In Conversation: An OUP Podcast

When World War I began, the Russian Empire was home to more than 5.7 million Jews, the most densely settled Jewish population in the world. Thirty years later, by 1945, only remnants of this civilization remained. The years of World War I, from 1914 to 1918, launched nearly all the forces that led to this epic destruction.

In A Nation of Refugees: Russia's Jews in World War I, Polly Zavadivker tells how Jewish civilians experienced that war and its epicenter of violence on the Eastern Front. World War I transformed the lives of East European Jews in ways that were second only to the Holocaust in their magnitude. State violence and forced migration determined many aspects of Jewish wartime and revolutionary experience. These policies not only destroyed much of traditional Jewish life but also inadvertently compelled a transformation of Jewish civil society. The collapse of Russian imperialism enabled the growth of an empire-wide humanitarian campaign to rescue the “nation of refugees,” whose plight embodied that of the Jewish nation itself. By exploring this history of Jewish humanitarianism during World War I, Zavadivker provides the origin stories of key leaders and public institutions that served East European Jewry in the interwar years and during the Holocaust.

Join YIVO for a discussion with Zavadivker about this book, led by historian Eliyana Adler.

Buy the book: here

This book talk originally took place on February 25, 2025.

Hindu nationalism is transforming India as an increasingly dominant
ideology and political force. But it is also a global phenomenon, with
sections of India’s vast and influential diaspora drawn to, or actively
supporting, right-wing Hindu nationalism. Indians overseas can be seen
as an important, even inextricable, aspect of the movement. This is not a
new dynamic—diasporic Hindutva has grown over many decades.

Hindu Nationalism in the Indian Diaspora: Transnational Politics and British Multiculturalism
(Oxford University Press, 2024) explores how and why the movement
became popular among India’s diaspora from the second half of the
twentieth century. It shows that Hindutva ideology and its plethora of
organizations have a distinctive resonance and way of operating
overseas; the movement and its ideas perform significant, particular
functions for diaspora communities.Edward T.G. Anderson argues that
transnational Hindutva cannot simply be viewed as an export: this
phenomenon has evolved and been shaped into an important aspect of
diasporic identity, a way for people to connect with their homeland. He
also sheds light on the impact of conservative Indian politics on
British multiculturalism, migrant politics and relations between various
minority communities.

Sachin Nikarge has
extensively worked in consultative capacity with prominent
foreign/diplomatic missions across both ‘hard’ as well as ‘soft’ power
domains.

What does it really mean to go "beyond the letter of the law"? In
this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with scholar Deborah Barer to
discuss her book Going Off Script: Improvisational Judgment in the Talmud, which offers a surprising new interpretation of one of the Talmud's most enduring ethical concepts: lifnim mi-shurat ha-din.

For generations, lifnim mi-shurat ha-din has been understood
to mean acting "beyond the letter of the law"—choosing generosity or
compassion over strict legal obligation. Barer challenges that
assumption. Through a close reading of classical rabbinic texts, she
argues that the Talmud originally used the phrase not to describe a
particular kind of moral act, but a particular way of making decisions.
Rather than rigidly following established rules, rabbis sometimes
improvised, departing from expected patterns in pursuit of the right
outcome for a unique case.

By tracing how this idea developed from in the Talmud, Barer uncovers
how one phrase evolved into a cornerstone of Jewish ethical thought.
Her work invites readers to rethink the relationship between law and
morality, showing that creativity and flexibility have always been part
of the rabbinic legal tradition.

Together, Barer and Katz explore why improvisation matters in Jewish
law, how the Talmud balances consistency with compassion, and what this
ancient model of decision-making can teach us about navigating difficult
moral questions today.

Deborah Barer is Senior Faculty with the Shalom Hartman Institute of
North America. She holds a PhD in Religious Studies from the University
of Virginia, with an emphasis on rabbinic literature and Jewish ethics.
Previously, she was Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Towson
University, and she has also taught at Oberlin College and for the
Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies (North America). She served as the
editor of the Journal of Textual Reasoning.

Rabbi Marc Katz is the senior Rabbi at Temple Ner
Tamid in Bloomfield, NJ. He is the author of Yochanan's Gamble:
Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life (JPS)

The Swasthani Vrata Katha is the most widely read, recited, and listened to Hindu devotional text, especially of local indigenous origin, among Hindu laity in Nepal. Dedicated to and itself the physical embodiment of a local goddess named Swasthani, Nepali Hindus recite the Swasthani every year from cover to cover over the winter month of Magh (January–February). It is a collection of widely circulating Hindu myths about gods, demons, and divine dalliances that forefront Shiva, Sati, and Parvati but it is also a local folk story about women’s real, everyday hardships and the rewards of attending to one’s dharma and devotion to the goddess Swasthani. The Swasthani Vrata Katha: A Secret Vow to the Goddess (Oxford UP, 2026) is the first full-length English translation of the Swasthanifrom the original Nepali. Just like Parvati made Swasthani and her story known beyond the realm of the gods to the human realm, so, too, this translation makes them known beyond Nepal to a broad English-speaking audience.

Open Access: here

Amy Weitzman interviews Emily Sneff on her new book When the Declaration of Independence Was News and the graduate school experience.

In 1776 people could hear the Declaration of Independence proclaimed in public squares and could read it in the pages of their local newspapers. Stories of the Declaration typically recount the work that took place inside the Continental Congress, focusing on the men tasked with drafting the text. Although Congress declared independence, the work of spreading the news involved printers, post riders, ship captains, civic leaders, soldiers, clerks, orators, preachers, diplomats, and translators.

When the Declaration of Independence Was News reveals the stories behind how the Declaration was communicated in the United States and around the Atlantic. Tracing the travels of the founding document of the United States from Philadelphia to New York, Boston, Charleston, London, Leiden, Paris, and beyond, Emily Sneff shows how people both celebrated the Declaration and critiqued it. In the weeks after the document was penned, it was printed in the columns of newspapers, translated into German and French, and shared with Native American allies. The document induced some people to make public their privately held beliefs about whether they wanted the United States to be independent or to reconcile with King George III. The Declaration was met with unique circumstances everywhere it went, and people modified the text along the way. The questions of who experienced the news of independence, when, and how reveal an expansive and complex history of a critical moment in the American Revolution.

Published for the 250th anniversary of American independence, When the Declaration of Independence Was News returns to a time before the legacy of these words and the outcome of the war against Great Britain were known to reconsider what the founding of the United States meant to the people who were living through it.