Jewish Studies Quarterly Archives

A troupe of mummers in animal costumes performing in a Medieval Baronial Hall at Christmas, c. 1500

Nittel Nacht: The Jewish Christmas Eve

'Twas the night before Christmas, and an undead Jesus walked the earth. No wonder early modern Jews played games and sang songs to scare him off.

Otto Marseus van Schrieck - Stilleben mit Insekten und Amphibien, 1662

Cabinet of Curiosities

A Recipe for Flies and Frogs

And other wonders of spontaneous generation.

Editors' Picks

Arts & Culture

The Bossa Nova Craze

In the early 1960s, bossa nova was hugely popular in the US thanks to its reinvention as a social dance and its connections with upper-class culture.

Education & Society

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God: Annotated

Jonathan Edwards’s sermon reflects the complicated religious culture of eighteenth-century America, influenced not just by Calvinism, but Newtonian physics as well.

Politics & History

Guns in America: Foundations and Key Concepts

This non-exhaustive list of readings on the role of guns in US history and society introduces the field as a subject of scholarly inquiry.

Politics & History

How Stovemakers Helped Invent Modern Marketing

Most people in the United States have a stove in their kitchen. But how did this “must-have” come to be?

Politics & History

The Swedish-American Coffee Tradition

For many Swedish immigrants to the United States, coffee was a key to hospitality and a way to signal prosperity.

Nittel Nacht: The Jewish Christmas Eve

A Recipe for Flies and Frogs

Support JSTOR Daily