Jennifer Anne Moses, "The Man Who Loved His Wife" (Mayapple Press, 2021)

New Books in Jewish Studies

#New Books #Marshall Poe #Jewish #Society #Religion

22:08

Host Francesca Amiker sits down with directors Joe and Anthony Russo, producer Angela Russo-Otstot, stars Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt, and more to uncover how family was the key to building the emotional core of The Electric State . From the Russos’ own experiences growing up in a large Italian family to the film’s central relationship between Michelle and her robot brother Kid Cosmo, family relationships both on and off of the set were the key to bringing The Electric State to life. Listen to more from Netflix Podcasts . State Secrets: Inside the Making of The Electric State is produced by Netflix and Treefort Media.…

4 years ago 34:05

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In The Man Who Loved His Wife (Mayapple Press, 2021), Jennifer Anne Moses creates characters who grapple with the minutiae of their lives while considering family, fate, love, death, the afterlife, the divine presence, and spirituality. Peppered with Yiddishisms and salted with sisters, brothers, parents, children, grandparents, neighbors, and friends, Moses tells the stories of regular people faced with the problems of daily life but weighted with the 4000-year-old history of Judaism. She is reminiscent of writers like Isaac Bashevis Singer, Cynthia Ozick, Chaim Grade, and Philip Roth (to name a few) who captured the spirit of humanity in a specific time and place.

Jennifer Anne Moses was born in 1959 and grew up in McLean, Virginia. She always wanted to be a writer, so she read a lot and later earned a degree at Tufts. Eventually she married, had three children, taught herself to paint, and moved from Washington D.C. to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to Montclair, NJ. In addition to her books (Food and Whine, The Book of Joshua, Bagels and Grits, Visiting Hours, Tales from My Closet, and The Art of Dumpster Diving), she's published dozens of essays, articles, Op Ed pieces, and short stories. Her work has also been anthologized in the Pushcart Prizes and New Stories from the South: The Year's Best. Moses loves to bicycle, garden, play the piano, and dance, although she can’t do it like she used to. She also adores her two smelly mutts.

I interview authors of beautifully written literary fiction and mysteries, and try to focus on independently published novels, especially by women and others whose voices deserve more attention. If your upcoming or recently published novel might be a candidate for a podcast, please contact me via my website, gpgottlieb.com.

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1250 episodes

Jennifer Anne Moses, "The Man Who Loved His Wife" (Mayapple Press, 2021)

New Books in Jewish Studies

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published 4 years ago

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Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

1250 episodes

#New Books #Marshall Poe #Jewish #Society #Religion

All episodes

1
Dariel U. González García, "Dos miradas: Israel and Judaism in Puerto Rico" (2024) 1:13:25

9 hours ago1:13:25

1:13:25

“Dos miradas: Israel y el judaísmo en Puerto Rico” by Dariel U. González García (אוריאל בן אברהם), Universidad de Puerto Rico en Mayagüez, was published in Perspectivas sobre cuestiones globales in 2024. The text examines the historical roots of the Puerto Rican Jewish community, from its beginnings during Spanish colonization in the 15th century, with emphasis on the arrival of Sephardic converts to the island. The author examines the diplomatic relations between the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the State of Israel. The article includes interviews with two community leaders of the Puerto Rican Jewish community: Shula Feldkran, an Israeli and former president of Temple Beth Shalom; and Rabbi Hernán D. Rustein, the first permanent rabbi of Latin American origin at Temple Beth Shalom. González García (אוריאל בן אברהם) is a Jew of Sephardic heritage, and his areas of interest are Middle Eastern politics, Zionism and the origins of the State of Israel and Jewish history. This interview includes Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera , Catedrático de Humanidades, Universidad de Puerto Rico-Mayagüez, Dariel U. González García (אוריאל בן אברהם) and Coordinador de Cultura Judía en Puerto Rico at the UPR-M, Joanna Cifredo de Fellman (יוחנה סיפרדו פלמן) UPR-M, and Rabino Hernán D. Rustein (הרב הרנן רוסטיין). They discuss Judaism, Israel, and the Puerto Rican Jewish community. This podcast and the Instituto Nuevos Horizontes are sponsored by the Mellon Foundation. This is the second episode about “Dos miradas: Israel y el judaísmo en Puerto Rico”; the first, in Spanish, is available on the New Books Network en español . Link to the article mentioned in this episode: “ Dos miradas: Israel y el judaísmo en Puerto Rico ,” Perspectivas sobre cuestiones globales , 2024. For more information about the Reform Jewish community of Puerto Rico, write to: info@tbspr.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies…

