Jeremy Eichler in Conversation with Jeremy Dauber
Mar
20
12:00 PM12:00

Jeremy Eichler in Conversation with Jeremy Dauber

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Join us in-person at 617 Kent Hall at 12:00 PM on Wednesday, March 20, for a conversation with Jeremy Eichler and Jeremy Dauber.

An award-winning writer, scholar and critic, Jeremy Eichler is the author of Time’s Echo, a new book on music, war and memory that has been named “History Book of the Year” by The Sunday Times and hailed as “the outstanding music book of this and several years” by The Times Literary Supplement. Published by Knopf in North America and Faber in the U.K., Time’s Echo was a finalist for the UK’s premier non-fiction prize, and is currently being translated into six languages.

Eichler is the recipient of an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for writing published in The New Yorker, a fellowship from Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and a Public Scholar award from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He earned his PhD in modern European history at Columbia University and has taught at Brandeis University. His criticism has appeared in The New York Times and many other national publications, and since 2006, he has served as chief classical music critic of The Boston Globe. For more information, please see www.timesecho.com.

Jeremy Dauber is the Atran Professor of Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture and Director Emeritus of Columbia's Institute of Israel and Jewish Studies; he also teaches in American studies. He is the author of Antonio's Devils: Writers of the Jewish Enlightenment and the Birth of Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature (Stanford University Press, 2004); In the Demon's Bedroom: Yiddish Literature and the Early Modern (Yale University Press, 2010); The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem (Schocken Books, 2013); and Jewish Comedy: A Serious History (W.W. Norton, 2017). He is also the co-editor and -translator, with Joel Berkowitz, of Landmark Yiddish Plays (SUNY Press, 2006), an anthology of Yiddish drama. He is also editor, with Barbara Mann, of Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History, a leading journal in the field of Jewish literature.

His research interests include Yiddish literature; comparative Jewish literature; the Yiddish theater; American Jewish literature and popular culture; and American literature and popular culture.


Supported by the generosity of the Radov and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

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Rachel Smith, "Superstition and the Haunting of Sephardic Modernity"
Mar
26
12:00 PM12:00

Rachel Smith, "Superstition and the Haunting of Sephardic Modernity"

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Join us in-person at 617 Kent Hall on Tuesday, March 26, at 12:00 PM for a lecture with Rachel Smith, the Mark and Anla Cheng Kingdon Postdoctoral Fellow in Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University.

This talk examines ethnographic writing about superstition among Sephardic communities of the late Ottoman Empire. I demonstrate how Sephardic reformers deployed the category of superstition in efforts to draw new social and intellectual boundaries that condoned various social groups—including women, the elderly, and traditional rabbis—and the knowledge they held as superstitious. I show how this was part of a larger political project to assert their newfound authority as an intellectual class at a time of great social, cultural, and political upheaval across the empire.

Rachel Smith is the Mark and Anla Cheng Kingdon Postdoctoral Fellow in Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University. Her research examines the history, politics, and ethics of knowledge production and representation among Ottoman Sephardic communities. Against the backdrop of expanding empires, the rise of anthropology, and shifting notions of race, she explores how travelers and teachers, rabbis and journalists produced, circulated, and mobilized ethnographic and racialized knowledge in service of different visions of reform. She earned her PhD in History from the University of California Los Angeles, and holds a BA/MA in Linguistic Anthropology from New York University and a dual-MA in Jewish History and Education from the Jewish Theological Seminary.


Supported by the generosity of Mark and Anla Cheng Kingdon and the Kaye family.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

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Amir Reicher, "From Eretz Yisrael to Adamah: On Metaphysical Detachment and the Turn to the Concrete Among West Bank Settlers (or: What Drives Settlers to Grab More Land)"
Apr
3
6:00 PM18:00

Amir Reicher, "From Eretz Yisrael to Adamah: On Metaphysical Detachment and the Turn to the Concrete Among West Bank Settlers (or: What Drives Settlers to Grab More Land)"

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Join us in-person at 617 Kent Hall at 6:00 PM on Wednesday, April 3, for a lecture with Amir Reicher (Hebrew University), a recipient of the IIJS’ Kingdon New Voices in Israel and Jewish Studies Award for 2023-2024.

Over the past two decades, the building of “illegal outposts” became the main tool in advancing the West Bank settlement project. Established deep within the territories, the people who live in these outposts – mostly second-generation settlers born in “Judea and Samaria” to parents from the Gush Emunim movement – are considered the most radical and “fundamentalist” within West Bank settlement society. In 2019, I immersed myself in one of these communities for nearly two years of anthropological research.

In this talk, I aim to unravel the mindset driving a specific segment of outpost settlers, who, as we shall see, diverge from the nationalist-messianic vision of their parents’ generation. Specifically, I will demonstrate how through a process of ‘metaphysical detachment,’ these frontier settlers gravitate toward the physical realm in a desperate quest for an existential anchor. I argue that rather than the abstract and the transcendental what drives these people is a radical turn to the concrete and tangible. In this way, I will analyze how a sense of religious crisis serves to infuse their settler-colonial practices with ever more energy. By tracing this process, I will reflect on contemporary political dynamics unfolding in the West Bank and outline the emergence of what I see is a distinct religious modality invented in the outposts.

Amir Reicher holds a PhD in Anthropology from the CUNY Graduate Center. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at the Hebrew University. He is an anthropologist specializing in the anthropology of religion and settler-colonialism. His research is based on almost two years of anthropological fieldwork among West Bank settlers, during which he lived in an illegal outpost settlement in the Judean Desert area. He is currently completing his book manuscript titled Between Two Messiahs, in which he presents a granular account of how the West Bank settlement project expands, as he analyzes the rise of a post-messianic imagination among a specific segment of settlers. In doing so, at the center of his work is an investigation of the unfolding of political violence in the aftermath of messianic and ideological fervor.


Supported by the generosity of Mark Kingdon and Anla Cheng Kingdon, as well as the Radov and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

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2023-2024 Naomi Prawer Kadar Annual Memorial Lecture - Ilan Stavans, "Yiddish and Ladino: Forking Paths"
Apr
8
12:00 PM12:00

2023-2024 Naomi Prawer Kadar Annual Memorial Lecture - Ilan Stavans, "Yiddish and Ladino: Forking Paths"

This event, initially scheduled for October 25th, 2023, has been rescheduled to April 8, 2024. We warmly invite you to join us in April for this lecture.

Please be in touch with us at iijs@columbia.edu with any questions.

Join the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies & The Naomi Foundation on Monday, April 8, at 12:00 PM, for the 2023-2024 Naomi Prawer Kadar Annual Memorial Lecture with academic and cultural critic Ilan Stavans, a virtual talk titled “Yiddish and Ladino: Forking Paths.”

This event is a virtual webinar on ZOOM.

Yiddish and Ladino have unique histories, each reflecting the sprawling civilizations they fostered. What elements do they share? How do we define their individual character? Was their route foreseeable? At what points have the two intersected and what has come from that encounter? Do the two have the same survivalist spirit? Born and raised in Mexico City in a Yiddishist milieu and among fervent Ladinists, Ilan Stavans reflects on the divergent, at times perplexing, and even tragic routes these two Jewish languages have taken.

Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, the publisher of Restless Books, and a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary. The recipient of numerous international awards and prizes, his books for adults and children include On Borrowed Words, Dictionary Days, Resurrecting Hebrew, How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish, Selected Translations: Poems 2000-2020, and The People's Tongue: Americans and the English Language. He has rendered Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, and Juan Rulfo into English, Emily Dickison and Elizabeth Bishop into Spanish, Isaac Bashevis Singer from Yiddish, Juan Gelman from Ladino, Yehuda Halevi and Yehuda Amichai from Hebrew, the Popol Vuh from K'iche',and Don Quixote, Alice and Wonderland and The Little Prince into Spanglish. An essayist, cultural commentator, linguist, translator, and editor, his work, translated into twenty languages, has been adapted into film, theater, TV, radio, and music. 

This event is supported by the generosity of the Naomi Foundation.

The Naomi Prawer Kadar Annual Memorial Lecture provides an opportunity for the public to explore topics of Yiddish language and linguistics, the history of Yiddish, Yiddish children’s literature and education. The lecture is supported by the Naomi Prawer Kadar Foundation, Inc., which is dedicated to reimagining education. The Naomi Foundation champions Yiddish, Naomi’s lifelong passion, as a vibrant, rich, and contemporary language. The Naomi Foundation advances the teaching and learning of Yiddish, particularly in academic and scholarly settings.

