Saint Anne Frank
Pop culture has made Anne Frank into an icon, but one scholar notes that she was a terrified child trapped and killed by war, and should be seen as such.
Kendrick Lamar and Black Israelism
Kendrick Lamar namechecked Black Israelism on his last album. The history behind the religious doctrine dates back at least to the eighteenth century.
The Bacchanalian, Drunken, Role-Switching Carnival of Purim
The day-long Purim festival was transformed into a week-long carnival in the Dutch Caribbean colonies, as a rowdy celebration of inversion celebrated liberations of all kinds.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and Jewish Identity
How do identity politics work in extremis? The resistance in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising had to both suppress and amplify their Jewishness.
The Cooking Classes that Americanized Jewish Immigrants
At the end of the 19th century, a Wisconsin woman named Elizabeth “Lizzie” Black Kander tried to help immigrants assimilate, through the food they ate.
Gabrielle Berlinger
An interview with scholar and folklorist Gabrielle Berlinger, a professor of American Studies at the University of North Caroline Chapel Hill.
Summoning 17th-Century Scholars: Researching The Weight of Ink
Author Rachel Kadish tells us about how she used JSTOR to research her fascinating, complex new novel, The Weight of Ink.
Edith Stein, the Jewish Woman Who Became a Catholic Saint
In 1998, Pope John Paul II made one of his most contentious canonizations, elevating a Jewish woman named Edith Stein to the status of saint.
“Give Us Bread!”
In 1917, a food riot erupted in Brooklyn over the prices of staples. These forms of protest, sadly, are not quite yet ready for the dustbin of history.
Matzo and Oreos: Keeping Kosher in America
The koshering of America's food industry has mostly gone unnoticed. Yet most people who specifically buy kosher foods are not Jewish.