In this episode Drora Arussy speaks with historian Adam S. Ferziger about his latest book, Agents of Change: American Jews and the Transformation of Israeli Judaism (New York University Press, 2025). Ferziger, a professor at Bar-Ilan University and one of the leading voices in the study of modern religious movements, offers a compelling exploration of the transnational interactions that have reshaped Israeli Judaism and redefined the contours of religious Zionism. Agents of Change investigates how ideas, teachers, and institutions moved across the Atlantic between America and Israel, creating new hybrid forms of Jewish religious expression. Ferziger focuses on a group of North American Orthodox rabbis and educators, many of them students of Rabbi Dr. Joseph B. Soloveitchik at Yeshiva University, who immigrated to Israel between 1965 and 1983. These figures—working at the nexus of American Modern Orthodoxy and Israeli religious Zionism—introduced new educational paradigms, reimagined communal norms, and ultimately diversified the ideological landscape of Israeli Orthodoxy. The conversation delves into the shifting meaning of religious Zionism after the 1967 Six-Day War, when a movement once on the margins of Zionist politics emerged as a vital force within Israeli society. Ferziger traces how theological optimism about Israel’s redemptive role led to internal debates over nationalism, messianism, and engagement with secular Israeli culture. He also shows how American-trained educators brought new emphases on intellectual openness, structured learning, and ethical responsibility that subtly reconfigured Israeli Torah study and communal life. Interwoven through the dialogue is a broader reflection on transnational educational exchange—how Jewish learning operates as both a local and global phenomenon. Ferziger emphasizes education’s transformative potential: students, he argues, do not merely replicate ideas but reinterpret them within new social and cultural frames. This dynamic has fueled the growth of innovative models in contemporary Israel, from advanced programs for women’s Torah study to initiatives blending religious learning with military and civic service. Arussy and Ferziger also discuss adjacent developments, including the integration of American Haredim into Israeli society, the emergence of Orthodox feminism as a transnational phenomenon, and the rise of global study networks such as Hadran, founded by Michelle Farber. Through these case studies, Ferziger illustrates how the intellectual and spiritual currents flowing between America and Israel continue to reshape what it means to live a religious Jewish life in a modern state. Throughout the interview, Ferziger reflects on the delicate balance between personal engagement and scholarly distance, underscoring the historian’s task of acknowledging one’s perspective while maintaining methodological transparency. His approach embodies the spirit of Agents of Change: to view Jewish history not as a story confined within national borders but as a transnational dialogue that continually evolves through exchange, adaptation, and reinterpretation. Agents of Change: American Jews and the Transformation of Israeli Judaism offers an incisive analysis of how transnational networks have redefined modern Jewish identities.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, firstly in 1969 for The Armies of the Night and again in 1980 for The Executioner's Song, Norman Mailer's life comes as close as is possible to being the Great American Novel: beyond reason, inexplicable, wonderfully grotesque and addictive.The Naked and the Dead was acclaimed not so much for its intrinsic qualities but rather because it launched a brutally realistic sub-genre of military fiction - Catch 22 and MASH would not exist without it.  In Tough Guy: The Life of Norman Mailer (Bloomsbury, 2023), Richard Bradford combs through Mailer's personal letters - to lovers and editors - which appear to be a rehearsal for his career as a shifty literary narcissist, and which shape the characters of one of the most widely celebrated World War II novels. Bradford strikes again with a merciless biography in which diary entries, journal extracts and newspaper columns set the tone of this study of a controversial figure. From friendships with contemporaries such as James Baldwin, failed correspondences with Hemingway and the Kennedys, to terrible - but justified - criticism of his work by William Faulkner and Eleanor Roosevelt, this book gives a unique, snappy and convincing perspective of Mailer's ferocious personality and writings. Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics (Twitter @15MinFilm). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

