New Books in Jewish Studies Podcast Por Marshall Poe arte de portada

New Books in Jewish Studies

New Books in Jewish Studies

De: Marshall Poe
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Interview with Scholars of Judaism about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studiesNew Books Network Espiritualidad Judaísmo
Episodios
  • Halina Brunning and Olya Khaleelee eds., "Sitting on a Suitcase: Psychoanalytic Stories" (Karnac Books, 2025)

    Halina Brunning and Olya Khaleelee eds., "Sitting on a Suitcase: Psychoanalytic Stories" (Karnac Books, 2025)
    Jul 22 2025
    Sitting on a Suitcase: Psychoanalytic Stories (Karnac Books, 2025) contains eighteen moving tales of disparate Jewish lives from Eliat Aram, Leslie B. Brissett, Louisa Diana Brunner, Halina Brunning, Leila Djemal, Shmuel Erlich, Mira Erlich-Ginor, Franca Fubini, Stan Gold, Larry Hirschhorn, Susan Kahn, Alicia E. Kaufmann, Olya Khaleelee, James Krantz, Vega Zagier Roberts, Edward R. Shapiro, Mannie Sher, and Marlene Spero. The book begins with a thought-provoking preface from former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and ends with a sensitive epilogue from Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, both providing societal containment for what comes between them. The contents also include two non-Jewish German writers, Claudia Nagel and Dorothee von Tippelskirch-Eissing, who between them provide a bravely honest introduction and conclusions to the stories contained within. Also contained within the book are black and white photographs of the contributors' young selves that provide an additional evocative layer to the words contained within. Plus four black and white line drawings to illustrate each of the four parts of the book: Orthodox beginnings, Sitting on the boundary: Marginality and belonging, Emigration and identity, and Will history repeat itself? This was not an easy book for its authors to write, revisiting the past unlocked painful memories and re-awoke fears of persecution. The manuscript was nearing completion when Hamas attacked a kibbutzim on October 7, 2023 and the war in Gaza followed. Incidents of anti-Semitism increased worldwide and questions were raised whether the book should be held back. However, its themes became more relevant than ever and these stories need to be read. Themes such as issues around having a voice, or finding a voice during formative years; finding a family through friends; a sense of not belonging because of constant relocation, or finding a sense of belonging through family and friends. Aspects of life that resonate with us all alongside the deeper theme of the impact of Jewish identity on every facet of life. This is a book full of emotion and meaning that needs to be read by all with an interest in humanity and fostering connection and understanding across nations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies
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    49 m
  • Ory Amitay, "Alexander the Great in Jerusalem: Myth and History" (Oxford UP, 2025)

    Ory Amitay, "Alexander the Great in Jerusalem: Myth and History" (Oxford UP, 2025)
    Jul 22 2025
    When I sat down with Dr. Ory Amitay, his passion for myth, history, and ancient cultures was infectious. Our conversation about his new book, Alexander the Great in Jerusalem: Myth and History, Oxford University Press, 2025, quickly revealed that for Ory, the real intrigue isn’t whether Alexander literally visited Jerusalem, but how and why this story was created and retold for centuries. Ory traced his fascination with this intersection of myth and reality back to his Israeli upbringing and Berkeley days, where he mastered ancient languages and ventured beyond traditional Jewish sources. He described how, over time, different versions of Alexander’s visit to Jerusalem reflected shifting political climates—from the Seleucid takeover to Roman conquest. Myths, he explained, were tools to help communities navigate upheaval, envisioning themselves in relation to powerful foreign rulers. Pressed for the historical “truth,” Ory smiled and emphasized that the stories’ meaning—how they address the anxieties and hopes of their tellers—outweighs whether Alexander’s visit “really” happened. As he pursues new projects, translating ancient versions of these tales and writing a book on Western civilization, I left inspired by his view that exploring old myths is also about understanding how we shape, and are shaped by, our stories about ourselves. Alexander the Great in Jerusalem: Myth and History discusses four different stories told in antiquity about the meeting between Alexander the Great and the Judeans of Jerusalem. In history, this meeting, if it happened, passed without noticeable events. Into the historical void stepped various Judean storytellers, who wrote not what was, but what could (or even should) have been.The tradition as a whole deals with an issue that resurfaced time and again in ancient Judean history: conquest and regime installment by new foreign rulers. It does so by using Alexander as a cipher for a current Hellenistic and Roman foreign rule. The earliest version can be traced to the context of the Seleukid monarch Antiochos III "the Great", and postulates a Judean text from that time that has been hitherto unknown, and which survived in a Byzantine recension (epsilon) of the Alexander Romance. The second and third chapters turn to rabbinic sources, and deal with the Judean approaches and attitudes towards Roman occupation and rule, first at the advent of Pompey and then at the institution of Provincia ludaea at the expense of the Herodian dynasty. The final story is the most famous, previously considered the earliest, rather than the latest; that of Josephus.Alexander the Great in Jerusalem demonstrates how the historical tradition consistently maintained the moral and sacral superiority of the Jerusalem temple and of Judaism, making Alexander either embrace monotheism or prostrate himself before the Judean high priest. This not only bolstered Judean self-confidence under conditions of military and political inferiority, but also brought the changing foreign rulers into the fold of Judean sacred history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies
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    46 m
  • Marc Herman, "After Revelation: The Rabbinic Past in the Medieval Islamic World" (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

    Marc Herman, "After Revelation: The Rabbinic Past in the Medieval Islamic World" (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
    Jul 21 2025
    After Revelation: The Rabbinic Past in the Medieval Islamic World offers a dynamic new perspective on medieval Jewish legal thought and its integration in the wider Islamic world. Here, Marc D. Herman demonstrates that Jews were fully conversant in their contemporaries' ideas about revelation, law, and legal interpretation. Bookended by the two luminaries of medieval Judaism--Saadia Gaon and Moses Maimonides--After Revelation analyzes the legal theory that medieval Jews produced in Islamic lands, mostly in Arabic, and reveals previously unrecognized commonalities between Jewish and Islamic constructions of religious law. Herman tackles one of the central doctrines of post-biblical Judaism: that God had supplemented the written Hebrew Bible with an Oral Torah. Tracing this idea from Baghdad to Córdoba to Cairo, he shows that the Oral Torah took many new forms in the medieval Islamic world. After Revelation makes plain that medieval Judaism took the shapes that it did largely because of contact with Islam. You can pre-order this book now, and it will be published on August 5, 2025 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies
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    55 m
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