A broadly interdisciplinary series published in association with the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania.
Series Editors:
Francesca Trivellato
Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study
Shaul Magid
Distinguished Fellow in Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College
Steven Weitzman
Abraham M. Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures
Ella Darivoff Director of the Katz Center of Advanced Judaic Studies
Beth Berkowitz
Professor, Ingeborg Rennert Chair of Jewish Studies
Barnard College
Staff Editorial Contact:
Elisabeth Maselli, Senior Editor emaselli@upenn.edu
Meirav Jones shows how political theory did not develop solely from within a conversation among elites; neither was it conceived as a Godless enterprise. She argues that the foundations of modern politics were laid in conversation with theological politics and in negotiation with Jewish ideas and ideas of the Jews.
Ofer Ashkenazi, Sarah Wobick-Segev, Rebekka Grossmann and Shira Miron
Price: $60.00
ISBN: 9781512826357
Pub Date: January 2025
Format: Hardcover
368 Pages
Still Lives reveals how Jews used photographs to document their experiences in the face of National Socialism. Based on analysis of more than fifteen thousand images, it explores the efforts of Jews to make sense of the changing landscapes of Germany, justify their decisions under Nazism, and communicate their hopes, anxieties, and self-perceptions.
Edited by Lila Corwin Berman, Deborah Dash Moore and Beth Wenger
Price: $59.95
ISBN: 9781512828245
Pub Date: November 2025
Format: Hardcover
264 Pages
What happens when scholars from diverse disciplines connect to explore the American Jewish experience? The Future of American Jewish Pasts shines a penetrating light on some of the most provocative questions of historical interpretation. These essays reconceive traditional approaches to American Jewish life to reimagine American Jewish studies.
Longing and Belonging investigates the histories of Jews living among Muslims from 1900 until 1950. The volume depicts modern Jewish protagonists as active participants in an expansive Islamic civilization, reflecting a mutuality and cross-fertilization in the region that raises new lines of inquiry and which offers enduring lessons for the world today.
In Christian Images and Their Jewish Desecrators, Katherine Aron-Bellerexamines European tales, myths, and fantasies about Jewish desecration of Christian images. She argues that this trope must be considered alongside more well-known antisemitic allegations to understand how anti-Jewish attitudes impacted Jewish individuals and communities.
The Holocaust radically altered the way many East European Jews spoke Yiddish. Occupied Words explores how Yiddish words created during the Shoah, or Khurbn Yiddish, operated as a form of Holocaust memory and as a testament to the sensation of speech under genocidal conditions.
Between the Bridge and the Barricade offers a comprehensive view of early modern translations of non-Jewish texts into Yiddish and Hebrew. Through an analysis of translations hosted in the Jewish Translation and Cultural Transfer database, Iris Idelson-Shein reveals that translation played a decisive role in shaping early modern Jewish culture.
Envisioned as ruddy-faced, redheaded, red-bearded warriors, the Red Jews are a legendary invention of late medieval vernacular culture in Germany. Sons of Saviors traces how Yiddish literature reappropriated the Red Jew by turning redness into a proud badge of self-assertion. The book also includes a significant Yiddish tale featuring the Red Jews.
The Kibbutz in Israel from Avant-Garde to Fetish, 1948-1955
Lior Libman
Price: $59.95
ISBN: 9781512826661
Pub Date: November 2024
Format: Hardcover
256 Pages
Through an exploration of the imagery of the kibbutz in the stormy transition into Israeli statehood, State of Shock argues that the establishment of the State of Israel was a trauma that destabilized the kibbutz’s deepest conceptual ground and shifted its history, turning it, politically and culturally, from avant-garde to fetish.
Modernism, Philosemitism, and Jews in a Postwar City
Frances Tanzer
Price: $59.95
ISBN: 9781512825343
Pub Date: May 2024
Format: Hardcover
264 Pages
Vanishing Vienna reveals the foundational role philosemitism played in the effort to reimagine urban cultures after the Holocaust. Frances Tanzer uncovers a seldom discussed aspect of the postwar era—a society that continues to consume, redefine, and bestow symbolic meaning on the victims in their relative absence.
