IIJS Film @ Home: America

On Monday, February 13, the Institute welcomed writer and director Ofir Raul Graizer, one of today’s most exciting Israeli filmmakers, via Zoom for its first Film Series event of 2023. Graizer participated in a Q&A with Stuart Weinstock, the IIJS Film Series Coordinator, about his latest film, America (2022).

Graizer’s first film, The Cakemaker (2018), was Israel’s official entry for the Best Foreign Film category at the 2019 Academy Awards and won six Israeli Academy Awards in 2018, including Best Film and Best Director. America was released to widespread acclaim in July 2022, premiering at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

In America, an Israeli man returns to Israel after 10 years in America, and has an encounter with a childhood friend and his fiancé that will change everyone’s lives. America is a story set between a flower shop and an ancient monastery, a swimming pool and the Mediterranean Sea, life and death—and somewhere in the middle. After the success of The Cakemaker, writer-director Ofir Raul Graizer returns with an affectionate tribute to 60s and 70s cinema.

The Q&A session is available to view in full below.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Appel and Kaye families.

Keep up with the IIJS on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter or join our mailing list for updates!

Book Talk: Josh Lambert, "The Literary Mafia"

On Monday, February 6, 2023, the IIJS welcomed Josh Lambert, author of The Literary Mafia: Jews, Publishing, and Postwar American Literature for an in-person book talk at Kent Hall.

This book’s inspiration comes from ubiquitous allegations throughout the 1960s and 1970s that publishing was dominated by a “Jewish literary mafia.” Although a conspiracy of Jews colluding to control publishing in the United States never actually existed, such accusations reflected a genuine transformation from an industry notorious for excluding Jews to one in which they arguably had become the most influential figures.

In The Literary Mafia, Josh Lambert examines the dynamics between Jewish editors and Jewish writers; how Jewish women exposed the misogyny they faced from publishers; and how children of literary parents have struggled with and benefited from their inheritances. Drawing on interviews and tens of thousands of pages of letters and manuscripts, The Literary Mafia offers striking new discoveries about celebrated figures such as Lionel Trilling and Gordon Lish, and neglected fiction by writers including Ivan Gold, Ann Birstein, and Trudy Gertler.

Dr. Lambert’s talk focused in particular on the role that Columbia University played in this history, centering on Columbia figures like Lionel Trilling and Ivan Gold. The professors, students, and community members in attendance engaged in dynamic discussions with Dr. Lambert during the Q&A session that followed his presentation.

Josh Lambert is the Sophia Moses Robison Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and English, and director of the Jewish Studies Program, at Wellesley College. His books include Unclean Lips: Obscenity, Jews, and American Culture (2014) and, co-edited with Ilan Stavans, How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish (2020). He's written recently for the New York Times Book Review, Jewish Currents, Literary Hub, and Lilith, and he serves as a judge for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Radov and Kaye families.

Keep up with the IIJS on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter or join our mailing list for updates!

2023 Yosef Yerushalmi Annual Memorial Lecture – Sarah Abrevaya Stein, "Eating on the Ground: Picnicking at the End of Empire"

On January 29, 2023, the Institute welcomed award-winning author and historian Sarah Abrevaya Stein in-person at Kent Hall for the 2023 Yosef Yerushalmi Annual Memorial Lecture.

The lecture honored the memory of Professor Yosef Yerushalmi, who held the Salo Wittmayer Baron Chair in Jewish History, Culture and Society at Columbia University from 1980 until 2008 and directed the Center for Israel and Jewish Studies—which would later become the IIJS—for those 28 years. He established himself as one of the world’s preeminent scholars in Jewish history, leaving an indelible mark on the field with his 1982 book Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory. Prof. Yerushalmi’s scholarship was notable, too, for its commitment to elucidating the history of Sephardic Jewry; his 1971 book From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto is no less than a foundational text in the study of Iberian crypto-Judaism.

This year’s lecture highlighted exciting new research approaches from a scholar building upon Prof. Yerushalmi’s legacy in Sephardic Studies. Dr. Sarah Abrevaya Stein is one of the world’s leading scholars on Sephardic, Middle Eastern, and North African Jewry, as well as the Ladino language. In her lecture, Dr. Stein discussed the novel approach that characterizes her current project: using archival photographs and photo albums to reconstruct Sephardic Jewish daily life in the late Ottoman Empire and in the post-Ottoman Balkans. A recording of her lecture, “Eating on the Ground: Picnicking at the End of Empire,” is available to view below.

Sarah Abrevaya Stein is the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Director of the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, and the Viterbi Family Chair in Mediterranean Jewish Studies at UCLA. The recipient of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, two National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and two National Jewish Book Awards, Stein is the author and editor of ten books, many of them award-winning. Her most recent books include Wartime North Africa: a Documentary History, 1934-1950 (Stanford University Press, with the cooperation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2022) and Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century (FSG/Macmillan, 2019), which was named a Best Book of 2019 by The Economist and an Editor’s Choice Book by the New York Times Book Review.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Knapp and Kaye families.

Keep up with the IIJS on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter or join our mailing list for updates!

IIJS Commemorates International Holocaust Remembrance Day With Mark Podwal Lecture: "Drawing On My Eastern European Roots"

On January 25, 2023, the IIJS hosted renowned artist Mark Podwal in-person at the Institute for its first event of the Spring 2023 semester. In a lecture titled “Drawing On My Eastern European Roots,” Podwal spoke about his ongoing work commemorating the Holocaust in Eastern Europe and the United States through art, frequently in collaboration with Eastern European communities. With International Holocaust Remembrance Day falling Friday, January 27, Podwal’s lecture and works proved a prescient demonstration of art’s power to preserve Eastern European Jewish heritage—and to serve as a way to process the tragedy that befell Eastern European Jewry in the Holocaust.

Tablet Magazine has called Mark Podwal “one of our great American Jewish artists.” Initially known for his drawings for The New York Times Op-Ed page, Podwal’s artworks have been exhibited and published worldwide. He is the author and illustrator of numerous books, many of which focus on Eastern European Jewish history, tradition, and folklore. His presentation showed images from his collaborations with Elie Wiesel, Harold Bloom, and Francine Prose. Works showcased also included his series “Kaddish for Dąbrowa Białostocka,” the Polish shtetl where his mother was born, as well as an image of the 13-foot mural he was asked to design for Dąbrowa’s high school wall. Moreover, his textiles for Prague’s gothic Altneuschul and Renaissance High Synagogue were discussed along with his current series, “Reimagining Polish Synagogues as Jewish Ceremonial Objects.” Elie Wiesel wrote, in his catalogue essay for Podwal’s first Prague Jewish Museum exhibition, “Such is the power of this artist: he captures what death has forgotten to take.”

Mark Podwal is an acclaimed artist whose works have been exhibited and published worldwide. Most of Podwal’s books—his own as well as those he illustrated for others including such luminaries as Elie Wiesel, Harold Bloom, and Francine Prose—focus on Jewish subjects. His art is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Israel Museum, among many other venues. Author Cynthia Ozick has given Podwal the Hebrew name Baal Kav Emet, or “Master of the True Line.” In 1996 the French Ministry of Culture named Podwal an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters; in 2011 he received the Foundation for Jewish Culture Achievement Award; and in 2019 the Czech Foreign Ministry awarded Podwal the Gratias Agit Prize. Additional honors include the American Book Award and the National Jewish Book Award. His latest artwork, a piece celebrating the Jewish holiday of Tu Bishvat, was featured by the Jewish News Syndicate.

A full recording of Mark Podwal’s lecture, and the Q&A following it, is available below.

This event was made possible by the generosity of the Radov and Kaye families.

Keep up with the IIJS on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter or join our mailing list for updates!