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2024 Yosef Yerushalmi Annual Memorial Lecture with Pierre Birnbaum
Apr
11
12:00 PM12:00

2024 Yosef Yerushalmi Annual Memorial Lecture with Pierre Birnbaum

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Join the IIJS and the Columbia Alliance Program in-person at 617 Kent Hall at 12:00 PM on Thursday, April 11, for the 2024 Yosef Yerushalmi Annual Memorial Lecture with French historian and sociologist Pierre Birnbaum.

Pierre Birn­baum is a his­to­ri­an and polit­i­cal soci­ol­o­gist who is pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Paris 1 Pan­théon-Sor­bonne. His books in Eng­lish include Paths of Eman­ci­pa­tion: Jews, States, and Cit­i­zen­ship (coedit­ed with Ira Katznel­son, 1995), Jew­ish Des­tinies: Cit­i­zen­ship, State, and Com­mu­ni­ty in Mod­ern France (2000), The Anti-Semit­ic Moment: A Tour of France in 1898 (2011), and Léon Blum: Prime Min­is­ter, Social­ist, Zion­ist (2015). His most recent book, Tears of His­to­ry: The Rise of Polit­i­cal Anti­semitism in the Unit­ed States, was published by Columbia University Press in 2023.


Supported by the generosity of the Knapp and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

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Professor Dan Miron Lecture in Hebrew Literature with Maya Arad
Apr
17
12:00 PM12:00

Professor Dan Miron Lecture in Hebrew Literature with Maya Arad

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Join us in-person at 617 Kent Hall at 12:00 PM on Wednesday, April 17, for the Professor Dan Miron Lecture in Hebrew Literature with bestselling Israeli-American author Maya Arad.

Maya Arad is the author of eleven books of Hebrew fiction, as well as studies in literary criticism and linguistics. Born in Israel in 1971, she received a PhD in linguistics from University College London and for the past twenty years has lived in California where she is currently writer in residence at Stanford University’s Taube Center for Jewish Studies. Her most recent book, The Hebrew Teacher, will be released in English translation for the first time on March 19, 2024.


Supported by the generosity of the Knapp family.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

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Britt Tevis, "Reconsidering Antisemitism in US History"
Mar
7
12:00 PM12:00

Britt Tevis, "Reconsidering Antisemitism in US History"

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Join us in-person at 617 Kent Hall on Thursday, March 7, at 12:00 PM for a lecture with Britt Tevis, the Rene Plessner Postdoctoral Fellow in Antisemitism and Holocaust Studies at Columbia University.

Britt P. Tevis is the Rene Plessner Postdoctoral Fellow in Holocaust and Antisemitism Studies at Columbia University. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her J.D. at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Her research examines the intersections between Jews and American law and her work has appeared in American Jewish History, American Journal of Legal History, and the Journal of American History. She has held fellowships at the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism at Yale University, the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University.


Supported by the generosity of Rene Plessner and the Kaye family.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

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IIJS Film@Home: Egypt, a Love Song
Mar
4
12:00 PM12:00

IIJS Film@Home: Egypt, a Love Song

The Spring 2024 IIJS Film Series continues on Monday, March 4, at 12:00 PM ET with Egypt, a Love Song, a film from writer-director Dr. Iris Zaki.

In 1940s Egypt, Souad Zaki was a popular Jewish Arab singer married to a renowned Muslim musician. After her husband abandoned her and their child, Souad was forced to flee to Israel and make ends meet by working as a domestic cleaner. Souad's granddaughter, Iris, tells Souad's tempestuous story in a documentary that incorporates intimate conversations with her father, family photos and movies, reenactments of key moments in Souad's life, and rare footage of Souad singing and acting. (74 minutes; Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles)

Please register for the event below. You will receive an email with a link to watch the film at home by Friday, March 1. This link will only be available until Monday, March 4, at 11:59pm EDT.

We will be hosting a Zoom Q&A session on Monday, March 4, at 12:00pm ET with writer-director Dr. Iris Zaki. You will receive a separate email with the Zoom link for the Q&A several days before the event.

Please note: at this time, only viewers in the United States will be able to stream the film.

Please email iijs@columbia.edu with any questions.

Dr. Iris Zaki is a Grierson award-winning artist-filmmaker with a signature cinematic style. Her first-person documentaries explore themes of complex identity, cross-cultural encounters and community representation. Her films, Women in Sink and Unsettling, have been shown at numerous festivals and universities worldwide, and have been featured on television and the NY Times’ OpDocs. Iris earned her PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London, and is teaching documentary filmmaking for BA and MA students at Sapir College in Israel.


Supported by the generosity of the Appel and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

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Derek Penslar and Liora Halperin, “Israel and Palestine: A History of the Present”
Feb
26
4:30 PM16:30

Derek Penslar and Liora Halperin, “Israel and Palestine: A History of the Present”

**Barnard ID or CUID required for entry**

IIJS, Barnard College, and the Barnard Program in Jewish Studies are excited to bring you this event with Derek Penslar, William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History at Harvard University and Liora Halperin, Professor in International Studies and History and Distinguished Endowed Chair of Jewish Studies at University of Washington.

This event is part of the "Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Palestine and Israel" speaker series.

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Yaniv Feller and Markus Krah: "The Political Thought of Leo Baeck"
Feb
21
12:00 PM12:00

Yaniv Feller and Markus Krah: "The Political Thought of Leo Baeck"

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Join the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and the Leo Baeck Institute in-person at 617 Kent Hall on Wednesday, February 21, at 12:00 PM for a talk with Yaniv Feller (University of Florida) and Markus Krah (Leo Baeck Institute): "The Political Thought of Leo Baeck."

Leo Baeck was the revered leader of German Jewry during the Holocaust and one of the leading Jewish public intellectuals of the twentieth century. He was a man steeped in the religious discourse of his time, but he was not merely a religious thinker. Rather, Baeck was profoundly shaped by the imperial constellations in which he lived. This insight sheds new light on his work as a political thinker during the Wilhelmine Empire as well as his writings and decisions during the Holocaust. The result is a new appreciation of his thought, including as it emerges from Baeck’s unpublished manuscripts and his lectures in the Theresienstadt Ghetto.

Yaniv Feller is an assistant professor of Religion and Jewish Studies at the University of Florida. He is the author of The Jewish Imperial Imagination: Leo Baeck and German-Jewish Thought, which won the Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award of the Association for Jewish Studies. Yaniv has published articles on themes such as moral value of resentment, modern gnosis, and Christmas trees.  

Markus Krah is the Executive Director of the Leo Baeck Institute. An American-trained, Germany-based scholar, Krah earned his Ph.D. at the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, in Modern Jewish Studies with a dissertation that became the basis for his monograph, American Jewry and the Re-Invention of the East European Jewish Past (DeGruyter, 2019). In 2021, he was awarded the LBI’s Gerald Westheimer Fellowship to support his research on Salman Schocken’s efforts to promote a Jewish intellectual and spiritual renaissance in post-war America with the US Schocken imprint’s initial program of classic German-Jewish texts. He has published numerous peer-reviewed scholarly articles and served as editor of PaRDeS, the journal of the Association for Jewish Studies in Germany. Before he began his academic career, Krah worked for over a decade as a journalist, including as the chief correspondent of the German-language service in Reuters’ Berlin Bureau.


Supported by the generosity of the Radov and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

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IIJS Film@Home: Love Gets a Room
Feb
12
12:00 PM12:00

IIJS Film@Home: Love Gets a Room

The Spring 2024 IIJS Film Series begins on Monday, February 12, at 12:00 PM ET, with Love Gets a Room, a film by Rodrigo Cortes.

Inspired by true events, Love Gets a Room is the story of a Jewish stage actress who must make the gut-wrenching decision to follow her heart or escape the Warsaw Ghetto in the midst of a performance by her beleaguered theater company. Moving nimbly between the stage, the theater corridors, and the bleak Ghetto outside, Love Gets a Room balances life-and-death struggle with the art we create to survive and transcend it. (103 minutes; English with open captions)

Please register for the event below. You will receive an email with a link to watch the film at home by Friday, February 9th. This link will only be available until Monday, February 12th at 11:59pm EDT.

We will be hosting a Zoom Q&A session on Monday, February 12th at 12:00pm ET with writer, director, and editor Rodrigo Cortes. You will receive a separate email with the Zoom link for the Q&A several days before the event.

Please note: at this time, only viewers in the United States will be able to stream the film.

Please email iijs@columbia.edu with any questions.

Born in Spain, Rodrigo Cortes is a Goya-Award-Winning writer, director, and editor of the internationally-produced films Concursante, Buried (starring Ryan Reynolds), Red Lights (starring Sigourney Weaver and Robert DeNiro), and Down a Dark Hall.


Supported by the generosity of the Kaye and Radov families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

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Giacomo Loi, "A Tale of Four Cities: Greco-Roman Antiquity and Hebrew Modernity" - Kingdon New Voices in Israel and Jewish Studies Award Lecture
Feb
7
6:00 PM18:00

Giacomo Loi, "A Tale of Four Cities: Greco-Roman Antiquity and Hebrew Modernity" - Kingdon New Voices in Israel and Jewish Studies Award Lecture

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Join us in-person at 617 Kent Hall at 6:00 PM on Wednesday, February 7, for a lecture with Giacomo Loi (University of Haifa), a recipient of the IIJS’ Kingdon New Voices in Israel and Jewish Studies Award for 2023-2024.

Since the nineteenth century, Hebrew writers integrated Greco-Roman culture as a non-Jewish sub-system within Hebrew culture to address various topics, ranging from literary aesthetics to issues of collective relevance. In contrast to previous studies organized around the “Hellenism and Hebraism” or “Athens and Jerusalem” dichotomy, I offer a new, “four cities” model to expand and better examine the picture of the reception of classical culture in Modern Hebrew literature. Following this model, I will demonstrate how Zionism, as a form of Jewish nationalism, serves as an essential backdrop for contextualizing classical reception throughout the history of Modern Hebrew literature. In fact, Zionism inherited the religious opposition with the classical world from Jewish tradition—but restructured it into an ethno-national one at the turn of the twentieth century, as I will show through a selection of political and literary texts.

Giacomo Loi is an Azrieli Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of Haifa. He earned his BA and MA in Classics at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, and obtained his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University in 2023 with the dissertation “‘Our Quarrel Is Of Old’: Classical Reception in Modern Hebrew Literature,” where he explores the presences, uses, and shifting meanings of Greco-Roman culture in modern Jewish Hebrew culture (1890s-2010s). As a 2021/22 doctoral fellow at the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, Paris, he developed his project There Is No Analogy Within History: Classical Myth and Holocaust Literature, and initiated the project “Gentile” Antiquity: The Reception of Antiquity in Modern Italian Jewish Culture. He has published articles, online essays, and reviews on classical reception in Italian, European, and Jewish culture.


Supported by the generosity of Mark Kingdon and Anla Cheng Kingdon, as well as the Radov and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

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Jonathan Gribetz and Anita Shapira, "Understanding the History of the US-Israel Relationship"
Feb
5
12:00 PM12:00

Jonathan Gribetz and Anita Shapira, "Understanding the History of the US-Israel Relationship"

**Barnard ID or CUID required for entry**

IIJS, Barnard College, and the Barnard Program in Jewish Studies are excited to bring you this event with Jonathan Gribetz, Associate Professor of Near Eastern Studies and the Program in Judaic Studies, Director of the Near Eastern Studies Program, and Director of the Transregional Institute at Princeton University and Anita Shapira, Ruben Merenfeld Professor for the Study of Zionism at Tel Aviv University and the director of the Chaim Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism and Israel.

This event is part of the "Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Palestine and Israel" speaker series.

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Book Talk: "The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Music Studies"
Jan
31
12:00 PM12:00

Book Talk: "The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Music Studies"

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Join us for the first event of the spring semester on Wednesday, January 31, at 12:00 PM, a discussion of the new Oxford Handbook of Jewish Music Studies. This event will take place in-person back in our permanent home at 617 Kent Hall!

The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Music Studies is a handbook of Jewish music that addresses the diverse range of sounds, texts, archives, traditions, histories, geographic and political contexts, and critical discourses in the field. The thirty-one experts from thirteen countries who prepared the thirty original and groundbreaking chapters in this handbook are leaders in the disciplines of musicology and Jewish studies as well as adjacent fields. Chapters in the handbook provide a broad coverage of the subject area with considerable expansion of the topics that are normally covered in a resource of this type.

Designed around eight distinct sections—Land, City, Ghetto, Stage, Sacred and Ritual Spaces, Destruction/Remembrance, and Spirit—the range and scope of The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Music Studies most significantly suggests a new framework for the study of Jewish music centered on spatiality and taking into consideration temporality and collectivity. Together the chapters form a truly global look at Jewish music, incorporating studies from Central and East Asia, Europe, Australia, the Americas, and the Arab world.

Join select authors for a panel discussion of this new handbook, introduced and led by its editor Tina Frühauf. The discussion will center on the concept and content of the handbook and will be illustrated with musical examples. 

Tina Frühauf teaches at Columbia University and serves on the doctoral faculty of The Graduate Center, CUNY. She is the Executive Director of Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM) and Director of the Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation at CUNY. Among her recent publications are Transcending Dystopia: Music, Mobility, and the Jewish Community in Germany, 1945-1989 and Dislocated Memories: Jews, Music, and Postwar German Culture (2014, with Lily E. Hirsch), which won the Ruth A. Solie Award and the Jewish Studies and Music Award of the American Musicological Society; as well as Postmodernity's Musical Pasts (2020). She has been serving on various committees of the American Musicological Society and as Council Member, and is on the board of the Louis Lewandowski Festival in Berlin and the DAAD Alumni Association USA.

Jessica Roda is an Assistant Professor of Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service, an anthropologist, and ethnomusicologist. She specializes in Jewish life in North America and France, and in international cultural policies. Her research interests include religion, performing arts, cultural heritage, gender, and media. Her articles on these topics have appeared in various scholarly journals, as well as edited volumes in French and English. The author of two books and the editor of a special issue of MUSICultures, her more recent book (Se réinventer au present, PUR 2018) was finalist for J. I. Segal Award for the best Quebec book on a Jewish theme. It also received the Prize UQAM-Respatrimoni in heritage studies. Her forthcoming monograph, For Women and Girls Only: Reshaping Jewish Orthodoxy Through the Arts in the Digital Age, investigates how music, films, and media made by ultra-Orthodox and former ultra-Orthodox women act as agents of social, economic, and cultural transformation and empowerment, and as spaces that challenge gender norms, orthodoxy, and liberalism.

Samantha M. Cooper (she/her) is the Ariel and Joshua Weiner Family Visiting Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies for the 2023-2024 academic year. Samantha Cooper is a historical musicologist specializing in American Jewish cultural history. Dr. Cooper is currently working on her first monograph, American Jews and the Making of the New York Opera Industry, which she began as a Harry Starr Postdoctoral Fellow in Judaica at Harvard University’s Center for Jewish Studies. Cooper received her Ph.D. in Historical Musicology at New York University in May 2022 for her dissertation, “Cultivating High Society: American Jews Engaging European Opera in New York, 1880–1940.” Cooper is the producer and host of “The Sounding Jewish Podcast,” and the associate executive director of the Jewish Music Forum, a project of the American Society for Jewish Music.


Supported by the generosity of the Radov and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

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Adam Teller, "Jewish Hostages in Captivity: A Historical Perspective"
Jan
28
4:00 PM16:00

Adam Teller, "Jewish Hostages in Captivity: A Historical Perspective"

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Join us for a webinar on Sunday, January 28, at 4:00 PM with Adam Teller, titled “Jewish Hostages in Captivity: A Historical Perspective.” This webinar will be the first entry of Spring 2024 in our Israel-Hamas War Webinar Series.

Adam Teller is Professor of History and Judaic Studies at Brown University in the USA. Born in London, he studied at Oxford University and completed his graduate studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializing in the history of the Jews in eastern Europe. He taught at the University of Haifa in Israel for 15 years before moving to Brown in 2010.

Dr. Teller has written widely on the economic, social, and cultural history of the Jews in early modern Poland-Lithuania. He has written three books on the subject and edited (or co-edited) a further four. He is the author of many academic articles in English, Hebrew, Polish, and German.

His newest book, Rescue the Surviving Souls: The Great Jewish Refugee Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, which deals with how the Jewish world organized in order to help the waves of Polish Jewish refugees that spread out across Europe, Asia, and North Africa following the Khmelnytsky uprising of 1648, was published by Princeton University Press in 2020.

Dr. Teller was a member of the core academic team that created the exhibit at the prize-winning POLIN Museum for the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and is currently a member of the museum’s Academic Advisory Council.


Supported by the generosity of the Kaye and Knapp Family Foundations.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

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Ethan Katz, "The Debate Over Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: The Terms and the Stakes”
Jan
25
4:30 PM16:30

Ethan Katz, "The Debate Over Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: The Terms and the Stakes”

**Barnard ID or CUID required for entry**

IIJS, Barnard College, and the Barnard Program in Jewish Studies are excited to bring you this event with Ethan Katz, Associate Professor of History at UC Berkeley, moderated by Deborah Valenze of Barnard College.

