New Issue of the Jewish Quarterly Review: Winter 2023

JQR 113.1 is now available, online* and in print. 

In this issue:

JQR presents a forum on French Jewish studies, part of our ongoing series dedicated to the state of Jewish studies seen through various regional lenses. The forum includes short-form essays on Jewish history as it has unfolded in various Francophone contexts, contributed by Lisa Leff, Jay Berkovitz, Sylvie Anne Goldberg, Perrine Simon-Nahum, Ethan Katz, Aomar Boum, Richard Cohen, Sami Everett, Jordan Katz, and Sara Lipton.

Haggai Olshanetsky takes a close look at how food distribution worked in the Roman army, suggesting that Jewish dietary laws were not the significant obstacle to military service they have been taken to be. This essay is FREE to read and download without a subscription through April 30, 2023.

Lucia Raspe studies the print history of penitential prayer (seliḥot) rites to understand the evolution of the legacy of medieval Ashkenaz in early modern Europe.

Daniel May analyzes the succinct critique of Zionism offered by Leo Strauss in the 1950s and 1960s, arguing that his critique provides a hinge connecting Strauss’s early Zionism, his mature critique of modern politics, and his account of Judaism’s political power. This essay is FREE to read and download without a subscription through April 30, 2023.

Alex Ozar resituates Joseph Soloveitchik as a Weimar-era European philosopher and reads Soloveitchik’s The Halakhic Mind as animated by the author’s early concern to counter mass-societal evil with prophecy. 

Scott Ury examines how two scholars based at the Hebrew University's Institute of Contemporary Jewry--Jonathan Frankel and Ezra Mendelsohn--conceived, created, and codified the academic subfield of modern Jewish politics.

*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.