In his influential Anti-Semite and Jew, French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre observed "If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him." In doing so he articulated the figure of an Antisemite responsible for imagining the Jew in a formulation that has lasted for decades. This figure became an indispensable trope in the period immediately after the war. It enabled Germans and Austrians to navigate a radically changed political and cultural landscape and reestablish lives upended by war by denying complicity in perpetuating antisemitic ideology. The deeply ingrained cultural practices that formed the basis for age-old prejudices against Jews persisted via coded references, taking new forms, and providing fertile ground for explicit eruptions.  Decades before the Nazi persecution of the Jews would emerge as a master moral paradigm of evil in popular culture, the constructed Antisemite became part of a forceful narrative structure that allowed stereotypes about Jews to persist, even as explicit antisemitism became taboo. Lisa Silverman examines the crucial development and implications of the figural Antisemite in a range of trials, films, and texts during the first years after the end of the Second World War. She argues that, in their economically shattered, emotionally exhausted, and culturally impoverished postwar world, Austrians, Germans, and others used the Antisemite as a way to come to terms with their altered circumstances and to shape new national self-understandings.  A readily recognizable and easily adaptable figure of evil, the Antisemite loomed large as a powerful and persistent trope in a wide range of artistic and cultural narratives. As a figure onto which to project or imagine as a source of the hatred of Jews, the Antisemite allowed audiences to avoid facing the implications of crimes committed by the Nazis and their accomplices and to deny the endurance of widespread and often coded antisemitic prejudices. In postwar Europe, where everyone looked to blame others for the murder and dispossession of the Jewish population, the authority to define the Antisemite as a receptacle for explicit Jew-hatred became a powerful force. As The Postwar Antisemite argues, antisemitism as a hidden code gained new force, packing stronger, more effective punches and affording its users more power. This era is critical to understanding ongoing struggles over the authority to set the parameters of antisemitism and the power and persistence of this hatred in society. Paul Lerner is Chair of the History Department at the University of Southern California where he directs the Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

A scion of the Protestant elite, Theodore Roosevelt was an unlikely ally of the waves of impoverished Jewish newcomers who crowded the docks at Ellis Island. Yet from his earliest years he forged ties with Jews never before witnessed in a president. American Maccabee traces Roosevelt’s deep connection with the Jewish people at every step of his dazzling ascent. But it also reveals a man of contradictions whose checkered approach to Jewish issues was no less conflicted than the nation he led.As a rising political figure in New York, Roosevelt barnstormed the Lower East Side, giving speeches to packed halls of Jewish immigrants. He rallied for reform of the sweatshops where Jewish laborers toiled for pitiful wages in perilous conditions. And Roosevelt repeatedly venerated the heroism of the Maccabee warriors, upholding those storied rebels as a model for the American Jewish community. Yet little could have prepared him for the blood-soaked persecution of Eastern European Jews that brought a deluge of refugees to American shores during his presidency. Andrew Porwancher uncovers the vexing challenges for Roosevelt as he confronted Jewish suffering abroad and antisemitic xenophobia at home.Drawing on new archival research to paint a richly nuanced portrait of an iconic figure, American Maccabee chronicles the complicated relationship between the leader of a youthful nation and the people of an ancient faith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

The Judeo-Christian Thought of Franz Rosenzweig (Liverpool UP, 2025) offers a new interpretation of Franz Rosenzweig's magnum opus The Star of Redemption, commonly treated as one of the high points of modern Jewish thought, and demonstrates its profound immersion in the Protestant conceptuality of its time. It argues that appreciating the decisive mark of Protestant thought on The Star solves many of its puzzles, challenges some entrenched hagiographic orthodoxies about Rosenzweig, and provides a unique perspective onto one of the most influential cases of the 'Protestantisation of Judaism'. The book shows that Rosenzweig's inventiveness resides in his weaving of Jewish and Christian motifs that result in an original scheme that is remarkably inclusive toward Judaism from a Christian perspective and remarkably inclusive toward Christianity from a Jewish perspective. The Star thus emerges anew, not simply as a work of Jewish thought that is 'influenced' by Christian theology but as a work that is more accurately characterised as 'Judeo-Christian'." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Queerness remains one of the most stigmatized and overlooked aspects of Holocaust history, often erased due to the lingering homophobia of survivors. People Without History Are Dust: Queer Desire in the Holocaust (U Toronto Press, 2025) challenges this silence, weaving together compelling stories of German, Dutch, Czech, and Polish Jewish Holocaust victims and survivors – including Anne Frank, Molly Applebaum, Margot Heuman, and Gad Beck – whose experiences help illuminate the hidden history of queerness in a time of genocide. Drawing on extensive archival research, this groundbreaking book uncovers the lives of those who were doubly marginalized, not only persecuted as Jews but also as queer individuals. In doing so, it confronts the ways in which history has excluded or minimized their experiences, urging us to question normative accounts of the Holocaust. By shedding light on these long-overlooked stories, People Without History Are Dust deepens our understanding of identity, survival, and memory, reminding us why an inclusive and complex approach to history is essential – not just for the sake of the past, but in service to the present and the future as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

As a third generation Holocaust survivor, this was an important conversation with a second generation survivor. Marty has been conducting workshops on writing memory for quite a while and that's where we met - in his workshops with Jewish Ethiopians in Israel. Son of the Shoah: Poems from a Second-Generation Holocaust Survivor is his emotional reckoning with his parents and the world as being born into a world of pain and distance. At times I saw my own parents in the discussion and at times I would hear my friend whose family is descended from Jews tortured in the Inquisitions.  This was an intimate and powerful discussion which will help the field of memory and Holocaust studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

During the mid-1930s, Germans opposed to Adolf Hitler had only a limited range of options available to them for resisting the Nazi regime. One of the most creative and successful challengers in this effort was Ernst Fraenkel, who as an attorney sought to use the law as a means of opposing Nazi oppression. In Legal Sabotage: Ernst Fraenkel in Hitler’s Germany (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Douglas G. Morris describes the ways in which Frankel stood up to the Nazis and what understandings he drew from that experience. As a veteran of the First World War, Fraenkel survived the initial purge resulting from the implementation of measures designed to bar Jews from practicing law in the Third Reich. Though his legal practice suffered, Fraenkel persisted in defending people prosecuted by the Nazis, and enjoyed success in a number of cases. While the increased restrictions and growing reach of the police state ultimately forced Fraenkel to emigrate in 1938, his experiences as a lawyer played a major role in the development of the “dual state” theory of dictatorship, the only analysis of totalitarianism written from within Nazi Germany and the cornerstone of Fraenkel’s contributions to the field of political science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Rabbi Professor Shomo Pereira discussed his book "Monuments of Paper and Parchment: Hebrew Printing in Portugal in the Late 15th Century." He explained that while Portugal lacks physical Jewish monuments due to natural disasters, earthquakes, and persecution, the book highlights the country's rich Jewish history through its manuscript and printing heritage of the late 15th century. He explained how Hebrew printing in Portugal was a vibrant force, contributing to the spread of knowledge and influencing printing practices in the Ottoman Empire. Pereira also detailed the contributions of Rabbi Abraham Zakuto, a Jewish scientist and astronomer who developed crucial navigational tools and was recognized for his work by having a crater on the moon named after him. Pereira discussed his book on Iberian Jewish history, emphasizing contributions to scholarship, mathematics, astronomy, and poetry during the late 1400s, when many Spanish Jews fled to Portugal. He explained his goal is to highlight these accomplishments to build bridges with non-Jewish communities and enrich Iberian history, while acknowledging the context of persecution. Pereira clarified that during this period, most Jews in Portugal were Spanish, and he uses "Iberian Jews" to reflect this diversity. Pereira emphasized the unique characteristic of Iberian commentators, who often included personal experiences in their writings, contrasting this with the more detached approach of commentators like Rashi. Pereira explained the complexity of uncovering colophons in historical Jewish texts, noting that simple colophons provide basic information about the work's completion, printer, sponsor, and date, while more sophisticated ones use cryptic biblical references that modern AI cannot translate. He discussed the challenges in interpreting colophons from historical Jewish texts, particularly those printed in 