Best Jewish Public Library Archives Podcasts (2025)

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Daniel K. Falk and Rodney A. Werline, "Prayer in the Ancient World Vol.1" (Brill, 2027) 35:14

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5d ago35:14

35:14

Prayer in the Ancient World is the resource on prayer in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean. With over 350 entries it showcases a robust selection of the range of different types of prayers attested from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, the Levant, early Judaism and Christianity, Greece, Rome, Arabia, and Iran, enhanced by critical commentary. Th…

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Mariana Ortega, "Carnalities: The Art of Living in Latinidad" (Duke UP, 2024) 1:16:41

1h ago1:16:41

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How can habits of racialization be affected by art, in its reception and its creation? How can a carnal aesthetics help us understand Latinx life? What if we listen to photographs? How might they undo us? Can we be undone? In Carnalities: The Art of Living in Latinidad (Duke UP, 2025), Mariana Ortega focuses on photography using a hermeneutics of l…

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Mark Celinscak and Mehnaz Afridi, eds., "Global Approaches to the Holocaust: Memory, History and Representation" (U Nebraska Press, 2025) 1:02:38

6d ago1:02:38

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The field of contemporary Holocaust studies is increasingly international in perspective. These approaches do not detach themselves from European history; rather, they incorporate perspectives and voices not always considered in more traditional Holocaust studies. The contributors to Global Approaches to the Holocaust: Memory, History and Represent…

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James Redfield, "Adventures of Rabah and Friends: The Talmud's Strange Tales and Their Readers" (Brown Judaic Studies, 2025) 48:55

8d ago48:55

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Adventures of Rabbah & Friends offers a new reader-centered approach to some of the Talmud’s most challenging stories. The Talmud contains about two pages of some of the strangest tales in the rabbinic corpus. For centuries people have scratched their head over what they mean and why they are there. In his new book, James Adam Redfield illustrates …

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Susan Weingarten, "Ancient Jewish Food in its Geographical and Cultural Contexts: What’s Cooking in the Talmuds?" (Taylor & Francis, 2025 37:27

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Ancient Jewish Food in its Geographical and Cultural Contexts: What’s Cooking in the Talmuds? (Taylor & Francis, 2025) is the first in-depth study of food in talmudic literature in its geographical and cultural contexts. It demonstrates the sharing of foods and foodways between Jews and their non-Jewish neighbours in the Near East in Late Antiquity…

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Yael Leibowitz, "Ezra-Nehemiah: Retrograde Revolution" (Maggid, 2025) 13:26

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Ezra-Nehemiah: Retrograde Revolution (Maggid, 2025) takes its readers on a literary tour of an era in which cohesiveness between Jews in Israel and the Diaspora is being tested, the parameters of Jewish identity are being re-assessed, political tact is being learned by necessity, and biblical literacy is at long last becoming the centerpiece of the…

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YIVO Archives and Library, "100 Objects from the Collections of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research" (YIVO, 2025) 31:53

12d ago31:53

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Delve into Jewish history through 100 unique objects from the YIVO Archives and Library with 100 Objects from the Collections of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (2025). This gorgeously-illustrated coffee table book contains images and essays which represent modern Jewish history and culture through YIVO's one hundred years of collecting. The…

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Jack Wertheimer, "Jewish Giving: Philanthropy and the Shaping of American Jewish Life" (NYU Press, 2025) 1:00:38

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The American Jewish philanthropic enterprise is unparalleled in scope, dynamism, and the diversity of funders and the causes they support. Yet even as Jewish giving has been largely successful in responding with alacrity to emergencies, it has been subjected to severe criticism. What once was regarded as a point of pride has become the object of sc…

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Dainy Bernstein, "Artifacts of Orthodox Jewish Childhoods" (Ben Yehuda Press, 2022) 1:12:19

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The culture of mainstream American childhood is vastly different than the culture of Orthodox Jewish childhood - which is itself a rich and varied landscape of texts, music, toys, and more, with nuanced shadings from one sect of Orthodox Judaism to the next. In Artifacts of Orthodox Jewish Childhoods: Personal and Critical Essays (Ben Yehuda Press,…

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Adam Silverstein, "Haman" (Princeton UP, 2025) 37:32

12d ago37:32

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Haman, infamous as the antagonist in the book of Esther, appears as a villainous figure in virtually all varieties of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In this “biography” of Haman (Princeton UP, 2025), Dr. Adam Silverstein traces the evolution of this villainous character from the ancient Near East to modern times, drawing on sources in a variety …

