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WHAT’S NEW IN THE JEWISH STUDIES LIBRARY

BY BRIAN GREENE

Thanks to the suggestion of Professor Bill Miles, we are pleased to announce a new subscription to the Jewish Quarterly. Edited by Jonathan Pearlman (Australian Foreign Affairs and the Saturday Paper), the JQ is an independent publication cultivating a high standard of literary journalism in an elegant book format. Each issue features a major political or cultural theme investigated in long-form essays by prominent voices from around the world. JQ’s mission is to investigate in-depth complex and pressing matters of politics, religion, history, and culture.

We also purchased a full set of the Cambridge History of Judaism. We now have access to all 8 volumes. The new volumes include:

Volume 5: Jews in the Medieval Islamic World

Volume 6: The Middle Ages: The Christian World

Volume 7: The Early Modern World: 1500-1815

Volume 8: The Modern World: 1815-2000

Another major acquisition is the Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature, which highlights the central role that Jewish writing has played in the formation of the national literature of the United States, from the Hebraic sources of the Puritan imagination to narratives of immigration and acculturation, as well as enriching global literature in its engagement with Jewish history and Jewish multilingual culture.

The Library continues to purchase a number of new books each year, mostly in e-format so they can be accessible to all Northeastern users across our global campus network. Here is a sample of our new books this year: • American JewBu:

Jews, Buddhists, and

Religious Change

Emily Sigalow tells the story of Judaism’s encounter with

Buddhism in the United States, showing how it has given rise to new contemplative forms within American Judaism and shaped the way Americans understand and practice Buddhism. • Gendering Modern Jewish Thought

Andrea Dara Cooper offers a gendered reading that challenges the key figures of the all-male fraternity of twentieth-century Jewish philosophy (Franz Rosenzweig, Emmanuel Levinas) to open up to the feminine, revealing new ways of illuminating questions of relational ethics, embodiment, politics, and positionality. • Jewish Mysticism: From Ancient

Times Through Today

Marvin Sweeney surveys Jewish visionary and mystical experience from biblical and ancient

Near Eastern times through the modern period and the emergence of modern Hasidism. • Trans Talmud: Androgynes and

Eunuchs in Rabbinic Literature

A Memoir of the 1960s Deep South

Showing how rabbis employed eunuchs and androgynes to define proper forms of masculinity,

Strassfeld emphasizes the unique potential of these figures to not only establish the boundary of law but exceed and transform it. • Waste Not: A Jewish Environmental Ethic

Winner of the 2020 Canadian Jewish Literary

Award, Tanhum S. Yoreh traces the development of bal tashchit, the Jewish prohibition against wastefulness and destruction, from its biblical origins to the contemporary environmental movement.

For a complete list of new titles in Jewish Studies, please view this list created in Leganto, the Library’s new reading list tool. Leganto is an easy way to share library materials and course content with students and can easily be linked to a Canvas course site.

To our faculty and students, I hope you’ll make time to check out some or all of these new resources. I’d be interested to hear your feedback on them. If you have suggestions or other recommendations for purchases, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Brian Greene, Head of Information Delivery and Access Services, is the Library’s Liaison for Jewish Studies. He can be contacted at br.greene@northeastern.edu.