New Books in Jewish Studies

This vivid reconstruction of one man’s life reveals the harsh realities and moral ambiguities of colonial power.

The Jew Who Would Be King: A True Story of Shipwreck, Survival, and Scandal in Victorian Africa (U California Press, 2025) tells the story of Nathaniel Isaacs—a nineteenth-century British Jew who helped establish the Zulu kingdom only to become a ruthless warlord and slaveholder. Isaacs’ thrilling journey begins with his shipwreck on the shores of Zululand and proceeds to ports across West Africa, including Freetown, Sierra Leone. There, tasked by the colonial governor to end the local slave trade, Isaacs brokered deals that reinforced his own power.

Adam Rovner’s meticulous archival research in England, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and St. Helena, coupled with his own travels to the remnants of Isaacs’ island stronghold in Guinea, brings this complex figure to life. Through Isaacs’ story, Rovner exposes the entangled forces of Jewish emancipation and antisemitism, slavery and abolition, the stark dichotomies of civilization and “savagery,” and the creation of whiteness versus Blackness.

Adam Rovner is Associate Professor of English and Jewish Literature at the University of Denver. He is the author of In the Shadow of Zion: Promised Lands Before Israel (New York University Press, 2014).

Geraldine Gudefin is a modern Jewish historian researching Jewish migrations, family life, and legal pluralism. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939.

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From a leading historian, the story of how entrepreneurial Jewish immigrants transformed commercial banking and enabled the economic and social advancement of Jews in America.

What are immigrants to do when business opportunities abound in their new home, but banks refuse essential financial support? How could they make the journey in the first place without helping hands? In this lively history, Rebecca Kobrin chronicles the turn-of-the-twentieth-century Jewish immigrants who stepped up by doing the lending themselves. Arriving from the Russian Empire and settling primarily in New York, they made livelihoods by assisting fellow Jews so they could purchase passage to the United States and, after arriving, obtain credit that other lenders would not dare provide.

Credit to the Nation: Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Bankers and the Shaping of American Finance, 1873–1930 (Harvard UP, 2026) traces the novel practices of bankers who not only enabled the flourishing of American Jewry but also revolutionized the US financial industry. Drawing on previously unexamined archival materials in Russian, Yiddish, German, and English, Kobrin tells a story that is also crucial to the history of New York, as immigrant bankers’ financing of real estate transformed wide swathes of the city. Lenders drove a boom in the prices of tenement buildings, but heavy speculation eventually precipitated the downfall of immigrant banking. Kobrin notes in particular the case of the Bank of United States—a private lender catering primarily to Jewish businessmen—which the Federal Reserve refused to bail out from bankruptcy in 1930.

Immigrants’ grasping for credit, and the rise and fall of immigrant banks, gave way to a contemporary banking industry that, ironically, refuses credit to today’s immigrants. Kobrin reminds us that now, as before, the denial of credit pushes entrepreneurial Americans into unregulated money-lending and the trap of endless debt.

Rebecca Kobrin, author of Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora, is Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History at Columbia University, where she codirects the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies.

Geraldine Gudefin is a modern Jewish historian researching Jewish migrations, family life, and legal pluralism. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939.

The book can be purchased on the Harvard University Press website: Credit to the Nation. Use code CRE30 to receive a 30% discount.

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Most of us use Wikipedia without thinking very much about it. A name comes up in conversation, an argument breaks out, or we suddenly need to know what happened in, for example, 1948—and within seconds, Wikipedia offers us a clean, confident answer.

But who decided what that answer would be?

Who chose which facts belonged in the opening paragraph and which could wait until paragraph fifteen? Who determined which sources were authoritative?

My guest on this podcast is Dr. Shlomit Lir, a researcher at the University of Haifa and Bar-Ilan University who specializes in the politics of knowledge—the often invisible ways power influences what a society accepts as fact.

Dr. Lir’s research began with questions about gender and participation on Wikipedia. She found that although the platform presents itself as open to everyone, not everyone feels equally welcome—or possesses equal influence—inside its editorial culture.

Her latest project, WikiBiases, turns to English Wikipedia’s treatment of Israel, Zionism, Jewish history, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By examining revision histories, changes in terminology, patterns of sourcing, article structure, and the experiences of volunteer editors, she argues that bias rarely arrives as one spectacularly false statement. It develops gradually: a sentence disappears, a source is dismissed, a disputed interpretation moves into the opening paragraph, and a different account of history begins to look settled.

The stakes extend far beyond Wikipedia. Its articles shape search results and influence journalists. They supply information to artificial-intelligence systems. If distorted information passes from Wikipedia into AI-generated material, and that material eventually returns as a source, we may be creating a hall of mirrors in which repetition gradually acquires the authority of truth.

Who gets to write history? Who gets to challenge it? And when thousands of small edits accumulate, at what point does editing become a quiet rewriting of the past?

Host: Renee Garfinkel

Guest: Shlomit Lir

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Joel Dinerstein's The Last of the Ellis Island Jews (SUNY Press, 2026) is a tragicomic memoir of a dysfunctional, working-class Brooklyn Jewish family that illuminates both the vitality of urban life in the twentieth century and the social turmoil of white flight. As a child of immigrants born to older parents, Dinerstein has a unique perspective on four generations--from his grandparents escaping Russia's pogroms to his parents' embattled marriage to his older Boomer siblings (split between feminist and Republican politics) to his own hippie hopes. As a white teenager in majority Black public schools, Dinerstein's firsthand experience led to his academic career as a scholar of race and music. Yet his family fits no paradigm of Jewish success due to a father with rage and gambling problems, resulting in the four siblings escaping early to the Brooklyn streets. As a family growing up with a diasporic identity, the Dinersteins provide a primer of ethnic Jewish culture through iconic scenes: a selfish Seder, a chaotic Bar Mitzvah, a videotaped bris, an allergy attack at Dachau, a staring contest with the Rebbe. Most of all, The Last of the Ellis Island Jews is a chronicle of lost worlds.

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Pamela S. Nadell holds the Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender History and is Director of the Jewish Studies Program. A specialist in American Jewish history and women’s history, she teaches a variety of courses in Jewish civilization. Pamela Nadell’s books include America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today (W.W. Norton, 2019), named Jewish Book of the Year by the Jewish Book Council. Reviewed in the New York Times, America’s Jewish Women was praised as “a welcome addition to the American historical canon.”

A past president of the Association for Jewish Studies, Nadell’s other titles include Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women’s Ordination, 1889–1985 (Beacon Press, 1998).

She consults for museums including the Weizman National Museum of American Jewish History and the Tree of Life Humanity Center.

She lectures widely, frequently appears on podcasts, and has written for, among others, the Washington Post, The Conversation, and Hadassah Magazine. She has testified before Congress about antisemitism on college campuses several times, most recently in the December 2023 hearing with the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania. 

Pamela S. Nadell’s Antisemitism, an American Tradition (2025) argues that antisemitism is not a recent anomaly in the United States but a deep-rooted, recurring feature of American life from colonial times to the present. Nadell traces nearly four centuries of anti-Jewish hatred—from 17th‑century colonial prejudices and religious test oaths, through 19th‑century exclusion, the “high tide” of the 1930s, and into today’s surge—showing how old tropes about “evil Jews” keep reappearing in new forms. She foregrounds the experiences and voices of Jewish men, women, and children, documenting how antisemitism shaped everyday life, opportunities, and communal strategies.

The book stresses that antisemitism cuts across politics, race, and religion; it is not confined to one party or movement but has appeared on multiple sides of American society. Alongside chronicling hate, Nadell highlights how Jews fought back—through advocacy, legal action, institution-building, and solidarity with other groups. Rather than treating U.S. antisemitism as a side note to European history, Nadell makes it the central subject across 400 years, insisting it is an “American tradition” in its own right. She explicitly aims to tell the story “through the eyes of its victims,” using personal and communal memories to show impact, not just ideology. The book connects classic Christian anti-Judaism and older stereotypes to modern conspiracy theories, showing how they reinforce each other rather than replacing one another. Antisemitism is often described as a millennia-old hatred rooted in late antique and medieval Christian Europe.

Nadell’s contribution is to relocate and reframe that story within U.S. history. She demonstrates that when Europeans immigrated to America, they brought these ancient prejudices with them, and those ideas became embedded in American institutions and culture from the start. By documenting persistent patterns—test oaths, quotas, job discrimination, propaganda, violence—she challenges narratives of American exceptionalism that treat antisemitism as marginal or limited to extreme moments. Her work helps scholars and policymakers see contemporary spikes not as isolated outbreaks but as the latest phase of a long-standing American pattern.

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In this episode of the New Books Network, Željko Stanojević speaks with Matthew Montgomery about his article “An Intercessor Like Moses: A Key Component of the Psalter’s Message”, published in the European Hebrew Journal.

Montgomery’s study asks how the final form of the Masoretic Psalter communicates hope after the collapse of Judah and the Babylonian exile. Building on the widely recognized observation that Book III of the Psalter engages the downfall of the Southern Kingdom while Book IV places unusual emphasis on Moses, he traces textual signals connecting these sections with Exodus 32–34. Particular attention is given to the introduction of Moses and Aaron, the clustering of references to them in Books IV and V, and repeated allusions to Moses’ intercession after Israel’s covenant-breaking at Sinai.