1494 and 1498 in Spain and Portugal. He explained that the dates and years in these colophons are often confused due to the use of astrological and astronomical coincidences. Rabbi Shlomo Pereira emphasized that history is about how we perceive and learn from the past, rather than just focusing on the past itself. This bilingual book on Hebrew printing in Portugal, highlighting its significance in Jewish and Iberian history is published by Chabad Portugal Press in 2025, and is available on Amazon and other platforms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Today’s battles over Christianity in U.S. public schools have deep roots. In the nineteenth century, disputes were largely between Protestants and later-arriving Catholics, but in 1905 Jews entered the conflict in a dramatic way. That Christmas, Frank Harding, a Presbyterian principal in Brooklyn, urged his Jewish students to be more like Jesus. For Orthodox activist Albert Lucas, already fighting Christian settlement houses that sought to convert Jewish children, Harding’s remarks were the last straw. He accused the public schools of illegal proselytizing, and Jewish leaders quickly mobilized, petitioning for Harding’s removal and demanding clear limits on religious practices in public education—limits they argued were violated by Bible readings, the Lord’s Prayer, religious imagery, and Christmas pageants. When the New York Board of Education refused to act decisively, Jewish parents staged a citywide boycott of the 1906 school Christmas pageants, keeping as many as three-quarters of students home in some neighborhoods. The board briefly barred sectarian hymns and religious material, but the decision provoked a fierce antisemitic backlash, framed in the press as a Jewish attack on Christmas, and most of the restrictions were soon reversed. The Great Christmas Boycott of 1906: Antisemitism and the Battle Over Christianity in the Public Schools (U Nebraska Press, 2025) shows how this conflict—over law, tradition, and the place of religion in public schools—has never truly ended. With decisive victories elusive, Jewish organizations today have shifted toward other, more strategic ways of confronting Christian nationalism. Scott D. Seligman is a writer and historian. He is the author of numerous books, including The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902: Immigrant Housewives and the Riots That Shook New York City (Potomac Books, 2020), the award-winning The Third Degree: The Triple Murder That Shook Washington and Changed American Criminal Justice (Potomac Books, 2018), and The First Chinese American: The Remarkable Life of Wong Chin Foo. Rabbi Marc Katz is the Senior Rabbi of Temple Ner Tamid. He is the author of Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

The Koren Tanakh of the Land of Israel breathes new life into the biblical narrative by incorporating the latest discoveries from archaeology, Near Eastern studies, Egyptology and more to connect the ancient world with modern scholarship, offering readers a deeper and more informed understanding of the Bible. Tune in as we speak with Editor in Chief, David Arnovitz about the latest volume of The Koren Tanakh of the Land of Israel—Deuteronomy! David Arnovitz is Editor in Chief of The Koren Tanakh of the Land of Israel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Prayer in the Ancient World is the resource on prayer in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean. With over 350 entries it showcases a robust selection of the range of different types of prayers attested from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, the Levant, early Judaism and Christianity, Greece, Rome, Arabia, and Iran, enhanced by critical commentary.The Prayer in the Ancient World will also be available online.Preview of the 'Prayer in the Ancient World’ Daniel K. Falk is Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies and Chaiken Family Chair in Jewish Studies at Penn State University. Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

The field of contemporary Holocaust studies is increasingly international in perspective. These approaches do not detach themselves from European history; rather, they incorporate perspectives and voices not always considered in more traditional Holocaust studies. The contributors to Global Approaches to the Holocaust: Memory, History and Representation (U Nebraska Press, 2025) take such an approach as they examine the Holocaust, adding to the historical and memorial reach of the subject through an international range of voices. Global Approaches to the Holocaust asks: What happens when scholars shift their focus from an exclusively European perspective of the Holocaust? What new insights are gained from exploring the impact of the Holocaust from outside the European milieu? How do countries that were not directly affected by Nazi policies of occupation and extermination remember the Holocaust? What does an expansive approach to the Holocaust entail? With essays about North and South