Historiographical scholarship tracking the responses, including theological, of a small people caught up in the swell of impacted global crises, here being primarily plagues and pandemics. As editors Elissa Bemporad, Julia Phillips Cohen, and Ari Y. Kelman suggest, the shift here in a general way is from History to Nature. The reference to Dubnov reflecting on his writing of medieval history during the early twentieth century suggests that Jewish Studies has heretofore been preoccupied with the former (History) at the expense of the latter (Nature). The two, of course, overlap. But the disasters in this volume are not the usual ones foregrounded in Jewish Studies, i.e. gentile violence against Jews, but rather so-called natural disasters behind which the hand of God? Kudos to the editors at Jewish Social Studies.
- Volume 26, Number 1, Fall 2020
- Epidemics and Other Disasters: Views from Jewish Studies
- Issue
Jewish Social Studies recognizes the increasingly fluid methodological and disciplinary boundaries within the humanities and is particularly interested both in exploring different approaches to Jewish history and in critical inquiry into the concepts and theoretical stances that underpin its problematics. It publishes specific case studies, engages in theoretical discussion, and advances the understanding of Jewish life as well as the multifaceted narratives that constitute its historiography.

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Volume 26, Number 1, Fall 2020
Table of Contents
- Ottoman Jews and Plagues
- Yaron Ayalon
- pp. 46-54
- Learning from Disasters Past: The Case of an Early Seventeenth-Century Plague in Northern Italy and Beyond
- Dean Phillip Bell
- pp. 55-66
- “Jewish Fever”: Myths and Realities in the History of Russia’s Typhus Epidemic, 1914–22
- Polly Zavadivker
- pp. 101-112
- Israel’s Shaar Ha’aliya Camp through the Lens of COVID-19: Does the History of Quarantine Matter?
- Rhona Seidelman
- pp. 113-121
- AIDS Was Our Earthquake: American Jewish Responses to the AIDS Crisis, 1985–92
- Gregg Drinkwater
- pp. 122-142
- “Hands Up! Don’t Shoot! We Want Summer Camp!”: Orthodox Jewry in the Age of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter
- Joshua Shanes
- pp. 143-155