Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchPavel Brunssen, "The Making of 'Jew Clubs': Performing Jewishness and Antisemitism in European Football and Fan Cultures" (Indiana UP, 2025)
Today we are joined by Pavel Brunssen, a Research Associate and Alfred Landecker Lecturer at the Research Center on Antigypsyism at Heidelberg Univer…
1 month, 4 weeks ago
Yiddish Children’s Literature and Jewish Modernity: A Conversation with Miriam Udel
Scholars are only beginning to consider the corpus of nearly one thousand extant books, as well as several periodicals, that constitute the Yiddish c…
2 months ago
Philip Boris Uninsky, "Invented Lives from Troubled Times: A Jewish Family’s Forms of Resilience after Surviving Pogroms, Revolution, and the Holocaust" (Cherry Orchard Books, 2025)
How do people rebuild their lives after unimaginable upheaval—and what stories do they tell along the way? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down…
2 months ago
Peter E. Gordon, "Walter Benjamin: The Pearl Diver" (Yale UP, 2026)
Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) is widely considered one of the most creative cultural critics of the twentieth century. Esteemed for his literary acumen…
2 months ago
Rethinking Kishinev: How a Riot Changed 20th Century Jewish History
Kishinev's 1903 pogrom was the first event in Russian Jewish life to receive international attention. The riot, leaving 49 dead in an obscure border …
2 months ago
Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese Food
For many Ashkenazi Jews in the United States, Christmastime sparks memories of egg rolls and General Tso's chicken. How did the affinity for Chinese …
2 months, 1 week ago
Sarah Berman, "Haggadah Shel Erev Rav: The Mixed Multitude Haggadah" (CCAR Press, 2026)
What does it mean to tell the Passover story as a truly diverse people? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with editor Rabbi Sarah Berman to …
2 months, 1 week ago
Elisheva Baumgarten, "Beyond the Elite: Everyday Jewish Lives in Medieval Northern Europe" (Cornell UP, 2026)
What can we learn about Jewish history when we stop focusing on great rabbis and turn instead to ordinary people? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sp…
2 months, 1 week ago
Yiddish in Israel: A History
The new book Yiddish in Israel: A History (Indiana UP, 2020) challenges the commonly held view that Yiddish was suppressed or even banned by Israeli…
2 months, 1 week ago
The Remarkable Life and Afterlife of Sholem Aleichem
Novelist, playwright, journalist, essayist, and editor, Sholem Aleichem was one of the founding giants of modern Yiddish literature. The creator of a…
2 months, 2 weeks ago