AJS Review • Collected Studies
January – May 2009

Baldauf, Ingeborg, Gammer, Moche, and Loy, Thomas, eds. Bukharan Jews in the 20th Century: History, Experience and Narration. Wiesbaden, Reichert Verlag, 2008. 239pp.  ISBN 978-3-89500-638-8

Contents: Yefim Yakubov, “The ‘Declaration of the Rights of Native Jews’ – the Final Legislative Act Induced by the ‘Bukharan Jewish Question’,” Ze’ev Levin, “When it All Began: Bukharan Jews and the Soviets in Central Asia, 1917-1932,” Lutz Rzehak, “The Linguistic Challenge: Bukharan Jews and Soviet Language Policy,” Yaacov Ro’i, “The Religious Life of the Bukharan Jewish Community in Soviet Central Asia after World War II,” Mark Tolts, “The Demographic Profile of the Bukharan Jews in the Late Soviet Period,” Sara Koplik, “The Experiences of Bukharan Jews outside the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1940s,” Albert Kaganovitch, “The Bukharan Jewish Diaspora at the Beginning of the 21st Century,” Ingeborg Baldauf, “The Soviet Union Remembered by an Uzbek Writer,” Thomas Loy, “About a Friend. Reflections on the Memoirs of Mordekhay Bachayev,” Thomas Loy, “Close Relatives. The Life Narration of Abrasha (Arkadi) Levayevich Il’yasov,” Yochai Primak, “Protection the Integrity of the Community: Interpreting Jewish Life in Pre-Soviet Central Asia. Notes from Rabbanith Miriam’s Life History,” Alanna E. Cooper, “Rituals in Flux: Courtship and Marriage among Bukharan Jews.”

Cammy, Justin et al., eds. Arguing the Modern Jewish Canon: Essays on Literature and Culture in Honor of Ruth R. Wisse. Introduction by the editors. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2008. ix, 721pp. ISBN 978-0-674-02585-1

Contents: Hillel Halkin, “Writing Jewish,” Alan Mintz, “Knocking on Heaven’s Gate: Hebrew Literature and Wisse’s Canon,” David Aberbach, “Holocaust Literature: Foreshadowings and Shadowings,” Ilan Stavans, “Of Jews and Canons: Further Thoughts,” Ezra Mendelsohn, “A Jewish Artistic Canon,” Justin Cammy, “Judging The Judgment of Shomer: Jewish Literature versus Jewish Reading,” Sholem Aleichem (trans. and annotated by Justin Cammy), “The Judgment of Shomer or The Jury Trial of All of Shomer’s Novels,” Edward Alexander, “Daniel Deronda: “The Zionist Fate in English Hands” and The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews,” Dan Miron, “The Pleasure of Disregarding Red Lights: A Reading of Sholem Aleichem’s Monologue ‘A Nisref’,” Sasha Senderovich, “The Hershele Maze: Isaac Babel and His Ghost Reader,” Avraham Novershtern, “The Open Suitcases: Yankev Glatshteyn’s Ven Yash Iz Gekumen,” Miriam Udel-Lambert, “Seductions and Disputations: Pseudo-Dialogues in the Fiction of Isaac Bashevis Singer,” David G. Roskies, “Gimpel the Simple and on Reading from Right to Left,” Susanne Klingenstein, “Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Short Story ‘Androgynous’,” Philip Hollander, “Building Bridges Destined to Fall: Biological and Literary Paternity in Appelfeld’s The Ice Mine,” Naomi B. Sokoloff, “Life/Writing: Aharon Appelfeld’s Autobiographical Work and the Modern Jewish Canon,” Hana Wirth-Nesher, “Henry Roth, Hebrew, and the Unspeakable,” Michael Kimmage, “The Modern Hero as Schlemiel: The Swede in Philip Roth’s American Pastorial,” Ken Frieden, “Innovation by Translation: Yiddish and Hasidic Hebrew in Literary History,” Marion Aptroot, “Creating Yiddish Dialogue for ‘The First Modern Yiddish Community’,” Marc Caplan, “The Smoke of Civilization: The Dialectic of Enlightenment in Sh. Y. Abramovitsh’s Di Klyatshe,” Jed Wyrick, “Yiddish Canon Consciousness and the Dionysiac Spirit of Music,” Rachel Rubinstein, “Joyce’s Yiddish: Modernism, Translation, and the Jews,” Janet Hadda, “The Transmission of Poetic Anger: An Unexploded Shell in the Jewish Canon,” Emily Miller Budick, “Guilt, Mourning, Idol Worship, and Golem Writing: The Symptoms of a Jewish Literary Canon,” Jeremy Dauber, “What’s So Funny about Yiddish Theater? Comedy and the Origins of Yiddish Drama,” Alyssa Quint, “Naked Truths: Avrom Goldfaden’s The Fanatic or the Two Kuni-Lemls,” Mikhail Krutikov, “Memory as Metaphor: Meir Wiener’s Novel Kolev Ashkenazi as Critique of the Jewish Historical Imagination,” Beatrice Lang Caplan, “Shmuel Nadler’s Besht-Simfonye: At the Limits of Orthodox Literature,” Goldie Morgentaler, “Chava Rosenfarb and The Tree of Life,” Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, “Fiddles on Willow Trees: The Missing Polish Link in the Jewish Canon,” Leah Garrett, “The Kvetcher in the Rye: J. D. Salinger and Challenges to the Modern Jewish Canon,” Yaron Peleg, “Israeli Identity in a Post-Zionist Age,” Jonathan Rosen, “Bellow’s Canon,” Dara Horn, “The Eicha Problem,” Cynthia Ozick, “The Grand Explainer.”

