website (GPGottlieb.com) if you wish to recommend an author (of a beautifully-written new novel) to interview, to listen to her previous podcast interviews, to read her mystery book reviews, or to check out some of her awesome recipes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

How should we understand the appearances of the king in Book V of the Hebrew Psalter? Ever since Gerald H. Wilson’s landmark work, The Editing of the Hebrew Psalter (1985), some have interpreted the failure of the Davidic covenant in Psalm 89 as signaling its replacement by a hope in the direct intervention of the LORD—that is, without any further role for a Davidic king. Others, however, insist that Book V marks the return of the king, pointing to a renewed hope in the Davidic covenant. Join us as we speak Ian J. Vaillancourt about his recent monograph, The Multifaceted Saviour of Psalms 110 and 118: A Canonical Exegesis (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2019), in which he seeks to demonstrate that Book V focuses Israel’s expectation on an eschatological figure of salvation who encompasses many hoped-for figures across the Old Testament in one person.Dr. Ian J. Vaillancourt serves as Associate Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Heritage Theological Seminary. He earned a B.Th. from Tyndale College, an M.T.S. from Tyndale Seminary, and a Ph.D. from the University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto. He is also an ordained pastor in the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptists in Canada and served in senior/teaching pastoral roles for 14 years. He has published articles and book reviews in several academic journals, including The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Westminster Theological Journal, Journal for the Evangelical Study of the Old Testament, and The Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology. Ian is married to Natalie and they have two children: Caleb and Emily. We are featuring his first monograph, on the vision of the Messiah from Psalms 110 and 118.Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus(Peeters, 2012), and Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015). He can be reached at mmorales@gpts.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Anti-Semitic incidents, ranging from vandalism through murder, are on the rise in Great Britain, and across Europe and North America.Julia Neuberger - Senior Rabbi at West London Synagogue, a member of the House of Lords, chair of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, and trustee of Full Fact, an organization dedicated to getting proper information and fair evidence before the public – writes for the contemporary reader who wants clarification of the way this insidious prejudice has reappeared in many parts of today’s society. She explains that anti-Semitism is not only a threat to Jews, but also to other minorities and to the society as whole, as it promotes paranoid conspiracy theories and irrationality.Beginning with a history of anti-Semitism, from ancient times, through early Christianity, through the Middle Ages and on to Nazi ideology, Antisemitism: What It Is, What It Isn’t, Why It Matters (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2019) also explores the boundary between legitimate criticism of Israeli policies and anti-Semitic Israel -bashing.Neuberger describes in detail the many manifestations of anti-Semitism in Britain, particularly, but by no means exclusively, as it has developed in the British Labor Party under Jeremy Corbin.Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, and Middle East commentator for the nationally syndicated TV program, The Armstrong Williams Show. Write her at r.garfinkel@yahoo.com or tweet @embracingwisdom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

In her new book Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism (Cornell University Press, 2019) Jelena Subotić asks why Holocaust memory continues to be so deeply troubled―ignored, appropriated, and obfuscated―throughout Eastern Europe, even though it was in those lands that most of the extermination campaign occurred. As part of accession to the European Union, Subotić shows, East European states were required to adopt, participate in, and contribute to the established Western narrative of the Holocaust. This requirement created anxiety and resentment in post-communist states: Holocaust memory replaced communist terror as the dominant narrative in Eastern Europe, focusing instead on predominantly Jewish suffering in World War II. Influencing the European Union's own memory politics and legislation in the process, post-communist states have attempted to reconcile these two memories by pursuing new strategies of Holocaust remembrance. The memory, symbols, and imagery of the Holocaust have been appropriated to represent crimes of communism.Yellow Star, Red Star presents in-depth accounts of Holocaust remembrance practices in Serbia, Croatia, and Lithuania, and extends the discussion to other East European states. The book demonstrates how countries of the region used Holocaust remembrance as a political strategy to resolve their contemporary "ontological insecurities"―insecurities about their identities, about their international status, and about their relationships with other international actors. As Subotić concludes, Holocaust memory in Eastern Europe has never been about the Holocaust or about the desire to remember the past, whether during communism or in its aftermath. Rather, it has been about managing national identities in a precarious and uncertain world.Jelena Subotić is Professor in the Department of Political Science at Georgia State University (PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2007).Steven Seegel is professor of history at University of Northern Colorado. