New Books in Jewish Studies

European Jews in the 21st Century

What is the status of Jews in Europe in the 21st century? How do they maintain vital communities? Do they desire to remain in Europe? To remain Jewish? Where are the trendlines headed? A mere 0.1% of Europe's population is Jewish. Proportionally, this figure is at its lowest since the turn of the first millennium. European Jews' numbers have continued to decline even after the Holocaust. Once a major center of world Jewry, Europe often goes largely unmentioned in conversations about the global Jewish community. K., the European Jewish Review, is a new magazine founded in March 2021 to document and analyze the current situation of the 1.3 million Jews living in Europe. The magazine is devoted to reporting from and fostering dialogue across all the various communities of European Jewry. Daniel Solomon, the English-language editor of K. will lead a discussion with members of the editorial board of K.: Stéphane Bou (Editor of chief of K., European Jewish Review), Macha Fogel (Author at K., European Jewish Review), and Danny Trom (Senior Researcher, EHESS). This panel discussion originally took place on October 12, 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

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Samantha Ellis, "Always Carry Salt: A Memoir of Preserving Language and Culture" (Pegasus Books, 2026)

2d ago00:49:38Tap to summarize

I had the privilege of speaking with writer Samantha Ellis about her deeply moving new book, Always Carry Salt: A Memoir of Preserving Language and Culture (Pegasus Books, 2026). Our discussion explored not only the story of a disappearing language, but also the broader questions of memory, identity, and what it means to inherit a fragile cultural legacy. At the heart of Ellis’s book is Judeo-Iraqi Arabic—also known as Baghdadi Jewish Arabic or Hakimalna—a language once spoken by the Jews of Iraq. Rich with layers of Hebrew and Judeo-Babylonian Aramaic, it reflects over two millennia of Jewish life in the region. Today, however, it stands on the brink of extinction. As Ellis shared, a language is considered endangered when it is no longer passed on to children, and Judeo-Iraqi Arabic may have only about a thousand speakers remaining worldwide. Within a generation, it could fall silent. Ellis described a powerful turning point in her own awareness: a casual question from another parent about why she was not sending her son to a nursery that spoke “her language.” Her spontaneous response—“my language is dead”—became the catalyst for the journey that led to this book. That moment captures the quiet grief of linguistic loss, but also the urgency of preservation. Our conversation traced the long arc of Iraqi Jewish history, beginning with the Babylonian exile in 597 BCE. Iraqi Jews lived in the region long before the arrival of Arabic, shifting over centuries from Hebrew to Aramaic and later to Arabic, while preserving distinctive linguistic features from earlier eras. This layered history lives on in the language itself. Yet the mass departures of Iraqi Jews in the mid-20th century—particularly the 1950–51 airlift—fractured this continuity. Today, only a handful of Jews remain in Iraq. And yet, as Ellis emphasized, culture does not disappear all at once. Language may fade, but other forms of transmission endure. Food, in particular, becomes a powerful vessel of memory. Ellis initially resisted including recipes in her book, but came to understand that cooking is itself a kind of language—a sensory bridge to the past. The image of her mother carrying three rolling pins from Iraq is emblematic of this continuity: tangible objects that hold intangible heritage. Even the book’s title gesture—“always carry salt”—evokes protective practices familiar across Mizrahi communities, small rituals that encode belief, memory, and identity. We also discussed the remarkable story of the Iraqi Jewish Archive, discovered in 2003 in the flooded basement of Saddam Hussein’s secret police headquarters. The archive contains hundreds of thousands of documents—school records, letters, communal registers—offering an intimate portrait of everyday Jewish life in Iraq. Today, innovative projects are using AI to transcribe and translate these materials across multiple scripts, making them accessible to descendants and scholars alike. Yet the archive’s ultimate fate remains uncertain, raising complex questions about ownership, memory, and cultural restitution. A particularly resonant theme in our conversation was Ellis’s struggle with authenticity. As a second-generation Iraqi Jew raised in the UK, she grappled with whether she had the “right” to tell this story, especially without having visited Iraq herself. Her resolution—to be “authentic to me”—offers an important model for thinking about diasporic identity. Preservation, she suggests, does not require perfect replication. It allows for adaptation, creativity, even reinvention. One can honor tradition while also “messing with it,” whether by adjusting a recipe or reimagining inherited practices. Ellis introduces a beautiful concept she calls “milk language”—the language absorbed in early childhood, through intimacy and care, even if it is not the dominant language of one’s environment. This idea invites us to reconsider how language lives within us, not only as a tool of communication but as a carrier of emotional and cultural memory. As an educator, I was especially struck by Ellis’s closing insight and her implicit call to action: to speak with our elders while we still can. There is a profound difference between hearing fragments of family stories in childhood and sitting down, as an adult, to listen fully and intentionally. These conversations do more than preserve history; they create connection, continuity, and a deeper sense of self. Always Carry Salt is not only a memoir. It is an invitation—to remember, to document, and to carry forward what might otherwise be lost. In a time when so many cultural threads are at risk of unraveling, Ellis’s work reminds us that preservation begins with attention, with curiosity, and with the willingness to listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

