New Books in Jewish Studies

New Books in Jewish Studies

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Episodes

Shimon Redlich, "Bridge Builder: My Life Since the Holocaust" (Academic Studies Press, 2026)

August 16, 2026 • 44 mins
How do you build bridges after living through one of history's greatest ruptures? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with historian Shimon Redlich to discuss his memoir Bridge Builder: My Life Since the Holocaust (Academic Studies Press, 2026), the concluding volume of his remarkable four-part autobiographical journey. Picking up in the late 1950s, Bridge Builder follows Redlich from his years as a ...
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James Loeffler, "Exceptional Hatred: Antisemitism and the Fight over Free Speech in Modern America" (Metropolitan Books, 2026)

August 15, 2026 • 64 mins
A leading historian’s revelatory exploration of antisemitism in the United States—from 1940s anti-Jewish riots until today—showing that it has long served as a frontline in our wars over freedom of speech and the nature of American liberalism Few issues are as vexed today as antisemitism and free speech. There is scarcely an arena—college campuses, congressional hearings, immigration courtrooms, social ...
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Are We In The Midst Of A Yiddish Renaissance?

August 15, 2026 • 66 mins
Are we currently experiencing a Yiddish renaissance? This is one of the questions we are often asked at YIVO. YIVO’s own community of Yiddish learners has expanded more than 10-fold in the last two years. Duolingo has added Yiddish as a language. Headline after headline touts Yiddish as unexpectedly alive and well. What does this all mean for Yiddish in the 21st century? Join YIVO for a conversation about the Yiddish world t...
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Zvi Yehuda and Marian Scheuer Sofaer, "The Expulsion of Jews from Iraq, 20th Century: The Agonies of Redemption" (Brill, 2024)

August 15, 2026 • 53 mins
In this episode we spoke with Marian Scheuer Sofaer, Esquire, and Dr. Einav Yehuda-Shnaidman about The Expulsion of Jews from Iraq, 20th Century: The Agonies of Redemption (Brill, 2024), by Dr. Zvi Yehuda, and translated by Sofaer. Dr. Zvi Yehuda, born in Iraq in 1936, immigrated to Israel as a teenager during Operation Ezra and Nehemiah and went on to complete a PhD in History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, later foundi...
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Sarah Ellen Zarrow, "Displays of Belonging: Polish Jewish Collecting and Museums, 1891–1941" (Cornell UP, 2025.)

August 14, 2026 • 64 mins
Displays of Belonging: Polish Jewish Collecting and Museums, 1891–1941 (Cornell UP, 2025.) illuminates the lives and work of Polish Jewish collectors and museologists, who sought to preserve the treasures of the Jewish past while demonstrating Jewish belonging on Polish soil. As Jews comfortable in the Polish language and within Polish artistic and academic society, they saw themselves as intermediaries between less...
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Yigal Levin, "The Chronicles of David and Solomon: 1 Chronicles 10–2 Chronicles 9: A New Translation and Commentary " (Bloomsbury, 2026)

August 13, 2026 • 35 mins
In this New Books Network interview, Professor Željko Stanojević speaks with Professor Yigal Levin of Bar-Ilan University about his new book, The Chronicles of David and Solomon: 1 Chronicles 10–2 Chronicles 9: A New Translation and Commentary, published by Bloomsbury. The conversation explores what is new in Levin’s translation and commentary, how the Book of Chronicles reshapes the stories of David and Solomon, ...
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In the Shadow of the Shtetl: Yiddish Memories of Small-Town Jewish Life in Ukraine

August 12, 2026 • 59 mins
Drawing from some four hundred Yiddish-language interviews conducted by the Archives of Historical and Ethnographic Yiddish Memories project, Jeffrey Veidlinger will explore how elderly Yiddish speakers in Ukraine described their memories of Jewish life in the Soviet shtetl, their stories of survival during the Holocaust, and their experiences living as Jews under Communism. This exploration will help us understand how despite Sta...
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Eckart Otto, "Max Weber's Studies of Ancient Judaism: The Historical Foundation for a Theory of the Modern Age" (Mohr Siebeck, 2002)

August 11, 2026 • 36 mins
In Max Weber's Studies of Ancient Judaism: The Historical Foundation for a Theory of the Modern Age (Mohr Siebeck, 2002) Eckart Otto provides a history of Max Weber's work on the cultural history of ancient Judaism, a subject on which Weber spent more than 10 years. He shows how closely these studies are linked not only to theology and Jewish studies, jurisprudence and economics, the science of history and philosophy...
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Eckart Otto, "Deuteronomy in the Pentateuch and the Hexateuch: Studies of the Literary History of the Pentateuch and the Hexateuch within the Framework of Deuteronomy" (Mohr Siebeck, 2000)

August 10, 2026 • 40 mins
In Deuteronomy in the Pentateuch and the Hexateuch: Studies of the Literary History of the Pentateuch and the Hexateuch within the Framework of Deuteronomy (Mohr Siebeck, 2000; unrevised e-book edition, 2019), Eckart Otto contributes to the study of Deuteronomy, the Pentateuch, the Hexateuch. The book argues that both the Hexateuch and the Pentateuch developed ideas already articulated in the Deuteronomistic form of Deute...
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Deborah Barer, "Going Off Script: Improvisational Judgment in the Talmud" (Oxford UP, 2026)

