New Books in Jewish Studies

In Unclean Lips: Obscenity, Jews, and American Culture (New York University Press, 2014), Josh Lambert, Academic Director of the Yiddish Book Center and Visiting Assistant Professor of English at UMass Amherst, explores the role of Jews in the history of obscenity in America. Through a series of case studies, he shows how Jews battled censorship as writers, editors, publishers, critics, and lawyers. In their engagements in battles over obscenity, Jews have played a previously underappreciated role in transforming American culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

In his expansive The Age of Secrecy: Jews, Christians, and the Economy of Secrets, 1400-1800 (Yale University Press, 2015), Daniel Jutte suggests new ways of understanding the scientific revolution of the early modern period through exploring the ways in which Christians and Jews engaged in the exchange of secret knowledge. As opposed to contemporary understandings of secrets as information needing to be exposed to the public or being withheld for potentially dangerous reasons, Jutte argues that early modern Christians and Jews often thought of arcane knowledge as positive and truthful. By looking at what he terms the economy of secrets, particularly Jewish participation in the keeping and transmittance of knowledge in areas as diverse as alchemy, cryptography, and espionage, Jutte argues for broader understanding of Jewish agency, economic opportunity, and sites of intellectual and cultural exchange during this era. 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 Rag Race: How Jews Sewed Their Way to Success in America and the British Empire (New York University Press, 2015), Adam Mendelsohn, Associate Professor of History at the University of Cape Town, embarks on a comparative exploration of Jews in the rag (or clothing) trade in the British Empire and the U.S. Differences within the garment industries in, for example, London and New York, explain the divergence in social and economic outcomes for Jews in each setting. Mendelsohn’s narrative helps us better understand the limits of “cultural,” and other, explanations for modern Jewish economic mobility. 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 Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France (Harvard University Press, 2015), Ethan Katz examines and interrogates Jewish-Muslim relations from 1914 to the present. Arguing that interactions between Jews and Muslims must be understood in and through the respective, changing statuses and relationships of both communities to the French state, The Burdens of Brotherhood pursues the history of this “triangular affair.” Drawing on a range of archival, press and media sources, as well as oral interviews, the book emphasizes everyday lives and mutual perceptions in and between spaces private and public, local and transnational. Its chapters move from the diversity and legacies of wartime experiences, to family and community gathering places in three different French cities (Paris, Strasbourg, and Marseille), to the routes and mobilities of people, cultures, and politics across the Mediterranean. The Burdens of Brotherhood revisits the First World War, the interwar years, the period of Vichy and the Occupation, the French-Algerian War, and the final decades of the twentieth century. It also traces the impact of international movements and politics on ethno-religious communities and identities in the French context, from forms of Zionism and anti-imperialism to the vicissitudes of the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1948. Towards the end of our conversation, Ethan and I had a chance to speak about the recent French past, including the events of January 2015 that he addresses in the book’s conclusion. Written with the present in mind, The Burdens of Brotherhood offers vital historical perspective and insight on issues of urgent concern with important implications for the future. 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 Star and the Stripes: A History of the Foreign Policies of American Jews (Princeton University Press, 2016), Michael Barnett, University Professor of International Affairs and Political Science at the George Washington University, explores the tension American Jews have felt between cosmopolitanism and tribalism in their approach to global affairs. Barnett explains how American Jews’ desire for inclusiveness and group survival forms a political theology of prophetic Judaism, which has guided the foreign policies of American Jews for over a century. 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 Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848 (Brandeis University Press, 2014), Sven-Erik Rose, Associate Professor of German at the University of California, Davis, explores how Jewish intellectuals in the first half of the nineteenth century reevaluated Judaism with the tools of German philosophy. That philosophy offered Jews ideas with which to think about the place of Jews in German society. The book won the 2015 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award in the category of Philosophy and Jewish Thought. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

In Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America (University of Illinois, 2015), Kenyon Zimmer, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Texas, Arlington, examines the anarchist movements and ideas of immigrants to the United States from the 1880’s through the 1940’s. Using sources in half a dozen different languages, Zimmer builds an in-depth picture of these movements’ achievements and challenges. This book is a definitive transnational history of working-class immigrant radicalism, which suggests that anarchist ideas are very much still relevant today. Max Kaiser is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. He can be reached at kaiser[at]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

In Building a Public Judaism: Synagogues and Jewish Identity in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Harvard University Press, 2013), Saskia Coenen Snyder, Associate Professor of History at the University of South Carolina, uses buildings to tell a story; specifically, a story about how the construction and architecture of nineteenth-century European synagogues shed light on the different national experiences of modern European Jews. By looking at synagogues in four important European centers: London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Berlin, Snyder explores Jewish space as a marker of acculturation but not full acceptance. 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 Love of God: Divine Gift, Human Gratitude, and Mutual Faithfulness in Judaism (Princeton University Press, 2016), Jon D. Levenson, Albert A. List Professor of Jewish Studies at Harvard University, explores the origin and development of the idea of “love of God.” From the Bible, to rabbinic interpreters in the ancient and medieval periods, to modern Jewish philosophers–Levenson traces strands of of covenantal love, sacrificial, and erotic love in the relationship between God and the people of Israel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

In British Fascist Antisemitism and Jewish Responses, 1932-1940 (Bloomsbury, 2015), Daniel Tilles, Assistant Professor of History at the Pedagogical University of Cracow, Poland, examines the use of antisemitism by Britain’s interwar fascists and the ways in which the country’s Jews reacted to this. Tilles challenges existing conceptions of the antisemitism of the British Union of Fascists, demonstrating that it was a far more central aspect of the party’s ideology than has previously been assumed. This book is a definitive account of British Fascism and its Jewish opponents during this period. With the rise of the far right in Europe, this book is very much relevant today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies