Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz and Alaka Atreya Chudal "The Swasthani Vrata Katha" (Oxford UP, 2026)

The claim to moderate or modernist Islam in Indonesia is particularly contentious today, as these labels participate in the global politics of identity for Muslims past and present. Who gets to claim to be representative of an Islam that is modernist, progressive, or tolerant? What constitutes a traditionalist Islamic orientation? And why and for whom do these distinctions matter? In her new book Theologies of Remembering: Modernity, Ambiguity, and Transcendence in Islamic Indonesia (U California Press, 2026), Dr. Verena Meyer raises these questions in an ethnographic study of two major Indonesian Muslim organizations based in Yogyakarta: the Muhammadiyya and the Nahdlatul Ulama.

Drora interviewed Dr. Eveyln Maria Dean-Olmsted about her book, Coming of Age as Syrian Jewish Mexicans: The Pragmatics of Diaspora (Brill, 2025), published by Brill in 2026. Dr. Dean-Olmsted is a linguistic anthropologist who lived with the Jewish community in Mexico City for a time to research this book. The community includes four distinct groups: Ashkenazi, Aleppans, Damascenes, and Ottoman Sephardim. She explained how these communities formed in the early 20th century following migration from the Ottoman Empire and later Syria and Lebanon, with each group maintaining separate institutions for social and religious purposes. Evelyn noted that while these communities were once strictly separated, there is now more mixing between them, though specific ethnic and geographic identifications remain important within the community.

When American churches face financial difficulties, a disproportionately high number of Black churches reorganize under chapter 11 bankruptcy. There are no easy explanations for this distinction: not location, denomination, leadership structure, or the reasons for the loans. In Forgive Us Our Debts: How Black Churches Use Bankruptcy to Survive (U Chicago Press, 2026), legal scholar Pamela Foohey asks why, then, Black churches account for two-thirds of all congregations that file for chapter 11 bankruptcy every year.

Despite the long tradition of exploring the Tantric temple culture of Nampūtiri Brahmins within Tantric studies, the Śākta stream remains under-researched. The Cultural Heritage of Śākta Tantric Communities in India: Goddesses and Magicians in the Holy Groves of Kerala (Routledge, 2026) therefore enriches understanding of these largely neglected sampradāyas (spiritual traditions), bringing them to the attention of the wider academic community and ultimately shedding light on Śākta communities often marginalised in the discourses on mainstream Asian religions.

What if you could experience the opening chapters of the Torah as a graphic novel—without losing the depth, complexity, or ambiguity of the original text? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with writer and creator Jordan B. Gorfinkel to discuss The Koren Magerman Tanakh Graphic Novel: Bereshit, Volume 1: The Beginning (Koren Publishers, 2026), a visually stunning reimagining of Genesis.