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Grace Kessler Overbeke, "First Lady of Laughs: The Forgotten Story of Jean Carroll" (NYU Press, 2024) 44:12

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Before Hacks and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, there was the comedienne who started it all. First Lady of Laughs: The Forgotten Story of Jean Carroll (NYU Press, 2024) tells the story of Jean Carroll, the first Jewish woman to become a star in the field we now call stand-up comedy. Though rarely mentioned among the pantheon of early stand-up comics su…

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Reading the Bible with AI?: A Conversation with John Kaag, Philosopher and Co-Founder of Rebind AI 42:40

19d ago42:40

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Rebind combines reading with AI-chat to deepen learning and simulate the experience of conversing with some of the greatest scholars and thinkers. With Rebind, you can read A Tale of Two Cities with Margaret Atwood, Huck Finn with Marlon James, and Candide with Salman Rushdie. John and his team have recently launched the Rebind Study Bible, an inte…

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Jacob Daniels, "The Jews of Edirne: The End of Ottoman Europe and the Arrival of Borders" (Stanford UP, 2025) 1:21:19

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At the turn of the twentieth century, the city of Edirne was a bustling center linking Istanbul to Ottoman Europe. It was also the capital of Edirne Province—among the most religiously diverse regions of the Ottoman Empire. But by 1923, the city had become a Turkish border town, and the province had lost much of its non-Muslim population. In The Je…

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Julia Wagner, "Hester Street" (Bloomsbury, 2025) 40:11

20d ago40:11

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Joan Micklin Silver's groundbreaking debut feature film, Hester Street (1975), vividly portrays the immigrant experience through the eyes of Gitl (Carol Kane), a young, Orthodox Jewish woman who arrives in New York City from Eastern Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. Reunited with her already-assimilated husband, Gitl finds they now have …

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Benjamin Balthaser, "Citizens of the Whole World: Anti-Zionism and the Cultures of the American Jewish Left" (Verso Books, 2025) 1:16:59

22d ago1:16:59

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Since October 7, 2023, the world has witnessed a massive American Jewish uprising in support of Palestinian liberation. Through sit-ins in Congress or Grand Central Terminal, through petitions and marches, thousands of Jews have made it known the Israeli state is not acting in their name. This resistance did not come out of nowhere. Citizens of the…

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Piotr Nowak, "After Jews: Essays on Political Theology, Shoah and the End of Man" (Anthem Press, 2025) 1:06:56

25d ago1:06:56

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After Jews: Essays on Political Theology, Shoah and the End of Man (Anthem Press, 2025) is an attempt to describe and critically interpret the condition of man living in the shadow of the Shoah, in the world "after Jews". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksne…

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Jeffrey K. Salkin, "Inviting God In: A Guide to Jewish Prayer" (CCAR Press, 2025) 44:54

28d ago44:54

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In this episode Rabbi Marc Katz is in discussion with Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin about his new book Inviting God In: A Guide to Jewish Prayer (Central Conference of American Rabbis Press, 2025), an engaging and insightful commentary on the Shabbat evening and morning services. Designed for students of all ages, from bet mitzvah to adulthood, the book's r…

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Yehudah Halper, "Averroes on Pathways to Divine Knowledge" (Academic Studies Press, 2025) 42:31

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Today we will be talking to Yehudah Halper about his new book, Averroes on Pathways to Divine Knowledge (Academic Studies Press, 2025). The twelfth-century Andalusian philosopher Averroes sought to understand the divine in a way independent of religious theology, by turning to the philosophical works of Aristotle and, to a lesser extent, Plato. In …

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Henry H. Sapoznik, "The Tourist's Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City" (SUNY Press, 2025) 47:40

1M ago47:40

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The Tourist's Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City (SUNY Press, 2025) by Henry H. Sapoznik explores a century of Yiddish popular culture in New York City. Sapoznik--the author of Klezmer! Jewish Music fro0m Old World to Our World and a Peabody Award-winning coproducer of NPR's Yiddish Radio Project--tells his story through chapters on eating, archit…

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Wendy I. Zierler, "Going Out with Knots: My Two Kaddish Years with Hebrew Poetry" (Jewish Publication Society, 2025) 43:29

