New Issue of the Jewish Quarterly Review: Fall 2024

JQR 114.4 is now available, online and in print. 

In this issue:

A forum on the modern history of Jews in the Middle East brings together short-form essays on contexts ranging from North Africa to Izmir to Iraq to Jerusalem, by contributors Dina Danon, Julia Phillips Cohen, Tamir Karkason, Jessica Marglin, Annie Greene, Nancy Berg, Yuval Evri, and Aviad Moreno. Together this collection offers fascinating glimpses into a world of Jewish experience that upends the inherited western-centric narratives of modernity. The entire forum is FREE to read and download without a subscription through January 31, 2025.

Eliyahu Rosenfeld wonders what situations cause the talmudic rabbis to deviate from their normal reliance on third-person storytelling to deploy first-person narration and, along the way, explores the evidentiary value of a rabbinic sage's claim to having seen a giant frog.

Alberto Palladini presents six new letters in the State Archive of Modena that tell us yet more about the extraordinary economic and political influence of the famous Doña Gracia Nasi, especially over Ercole II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara.

David Ruderman reflects on the possibilities and limits of Jewish-Christian encounter in nineteenth-century England through the lens of two unusual female intellectuals and authors who befriended, and exploited the Hebraic expertise of, a Polish Jewish immigrant.

Robert Erlewine elucidates the relationship between the modern theological projects of Mordecai Kaplan and Richard L. Rubenstein, considering the two thinkers’ respective forms of religious naturalism in response to the Holocaust, their critiques of Reform Judaism, and their shared emphasis on divine immanence.

*The most recent four years of JQR are distributed online to subscribers exclusively through Project Muse. 

As always, see jqr.pennpress.org to subscribe and get access to all 130 years of JQR content.