The central argument is that these features are not isolated reminiscences. Read together, they help shape the Psalter’s theological and literary message. Moses appears as the paradigmatic representative who can stand between God and a disobedient people, plead on their behalf, and turn away divine anger. Montgomery argues that, in the post-exilic horizon of the Psalter, this Mosaic pattern contributes to an emerging hope for an intercessory figure capable of mediating between God and a covenant-breaking community. The interview explores what this proposal contributes to final-form readings of the Psalter and why the arrangement of psalms can itself become a vehicle of meaning.

Matthew Montgomery is a scholar of the Hebrew Bible whose research includes Psalms, scriptural reuse, rhetoric, literary coherence, and the shaping of biblical collections. His article was published on 18 June 2026 after double-blind peer review, with Prof. em. Dr. Dr. h.c. Eckart Otto serving as Academic Editor. The article is freely available through its permanent DOI.

Montgomery will also speak at the EHJ International Scholarly Online Conference 2026, “New Discoveries and New Directions in Biblical, Hebrew, and Theological Studies”. On 8 November 2026 at 22:00 CET, he will present “Neither Story or Arbitrary: The Rhetoric of Juxtaposition in the MT Psalter”. The presentation develops a related concern with how the Psalter’s ordering creates rhetorical and theological effects without requiring readers to treat the collection either as one continuous story or as an arbitrary anthology.

The host, Željko Stanojević, is a Hebrew linguist, biblical philologist, lexicographer, translator, and scholar of Biblical and Modern Hebrew. He is President of the Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature in Belgrade, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the European Hebrew Journal, and a host on the New Books Network Biblical Studies channel. His work includes Biblical Hebrew, Semitic linguistics, textual criticism, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Bible translation, biblical onomastics, and Hebrew lexicography.

This episode will be of interest to readers and listeners working on Psalms, the Hebrew Bible, Moses and Aaron, Exodus traditions, intercession, post-exilic theology, ancient Hebrew, biblical allusion, textual criticism, and the literary shaping of Scripture.

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In this episode of New Books Network, Željko Stanojević speaks with historian Giuseppe Motta about Jewish Refugees and the International Community Between the Two World Wars: Beyond the State (Routledge, 2026), a study of Jewish displacement, statelessness, humanitarian action, international law, and international institutions between the First and Second World Wars.

Drawing on extensive archival research in the records of the League of Nations and the Joint Distribution Committee, Motta reconstructs the political and legal environment in which Jewish refugees from East-Central Europe struggled to find protection after the collapse of empires and the redrawing of national borders. The book follows the refugee question from the aftermath of World War I through the rise of Nazism and the Évian Conference of 1938, asking how states, international organizations, humanitarian agencies, and Jewish institutions responded to people increasingly left outside effective national protection.

A central theme of the conversation is the tension captured in the subtitle, Beyond the State. The interwar refugee crisis exposed a basic contradiction: refugees required protection that crossed national borders, while international law remained dependent on the sovereignty and political choices of individual states. Motta explains how the Jewish refugee question became connected to statelessness, minority protection, humanitarian responsibility, migration control, legal identity, and international cooperation across Europe.

The discussion also explores the wider forces surrounding Jewish displacement: the legacies of World War I, new states in Central and Eastern Europe, nationalism, antisemitism, Bolshevism, Zionism, migration policy, and the restrictive political climate of the 1920s and 1930s. Particular attention is given to the League of Nations and the Joint Distribution Committee, whose archives reveal both institutional debates and the practical difficulties faced by refugees seeking safety and legal recognition.

Rather than treating Jewish refugees only as a prelude to the Holocaust, Motta places the interwar period in its own historical and legal context. This perspective helps explain how ideas later central to international refugee law and human rights developed through earlier crises, experiments, failures, and negotiations.

Giuseppe Motta is Associate Professor of History of International Relations at Sapienza University of Rome and a member of the Editorial Board of the European Hebrew Journal (EHJ).

Motta will also speak at the European Hebrew Journal International Online Conference, New Discoveries and New Directions in Biblical, Hebrew, and Theological Studies. On 7 November 2026 at 19:00 CET, he will lead a live scholarly debate based on this book. His biography, book information, presentation details, and conference session are available on Giuseppe Motta’s conference page.

The interview is hosted by Željko Stanojević, President of the Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature, Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor of the European Hebrew Journal, and a New Books Network host in Biblical Studies. The Belgrade-based Institute promotes international scholarship in Hebrew language, Jewish studies, Biblical studies, Semitic studies, history, religion, and related interdisciplinary fields.

Keywords and themes: Jewish refugees, interwar Europe, League of Nations, Joint Distribution Committee, statelessness, Jewish migration, Évian Conference, antisemitism, minority rights, humanitarianism, refugee law, international law, East-Central Europe, Jewish history, human rights, nationalism, international relations, refugee protection.  

