New Issue of the Jewish Quarterly Review: Summer 2018

JQR 108.3 is now available, online* and in print. It features a forum on the scholarship of Elliott Horowitz, coeditor of JQR until his passing last year, with contributions from an all-star group of scholars: Natalie Zemon Davis, Javier Castaño, Francesca Bregoli, and Stuart Schoffman. (We’ve made Schoffman’s essay available without a subscription.) 

Also in this issue, Marc Herman examines how the medieval master Saadia Gaon treated the question of prophetic authority with respect to Jewish law. Contrary to a received view that Saadia emphasized divine authority in order to parry Karaite claims, Herman argues for the decisive influence of contemporary Islamic depictions of religious law. 

Ofer Elior spotlights the little-known testimony of Joseph Beghi, an early modern Karaite scientist in Istanbul. His essay reveals an active and enthusiastic Karaite reception of contemporary science, and also shows something of relations between the Karaite and mainstream Jewish communities of the era.

Through attention to social history and material texts, Debra Kaplan shows how safe conduct passes—something like visas or passports for the early modern world—were made and traded among Jews in sixteenth-century German-speaking lands. She discusses the extensive communal organization that developed to regulate these documents, administering their sale, distribution, and sometimes even forgery, in an age obsesssed with identity verification.

Finally, this issue’s attention to medieval and early modern contexts is rounded out by Frank Felsenstein’s review essay treating several recent books about the medieval European conception of Jews.

Online, we also have our semiannual listing of recently completed dissertations in the field.

Check back here on the JQR Blog for more content related to these pieces in the next few months.

*The most recent four years of JQR are distributed online exclusively by Project Muse, where most articles are available to subscribers only. Log in through your home library for institutional access or see jqr.pennpress.org for subscription information.