New Books in Jewish Studies

For this episode, New Books in Jewish Studies interviews Lewis Glinert, Professor of Hebrew Studies at Dartmouth College, where he is also affiliated with the Program in Linguistics.

His book, The Story of Hebrew (Princeton University Press, 2017), can be defined as a biography of Hebrew language that spans Millenia. The book includes a chronological description of the use and perception of Hebrew in different communities across the world, addressing questions related to the ways in which Hebrew has been represented and utilized by Jews of different backgrounds, Christian scholars and colonials, and modern day Israelis.

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Benjamin Fondane, a Franco-Romanian writer and contributor to the development of existential philosophy in the 1930s and 40s, is in the process of being rediscovered. His work has gained a new relevance in the contemporary period due in part to the way it anticipates some of the core themes and interests of critical theory, including the limits of rationality and subjectivity, and ideas about the ineffable and the impossible.

Until recently, few of Fondane’s writings, aside from his poetry, had been translated into English, despite a long-standing recognition of their importance to philosophical debates in the period, including by Fondane’s contemporaries, such as Lev Shestov and Albert Camus. A new collection entitled Existential Monday: Philosophical Essays edited and translated by Bruce Baugh and published by the New York Review of Books in 2016, aims to rectify this.

Professor Baugh, who teaches Philosophy at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia, has written extensively on existential thought and continental philosophy, and is the author of French Hegel: From Surrealism to Postmodernism (Routledge, 2003). Professor Baugh’s work on Fondane will be of interest to a wide variety of readers seeking a better understanding of a thinker whose work invites consideration alongside his better known contemporaries Walter Benjamin and the early Levinas, among others.

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Jewish Magic Before the Rise of Kabbalah (Wayne State University Press, 2017) opens new vistas not only on the history of the practice of magic throughout Jewish history, but on the variety and syncretistic depth of such practices. Its author is Yuval Harari, professor in the Department of Jewish Thought and head of the Program of Folklore Studies at Ben Gurion University. Professor Harari’s work challenges perceptions and categorizations of what Jewish magic is, and what its place in the Judaism of late antiquity was. It thus promises to facilitate a reappraisal of the performative practices, the beliefs and rituals, on which Jewish life as we know it is founded. Professor Harari’s work carefully and systematically examines a wide variety of Jewish texts and artifacts, and reveals the extent to which the practice of magic is woven into Jewish ritual, thought, culture, from Late Antiquity through and beyond the Middle Ages.

David Gottlieb is a PhD Candidate in the History of Judaism at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His research interests center on the influence of rabbinic midrash on the formation of Jewish cultural memory. He can be reached at [email protected].

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At Newman I co-teach a class titled "The Holocaust and its Legacies." I teach the course with a Professor of Theology and it's designed to help students understand the ways in which the Holocaust shaped the world they live in. It is, in a sense, designed to help students gain insight.

John K. Roth's new book Sources of Holocaust Insight: Learning and Teaching about the Genocide (Cascade Books, 2020) may become a required text in this course. His book is different than, I think, any other books I’ve discussed on the show. It is a reflection, a tribute, and perhaps a kind of valedictory all at once. John reflects on the people who have taught him, in all the different ways teaching can happen, and the lessons that he’s learned over decades of thinking and writing about the Holocaust. In doing so, he offers the reader an insight both into his own development and into the way historians, theologians, philosophers and artists have responded to the Holocaust over time.

It's a revealing book, sober, reflective and occasionally inspiring. Roth offers us an intellectual biography that puts his other work into context. But he also challenges his readers to be better scholars and better people while recognizing the world is far too big for one person to change.

Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. He’s the author of four modules in the Reacting to the Past series, including The Needs of Others: Human Rights, International Organizations and Intervention in Rwanda, 1994, published by W. W. Norton Press.

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A New Orient: From German Scholarship to Middle Eastern Studies in Israel (Brandeis UP, 2024) explores the fascinating history of Zionist and Israeli "Oriental Studies" (mizrahanut), particularly the study of Islam, Arabic, and the Middle East, as a field deeply rooted in the academic traditions of early 20th-century German universities. Drawing on rich archival documentation in German, Arabic, English, and Hebrew, it traces the migration of Orientalist knowledge from Germany to Mandatory Palestine. The book examines how research – and researchers – were transformed as their encounter with the Orient shifted from a textual-philological exercise to a direct, physical engagement, marked by contradictions and tensions against the backdrop of the intensifying Jewish-Arab conflict.

Among its key themes, the book reveals how prominent Orientalist scholars extended their work beyond study rooms and libraries, engaging in efforts to foster Jewish-Arab understanding or collaborating with diplomatic and security institutions.

By shedding new light on the development of academic research in Mandatory Palestine and the early years of Israel, the book offers a compelling case study of the intricate relationship between "pure" scholarship and the political, social, and cultural challenges of the time. It also provides a fresh perspective on the roots of the Jewish-Arab conflict and the influential role of knowledge in shaping it.

Amit Levy is a Spinoza postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Israel Studies, School of Regional and Historical Studies, University of Haifa. His research focuses on the history of knowledge and migration and their impact on cross-cultural encounters. He earned his PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2021, and has held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Oxford, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the Open University of Israel. His book A New Orient received the Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award, administered by the Association for Jewish Studies.

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