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Who are the Jews from Arab countries? What were relations with Muslims like? What made Jews leave countries where they had been settled for thousands of years? And what lessons can we learn from the mass exodus of minorities from the Middle East?This neglected piece of history, as ancient as the Bible, and as modern as today’s news, is urgently relevant today, as minorities continue to face discrimination, persecution, ethnic cleansing and even genocide in parts of the Middle East.Jews lived continuously in the Middle East and North Africa for almost 3,000 years, long predating the rise of Islam. Yet, as Lyn Julius explains in her new book Uprooted: How 3000 Years of Jewish Civilization in the Arab World Vanished Overnight (Vallentine Mitchell, 2018), their indigenous communities throughout the region almost totally disappeared as more than 99 percent of the Jewish population fled. Those with foreign passports and connections generally left for Europe, Australia, or the Americas. The rest - including a minority of ideological Zionists - went to Israel. Today over 50 percent of Israel's Jews are “Mizrahim”, refugees from Arab and Muslim countries, or their descendants.This same process is now repeating in Christian and other minority communities across the Middle East.Renee Garfinkel is a psychologist, writer, and Middle East commentator for the nationally syndicated TV program, The Armstrong Williams Show. Write her at r.garfinkel@yahoo.com or tweet @embracingwisdom Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous―and easier to share than ever. We associate charts with science and reason; the flashy visuals are both appealing and persuasive. Pie charts, maps, bar and line graphs, and scatter plots (to name a few) can better inform us, revealing patterns and trends hidden behind the numbers we encounter in our lives. In short, good charts make us smarter―if we know how to read them.However, they can also lead us astray. Charts lie in a variety of ways―displaying incomplete or inaccurate data, suggesting misleading patterns, and concealing uncertainty―or are frequently misunderstood, such as the confusing cone of uncertainty maps shown on TV every hurricane season. To make matters worse, many of us are ill-equipped to interpret the visuals that politicians, journalists, advertisers, and even our employers present each day, enabling bad actors to easily manipulate them to promote their own agendas.In How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information (W. W. Norton, 2019), data visualization expert Alberto Cairo teaches us to not only spot the lies in deceptive visuals, but also to take advantage of good ones to understand complex stories. Public conversations are increasingly propelled by numbers, and to make sense of them we must be able to decode and use visual information. By examining contemporary examples ranging from election-result infographics to global GDP maps and box-office record charts, How Charts Lie demystifies an essential new literacy, one that will make us better equipped to navigate our data-driven world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran (Stanford University Press, 2019) by Lior Sternfeld presents the first systematic study of the rich and variegated history of Jews in twentieth-century Iran. Lior begins his intervention by identifying a “lachrymose historical narrative” that has predominated modern Jewish history and framed it as a “homogenously tragic” history across the board, resulting in the privileging of Zionist historiography in Jewish historical writing and erased the complexity of Jewish histories that don’t neatly fit that narrative.Throughout his book, Lior complicates the narrative by showing how various Iranian Jewish communities exerted the agency to assert their space in Iran's social, cultural, and political milieu, whether it was through intellectual production or political activism. Lior explores Iran’s Jews in relation to local politics, urbanity, immigration, nationalism, leftism, Zionism, and more, demonstrating the multivocality and multivalence of these communities, and ultimately illuminating how deeply entwined Iranian Jews have been to the country of Iran itself.Asad Dandia is a graduate student of Islamic Studies at Columbia University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Claudia Moscovici’s recent book, Holocaust Memories: A Survey of Holocaust Memoirs, Histories, Novels, and Films (Hamilton Books, 2019), is intended for educators and politicians to draw attention to and educate people about the Never Again Education Act.Moscovici: “Nearly eighty years have passed since the Holocaust. There have been hundreds of memoirs, histories and novels written about it, yet many fear that this important event may fall into oblivion. As Holocaust survivors pass away, their legacy of suffering, tenacity and courage could be forgotten. It is up to each generation to commemorate the victims, preserve their life stories and hopefully help prevent such catastrophes. These were my main motivations in writing this book, Holocaust Memories, which includes reviews of memoirs, histories, biographies, novels and films about the Holocaust.It was difficult to choose among the multitude of books on the subject that deserve our attention. I made my selections based partly on the works that are considered to be the most important on the subject; partly on wishing to offer some historical background about the Holocaust in different countries and regions that were occupied by or allied themselves with Nazi Germany, and partly on my personal preferences, interests and knowledge.The Nazis targeted European Jews as their main victims, so my book focuses primarily on them. At the same time, since the Nazis also targeted other groups they considered dangerous and inferior, I also review books about the sufferings of the Gypsies, the Poles and other groups that fell victim to the Nazi regimes.In the last part, I review books that discuss other genocides and crimes against humanity, including the Stalinist mass purges, the Cambodian massacres by the Pol Pot regime and the Rwandan genocide. I want to emphasize that history can, indeed, repeat itself, even if in different forms and contexts. Just as the Jews of Europe were not the only targets of genocide, Fascist regimes were not its only perpetrators.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies