New Books in Jewish Studies

Messiah ben Joseph, the slain Galilean messiah, is the most enigmatic figure in Rabbinic Judaism. David C. Mitchell‘s Messiah ben Joseph (Campbell Publications, 2016) proposes that this messiah is not a rabbinic invention at all, however, and convincingly details Messiah ben Joseph’s emergence as early as the Pentateuch. Join us as we talk with Mitchell about his fascinating book. David C. Mitchell is a biblical scholar, musicologist, and Hebraist. He is Precentor and Director of Music at Holy Trinity Pro-Cathedral, Brussels. L. 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

In What is Modern Israel? (University of Chicago/Pluto Press, 2016), Yakov Rabkin, a professor of history at the University of Montreal, discusses some of the most fundamental issues pertaining to the history and socio-politics of Israel. He does not shy away from dealing with some of the most sensitive and controversial issues, such as the Christian roots of Zionist ideology, the commemoration and political uses of the Holocaust in Israel, and the problematic stance of Zionist ideology towards Jewish tradition. Rabkin’s earlier work has charted some of the main streams of Jewish opposition to Zionism. In this book, he offers a coherent Jewish critique of his own. Yaacov Yadgar is the Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies at the University of Oxford. His most recent book is 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

Born in the Land of Israel around the year 50 C.E., Rabbi Akiva was the greatest rabbi of his time and one of the most important influences on Judaism as we know it today. Traditional sources tell how he was raised in poverty and unschooled in religious tradition but began to learn the Torah as an adult. In the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 C.E., he helped shape a new direction for Judaism through his brilliance and his character. Mystic, legalist, theologian, and interpreter, he disputed with his colleagues in dramatic fashion yet was admired and beloved by his peers. Executed by Roman authorities for his insistence on teaching Torah in public, he became the exemplar of Jewish martyrdom. Drawing on the latest historical and literary scholarship, Barry W. Holtz‘s Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud (Yale University Press, 2017) goes beyond older biographies, untangling a complex assortment of ancient sources to present a clear and nuanced portrait of Talmudic hero Rabbi Akiva. Phillip Sherman is Associate Professor of Religion at Maryville College in Maryville, TN.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

In Strangers in Berlin: Modern Jewish Literature between East and West, 1919-1933 (University of Michigan Press, 2016), Rachel Seelig, Visiting Scholar in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Toronto, works against the prevailing tendency to view German and East European Jewish cultures as separate fields of study. Looking at four writers, Seelig presents Jewish literature in the Weimar Republic as the product of a dynamic encounter between East and West. This is a very interesting and groundbreaking work of scholarship. Max Kaiser is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. He can be reached at kaiser@student.unimelb.edu.au. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

​​Witnessing Unbound: Holocaust Representation and the Origins of Memory (Wayne State University Press, 2017) is a ​collection of essays and interviews that offer fresh ​insight on the last of the primary witnesses to the Holocaust​. The book interrogates the stylization of the ​narrative ​account of the primary witness, and it offers significant new scholarship on the Halakhic witness​ — Orthodox Jewish prisoners of German concentration camps, who attempted to confront their experience through the framework of Halakhic thought and praxis​. ​The book also provides analysis of the different methods and aims of collecting witness testimony between the Soviet-dominated East and the ​Allies of the West. Through the testimony of survivors of and witnesses to the atrocities, and the work of those who seek them out, the book unveils new insights at a critical moment in the documentation and commemoration of the Holocaust. David Gottlieb interviews co-author and co-editor Henri Lustiger-Thaler, professor of cultural sociology at Ramapo College of New Jersey. David Gottlieb is a PhD Candidate in the History of Judaism at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His research focuses on interpretations of the Binding of Isaac and the formation of Jewish cultural memory. He can be reached at davidg1@uchicago.edu.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

In Denying Her Voice: The Figure of Miriam in Ancient Jewish Literature (Vandenhock and Ruprecht, 2016) Hanna Tervanotko first analyzes the treatment and development of Miriam as a literary character in ancient Jewish texts, taking into account all the references to this figure preserved in ancient Jewish literature from the exilic period to the early second century C.E.: Exodus 15:20-21; Deuteronomy 24:8-9; Numbers 12:1-15; 20:1; 26:59; 1 Chronicles 5:29; Micah 6:4, the Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q365 6 II, 1-7; 4Q377 2 I, 9; 4Q543 1 I, 6 = 4Q545 1 I, 5; 4Q546 12, 4; 4Q547 4 I, 10; 4Q549 2, 8), Jubilees 47:4; Ezekiel the Tragedian 18; Demetrius Chronographer frag. 3; texts by Philo of Alexandria: De vita contemplativa 87; Legum allegoriae 1.76; 2.66-67; 3.103; De agricultura 80-81; Liber antiquitatum biblicarum 9:10; 20:8, and finally texts by Josephus: Antiquitates judaicae 2.221; 3.54; 3.105; 4.78. These texts demonstrate that the picture of Miriam preserved in the ancient Jewish texts is richer than the Hebrew Bible suggests. The results provide a contradictory image of Miriam. On the one hand she becomes a tool of Levitical politics, whereas on the other she continues to enjoy a freer role. People continued to interpret earlier literary traditions in light of new situations, and interpretations varied in different contexts. Second, in light of poststructuralist literary studies that treat texts as reflections of specific social situations, Tervanotko argues that the treatment of Miriam in ancient Jewish literature reflects mostly a reality in which women had little space as active agents. Despite the general tendency to allow women only little room, the references to Miriam suggest that at least some prominent women may have enjoyed occasional freedom. Phillip Sherman is Associate Professor of Religion at Maryville College in Maryville, TN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

In The Right To Difference: French Universalism and the Jews (University of Chicago Press, 2016), Maurice Samuels, Betty Jane Anylan Professor of French and director of the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism at Yale University, demonstrates that Jewish difference has always been essential to the elaboration of French universalism. Looking at novelists, philosophers, filmmakers and political figures Samuels recovers the forgotten history of a more open, pluralistic form of French universalism. This is sure to become a classic and essential text. Max Kaiser is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Melbourne. He can be reached at kaiser@student.unimelb.edu.au.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

The work of Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), one of Judaism’s great philosophers and defenders, has nonetheless defied easy categorization or definitive depiction. While advocating for the granting of full rights to the Jews of Germany, Mendelssohn also was cast in the role of defender of the faith and advocate for continued obedience to what he termed “ceremonial law” or “divine legislation.” In his new book, Moses Mendelssohn’s Living Script: Philosophy, Practice, History, Judaism (Indiana University Press, 2016), Elias Sacks, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, delves into Mendelssohn’s Hebrew and German works to develop a comprehensive perspective on Jewish practice, Jewish citizenship, and Jewish history. Professor Sacks pays careful attention to Mendelssohn’s historical context and the influence on his work of late Enlightenment philosophy, Christian theology, and emerging scientific models of thought. David Gottlieb is a PhD Candidate in the History of Judaism at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His research focuses on interpretations of the Binding of Isaac and the formation of Jewish cultural memory. He can be reached at davidg1@uchicago.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Mainstream readings of Numbers have tended to see the book as a haphazard junkyard of material that connects Genesis—Leviticus with Deuteronomy and Joshua, composed at a late stage in the history of ancient Israel. By contrast, Pekka Pitkanen reads Numbers as part of a wider work of Genesis—Joshua, a carefully crafted programmatic settler colonial document for a new society in Canaanite highlands in the late second millennium BCE—a document that seeks to replace pre-existing indigenous societies. On this show, we speak with Pekka Pitkanen about his new approach to Numbers in his recent book, A Commentary on Numbers: Narrative, Ritual and Colonialism (Routledge, 2017). Dr Pekka Pitkanen is a senior lecturer in the School of Liberal and Performing Arts at the University of Gloucestershire, UK. He also has an MDiv in theology from Chongshin University, Seoul, Korea, and a PhD on Old Testament studies from University of Gloucestershire. He is the author of Central Sanctuary and Centralization of Worship in Ancient Israel (2003) and Joshua (2010). His main area of specialization is the study of the sacred texts of Christianity (OT/HB) in the context of the ancient world and from a number of perspectives including archaeology, sociology, and anthropology. L. 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

In Jewish Volunteers, the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), Gerben Zaagsma, Senior researcher at the centre for contemporary and digital history at the University of Luxembourg, discusses the participation of volunteers of Jewish descent in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, focusing particularly on the establishment of the Naftali Botwin Company, a Jewish military unit that was created in the Polish Dombrowski Brigade. Zaagsma analyses the symbolic meaning of the participation of Jewish volunteers and the Botwin Company both during and after the civil war. He puts this participation in the broader context of Jewish involvement and Jewish/non-Jewish relations in the Left, and asks to what extent Jewishness and Jewish concerns mattered in the International Brigades and why the Botwin Company was actually created. To this end, the book examines representations of Jewish volunteers in the Parisian Yiddish press (both communist and non-communist). In addition, he analyses the various ways in which the memory of the experiences of Jewish volunteers and the Botwin Company came to be constituted and constructed after the Second World War and the Holocaust. To that end the book traces how discourses about Jewish volunteers became decisively shaped by post-Holocaust debates on Jewish responses to fascism and Nazism, analyses how, and why, volunteers of Jewish descent eventually became Jewish volunteers after the war, and discusses claims that Jewish volunteers can be seen as ‘the first Jews to resist Hitler with arms’. Max Kaiser is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. He can be reached at kaiser@student.unimelb.edu.au. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies