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About Zalman Newfield
Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and the author of a memoir, Brooklyn Odyssey: My Journey out of Hasidism, and an academic book, Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (both from Temple University Press).
NBN Episodes hosted by Zalman:
March 18, 2026
The Bible Says So
The Bible is arguably the world’s most influential book, but do we really know what it says? Every day across social media and in homes, businesses, a…
January 29, 2026
A Woman Is Responsible for Everything
In small villages, bustling cities, and crowded ghettos across early modern Europe, Jewish women were increasingly active participants in the daily li…
January 26, 2026
War of Shadows
As World War II raged in North Africa, General Erwin Rommel was guided by an uncanny sense of his enemies' plans and weaknesses. In the summer of 1942…
January 6, 2026
Modern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish Children's Literature
As migration carried Yiddish to several continents during the long twentieth century, an increasingly global community of speakers and readers clung t…
November 16, 2025
The Package King
If the 20th Century was the American Century, it was also UPS's Century. Joe Allen's The Package King: A Rank and File History of UPS (Haymarket Book…
November 14, 2025
Law and Order Leviathan
The United States has long been an international outlier, with a powerful business class, a weak social state, and an exceptional gun culture. In Law …
September 17, 2025
Philip Roth
In his literary biography, Philip Roth: Stung by Life (Yale UP, 2025), Steven J. Zipperstein captures the complex life and astonishing work of Philip …
July 28, 2025
Paul and Judaism at the End of History
The apostle Paul was a Jew. He was born, lived, undertook his apostolic work, and died within the milieu of ancient Judaism. And yet, many readers hav…
July 18, 2025
The Progressives' Bible
In her book, The Progressives' Bible: How Scriptural Interpretation Built a More Just America, (Fortress Press, 2024), Claudia Setzer argues that whil…
July 2, 2025
The Routledge Companion to Global Chaucer
The Routledge Companion to Global Chaucer (Routledge, 2024) offers 40 chapters by leading scholars working with contemporary, theoretical, and textual…
June 15, 2025
Menachem Mendel Schneerson
The Chabad-Lubavitch movement, one of the world’s best-known Hasidic groups, is driven by the belief that we are on the verge of the messianic age. Th…
June 1, 2025
College in Prison
Over the years, American colleges and universities have made various efforts to provide prisoners with access to education. However, few of these outr…
May 19, 2025
Mapito
In Mapito: Embrace Yourself (BookBaby, 2025), Chani Getter presents both a collection of stories and a personal guide to becoming your most authentic …
May 9, 2025
My Tax Dollars
In My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America (Princeton University Press, 2025), Ruth Braunstein maps the contested moral landscape in whic…
April 5, 2025
Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity
In Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity: An Existential History of Chabad Hasidism (Stanford University Press, 2025), Eli Rubin provides a comprehens…
March 4, 2025
Noble Fragments
One hundred years ago, Gabriel Wells, a New York bookseller, committed a crime against history. He broke up the world’s greatest book, the Gutenberg B…
January 27, 2025
Contemporary Humanistic Judaism
In their edited volume, Contemporary Humanistic Judaism: Beliefs, Values, Practices (Jewish Publication Society, 2025), Rabbis Adam Chalom and Jodi Ko…
January 11, 2025
Trial Stories in Jewish Antiquity
What can early Jewish courtroom narratives tell us about the capacity and limits of human justice? By exploring how judges and the act of judging are …
December 24, 2024
Forbidden
Jews do not eat pig. This (not always true) observation has been made by both Jews and non-Jews for more than three thousand years and is rooted in bi…
December 8, 2024
At Home in the City
To understand elders' experiences of aging in place, sociologist Stacy Torres spent five years with longtime New York City residents as they coped wit…
November 26, 2024
Prayers of a Heretic
In the poetry collection Prayers of a Heretic (Plain View Press, 2013), Yermiyahu Ahron Taub explores the "crime" of heresy and the condition of exist…
November 13, 2024
Kissing Girls on Shabbat
Growing up in the Hasidic community of Brooklyn’s Borough Park, Sara Glass knew one painful truth: what was expected of her and what she desperately w…
October 2, 2024
In the Freud Closet
There is an academic cottage industry on the "Jewish Freud," aiming to detect Jewish influences on Freud, his own feelings about being Jewish, and sup…
September 21, 2024
Safety through Solidarity
Antisemitism is on the rise today. From synagogue shootings by white nationalists, to right-wing politicians and media figures pushing George Soros co…