JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW

JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW (jqr), learned journal published first in London and subsequently in Philadelphia. The Jewish Quarterly Review was established in 1889 by I. Abrahams and C.G. Montefiore, who acted as editors. The detailed editorial work was undertaken by Abrahams; Montefiore bore the expenses. Modeled on the scholarly journals published in Europe, the jqr attracted articles from the great savants of the day, and much original scholarship (e.g., Schechter's genizah discoveries) first appeared in its pages. But the jqr differed by giving space to more ephemeral topics, as well as including theological controversies. At the beginning of volume 20, the editors announced their intention to discontinue the "quarterly," stating that their hope that it "might be the medium for a living theology" had been disappointed, and that Abrahams was finding his editorial duties too onerous.

Cyrus *Adler, president of the newly established Dropsie College in Philadelphia, offered to take over the jqr, and a new series, published by Dropsie College and edited by Cyrus Adler and Solomon *Schechter, began in July 1910. At the outset of their regime, the editors observed that "the fact that the Review has passed from the hands of private individuals into those of a learned institution with a strict academic character… will necessitate the exclusion of all matter not falling within the province of Jewish history, literature, philology and archaeology…." Volumes 1–6 of the new series were edited by Adler and Schechter and volumes 7–30 by Adler alone. A.A. Neuman and Solomon *Zeitlin edited volumes 31–57, while Zeitlin was sole editor from volume 58 onward. After the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a considerable proportion of the space of the jqr was devoted to Zeitlin's views as to their authenticity.

The Jewish Quarterly Review is now published at the University of Pennsylvania for its Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. Considered to be the oldest English-language journal in the field of Jewish studies, the jqr strives to preserve the attention to textual detail that has always been characteristic of the journal, while attempting to reach a wider and more diverse audience.

bibliography:

A.A. Neuman and S. Zeitlin (eds.), Jewish Quarterly Review, Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Volume (1967), 60–68.

[Sefton D. Temkin]