In his recent book Judaism: The Genealogy of a Modern Notion, Daniel Boyarin gives a historical account of the term “Judaism” and concludes that Jews had no word equivalent to it before the modern period. Boyarin therefore argues that, “from a linguistic point of view, only modern Judaism can be said to exist at all,” and that scholars who speak of ancient or medieval Judaism are engaging in an unscholarly anachronism. In her review, Adele Reinhartz writes:

Last week, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), an influential academic organization, announced that Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi of San Francisco State University would receive one of its annual awards, citing her “courage, persistence, political foresight, and concern for human rights . . . in her scholarship, teaching, [and] public advocacy” as well as her efforts to “advance the agenda for social change in Palestine, the United States, and internationally.” Those efforts, notes Jonathan Marks, include supporting the exclusion of the Jewish campus group Hillel from a university-wide event, and lambasting the school’s president for apologizing for that exclusion: