Check out a few highlights from this week's seminar: fellow Marjorie Feld led the talk, From the Roots: A History of the Sustainable Jewish Farming Movement.

We're thrilled to share that 2024–25 fellow Wendy Zierler's new book, Going Out with Knots was just published today by University of Nebraska Press. www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/.../going-ou...

This #fellowtuesday we're spotlighting 2025–26 fellow Hannah Mayne. As part of this year's theme New Frontiers in Contemporary Jewish Life, Mayne's research focuses on transgressive piety: emerging practices of ultra-Orthodox Jewish women. katz.sas.upenn.edu/who-we-are/h...

2025–26 fellow Michal Kravel-Tovi launches the fellowship year by exploring the perils and opportunities entangled in the trope of the frontier as an analytical tool. Click below to read her conversation with Natalie Dohrmann. katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

There are 6 weeks left to apply to the Katz Center's 2026–27 fellowship, War and Peace in Jewish Thought and History. Click below to learn more! katz.sas.upenn.edu/scholarly-pr...

With an eye toward this year’s fellowship theme of New Frontiers in Contemporary Jewish Life, check out this "Collections Spotlight." katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

This #throwbackthursday check out Past Lectures and Contemporary(ish) Times, a round up of virtual lectures and classes compiled with the 2025–26 fellowship theme, New Frontiers in Contemporary Jewish Life in mind. katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

In his interview with Natalie Dohrmann, Mendel Kranz discusses the complex entanglement of antisemitism and Islamophobia in France, new ways of studying antisemitism, and the relationship between scholarship and the present moment. Click below to read! katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

This #fellowtuesday the Katz Center spotlights 2025–26 fellow Gal Levy. As part of this year's theme, New Frontiers in Contemporary Jewish Life, Levy's research topic is Diversity, Ethnicity, and Belonging: American Jewry Transformed? katz.sas.upenn.edu/who-we-are/g...

Click the link below to apply for the 2026–27 international fellowship program, a year focused on war and peace in Jewish history, thought, and culture. The deadline to apply is in seven weeks, November 10, 2025. katz.sas.upenn.edu/scholarly-pr...

Enjoy these highlights from Wednesday's seminar, Torah u'Maga: The Religio-political Theology of Contemporary Orthodoxy with fellow Joshua Shanes.

Check out the latest fellow Q&A! 2024–25 fellow Lennart Lehmhaus digs deeply into rabbinic sources to try to contextualize and understand the rabbis’ unique understanding of mental health. katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

We are thrilled to announce that beginning with our winter issue in January 2026, the Jewish Quarterly Review will become fully open access, including future issues and our whole 136-year back catalog! Learn more about this exciting change on the blog: katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

A $21M gift from the estate of alumna Louise A. Strauss will provide major support to the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, as well as the Rare Judaica Acquisitions Endowment Fund in Penn Libraries. Read the full announcement: https://bit.ly/4pqTtOL @katzcenterupenn.bsky.social

This #fellowtuesday the Katz Center spotlights incoming 2025–26 fellow Sarah Leiter. As part of this year's theme, New Frontiers in Contemporary Jewish Life, Leiter's research focuses “Children of Songbirds”: creating community from emergent ancestral Jewishness. katz.sas.upenn.edu/who-we-are/s...

Check out these highlights from the opening seminar of the 2025-2026 fellowship year, New Frontiers in Contemporary Jewish Life: Cultural Expansions, Encounters, and Experiments. Short-term fellow Michal Kravel-Tovi led introduced a discussion on Thinking from the Frontier. #FellowFriday

Unrest in the Roman Empire: A Discursive History is now open access. Download the whole book, including Katz Center associate director Natalie Dohrmann's contribution, for free here: www.campus.de/buecher-camp...

This #fellowtuesday the Katz Center spotlights incoming 2025–26 fellow Tamar Hess. As part of this year's theme, Hess's research focuses on contradictions in contemporary Israeli religious Zionist literature. katz.sas.upenn.edu/who-we-are/t...

In our current issue, Leslie Ribovich and Cara Rock-Singer stage a conversation with 20th century cultural critics James Baldwin and Rabbi Louis Finkelstein. Learn more on the blog! katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

For #CoffeeWithACodex on September 11 (on Zoom, at Noon ET), Judaica Special Collections Cataloging Librarian Louis Meiselman will bring out CAJS Rar Ms 491, a manuscript of the Yom Kippur Maḥzor for the rite of L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, written in Provence, 1663. Register here: https://bit.ly/41XvkFm

With an eye towards the Katz Center's 025–26 fellowship theme, New Frontiers in Contemporary Jewish Life, this #ThrowbackThursday check out past fellow, Alon Tam's exploration of Egyptian coffeehouse culture. katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

Today, the Katz Center spotlights incoming 2025–26 fellow Cynthia Gabbay. As part of this year's theme, New Frontiers in Contemporary Jewish Life, Gabbay's research will focus on shattering the abjad: new genres in the postnational Hebraic diaspora. katz.sas.upenn.edu/who-we-are/c...

Applications are open for the 2026–27 international fellowship program, a year focused on war and peace in Jewish history, thought, and culture. Deadline to apply is November 10, 2025. Apply below! katz.sas.upenn.edu/scholarly-pr...

This #fellowtuesday the Katz Center spotlights incoming 2025–26 fellow Marjorie Feld. As part of this year's theme, New Frontiers in Contemporary Jewish Life, Feld's research will focus on exploring the history of the sustainable Jewish farming movement. katz.sas.upenn.edu/who-we-are/m...

