The Jewish Quarterly Review mourns the loss of Professor Arnold J. Band z”l, who passed away on July 7, 2024. Arnie was a longstanding member of JQR’s editorial board, as well as a fellow of the Katz Center’s year on modern Jewish literatures in 2004–05. He was widely recognized in the United States and Israel as one of the leading scholars of modern Hebrew literature, with a particular interest in Nobel laureate Sh. Y. Agnon.
On April 18–19, 2021, the Ancient Judaism Regional Seminar (AJRS) hosted its annual colloquium on Zoom. The seminar is dedicated to graduate training, and pairs graduate students in the Northeast together with senior scholars who respond to their papers as well as offering networking and professionalization session.
The current issue of JQR includes a set of short essays on particular years of import in the history of Israel and Zionism—all of which, as it happens, end in seven. The essays themselves, linked below, are available with a subscription. Here on the blog, we excerpt JQR coeditor David N. Myers’s introduction to the lot.
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)
