Strictly Kosher Reading: 2012

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

SKR on Seforim Blog

A 10-page selection from SKR was recently posted on the fascinating "Seforim Blog." (Thanks to Academic Studies Press for allowing them to publish it!)

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

The Little Victorian Professor

This has to be the most thought-provoking review that has yet been published, and I'm happy to see what issues get raised from cross-discipline conversations. Professor of Victorian literature, Miriam Burstein, has posted a review on her blog, The Little Professor. She asks some fascinating questions that would not have come up with in the little world of "Harediology."

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

H-Judaic

If you are not familiar with the fantastic collection of academic listserv's, H-net, you should check it out. It is a great source of collaboration and ideas. Their Jewish studies list, H-Judaic, just published a very positive review of SKR.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Life in Israel

A Beit Shemesh blogger at "Life in Israel," liked SKR but found it hard to read (Sorry!).

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Israel's Leading News Website

Ynet, a major news website here in Israel, summarized the book based on an interview with me. I might have framed things differently, but they seem to have gotten it basically right.

Prof. Martin Lockshin

Prof. Martin Lockshin, in his regular column in the Canadian Jewish News, offers a thorough and thoughtful review of SKR. It's not available online, but I have posted a PDF here.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Jewish Book Council

The Jewish Book Council has posted a short "just the facts" review on its website. Check it out here.

Strictly Kosher Reading

For centuries, fervently observant Jewish communities have produced thousands of works of Jewish law, thought, and spirituality. But in recent decades, the literature of America's Haredi [ultra-Orthodox] community has taken on brand-new forms: self-help books, cookbooks, monthly magazines, parenting guides, biographies, picture books, even adventure stories and spy novels -- all produced by Haredi men and women, for the Haredi reader. What's changed? Why did these works appear, and what do they mean to the community that produces and consumes them? How has the Haredi world, as it seeks fidelity to unchanging tradition, so radically changed what it writes and what it reads? In answering these questions, Strictly Kosher Reading points to a central paradox in contemporary Haredi life. Haredi Jewry sets itself apart, claiming to reject modern secular culture as dangerous and as threatening to everything Torah stands for. But in practice, Haredi popular literature reveals a community thoroughly embedded in contemporary values. Popular literature plays a critical role in helping Haredi Jews to understand themselves as different, even as it shows them to be very much the same.