1M ago43:29

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Interweaving memoir with Hebrew poetry, Going Out with Knots: My Two Kaddish Years with Hebrew Poetry (Jewish Publication Society, 2025) illluminates author Wendy I. Zierler’s literary and personal Jewish mourning journey in the aftermath of unremitting personal loss. She begins with her story: the death of both her parents in one year; the challen…

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Michal Govrin et. al, "But There Was Love―Shaping the Memory of the Shoah" (de Gruyter, 2025) 33:41

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But There Was Love―Shaping the Memory of the Shoah (de Gruyter, 2025) proposes a new paradigm for Shoah remembrance in today’s cultural and political reality. It derives from the four-year workings of a group of researchers and artists at The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute led by Michal Govrin. The group positions the extraordinary Jewish and non-Jew…

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Jorge Coronado, “Portraits in the Andes: Photography and Agency, 1900-1950” (U Pittsburgh Press, 2018) 46:19

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In Portraits in the Andes: Photography and Agency, 1900-1950 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), Jorge Coronado, Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Northwestern University, examines photography to further the argument that intellectuals grafted their own notions of indigeneity onto their subjects. He looks specifically at the Cuzco School o…

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Elizabeth R. Hyman, "The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto: The True Story of Five Courageous Young Women Who Sparked an Uprising" (Harper, 2025) 40:58

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The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is one of the most storied events of the Holocaust, yet previous accounts of have almost entirely focused on its male participants. In The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto: The True Story of Five Courageous Young Women Who Sparked an Uprising (Harper, 2025), Holocaust historian Elizabeth Hyman introduces five young, cour…

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Shaul Kelner, "A Cold War Exodus: How American Activists Mobilized To Free Soviet Jews" (NYU Press, 2025) 36:11

2M ago36:11

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Winner of The 74th National Jewish Book Award: American Jewish Studies Celebrate 350 Award Reveals the mass mobilization tactics that helped free Soviet Jews and reshaped the Jewish American experience from the Johnson era through the Reagan–Bush years What do these things have in common? Ingrid Bergman, Passover matzoh, Banana Republic®, the …

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Paula Oppermann, "Thunder Cross: Fascist Antisemitism in Twentieth-Century Latvia" (U Wisconsin Press, 2025) 1:04:54

2M ago1:04:54

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Founded in 1932, the Pērkonkrusts ("Thunder Cross") was the largest and most prominent right-wing political party in Latvia in the early twentieth century. Its motto--"Latvia for Latvians!"--echoed the ultranationalist rhetoric of similar movements throughout Europe at the time. Unlike the Nazis in Germany or the Fascists in Italy, however, the Pēr…

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Elissa Bemporad, "Jews in the Soviet Union: A History: Revolution, Civil War, and New Ways of Life, 1917–1930, Vol. 1" (NYU Press, 2025) 57:04

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Chronicles the encounter of one of the largest Jewish communities in the world with war, revolution, and Soviet power from 1917 through 1930 At the beginning of the twentieth century, more Jews lived in the Russian Empire than anywhere else in the world. After the Holocaust, the USSR remained one of the world’s three key centers of Jewish populatio…

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Brian Baker, "The Road" (Akashic Books, 2025) 34:07

2M ago34:07

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The Road (Akashic Books, 2025) is an illuminating selection of photographs spanning iconic punk rock guitarist Brian Baker’s many years of global touring with Bad Religion, Dag Nasty, and other bands. The images are intelligent and arresting, reflecting time spent both inside and outside the bubble of backstages and tour buses. While touring is eas…

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Mark Mazower, "On Antisemitism: A Word in History" (Penguin Press, 2025) 45:58

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What do we mean when we talk about antisemitism? A thoughtful, vital new intervention from the award-winning historian. For most of history, antisemitism has been understood as a menace from Europe’s political Right, the province of blood-and-soil ethno-nativists who built on Christendom’s long-standing suspicion of its Jewish population and infuse…

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Iris Idelson-Shein, "Between the Bridge and the Barricade: Jewish Translation in Early Modern Europe" (U Penn Press, 2024) 51:21

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One of the constants of Jewish history is that Jews have learned from the cultures around them. But this exchange of information was not an easy endeavor. Not only did Jews speak a different language, but their cultural touchpoints were different. If they were to learn from the people around them, their translations had to be deliberate, sometimes …

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Maurice Samuels, "Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair" (Yale UP, 2024) 39:17

