New Books in Jewish Studies

Daniel Boyarin's new book The No-State Solution: A Jewish Manifesto (Yale University Press, 2023) is a provocative anti-Zionist manifesto pleading for a new understanding of Jewish peoplehood and sketching an alternative vision for a Jewish future beyond the nation-state: the Diaspora nation. He aims to drive a wedge between the "nation" and the "state," only very recently conjoined, and recover a robust sense of nationalism that does not involve sovereignty. Professor emeritus of Talmudic culture at the University of California, Berkeley, Daniel Boyarin has been one of the most influential and paradigm-shifting scholars in Jewish Studies generally and of rabbinic culture and the study of Judaism and Christianity specifically. His publications include Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (1993), Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Judaism and Christianity (1999), Queer Theory and the Jewish Question (2003), A Traveling Homeland: The Babylonian Talmud as Diaspora (2015) and Judaism: The Genealogy of a Modern Notion (2018).Miriam Chorley-Schulz (neé Schulz) holds a Ph.D. in Yiddish Studies from Columbia University. She is an Assistant Professor and Mokin Fellow in Holocaust Studies at the University of Oregon. Miriam is the co-founder of the EU-funded project We Refugees. Digital Archive on Refugeedom, Past and Present and the author of the award-winning monograph Der Beginn des Untergangs: Die Zerstörung der jüdischen Gemeinden in Polen und das Vermächtnis des Wilnaer Komitees (Berlin: Metropol, 2016). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

In this comprehensive approach to Jewish humor focused on the relationship between humor and American Jewish practice, Jennifer Caplan calls us to adopt a more expansive view of what it means to “do Jewish,” revealing that American Jews have turned, and continue to turn, to humor as a cultural touchstone. Caplan frames Funny, You Don't Look Funny: Judaism and Humor from the Silent Generation to Millennials (Wayne State UP, 2023) around four generations of Jewish Americans from the Silent Generation to Millennials, highlighting a shift from the utilization of Jewish-specific markers to American-specific markers.Jewish humor operates as a system of meaning-making for many Jewish Americans. By mapping humor onto both the generational identity of those making it and the use of Judaism within it, new insights about the development of American Judaism emerge. Caplan’s explication is innovative and insightful, engaging with scholarly discourse across Jewish studies and Jewish American history; it includes the work of Joseph Heller, Larry David, Woody Allen, Seinfeld, the Coen brothers films, and Broad City. This example of well-informed scholarship begins with an explanation of what makes Jewish humor Jewish and why Jewish humor is such a visible phenomenon. Offering ample evidence and examples along the way, Caplan guides readers through a series of phenomenological and ideological changes across generations, concluding with commentary regarding the potential influences on Jewish humor of later Millennials, Gen Z, and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

A Jewish Childhood in the Muslim Mediterranean: A Collection of Stories Curated by Leila Sebbar (U California Press, 2023) brings together the fascinating personal stories of Jewish writers, scholars, and intellectuals who came of age in lands where Islam was the dominant religion and everyday life was infused with the politics of the French imperial project. Prompted by novelist Leïla Sebbar to reflect on their childhoods, these writers offer literary portraits that gesture to a universal condition while also shedding light on the exceptional nature of certain experiences. The childhoods captured here are undeniably Jewish, but they are also Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Egyptian, Lebanese, and Turkish; each essay thus testifies to the multicultural, multilingual, and multi-faith community into which its author was born. The present translation makes this unique collection available to an English-speaking public for the first time. The original version, published in French in 2012, was awarded the Prix Haïm Zafrani, a prize given by the Elie Wiesel Institute of Jewish Studies to a literary project that valorizes Jewish civilization in the Muslim world.Translation by Lia Brozgal, Jane Kuntz, Rebekah Vince and Robert Watson.A free ebook version of this title is available here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Building on the success of Stereotyping Religion: Critiquing Clichés, this follow up volume dismantles a further 10 widespread stereotypes and clichés about religion, focusing on clichés that a new generation of students are most familiar with. Each chapter includes: A description of a particular cliché; Discussion of where it appears in popular culture or popular media; Discussion of where it appears in scholarly literature; A historical contextualization of its use in the past; An analysis of the social or rhetorical work the cliché accomplishes in the present. Clichés addressed include: "Religion and science naturally conflict", "All religions are against LGBTQ rights", "Eastern religions are more spiritual than Western religions", "Religion is personal and not subject to government regulation", "Religious pluralism gives everyone a voice", etc. Written in an easy and accessible style, Stereotyping Religion II: Critiquing Clichés is suitable for all readers looking to clear away unsophisticated assumptions in preparation for more critical studies.Brad Stoddard is Associate Professor in the History and Art History Department at McDaniel College, Westminster, MD. He researches religion in the United States. He is the author of Spiritual Entrepreneurs: Florida's Faith-Based Prisons and the American Carceral State (2021) and has edited or coedited several books. He is currently researching the topic of entheogens. Craig Martin is Professor of Religious Studies at St. Thomas Aquinas College, Sparkill, NY. His research interests include method and theory in the study of religion, discourse analysis and ideology critique, and poststructuralism. His books include A Critical Introduction to the Study of Religion (2017) and Discourse and Ideology: A Critique of the Study of Culture (2022). He edits a book series with Bloomsbury titled Critiquing Religion: Discourse, Culture, Power.This episode’s host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his website thereluctantamericanist.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

