Yosie Levine’s “Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi and the Battlegrounds of the Early Modern Rabbinate” (Littman Library) is an engaging read, leavening impeccable scholarship with colorful anecdotes. Daniel Yolkut’s review shows the value in understanding the book’s subject in his Early Modern mercantile milieu, and praises Levine for championing the role of “rabbi-scholar.”

Sima Zalcberg-Block’s Hebrew book, “They Are Still Sitting and Sewing: The Toldot Aharon Hasidic Women” (Bialik Institute), opens a rare window into one of Israel’s most closed Hasidic sects. Through years of trust-building and fieldwork, she brings forward women’s voices long absent from scholarship—revealing resilience, meaning, and agency within strict gender roles. Menachen Keren-Kratz reviews what he call “a landmark study of faith, gender, and cultural survival.”