Through a generous gift to the School of Arts & Sciences, the Goldhirsh-Yellin Foundation has established the Goldhirsh-Yellin Program Fund for the Study of Jewish History and Culture in Israel and the Goldhirsh-Yellin Program Fund for the Study of Antisemitism in the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies.
There is a good deal of heated discussion today about what is and isn’t anti-Zionism. Much of it surrounds the question of whether harsh forms of criticism of the state of Israel can be deemed antisemitic. What is rarely recalled in those debates is that one of the most prominent anti-Zionists of the twentieth century was a Jew, Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum (1887–1979), the founding Satmar Rebbe, who formulated a detailed theological rationale for his opposition to the state of Israel.
JQR 113.3 is now available, online and in print.
In this issue:
Barry Wimpfheimer shows that the Mishnah stacks legal couplets like building blocks to produce ever-richer conceptual understandings and train the reader to mine it for such meaning.
In the current issue of JQR (113.2), Adam Ferziger makes exciting use of archival audio footage of David Ben-Gurion speaking live on university campuses in the United States in 1960. He uses the footage alongside contemporaneous first-hand accounts to offer new insight into the way the legendary prime minister approached the relationship between American Jews and Israel at a late stage in his career.
In March of 2023, the Katz Center was honored to inaugurate a new series in memory of Katz Center Board of Advisors member Howard Jay Reiter.
JQR 113.2 is now available, online and in print.
In this issue:
Jonathan Kaplan’s research note suggests that tannaitic legends about Serah, the long-lived daughter of the patriarch Asher, derive from much earlier tradition, likely Second Temple–era in origin.
Earlier this year we had the pleasure of hosting Menahem Ben-Sasson, a Katz Center fellow and Chancellor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in our public lecture series. He spoke about Israel’s Declaration of Independence, its relationship to the founding and current laws of the State of Israel, and efforts to create a constitution, to which Ben-Sasson himself has contributed. Audience members submitted so many excellent questions that there wasn’t enough time to answer them all on air. Prof. Ben-Sasson was kind enough to respond in writing.
JQR 111.1 is now available, online* and in print.
In this issue:
Steven P. Weitzman (SPW): Elazar, can you tell us a little about how you came to your intellectual interests, and what you are hoping to accomplish as a Katz Center fellow this year?
