New Issue of the Jewish Quarterly Review: Summer 2025

In this issue:

Simcha Gross situates classical rabbinic discussions of male head coverings in their Roman and Sasanian contexts, and in doing so he shows how the diverse meanings of late antique head coverings complicate the narrative of the origins of the kippah. This essay is FREE to read and download without a subscription through September 5, 2025.

New Books in the Jewish Culture and Contexts Series Spotlight Jewish life in the Muslim World

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.

A Battle of the Sexes in Early Modern Italy

Taking a minor detour from his work as an intellectual historian with an interest in early modern skepticism, philosophy, and medicine, Ahuvia Goren unearths a rather astounding woman from the archives: Rica Clava (Rivkah Katzigin), a whip-smart and outspoken advocate for her own marital property, who not only wrote in Hebrew, but was conversant in Jewish law.