This event is part of the "Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Palestine and Israel" speaker series.

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Adi Mahalel in Conversation with James Nadel, "The Radical Isaac: I. L. Peretz and the Rise of Jewish Socialism"
Dec
4
6:30 PM18:30

Adi Mahalel in Conversation with James Nadel, "The Radical Isaac: I. L. Peretz and the Rise of Jewish Socialism"

Join us in-person on Monday, December 4 at 6:30PM for a Book Talk with scholars Adi Mahalel and James Nadel about Dr. Mahalel's new book, The Radical Isaac: I. L. Peretz and the Rise of Jewish Socialism. This event will take place in the Yavitz-Calder Lounge on the first floor of Uris Hall.

Yiddish and Hebrew writer I. L. Peretz (1852-1915) was a major leader of Eastern European Jewry in the years prior to World War I, and was deeply involved in Jewish politics and communal life throughout his lifetime. In The Radical Isaac: I. L. Peretz and the Rise of Jewish Socialism, Adi Mahalel examines a central part of his life and art that has often been neglected, namely, his close alignment with the needs of the Jewish working-class and his deep devotion to progressive politics. Although there have been numerous studies of Peretz and his work, this very central component of his life nonetheless remains severely understudied. By offering close readings of the "radical" Peretz, Mahalel recasts the way political activism is understood in scholarly evaluations of the writer's work. Employing a partly chronological, partly thematic scheme, Mahalel follows Peretz's radicalism from its inception and then through the various ways in which it was synchronically expressed during this intense period of history. Columbia doctoral candidate James Nadel will join Dr. Mahalel to discuss his new book.

Dr. Adi Mahalel is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Yiddish Studies at the University of Maryland. He received his doctoral degree in Yiddish Studies from Columbia University. His book, The Radical Isaac: I. L. Peretz and the Rise of Jewish Socialism, was published by SUNY Press in 2023. Adi’s areas of interest include modern Hebrew and Yiddish literatures, Jewish cultures in modern times, and the crossroads between culture and politics. He has published articles and translations on these subjects in multiple languages, and has taught at Columbia University and YIVO.

James Nadel is a Ph.D. candidate in History at Columbia University. His research focuses on Jewish merchants and business people in late imperial Russia. He has written for In Geveb, Vashti and Sephardic Horizons.


Supported by the generosity of the Radov and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

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Derek Penslar, "American Jews and Israel: From Love to Anguish"
Dec
3
6:00 PM18:00

Derek Penslar, "American Jews and Israel: From Love to Anguish"

  • Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies (map)
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Join the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies at 6:00 PM ET on Sunday, December 3, for a webinar with Derek Penslar, William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History and Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University, titled “American Jews and Israel: From Love to Anguish.” Dr. Penslar is the author of Zionism: An Emotional State (2023), which examines the emotions that have shaped Zionist sensibilities and practices over the course of the movement’s history.

This event is the third in our webinar series on the current Israel-Hamas war, which has featured “Israel at War: Live Discussion from Tel Aviv,” with Avi Shilon, and Unpacking Antisemitism on Campus,” with Pamela Nadell and Britt Tevis.

Derek Penslar is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History at Harvard University. He is the director of undergraduate studies within the history department and directs Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies. Penslar is a resident faculty member at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES) and is also affiliated with Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

Penslar takes a comparative and transnational approach to modern Jewish history, which he studies within the contexts of modern nationalism, capitalism, and colonialism. His books have engaged with a variety of approaches and methods, including the history of science and technology (Zionism and Technocracy: The Engineering of the Jewish Settlement in Palestine 19870-1918, 1991), economic history (Shylock’s Children: Economics and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe, 2001), military history (Jews and the Military: A History, 2013), biography (Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader, 2020), and the history of emotions (Zionism: An Emotional State, 2023). In two co-edited volumes, Penslar has brought Jewish studies into conversation with postcolonial studies (Orientalism and the Jews, [2005] and Unacknowledged Kinships: Postcolonial Theory and the Historiography of Zionism [2023]). Penslar’s current interests lie in international history, and he is writing a book about worldwide reactions to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Penslar’s teaching reflects his interests in integrating Jewish history into global contexts. In addition to teaching courses in modern Jewish history and the history of Zionism and Israel, he teaches courses on nationalism, military history, and the history of emotions. He brings these themes into his General Education course on war and anti-war movements in the modern world.

Before coming to Harvard, Penslar taught at Indiana University Bloomington, the University of Toronto, and the University of Oxford, where he was the inaugural holder of the Stanley Lewis Chair in Israel Studies. He has taught as a visiting professor at Columbia University, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS). He has held research fellowships in Germany, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States. 

Penslar is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the American Academy for Jewish Research and is an honorary fellow of St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford.


Supported by the generosity of the Kaye and Knapp Family Foundations.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

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IIJS Film Series: SHTTL
Nov
29
7:00 PM19:00

IIJS Film Series: SHTTL

  • Yavitz-Calder Lounge at Uris Hall (map)
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Join us in-person at Uris Hall on Wednesday, November 29 for a screening of SHTTL, followed by a conversation with scholars Agnieszka Legutko and Stuart Weinstock.

A young man returns from Kyiv to his rural shtetl to settle old feuds and reunite with the love of his life, who is betrothed to the rabbi’s successor. This single-take film (like Sam Mendes’ 1917), shot in expressionistic black and white, captures a day in the life of a Jewish village in 1941 on the eve of its eradication. The Yiddish-speaking cast (including Moshe Lobel, from Broadway’s Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, and Saul Rubinek) brings a vanished world back to vibrant life, discussing, debating, and fighting over questions of Jewish tradition and modernity that feel contemporary in their urgency. (114 minutes)

This event will take place entirely in-person at the Yavitz-Calder Lounge in Columbia’s Uris Hall. The film screening will begin at 7:00 PM, with a brief talk and Q&A after its conclusion.

Agnieszka Legutko is Lecturer in Yiddish and Director of the Yiddish Language Program at Columbia University. She specializes in modern Yiddish literature, language, and culture, women and gender studies, and spirit possession in Judaism. She is the author of a historical guidebook, Krakow’s Kazimierz: Town of Partings and Returns (2004, 2009), and her publications have appeared in several journals and essay collections on Yiddish literature and culture, such as Cwiszn, Bridges, Lilith, Jewish Quarterly, Silent Souls? Women in Yiddish Culture (2010), Dybbuk: Na Pograniczu Dwóch Światów (2017), and Theatermachine: Tadeusz Kantor in Context (2020).

Stuart Weinstock, the IIJS Film Series Coordinator, is a writer, a director, and a professor of Film. He earned his BA in Film Studies and Psychology from Columbia College, and his MFA in Directing from Columbia's School of the Arts. His short films have screened and won awards at film festivals worldwide. Stuart has taught Film courses at Ramapo College of New Jersey, Mercy College, and the New York Film Academy. His courses for Columbia include Topics in American Cinema: the History of Comedy, Auteur Study: Steven Spielberg, and New Hollywood: 1967-1980.


Supported by the generosity of the Kaye and Radov families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

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Nov
15
2:30 PM14:30

Mia Brett, "Antisemitism, Critical Race Theory, and the Politics of Anti-Discrimination Scholarship" - Plessner New Perspectives in Holocaust and Antisemitism Studies Award Lecture

Join us virtually at 2:30 PM on Wednesday, November 15, for a lecture with our Plessner New Perspectives in Holocaust and Antisemitism Studies Award recipient, Mia Brett. This event is a webinar on Zoom.

In this political moment the academy is under attack from the weaponization of Critical Race Theory and American Jewish history to justify erasing historical education and politicize academic scholarship. Accusations of antisemitism are being used to attack Critical Race Theory when CRT is a vital tool to better understanding antisemitism and historical legal discrimination against Jews in the United States. This lecture will discuss the importance of studying legal antisemitism in the United States to fighting both current attacks on the academy and Jews in American life.

Mia Brett holds a PhD in History from Stony Brook University specializing in American legal history and the study of the legal construction of race and gender. Her dissertation, "The Murdered Jewess: Jewish Immigration and the Problem of Citizenship in the Courtroom in Late Nineteenth Century New York," used Critical Race Theory to study anti Jewish bigotry in American law. She is currently teaching at Suffolk Community College.


