New Books in Jewish Studies

In the West, World War II is commonly understood as the Allies’ struggle against Nazism. Often elided, if not simply forgotten, is the Soviet Union’s crucial role in that fight. With World Enemy No. 1: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews, Jochen Hellbeck rectifies this omission by relocating the ideological core of the conflict. It was not the Western powers but Communist Russia that Nazi Germany viewed as an existential threat. Jewish revolutionaries, the Nazis believed, had seized power in 1917 and were preparing the Soviet state to destroy Germany and the world. And so, on June 22, 1941, a German army of three million attacked the Soviet Union to exterminate “Judeo-Bolshevism,” Hitler’s cardinal obsession. While Europe’s Jews were expelled, exiled, and persecuted by the Nazis, Soviet Jews were immediately slated for elimination. The Soviet lands thus became ground zero for systematic extermination, which was only later extended to all Jews, igniting the Holocaust.
Join YIVO for a discussion with Hellbeck about this book, led by historian Jeffrey Veidlinger.
Purchase World Enemy No. 1: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews here
This lecture originally took place on March 26, 2026.

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A comprehensive study of the Mishnah that argues it manifests an implicit theory of what performing rituals accomplishes

Jews are known for having many ritual practices. Many of these come from the Bible, but Jewish ritual practice as we know it today is as much a product of the earliest rabbis who lived in the late-second and early-third centuries. These rabbis created the text known as the Mishnah, which collects, develops, and records in great detail rules about the proper way to carry out traditional rituals, what the text terms mitsvot. Naftali S. Cohn’s book Ritual: An Ancient Jewish Perspective (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026) is a comprehensive study of ritual in the Mishnah, focused especially on the fundamental questions of the nature of ritual, what ritual does or accomplishes, and what motivates people to do rituals, all according to the Mishnah’s authors.

Reading the text of the Mishnah closely and drawing widely from the analytic toolbox of ritual studies, Cohn argues that ritual, in the perspective of the Mishnah’s authors, has multiple effects. Performing mitsvot—and refraining from the mitsvot “not to do”—shapes individual bodies by choreographing a person’s interactions with the objects, spaces, times, and other bodies that form the environment in which they act. It shapes collective bodies by enabling social life and creating group identity, even as it establishes differences between people and social hierarchy. Doing mitsvot also activates cultural ideas, connecting the people of Israel to their God, their past, their place, and each other. Repeated ritual action, further, forges body habits and generates the powerful feelings of obligation and, at times, even joy and love, which move people to continue to carry out these rituals. Mitsvot, according to the Mishnah, have the power to shape Israeliteness, or Jewishness, in its every facet. By focusing so much attention on ritual behavior, Cohn shows how the Mishnah can also be understood as a rumination on the fundamental nature of activity itself, of doing, being, moving, and engaging with the world.
New Books in Late Antiquity is Presented by Ancient Jew Review
Naftali Coen is chair of religions and cultures at Concordia University in Montreal
Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston

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Is tolerance an achievement of secular modernity that religion has always resisted? The Concept of Tolerance in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (De Gruyter, 2026), the seventh volume in the Key Concepts in Interreligious Discourses series, says the answer is more complicated. Edited by Catharina Rachik and Georges Tamer of FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg, the book gives one substantial chapter to each tradition and closes with an epilogue in which the editors compare the three.
Menachem Kellner draws on Maimonides to build a Jewish account of tolerance grounded in epistemological humility. The Torah is true, but no human mind, not even Moses’s, grasps that truth completely. Christian Polke treats tolerance as a virtue practiced in the habits of a community, especially in the confession of sin and in reading scripture critically. Anna Akasoy declines to ask whether Islam is “essentially” tolerant or intolerant. She asks instead why that question keeps being put to Islam, and then traces how Muslims have handled difference across scripture, law, theology, Sufism, and political rule.
In this conversation, Tamer and Rachik discuss the series’ “archaeology of religious knowledge.” They explain why “tolerance” works as an analytical category rather than a historical one, and why the limits of tolerance require public justification. Finally, they argue that naming irreconcilable differences gives interreligious life a sturdier foundation than a manufactured consensus. Taking a cue from Goethe, they make the case for moving beyond tolerance toward recognition.
Iqbal Akhtar teaches in the Departments of Religious Studies and Politics & International Relations at Florida International University and is the Executive Director of The East-West Foundation. He is the author of Covenantal Pluralism: The Geopolitics of Interfaith Religious Freedom (Springer, 2026), available open access at this link.

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In this episode of the CEU Press Podcast host Andrea Talabér talked to Marius Turda about his new book, In Search of the Perfect Romanian: National Specificity, Racial Degeneration, and Social Selection in Modern Romania. We discussed the importance of the social and medical sciences in understanding Romanian nationalism, the intellectual sources of Romanian nationalist thought, and the various discussions surrounding biopolitical debates in interwar Romania amongst other topics.
You can purchase a copy here. The book is also available Open Access here.
The CEU Press Podcast delves into various aspects of the publishing process: from crafting a book proposal, finding a publisher, responding to peer review feedback on the manuscript, to the subsequent distribution, promotion and marketing of academic books. We also talk to series editors and authors, who will share their experiences of getting published and discuss their series or books.
Interested in CEU Press’s publications? Click here to find out more: https://www.aup.nl/en/imprint/ceu-press
Stay tuned for future episodes and subscribe to our podcast to be the first to be notified.

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Most people know Israel through headlines. In Almost True: Stories From Jerusalem, Tal Shalev invites readers to discover it through stories.
Set in Jerusalem and across Israel, these twenty-two stories introduce unforgettable characters navigating friendship, marriage, family, love, loss, and the quiet absurdities of everyday life. A wedding guest faces an impossible social dilemma. A husband struggles to save his marriage. Neighbors misunderstand one another, while parents and children search for common ground.
With humor, compassion, and keen observation, Shalev captures the moments that reveal who we are-not only as Israelis, but as human beings. Beyond the headlines are ordinary people confronting extraordinary choices, finding grace in unexpected places, and discovering that life's deepest truths often arrive disguised as its smallest moments.
Warm, witty, and deeply humane, Almost True: Stories from Jerusalem offers a rarely seen portrait of Israel while celebrating the complexity, resilience, and quiet beauty of everyday life.
Host: Renee Garfinkel
Guest: Tal Shalev

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