Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchSasha Senderovich, "How the Soviet Jew Was Made" (Harvard UP, 2022)
Episode 316
The Russian Revolution of 1917 transformed the Jewish community of the former tsarist empire. The Pale of Settlement on the empire’s western borderla…
3 years, 8 months ago
Tamar Biala, "Dirshuni: Contemporary Women's Midrash" (Brandeis UP, 2022)
Episode 315
Dirshuni: Contemporary Women's Midrash (Brandeis UP, 2022), is the first-ever English edition of a historic collection of midrashim composed by Israe…
3 years, 8 months ago
Book Talk 55: Courtney B. Hodrick and Amir Eshel on Hannah Arendt's "Rachel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewish Woman"
Episode 126
Hannah Arendt said that she had one life-long “best friend.” That was Rachel Varnhagen, a Jewish woman who lived in Enlightenment-era Berlin around 1…
3 years, 8 months ago
Kimberley Czajkowski and Benedikt Eckhardt, "Herod in History: Nicolaus of Damascus and the Augustan Context" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Episode 314
Most of our information about Herod the Great derives from the accounts found in Josephus' Jewish War and Jewish Antiquities. Together they constitut…
3 years, 8 months ago
Seth M. Ehorn, "Exodus in the New Testament" (T&T Clark, 2022)
Episode 94
The book of Exodus played a significant role in forming the identity of the Jewish people, with exodus traditions appearing throughout the Hebrew Scr…
3 years, 8 months ago
Tilde Rosmer, "The Islamic Movement in Israel" (U Texas Press, 2022)
Episode 192
Since its establishment in the late 1970s, Israel’s Islamic Movement has grown from a small religious revivalist organization focused on strengthenin…
3 years, 9 months ago
Michael Engel, "Elijah Del Medigo and Paduan Aristotelianism: Investigating the Human Intellect" (Bloomsbury, 2016)
Episode 157
Elijah Del Medigo (1458-1493) was a Jewish Aristotelian philosopher living in Padua, whose work influenced many of the leading philosophers of the ea…
3 years, 9 months ago
Manuel Duarte de Oliveira, "Humanity Divided: Martin Buber and the Challenges of Being Chosen" (de Gruyter, 2021)
Episode 313
Throughout a hugely productive intellectual career spanning more than half a century, the Austrian-born philosopher Martin Buber returned repeatedly …
3 years, 9 months ago
Matthew Teller, "Nine Quarters of Jerusalem: A New Biography of the Old City" (Other Press, 2022)
Episode 98
Jerusalem’s Old City is normally understood to be split into four quarters: the Jewish Quarter, the Armenian Quarter, the Christian Quarter, and the …
3 years, 9 months ago
Matti Friedman, "Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai" (Spiegel & Grau, 2022)
Episode 162
In October 1973, the poet and singer Leonard Cohen—thirty-nine years old, famous, unhappy, and at a creative dead end—traveled from his home on the G…
3 years, 9 months ago