This #fellowtuesday the Katz Center spotlights incoming fellow Peter Decherney. As part of this year's theme, New Frontiers in Contemporary Jewish Life, his research will focus on amplifying the stories of African Jewish communities through photography and film. katz.sas.upenn.edu/who-we-are/p...

Pssst... have you heard? Edwin Seroussi's essay in the Jewish Quarterly Review's current issue, "Gossip, Rumors, Rehabilitation: Israel Najara's Shaming Revisited," is free to read and download through September 5! Read about it on the blog. katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

This #fellowfriday check out the latest Q&A with 2024–25 fellow Sarah Wolf where she explores the entanglement of body, law, and ritual in early Jewish ideas about mourning. katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

This #ThrowbackThursday In honor of the 2025–26 fellowship theme, New Frontiers in Contemporary Jewish Life, check out past fellow Aviad Moreno's essay exploring Jewish migration from the Middle East and North Africa to Latin America. katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

This #FellowTuesday the Katz Center spotlights incoming 2025–26 fellow Sara Byala. As part of this year’s theme, New Frontiers in Contemporary Jewish Life, Byala's research considers a new historical survey of contemporary African Judaism. katz.sas.upenn.edu/who-we-are/s...

We're delighted to congratulate Penn professor and former Katz Center fellow Simcha Gross on winning the 2024 Salo Baron Prize for the best first book in Jewish studies for Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity (Cambridge University Press). aajr.org/funding/baro...

Read the Jewish Quarterly Review 115.3 for: -Early Jewish head coverings -The Talmud & the Aramaic incantation bowls -Israel Naraja -The Palestinian vocalization signs -Yosef Yerushalmi & Walter Benjamin -James Baldwin & Louis Finkelstein Learn more and read two free essays!👇 tinyurl.com/ynu6htzd

Check out these featured books in the Katz Center's series with @pennpress.bsky.social, Jewish Cultures and Contexts. Click below find out how these titles spotlight Jewish life in the Muslim world. katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

This #FellowTuesday the Katz Center spotlights incoming 2025–26 fellow Tom Baker. As part of this year’s theme, New Frontiers in Contemporary Jewish Life, Baker's research will focus on conversion and intermarriage in the United States. katz.sas.upenn.edu/who-we-are/t...

This #ThrowbackThursday in honor of the Katz Center’s 2025–26 theme of New Frontiers in Contemporary Jewish Life, check out past fellow Ayelet Brinn's discussion with director Steve Weitzman about her research into the history of the Yiddish press. katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

Check out this new book from former Katz Center fellow Meirav Jones! England's Israel and the Foundations of Modern Political Thought was just published this month by University of Pennsylvania Press as part of the Jewish Culture and Context series. www.pennpress.org/978151282780...

This #fellowfriday check out Katz Center fellow Carmen Caballero Navas's hunt for women’s expertise as laced between the lines of male-authored medieval gynecological texts. katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

This #throwbackthursday in honor of the Katz Center’s 2025–26 theme of New Frontiers in Contemporary Jewish Life, check out this 2020 interview with cultural anthropologist and former Katz Center fellow Alanna E. Cooper: katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

Call for applications! The 2026–27 fellowship year is dedicated to War and Peace in Jewish Thought and History. Click below to learn more; applications are due on November 10, 2025. katz.sas.upenn.edu/scholarly-pr... #jewishstudies

Meet the incoming fellows for the 2025–26 academic year! katz.sas.upenn.edu/scholarly-pr...

We're delighted to share this news from 2022–23 Katz Center fellow Noëmie Duhaut!

This #fellowfriday read a conversation with Katz Center fellow Xandy Frisch as she examines changing changing religious purity laws as evidence of communal trauma. katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

This #ThrowbackThursday in honor of this year's theme, New Frontiers in Contemporary Jewish Life, we're revisiting a 2022 forum featuring scholars from the Haredi Research Group, "Hasidic Education in New York: A Clash of Law, Politics, and Culture." katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

In the Jewish Quarterly Review115.2, Christian Stadel traces the Hanukkah story from the Hasmonean era to the Babylonian geonim. Read about his essay "Probing the Sources of the Scroll of Antiochus: The Case for the Syriac Version of 1 Maccabees" on the blog! katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

We're delighted that Penn Today featured one of our recent Q&As. In this interview, Katz Center fellow Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar examines the lives of women from two of the Western world's most conservative religious groups tinyurl.com/4spcbe5b

We're delighted to share that 2012–13 fellow John Tolan just published a new book, Islam: A New History from Muhammad to the Present (Princeton University Press). tinyurl.com/y8um5mb6

Click below to read the Jewish Book Council's review of Longing and Belonging: Jews in the Modern Islamic World (@pennpress.bsky.social, 2025), a collaboration between former Katz Center fellows Nancy E. Berg and Dina Danon. www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/longing...

In honor of the Katz Center's 2025–26 theme of New Frontiers in Contemporary Jewish Life, this #ThrowbackThursday check out this interview with 2023–24 fellow Samantha Cooper as she explains the essential role of Jews in the history of the Metropolitan Opera. katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

Though June 20, get 40% off Jewish Culture and Contexts (and all other available books) with the @University of Pennsylvania Press Summer Reading Sale! Use code PENN-SUMMER25. Click below to check out the sale. www.pennpress.org/search-resul...

This #FellowFriday you gotta catch em' all! Read conversations with the 2024–25 fellows as they share the the interests and inspirations that animate their scholarship. katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...

Check out three fascinating new additions to the collection! katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/bl...