Jewish Studies Research Guide

This Jewish Studies Research Guide aims to assist students, researchers, and readers engaging with Jewish Studies and exploring Jewish Studies-related resources at Emory University. The tabs on the left-hand side help navigate this research guide.

As any guide of this nature, this library guide is a work in progress. It is constantly under construction and editing. I thank visitors who consult these pages for sending constructive feedback, comments, or questions in order to help me develop this guide so that it can provide more answers to more questions and become an increasingly richer and more inclusive tool for inquiry and learning.

Jewish Studies is the multidisciplinary field dedicated to the study of the Jewish Diaspora and Israel (past and present). In addition to scrutinizing the religious-literary-legal heritage of Jewish communities and individuals across geographical regions, it explores and produces an ever-growing circle of literary, scholarly, and artistic resources written in multiple languages and developed in multiple formats, that is in conversation with the rich Jewish intellectual and cultural heritage and with sources from outside the realm of Jewish studies.

The resources supporting study and research in Jewish Studies at Emory reach beyond the categories of Judaica (traditionally understood Jewish literature closely related to the study of Judaism) and Hebraica (sources related to the cultivation of the Hebrew language and sources, scriptural sources included). This guide focuses on Jewish Studies-related works pertaining to Jewish experiences, cultures, thought, religiosity, and creativity, often explored within broader social, cultural, political, and economic contexts. Part of the works listed here explore Jewish lives and consciousness and Judaism as their primary scope of study. Also mentioned here are items that articulate and promote Jewish agency and Jewish voices. Items described as related tangentially or not exclusively contribute to Jewish Studies. Works on traditional anti-Judaism or Jew-hatred and antisemitism, the modern, racialized sentiment and political movement targeting Jews, as well as the Holocaust are also included in this library guide for their importance in shaping Jewish thought, experience, and religiosity throughout the centuries.

The collection, integrated into Emory’s holdings, illustrates that, by participating in the scholarly explorations of Emory’s various departments and colleges, faculty members and students at Emory continue to broaden the scope of the modern academic field of Jewish Studies that emerged at the end of the eighteenth century.

The collection is currently estimated to include about 90,000 items housed in different library units: the Robert W. Woodruff Library, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Pitts Theological Library, and the Law Library. It is comprised of physical and electronic resources, archival materials and rare books, music and oral history recordings, DVDs, and more, widely ranging in genre, language, geographical origin, and age. From an early modern Middle Eastern Torah scroll, through the first printed editions of the Hebrew Bible, the papers of the civil rights activist Atlanta religious leader, Rabbi Jacob M. Rothchild, Yemenite and  Bukharan Jewish music recordings and recent Israeli movies, these records enrich and entertain the whole Emory community and visitors alike, while directly supporting the work of the TAM Institute for Jewish Studies and the Institute for the Study of Modern Israel. Some of the resources are available in digital form to non-Emory affiliates via the Emory Digital Collections. Likewise, the Holocaust Denial on Trial online project offers unique resources on the David Irving v. Penguin Books Ltd. and Deborah Lipstadt trial and Holocaust denial.