With An Ordinary Life? The Journeys of Tonia Lechtman, 1918-1996 (Ohio University Press, 2023), historian Anna Müller has produced a beautifully written book that is part biography, part family ethnography, part critical meditation on the challenges and contradictions of historical sourcework. Honest and illuminating reflections on the process of crafting an intimate portrait from a scholarly perspective are interwoven with an illuminating case study of migration, motherhood, identity, and incarceration in mid-twentieth-century Europe. Tonia Lechtman was a Jew, a loving mother and wife, a Polish patriot, a committed communist, and a Holocaust survivor. Throughout her life these identities brought her to multiple countries—Poland, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Israel—during some of the most pivotal and cataclysmic decades of the twentieth century. In most of those places, she lived on the margins of society while working to promote communism and trying to create a safe space for her small children. One woman’s national, political, ethnic, social, and personal identities impart an extraordinary perspective on the histories of Europe, Polish Jews, communism, activism, and survival during the twentieth century.Piotr H. Kosicki is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Catholics on the Barricades (Yale, 2018) and editor, among others, of Political Exile in the Global Twentieth Century (with Wolfram Kaiser). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

This book is an original and comparative study of reactions in West and East Africa to the persecution and attempted annihilation of Jews in Europe and in former German colonies in sub-Saharan Africa during the Second World War.An intellectual and diplomatic history of World War II and the Holocaust, Africans and the Holocaust: Perceptions and Responses of Colonized and Sovereign Peoples (Routledge, 2021) looks at the period from the perspectives of the colonized subjects of the Gold Coast, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Tanganyika, and Uganda, as well as the sovereign peoples of Liberia and Ethiopia, who wrestled with the social and moral questions that the war and the Holocaust raised. The five main chapters of the book explore the pre-Holocaust history of relations between Jews and Africans in West and East Africa, perceptions of Nazism in both regions, opinions of World War II, interpretations of the Holocaust, and responses of the colonized and sovereign peoples of West and East Africa to efforts by Great Britain to resettle certain categories of Jewish refugees from Europe in the two regions before and during the Holocaust.This book will be of use to students and scholars of African history, Holocaust and Jewish studies, and international or global history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Jesus changed our world forever. But who was he and what do we know about him? David Wenham's Jesus in Context: Making Sense of the Historical Figure (Cambridge UP, 2021) is a concise and wide-ranging engagement with that enduring and elusive subject. Exploring the sources for Jesus and his scholarly reception, he surveys information from Roman, Jewish, and Christian texts, and also examines the origins of the gospels, as well as the evidence of Paul, who had access to the earliest oral traditions about Jesus. Wenham demonstrates that the Jesus of the New Testament makes sense within the first century CE context in which he lived and preached. He offers a contextualized portrait of Jesus and his teaching; his relationship with John the Baptist and the Qumran community (and the Dead Sea Scrolls); his ethics and the Sermon on the Mount, his successes and disappointments. Wenham also brings insights into Jesus' vision of the future and his understanding of his own death and calling.Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

What do we do when God is silent? This question was asked by the ancient Jewish people during their darkest era, the seventh century BCE. Assyrian armies had ransacked, looted, and burned their once-beautiful land--destroying or exiling much of the populace, leaving behind scarred and traumatized inhabitants under a tyrant's rule. In this environment, violence and idolatry flourished. The prophets were silenced and the Torah nearly forgotten, threatening the survival of God's people. Into this spiritual vacuum, three new voices arose: Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, who are some of the most unfamiliar prophets within the Book of the Twelve. What were their historical contexts, and what is the main divine message communicated by each? Drawing from the best of traditional and contemporary scholarship, master teacher Rabbi Yaakov Beasley shows us why these prophets are as relevant today as they were to the Jews of Judah so many centuries ago. Join us as we speak with Yaakov Beasley about his recent commentary on these prophets, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah: Lights in the Valley (Maggid, 2020).Rabbi Yaakov Beasley is a popular and passionate educator, lecturer, and writer on the Bible in North America and Israel. He studied at Yeshiva University and Herzog College, and holds an MA with, and is a doctoral candidate at, Bar Ilan University.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), Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus(IVP Academic, 2015), and Exodus Old and New: A Biblical Theology of Redemption (IVP Academic, 2020). 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

Absorbing the full reality of climate change will require more than a scientific approach. Some American Jews are showing how religious ritual can help us metabolize catastrophic grief while also pointing towards a future rebirth.Guests:-Jennie Rosenn, Founder & CEO of Dayenu-Andrue Kahn, Central Synagogue-Malkah Binah Klein, Community leaderThis episode was produced by Liya Rechtman.Zachary Davis is the host of Ministry of Ideas and Writ Large and the Editor-in-Chief of Radiant. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

There has been a dearth of study in Lukan scholarship on the transfiguration account and the enigmatic statement about Jesus' "exodus" in Jerusalem. Now Gil Shin has provided a model of new exodus based on the Song of the Sea in Exodus 15, illuminating along the way how the motifs of Moses and David are conjoined within a larger drama of the (new) exodus and the subsequent establishment of Israel's (eschatological) worship space. Join us as we speak with Gil Shin about his recent book, The "Exodus" in Jerusalem (Luke 9:31): A Lukan Form of Israel's Restoration Hope (Brill, 2022).W. Gil Shin earned his PhD at Fuller Theological Seminary, where he is Affiliate Professor of New Testament. He has published books and articles, including CEB Gospel Parallels (2012).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), Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus(IVP Academic, 2015), and Exodus Old and New: A Biblical Theology of Redemption (IVP Academic, 2020). 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