Africa, Mauritius, Japan, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, the Philippines, the United States, Australia, Canada, India, Pakistan, Palestine, Colombia, New Zealand, and more, Global Approaches to the Holocaust seeks to create a critical voice in Holocaust studies that encompasses not only Europe but also Asia, Africa, South and North America, Australia, and the Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Adventures of Rabbah & Friends offers a new reader-centered approach to some of the Talmud’s most challenging stories. The Talmud contains about two pages of some of the strangest tales in the rabbinic corpus. For centuries people have scratched their head over what they mean and why they are there. In his new book, James Adam Redfield illustrates how these tales have interacted with diverse interpretive frameworks from ancient myth to modern mysticism. By reevaluating conventional assumptions about coherence, authority, and tradition, the book redefines how stories can function in the Talmud, reorients the study of rabbinic literature around practices of reading and reception, and opens pathways for connecting the Talmud with broader conversations in the study of literature. Redfield’s analysis of the vibrant dialogue between many voices in this literary tradition—storytellers, editors, performers, transmitters, commentators, anthologizers, and more—reveals their diverse and original contributions to the art of interpretation in Jewish culture. Rich appendixes revealing the stories’ reception in late ancient exegesis, medieval responsa, and early modern ethical and mystical commentaries make this volume a valuable specialist resource, while its lively prose is accessible for a wider audience of students and humanities scholars. In this episode we discuss these themes and more. James Adam Redfield is Associate Professor of Jewish Anthropology and Hermeneutics in the Department of Theological Studies at Saint Louis University and Visiting Associate Professor in Jewish Civilization and the History of European Civilization at the University of Chicago. He is the coeditor with Sergey Dolgopolski of Talmud /and/ Philosophy (2024) and the translator and editor of Mikhah Yosef Berdichevsky’s Yiddish stories published in From a Distant Relation (2021). Rabbi Marc Katz is the Senior Rabbi of Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield NJ. He is the author of Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life (JPS) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Ancient Jewish Food in its Geographical and Cultural Contexts: What’s Cooking in the Talmuds? (Taylor & Francis, 2025) is the first in-depth study of food in talmudic literature in its geographical and cultural contexts. It demonstrates the sharing of foods and foodways between Jews and their non-Jewish neighbours in the Near East in Late Antiquity. Using both ancient written sources and archaeological evidence, this book sets the foods of the Mishnah and Palestinian Talmud in their Graeco-Roman context, and the foods of the Babylonian Talmud and the ge’onim in their Persian and Arab contexts. It explores practices of food preparation and their contribution to the ancient diet, as well as analysing the relationships between food, status and culture. The rabbinical authors of talmudic literature were more concerned with everyday food than were aristocratic Classical authors; by examining both talmudic sources and archaeological finds, this book paints a new picture of the diet, lifestyle and culture of ordinary people. Ancient Jewish Food in Its Geographical and Cultural Contexts will interest Food Historians as well as students and scholars of Jewish Studies, particularly the period of the Mishnah and Talmud, as well as those dealing with the wider social and cultural history of the Ancient Near East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Ezra-Nehemiah: Retrograde Revolution (Maggid, 2025) takes its readers on a literary tour of an era in which cohesiveness between Jews in Israel and the Diaspora is being tested, the parameters of Jewish identity are being re-assessed, political tact is being learned by necessity, and biblical literacy is at long last becoming the centerpiece of the Jewish community.  Tune in as we hear from Yael Leibowitz about her recent Maggid commentary on Ezra-Nehemiah! Yael Leibowitz is an Israeli educator and a Matan Kitvuni Fellow. She holds a Master’s degree in Judaic Studies from Columbia University and currently teaches at Matan Women’s Institute for Torah Learning and MIdreshet Lindenbaum College for Women. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

