Shofar Submission Guidelines For Articles And Book Reviews

ARTICLES

Manuscripts should be 6,000 to 10,000 words and conform to the latest Chicago Manual of Style, specifically, the short note format with a full bibliography (see examples below). Please follow the latest SBL Handbook of Style for biblical and ancient text citations. Hebrew characters should all be transliterated; a transliteration chart is listed at the bottom of this section.

Manuscripts should be submitted as a Microsoft Word or rich text file online.

Articles that are judged suitable for the journal by the editorial board will be put through a double-blind peer-review process and sent to at least two experts in the article’s field. Please avoid any identifying references in your submission.

As you go through the online submission process, you will be asked for an abstract, a list of keywords, a contributor’s information brief, your e-mail address, and your mailing address.

FIGURES AND PERMISSIONS

Photographs, artwork, charts, or other images must be ready for photographic reproduction. All figures should be sent separately (not embedded in the text manuscript) as image files such as tifs or jpgs. They may be left in color but should reproduce well in black and white. The figures should be provided in print-quality resolution of at least 300 dpi, and close in size to the final publication size (about 4” wide). Locations of figures and full captions should be provided in the manuscript.

Permissions from photographers, artists, poets, musicians, or other copyright holders for figures or text must be provided when the final accepted manuscript is turned in. For information about copyright, permissions, and fair use, visit the American Association of University Presses’ FAQ at https://aupresses.org/permissions-faq/permissions-faq-part-i/.

We discourage the use of images for mere illustration, as fair use does not apply in such instances. Any images used must be necessary for the understanding of an extended analysis in the text.

MANUSCRIPT STYLE AND FORMATTING

Non-English text

Text not in English should appear in roman transliteration and in the most common spelling (e.g., tisch rather than tish). Non-English words and terms should be set in italics unless they are proper nouns (i.e., names or persons, organizations, etc.) or have been adopted into common usage in English (e.g., midrash; see the latest edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Edition for reference). When using a non-English term frequently in an article, you may simply italicize the term in the first instance and use standard formatting for any other iterations.

Spelling

Spelling should follow American English conventions rather than British English (e.g., use “analyze,” “behavior,” “etiology”). Please also use “antisemitism,” “antisemitic,” and/or “antisemite” (as opposed to “anti-Semitic,” e.g.).

Endnotes

Because a full bibliography will be provided, the short endnotes form should be used throughout. Please format endnotes using 1. author(s) or editor(s) last names, 2. shortened title of work, 3. page citation, and 4. substantive comments, if any. Please also note that, although the latest edition of CMOS does not prohibit the use of “Ibid.,” it does strongly discourage it. When referencing a work more than once, please simply repeat the shortened entry. These examples use works from the sample bibliography entries below:

Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!, 56.
Chilson, “The Border,” 45–46.
Bent, “Professionalization,” 132–34.
Bent, “Professionalization,” 132–34.
Horn and Wren, “Effulgence of the North.” Horn and Wren note that Paolo Uccello is working on an exhibition on Albert Smith's ascent of Mont Blanc in 1951 and on the “Mont Blanc Mania” which followed Smith's London show: it ran for 2000 performances over six years and helped to popularize mountain climbing in mid-Victorian Britain.

Further information about formatting bibliography works in Chicago style is available online at https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/chicago_manual_17th_edition/cmos_formatting_and_style_guide/chicago_manual_of_style_17th_edition.html.

Bibliography

Book

Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom!. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.

Book with editor or translator

Cortázar, Julio. Hopscotch. Translated by Gregory Rabassa. New York: Pantheon Books, 1966.

Book with author and editor

Tylor, Edward B. Researches into the Early Development of Mankind and the Development of Civilization. Edited by Paul Bohannan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964.

Article, chapter, essay, or short story in an edited collection

Chilson, Peter. "The Border." In The Best American Travel Writing 2008, edited by Anthony Bourdain, 44-51. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008.

Journal article

MacDonald, Susan Peck. “The Erasure of Language.” College Composition and Communication 58, no. 4 (2007): 585–625.

Journal article online

Bent, Henry E. "Professionalization of the Ph.D. Degree.” College Composition and Communication 58, no. 4 (2007): 1–145. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1978286.

Article from web page

Horn, John, and Ian Wren. “Effulgence of the North: Storefront Arctic Panorama in Los Angeles.” Dinosaurs and Robots. Last modified January 30, 2009. http://www.dinosaursandrobots.com/2009/01/effulgence-of-north-storefront-arctic.html.

Formating

The editing of your article will be faster and less costly if you follow these few guidelines for manuscript preparation. Please note that we need to strip most formatting in order to lay out your text in a typesetting program, so excess formatting such as centering heads and subheads, adding headers or footers or page numbers, and tabbing creates extra work.

Double-spaced text. Double-space all body text and the works cited.

Subheads. If you have more than one level of subhead in the text, alert the editor to this by using different styles for different levels: you might use boldface for top-level subheading, then use italics for second-level subheading. Using more than two subhead levels is discouraged.

Paragraph indents. Do not use the space bar to indent paragraphs. Use the paragraph dialogue box to format your paragraphs.

All caps. Do not type anything in all caps.

Indented text. For block quotes, epigraphs, and other indented material, do not use tabs, the space bar, or carriage returns to format. Either use the indent command in your word-processing program or indicate with a brief note to the editor what the material is.

Hebrew Transliteration Chart

א aleph ’

בּ bet b

ב vet v

ג gimmel g

ד dalet d

ה heh h

ו vav-consonant v

ו vav-vowel o, u

ז zayin z

ח ḥet ḥ

ט tet t

י yod-consonant y

י yod-vowel i

כּ kaf k

כ khaf kh

ל lamed l

מ mem m

נ nun n

ס samekh s

ע ayin ‘

פּ peh p

פ feh f

צ tsadi ẓ

ק kuf k

ר resh r

ש shin sh

שׂ sin s

ת tav t

Book Reviews

The page limit for a single book review is 600 to 1,000 words. Reviews should be submitted as a Microsoft Word or rich text file. Please list the book’s publication details at the top of the page, including number of pages, following the latest Chicago Manual of Style. ISBNs and prices are not needed. Some examples in Chicago style are listed below.

At the end of your review, list your name and your institution.

Please note that our book reviews do not contain footnotes.

As you go through the online uploading process, you will be asked for an abstract, a contributor’s information brief, and your mailing address.

We will only need your mailing address in order to send you a copy of the issue in which your review is published. Please simply leave the other fields empty.

Chicago Style Book References

Single author

Sherwin, Byron L. Faith Finding Meaning: A Theology of Judaism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. vi + 207 pp.

Single editor

Schwartz, Evan Z., ed. Roth Reviewed. New York: Haberer Press, 2010. 105 pp.

Multiple authors or editors
Jacobs, Susan, Steven Levitt, and Haley Green. Yiddish Films. Toronto: New Press, 2013. xi + 403 pp.

Garber, Ruth, and Larry David, eds. Essays on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Los Angeles: Oscar Press, 2013. 205 pp.