New Books Network
Jewish Studies
Jewish Studies January 13, 2022

Yiddish Writers in Weimar Berlin

A Fugitive Modernism

Marc Caplan

Hosted by Lea Greenberg
In Yiddish Writers in Weimar Berlin: A Fugitive Modernism (Indiana UP, 2021), Marc Caplan explores the reciprocal encounter between Eastern European Jews and German culture in the days following World War …

Jewish Studies

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Interviews with scholars of Judaism about their new books.

Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas with Renee Garfinkel January 11, 2022

State and Religion in Israel

A Philosophical-Legal Inquiry

Gideon Sapir and Daniel Statman

Hosted by Renee Garfinkel
Mahatma Gandhi said, “Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either.” The relationship between religion and state presents complex challenges to liberal democracies around the world. In …
Children's Literature January 11, 2022

Sadie’s Shabbat Stories

Melissa Stoller

Hosted by Mel Rosenberg
Today I talked to Melissa Stoller about her book Sadie’s Shabbat Stories (Spork, 2020). Sadie loves listening to Nana's tales, especially about the traveling candlesticks, kiddush cup, and challah cover they use …
Jewish Studies January 5, 2022

Revolutionary Visions

Jewish Life and Politics in Latin American Film

Stephanie M. Pridgeon

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Stephanie M. Pridgeon's book Revolutionary Visions: Jewish Life and Politics in Latin American Film (U Toronto Press, 2020) examines recent cinematic depictions of Jewish involvement in 1960s and 1970s revolutionary movements …
Jewish Studies December 31, 2021

Sanctified Sex

The Two-Thousand-Year Jewish Debate on Marital Intimacy

Noam Sachs Zion

Hosted by Rachel Adelman
Sanctified Sex: The Two-Thousand-Year Jewish Debate on Marital Intimacy (Jewish Publication Society, 2021) draws on two thousand years of rabbinic debates addressing competing aspirations for loving intimacy, passionate sexual union …
Children's Literature December 28, 2021

Kayla and Kugel's Happy Hanhukkah

Ann Koffsky

Hosted by Mel Rosenberg
Our current podcast features the picture book Kayla and Kugel's Happy Hanhukkah (Apples and Honey Press, 2020). The author, Ann Koffsky is the author and illustrator of more than thirty …
Biblical Studies December 23, 2021

The Reception of Exodus Motifs in Jewish and Christian Literature

"Let My People Go!"

Beate Kowalski and Susan E. Docherty

Hosted by Michael Morales
The account of the exodus of Israel out of Egypt led by Moses has shaped the theology and community identity of both Jewish people and Christians across the centuries, blossoming …
Music December 21, 2021

From This Broken Hill I Sing to You

God, Sex, and Politics in the Work of Leonard Cohen

Marcia Pally

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Leonard Cohen's troubled relationship with God is here mapped onto his troubled relationships with sex and politics. Analysing Covenantal theology and its place in Cohen's work, Marcia Pally's From This …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast December 15, 2021

"Bambi" isn't about what you think it's about

Jack Zipes explains what it's really about

Jack Zipes

Hosted by Marshall Poe
Most of us think we know the story of Bambi—but do we? The Original Bambi: The Story of a Life in the Forest (Princeton UP, 2022) is an all-new, illustrated …
Jewish Studies December 13, 2021

We Are Not Alone

A Maimonidean Theology of the Other

Menachem Kellner

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed addressed Jews of his day who felt challenged by apparent contradictions between Torah and science. We Are Not Alone: A Maimonidean Theology of the Other (Academic …
Jewish Studies January 17, 2022

The Male Body in Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Theology

Yakir Englander

Hosted by Zalman Newfield
How does Ultra-Orthodox Jewish literature describe the male body? What does the body represent? What is the ideal male body? In The Male Body in Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Theology, published in …
Eastern European Studies January 12, 2022

The Expulsion of Jews from Communist Poland

Memory Wars and Homeland Anxieties

Anat Plocker

Hosted by Piotr Kosicki
In The Expulsion of Jews from Communist Poland: Memory Wars and Homeland Anxieties (Indiana University Press, 2022), Anat Plocker examines the campaign of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism that swept through Poland …
Film December 31, 2021

Holocaust Cinema Complete

A History and Analysis of 400 Films, with a Teaching Guide

Rich Brownstein

Hosted by Joel Tscherne
Holocaust movies have become an important segment of world cinema and the de-facto Holocaust education for many. One quarter of all American-produced Holocaust-related feature films have won or been nominated …
Eastern European Studies December 17, 2021

Bauman

A Biography

Izabela Wagner

Hosted by Vladislav Lilic
Global thinker, public intellectual, and world-famous theorist of ‘liquid modernity’, Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017) was a scholar who, despite forced migration, built a very successful academic career and, after retirement, became …
Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas with Renee Garfinkel December 17, 2021

Abraham Joshua Heschel

A Life of Radical Amazement

Julian E. Zelizer

Hosted by Renee Garfinkel
“When I marched in Selma, I felt my legs were praying.” So said Polish-born American rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) of his involvement in the 1965 Selma civil rights march …
Jewish Studies December 14, 2021

The Koren Standard Tanakh Maalot

Magerman Edition

Jonathan Sacks

Hosted by Michael Morales
A decade in development, the new KOREN TANAKH offers an eloquent, faithful, and masterful translation of the Torah, Prophets, and Writings with the renowned Koren Hebrew text. Translation for the Pentateuch …
Jewish Studies December 7, 2021

It Could Lead to Dancing

Mixed-Sex Dancing and Jewish Modernity

Sonia Gollance

Hosted by Amber Nickell
Dances and balls appear throughout world literature as venues for young people to meet, flirt, and form relationships, as any reader of Pride and Prejudice, War and Peace, or Romeo …
Princeton UP Ideas Podcast December 1, 2021

Billy Wilder on Assignment

Dispatches from Weimar Berlin and Interwar Vienna

Noah Isenberg and Shelley Frisch

Hosted by Marshall Poe
Before Billy Wilder became the screenwriter and director of iconic films like Sunset Boulevard and Some Like It Hot, he worked as a freelance reporter, first in Vienna and then …
Jewish Studies December 1, 2021

Abraham the Hebrew Believer

Secularism and Religion in the Work of Avraham Shlonsky

Rani Jaeger

Hosted by Yakir Englander
How can it be that deeply religious poetry is being written by a committed socialist, literary revolutionary and modernist? How sacredness appears in working in the field? How one can …
Jewish Studies November 29, 2021

Hadassah

An American Story

Hadassah Lieberman

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Born in Prague to Holocaust survivors, Hadassah Lieberman and her family immigrated in 1949 to the United States. She went on to earn a BA from Boston University in government …