Cook, Daniel J.; Rudolf, Hartmut; Schulte, Christoph, eds. Leibniz und das Judentum. Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag, 2008. 283pp. ISBN 978-3-515-09251-7

Contents: Ursula Goldenbaum, “ ‘Judaeus Amstelodami’?” Christoph Schulte, “Leibniz und sein , ‘Schüler’ Raphael Levi,” Rotraud Ries, “Die Residenzstadt Hannover als Kommunikationsraum für Juden und Christen um 1700,” Hiltrud Wallenborn, “Hugo Grotius und die Lage der Juden in den Niederlanden,” Patrick Riley, “Leibniz, Platonism, and Judaism: The 1714 Vienna Lecture on ‘the Greeks as Founders of a Sacred Philosophy’,” Brigitte Saouma, “Les origins médiévales de la pensée de Leibniz sur les juifs et le judaïsme,” Jaime De Salas, “Leibniz and the interpretation of Bodin’s Colloquium heptaplomeres,” Daniel J. Cook, “Leibniz: The Hebrew Bible, Hebraism and Rationalism,” Stephan Waldhoff, “Leibniz und der Plausibilitatsverlust der biblischen Völkergenealogie,” Wenchao Li, “Leibniz, der Chronologiestreit und die Juden in China,” Hartmut Rudolph, “Hinweise in Leibniz’ Korrespondenz mit Hermann von der Hardt,” Rüdiger Otto, “Johann Franz Buddes Verständnis der Kabbala,” Peter Blastenbrei, “Pionier zwischen Theologie und früher Aufklärung: Johann Christoph Wagenseil (1633-1705),” Johannes Wallmann, “Das Luthertum und die Juden in der Leibnizzeit”

Dolansky, Shawna, ed.. Sacred History of Sacred Literature: Essays on Ancient Israel, The Bible, and Religion in honor of R. E. Friedman on his Sixtieth Birthday. Preface by William H. C. Propp, introduction by the editor. Winona Lake, IN, Eisenbrauns, 2008. xiv, 348pp. ISBN 978-1-57506-151-1

