Michael Casper holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in History from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a B.A. in Religion from Reed College. He held fellowships at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies and served as a postdoctoral associate at Yale University, as well as a visiting research fellow and adjunct professor at NYPL and Fordham. Michael Casper co-authored A Fortress in Brooklyn (Yale University Press, 2021), which won multiple major book awards. 

Project Title:
"The Politics of Jewish Belonging in Interwar Lithuania"

Abstract:
This book project investigates how Lithuanian Jews positioned themselves vis-à-vis Lithuanians and the Lithuanian state in the era of democratic nation building and, after a military coup d’état in 1926, under an authoritarian regime. Even as Jews found ways of belonging to Lithuania they negotiated a public discourse that held that they were conditional participants in the Lithuanian national project. 

David Weinfeld is assistant professor of World Religions at Rowan University. He received his doctorate in History and Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University and his AB cum laude in history from Harvard. His book, An American Friendship: Horace Kallen Alain Locke, and the Development of Cultural Pluralism was published by Cornell University Press in 2022. His second monograph, “Southern Jews and the Lost Cause: Between Confederate Memory and Religious Identity,” is under contract with University of North Carolina Press. He is co-editing a volume on American Jewish intellectual history with Ronnie Grinberg and Kevin Schultz.

Project Title:
"Conversion to Judaism: An American History"

Abstract:
This project traces the history of conversion to Judaism in America. I examine institutional transformation, cultural and communal discourse, and personal reflections of Jews by choice. These developments shaped and were shaped by ideas concerning religion and secularism, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, as well as domestic and international politics.

Elissa Bemporad is Professor of History and Chair in East European Jewish History and the Holocaust at CUNY. A three-time National Jewish Book Award winner, she authored major works including Legacy of Bloodand Revolution, Civil War, and New Ways of Life. She co-edited Pogroms: A Documentary History and serves as series editor of Yiddish Voices; her scholarship appears in multiple languages. 

Project Title:
"Ester: A Revolutionary Jewish Woman between Tsarist Oppression and Stalin’s Terror"

Abstract:
Ester Frumkin’s life traces the promises and catastrophes of Jewish revolutionary politics in the early twentieth century. A leading Bundist, she championed workers’ rights, Yiddish culture, and Jewish autonomy, shaping key moments after 1905 and in 1919. Aligning with the Soviet system, she later saw it dismantle her achievements, leaving a legacy marked by influence and tragic betrayal. 

Gustavo Guzmán is a historian specializing in antisemitism in Latin America and the Caribbean. He holds a PhD in History from Tel Aviv University (2021), where he completed a dissertation on Chilean right-wing attitudes toward Jews. Guzmán is the author of Antisemitism and Philosemitism in Latin America, 1891–1991 (Routledge, forthcoming 2027), Allende, Pinochet, and the Jews (Routledge, 2026), and Attitudes of the Chilean Right Toward Jews (Brill, 2022).

Project Title:
"Jewish Responses to Antisemitism in Latin America, 1917–1991"

Abstract:
Although antisemitism in Latin America and the Caribbean was far less violent than in Europe, Jewish immigrants nonetheless faced hostility in their new countries. Jews in the region developed a range of strategies to respond to antisemitism, and this research examines those strategies, from Zionism to left-wing activism and beyond.

Hilit Surowitz-Israel is an Assistant Professor in the Religion Department at Rutgers University. She is co-editor of Jews in the Americas, 1776-1826. Her areas of publication and research are Religion in the Americas, Caribbean Religions, Sephardic Jewish History, Atlantic History, and Diaspora Theory. She is currently completing her manuscript, American Diasporas: The Creolization of Religion in the Colonial Atlantic World, which explores the formation of religious community, and the creolization and Americanization of religious identity among the Portuguese Jews in early modern Curaçao.

Project Title:
"Decentering the North: Curaçao and the Making of American Judaism"

Abstract:
This project reorients American Jewish historiography toward the Caribbean, arguing that eighteenth-century Curaçao served as a socio-religious hub of the Atlantic Jewish world. Drawing on archival sources, it demonstrates how religious practices, material culture, and intercolonial networks shaped diasporic identity and circulated religious authority across the Americas.

Ari Forsyth is a PhD candidate in History and a Graduate Fellow in Jewish Studies at the University of Washington. Their research explores race, gender, and disability in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States and in the modern Jewish diaspora, with an emphasis on the political and scientific work of ordinary women and girls. Ari’s professional experience includes positions at Pacific Northwest Quarterly, The Lakeland Village Preservation Project, and teaching in History and Disability Studies.

Project Title:
"Big Mother: A History of Jewish Social Work in the United States, 1880–1940"

Abstract:
This historical study examines how Jewish social workers in early twentieth-century US cities interacted with Jewish women and girls they deemed “deviant,” “defective,” and “delinquent”. It shows how, through these encounters, Jewish social workers enacted, policed, and ultimately reshaped  Jewish relationships to race, gender, and (dis)abilty. 

Joseph Weisberg is a PhD Candidate in the History Department at Brandeis University. He graduated summa cum laude with bachelor’s degrees in history and Spanish from Haverford College. He has recently served as a fellow of the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium, Harvard Slavery Remembrance Project, and American Jewish Archives. His work at the Center for Jewish History will concentrate on a significant collection of papers related to the Jewish merchant Aaron Lopez.

Project Title:
"Slavery, Commerce, and Judaism in an Early American Family"

Abstract:
This dissertation demonstrates the complex ways that slavery and Jewish life shaped each other in early America. Mining the business records of Jewish merchant Aaron Lopez and his family, it draws on insights gleaned from African American and Jewish studies to unearth previously overlooked connections between slavery, commerce, and Judaism in early America.

Daniel Mackler is a PhD candidate in Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University, where he studies modern Jewish intellectual history. He is interested in the theoretical course of Jewish secularization and the interaction of theology and nationalism as these show up in modern Hebrew writings of the 19th and 20th centuries. His article on Zechariah Frankel at Jewish Studies Quarterly was adapted from his undergraduate thesis on the same.

Project Title:
"God and the Origins of Zionist Historiography: Krochmal, Berdichevsky, Kaufmann"

Abstract:
Nahman Krochmal, Micha Yosef Berdichevsky, and Yehezkel Kaufmann are often seen as leading away from the theocentric scholarship of rabbinic Ashkenaz toward the secular nationalist historiography of the Jerusalem School. This dissertation argues that their own historical projects remained centered on a desire to know the God beyond the nation.

Shiyong Lu is a joint PhD Candidate in the History/Hebrew and Judaic Studies Departments at New York University, specializing in American Jewish history. She was a 2024-25 Mellon Predoctoral Awardee in Women’s and Public History at the New York Historical Society, and the 2025–26 Sid and Ruth Lapidus Graduate Student Fellow at CJH. In 2026-27, she will be the Association for Jewish Studies Dissertation Completion Fellow. Her research interests also include immigration foodways, Asian American experience and ethnic entrepreneurship.

Project Title:
"'We Offer Chicken Chop Suey on Sundays:' How Chinese Food Purveyors Encountered Jews in Twentieth Century America"

Abstract:
Shiyong Lu’s dissertation explores diverse interactions between American Jews and Chinese Americans in the twentieth century, with a focus on food and business. Her project aims to reveal Chinese restaurateurs’ active role in forming the deep-rooted attachment of American Jews to Chinese food, interethnic strategy making of both immigrant communities to situate themselves in the American society, and the interconnectedness between the two communities that evolved from food.

Sonia Gollance is Associate Professor of Yiddish Studies at University College London. Her first book, It Could Lead to Dancing: Mixed-Sex Dancing and Jewish Modernity (Stanford UP, 2021) was a National Jewish Book Awards finalist. She has co-edited journal special issues of Feminist German Studies and In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies. Her translation of Tea Arciszewska’s modernist play Miryeml (forthcoming Syracuse UP, 2028) was supported by a Yiddish Book Center Translation Fellowship.

Project Title:
"The Shomer Sisters, or, From Pulp to Plays: The True Story of a Yiddish Literary Family"

Abstract:
This project examines an overlooked corpus: Yiddish plays by women. Rather than focusing on gatekeeping by the literary establishment, this corpus invites us to consider how playwrights like the Shomer sisters mobilized family and creative networks, since producing a play is an inherently collaborative endeavor.

Akiva Schick is the Associate Editor of the Jewish Review of Books and has an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College.

Associate Editor at the Jewish Review of Books

Julia Kornberg holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University’s Spanish and Portuguese department, where she specialized in literary translation. She is the author of the novels Berlin Atomized (2024) and The Parties (2026) and has written for The Jewish Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, and  other publications.

Project Title:
"From the Gauchos to Borges: Jewish Culture in the Argentinian Imagination"

Abstract:
This project traces the evolving representation of Jews and Jewishness in Argentine literature from the late 19th century onward. From the myth of the Jewish gaucho and Alberto Gerchunoff’s ideal of integration to Jorge Luis Borges, Juan Perón, Kabbalah, and Jewish experiences of political violence, the project explores the myths, tensions, and transformations that have shaped Jewish life and identity in Argentina.