Reviews

The prop­er place for dis­cussing a mono­graph is a book review. The prop­er exten­sion of a man­i­festo is a rev­o­lu­tion. If not a rev­o­lu­tion, a forum.

Jan 08, 2025

The estab­lished cor­pus of queer the­o­ry can offer even more lan­guage and fram­ing for under­stand­ing mod­ern Jew­ish cul­ture while, at the same time, sharp­en­ing how the taytsh frame­work can fill out what it means to read — lit­er­a­ture, cul­ture, his­to­ry — queer­ly, and Jew­ish­ly, if there is a dif­fer­ence between the two.

Jan 08, 2025

Ayelet Brinn’s com­pre­hen­sive account of the gen­der dynam­ics that shaped Amer­i­can Jew­ish cul­ture dur­ing its for­ma­tive years reminds us that rev­o­lu­tions, espe­cial­ly those that have to do with gen­der, are nev­er finite or com­plete. With exquis­ite prose and nuanced analy­sis of a wide array of sources, A Rev­o­lu­tion in Type offers a time­ly and force­ful con­tri­bu­tion to the study of Jew­ish his­to­ry, cul­ture, and gender.

Dec 16, 2024

The sto­ries in this col­lec­tion are an invi­ta­tion to reex­am­ine what Israeli lit­er­a­ture is: to expand the cat­e­go­ry of Israeli lit­er­a­ture beyond just the Hebrew lan­guage and in so doing to dis­rupt expec­ta­tions about that literature.

Dec 12, 2024

A valu­able fea­ture of Avreml Broide is the chance it offers to take a deep dive into the world of twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry rad­i­cal left activism to under­stand essen­tials of the CPUSA as an Amer­i­can subculture.

Nov 20, 2024

The con­sid­er­able achieve­ments of this book include its wide rang­ing sur­vey of the rela­tion­ship between Freud and Judaism, as well as Freud and Jew­ish lan­guages, and its detailed acquain­tance with the sec­ondary lit­er­a­ture that address­es this con­nec­tion. The work brims with ref­er­ences to fig­ures of impor­tance to Jew­ish cul­ture his­to­ry that might have been con­sid­ered sec­ondary, but high­light­ed in this con­text by their rela­tion­ship to Freud, as if illu­mi­nat­ed by a dif­fer­ent light or from the side, they emerge more ful­ly, in a Freudi­an dimension.

Nov 13, 2024

The sophis­ti­cat­ed method, the humane sub­ject mat­ter, the bold inter­pre­ta­tions and the care­ful his­tor­i­cal research all make Dust of the Earth a potent mod­el for con­tem­po­rary schol­ar­ship — in Yid­dish Stud­ies and beyond. In a moment when an increas­ing num­ber of peo­ple across the globe find them­selves in a polit­i­cal and social state of hefk­eris, up for grabs and aban­doned by their allies and lead­ers, Murav shows us that lit­er­a­ture offers one small, but pow­er­ful path back to humanity.

Oct 30, 2024

Dyn­ner frames The Light of Learn­ing​’s sweep­ing his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive with a cru­cial the­o­ret­i­cal inter­ven­tion. To think about inter­war Pol­ish Hasidism is also to think about the ongo­ing con­struc­tion of mod­ern Jew­ish iden­ti­ty, and the fraught inter­sec­tions of eman­ci­pa­tion, accul­tur­a­tion, assim­i­la­tion, and colonization.

Oct 14, 2024

Oct 10, 2024

Mer­le L. Bachman’s new trans­la­tion of a selec­tion of Nevadovska’s poems, most­ly from Lid­er Mayne, pub­lished by Ben Yehu­da Press, is an event to celebrate.

Oct 09, 2024