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On January 5, 1895, Captain Alfred Dreyfus’s cries of innocence were drowned out by a mob shouting “Death to Judas!” In Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair (Yale UP, 2024), Maurice Samuels gives readers new insight into Dreyfus himself—the man at the center of the affair. He tells the story of Dreyfus’s early life in Paris, his prom…

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Elliott Rabin, "The Biblical Hero: Portraits in Nobility and Fallibility" (Jewish Publication Society, 2020) 58:18

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Today I talked to Elliott Rabin about his book The Biblical Hero: Portraits in Nobility and Fallibility (Jewish Publication Society, 2020). Approaching the Bible in an original way—comparing biblical heroes to heroes in world literature—Rabin addresses a core biblical question: What is the Bible telling us about what it means to be a hero? Focusing…

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Oksana Sarkisova and Olga Shevchenko "In Visible Presence: Soviet Afterlives in Family Photos" (MIT Press, 2023) 59:37

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In Visible Presence: Soviet Afterlives in Family Photos (MIT Press, 2023) is an absorbing exploration of Soviet-era family photographs that demonstrates the singular power of the photographic image to command attention, resist closure, and complicate the meaning of the past. A faded image of a family gathered at a festively served dinner table, rai…

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Lawrence Grossman, "Living in Both Worlds: Modern Orthodox Judaism in the United States, 1945-2025" (Academic Studies Press, 2025) 55:19

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In American Judaism today, Orthodoxy is the fastest growing movement. However, Orthodoxy is anything but monolithic. Living in Both Worlds: Modern Orthodox Judaism in the United States, 1945–2025 by Lawrence Grossman explores a piece of the Orthodox story, that of Modern Orthodoxy. For those who may be unfamiliar, Modern Orthodoxy affirms the tradi…

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Scott D. Seligman, "The Chief Rabbi's Funeral" (U Nebraska Press, 2024) 55:46

3M ago55:46

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On July 30, 1902, tens of thousands of mourners lined the streets of New York’s Lower East Side to bid farewell to the city’s chief rabbi, the eminent Talmudist Jacob Joseph. All went well until the procession crossed Sheriff Street, where the six-story R. Hoe and Company printing press factory towered over the intersection. Without warning, scraps…

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Digital Expressions of the Self(ie): The Social Life of Selfies in India 25:30

2M ago25:30

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Selfies are more than fleeting images—across India, they shape how people imagine themselves, connect with others, and inhabit spaces. In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Prof. Xenia Zeiler from the University of Helsinki talks to Prof. Avishek Ray about his co-authored book Digital Expressions of the Self(ie): The Social Life of Selfies in…

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Cooper Smith, "Allusive and Elusive: Allusion and the Elihu Speeches of Job 32-37" (Brill, 2022) 31:12

3M ago31:12

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Within the Book of Job, Elihu is one of the most diversely evaluated characters. For example, are Elihu’s speeches so insignificant he’s absolutely ignored afterward, or do they actually form an introduction to the speeches of the LORD? What are we to make of Elihu? Find out as we speak with Cooper Smith about his recent monograph, Allusive and Elu…

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Árni Heimir Ingólfsson, "Music at World's End: Three Exiled Musicians from Nazi Germany and Austria and Their Contribution to Music in Iceland" (SUNY Press, 2025) 55:47

3M ago55:47

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A fascinating story of how three musicians, who escaped the Nazis, inspired Iceland's modern classical music. In Iceland in the 1930s, classical music was only beginning to be seriously practiced, at the same time when musicians of Jewish heritage were fleeing Nazi Germany and Austria. Despite the country's strict immigration policy, three outstand…

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Sarah Hurwitz, "As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us" (HarperOne, 2025) 50:28

3M ago50:28

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An urgent exploration of how antisemitism has shaped Jewish identity and how Jews can reclaim their tradition, by the celebrated White House speechwriter and author of the critically acclaimed Here All Along. At thirty-six, Sarah Hurwitz was a typical lapsed Jew. On a whim, she attended an introduction to Judaism class and was astonished by what sh…

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Danya Ruttenberg, "On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World" (Beacon Press, 2022) 31:46

3M ago31:46

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Winner of the National Jewish Book Awards in Contemporary Jewish Life & Practice and Myra H. Kraft Memorial Award On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World (Beacon Press, 2022) is a crucial new lens on repentance, atonement, forgiveness, and repair from harm—from personal transgressions to our culture's most painful and unres…

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Elizabeth E. Imber, "Uncertain Empire: Jews, Nationalism, and the Fate of British Imperialism" (Stanford UP, 2025) 1:12:46