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Abraham: The First Jew (Yale UP, 2025) is the story of Abraham, the first Jew, portrayed as two lives lived by one person, paralleling the contradictions in Judaism throughout its history

 
In this new biography of Abraham, Judaism’s foundational figure, Anthony Julius offers an account of the origins of a fundamental struggle within Judaism between skepticism and faith, critique and affirmation, thinking for oneself and thinking under the direction of another. Julius describes Abraham’s life as two separate lives, and as a version of the collective life of the Jewish people.
 
Abraham’s first life is an early adulthood of questioning the polytheism of his home city of Ur Kasdim until its ruler, Nimrod, condemns him to death and he is rescued, he believes, by a miracle. In his second life, Abraham’s focus is no longer on critique but rather on conversion and on his leadership over his growing household, until God’s command that he sacrifice his son Isaac. This test, the Akedah (or “Binding”), ends with another miracle, as he believes, but as Julius argues, it is also a catastrophe for Abraham. The Akedah represents for him an unsurpassed horizon—and in Jewish life thereafter. This book focuses on Abraham as leader of the first Jewish project, Judaism, and the unresolvable, insurmountable crisis that the Akedah represents—both in his leadership and in Judaism itself.  

Host: Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. 

Guest: Anthony Julius, Deputy Chairman, international law firm of Mishcon de Reya, and professor, University of London.   

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What if Pirkei Avot has a bigger story to tell? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with Joseph G. Rosenstein to discuss Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers): The Big Picture (Academic Studies Press, 2026), a fresh approach to one of Judaism’s most beloved collections of rabbinic wisdom.

The 123 teachings of Pirkei Avot often seem to jump from one subject to another: Torah study, ethics, the afterlife, relationships, leadership, and the responsibilities of living a meaningful Jewish life. Rosenstein argues that beneath this seemingly disconnected collection is a larger conceptual framework. Instead of following the mishnayot in their traditional order, he groups them by theme, revealing connections that can be easy to miss when each teaching is studied on its own.

The result is a new way of seeing Pirkei Avot—not as a collection of isolated aphorisms, but as a coherent work that reflects how Judaism was reshaped in the generations following the destruction of the Temple. Rosenstein also turns the book’s ethical teachings into 90 concrete principles for living, organized into 16 themes and accompanied by kavvanot, short meditations designed to help readers put those ideas into practice.

Together, Rosenstein and Katz explore what Pirkei Avot is really trying to teach, why its teachings were assembled the way they were, and what happens when ancient rabbinic wisdom is read not simply as something to study, but as a guide for how to live.

About the Guest

Joseph G. Rosenstein is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Rutgers University. In addition to his careers in mathematics and mathematics education, he has written extensively on Jewish prayer and thought. He is the author of Reflections on Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers): Not Just What My Rebbe Taught Me and has published the traditional-yet-unconventional prayer books Siddur Eit Ratzon and Machzor Eit Ratzon – Memorable Verses in the Torah. His website, joerosenstein.com, reflects his wide-ranging work in mathematics, education, and Jewish life.

About the Host

Rabbi Marc Katz is the rabbi of Temple Ner Tamid and the author of several books on Jewish thought and the Talmud including Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life (JPS). 

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In The Wanderers: A Story of Exile, Survival, and Unexpected Love in the Shadow of World War II (Grand Central Publishing, 2026), an immigration journalist and her wife trace their family’s intertwined past to unearth a history of how hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews survived Hitler’s Holocaust at the brutal hands of Stalin—a story that sheds light on the enduring power of hope and love.
Daniela Gerson and her wife, Talia Inlender, met at a picnic in Los Angeles, not knowing that 75 years earlier, their grandparents had left homes only blocks away from each other in a small Polish town, and fled east to Ukraine. The Gersons and the Inlenders would go on parallel odysseys of 5,000 miles to survive the Holocaust—journeys that would, after a deceitful loyalty test from Stalin, put them on cattle cars to a Soviet Gulag, trap them for years in limbo in Central Asia, and would end, after a decade on the run, with new lives built on secrets and lies.
For years, Daniela and Talia simply accepted this painful shared history as a sign that they were b’shert, meant to be. Their families’ refugee past fueled their work: Daniela as an immigration journalist; Talia an immigration attorney. But as Daniela uncovered more, she realized that their grandparents shared this escape path in the Soviet Union with most Polish Jews who survived; a group—sometimes collectively called “the Wanderers”—that is almost entirely absent from popular understanding of World War II. And unlike most Holocaust sagas that focus on the exceptionality of the Nazi genocide, theirs was also a universal story of refugees making impossible decisions when forced to seek safety, protect their children, and find new homes.

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