Contents: Jacob Milgrom, “Ezekiel and the Levites,” Carol Meyers, “Framing Aaron: Incense Altar and Lamp Oil in the Tabernacle Texts,” W. Randall Garr, “Necromancy and 1 Samuel 19:22,” Herbert Bardwell Huffmon, “A Tale of the Prophet and the Courtier: A Responsive Reading of the Nathan Texts,” Andrew Lemaire, “A Forgotten Cultic Reform? 2 Kings 3:2b,” Bradley Root, “Scribal Error and the Transmission of 2 Kings 18-20 and Isaiah 36-39,” A. Dean Forbes, “Empirical Taxonomy and the Hebrew Bible,” H. G. M. Williamson, “Place-Names as Superlatives in Classical Hebrew,” David Noel Freedman, “The Real Formal Full Personal Name of the God of Israel,” Ronald Hendel, “Leitwort Style and Literary Structure in the J Primeval Narrative,” Michael M. Homan, “How Moses Gained and Lost the Reputation of Being the Torah’s Author: Higher Criticism prior to Julius Wellhausen,” Robert R. Wilson, “How Was the Bible Written? Reflections on Sources and Authors in the Book of Kings,” Jeffrey C. Geoghegan, “The ‘Biblical’ Origins of Passover,” Shalom M. Paul, “‘Plowing with a Heifer’ in Judges 14:18,” Laura M. Zucconi, “Aramean Skin Care: A New Perspective on Naaman’s Leprosy,” John A. Emerton, “Abraham and Damascus in Some Greek and Latin Texts of the Hellenistic Period,” Risa Levitt Kohn and Revecca Moore, “Rethinking Sectarian Judaism: The Centrality of the Priesthood in the Second Temple Period,” Baruch Halpern, “In Defense of Forgery,” William G. Dever, “Can Archaeology Serve as a Tool in Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible?” Thomas E. Levy, “‘You Shall Make for Yourself No Molten Gods’: Some Thoughts on Archaeology and Edomite Ethnic Identity,” Beth Alpert Nakhai, “Female Infanticide in Iron II Israel and Judah,” Alan Cooper, “Elements of Popular Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Jewish Psalms Commentary,” Stephen Cox, “The Biblical Icon,” Steven Cassedy, “Walter Rauschenbusch, the Social Gospel Movement, and How Julius Wellhausen Unwittingly Helped Create American Progressivism in the Twentieth Century,” Randy Linda Sturman, “‘Starving’ the Patient: A Jewish Perspective on Terry Schiavo and the Feeding Tube Controversy.”

Jacobs, Steven Leonard, ed.. Maven in Blue Jeans: A Festschrift in Honor of Zev Garber. Preface by Susan Garber. West Lafayette, Indiana, Purdue University Press, 2009. 513pp. ISBN 978-1-55753-521-4