3M ago1:12:46

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Following the British conquest of Ottoman Palestine, Jews across the British Empire—from Jerusalem to Johannesburg, London to Calcutta—found themselves at the heart of global Jewish political discourse. As these intellectuals, politicians, activists, and communal elites navigated shifting political landscapes, some envisioned Palestine as a British…

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Mark A. Schneegurt, "Everyday Holiday: A Jewish Calendar of Events and Observances" (Independently Published, 2024) 52:33

3M ago52:33

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Because Every Day Is a Special Day on the Jewish Calendar. Giant Jewish Calendar. More than 2400 Jewish events. Holidays - Biblical - History. Hundreds of Rabbinic Yarzheits. Modern Celebrities and Sports Figures. Every Day Is a Special Day to Celebrate. Everyday Holiday: A Jewish Calendar of Events and Observances (Independently Published, 2024) i…

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Julia Rensing, "Troubling Archives: History and Memory in Namibian Literature and Art" (Transcript Publishing, 2025) 46:14

3M ago46:14

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Namibia’s colonial history casts a long shadow over the country’s present. Contemporary authors and artists confront the legacies of German and South African colonial rule and engage creatively with the persistent remnants of the past. In their works, the archive remains both an invaluable and fraught resource for accessing obscured histories. In T…

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Paris Papamichos Chronakis, "The Business of Transition: Jewish and Greek Merchants of Salonica from Ottoman to Greek Rule" (Stanford UP, 2024) 1:11:50

3M ago1:11:50

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The Business of Transition: Jewish and Greek Merchants of Salonica from Ottoman to Greek Rule (Stanford UP, 2024) examines how the cosmopolitan bourgeoisie of the Eastern Mediterranean navigated the transition from empire to nation-state in the early twentieth century. In this social and cultural history, Paris Papamichos Chronakis shows how the Je…

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Shulamit Reinharz, "Hiding in Holland: A Resistance Memoir" (Amsterdam Publishers, 2024) 1:00:29

3M ago1:00:29

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Born in Amsterdam in 1946, Professor Shulamit Reinharz grew up amid the lingering shadows of wartime trauma, an experience that shaped her later academic path and her role in the creation of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute. With Hiding in Holland: A Resistance Memoir (Amsterdam Publishers, 2024), she has crafted a unique form of Holocaust memoir, d…

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Hannah Shafiroff, "My Little Book of Big Jewish Holidays" (Bloomsbury Children's Books, 2025) 33:57

3M ago33:57

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Hannah Shafiroff is celebrating a book about celebrations! In our interview we talk about her brand new picture book which she both wrote and illustrated, My Little Book of Big Jewish Holidays (Bloomsbury Children's Books, 2025). We talk about her own childhood and memories of Sabbath and holidays, and how her she was able to turn her childhood pas…

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Ofer Ashkenazi, et al., "Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) 1:01:17

3M ago1:01:17

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Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) is a systematic study of the ways Jews used photographs to document their experiences in the face of National Socialism. In a time of intensifying anti-Jewish rhetoric and policies, German Jews documented their lives and their environment in tens of thousands of photograph…

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Ofer Ashkenazi, et al., "Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) 1:01:17

3M ago1:01:17

1:01:17

Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) is a systematic study of the ways Jews used photographs to document their experiences in the face of National Socialism. In a time of intensifying anti-Jewish rhetoric and policies, German Jews documented their lives and their environment in tens of thousands of photograph…

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Steven J. Zipperstein, "Philip Roth: Stung by Life" (Yale UP, 2025) 1:00:38

3M ago1:00:38

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In his literary biography, Philip Roth: Stung by Life (Yale UP, 2025), Steven J. Zipperstein captures the complex life and astonishing work of Philip Roth (1933–2018), one of America’s most celebrated writers. Born in Newark, New Jersey—where his short stories and books were often set—Roth wrote with ambition and awareness of what was required to p…

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Laura Hobson Faure, "Who Will Rescue Us?: The Story of the Jewish Children who Fled to France and America During the Holocaust" (Yale UP, 2025) 1:12:22

3M ago1:12:22

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The first account of Jewish children’s flight from Nazi Germany to France—and their subsequent escape to America from the Vichy regime At the eve of the Second World War, an estimated 1.6 million Jewish children lived in Nazi-occupied Europe. While 10,000 of them escaped to Britain in the Kindertransport, only some 500 found a new home in France. H…