The American Jewish philanthropic enterprise is unparalleled in scope, dynamism, and the diversity of funders and the causes they support. Yet even as Jewish giving has been largely successful in responding with alacrity to emergencies, it has been subjected to severe criticism. What once was regarded as a point of pride has become the object of scorn and dismissal, with skepticism--if not harsh criticism--about its work rife both within and outside Jewish communal circles. Based on 320 interviews with professionals at Jewish not-for-profits across the United States, principals of foundations and their top staff personnel, and also tax filings of major foundations, Jewish Giving: Philanthropy and the Shaping of American Jewish Life (NYU Press, 2025) provides readers with fresh perspectives to evaluate the efforts of Jewish donors, large and small. The book traces the evolution of Jewish giving from the colonial era to the present, charting the changing profile of those who give to Jewish causes and what funders have aimed to achieve through their largesse. It makes the case that philanthropy serves as a prism through which broader themes in communal life are illuminated. As society or politics change, the priorities of charitable giving adjust in response. These changes in targeted funding can help to sharpen our understanding of demographic and social patterns. Devoting much attention to twenty-first century developments in contemporary Jewish giving, the book pays special attention to the changing landscape of donors who are remaking Jewish philanthropy, including women, Orthodox Jews, Sephardi givers, and young funders. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Delve into Jewish history through 100 unique objects from the YIVO Archives and Library with 100 Objects from the Collections of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (2025). This gorgeously-illustrated coffee table book contains images and essays which represent modern Jewish history and culture through YIVO's one hundred years of collecting. The volume highlights a variety of manuscripts, photographs, ritual objects, and other ephemera. ּBook can be purchased here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

The culture of mainstream American childhood is vastly different than the culture of Orthodox Jewish childhood - which is itself a rich and varied landscape of texts, music, toys, and more, with nuanced shadings from one sect of Orthodox Judaism to the next. In Artifacts of Orthodox Jewish Childhoods: Personal and Critical Essays (Ben Yehuda Press, 2022), Dainy Bernstein has collected a treasury of essays examining the artifacts of Orthodox Jewish childhood and how they influence a child's developing view of the wider world - and their inner world. Interviewees: Dainy Bernstein holds a PhD in English and a Certificate in Medieval Studies from the CUNY Graduate Center and teaches college composition, medieval literature, and children's and Young Adult literature at Lehman College, CUNY. Goldie Gross earned a bachelor’s degree in art and business from Baruch College and earned a master’s degree in the history of art and archeology at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University Yehudis Keller earned a BA in psychology and fine arts from Brooklyn College and is pursuing a doctorate in clinical psychology at Case Western Reserve University. Hannah Lebovits is an assistant professor of public affairs at the University of Texas-Arlington Miriam Moster is a doctoral student in sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press, 2020). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Before Hacks and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, there was the comedienne who started it all. First Lady of Laughs: The Forgotten Story of Jean Carroll (NYU Press, 2024) tells the story of Jean Carroll, the first Jewish woman to become a star in the field we now call stand-up comedy. Though rarely mentioned among the pantheon of early stand-up comics such as Henny Youngman and Lenny Bruce, Jean Carroll rivaled or even outshone the male counterparts of her heyday, playing more major theaters than any other comedian of her period. In addition to releasing a hit comedy album, Girl in a Hot Steam Bath, and briefly starring in her own sitcom on ABC, she also made twenty-nine appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show.Carroll made enduring changes to the genre of stand-up comedy, carving space for women and modeling a new form of Jewish femininity with her glamorous, acculturated, but still recognizably Jewish persona. She innovated a newly conversational, intimate style of stand-up, which is now recognized in comics like Joan Rivers, Sarah Silverman, and Tiffany Haddish. When Carroll was ninety-five she was honored at the Friars Club in New York City, where celebrities like Joy Behar and Lily Tomlin praised her influence on their craft. But her celebrated career began as an impoverished immigrant child, scrounging for talent show prize money to support her family.Drawing on archival footage, press clippings, and Jean Carroll’s personal scrapbook, First Lady of Laughs restores Jean Carroll’s remarkable story to its rightful place in the lineage of comedy history and Jewish American performance. Jane Scimeca, Professor of History at Brookdale Community College Website here @janescimeca.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies