Magda Teter | The New York Review of Books

What Happened

“We must allow the past to speak on its own terms, even when asking questions that are pertinent to the present.”

January 11, 2025

Jewish Middlemen, Archival Myopia

The story of two Jewish trading families during the last decades of the Regency of Algiers is skewed by being told through the perspectives of only European and American actors.

The Kings of Algiers: How Two Jewish Families Shaped the Mediterranean World During the Napoleonic Wars and Beyond

by Julie Kalman

December 5, 2024 issue

Found in Translation

A painstaking work of linguistic and textual archaeology unravels a forgotten story of pre-Ashkenazi Jews’ presence in medieval eastern Europe and their intellectual contributions.

The Cultural Legacy of the Pre-Ashkenazic Jews in Eastern Europe

by Moshe Taube

December 7, 2023 issue

Reckoning with a Troubled Past

Two European museum exhibitions made good-faith efforts to bear witness to their towns’ early libels against Jews, while not always avoiding the pitfalls of historically loaded discourse.

L’invenzione del colpevole: Il “caso” di Simonino da Trento, dalla propaganda alla storia [The Invention of the Culprit: The Case of Little Simon of Trento from Propaganda to History]

an exhibition at the Tridentine Diocesan Museum, Trent, Italy, December 13, 2019–September 14, 2020

Nieobecni—Z Dziejów Społeczności Żydowskiej w Sandomierzu [The Absent: The History of the Jewish Community in Sandomierz]

an exhibition at the Regional Museum in Sandomierz, Poland, October 23, 2020–April 2, 2021

March 23, 2023 issue

Letter

M. Barry Katz

Another Trace of Anti-Jewish Libel in Europe

August 17, 2023 issue

Rehearsal for Genocide

Three recent books conclude that the anti-Jewish pogroms following World War I help to explain what would take place a generation later.

Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets

by Elissa Bemporad

International Jewish Humanitarianism in the Age of the Great War

by Jaclyn Granick

In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918–1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust

by Jeffrey Veidlinger

June 9, 2022 issue

When Poverty Became Profane

Two recent books, by Debra Kaplan and Natan Meir, examine poverty and charity in European Jewish communities, looking at how a marginalized minority dealt with the problems of destitution and social welfare during periods of rapid change.

The Patrons and Their Poor: Jewish Community and Public Charity in Early Modern Germany

by Debra Kaplan

Stepchildren of the Shtetl: The Destitute, Disabled, and Mad of Jewish Eastern Europe, 1800–1939

by Natan M. Meir

April 29, 2021 issue