In an essay in JQR 116.3, Yuval Fraenkel explores stories in the Babylonian Talmud that blur the boundary between living and dead. Read about "a sage who growls at a clay digger disturbing his grave’s tranquility," and other colorful characters! katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

Picking Lice from the Living Dead

Yuval Fraenkel explores an unexpected take on death in the Babylonian Talmud

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We are thrilled to celebrate our first #OAWeek as an open access journal!

The Jewish Quarterly Review@thejqr.bsky.social · 9mo ago

JQR's move to open access represents a new era in the life of the journal. In a letter to readers in our winter issue and on our blog, the editors reflect on the transition. katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

Did you catch Daniel Amir's 2024 JQR essay "Reading Bialik in Tehran"? dx.doi.org/10.1353/jqr.... We're excited to see his how his research has developed in his new book Jewish Iran: Modern Nationalism in Print (Stanford 2026)! www.sup.org/books/middle...

Have you checked out the contents of our current issue? 👀(The whole issue is free to read!)

The Jewish Quarterly Review@thejqr.bsky.social · 3mo ago

JQR 116.3 has landed and this one truly has something for everyone: the Babylonian Talmud, Cairo Geniza letters, medieval MSS diagrams, Nahmanides, early Hasidic lit, and Maimonides in dialogue with Hegel. And not a paywall in sight! Peruse the contents: katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

Sivan Gottlieb's essay on Tree of Porphyry diagrams in medieval Hebrew MSS is a must-read for anyone interested in how scientific and philosophical knowledge was circulated and translated between the Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew traditions!🌳 Check it out: dx.doi.org/10.1353/jqr....

Nahmanides has appeared often in JQR, from Solomon Schechter’s eponymous 1892 essay, to Hannah Davidson’s piece in our summer issue, which examines yet another of his guises: that of physician. On the blog, our latest Archive Dive rounds up some of these studies: katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

Archive Dive: Nahmanides

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Dylan Shaul's essay in our current issue reconstructs Hegel’s critique of Jewish law and applies a Maimonidean framework to counter it and critique it in turn. Check it out: dx.doi.org/10.1353/jqr....

Thank you to all those who have peer reviewed for JQR! You make what we do possible.

Penn Press@pennpress.bsky.social · 2mo ago

As we celebrate #PeerReviewWeek, we want to take a moment to thank the peer reviewers who make our publications possible. Ensuring that our books and journals maintain high standards of scholarship, peer reviewers are essential to the production of new academic works. We couldn't do it without them!

In the 1940s-60s, JQR editor Solomon Zeitlin published numerous essays advancing the theory that the Dead Sea Scrolls were not authentic Second Temple compositions, but medieval forgeries. On the blog, we revisit this lively chapter in JQR history: katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

Archive Dive: Zeitlin and the “So-called Phenomenal Discovery” of the Dead Sea Scrolls

Solomon Zeitlin had an axe to grind

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Have you read Oded Zinger's new essay in JQR 116.3, "Voices, Authorship, and Communication in Women’s Letters from the Cairo Geniza"? Find out what this corpus can tell us about how medieval women effected action in their world. (It's free to read!) muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

In JQR 116.3, Yuval Fraenkel examines the “narrative world” of the afterlife in the Babylonian Talmud in which the deceased retain their physical bodies, and shows how this signals resistance both to normative rabbinic theology and to Zoroastrian imperial policies. 👇 dx.doi.org/10.1353/jqr....

JQR 116.3 has landed and this one truly has something for everyone: the Babylonian Talmud, Cairo Geniza letters, medieval MSS diagrams, Nahmanides, early Hasidic lit, and Maimonides in dialogue with Hegel. And not a paywall in sight! Peruse the contents: katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

New Issue of the Jewish Quarterly Review: Summer 2026

JQR 116.3 is now available, online and in print

katz.sas.upenn.edu

Readers of Christoph Hopp's recent essay might also try Caroline Kahlenberg's 2024 JQR essay on Ribhi Kamal (1912–79), a Palestinian scholar of Semitic languages who grew up in Jerusalem and went on to host Radio Damascus’s Hebrew-language broadcast. dx.doi.org/10.1353/jqr....

The Jewish Quarterly Review@thejqr.bsky.social · 4mo ago

In JQR 116.2, Christoph Hopp examines how the political ideals of Israel Ben-Ze’ev’s contemporary Cairo informed his History of the Semitic Languages (1929), which postulates, against the scholarly norm, that Hebrew originated from early Arabic dialects. dx.doi.org/10.1353/jqr....

In JQR 116.2, Jeremiah Lockwood highlights early 20th-cent American women performers of popular cantorial music (khazntes) and explores what their reception says about gender, religion, and power in that historical moment—and he includes some amazing photos! dx.doi.org/10.1353/jqr....

Interested to learn more about Albo? Some open access classics from JQR's archives: Shira Weiss, "Free Choice in the Responsum of Joseph Albo: The Case of the Katlanit" (2015) dx.doi.org/10.1353/jqr.... Warren Zev Harvey, "Albo's Discussion of Time" (1980) www.jstor.org/stable/1454498

The Jewish Quarterly Review@thejqr.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Check out Yosi Yisraeli's essay in JQR 116.2, which contextualizes Joseph Albo’s Book of Principles (ca. 1420) with Christian conversionist sources. Yisraeli shows how it responds to specific contemporary critiques of Judaism: dx.doi.org/10.1353/jqr.... Like all our content, it is open access!

