There is a growing and evolving field of research focused on Jews living in the Islamic world, from South Asia to North Africa and beyond, and from the Middle Ages to the present. Since last year, the Jewish Culture and Contexts series (JCC), which is published by Penn Press in collaboration with the Katz Center, has published four books breaking new ground on this scholarly frontier. These studies spotlight Jewish communities at different places and times throughout Islamic history, illuminating them with a diverse array of written and material sources.

Modern media has not only documented Jewish culture but also transformed it by allowing Jews to express and represent themselves new ways. This is the thesis of two new titles in the Jewish Culture and Contexts series, which is published by Penn Press in collaboration with the Katz Center.

We are thrilled to learn that scholarship supported by the Katz Center has been recognized by the National Jewish Book Awards.

We are proud to celebrate a year of new books in the Jewish Culture and Contexts series published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. 

The Jewish Culture and Contexts series is published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in association with the Katz Center. The series is co-edited by Steven Weitzman, Francesca Trivellato (Institute for Advanced Study), Shaul Magid (Dartmouth College), and Beth Berkowitz (Barnard College), and its goal is to deepen understanding of Jewish culture within the specific historical and geographic contexts in which it has developed. Broadly interdisciplinary, this series features monographs in all areas of Judaic studies.

Four current and past Katz Center fellows won top honors:

Over the past year, Katz Center scholars have published an impressive array of books, representing a range of methodological, disciplinary, and historical specializations. Browse our virtual bookshelf below to learn more about this great selection of texts and the authors who produced them.

Conscious History: Polish Jewish Historians before the Holocaust
Oxford University Press
By Natalia Aleksiun (2014–15: Wissenschaft and 2017–18: Nature)

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.

“This one hurts more,” my seventy-something congregant, a Philadelphia native, tells me as we observe  that the new cemetery monument to the three men killed in an attack at our Pittsburgh synagogue in October 2018 is in the direct sightline of one dedicated in 2012 to those lost in the Shoah.