New Books in Jewish Studies

In The Origins of Judaism: An Archaeological-Historical Reappraisal (Yale University Press, 2022), Yonatan Adler pursues the societal adoption of recognizable Jewish practices by Judeans in antiquity with the ultimate aim of establishing a particular terminus ante quem (temporal limit before which) these practices must have become widespread. Sifting through both textual and archaeological evidence for the aversion to graven images/figural artwork, dietary restrictions, synagogue worship, circumcision, the Sabbath as a day of rest, Judean festivals, and more, Adler’s “social history” demonstrates that such observances can be conclusively dated at various points within the second century BCE—but not on any meaningful scale before this crucial time of the Maccabean revolt and Israel’s brief period of Hasmonean self-rule. Adler joined the New Books Network to discuss his potentially paradigm-shifting findings, which contrast strongly with claims from the Hebrew Bible and much of biblical scholarship that, on the basis of “intellectual history,” prefer to locate Jewish origins in the postexilic Persian Achaemenid period (ca. 539–332 BCE) if not significantly earlier than this.Yonatan Adler (Ph.D., Bar-Ilan University, 2011) is Associate Professor in Archaeology at Ariel University in Israel, where he also heads its Institute of Archaeology. Adler specializes in the origins of Judaism as a system of ritual practices, and in the evolution of these practices over the long-term. Previously, his research has focused on ritual purity observance evidenced in the archaeological remains of chalk vessels and immersion pools, and he has also published extensively on ancient tefillin (phylacteries) from Qumran and elsewhere in the Judean Desert. Dr. Adler has directed excavations at several sites throughout Israel, and from 2019 to 2020 he held the appointment of Horace W. Goldsmith Visiting Associate Professor in Judaic Studies at Yale University.Rob Heaton (Ph.D., University of Denver, 2019) hosts Biblical Studies conversations for New Books in Religion and teaches New Testament, Christian origins, and early Christianity at Anderson University in Indiana. He recently authored The Shepherd of Hermas as Scriptura Non Grata: From Popularity in Early Christianity to Exclusion from the New Testament Canon (Lexington Books, 2023). For more about Rob and his work, please see his website at https://www.robheaton.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 recent years, Israeli state policies have attempted to dissuade Orthodox Jews from creating large families, an objective that flies in the face of traditional practices in their community. As state desires to cultivate a high-income, tech-centered nation come into greater conflict with common Orthodox familial practices, Jewish couples are finding it increasingly difficult to actualize their reproductive aims and communal expectations.In The State of Desire: Religion and Reproductive Politics in the Promised Land (New York University Press, 2023), Lea Taragin-Zeller provides an intimate examination of the often devastating effects of Israel's steep cutbacks in child benefits, which are aimed at limiting the rapid increase in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish population. Taragin-Zeller takes the reader beyond Orthodox taboos, capturing how cracks in religious convictions engender a painful process of re-orientating desires to reproduce amidst shrinking public support, feminism, and new ideals of romance, intimacy and parenting. Paying close attention to ethical dilemmas, the book explores not just pro-ceptive but also contraceptive desires around family formation: when to have children, how many, and at what cost.The volume offers a rare look at issues of contraception in the Orthodox context, and notably includes interviews with men, making the case that we cannot continue to study reproductive choice solely through the perspectives of women. The State of Desire is a groundbreaking anthropological approach to the study of religion and reproduction, and a remarkably intimate account of the delicate balance between personal desires and those of the state.Lea Taragin-Zeller is Assistant Professor in the Federmann School of Public Policy and Program in Cultural Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press, 2020). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Yamin Levy's The Mysticism of Andalusia: Exploring HaRambam's Mystical Tradition (MHC Press, 2023) is a groundbreaking book that delves into the mystical tradition of Andalusia and specifically of Maimonides. Unlike Kabalah and the European mystical traditions, Andalusian mysticism is rooted in clear Halakhic and philosophical principles devoid of superstition and magic. This book examines Maimonides works which serve as a guide for those interested in pursuing mystical union with G-d. Topics such as prophecy, love and awe of G-d, silent meditation, the role of prophets, and the spiritual aspects of Jewish rituals are all explored in this book. The Mysticism of Andalusia offers a refreshing perspective and path forward for all who desire deep spiritual fulfillment without the rejection of the mind and self.Ohad Fedida lives in Miami and is a psychology research and clinical assistant. He is pursuing a graduate degree in psychology, and is involved in a wide array of initiatives and studies from legal philosophy, Jewish programming, and psychology. 