Dialogues in Judaic Studies – Details, episodes & analysis

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Dialogues in Judaic Studies

Ari Barbalat

Religion & Spirituality

History

Society & Culture

Frequency: 1 episode/4d. Total Eps: 62

This podcast features educational, informative and intellectually compelling conversations with authors of newly-published books and recently-released monographs on Jewish history, Jewish religion, Jewish philosophy and Jewish literature. The podcast intends to reach academic specialists, members of the reading public and beginners with entry-level curiosity.

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Apple Podcasts

🇫🇷 France - judaism
04/09/2026
#60
🇩🇪 Germany - judaism
13/08/2026
#96
🇩🇪 Germany - judaism
12/08/2026
#65
🇩🇪 Germany - judaism
11/08/2026
#76
🇩🇪 Germany - judaism
10/08/2026
#60
🇩🇪 Germany - judaism
09/08/2026
#37
🇫🇷 France - judaism
02/08/2026
#79
🇫🇷 France - judaism
01/08/2026
#72
🇫🇷 France - judaism
31/07/2026
#37
🇫🇷 France - judaism
28/07/2026
#68

Spotify

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Score global : 58%

Publication history

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Debby Koren, *Responsa in a Historical Context: A View of Post-Expulsion Spanish-Portuguese Jewish Communities through Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Responsa*. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2024.

Episode 1

Monday, January 26, 2026 • Duration 01:11:40

This book features a collection of eight annotated translations of responsa, along with the original Hebrew texts, concentrating on the Spanish-Portuguese communities that arose after the expulsion during the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries. This collection seeks to familiarize the reader with Jews who, after their expulsion, settled in the Ottoman Empire, in Palestine under Mamluk governance, in Amsterdam, and in Brazil. The expulsion of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula was a devastating period in Jewish history; nevertheless, the revitalization of the post-expulsion Spanish-Portuguese Jewish communities in new settings is a reflection of the human spirit and tenacity.

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Josef Mendelevitch, *The Cantonists: Jewish Boys in the Russian Military, 1827-1856*. Rachelle Emanuel, trans. Boston: Academic Studies Press (in Partnership with Touro University Press in New York), 2025.

Thursday, January 22, 2026 • Duration 01:25:58

Before 1917, the Russian Tsar wielded total power over a sprawling empire, where more than 5 million Jews lived in seclusion and segregation. During the reign of Tsar Nicholas I (1825–1855), the treatment of Jews became especially brutal. Nicholas sought to obliterate Jewish identity by compelling Jews to convert to Christianity and promoting assimilation through intermarriage. One of the most heartless acts under Nicholas I was the implementation of the Cantonist system, which forcibly enlisted Jewish boys under the age of 13 into military service. These young boys were cruelly torn from their families and communities, suffering severe mistreatment, and were incessantly pressured to abandon their faith. Over a span of thirty years, approximately 75,000 Jewish boys were conscripted. In spite of the immense hardships, the majority remained resolute, with only 25% succumbing to conversion. This heartrending account underscores a grim chapter in modern history, illustrating the resilience of a people facing extreme oppression under a tyrannical regime.

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David Edwards, *In the Court of the Gentiles: Narrative, Exemplarity, and Scriptural Adaptation in the Court-Tales of Flavius Josephus*. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2023.

Season 1 · Episode 1

Wednesday, January 21, 2026 • Duration 01:38:14

In this monograph, David Edwards explores how Josephus, in his work *Jewish Antiquities*, reinterprets the biblical stories of Joseph and Esther in unexpected ways, employing them as frameworks for narratives concerning more modern Jewish figures.

He refers to this method as "subversive adaptation," situating it within the framework of Greco-Roman literary traditions.

Moreover, he applies the concept of "discourses of exemplarity" to demonstrate how Josephus utilized the tales of historical figures to encourage moral reflection and practical decision-making among Roman elites.

This book provides an examination of frequently overlooked narratives alongside Josephus' broader literary techniques, illustrating how ancient Jews adapted imperial historiographical practices and modes of discourse while contesting Greco-Roman claims of cultural superiority.

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Kristine Henriksen Garroway, *The Dying Child: The Death and Personhood of Children in Ancient Israel*. New York: Oxford University Press, 2025.

Season 1 · Episode 11

Friday, February 27, 2026 • Duration 01:23:19

The loss of a child is one of the most painful, sorrowful, and seemingly unnatural experiences that anyone can endure. Nevertheless, it is still unclear if this sentiment was also felt by the people of ancient Israel.

Many studies have explored death in ancient societies by examining burial customs, rituals, biblical views on death and the afterlife, care for the deceased, and even death cults; however, no extensive research has specifically targeted children and death in ancient Israel.

The study of child mortality is closely tied to the challenges within a relatively new area of research concerning ancient Israel: personhood. A comprehensive exploration of the concept of personhood is crucial when reflecting on childhood death.

In her monograph, *The Dying Child*, Kristine Henriksen Garroway calls for a greater acknowledgment of children in modern archaeological debates. Numerous archaeologists hesitate to link various household artifacts to children, even though their presence is evident in ancient domestic environments.

This neglect effectively overlooks an entire segment of the population in the study of death. By acknowledging the personhood of children in burial customs and other death-related practices, Garroway highlights the emotional and personal aspects of ancient Israeli culture, thus filling a significant void in our understanding of this society.

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Rebecca Harris, *Religious Experience and Divinization in the Sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls: Living in the Liminal*. Leiden: Brill, 2026.

Season 1 · Episode 10

Friday, February 20, 2026 • Duration 57:07

For those engaged in the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls movement, membership in the group would have granted them exceptional privileges, including direct and unmediated access to otherworldly realities. This understanding of the present as a type of liminal space is profoundly rooted in the group’s interpretations of time and space. By applying theories of liminality in conjunction with anthropological research on religious consciousness, this study seeks to demonstrate how sectarian identity, along with ritual and liturgical practices, may have cultivated an experience of present communion with divine entities that was both aspirational and designed to promote the human worshiper’s lasting integration into the heavenly realm.

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Rina Lapidus, *Russian Ideational Roots of Jewish Thought and Hebrew Literature*. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2024.

Friday, February 20, 2026 • Duration 01:33:52

This book explores how the intellectual and literary movements of Russia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries affected Jewish thought and Hebrew literature.

By engaging in a comparative analysis of a diverse range of writings from key Russian and Jewish intellectuals, the book uncovers how ideas about the necessity for a national revival spread from Russian to Jewish intellectual circles.

Jewish thinkers who adopted these concepts modified them to correspond with the realities and experiences of Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe.

Similarly, the portrayals of an individual's search for the true and just God in Russian literature resonated in ideological Hebrew literature, where the protagonist endeavors to find a genuine path to achieve spiritual, social, and national prosperity for the Jewish community.

The incorporation of ideological influences is a widespread phenomenon that plays a significant role in advancement and cultural evolution, and it is acknowledged within Jewish culture as well.

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Ursula Westwood, *Moses Among the Greek Lawgivers: Reading Josephus’ Antiquities through Plutarch’s Lives*. Leiden: Brill, 2023.

Season 1 · Episode 10

Thursday, February 19, 2026 • Duration 01:14:43

Josephus' Antiquities depicts Moses as the Jewish lawgiver, altering the biblical story for a distinct audience. Nevertheless, who made up that audience, and how did they interpret the term lawgiver? This work utilizes Plutarch's Lives as a proxy for a conceptual audience, providing a historically grounded yet flexible framework of a lawgiver, which emphasizes certain influences that may have been overlooked in understanding Josephus' choices. This methodology reveals patterns of persuasion and resistance in Josephus' engaging and vibrant representation of Moses' legislative activities.

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Jordan Henderson, *Defeat and Deliverance: Prefigurements of the Jewish Revolt against Rome in Josephus' Depictions of Past Invasions of Jerusalem*. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2026.

Season 1 · Episode 9

Thursday, February 12, 2026 • Duration 01:43:16

This monograph investigates Josephus’ representations of foreign invasions of Jerusalem as detailed in his Jewish Antiquities. The invasions covered include those by Shishak, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander the Great, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and Pompey the Great. In analyzing these stories, the book views the Jewish Antiquities as an extended "prequel" or backstory to his earlier work, Jewish War, examining how these narratives foreshadow and create connections with his previous account of the war against Rome. Furthermore, the book looks at these narratives within the literary framework of the Jewish Antiquities as a whole and how Josephus’ perceived audience expectations might have influenced his portrayals of these events.

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Roni Weinstein, *Joseph Karo and the Shaping of Modern Jewish Law: The Early Modern Ottoman and Global Settings*. London: Anthem Press, 2022.

Season 1 · Episode 8

Friday, February 6, 2026 • Duration 01:29:37

The dual legal codes established by R. Joseph Karo during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries mark a crucial milestone in the development of Jewish Halakhah. No further legal advancements were introduced in the following generations. R. Karo maintained long-standing traditions of Jewish scholarship while simultaneously responding to the global transformations in the history of law and legality, especially in Europe and primarily within the Ottoman Empire. This signifies a thorough interpretation of Jewish Halakhah and the overall modernization of Jewish culture. In this study, Roni Weinstein situates R. Karo's legacy in the context of the concurrent history of the Ottoman Empire.

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Golan Moskowitz, *Wild Visionary: Maurice Sendak in Queer Jewish Context*. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2021.

Tuesday, January 27, 2026 • Duration 01:30:01

*Wild Visionary* reexamines the life and work of Maurice Sendak through the lens of his identity as a Jewish gay man. Maurice (Moishe) Bernard Sendak (1928–2012) was a passionate, romantic, and surprisingly humorous seeker of truth who made significant contributions to modern literature and culture. By elevating the standards of children's literature, Sendak depicted childhood with a blend of dark realism and vibrant imagination, influenced by his own sensitive 'inner child' and the queer and Yiddish sensibilities that defined his unique voice. Golan Y. Moskowitz intricately weaves together literary biography and cultural history, tracing Sendak's journey from his parents' Brooklyn home to various creative havens—from local movie theaters to Hell's Kitchen, Greenwich Village, Fire Island, and the Connecticut country house he shared with his partner of over fifty years, Eugene Glynn. Additionally, he delves into Sendak's deep connection to the concept of the endangered child, exploring its symbolic ties to significant historical events that shaped the artist's worldview, including the Great Depression, the Holocaust, and the AIDS crisis. Through a thorough examination of Sendak's picture books, interviews, and previously unexamined personal letters, *Wild Visionary* presents a nuanced portrait of one of the most cherished and captivating picture-book artists of our era.

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Dialogues in Judaic Studies – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Dialogues in Judaic Studies – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

Other4

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Similar podcasts and content

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Other4

Apple Podcasts

Spotify