A Peek Ahead and a Look Back

The venerable Jewish Quarterly Revew celebrates its centennial volume this year. The journal will be looking back at its early roots and will also reflect on its new directions. The current editor in chief, Elliot Horowitz, is well known not only for the breadth of his scholarship, but also his humor, biting irony, and general good-hearted inappropriateness. The man can, at times, be rip-roaring hilarious, and his humor should be linked to a kind of post-modern stance, making him the perfect person to bring the journal into the Future Shock.

And now, for a peek ahead:

100.1 due out this winter, includes an article by Josh Levenson on "Enchanting Rabbis: Contest Narratives between Rabbis and Magicians in Late Antiquity." Jordan Rosenblum publishes “'Why Do You Refuse to Eat Pork?': Jews, Food, and Identity in Roman Palestine,: and there is a certainly to be frequently downloaded symposium on Jim Kugel's How to Read the Bible. 100.2 (Spring) is devoted to rabbinics and will include:

Herod’s Jewish Ideology Facing Romanization: On Intermarriage, Ritual Baths and Speeches

Eyal Regev

Tradition and Truth: The Ethics of Lawmaking in Tannaitic Literature

Tzvi Novick

“Fruit and the Fruit of Fruit”: Charity and Piety among Jews in Late Antique Palestine

Michael L. Satlow

Josephus, the Rabbis, and Responses to Catastrophes Ancient and Modern

Jonathan Klawans

and my own little contribution,

Reading the Bavli in Iran

For a nice retrospective by Horowitz on JQR and the Bible, see here.

For a review of Rosenblum's forthcoming book, see here. (hat-tip: Adderabbi).