New Issue of the Jewish Quarterly Review: Winter 2025

JQR 115.1 is now available, online and in print. 

In this issue:

Avigail Manekin-Bamberger challenges recent theories of female authorship of the Aramaic incantation bowls, reframing the search for women in their context by focusing on the details the bowls contain about the daily lives, hardships, and fears of named individuals. This essay is FREE to read and download without a subscription through May 25, 2025.

Andrea Gondos explores early modern Jewish handbooks of magic written by itinerant wonder-workers, to learn about how they treat the female body and its generative power. This essay is FREE to read and download without a subscription through May 25, 2025.

Ilan Benattar unearths a little-known proposal put forth by the Ottoman Jewish journalist (and later historian) Abraham Galante (1873–1961) to locate a new Jewish state in the Sudan.

Sam Shuman shows how a current Hasidic revival movement figures the Kerestirer Rebbe, Yeshaya Steiner (Reb Shayele), as a populist patron saint of protection against the state and regulators, cast as “intruders” into everyday Hasidic life.

Wojciech Tworek traces the origins of the Chabad custom of eating “black kasha” during the interwar period and its evolution into an example of Hasidic religious expression through nostalgic engagement with food.

*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.