“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: [email protected]

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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