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Great Minds in Despair

2d ago00:45:39Tap to summarize

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Ingrid Piller speaks with Frank Stahnisch, Professor of the History of Medicine and Health Care at the University of Calgary in Canada, about his new book Great Minds in Despair – The Forced Migration of German-Speaking Neuroscientists to North America, 1933 to 1989 (2025, McGill-Queen’s University Press). Great Minds in Despair examines the long-term effects of the forced migration of neuroscientists from the German lands in the 20th century on scientific and medical cultures in North America, and on the researchers themselves. The book traces the lives and careers of approximately 400 German-speaking doctors, scientists, and researchers over two generations. It is a fascinating read that anyone interested in migration, science history, Nazi Germany, transatlantic relations, Jewish Studies, and much more should read. Reference Stahnisch, F. W. (2025). Great Minds in Despair: The Forced Migration of German-Speaking Neuroscientists to North America, 1933 to 1989. McGill-Queen's University Press. For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

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Adrian Ciani, "Contesting Zion: The Vatican, American Catholics, and the Partition of Palestine" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025)

2d ago00:57:26Tap to summarize

The modern relationship between the Vatican and the State of Israel is rooted in a long history of hostility between Judaism and Roman Catholicism. Through the centuries, popes and theologians marginalized the Jewish people, assigning them collective guilt for the death of Jesus Christ and claiming that the sacred territory of Palestine was the true patrimony of the Roman Catholic Church. With the advent of political Zionism in the nineteenth century, Catholic fears of a Jewish-dominated Palestine were renewed. Contesting Zion: The Vatican, American Catholics, and the Partition of Palestine (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025) examines the relationship between the Vatican and the Zionist movement from the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to the first decade of Israeli statehood. Adrian Ciani considers the transnational nature of Catholic responses to Zionism and the creation of Israel, with a focus on the Catholic Church in the United States. From the 1920s through the 1950s, American Catholic leaders became crucial intermediaries between Washington and the Vatican. Speaking as both loyal American citizens and devout Catholics, they were uniquely positioned to articulate the Vatican’s policy objectives to the American government, including on the future of Palestine. American Catholics were also instrumental in advocating the church’s Palestine policy at the United Nations, playing a central role in the Holy See’s attempts to shape the twentieth-century international order. Roberto Mazza is currently a visiting scholar at the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University. He is the host of the Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast and to discuss and propose a book for interview can be reached at robbymazza@gmail.com. Blusky and IG: @robbyref Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

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Jewish Identity in Lithuania Today

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Join YIVO for a conversation about the resurgence of interest in Jewish identity and history in Lithuania today. Jonathan Brent will moderate a conversation among Miglė Anušauskaitė, a Lithuanian cartoonist and archivist working on the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections Project, Anna Avidan, Managing Director of LitvakWorld, Kęstas Pikūnas, publisher of Passport, and former Lithuanian Minister of Culture, Mindaugas Kvietkauskas. Together they will explore topics such as the historical and social realities of Jewish-Lithuanian relations, and the challenges of building a multi-cultural, democratic society in Lithuania today. This panel originally took place on December 7, 2021 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

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Brook Wilensky-Lanford, "A God-Shaped Nation: Five Hundred Years of Religion in America" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2026)