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 important historical account of the role that religion played in defining the political life of a modern national society, Paul A. Hanebrink shows how Hungarian nationalists redefined Hungary--a liberal society in the nineteenth century--as a narrowly "Christian" nation in the aftermath of World War I. Drawing on impressive archival research, Hanebrink uncovers how political and religious leaders demanded that "Christian values" influence public life while insisting that religion should never be reduced to the status of a simple nationalist symbol.In Defense of Christian Hungary: Religion, Nationalism, and Antisemitism, 1890–1944 (Cornell UP, 2018) also explores the emergence of the idea that a destructive "Jewish spirit" was the national enemy. In combining the historical study of antisemitism with more recent considerations of religion and nationalism, Hanebrink addresses an important question in Central European historiography: how nations that had been inclusive of Jews before World War I became rabidly antisemitic during the interwar period. As he traces the crucial and complex legacy of religion's role in shaping exclusionary antisemitic politics in Hungary, Hanebrink follows the process from its origins in the 1890s to the Holocaust and beyond.More broadly, In Defense of Christian Hungary squarely addresses the relationship between antisemitic words and antisemitic violence and between religion and racial politics, deeply contested issues in the history of twentieth-century Europe. The Hungarian example is a chilling demonstration of how religious nationalism can find a home even within a pluralist and tolerant civil society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Ruth, a princess of Moab, leaves her homeland after suffering terrible losses to become the mother of the royal house of Israel. Now, in a revolutionary reading of this immortal tale, Moshe Miller provides an entirely new perspective on this beloved story. Beneath the simple surface of this story, the Sages trace a web of primal issues, including the Serpent in the Garden of Eden; the jealousy of Cain; the painful break between Abraham and Lot; and the mystery that is the mitzvah of yibum. The fiber that binds together all these issues is love. Love is the key to this story, which culminates in the unique love of Ruth and Boaz, and the ancestors of the once and future king, David, whose very name means love! Join us as we speak with Moshe Miller about his book, Rising Moon: Unraveling the Book of Ruth (Kodesh Press, 2022).Moshe Miller is a graduate of Yeshivat Ner Yisrael and holds a master's degree in philosophy from Brown University. He has been an educator for nearly fifty years and immigrated to Israel in 2010. He lives in Jerusalem, where he continues to teach and write.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

Why do pogroms occur in some localities and not in others? Jeffrey S. Kopstein and Jason Wittenberg examine a particularly brutal wave of violence that occurred across hundreds of predominantly Polish and Ukrainian communities in the aftermath of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. The authors note that while some communities erupted in anti-Jewish violence, most others remained quiescent. In fact, fewer than 10 percent of communities saw pogroms in 1941, and most ordinary gentiles never attacked Jews.Intimate Violence: Anti-Jewish Pogroms on the Eve of the Holocaust (Cornell UP, 2018) is a novel social-scientific explanation of ethnic violence and the Holocaust. It locates the roots of violence in efforts to maintain Polish and Ukrainian dominance rather than in anti-Semitic hatred or revenge for communism. In doing so, it cuts through painful debates about relative victimhood that are driven more by metaphysical beliefs in Jewish culpability than empirical evidence of perpetrators and victims. Pogroms, they conclude, were difficult to start, and local conditions in most places prevented their outbreak despite a general anti-Semitism and the collapse of the central state. Kopstein and Wittenberg shed new light on the sources of mass ethnic violence and the ways in which such gruesome acts might be avoided. