James B. Loef­fler is assis­tant pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia. He received a BA from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty and an MA and Ph.D. in Jew­ish his­to­ry from Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, where he was a Wexn­er Foun­da­tion Grad­u­ate Fel­low. As a U.S. Ful­bright Fel­low, he lived and trav­eled in Rus­sia and Ukraine in 2003 and 2004, con­duct­ing research for his doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion, “ ​‘The Most Musi­cal Nation’: Jews, Cul­ture and Nation­al­ism in the Late Russ­ian Empire.” His pub­li­ca­tions include sev­er­al aca­d­e­m­ic essays, the lin­er notes to the Gram­my-nom­i­nat­ed album, The Zmiros Project (Tra­di­ton­al Cross­roads, 2002), and arti­cles in The New Repub­lic, The Jerusalem Report, and Next­book. He has taught Jew­ish his­to­ry, lit­er­a­ture, and music in a vari­ety of aca­d­e­m­ic and com­mu­nal insti­tu­tions includ­ing Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, Bal­ti­more Hebrew Uni­ver­si­ty, the 92nd Street Y, and the Jew­ish The­o­log­i­cal Seminary.