4d ago00:45:46Tap to summarize

Ever since conquistadores claimed Taino land in the name of their Catholic God and New England Puritans formed their strictly Protestant “city on a hill,” religion has been central to American life. Even as some found religious freedom—Rhode Island welcomed the Quakers, Jews, and Baptists that Massachusetts expelled as dissenters—indigenous people and Africans forced into slavery struggled to protect their religious practices. With the constitutional separation of church and state, it fell to the American people to decide: would they sharpen religion’s formidable powers of division, or reimagine its creative possibilities? In A God-Shaped Nation: Five Hundred Years of Religion in America ( Atlantic Monthly Press, 2026) Brook Wilensky-Lanford follows this essential American tension from first contact through the 2024 election. This is an expansive history of extraordinary religious questions, told through the ordinary people who grappled with them. It is a story of defiance: Anne Hutchinson, preaching against Puritan clergy; Reform rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise serving soft-shell crab to his kosher guests at an 1883 banquet; and Wovoka, a Paiute man who envisioned the Ghost Dance movement, which persisted in the face of violent government repression at Wounded Knee. It is also a story of community: Millerites waiting together in vain for Jesus’s return on a rainy October night in 1844; Chinese immigrants bringing Daoist and Buddhist gods to their California temples; Mormons pushing westward to build their “new Zion” in Utah. And in the last fifty years, it has been a story of muscular political power, as the religious right has sought to shape the present and paint the past in its own image. At a moment when religion penetrates even the most secular aspects of American life, understanding its history is more essential than ever before. “It is in history that the very human work of religion happens,” Wilensky-Lanford shows us, “and in ordinary time that even the most carved-in-stone tenets can and do change.” Brook Wilensky-Lanford is a religion writer, editor, and teacher. The author of Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and former managing editor of Killing the Buddha, her work has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Republic, and elsewhere. Currently the Associate Director of Sacred Writes Public Scholarship, she holds an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from Columbia University and a PhD in Religion in the Americas from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she lives. This episode’s host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his website thereluctantamericanist.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

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The Yiddish Historians and the Struggle for a Jewish History of the Holocaust

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Historians began writing the history of the Holocaust in Yiddish from a distinctly Jewish perspective in the years immediately after World War II. These Yiddish historians studied the Holocaust from the perspective of its Jewish victims, rather than that of the Nazi perpetrators, examining daily life in the ghettos and camps, and stressing the importance of survivor testimonies, eyewitness accounts, and memoirs. Above all, they redefined “resistance” to include the many ways Jews struggled to remain alive under Nazi occupation. Mark Smith chronicles and contextualizes this largely overlooked yet significant set of scholars in his recently published work, The Yiddish Historians and the Struggle for a Jewish History of the Holocaust. This book talk originally took place on October 29, 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

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The Legacy of Chaim Grade

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Chaim Grade was born in 1910 in Vilna, Poland. In his youth, Grade was a student of the Novaredok Musar Yeshiva and of Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz. He was also a founding member of the Yung-Vilne literary group, known for its leftist politics, secular Jewish thinking, and literary influence. After losing both his mother and wife during the Holocaust, he emerged as one of the most prolific and defining Yiddish voices in post-war literature. Besides publishing several volumes of poetry, he is best known for his two acclaimed novels, The Agunah and The Yeshiva. In early 2023, YIVO and the National Library of Israel (NLI) completed the digitization of the Papers of Chaim Grade and Inna Hecker Grade. The collection helps to illustrate Grade’s literary development and impact on Yiddish literature, from his earliest poetic works written in Vilna and the Soviet Union to his prolific and accomplished prose work composed mainly in the United States. Join YIVO and NLI for a panel discussion of Grade’s legacy with Ruth Wisse, Ofer Dynes, and Curt Leviant, led by scholar and translator Justin Cammy. This panel discussion originally took place on November 15, 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

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Stephen Spector, "God and the First Families: Parenting, Trauma, and Healing in the Book of Genesis" (Jewish Publication Society, 2026)