1
Jeremy Brown, "The Eleventh Plague: Jews and Pandemics from the Bible to COVID-19" (Oxford UP, 2023) 1:03:17

1 day ago1:03:17

1:03:17

In The Eleventh Plague: Jews and Pandemics from the Bible to COVID-19 (Oxford UP, 2023), Brown investigates the relation between Judaism and infectious diseases throughout the ages, from premodern and early-modern plagues, to rabbinic responses to smallpox and cholera, to the special vulnerabilities Jewish immigrants faced in the US as result of prejudice, and to the curious practice of “Black Weddings” in which two orphans are married in a cemetery and brings us to the modern day with the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies…

1
Yaron Ayalon, "Ottoman Jewry: Leadership, Charity, and Literacy" (Brill, 2024) 43:34

2 days ago43:34

43:34

Those of us who have some background in Jewish history are taught that the Ottoman Empire encouraged Jews, particularly those of the Spanish and Portuguese Expulsions, to settle in Ottoman Lands. In Ottoman Jewry: Leadership, Charity, and Literacy (Brill, 2024), Professor Ayalon debunks what he calls that myth. The Ottomans, according to Yaron, were interested in stability - economic and otherwise. Minorities, with their additional taxes, would bring more financial benefits. Many were merchants who would pay higher taxes. With this premise, we discussed the world of the Ottoman Jews as one of creating community and society. There were Romaniot, Sephardim, Msta'ribun and some Ashkenazim who settled across these lands, and together they created strong communities with Rabbinic and lay leadership and a cultural heritage that can still be seen today in those communities who have survived and relocated around the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies…

1
Hannan Hever, "Hasidism, Haskalah, Zionism: Chapters in Literary Politics" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023) 56:23

3 days ago56:23

56:23

Hasidism, Haskalah, Zionism (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023) reveals how political and literary dialogues and conflicts between the Hebrew literature of the Hasidism, the Jewish Enlightenment, and Zionism interacted with each other in the nineteenth century. Hannan Hever uses postcolonial theories and theories of nationality to analyze how Jews used literature to make sense of hostility directed toward Jews from their European “host” countries and to set forth their own ideas and preferences regarding their status, control, and treatment. In doing so, Hever theorizes the Enlightenment’s intellectual aims and cultural influences, tracking how the models of integration crucial to Haskalah gave way to Jewish nationalism in the twentieth century. The readings in this book are theoretically informed, setting forward novel claims based on detailed textual analyses of hasidic tales, Haskalah satires, and Zionist narratives. Thus, this book tackles a major interpretative problem visible at the core of modern Hebrew literature—its radical difficulty in distinguishing between the theological components of modern Jewish discourse and its national identity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies…

1
Mikhail Goldis, "Memoirs of a Jewish District Attorney from Soviet Ukraine" (Academic Studies Press, 2024) 48:20

4 days ago48:20

48:20

What was it like to work as a Jewish district attorney in provincial Soviet Ukraine in the post-Stalinist eras? What role did antisemitism and Holocaust memories play in solving and investigating the criminal cases? How does a detective’s mind work? The answers to these and many other fascinating questions are found in Memoirs of a Jewish District Attorney from Soviet Ukraine (Academic Studies Press, 2024). Mikhail Goldis (1926-2020) worked as a detective and district attorney for 30 years in Ukraine and wrote his memoirs after immigrating to the US in 1993. Translated by Marat Grinberg, a prolific scholar of Russian and Jewish literature and cinema, the memoirs tell the rich and poignant story of Goldis’s life and what it took for a Jew to navigate and survive in the halls of Soviet power. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies…