Supported by the generosity of Rene Plessner and the Kaye family.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

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Norman E. Alexander Celebration of Collections: The Tales The Books Will Tell
Nov
9
12:00 PM12:00

Norman E. Alexander Celebration of Collections: The Tales The Books Will Tell

Join the Institute and the Norman E. Alexander Library Studies for the 2023 Norman E. Alexander Celebration of Collections on Thursday, November 9, at 12:00 PM. This event is a webinar on Zoom.

This year's Norman E. Alexander Celebration of Collections centers around the physical aspects of books and manuscripts. Rabbi Dr. Jacob J. Schacter will discuss what he learned about Rabbis Ya'akov Emden and Tsevi Hirsch Ashekenazi through examination of their annotations in books; Abigail Slawik will discuss some of the work involved in conserving a 700 year old manuscript of the Bible written in Spain, and Dr. Shai Zamir will discuss what he discovered when he examined two Ladino works that seemed remarkably similar in form.

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Irena Klepfisz, "Her Birth and Later Years: New and Collected Poems, 1971-2021," in Conversation with Agnieszka Legutko
Nov
8
6:30 PM18:30

Irena Klepfisz, "Her Birth and Later Years: New and Collected Poems, 1971-2021," in Conversation with Agnieszka Legutko

  • Yavitz-Calder Lounge at Uris Hall (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Join the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, the Department of Germanic Languages, and the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender on Wednesday, November 8, at 6:30 PM for a conversation with lesbian poet, essayist, political activist, and Yiddishist Irena Klepfisz and Agnieszka Legutko, Director of the Yiddish Language Program at Columbia University, about Klepfisz’s latest book, Her Birth and Later Years: New and Collected Poems, 1971-2021 (Wesleyan UP, 2022). This event will take place in the Yavitz-Calder Lounge on the first floor of Uris Hall.

Irena Klepfisz was born in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1941. She survived the war hiding in an orphanage and later in the Polish countryside with her mother. After the war they lived in Lódz and Sweden before settling in New York in 1949. Klepfisz’s poetry broke new ground in its brazen lesbian voice, while also finding new ways to poetically investigate the trauma of the Holocaust. Klepfisz played a key role in the emergent Jewish lesbian movement starting in the 1970s. She has been dedicated to the recovery and transmission of women’s writing in Yiddish, as an active scholar, translator, and teacher. Her own poetry engages the Yiddish language, writing bilingually to create a Jewish feminist poetics for the past and present.

Klepfisz recently ended 22 years of teaching Jewish Women's Studies at Barnard College. She has been a recipient of an NEA fellowship and NYFA grant in poetry and a finalist for the poetry Lambda Award. In 2016 she was honored to receive the Dreaming in Yiddish Prize from the Adrienne Cooper Fund and currently serves on the Board of the Workers Circle. The author of A Few Words in the Mother Tongue (poetry) and Dreams of an Insomniac (essays), she is preparing the manuscript for a bilingual collection of her poetry and prose to be published next year by the Polish publishing house słowo/obraz terytoria (word/image territories).

Agnieszka Legutko is Lecturer in Yiddish and Director of the Yiddish Language Program at Columbia University. She specializes in modern Yiddish literature, language, and culture, women and gender studies, and spirit possession in Judaism. She is the author of a historical guidebook, Krakow’s Kazimierz: Town of Partings and Returns (2004, 2009), and her publications have appeared in several journals and essay collections on Yiddish literature and culture, such as Cwiszn, Bridges, Lilith, Jewish Quarterly, Silent Souls? Women in Yiddish Culture (2010), Dybbuk: Na Pograniczu Dwóch Światów (2017), and Theatermachine: Tadeusz Kantor in Context (2020). She received her Ph.D. in Yiddish studies with distinction from Columbia University and her research interests include trauma, memory, performance, and the body represented in Jewish literature, theater, and film. She is currently completing a manuscript exploring the trope of dybbuk possession in modern Jewish cultures.


Supported by the generosity of the Radov and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

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IIJS Film@Home: Zorki
Oct
30
12:00 PM12:00

IIJS Film@Home: Zorki

The Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies is devastated by the horrific attacks on Israel. While Savoy (2022), the film originally featured in this event, is a meaningful and deserving work of art, we believe—in light of these events—that it would now be insensitive to engage with it as such. We have selected another film from Zohar Wagner, Zorki (2006), to screen and discuss in its place.

The IIJS Film Series continues with Zorki, a documentary from Zohar Wagner, on Monday, October 30.

Zohar Wagner, then 34, used her documentary camera to tear away the cloak of silence that enveloped her bourgeois family. Her mother had a five-year affair with a man ten years her junior, and Zohar, at the age of twelve, was an accomplice to the secret. Twenty years after the difficult episode that had torn the family apart, Zohar's mother is selling her childhood home and Zohar gathers her family to open their personal Pandora’s Box. The resulting film is called “Zorki,” the family nickname for Zohar. (54 minutes; Hebrew with English subtitles; 2006)

Please register for the event below. You will receive an email with a link to watch the film at home on Friday, October 27th. This link will only be available until Monday, October 30th at 11:59pm EDT.

We will be hosting a Zoom Q&A session on Monday, October 30th at 12:00pm EDT with writer-director Zohar Wagner. You will receive a separate email with the Zoom link for the Q&A several days before the event.

Please email iijs@columbia.edu with any questions.

Zohar Wagner directs feature and television documentaries in Israel, which have screened at festivals worldwide. Savoy opened at the 2022 Jerusalem Film Festival and won awards for Best Documentary Director and Best Editing. It also won Israeli Film Academy Awards for Best Editing and Best Makeup, with nominations for Best Screenplay and Best Actress.


Supported by the generosity of the Appel and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

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Love in Dark Times: Friendship and Eros in Jewish Theology, Literature, and Ethics
Oct
25
7:00 PM19:00

Love in Dark Times: Friendship and Eros in Jewish Theology, Literature, and Ethics

Join JTS, IIJS, and the NYU Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies to explore themes of love and friendship in Jewish thought with a panel of preeminent scholars. We will examine the complex and central place of love and longing in modern Hebrew literature, Jewish theology, and ethics, and consider what this rich intellectual tradition can offer for contemporary political life. This event will take place in person at the Jewish Theological Seminary (3080 Broadway).

Nadav S. Berman,
University of Haifa

Fannie Bialek,
Washington University in St. Louis

Tafat Hacohen-Bick,
CUNY Graduate Center

Shai Held,
Hadar Institute

Moderated by Shira Billet, Assistant Professor of Jewish Thought and Ethics at JTS

Supported with a grant from the Fetzer Institute.

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"Unpacking Antisemitism on Campus" with Pamela Nadell and Britt Tevis
Oct
22
4:00 PM16:00

"Unpacking Antisemitism on Campus" with Pamela Nadell and Britt Tevis

Join the Columbia University Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, and the American University Jewish Studies Program, this Sunday, October 22, at 4:00 PM ET, for a ZOOM webinar:

Unpacking Antisemitism on Campus

Please join us for a discussion and analysis of antisemitism on campus with with Pamela Nadell, the Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women's and Gender History and Director of the Jewish Studies Program at American University, and Britt Tevis, IIJS’ Rene Plessner Postdoctoral Fellow in Holocaust and Antisemitism Studies.

This event is the second in our webinar series on the current Israel-Hamas war, which began last week with “Israel at War: Live Discussion from Tel Aviv,” featuring Avi Shilon and Rebecca Kobrin.

Pamela S. Nadell holds the Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women's and Gender History and is Director of the Jewish Studies Program at American University. A specialist in American Jewish history and women’s history, she teaches a variety of courses in Jewish civilization. Her awards include AU’s highest faculty award, Scholar/Teacher of the Year (2007). Pamela Nadell’s books include America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today (W.W. Norton, 2019), named Jewish Book of the Year by the Jewish Book Council. Reviewed in the New York Times, America’s Jewish Women was praised as “a welcome addition to the American historical canon.” Past president of the Association for Jewish Studies, Nadell’s other titles include Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women's Ordination, 1889–1985 (Beacon Press, 1998). She consults for museums including the National Museum of American Jewish History and the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream. She lectures widely, frequently appears on podcasts, and has written for, among others, the Washington Post, The Conversation, and Hadassah Magazine. In 2017, she testified before Congress about antisemitism on college campuses. She is currently writing a history of antisemitism in America.

Britt P. Tevis is the Rene Plessner Postdoctoral Fellow in Holocaust and Antisemitism Studies at Columbia University. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her J.D. at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Her research examines the intersections between Jews and American law and her work has appeared in American Jewish History, American Journal of Legal History, and the Journal of American History. She has held fellowships at the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism at Yale University, the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University.


