Blog

Sep
30
September 30, 2020
Katz Center Fellow Dr. Elazar Ben-Lulu on Reform Lifecycle Rituals, LGBTQ Culture in Judaism, and Religious Observance During COVID-19
by
Elazar Ben-Lulu

This blog post is part of a series focused on the research of current fellows. In this edition, Katz Center Director Steven Weitzman sits down with Elazar Ben-Lulu, who is an anthropologist of religion and gender with a particular interest in the intersection of LGBTQ identities and Judaism.

Sep
25
September 25, 2020
Jews and the America to Come

The year 2020 has been a transformative one for American society, but what is America becoming? And what role do Jews play in the changes underway?

Sep
24
September 24, 2020
Jewish Quarterly Review
Vacationing in Nazi Germany
by
The Jewish Quarterly Review

Even as the Nazi state closed in, many bourgeois Jews continued to lead bourgeois lives, leaving records of vacations and family gatherings. Ashkenazi and Miron read these images and words, so apparently anodyne, and yet impossibly so.

Sep
22
September 22, 2020
Katz Center Fellows Reframe the American Jewish Experience

This year's fellows are populating a rich field of vision for a new story of the Jewish experience in America.

Sep
15
September 15, 2020
Jewish Quarterly Review
Kabbalistic Forms: Erratum et Novellus

Yossi Chajes heralds the recent study of rarely depicted huppahs in kabbalistic manuscripts by Uriel Safrai and Eliezer Baumgarten.

Sep
8
September 08, 2020
Jewish Quarterly Review
JQR Contributor Conversation: Wojciech Tworek on Hasidism between the World Wars
by
David Myers

JQR editor David Myers chats with contributor Wojciech Tworek about new paradigms in the study of Hasidism on the horizon of Modernity, Shimon Engel, and the loss of a beloved teacher.

Sep
1
September 01, 2020
Jewish Quarterly Review
Women’s Riches: Culture & Capital in Medieval Egypt
by
Natalie B. Dohrmann

Reform is always a destruction of something that exists to make way for the new. Eve Krakowski looks at a moment of halakhic reform and traces its collateral damage on women's lives.

Aug
25
August 25, 2020
Jewish Quarterly Review
New Issue of the Jewish Quarterly Review: Summer 2020
by
The Jewish Quarterly Review

The TOC in Brief.

Aug
18
August 18, 2020
Jews, Giraffes, and the Italian Renaissance
by
Natalie B. Dohrmann

Giraffes, maps, lost tribes, and the Medici! Fabrizio Lelli's new online mini-course introduces a fascinating Hebrew document and, in so doing, situates Jews and Jewish learning within the intellectual ferment of the Italian Renaissance.

Aug
17
August 17, 2020
National Library of Israel's Suspension of Services
by
Steven Weitzman

The National Library of Israel recently announced a suspension of services.

Aug
14
August 14, 2020
Jewish Quarterly Review
Ox and Pit and Tooth and Fire: Reading Tannaitic Legal Reasoning
by
The Jewish Quarterly Review

Did rabbinic jurists reason conceptually? Daniel Reifman weighs in.

Jul
29
July 29, 2020
New Books by Katz Center Scholars
by
Becky Friedman

A collection of recently published books for your personal library, courtesy of the Katz Center fellows.

Jul
21
July 21, 2020
New Online Exhibition: The Jewish Home

A new web exhibition focused on the 2019–2020 fellowship theme from the Katz Center fellows and Penn Libraries.

Jul
17
July 17, 2020
Jews and Race-Relations in the 21st Century: Grappling with Tragically Unresolved Questions
by
Steven Weitzman

Announcing a series that will explore the complex entanglements of race and religion in modern Jewish identity and in the Jews' place in America's racialized culture.

Jul
8
July 08, 2020
Jewish Quarterly Review
Josephus’s Elusive Command
by
The Jewish Quarterly Review

Nathan Thiel tries to solve a puzzle that has long troubled the journal: Who were Josephus’s “Galileans”?