1
Lucy Adlington, "Four Red Sweaters: Powerful True Stories of Women and the Holocaust" (HarperCollins, 2025) 1:06:43

5 days ago1:06:43

1:06:43

The New York Times bestselling author of The Dressmakers of Auschwitz tells the stories of four Jewish girls during the Holocaust, strangers whose lives were unknowingly linked by everyday garments, revealing how the ordinary can connect us in extraordinary ways. Jock Heidenstein, Anita Lasker, Chana Zumerkorn, and Regina Feldman all faced the Holocaust in different ways. While they did not know each other—in fact had never met—each had a red sweater that would play a major part in their lives. In this absorbing and deeply moving account, award-winning clothes historian Lucy Adlington documents their stories, knitting together the experiences that fragmented their families and their lives. Adlington immortalizes these young women whose resilience, skills, strength, and kindness accompanied them through the darkest events in human history. A powerful reminder of the suffering they endured and a celebration of courage, love, and tenacity, this moving and original work illuminates moments long lost to history, now pieced back together by a simple garment. Four Red Sweaters is illustrated with more than two dozen black-and-white images throughout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies…

1
Joanne Miyang Cho, et al., "German-Speaking Jewish Refugees in Asia, 1930-1950" (Routledge, 2025) 1:07:14

6 days ago1:07:14

1:07:14

Although most perished, hundreds of thousands of Central European Jews escaped the Holocaust; tens of thousands of these Jewish refugees ended up in East Asia, Southeast Asia, or South Asia. Taking a global and transnational approach, German-Speaking Jewish Refugees in Asia, 1930-1950 (Routledge, 2025) examines the cultural, political, and socioeconomic encounters among and between Asian and European states and empires, Central European Jews, and Asians between 1930 and 1950, offering important case studies that address the policies toward and experiences of German-speaking Jews across East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. The strength of this volume lies not only in its efforts to include multiple theoretical perspectives, which integrate German, Jewish, Asian, and Migration Studies, but also in the original empirical research on which it is based. Engaging directly with the rich and growing historiography on the origins, course, and consequences of the Holocaust in East, Southeast, and South Asia, this volume provides a framework in which we can better understand how global traditions of empire and colonialism matter in our efforts to understand the Holocaust, while indicating that Asian states and peoples were keenly aware of the so-called "Jewish Question" and made efforts, though widely differentiated, to provide shelter from the Nazi storm. German-Speaking Jewish Refugees in Asia, 1930-1950 will appeal to students and scholars alike interested in the history of Jewish refugees in the twentieth century, as well as all those interested in the modern history of German-speaking Central Europe and Asia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies…

1
Thomas P. Bernstein, "Holocaust: German History and Our Half-Jewish Family" (Cherry Orchard, 2024) 1:27:19

8 days ago1:27:19

1:27:19

This compelling family history spans from the 1890s to the 21st century, weaving personal stories into the broader fabric of German history to reveal a deeply moving account of survival, courage, and resilience. At the heart of this narrative is Paul Bernstein, a Jewish WWI veteran who was awarded for his bravery but ultimately perished in Auschwitz in 1944, and his wife, Johanna Moosdorf, a non-Jewish woman who fought tirelessly to protect their family. Their two half-Jewish children, Barbara and Thomas, born in the late 1930s, faced constant danger during WWII. Yet, thanks to Johanna's courageous efforts and Nazi policies that treated half-Jews differently, the children survived the war. With a powerful epilogue that reflects on Germany's response to its Nazi past and its relevance to contemporary far-right movements, including those in the U.S., Holocaust: German History and Our Half-Jewish Family (Cherry Orchard, 2024) offers a timely perspective on history's echoes in today's world. This unforgettable story captures a family's fight for survival amidst one of history's darkest chapters, making it an essential read for anyone interested in personal stories of resistance and the enduring lessons of the past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies…

