Founded in 1889, JQR spent nearly two decades in England before moving to Philadelphia in 1908 under new editorship. Peruse the contents of these early issues—now called the Old Series—and you’ll find Jewish literature in English translation among the journal’s early output. Translations ranged from Talmud to contemporary poetry and drew from Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, and more.
JQR’s archive is more than a century deep, and much of the scholarship of the decades that precede ours remains vital. This winter’s issue of JQR features a note in which Naphtali Meshel extends a conversation started by Raphael Jospe in an essay titled “Hillel’s Rule,” which ran in our pages thirty-four years ago. (JQR 81.1 [1990]: 45–57).
With Bonnie Blankenship’s retirement on December 31, 2022, the Jewish Quarterly Review loses a sustaining pillar, and the Center says farewell to the person with the longest memory of this institution, as she moves on to a life of art, books, and leisure.
In JQR 112.2, David Guedj writes about a set of essays written by Moroccan Jewish children over the course of a few months in 1930–1931. The essays were published in the Casablanca Jewish newspaper L’Avenir illustré, as the paper tried an experiment: emulating a new interest in youth culture pursued by non-Jewish publications, the paper established a page dedicated to the voices and interests of young people.
“What I found surprised me.” This sentiment, voiced by Benjamin Sommer in his essay on biblical theology, was one shared by all of the essayists in our recent forum marking JQR’s 130th anniversary.
In fewer than 200 words in the journal’s third issue, Israel Abrahams made a mockery of a long beloved motif of western art, scriptural interpretation, indeed Scripture itself, when he informed the reader—summarily, and without footnotes or citation—that pseudepigraphical Tobias did not have a dog! (JQR 1.3 o.s. [1889]: 288)