Contents: S. Scott Bartchy, “The Domestication of a Radical Jew: Paul of Tarsus,” Herbert W. Basser, “A ‘Seminal’ Study of the Jesus Drasha in the Gospel of Matthew,” Joseph A. Edelheit, “The Messy Realities of Life: A Rereading of Numbers 19 and 20,” Steven Fine, “A Cosmopolitan ‘Student of the Sages’: Jacob of Kefar Nevoraia,” Mayer I. Gruber, “Floating Letters,” James F. Moore, “Dialogue as Praxis:  A Midrashic Reading of Numbers19-20 and Hebrews 9,” Jacob Neusner, “Testing the Results of Richard Kalmin: A Null Hypothesis Examined in the Setting of Mishnah and Bavli Tractate Moed Qatan,” Sara R. Mandell, “Creation and Mortalization: A Religio-Literary Perspective,” Marvin Sweeney, “Jeremiah, the Shoah, and the Restoration of Israel,” Eugene Fisher, “Jewish-Christian Relations: A Dialogue with Zev Garber,” Steven Leonard Jacobs, “Who Owns the Truth? The Question of the ‘Other’ in Postdenominational Judaism and Christianity (and Islam) in the Next Fifty Years,” Daniel Morris, “The Backwards Man and the Jewish Giant: Mirrors of Traumatic Memory in the Late Photographs of Diane Arbus,” John T. Pawlikowski, “Developments in Catholic-Jewish Relations: 1900 and Beyond,” Louis H. Feldman, “Philo and Dangers of Philosophizing,” Michael Fishbane, “Exegetical Theology and Divine Suffering in Jewish Thought,” Harold Kasimow, “Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Paths to God,” Moshe Pelli, “The Reception of Early German Haskalah in Nineteenth-Century Haskalah,” G. Jan Colijn, “Traveling in Ga(r)berdine,” Klaus Hodl, “Jewish Studies without Jews: The Growth of an Academic Field in Austria and Germany,” Joseph Haberer, “The Story of Shofar: An Editor’s Personal Account,” Louanne Clayton Jacobs, “‘But It Isn’t on the Test!’ Holocaust Education in the Age of ‘No Child Left Behind’,” Nancy Shiffrin, “Spelling and Kabalah: A Review Essay of Myla Goldberg’s Bee Season,” Lawrence Baron, “What Do Americans Read When They Read about the Holocaust?,” Paul R. Bartrop, “The Evolution and Devolution of a World Apart: The Nazi Concentration Camps and the Holocaust,” Michael Berenbaum, “Soft-core Holocaust Denial: Trivialization and Sanitization in the Early Twenty-first Century,” Samuel M. Edelman, “The Scroll of the Shoah: The Case for the Writings of Yitzhak Katzenelson as the Basis of a Future Jewish Post-Shoah Jewish Theology,” Peter Haas, “‘Thou Shalt Teach It to Thy Children’: What American Jewish Children’s Literature Teaches about the Holocaust,” Henry F. Knight, “Once More to the Jabbok: The Place of Midrashic Dialogue in Post-Shoah Hermeneutics,” Richard Libowitz, “Portraits of Two Jewries: Experiencing the Shoah through Fiction,” Yair Mazor, “No Vindication to Venomous Verdict: The Poem ‘Mr. Auschwitz’ by Ronny Someck,” David Patterson, “Holocaust or Shoah: The Greek Category versus Jewish Thought,” John K. Roth, “What Have We Learned from the Holocaust?” Richard L. Rubenstein, “On Oil and Antisemitism,” Frederick M. Schweitzer, “Disraeli’s Boomerang Efforts to Combat Antisemitism: The Interplay of Ideas of Race, Religion, and Conspiracy,” William Wallis, “Writing,” Ann Weiss, “The Landscape of Memory,” Esther Fuchs, “Hebrew Literature, Academic Politics, and Feminist Criticism: A Confessional Essay,” Lev Hakak, “The Folktales of Rabbi Yosef Hayyim,” Rivka Kern-Ulmer, “The Sha’ar Ha-Shamayim Synagogue  (Keniset Isma’iliyah) in Cairo, Egypt,” Harris Lenowitz, “On Three Early Incidences of Hebrew Script in Western Art,” Gilead Morahg, “The Literary Quest for National Revival: From Hazaz’s ‘The Sermon’ (1942) to Yehoshua’s Mr. Mani (1990),” Ziony Zevit, “The Two-Bodied People, Their Cosmos, and the Origin of the Soul”

Kagen, Richard L. and Morgan, Philip D., eds. Atlantic Diasporas: Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews in the Age of Mercantilism, 1500-1800. Preface by the editors, epilogue by Natalie Zemon Davis. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009, xvii, 307pp. ISBN 978-0-8018-9035-2

Contents: Jonathan Israel, “Jews and Crypto-Jews in the Atlantic World Systems, 1500-1800,” Adam Sutcliffe, “Jewish History in an Age of Atlanticism,” Wim Klooster, “Networks of Colonial Entrepreneurs: The Founders of the Jewish Settlements in Dutch America, 1650s and 1660s,” Holly Snyder, “English Markets, Jewish Merchants, and Atlantic Endeavors: Jews and the Making of British Transatlantic Commercial Culture, 1650-1800,” Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, “La Nacion among the Nations: Portuguese and Other Maritime Trading Diasporas in the Atlantic, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries,” Francesca Trivellato, “Sephardic Merchants in the Early Modern Atlantic and Beyond: Toward a Comparative Historical Approach to Business Cooperation,” Bruno Feitler, “Jews and New  Christians in Dutch Brazil, 1630-1654,” Aviva Ben-Ur, “A Matriarchal Matter: Slavery, Conversion, and Upward Mobility in Suriname’s Jewish Community,” Peter Mark and Jose de Silva Horta, “Catholics, Jews, and Muslims in Early Seventeenth-Century Guine,” Ronnie Perelis, “‘These Indians are Jews!’ Lost Tribes, Crypto-Jews, and Jewish Self-Fashioning in Antonio de Montezino’s Relacion”