August 8, 2026 • 51 mins
What does it really mean to go "beyond the letter of the law"? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with scholar Deborah Barer to discuss her book Going Off Script: Improvisational Judgment in the Talmud, which offers a surprising new interpretation of one of the Talmud's most enduring ethical concepts: lifnim mi-shurat ha-din. For generations, lifnim mi-shurat ha-din has been understood to mean acting "beyond the letter ...
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Russia’s Jews in World War I

August 8, 2026
When World War I began, the Russian Empire was home to more than 5.7 million Jews, the most densely settled Jewish population in the world. Thirty years later, by 1945, only remnants of this civilization remained. The years of World War I, from 1914 to 1918, launched nearly all the forces that led to this epic destruction. In A Nation of Refugees: Russia's Jews in World War I, Polly Zavadivker tells how Jewish civilians exper...
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Donniel Hartman, "Who Are the Jews—And Who Can We Become?" (Jewish Publication Society, 2023)

August 7, 2026 • 46 mins
In this episode of the New Books Network, I speak with Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman about his book Who Are the Jews and Who Can We Become? (Jewish Publication Society, 2023), the 2023 National Jewish Book Award Finalist in Modern Jewish Thought and Experience. Hartman is president of the Shalom Hartman Institute and holds the Kaufman Family Chair in Jewish Philosophy. His work has consistently addressed what constit...
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Gianluca Fantoni, "Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers: A History of the Jewish Brigade" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2026)

August 7, 2026 • 65 mins
Soldiers, Angels, and Avengers: A History of the Jewish Brigade (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2026) tells the compelling story of the Jewish Brigade Infantry Group (JBG), a five-thousand-strong military unit, recruited primarily from the Jewish population of Palestine, and the only exclusively Jewish military unit to fight under the British flag during the Second World War. Gianluca Fantoni reconstructs the milit...
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Laura Jockusch on Jewish Revenge after the Holocaust (JP)

August 6, 2026 • 50 mins
After a great human-wrought tragedy, how are victims and their kin made right? What does it mean to take revenge, to exact vengeance, to seek redress, to go vigilante in seeking justice? What counts as the proper or sufficient retaliation or retribution--and what can or should be left to the impartial third-person mechanisms of a justice system? To ask about those troubling topics from a new angle, Brandeis University's Laura...
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Hasidism in Poland on the Eve of the Holocaust

August 6, 2026 • 69 mins
The Light of Learning (Oxford UP, 2024) tells the story of an unexpected Hasidic revival in Poland on the eve of the Holocaust. In the aftermath of World War I, as secularism spread, Hasidic leaders rapidly reinvented themselves as educators devoted to rescuing the youth by means of world-renowned yeshivas, Bais Yaakov schools for girls and women, and eventually underground yeshiva bunkers during the Holocaust. ...
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Yiddish Language During the Holocaust

August 5, 2026 • 62 mins
The Holocaust radically altered the way many East European Jews spoke Yiddish. Finding prewar language incapable of describing the imprisonment, death, and dehumanization of the Holocaust, prisoners added or reinvented thousands of Yiddish words and phrases to describe their new reality. These crass, witty, and sometimes beautiful Yiddish words – Khurbn Yiddish, or “Yiddish of the Holocaust” – puzz...
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Posen Library: Jewish Studies Teaching Modules

August 1, 2026 • 56 mins
Bring the breadth of Jewish history and civilization into your classroom with ready-to-use teaching modules curated by experts. The Posen Library is an educational resource grounded in primary sources and made broadly accessible through the creation and curation of engaging contextual material. Its goal is to highlight the varieties of Jewish culture and civilization across time and space for English-speaking audiences and to be t...
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Kyle H. Keimer and George A. Pierce eds., "The Ancient Israelite World" (Routledge, 2024)

July 31, 2026 • 27 mins
The Ancient Israelite World (Routledge, 2024) presents a collection of studies by international experts on various aspects of ancient Israel’s society, economy, religion, language, culture, and history, synthesizing archaeological remains and integrating them with discussions of ancient Near Eastern and biblical texts. Driven by theoretically and methodologically informed discussions of the archaeology of the Iron ...
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The YIVO Library in New York: Personal Reflections on Its History and Collections

July 31, 2026
In the mid-1930s a group of New York Yiddishist intellectuals established the Central Jewish Library and Press Archive, whose collections became the nucleus of the YIVO Library when the Institute relocated from Vilna to New York in 1940. Over the succeeding decades, the Library grew by leaps and bounds, thanks to the dedication of its librarians and supporters. It emerged as a “collection of collections,” absorbing the ...
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George Savran, "Jacob: Conflicted Twin, Aggrieved Patriarch" (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2025)

July 30, 2026 • 68 mins
In Jacob: Conflicted Twin, Aggrieved Patriarch (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2025), George Savran brings his narrative interpretive approach to look closely at Jacob's shifting identity. Jacob is indelibly linked to his brother Esau in the Genesis narrative, and their complex relationship as twins foregrounds this problematic connection. Jacob's lineage is examined-he differs noticeably from his ancestors and his offsp...
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