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Béla Bodó's book Black Humor and the White Terror (Routledge, 2023) examines political humor as a reaction to the lost war, the post-war chaos, and antisemitic violence in Hungary between 1918 and 1922. While there is an increased body of literature on Jewish humor as a form of resistance and a means of resilience during the Holocaust, only a handful of studies have addressed Jewish humor as a reaction to physical attacks and increased discrimination in Europe during and after the First World War. The majority of studies have approached the issue of Jewish humor from an anthropological, cultural, or linguistic perspective; they have been interested in the humor of lower- or lower-middle-class Jews in the East European shtetles before 1914.On the other hand, this study follows a historical and political approach to the same topic and focuses on the reaction of urban, middle-class, and culturally assimilated Jews to recent events: to the disintegration of the Dual Monarchy, the collapse of law and order, increased violence, the reversal of Jewish emancipation and the rise of new and more pernicious antisemitic prejudices. The study sees humor not only as a form of entertainment and jokes as literature and a product of popular culture, but also as a heuristic device to understand the world and make sense of recent changes, as well as a means to defend one's social position, individual and group identity, strike back at the enemy, and last but not least, to gain the support and change the hearts and minds of non-Jews and neutral bystanders.Unlike previous scholarly works on Jewish resistance during the Holocaust, this study sees Budapest Jewish humor after WWI as a joint adventure: as a product of urban and Hungarian culture, in which Jewish not only played an important role but also cofounded. Finally, the book addressed the issue of continuity in Hungarian history, the "twisted road to Auschwitz" whether urban Jewish humor, as a form of escapism, helped to desensitize the future victims of the Holocaust to the approaching danger, or it continued to play the same defensive and positive role in the interwar period, as it had done in the immediate aftermath of the Great War. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Beloved culinary and cultural institutions, Jewish delis are wonderlands of amazing flavors and great food—bright, buttery, briny, sweet, fatty, salty, smoky. . . . In The Jewish Deli: An Illustrated Guide to the Chosen Food (Chronicle Books, 2023), comics artist and deli aficionado Ben Nadler takes a deliciously entertaining deep dive into the history and culture of this food and the places that serve it up to us across the counter. Nadler guides readers through the details and delights of each major food category, all playfully illustrated and each more irresistibly noshable than the last.Ben talks to New Books Network about how today’s Jewish cuisine is not only guided by ancient Jewish religious rites, but is also rooted in stories of immigration. From pastrami to lox and black-and-white cookies to a bagel and schmear, he covers it with tales of the people making and baking, and his own personal hunger for culinary knowledge.Interview by Laura Goldberg, longtime food blogger at Vittlesvamp.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

The province of Grosseto in southern Tuscany shows two extremes in the treatment of Italian and foreign Jews during the Holocaust. To the east of the province, the Jews of Pitigliano, a four hundred-year-old community, were hidden for almost a year by sympathetic farmers in barns and caves. None of those in hiding were arrested and all survived the Fascist hunt for Jews. In the west, near the provincial capital of Grosseto, almost a hundred Italian and foreign Jews were imprisoned in 1943–1944 in the bishop's seminary, which he had rented to the Fascists for that purpose. About half of them, though they had thought that the bishop would protect them, were deported with his knowledge by Fascists and Nazis to Auschwitz. Thus, the Holocaust reached into this provincial corner as it did into all parts of Italy still under Italian Fascist control. Judith Roumani's Jews in Southern Tuscany During the Holocaust (Lexington Books, 2020) is based on new interviews and research in local and national archives.Judith Roumani is founder and director of the Jewish Institute of Pitigliano. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

The book of Kohelet or Ecclesiastes is one of the most challenging biblical books to comprehend, yet it is traditionally read on every Sukkot, the Feast of Booths. In a groundbreaking work, David Curwin draws from traditional sources and modern scholarship to take us on an eye-opening journey through Kohelet and other books of the Tanakh. Starting with a look at the life of King Solomon, whose successes and failures are reflected in the teachings of Kohelet, Curwin then presents linguistic and thematic evidence suggesting strong parallels between the life of Adam and that of Solomon, and between the book of Kohelet and the opening chapters of Genesis.Tune in as we speak with David Curwin about his book, Kohelet: A Map to Eden (Maggid, 2023).David Curwin is an independent scholar who has researched and published widely on the Bible, Jewish thought and philosophy, and Hebrew language. His writings, both academic and popular, have appeared in periodicals such as Tradition, Hakirah, and Jewish Bible Quarterly. His blog on Hebrew language is: https://www.balashon.com/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