Who Gets to Define Jewish Studies?

To the Editor:
While a great deal of Aaron Hughes’s "Jewish Studies Is Too Jewish" (The Chronicle Review, March 28) is spurious and objectionable, we will restrict our comments to his cheap shots at the Jewish Review of Books. The JRB, he writes, is a magazine "in which scholars (some of whom are associated with other Tikvah programs) air personal grievances, review one another’s books, and trash those with whom they disagree."
It is hard, as William Paley famously noted, to refute a sneer, but when it is as unfounded as this, it isn’t that hard. Can he name the scholars who air their personal grievances in our pages? We know that he cannot. In fact, we routinely ask reviewers whether they have any relationship with the writer that might shape or impair their review. More...