The Naomi Prawer Kadar Annual Memorial Lecture: "Adventures in Yiddish Storytelling and Their Consequences" with Dara Horn

On December 7, 2022, the Institute and the Naomi Foundation hosted bestselling author and scholar Dara Horn—and over 250 attendees—via Zoom for the Naomi Prawer Kadar Annual Memorial Lecture. Horn’s lecture discusses the works and style of writer Pinchas Kahanovich, who wrote under the pseudonym Der Nister (“The Hidden One”), a seminal figure in twentieth century Yiddish literature. By examining plot structures in Yiddish stories and the challenges Der Nister and many others brought to that tradition, Horn takes viewers for a deep dive into our own expectations for what stories should do, their role in Jewish life, and the disturbing possibility that stories actually can't save us. She highlights in particular the story “Fun mayne giter” (“From My Estates”), a powerful allegory for Der Nister’s firsthand experience of Jewish persecution in the Soviet Union in which a man’s home is overrun by bears who slowly eat his body away. Below is a summary clip from the conclusion of Horn’s discussion on Yiddish storytelling.

---

This lecture was made possible by the generosity of the Naomi Foundation.

IIJS FILM @Home: Persian Lessons

On Monday, December 5, the Institute welcomed acclaimed filmmaker Vadim Perelman via Zoom for a Q&A about his newest film, Persian Lessons, hosted by IIJS Film Series Coordinator Stuart Weinstock.

In Persian Lessons, Gilles, a Belgian Jew, is arrested by the SS and narrowly avoids execution by swearing that he is not Jewish, but Persian. This lie temporarily saves him, but also traps him in an apparently-impossible job: teaching Farsi to Koch, the SS officer in charge of the camp's kitchen, who dreams of opening a restaurant in Iran once the war is over. To stay alive, Gilles must invent a language from scratch, word by word, while also navigating the daily tortures and terrors of the concentration camp. Persian Lessons is the latest film by Vadim Perelman, the director of the Oscar-nominated House of Sand and Fog.

Persian Lessons is based on a 1977 short story, “Erfindung einer Sprache” (“Invention of a Language”), by Wolfgang Kolhaase. The short story is available to read in English here.

Zionism As Translation: On National Origins And Literary Originals

On Wednesday, November 30, we welcomed Danielle Drori, a winner of the 2022 Warren & Susan Stern New Perspectives in Jewish Studies Award, to the Institute for an in-person lecture.

Dr. Drori’s lecture examines the relationship between translation and Zionism, showing how early Zionist thought in Hebrew relied on translation as both a metaphor for the so-called Zionist return to origin and an effective device for disseminating nationalist sentiment. While scholars of Zionism have argued that early Zionist thinkers translated European nationalist thought into a Jewish idiom, few have asked what Zionism may teach us about translation as a driving force in Jewish intellectual history. This lecture suggests that translation functioned as the comfort zone of early Zionist thought: a locus where Zionist thinkers could feel neither fully Western nor fully Eastern, both European and non-European, victors and victims.

This lecture was broadcast virtually using Facebook Live, and a recording of that stream is available in full below.

Danielle Drori completed her doctoral studies at the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at NYU. She has taught courses on literary theory, modern Jewish literatures, nationalism, and gender at the University of Oxford, New York University, the City College of New York, and the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, where she is currently Associate Faculty. Her writing has appeared in several academic and popular publications, including Prooftexts, Dibur, Popula, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

This lecture was supported by the Warren & Susan Stern New Perspectives in Jewish Studies Award.

2022 Norman E. Alexander Celebration of Collections : "Fleeing France, Portraying the Plague, and Cultivating Commentaries"

On November 14, 2022, the Norman E. Alexander Library for Jewish Studies hosted its 2022 Celebration of Collections. The Celebration’s Zoom event featured lectures by Columbia’s Charlie Steinman, the University of Connecticut’s Susan Einbinder, and independent scholar Dan Klein discussing materials from the Alexander Library’s collections. The Columbia University Vice Provost and University Librarian, Ann Thornton, delivered introductory remarks. A recording of the event is available below.