Supported by the generosity of the Kaye and Knapp Family Foundations.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

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Jules Riegel, "The Voices of the Starving: Beggars’ Music in the Warsaw Ghetto" - Plessner New Perspectives in Holocaust and Antisemitism Studies Award Lecture
Oct
19
12:00 PM12:00

Jules Riegel, "The Voices of the Starving: Beggars’ Music in the Warsaw Ghetto" - Plessner New Perspectives in Holocaust and Antisemitism Studies Award Lecture

Join us virtually at noon on Thursday, October 19, for a lecture with our Plessner New Perspectives in Holocaust and Antisemitism Studies Award recipient, Jules Riegel, Lecturer on History and Literature at Harvard University. This event is a webinar on Zoom.

The Warsaw Ghetto—the largest ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe—imprisoned roughly 460,000 Jews at its peak. Its society was marked by severe overcrowding and inequality, and many turned to begging to survive, drawing attention to their plight using songs, cries, shouts, and other sounds. Though beggars’ desperation was clear to all ghetto residents, non-beggars’ reactions to their songs and other sounds were often uncomfortable and even hostile. Close readings of diaries, reports, and song texts from the ghetto, alongside memoir and testimonies, reveal that these reactions stemmed from longstanding anxieties about the Jewish community’s status as civilized and European. Examining how non-beggars—especially educated people and members of the prewar intelligentsia—wrote about beggars’ music in the ghetto also indicates the continuing relevance of polemics against shund (artistic “trash”) in Yiddish-speaking Eastern Europe. Even so, some beggars’ songs gained widespread popularity by directly confronting inequality and ghetto authorities’ abuses of power. Beggars were an intrinsic part of ghetto society, and the debates their music engendered reveal how Polish Jews imagined their community’s future, even at the moment of its destruction.

Jules Riegel (they/them) received their Ph.D. in Modern European History at Indiana University Bloomington in 2021. They are currently a Lecturer on History and Literature at Harvard University. Their research interests include modern Polish-Jewish cultural history, the Holocaust, and music during war and genocide. Their scholarship has been supported by a Harry Starr Fellowship in Judaica at Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies; a Fulbright Institute of International Education Grant to Warsaw, Poland; and a Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies Sosland Fellowship at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, among others.

Riegel’s book project, In the Season of Hunger and Plague: Musical Life in the Warsaw Ghetto, uses sources written and preserved by ghetto residents to reconstruct how music performance represented, reproduced, and contributed to the ghetto’s complex and contentious social and cultural dynamics. They are also developing a second book project on gender, sexuality, and perceived collaboration in the camps and ghettos during the Holocaust, and are planning future research on transgender history in Eastern Europe. Their publications include a forthcoming article in Jewish Social Studies on beggars’ music in the Warsaw Ghetto and an article on the musician, ethnographer, and journalist Menachem Kipnis in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry.


Supported by the generosity of Rene Plessner and the Kaye family.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

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Israel at War: Live Discussion from Tel Aviv
Oct
15
4:00 PM16:00

Israel at War: Live Discussion from Tel Aviv

The Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies is devastated by the horrific attacks on Israel. We extend our deepest sympathies and support to the families of those who lost their lives and condemn the abhorrent slaughter and kidnapping of civilians. As it has since its inception in 1950, the Institute stands in solidarity with the people of Israel.

As the situation unfolds, please join us on Sunday, October 15, at 4:00PM ET for a webinar with Avi Shilon:

Israel at War:
Live Discussion from Tel Aviv

Dr. Shilon is a journalist, historian, and political scientist who has taught at Columbia, NYU, Tsinghua University, and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

This talk will be moderated by Rebecca Kobrin, IIJS Co-Director and Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History.

Avi Shilon has taught with the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University and the Taub Center for Israel Studies at New York University. He also has been a postdoctoral fellow at The Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel and at Tsinghua University, China. He has published the books The Decline of the Left-Wing in Israel: Yossi Beilin and the Politics of the Peace Process (2020), Ben-Gurion: His Later Years in the Political Wilderness (2016) and Menachem Begin: A Life (2012) as well as articles in Middle Eastern Studies, The Jewish Quarterly Review, and Middle East Journal. Dr. Shilon also writes for the Ha’aretz newspaper. He received his Ph.D. from Bar-Ilan University, Israel in 2015.

Rebecca Kobrin is the Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History, in Columbia University’s Department of History, where she teaches in the field of American Jewish History, specializing in modern Jewish migration. She is also the Co-Director of the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University. Her research, teaching, and publications engage in the fields of international migration, urban history, Jewish history, American religion, and diaspora studies. She is one of the principal investigators leading the award-winning digital humanities Historical NYC Project, an award-winning map that visualizes the demographic and spatial changes wrought in New York City between 1850 and 1940.


Supported by the generosity of the Radov and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

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Allison Schachter: "Fradl Shtok and Women Writing Jewish Modernity"
Oct
12
12:00 PM12:00

Allison Schachter: "Fradl Shtok and Women Writing Jewish Modernity"

  • Yavitz-Calder Lounge at Uris Hall (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Join the IIJS and the Department of Germanic Languages on Thursday, October 12 for a Book Talk with Allison Schachter, author of Women Writing Jewish Modernity: 1919-1939. This event will take place in the Yavitz-Calder Lounge on the first floor of Uris Hall.

Access to the Morningside Campus has been restricted to Columbia University ID holders only for today, Thursday, October 12. You will not be able to access the event on-campus at Uris Hall if you are not a CUID holder.

Please join this event virtually via Zoom webinar (link available with Eventbrite registration, click the button below).

If you are a Columbia University affiliate with campus access today, we look forward to seeing you in-person at Uris Hall.

What role did women play in the making of Jewish literary modernity? We know too little about the women writers, artists, and intellectuals who participated in transforming Jewish culture in the twentieth century. The standard accounts of modern Hebrew and Yiddish  literary history exclude women’s writing and experience. When women appear they do so as poets, but not prose writers. This talk offers a counter history of modern Jewish literature from the perspective of women, focusing on the life and work of the modernist writer, Fradl Shtok. Shtok was a well-regarded poet, who published a short story collection in 1919 and then mysteriously withdrew from Yiddish public life. Tracing her life story through archival records, and closely reading her literary work, I piece together a story of women’s artistic and literary lives in the first half of the twentieth century and offer a new account of Yiddish modernism. 

Allison Schachter is Professor of English, Jewish Studies, and Russian and East European Studies, as well as Chair of Jewish Studies, at Vanderbilt University. She works on nineteenth and twentieth century modern Jewish culture in comparative perspectives. Her research interests include diaspora, transnational and world literary cultures, gender studies, and minority cultures. Her first book, Diasporic Modernisms: Hebrew and Yiddish Literatures in the Twentieth Century (Oxford 2012) traced the shared diasporic histories of Hebrew and Yiddish modernism. Her second book Women Writing Jewish Modernity, 1919-1939 (Northwestern 2022), a National Jewish Book Award finalist, revises the history of Hebrew and Yiddish modernism by foregrounding women’s voices. She is currently working on a new project  on mid-century women intellectuals, which examines how African American and Jewish women writers theorized the postwar moment from feminist and leftist perspectives. She is an avid translator of Yiddish literature. Together with Jordan Finkin she translated From the Jewish Provinces: The Selected Stories of Fradl Shtok (Northwestern 2021), which was awarded the 2022 MLA Fenia and Yaakov Leviant Memorial Prize in Yiddish Studies.

She received her B.A. with honors in Comparative Literature from Stanford University in 1996. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 2007 to pursue research on Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She completed her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at U. C. Berkeley in 2006. She has received grants in support of her work from the Graduate Division at the University of California, Berkeley, the National Foundation of Jewish culture, Vanderbilt University, the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Yiddish Book Center, and the Simon Dubnow Institute.

She has published widely in a range of peer-reviewed journals, including PMLA, Jewish Quarterly Review, Prooftexts, Modern Language Quarterly, Comparative Literature, and Mekhere yerushalayim be-sifrut ivrit.


Supported by the generosity of the Radov and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

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[CANCELED] Histories of  Jewish Anarchism: A Conversation
Oct
10
5:30 PM17:30

[CANCELED] Histories of Jewish Anarchism: A Conversation

  • Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies (map)
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Join IIJS, the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life, and the Department of Religion on Tuesday, October 10, for “Histories of Jewish Anarchism,” a virtual conversation with Anna Elena Torres (University of Chicago), Kenyon Zimmer (University of Texas at Arlington), Mohamed Abdou (Cornell University), and William Anderson (writer and activist). This conversation will be moderated by Clémence Boulouque, Columbia’s Carl and Bernice Witten Associate Professor of Jewish and Israel Studies.

This event has been canceled.

This event highlights a recent collection of essays, With Freedom in Our Ears. Jewish anarchism has long been marginalized in histories of anarchist thought and action. Anna Elena Torres and Kenyon Zimmer have edited a collection of essays that recovers many aspects of this erased tradition. Contributors bring to light the presence and persistence of Jewish anarchism throughout histories of radical labor, women’s studies, political theory, multilingual literature, and ethnic studies. These essays reveal an ongoing engagement with non-Jewish radical cultures, including the translation practices of the Jewish anarchist press. Jewish anarchists drew from a matrix of secular, cultural, and religious influences, inventing new anarchist forms that ranged from mystical individualism to militantly atheist revolutionary cells. With Freedom in Our Ears brings together more than a dozen scholars and translators to write the first collaborative history of international, multilingual, and transdisciplinary Jewish anarchism. In this event, the editors of this collection will be joined by two scholars and activists who focus on other traditions of anarchism, for a broad ranging conversation.

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IIJS Film@Home: The Road to Eilat
Oct
9
12:00 PM12:00

IIJS Film@Home: The Road to Eilat

The IIJS Fall 2023 Film Series kicks off on October 9, 2023, with The Road to Eilat, a new film from writer-director Yona Rozenkier.

Albert, an aging war veteran, makes a drunken bet: he will drive his beat up tractor (top speed: 35km/hour... downhill) the length of Israel to Eilat, in one week. Ben, his grumpy, unemployed son, is obligated to join him. Their funny and bittersweet journey towards forgiveness and understanding takes them on a road trip from their kibbutz through Israel's neglected backyard, meeting others along the way who also strive for a better life. The Road to Eilat premiered at the 2022 Jerusalem Film Festival, where it won prizes for Best Israeli Feature, Best Actor (Shmuel Vilozni), and Best Cinematography. It was later nominated for 8 Israeli Film Academy Awards, including Best Picture. (105 minutes)

Please register for the event below. You will receive an email with a link to watch the film at home on Wednesday, October 4th. This link will only be available until Monday, October 9th at 11:59pm EDT.

We will be hosting a Zoom Q&A session on Monday, October 9th at 12:00pm EDT with writer-director Yona Rozenkier. You will receive a separate email with the Zoom link for the Q&A several days before the event.

Please note: at this time, only viewers in the United States will be able to stream the film.

Please email iijs@columbia.edu with any questions.

Yona Rozenkier is an actor, writer, and director. Born and raised on Kibbutz Yehiam, Rozenkier's short films and two features examine kibbutz culture, IDF culture, masculinity, and their impact on family relationships (often casting his brothers and himself). His prior feature, The Dive, was screened by Columbia IIJS in March, 2020.


Supported by the generosity of the Appel and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

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Public Conference - Per Aspera ad Astra: The Making of Soviet Jewish Selves
Oct
5
10:00 AM10:00

Public Conference - Per Aspera ad Astra: The Making of Soviet Jewish Selves

Please join the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, the Department of Germanic Languages, and the Harriman Institute on October 5 at Columbia’s Deutsches Haus for a conference, Per Aspera ad Astra: The Making of Soviet Jewish Selves.

Registration required.

The beginnings of the Soviet Union saw a dramatic shift in rights, policy, and rhetoric toward non-Russian peoples. Many ethnic minorities that had been considered “aliens” were newly recognized as equal citizens. The early years of fledgling Soviet rule were characterized by national-territorial questions and state subsidization of regional languages. Jews were one of the officially recognized minority groups, and Yiddish, the common tongue of Eastern European Jewry, became an official language of the Soviet Union. While language was standardized, the question of identity remained open ended, multifaceted, and polemic. Geographically, socially, and ideologically scattered, Soviet-Jewish identity was anything but uniform. Zionists, Yiddishists, territorrialists, Bundists, socialists, and communists were equally invested in the question of national determination, with each group constructing their own sense of self. Under nascent ideology and infrastructure, the Soviet Jew quickly assumed leading roles in the production and administration of power and culture. These early years, though marked by adversity, held the potential and promise for astronomical success. Following this brief cultural renaissance, Jewish culture—namely Yiddish language culture—was stifled by the arrival of high Stalinism, whose imperative of russification was ruthlessly enforced. To stay afloat amidst the perilously shifting political currents, the Soviet Jew had to navigate the between the utopianism of the Soviet idea and the brutal conditions of its pursuit.

In his new book How the Soviet Jew Was Made, Prof. Sasha Senderovich (University of Washington) examines Soviet Jewishness through a series of literary and artistic representations that ultimately position the Soviet Jewish person as a liminal figure. On October 5th, 2023, the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, the Harriman Institute, and the Department of Germanic Languages at Columbia University will hold a one-day graduate conference, featuring talks from Gennady Estraikh (New York University) and Elissa Bemporad (Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center), and a keynote talk from Sasha Senderovich that will examine, from a range of disciplinary perspectives, the implicit question: How, indeed, was the Soviet Jew made?

Conference organizers:

Noa Tsaushu, Department of Germanic Languages, Columbia University

Elaine Wilson, Department of Slavic Languages, Columbia University


Program

10:00 – 10:45am | Morning Session

Ester Frumkin: A Jew at War with Judaism - Prof. Elissa Bemporad, Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center

Moderators: Elaine Wilson and Noa Tsaushu

By analyzing the words and deeds of Ester Frumkin, who in the wake of the Bolshevik rise to power rejected her Bundist past to join the Communist Party and bring the Revolution to the Jewish street, Bemporad will explore her role in forging the new secularist Soviet Jew. As a teacher, editor, author, and riveting orator, over the course of the 1920s and 1930s Frumkin helped forge the revolutionary minds of thousands of Jewish youth, imbuing them with a new anti-religious ethos.

3:00 – 6:00pm | Afternoon Session

3:00-3:45pm | Birobidzhan: A Hapless Embryo of a Jewish Land - Prof. Gennady Estraikh, New York University

Moderator: Noa Tsaushu

Ninety-five years ago, in March 1928, the Soviet government announced its plan of building a Jewish territorial unit in Russia’s Far East, on the border with China. Birobidzhan, initially the name of the territory, later was turned into the name of a new city, the center of the Jewish Autonomous Region. Both the city of Birobidzhan and the JAR are still atavistically present on the map of contemporary Russia. The talk—based on the 2023 book The History of Birobidzhan: Building a Soviet Jewish Homeland in Siberia­—will focus on the factors that hindered the project’s development from start to finish.

4:30-6:00pm | How the Soviet Jew Was Made - Keynote Lecture by Sasha Senderovich, University of Washington

Moderator: Elaine Wilson

Senderovich will discuss his new book, How the Soviet Jew Was Made, (Harvard University Press, 2022; finalist for the 2023 National Jewish Book Awards). The book offers a close reading of postrevolutionary Russian and Yiddish literature and film that recast the Soviet Jew as a novel cultural figure: not just a minority but an ambivalent character navigating between the Jewish past and Bolshevik modernity. Drawing on Yiddish and Russian-language literature, films, andreportage, Senderovich finds characters traversing space and history and carrying with them the dislodged practices and archetypes of a Jewish world in the process of transformation. Senderovich urges us to see the Soviet Jew anew, as not only a member of a minority group but also a particular kind of liminal being.

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Roni Cohen, "The Myth of Jewish Humor: A Medieval Take"
Oct
4
12:00 PM12:00

Roni Cohen, "The Myth of Jewish Humor: A Medieval Take"

  • Yavitz-Calder Lounge at Uris Hall (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Join the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program in-person on Wednesday, October 4 at 12PM for a lecture with Columbia University Fulbright fellow Dr. Roni Cohen. This event will take place in the Yavitz-Calder Lounge on the first floor of Uris Hall.

The existence of a distinctive Jewish sense of humor is a widely recognized phenomenon, particularly in the 20th and 21st centuries. This unique ethos is often associated with early 20th-century Yiddish literature, theater culture, as well as Jewish-American comedians and entertainers. However, it is important to note that humoristic pieces also existed in the early modern and medieval times within Jewish communities. In this talk, we will explore a specific genre of humorous literature that gained popularity in Europe during the late Middle Ages: parodies of the Talmud and the Hebrew Bible. By delving into the historical background of this literary phenomenon, we will suggest new insights into its place within the broader history of Jewish humor.