Esra Almas's new essay analyzes language, music, and sound in Who Are You, Jak Samanon? (1997), a novel by Liz Behmoaras about a Jewish family in 19-20th c Turkey, to illuminate how Jews shaped and were shaped by Turkish modernity. dx.doi.org/10.1353/jqr.... (And don't miss her blog post!)

The Jewish Quarterly Review@thejqr.bsky.social · 5mo ago

On the blog, Esra Almas reflects on the life, work, and inspirational friendship of Turkish author Liz Behmoaras—whose 1997 book Kimsin Jak Samanon? (Who are you Jak Samanon?) is the subject of Almas's latest JQR essay. katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

Have you read Tanja Werthmann's new book The Transcendent Beloved: Platonic Eros and Its Graeco-Arabic Paths to Kabbalah (OUP, 2026)? If so, try her latest JQR essay, which exposes the Neoplatonist, Christian, and Islamic underpinnings of Maimonides' via negativa! dx.doi.org/10.1353/jqr....

In JQR 116.2, Christoph Hopp examines how the political ideals of Israel Ben-Ze’ev’s contemporary Cairo informed his History of the Semitic Languages (1929), which postulates, against the scholarly norm, that Hebrew originated from early Arabic dialects. dx.doi.org/10.1353/jqr....

If Jeremiah Lockwood's latest JQR essay on early 20th c. American women cantors left you wishing you could hear their music yourself, you're in luck! On the JQR blog, Lockwood describes how contemporary musicians are continuing the legacy of the early khazntes. katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

Cantorial Music in Ever New Guises

Jeremiah Lockwood is not only a scholar of the female cantorial geniuses of the 20th century—he is a virtuoso performer of this repertoire himself

katz.sas.upenn.edu

Check out Yosi Yisraeli's essay in JQR 116.2, which contextualizes Joseph Albo’s Book of Principles (ca. 1420) with Christian conversionist sources. Yisraeli shows how it responds to specific contemporary critiques of Judaism: dx.doi.org/10.1353/jqr.... Like all our content, it is open access!

On the blog, Esra Almas reflects on the life, work, and inspirational friendship of Turkish author Liz Behmoaras—whose 1997 book Kimsin Jak Samanon? (Who are you Jak Samanon?) is the subject of Almas's latest JQR essay. katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

Remembering Liz Behmoaras (1950–2025)

Esra Almas reflects on the life, work, and inspirational friendship of Turkish author Liz Behmoaras

katz.sas.upenn.edu

JQR 116.2 is out with 5 new open access essays! Have you perused the table of contents yet? muse.jhu.edu/issue/56911

In our latest issue, Tanja Werthmann marshals late antique Eastern Syriac philosophy and theology and their reception in the Islamicate world to shed light on Maimonides’s via negativa. Find out how and why Maimonides elevates silence to a form of spiritual practice: muse.jhu.edu/article/991939

JQR 116.2 is here! Learn about: -Maimonides's via negativa -Joseph Albo (15th c.) on Christian conversionist arguments -early 20th c. popular women cantors -Semitic linguistics historiography -modern Turkish Jewish lit It's open access, so what is there to lose? katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

New Issue of the Jewish Quarterly Review: Spring 2026

JQR 116.2 is now available, online and in print

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This week on the blog, we're reflecting on the origins of Jewish art history scholarship through the eyes of pathbreaking 20th century art historian Rachel Wischnitzer—as told in her own words, in JQR essays from 1922–1949. katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

Pathbreaking Scholar Rachel Wischnitzer on Jewish Art, and How to Study It

Explore the beginnings of Jewish art history scholarship in JQR’s pages.

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We know you're hungry for spring reading, so we dug deep into the JQR archives and harvested several essays on food and drink, all open access. We hope you enjoy this gastronomic tour from the Roman triclinium to the streets of New York, and everywhere in between! katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

A Feast! Food in JQR

JQR gleans some delicious offerings from the archives

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Looking for Earth Day reading? Try Sarah Abrevaya Stein's 2022 essay "The Queen of Herbs: A Plant’s-Eye View of the Sephardic Diaspora," which she describes as an "ethnobotanical, historical study" of the plant known as ruta graveolens, rue, or ruda. muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

Check out Elly Moseson's essay in our current issue, which "sheds new light on the complex role played by literature in the transformation of Hasidism from a small local phenomenon into a mass movement." 👇 muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

In JQR 116.1, Vered Noam investigates why primordial priestly figures in Second Temple Jewish culture who had all but disappeared from early rabbinic literature are celebrated in the High Holiday prayers. Check out her essay! muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

We combed through the winners and finalists of the latest AJS Schnitzer Awards and National Jewish Book Awards for JQR alumni, and we have gathered their essays on our blog. Some open-access research by the honorees for your reading pleasure! katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

We Knew Them When…

Get to know the latest Schnitzer and NJBA honorees through their earlier JQR publications, all available open access

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