The Jews of Eastern Europe, Part II

On Wednesday, November 9, the Institute welcomed Natalia Aleksiun, author of Conscious History: Polish Jewish Historians before the Holocaust, and Kenneth B. Moss, author of An Unchosen People: Jewish Political Reckoning in Interwar Poland for Part II of our Jews of Eastern Europe series.

Until the Second World War, Eastern Europe was home to the largest Jewish community in the world. This demographic concentration fostered the development of many important religious, cultural, literary, and political movements that continue to define Jewish life to this day. Focusing on recent scholarship that deals with Yiddish literature and Jewish life in interwar Yiddishland, this book series hopes to shed light on how the history of this important Jewish community a century ago has much to teach us today.

The Jews of Corfu: Between the Adriatic and the Ionian

From August 22, 2022 through December 16, 2022, the Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, together with the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), hosted an exhibition on the historic Jewish community of Corfu, in Greece. The Jewish communities in Corfu date back millennia, but due to its devastation by the Nazis during World War II, this vibrant and unique community is not very well known today. The exhibit featured illuminated ketubbot (marriage contracts), decorated prayer books, communal documents, and government legislation over the communities of Corfu from both of the libraries’ collections.

In partnership with the Jewish Museum of Greece (JMG), the Corfu Jewish community, the Jewish Theological Seminary and Columbia University Libraries held an event on Monday, October 31 called “The Jews of Corfu: Past and Present.”  The event highlighted a recent digital exhibition by the JMG on the Jews of Corfu, the exhibition at Columbia and JTS, and a conversation with members of the community on Jewish life in Corfu today. The following week, on Monday, November 7, the JTS and Columbia Libraries hosted an event focused on the technical efforts that made this exhibit possible, called “Red Inks and Gold Leaf, Parchment and Paper: Conservation of the Corfu Manuscripts.” This panel featured Morgan Adams and Katherine Parks, members of the conservation team that worked to make the materials safe for exhibition. Recordings of both of these events are available below.

A Permanent Beginning: R. Nachman of Braslav and Jewish Literary Modernity

On Wednesday, November 2, the Institute welcomed Yitzhak Lewis, author of A Permanent Beginning: R. Nachman of Braslav and Jewish Literary Modernity.

The Hasidic leader R. Nachman of Braslav (1772–1810) has held a place in the Jewish popular imagination for more than two centuries. Some see him as the (self-proclaimed) Messiah, others as the forerunner of modern Jewish literature. Existing studies struggle between these dueling readings, largely ignoring questions of aesthetics and politics in his work. A Permanent Beginning lays out a new paradigm for understanding R. Nachman’s thought and writing, and with them, the beginnings of Jewish literary modernity. Yitzhak Lewis examines the connections between imperial modernization processes in Eastern Europe at the turn of the eighteenth century and the emergence of “modern literature” in the storytelling of R. Nachman. Reading his tales and teachings alongside the social, legal, and intellectual history of the time, the book’s guiding question is literary: How does R. Nachman represent this changing environment in his writing? Lewis paints a nuanced and fascinating portrait of a literary thinker and creative genius at the very moment his world was evolving unrecognizably. He argues compellingly that R. Nachman’s narrative response to his changing world was a major point of departure for Jewish literary modernity.

IIJS@Home: Perfect Strangers

On October 23, we welcomed the director of Perfect Strangers, Lior Ashkenazi.

In this Israeli remake of the 2016 Italian hit, seven childhood friends with a lot of shared history and experiences meet for an extravagant dinner party. They agree to play a game that puts all their relationships to the test: every text message, call, and notification they receive on their phones must be revealed for all to see. "Perfect Strangers" is the feature directing debut of iconic actor, Lior Ashkenazi ("Late Marriage," "Walk on Water," "Footnote").

