Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela's travel writing shows that Jews in medieval Iraq and Kurdistan lived in (relative) peace and freedom, countering narratives of universal misery and oppression, grad fellow Jeffrey Haines writes.
Grad fellow Canan Bolel explains the unfortunate parallels between responses to 19th-century cholera outbreaks in Ottoman Izmir (present-day Turkey) — especially for Jewish communities— and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Like people today, people in the ancient world were obsessed with having ideal children. And ancient theories of vision combined with fears around imperfect babies to create some funky beliefs about sex and conception, writes grad fellow Jennifer Hunter. But were they really weirder than our worries today?
Uniquely mobile, religiously unconventional Jews of 19th-century America laid the groundwork for American Judaism today, writes Dr. Shari Rabin.
Anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish expulsions in medieval Germany were engineered for political gain, writes Grad Fellow Kerice Doten-Snitker, much like anti-Semitism today.
Ancient synagogue poetry describing the magic "sotah" ritual for women evoked common fears around demonic forces and women's sexuality, writes Dr. Laura S. Lieber.
Christian myths about Judaism both feed anti-Semitism and misrepresent the reality of a religion based on the love of God and the other.
Works of literature speak to the forces behind anti-Semitic violence.
