To most, the distinction between Jewish thought and Jewish studies likely appears slight.
To Josh Tapper, a Toronto journalist and graduate student at the University of Toronto’s Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies (CJS), shifting the focus of U of T’s Journal of Jewish Thought from the former to the latter constitutes a whole new direction for the publication.
Last spring, Tapper took over as executive editor of the journal, an online peer-reviewed scholarly periodical that CJS graduate students have produced annually since 2011, except for a hiatus in 2014.
Tapper stressed that despite the journal retaining – for now – its original name, he and associate editors Liza Futerman, a PhD student in comparative literature, and Alexis Lerner, a PhD student in political science, have been working toward a total rebrand, reflected in the 2015 issue, released Dec. 8.
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“”Jewish thought to me … is Jewish philosophy or Jewish thinking or the study of religious texts… Jewish studies takes us beyond that… There are historians, literary scholars, Yiddishists, political scientists, anthropologists, ethnographers – people in all sorts of disciplines – who can call themselves scholars of Jewish studies,” explained Tapper, whose graduate research looks at post-Soviet Jewish life and culture.
The journal will continue to provide a forum for CJS students and faculty, as well as for international scholars, to publish research, reviews, political and literary criticism and short fiction or poetry, but Tapper said it will focus less on philosophy and theology and be more interdisciplinary in scope.
“I saw an opportunity to tweak things and incorporate some of my own interests and those of people I work with… the past issues were lively, but I [wanted] to make this a… more inclusive journal of Jewish studies,” he said.
The new issue’s theme is “boundaries.” It includes a conversation with Daniel Boyarin, a professor of talmudic culture at the University of California, who delivered the Pearl and Jack Mandel Lecture in Jewish Studies at U of T; a piece by Jason M. Schlude, an assistant professor of classics at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University in Minnesota, which examines Herod the Great’s crossing of personal, religious and political borders; a piece by U of T doctoral student and associate editor Alexis Lerner about Russian anti-Semitism in the era of President Vladimir Putin; and a piece by Noam Lemish, a pianist, composer and doctoral candidate in jazz performance at U of T, who fused an unrecorded Soviet Yiddish song from the 1940s with another Soviet song – the article includes reflections on his process, musical notations and an MP3 sample of the music.
“To have the piece on Herod at one end and the piece on Russian anti-Semitism on the other speaks to the breadth of possibility when it comes to content for this journal, showing that Jewish studies can trace from the Second Temple period all the way to 2015,” Tapper said.
He said the versatility of the articles and the innovative presentation of works like Lemish’s speak to the new editorial mandate as being more accessible – a growing trend in academic scholarship. “I want this to push the boundaries of digital scholarship… to find a middle ground between scholarship that’s rooted in tradition… but also something that people who aren’t scholars can read and appreciate.”
Part of this push will involve revamping the website, something he hopes to do in the new year, and using social media to promote individual articles to a wider readership.
Tapper’s journalistic background – he was a reporter at the Toronto Star and has written for publications such as the New York Times, Washington Post and the Forward – has likely played a role in his re-imagining of the journal, but he stressed, “I’m not trying to make this more journalistic or dumb it down, but I want it to be accessible.”
Anna Shternshis, acting director of CJS and an associate professor in Yiddish studies, said the journal provides an opportunity for students to present their work in less traditional, but no less rigorous, ways, and that the new direction allows for content to reach across diverse areas of Jewish studies.
“The beauty of this is it’s a project that’s fully run by graduate students. So they get to choose what’s interesting, what disciplines should speak to each other and the format,” Shternshis said.
“It’s very rare for a centre of Jewish studies at a major university to provide such a forum for grad students to get their publications out, and in a way that’s really not stuffy, that’s interesting and speaks to academics and non-academics.”