Kamesar, Adam, ed. and intr.  The Cambridge Companion to Philo. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009. xv, 301pp. ISBN 978-0-521-67802-5

Contents: Daniel R. Schwartz, “Philo, His Family, and His Times,” James R. Royse, “The Works of Philo,” Adam Kamesar, “Biblical Interpretation in Philo,” Cristina Termini, “Philo’s Thought within the Context of Middle Judaism,” Roberto Radice, “Philo’s Theology and Theory of Creation,” Carlos Levy, “Philo’s Ethics,” Folker Siegert, “Philo and the New Testament,” David T. Runia, “Philo and the Early Christian Fathers,” David Winston, “Philo and Rabbinic Literature.”

Nahshon, Edna, ed. Jews and Shoes. Oxford, Berg Publishing. 2008. xii, 226pp. ISBN 978-1-84788-050-5

Contents: Edna Nahshon, “Jews and Shoes,” Ora Horn Prouser, “Eschewing Footwear: The Call of Moses As Biblical Archetype,” Catherine Hezser, “Between Female Subjugation and Symbolic Emasculation,” Rivka Parciack, “Shoe-Shaped Tombstones in Jewish Cemeteries in the Ukraine,” Orna Ben-Meir, “Biblical Sandals and Native Israeli Identity,” Mayer Kirshenblatt and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “How to Make a Shoe,” Robert A. Rothstein, “Shoes and Shoemakers in Yiddish Language and Folklore,” Jeffrey Feldman, “Untying Memory: Shoes as Holocaust Memorial Experience,” Shelly Zer-Zion, “The Cobbler’s Penalty: The Wandering Jew in Search of Salvation,” Ayala Raz, “Shoes as a Symbol of Equality in the Jewish Society in Palestine during the First Half of the Twentieth Century,” Andrew Ingall, “‘Poems of Pedal Atrocity’: Sexuality, Ethnicity, and Religion in the Art of Bruno Schulz,” Sonya Rapoport, “Digging into the Jewish Roots of Shoe-Field,” Dorit Yerushalmi, “The Utterance of Shoemaking: Cobblers on the Israeli Stage,” Jeanette R. Malkin, “Ernst Lubitsch’s Each European ‘Touch’ in Pinkus’s Shoe Palace.”

Neusner, Jacob and Chilton, Bruce, eds.. The Golden Rule: Analytical Perspectives, preface by Jacob Neusner. Lanham, University Press of America, 2009. viii,
187pp. ISBN 978-0-7618-4101-2

Contents: William Scott Green, “Parsing Reciprocity: Questions for the Golden Rule,” Robert M. Berchman, “The Golden Rule in Graeco-Roman Religion and Philosophy [1 and 2],” Daniel Berthold, “The Goldan Rule in Kant and Utilitarianism,” Jeffrey Wattles, “Philosophical Reflections on the Golden Rule,” David Sloan Wilson, “The Golden Rules of Religion,” Harry J. Gensler, S.J., “Gold or Fool’s Gold? Ridding the Golden Rule of Absurd Implications,” Christopher Boehm, “How the Golden Rule Can Lead to Reproductive Success: A New Selection Bias for Alexander’s ‘Indirect Reciprocity’,” Stephen G. Post, “The Golden Rule in Its Idealistic Formulation: Benefits for the Moral Agent.”  

Raider, Mark A., ed. and pref. Nahum Goldmann: Statesman Without a State. Albany, State University of New York Press, 2009. ix, 343pp. ISBN 978-1-4384-2499-6

Contents: Jehuda Reinharz and Evyatar Friesel, “Nahum Goldmann: Jewish and Zionist Statesman – An Overview,” Gideon Shimoni, “Nahum Goldmann as Zionist Thinker,” Yosef Gorny, “Negation of the Galut and the Centrality of Israel: Nahum Goldmann and David Ben-Gurion,” Michael Brenner, “The German Years: Early Chapters in the Biography of a Jewish Statesman,” Zohar Segev, “Nahum Goldmann and the First Two Decades of the World Jewish Congress,” Jehuda Reinharz, “Nahum Goldmann and Chaim Weizmann: An Ambivalent ‘Relationship’,” Mark A. Raider, “Idealism, Vision, and Pragmatism: Stephen S. Wise, Nahum Goldmann, and Abba Hillel Silver in the United States,” Evyatar Friesel, “Toward the Partition of Palestine: The Golmann Mission in Washington, August 1946,” Shlomo Shafir, “Nahum Goldmann and Germany after World War II,” Ronald W. Zweig, “‘Reparations Made Me’: Nahum Goldmann, German Reparations, and the Jewish World,” Dina Porat, “Nahum Goldmann and the Establishment of the Diaspora Museum,” Suzanne D. Rutland, “Leadership of Accommodation or Protest?: Nahum Goldmann and the Struggle for Soviet Jewry,” Meir Chazan, “Goldmann’s Initiative to Meet with Nasser in 1970.”