Dr. Roni Cohen is a Fulbright postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University. His Ph.D. dissertation, titled "Carnival and Canon: Medieval Parodies for Purim," was written in the Jewish History department at Tel Aviv University. Roni's research focuses on European Jewish popular culture in the late Middle Ages and early modern period, as well as the relationships between textual pieces and communities. In his current project, "In Search of the Early Modern Earworm," Roni maps and analyzes short textual pieces that were added by scribes and book owners in the margins of late medieval and early modern Jewish manuscripts.


Supported by the generosity of the Radov and Appel families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

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[CANCELED] Bulgaria and the Jews during the Holocaust: Between Mythology and Reality
Sep
28
12:00 PM12:00

[CANCELED] Bulgaria and the Jews during the Holocaust: Between Mythology and Reality

  • Marshall D. Shulman Seminar Room, 1219 International Affairs Building (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

This event has been canceled.

Please join the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and the Harriman Institute on Thursday, September 28, for a talk by Professor Rumyana Christidi, moderated by Rebecca Kobrin, co-director of the IIJS.

It is a well-known fact that the Bulgarian Jews survived the Holocaust and none of them were deported to the Nazi death camps. On another hand, the Jews from the so called “New Added” territories of the Kingdom – Macedonia and Thrace – were deprived of citizenship and deported to Treblinka where they all perished. What are the facts behind these stories and how the historians interpret them? Salvation and deportation, mythology and reality? Where does the line lie and what is national historiography choosing to hide, underline, point out or pass over in silence? What made the salvation of 48,000 Jewish lives possible in a country allied to Germany, governed by a pro-Nazi government? And what made the German Ambassador to Sofia in 1943 exclaim: “Bulgarian society does not understand the real meaning of the Jewish question… an ordinary Bulgarian does not understand the meaning of the struggle against Judaism, even more, that the racial question from its nature is incomprehensible to him.” And why after the war did the majority of the Bulgarian Jewish community prefer to leave the country that saved their lives?

Dr. Rumyana Marinova-Christidi is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of History, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” and Head of “Hebraistika” BA Program (Jewish Studies). Rumyana Christidi was born in Sofia in 1977. She received her Master’s degree in History and Archives from the Faculty of History, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” and her PhD in Contemporary Bulgarian History from the same Faculty. Rumyana Christidi is holds an award by the Organization of the Jews in Bulgaria, “Shalom,” for her “exceptional contribution in the realization of interethnic and religious dialogue, the fight against manifestations of hate and xenophobia, and in strengthening relations between Bulgarians and Jews.” She is a member of the Bulgarian delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and a member of the European Association for Jewish Studies. She speaks Bulgarian, English and Greek, and has working knowledge of Russian.

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Golan Moskowitz, "Wild Visionary: Maurice Sendak in Queer Jewish Context"
Sep
19
12:00 PM12:00

Golan Moskowitz, "Wild Visionary: Maurice Sendak in Queer Jewish Context"

  • Yavitz-Calder Lounge at Uris Hall (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Join us the IIJS and the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender in-person on Tuesday, September 19 at 12PM for a Book Talk with Golan Moskowitz, author of Wild Visionary: Maurice Sendak in Queer Jewish Context. This event will take place in the Yavitz-Calder Lounge on the first floor of Uris Hall.

In Wild Visionary: Maurice Sendak in Queer Jewish Context (Stanford University Press, 2020), Golan Moskowitz investigates the evolution of Sendak’s artistic vision and its appeal for American, Jewish, and queer audiences. Dr. Moskowitz's talk will examine how Sendak’s multiple perspectives as a gay, Holocaust-conscious, American-born son of Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants from Poland informed his life and work. It will also explore how his creative output interacted dynamically with his cultural surroundings, offering insights into experiences of marginality and emotional resilience that remain relevant and visionary to this day. 

Golan Moskowitz is Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Catherine and Henry J. Gaisman Faculty Fellow at Tulane University, where he teaches courses on Jewish gender and sexuality, American pop culture, Holocaust studies, and comics and graphic novels. He is the author of Wild Visionary: Maurice Sendak in Queer Jewish Context (Stanford University Press, 2020) and of several publications on intergenerational memory in post-Holocaust family narratives. Golan’s work has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, and the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry.


Supported by the generosity of the Radov and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

View Event →
Matt Garcia, "Eli and the Octopus: The CEO Who Tried to Reform One of the World's Most Notorious Corporations"
Sep
12
5:00 PM17:00

Matt Garcia, "Eli and the Octopus: The CEO Who Tried to Reform One of the World's Most Notorious Corporations"

  • Lehman Suite, International Affairs Building (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Join the Lehman Center for American History and Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies for a conversation with Matt Garcia (Dartmouth College), to discuss his new book Eli and the Octopus: The CEO Who Tried to Reform One of the World's Most Notorious Corporations. The discussion will be held on Tuesday, September 12 at 5:00 PM at the Lehman Suite (Room 406) in the International Affairs Building.

Eli and the Octopus traces the rise and fall of an enigmatic business leader and his influence on the nascent project of corporate social responsibility. Born Menashe Elihu Blachowitz in Lublin, Poland, Black arrived in New York at the age of three and became a rabbi before entering the business world. Driven by the moral tenets of his faith, he charted a new course in industries known for poor treatment of workers, partnering with labor leaders like Cesar Chavez to improve conditions. But risky investments, economic recession, and a costly wave of natural disasters led Black away from the path of reform and toward corrupt backroom dealing.

Matt Garcia is Professor of Latin American, Latino & Caribbean Studies and History at Dartmouth College. He previously taught at Arizona State University, Brown University, University of Oregon, and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of A World of Its Own: Race, Labor and Citrus in the Making of Greater Los Angeles, 1900-1970, which won the award for the best book from the Oral History Association in 2003. His book, From the Jaws of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement, won the Philip Taft Award for the Best Book in Labor History, 2013. He is the co-editor of Food Across Borders with Melanie DuPuis and Don Mitchell published by Rutgers University Press in 2017. Garcia served as the outreach director and co-primary investigator for the Bracero Archive Project, which received a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant in 2008 and was the recipient of the Best Public History Award by the National Council for Public History in 2009-2010. He was an American Council for Learned Societies Fellow in 2020 for this project, Eli and the Octopus.

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IIJS Film@Home: Nelson's Last Stand
Aug
7
12:00 PM12:00

IIJS Film@Home: Nelson's Last Stand

We are thrilled to announce an exciting entry in our Summer Film Series, Nelson’s Last Stand, a new documentary written and directed by Avi Maor Marzuk.

Nelson’s Last Stand, a “Best Israeli Film” nominee at the 2021 DocAviv Film Festival, is a fascinating exploration of a little-known piece of Israeli history, with abundant archival footage to bring us back to the freewheeling 1970s. When Israel gained control of the Sinai in the 1967 Six-Day War, vacationers and adventurers came in droves. Few were as committed as Rafi Nelson, an eccentric, bearded bohemian who set up a beach resort village in Taba that flourished in the 1970s as an anything-goes getaway for average Israelis, international celebrities, and quite a few Members of the Knesset (Israel’s Parliament). The 1978 Camp David Accords signaled a new era of peace between Israel and Egypt, but for Rafi Nelson, they marked the beginning of a decades-long campaign to keep his beach village and the surrounding area inside Israel’s borders. (81 minutes)

Rafi Nelson and his horse stand guard at the village in Taba.

Please register for the event below. You will receive an email with a link to watch the film at home on Friday, August 4th. This link will only be available until Monday, August 7th at 11:59pm EDT.

We will be hosting a Zoom Q&A session on Monday, August 7th at 12:00pm EDT with Israeli journalist and historian Gershom Gorenberg. You will receive a separate email with the Zoom link for the Q&A several days before the event.

Please note: at this time, only viewers in the United States will be able to stream the film. This event will be on ZOOM.

Please email iijs@columbia.edu with any questions.

Gershom Gorenberg is the Knapp Adjunct Senior Research Scholar and Adjunct Professor of Journalism at Columbia University. An Israeli historian and journalist, Gorenberg has been covering Middle Eastern affairs for three decades. Gorenberg is the author of The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements 1967-1977 and The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount, and coauthor of Shalom Friend, a biography of Yitzhak Rabin that won the National Jewish Book Award

Gorenberg is a columnist for the Washington Post and a senior correspondent for The American Prospect. He has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, Foreign Policy and other leading publications in North America, Europe and the Middle East. He holds degrees from the University of California at Santa Cruz and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.


Supported by the generosity of the Appel and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

View Event →