1w ago00:42:38Tap to summarize

What if the book of Genesis is not only the story of humanity’s first family, but also the story of God learning how to parent? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with Stephen Spector to discuss his book God and the First Families: Parenting, Trauma, and Healing in the Book of Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 2026), a provocative reexamination of the Bible’s foundational stories through the lens of parenting. Drawing on both biblical interpretation and contemporary psychology, Spector explores how God’s relationship with the patriarchs and matriarchs evolves throughout Genesis. God begins as a demanding authority figure, shifts toward a more nurturing presence, returns briefly to authoritarianism in the binding of Isaac, and ultimately develops a style focused on fostering moral and emotional growth. Remarkably, Spector argues, Genesis anticipates parenting insights that psychologists would not articulate for thousands of years. Along the way, familiar stories take on new meaning. Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers—each narrative becomes a window into questions of favoritism, resilience, forgiveness, family conflict, and healing after trauma. By reading Genesis as a story about parenting and human development, Spector uncovers enduring wisdom about how families flourish, fracture, and find their way back to one another. Together, Spector and Katz explore what the Bible can teach about raising children, repairing relationships, and understanding the complex bond between love, authority, and growth. Stephen Spector is a professor of English emeritus at Stony Brook University. He is the author of Operation Solomon: The Daring Rescue of the Ethiopian Jews and Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism, among other volumes. Spector has taught the Bible to undergraduate and graduate students for fifty years. He has been a visiting scholar at Hebrew University and a senior research fellow at the National Humanities Center and the Wesleyan Center for Humanities. Rabbi Marc Katz is the senior rabbi at Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, New Jersey. He is the author of The Heart of Loneliness: How Jewish Wisdom Can Help You Cope and Find Comfort, a National Jewish Book Award finalist and Yochanan’s Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

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Christopher D. Stanley, "A Ram for Mars" (NFB Publishing, 2026)

1w ago00:58:30Tap to summarize

What would you do if you were pressured to support a rebellion that you believed was misguided and doomed to failure? What if the safety of your family and business depended on your answer? In A Ram for Mars (NFB Publishing, 2026), Marcus and Miriam, recently freed slaves from Asia Minor, arrive in Israel buoyed by hopes of finding Marcus's long-lost mother and starting a new life together. They discover that the land is seething with social and political unrest, with anti-Roman parties in the ascendancy. Marcus, who grew up in a Roman colony and owes his present prosperity to a Roman master, finds these anti-Roman sentiments perplexing. His uncertainty increases when war breaks out and he's asked to ship supplies to the rebel army, including a newfound cousin who protects the northern front. As his entanglement with the rebellion deepens, Marcus is torn between loyalty to the world in which he was nurtured and the need to secure his family's safety. Then his adopted son runs off to join the rebels. What is he to do? Fans of Conn Iggulden, Ken Follett, and Robert Graves will be captivated by this richly detailed and compelling exploration of the Jewish revolt against Rome (66-73 AD/CE) through the lens of a pro-Roman Jew in the rural district of Galilee. More about A Ram for Mars , as well as the trilogy, “A Slave’s Story,” can be found here. Christopher D. Stanley is a social and religious historian who writes about early Christianity and Judaism in the Greco-Roman world. He served for over twenty years as a professor at St. Bonaventure University in western New York, where he holds the title of Professor Emeritus. Dr. Stanley has written or edited ten books and dozens of professional articles on early Christian texts and history and presents papers at academic conferences around the world. The “A Slave’s Story” trilogy, which grew out of his historical research on first-century Asia Minor, is his first foray into fiction. He continues to write for the academic world as well, including a recently finished book on sickness and healing in the Greco-Roman world that explores some of the history behind this trilogy, Paul and Asklepios: The Greco-Roman Quest for Healing and the Apostolic Mission (T&T Clark, 2023). Jonathon Lookadoo is Associate Professor at the Presbyterian University and Theological Seminary in Seoul, South Korea. While his interests range widely over the world of early Christianity, he is the author of books on the Epistle of Barnabas, Ignatius of Antioch, and the Shepherd of Hermas, including The Christology of Ignatius of Antioch (Cascade, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

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All episodes

European Jews in the 21st Century

Samantha Ellis, "Always Carry Salt: A Memoir of Preserving Language and Culture" (Pegasus Books, 2026)

Great Minds in Despair

Adrian Ciani, "Contesting Zion: The Vatican, American Catholics, and the Partition of Palestine" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025)

Jewish Identity in Lithuania Today

Brook Wilensky-Lanford, "A God-Shaped Nation: Five Hundred Years of Religion in America" (﻿Atlantic Monthly Press, 2026)

The Yiddish Historians and the Struggle for a Jewish History of the Holocaust

The Legacy of Chaim Grade

Stephen Spector, "God and the First Families: Parenting, Trauma, and Healing in the Book of Genesis" (Jewish Publication Society, 2026)

Christopher D. Stanley, "A Ram for Mars" (NFB Publishing, 2026)

Brook Wilensky-Lanford, "A God-Shaped Nation: Five Hundred Years of Religion in America" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2026)