Schochet, Gordon; Oz-Salzberger, Fania and Jones, Meirav, eds. Political Hebraism: Judaic Sources in Early Modern Political Thought, Introduction by Meirav Jones. Jerusalem, Shalem Press, 2008. xix, 287pp. 978-965-7052-44-0

Contents: Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, “Political Theology in Renaissance Christian Kabbala: Petrus Galatinus and Guillaume Postel,” Christopher Lynch, “Machiavelli on Reading the Bilbe Judiciously,” Kalman Neuman, “Political Hebraism and the Early Modern ‘Respublica Hebraeorum’: On Defining the Field,” Alan Mittleman, “Some Thoughts on the Covenantal Politics of Johannes Althusius,” Emile Perreau-Saussine, “Why Draw a Politics from Scripture? Bossuet and the Divine Right of Kings,” Arthur Eyffinger, “’How Wondrously Moses Goes Along With the House of Orange!’ Hugo Grotius’ ‘De Republica Emendanda’ in the Context of the Dutch Revolt,” Miriam Bodian, “The Biblical ‘Jewish Republic’ and the Dutch New Israel in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Thought,” Menachem Lorberbaum, “Spinoza’s Theological-Political Problem,” Jason Rosenblatt, “Rabbinic ideas in the Political Thought of John Selden,” Gary Remer, “After Machiavelli and Hobbes: James Harrington’s Commonwealth of Israel,” Fania Oz-Salzberger, “The Political Thought of John Locke and the Significance of Political Hebraism: Then and Now,” Gordon Schochet, “The Judeo-Christian Tradition as Imposition: Present at the Creation?”

Waxman, Chaim I., ed. and pref. Religious Zionism Post Disengagement: Future Directions. New York, Yeshiva University Press, 2008, xxv, 445pp. ISBN 978-1-60280-022-9

Contents: Aharon Lichtenstein, “Diaspora Religious Zionism: Some Current Reflections,” Lawrence Grossman, “Decline and Fall: Thoughts on Religious Zionism in America,” Avraham Walfish, “Re-engaging Theology,” Dov Schwartz, “Religious Zionism and the Struggle Against the Evacuation of the Settlements: Theological and Cultural Aspects,” Moshe Koppel, “The Demise of Self-Negating Religious Zionism,” Kalman Neuman, “Which Way for Religious Zionism?” Zehavit Gross, “Walking a Tightrope: The Attitude of Religious Zionist Adolescents to the State of Israel after the Disengagement,” Yuval Cherlow, “The Disengagement Plan as Reflected in Virtual FAQ,” Yoel Finkelman, “Can American Orthodoxy Afford to Have its Best and Brightest (Not) Make Aliya?” Binyamin Blau, “Are the Right People Making Aliya? [Who Will Be the Teachers of Our Children?]” Seth Farber, “The Aliya Threat to American Modern Orthodoxy,” Binyamin Lau, “Prophetic Morality as a Factor in R. Uziel’s Rulings on Conversation: A Case Study of Halakhic Decision-Making from a Zionist Perspective,” Aviad Hacohen, “‘Religious Zionist Halakhah’ – Is It Reality Or Was It A Dream?” Adam S. Ferziger, “Holy Land in Exile: The Torah MiTzion Movement – Toward a New Paradigm for Religious Zionism,” Chaim I. Waxman, “If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem…: The Impact of Israel on American Orthodox Jewry,” Leonard A. Matanky, “Israel’s Impact on American Orthodoxy: A Response.”