1
"T&T Clark Encyclopedia of Second Temple Judaism" (T&T Clark, 2019) 31:09

11 days ago31:09

31:09

Second Temple Judaism is one of the more exciting burgeoning fields in biblical studies. Now, with T&T Clark's two-volume Encyclopedia of Second Temple Judaism , anyone can have a wealth of knowledge literally at their fingertips. Tune in as we speak with Daniel Gurtner, an editor and contributor to the encyclopedia, as we speak about this outstanding resource! Daniel M. Gurtner is Professor of New Testament Studies at Gateway Seminary in Ontario, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies…

1
Ofra Amihay, "The People of the Book and the Camera: Photography in the Hebrew Novel" (Syracuse UP, 2022) 1:36:13

12 days ago1:36:13

1:36:13

In The People of the Book and the Camera: Photography in the Hebrew Novel (Syracuse UP, 2022), Amihay offers a pioneering study of the unique nexus between literature and photography in the works of Hebrew authors. Exploring the use of photography--both as a textual element and through the inclusion of actual images-- Amihay shows how the presence of visual elements in a textual work of fiction has a powerful subversive function. Contemporary Hebrew authors have turned to photography as a tool to disrupt narratives and give voice to marginalized sectors in Israel, including women, immigrants, Mizrahi Israelis, LGBTQ+ individuals, second-generation Holocaust survivors, and traumatized army veterans. Amihay discusses standard novels alongside graphic novels, challenging the dominance of the written word in literature. In addition to providing a poetic analysis of imagetext pages, Amihay addresses the social and political issues authors are responding to, including gender roles, Zionism, the ethnic divide in Israel, and its Palestinian minority. In exploring these avant-garde novels and their authors, Amihay elevates their significance and calls for a more expansive definition of canonical Hebrew literature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies…

1
Kobi Kabalek, "Rescue and Remembrance: Imagining the German Collective After Nazism" (U Wisconsin Press, 2025) 58:12

13 days ago58:12

58:12

In Rescue and Remembrance: Imagining the German Collective After Nazism (U Wisconsin Press, 2025), Kobi Kabalek examines how the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust has been understood and represented in Germany from the Nazi period to the present. In many regions outside Germany, a small number of known Holocaust rescuers are often held up as exemplars of broad pro-Jewish sentiment among that country's population during World War II, thereby projecting an image of national moral virtue. Within Germany, by contrast, rescuers are often presented in both scholarship and public commemoration as a small minority; their examples condemn the majority by showing what Germans could have done but did not do. Kabalek argues that such simplistic depictions of the majority versus minority obscure the complex motivations and situations that led people in Nazi Germany to help persecuted Jews. Against the view that the rescuers were "forgotten" after the war, he shows that portrayals and interpretations of helping Jews appeared in various media and social discourses in East, West, and unified Germany and were used to actively debate questions of collective morality. Rescue and Remembrance analyzes the varied and changing depictions of rescue in the distinct German politics from the Nazi period, examining how the very notions of "majority" and "collective" were articulated and reformulated. Kobi Kabalek is Assistant Professor of German and Jewish Studies, Penn State University, since 2019. He earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of Virginia, with a dissertation on “The Rescue of Jews and the Memory of Nazism in Germany” (2013). In 2014-2017 he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem as part of the ERC project “Experience, Judgment, and Representation of WWII in an Age of Globalization,” and examined conflicting perspectives concerning the war in Mandatory Palestine and their impact on the postwar historiography of Israel and Zionism. Former editor of The Journal for Holocaust Research and assistant editor of History & Memory . His research focuses on historical perceptions, moral sentiments, and memory in film, literature, auto/biography, oral narratives, art, etc., in German, Israeli, and global Holocaust history. He currently explores marginalized and extreme phenomena in Holocaust testimonies, historical writing, and popular culture – with special attention to the role of fantasy, imagination, and horror – and their impact on our understanding and representation of the Holocaust. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies…

1
Laurel Leff, "Well Worth Saving: American Universities' Life-And-Death Decisions on Refugees from Nazi Europe" (Yale UP, 2019) 1:19:25