IIJS@Home: Let It Be Morning

On October 3, we welcomed the writer and director of Let It Be Morning, Eran Kolirin.

In Let It Be Morning, Sami, a white-collar telecom worker in the throes of a midlife crisis, returns to the Arab village of his birth for his brother's wedding. When he and his family try to return to Jerusalem, they find the entire village locked down by the IDF. A Kafkaesque fable ensues. Let It Be Morning is written and directed by Eran Kolirin, (The Band's Visit) and adapted from a novel by Sayed Kashua, (A Borrowed Identity).

The Netanyahus, An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family.

On Wednesday, September 14, the Institute welcomed Joshua Cohen, recipient of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, for his book The Netanyahus, An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family.

Corbin College, not quite upstate New York, winter 1959–1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian—but not an historian of the Jews—is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition. When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies. Mixing fiction with nonfiction, the campus novel with the lecture, The Netanyahus is a wildly inventive, genre-bending comedy of blending, identity, and politics that finds Joshua Cohen at the height of his powers.

Embed Block

Add an embed URL or code. Learn more

IIJS@Home: Jews Of Eastern Europe Series, Part I: Book Talk With Saul Noam Zaritt And Samuel Spinner

On Wednesday, September 21, the Institute had the first of a two part series on The Jews of Eastern Europe featuring Saul Noam Zaritt, author of Jewish American Writing and World Literature: Maybe to Millions, Maybe to Nobody and Samuel Spinner, author of Jewish Primitivism.

Until the Second World War, Eastern Europe was home to the largest Jewish community in the world. This demographic concentration fostered the development of many important religious, cultural, literary, and political movements that continue to define Jewish life to this day. Focusing on recent scholarship that deals with Yiddish literature and Jewish life in interwar Yiddishland, this book series hopes to shed light on how the history of this important Jewish community a century ago has much to teach us today.

IIJS@Home: Speer Goes To Hollywood

On August 16, we welcomed the co-director, co-writer and co-producer of Speer goes to Hollywood, Vanessa Lapa. Albert Speer was one of Hitler’s closest confidants and his chief architect, tasked with rebuilding Berlin as the capital of a global empire. Appointed Minister of Armaments and War production in 1942, Speer was responsible for 12 million slave laborers. And yet, even now, he has the reputation of being the "good Nazi" – a myth he constructed himself with his bestselling memoir, Inside the Third Reich.

Stuart Weinstock named New director for New Jersey Jewish Film Festival

The IIJS is delighted to congratulate Stuart Weinstock, IIJS Film Series Coordinator who has joined the New Jersey Jewish Film Festival as their new director. He will be running year-round film programming for the JCC Metro West in Livingston, NJ.

Avi Nesher's most recent film, "Image of Victory" is Now on Netflix!

Great news for everyone who joined us for our excellent Q&A with Avi Nesher (and if you missed it, here's the video). Nesher's most recent film, Image of Victory, is now streaming on Netflix in the US. Check it out, and be sure to join us for more exciting Film@IIJS events soon!

IIJS@Home: Forgiveness

On July 12, we welcomed the director of Forgiveness, Adar Shafran. In this comedy/drama set near the border with Gaza, longtime pals Shaul and Nissan (co-writers/directors Guy Amir & Hanan Savyon) attempt to rob a postal bank. The mismanaged job lands Shaul in prison. Years later, upon his release, Shaul is less than pleased to be greeted by the newly-religious Nissan, desperately seeking his forgiveness.

Agnieszka Legutko's interview with Columbia's Language Resource Center (LRC)

Agnieszka Legutko was interviewed by LRC's Said & Done podcast. Tune in to the full interview to learn about Agi’s background, Yiddish at Columbia, and other programs including Mapping Yiddish New York and the Naomi Fellowship. Stay tuned for Part II, coming soon.