We are very saddened to report the passing of Professor Samuel Klausner, a founding member of Penn's Jewish Studies Program, a long-time participant in Katz Center activities who remained actively engaged in the Center until just before the onset of the pandemic and who, together with his spouse Professor Roberta Sands, created a fellowship that supported several scholars during the Katz Center fellowship year devoted to Jewish life in modern Islamic contexts.  Professor Klausner was an exemplary social-scientist, and through his questions during the Center

Thanks to the extraordinary generosity and vision of Arnold and Deanne Kaplan, the Penn Libraries have acquired a pair of 18th-century oil portraits of Moses Michael Hays, arguably the most prominent Jewish merchant of the time, and his wife Rachel Myers Hays, the daughter of the outstanding colonial Jewish silversmith (Myer Myers). These paintings are attributed to Gilbert Stuart, renowned for his unfinished painting of George Washington, which appears on the one dollar bill!

Each year, the Katz Center offers a lineup of public programs to share the fruits of scholarly research with wider audiences. Open to everyone, these lectures feature current fellows along with colleagues from across the field talking about new and critical issues in Jewish studies.

JQR 111.3 is now available, online* and in print. 

In this issue:

Just before the Jewish New Year, the Katz Center community suffered a deeply upsetting loss with the sudden passing of one of its board members, Howard Reiter. The Katz Center wishes to convey its deepest condolences to Howard’s wife Jody, their four children, and the many family members and friends left heart-broken by his passing.

JQR 111.2 is now available, online* and in print. 

In this issue:

Ayelet Hoffman Libson argues that the Tosefta’s novel institution of blessings over commandments served a legal and political function, denoting legal personhood and delineating the borders of the community.

It is with tremendous excitement that we announce the incoming fellows for the 2021–2022 academic year, focusing on the theme of Rethinking Premodern Jewish Legal Cultures. These scholars bring expertise in law, drawing on a range of methodologies and evidence bases, and covering space and time from ancient Mesopotamia though medieval Sefarad and early modern Germany. Chosen from a particularly competitive pool of applicants, the incoming fellows hail from Israel, Western Europe, Brazil, Canada, and the US.

JQR 111.1 is now available, online* and in print. 

In this issue:

The University of Pennsylvania Libraries is pleased to announce that Emily Esten has been named the inaugural Arnold and Deanne Kaplan Collection of Early American Judaica Curator of Digital Humanities. 

We are delighted to announce that Ilan Stavans, of Amherst College, the internationally known scholar, writer, editor, translator, playwright, cultural critic, publisher, teacher, lexicographer, columnist, journalist, travel writer, biographer, actor, TV and radio host, has donated to the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, the Ilan Stavans Collection of Jewish Latin American History, Culture, and Literature.