14 days ago1:19:25

1:19:25

In Well Worth Saving (Yale University Press, 2019), Professor Laurel Leff explores how American universities responded to the sudden and urgent appeals for help from scholars trapped in Nazi-dominated Europe. Although many scholars were welcomed into faculty or research positions in the US, thousands more tried to find a way over and failed. Those who were unable to flee were left to face the horrors of the Holocaust. In this rigorously researched book, Laurel Leff rescues from obscurity scholars who were deemed "not worth saving" and tells the riveting, full story of the hiring decisions universities made during the Nazi era. Laurel Leff is Professor of Journalism and Associate Director of Jewish Studies at Northeastern University. This interview was conducted by Renee Hale, who holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and works in R&D for the food and beverage industry. She is the author of The Nightstorm Files , a voracious reader, and enjoys sharing the joy of discovering new perspectives with listeners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies…

1
Simon Rabinovitch, "Sovereignty and Religious Freedom: A Jewish History" (Yale UP, 2024) 1:21:44

15 days ago1:21:44

1:21:44

It is a common assumption that in Israel, Jews have sovereignty, and in most other places where Jews live today, they have religious freedom instead. As Simon Rabinovitch shows in this original work, the situation is much more complicated. Jews today possess different kinds of legal rights in states around the world; some stem from religious freedom protections, and others evolved from a longer history of Jewish autonomy. By comparing conflicts between Jewish collective and individual rights in courts and laws across the globe, from the French Revolution to today, this book provides a nuanced legal history of Jewish sovereignty and religious freedom. Rabinovitch weaves key themes in Jewish legal history with the individual stories of litigants, exploring ideas about citizenship and belonging; who is a Jew; what makes a Jewish family; and how to define Jewish space. He uses recent court cases to explore problems of conflicting rights and then situates each case in a wider historical context. This unique comparative history creates a global picture of modern legal development in which Jews continue to use the law to carve out surprising forms of sovereignty. Simon Rabinovitch is the Stotsky Associate Professor of Jewish Historical and Cultural Studies at Northeastern University. He teaches and writes on a range of topics in European, Jewish, Russian, and legal history. Geraldine Gudefin is a French-born modern Jewish historian researching Jewish family life, legal pluralism, and the migration experiences of Jews in France and the United States. She is currently a research fellow at the Hebrew University’s Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939 . Mentioned in the podcast: • Simon Rabinovitch, Jewish Rights, National Rites: Nationalism and Autonomy in Late Imperial and Revolutionary Russia (2014) • Maurice Samuels, The Right to Difference: French Universalism and the Jews (2016) • David Sorkin , The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna (2008) • David Sorkin, Jewish Emancipation: A History across Five Centuries (2019) • Lawrence Rosen, The Rights of Groups: Understanding Community in the Eyes of the Law (2024) • Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Church State Corporation: Construing Religion in US Law (2020) • Nomi M. Stolzenberg and David N. Myers, American Shtetl: The Making of Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic Village in Upstate New York (2022) • David Biale, Power & Powerlessness in Jewish History (1986) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies…

1
Ariel Evan Mayse, "Laws of the Spirit: Ritual, Mysticism, and the Commandments in Early Hasidism" (Stanford UP, 2024) 53:23

16 days ago53:23

53:23

In Laws of the Spirit: Ritual, Mysticism, and the Commandments in Early Hasidism (Stanford UP, 2024), Ariel Evan Mayse faces up to an enduring question about the Jewish religious movement known as Hasidism: how did it manage to innovate in the realms of Jewish study and practice with such daring and yet at the same time produce communities ready and willing to subject themselves to the rigors of inherited Jewish law? Exploring the movement from its emergence in the mid-1700s until 1815, Mayse turns to ritual studies rather than history or theology in order to grapple with this enigma, and does so with clarity, insight, and profound ambition. Avi Bernstein-Nahar is founder of 36learningmatters.com , a Jewish adult learning practice. Ariel Evan Mayse is associate professor of religious studies at Stanford University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies…

1
Ken Frieden, "Travels in Translation: Sea Tales at the Source of Jewish Fiction" (Syracuse UP, 2016) 1:34:17

21 days ago1:34:17