The complex relationship between Jews and non-Jews lies at the heart of teaching Jewish Studies at university level. A new online teaching resource provides access to a broad range of primary sources and high-quality commentaries by experts in the field, addressing the perceived lack of an easily accessible body of sources, which specifically deal with relations between Jews and non-Jews from a historical and contemporary perspective.
The website offers a range of commented primary sources from all periods of history, offering original and stimulating discussions of a broad range of topics and issues from an interdisciplinary perspective. Accessibility is a major concern of the project: as an online-based project, it can be freely accessed by anybody with an internet connection. All entries were written in jargon-free language.20
The main target group for the website are students and academics in higher education. Each peer-reviewed entry provides the historical and social context and background of a chosen primary source, includes the source in its original language and, where necessary, a translation into English, followed by a discussion of the source and a number of relevant questions that can be used as a starting point for discussion in the
classroom.
In the recently completed pilot stage of the project, we have mainly secured contributions from colleagues at other British universities. We are now commissioning additional contributions from all periods of history and geographical areas and invite scholars working on Jewish-Christian or Jewish-Muslim relations to suggest further contributions from their specific field of expertise.
Please contact us at jnjr(at)ed.ac.uk for suggestions and comments and for authors' guidelines if you wish to contribute to the site.
Project coordinators:
Dr Maria Diemling (Canterbury Christ Church University, UK) and Dr
Hannah Holtschneider (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Contact: jnjr(at)ed.ac.uk
URL: www.jnjr.div.ed.ac.uk.