Three Israeli Scholars discuss "Framing October 7: A Date of Inflection for Jewish History"

The Institute hosted a panel discussion led by IIJS Co-Director Rebecca Kobrin and featuring Jonathan Dekel-Chen, Nadav Eyal, and Avi Shilon on Sunday, October 5, 2025.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas invaded Israel and carried out the deadliest assault on Jews since the Holocaust. The attack not only shattered assumptions about Jewish sovereignty, security, and politics but also reshaped Israel’s relationship with the wider world. In the months that followed, the war in Gaza and the intensifying debates it provoked deeply influenced global perceptions of Israel, the Jewish diaspora, and the boundaries of antisemitism.

As scholars continue to assess the aftermath, new questions emerge. How should October 7 and its consequences be integrated into the broader trajectory of Jewish history? What insights do Jewish historical experience and memory offer for understanding this moment? In what ways are shifting international responses to the Hamas–Israel conflict reshaping Jewish life worldwide?

The Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies continues this vital conversation with the second event in our series, Framing October 7.

Jonathan Dekel-Chen is a member of Kibbutz Nir Oz. The Hamas attack on his kibbutz on October 7, 2023 resulted in the massacre of dozens of its members, the captivity of many dozens more as well as the physical destruction and looting of Nir Oz. His 37 year-old son Sagui – a father of three young girls – was among the hostages from Nir Oz; he was released on February 14, 2025.

Since the Hamas attack on his kibbutz, Dekel-Chen has advocated in the US and Israel for release of the hostages, including many meetings with senior officials in both the Biden and Trump administrations, as well as members of Congress. He has also made hundreds of media appearances to inform the public about the plight of the hostages.

Dekel-Chen is the Rabbi Edward Sandrow Chair in Soviet & East European Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he holds a dual appointment in the Department of Jewish History and in the Department of General History; he is also the Academic Chairman of the Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian & East European Jewry. Dekel-Chen’s research deals with modern Jewish history, modern Israel, transnational philanthropy and advocacy, non-state diplomacy, agrarian history and migration.

Together with Sagui, his older son Etai, and the late Tamar Kedem Siman-Tov, in 2014 Jonathan co-founded the Bikurim Youth Village for the Arts in Eshkol. Relocated to Ein Gedi in 2020, Bikurim provides world-class artistic training for underserved high school students from throughout Israel.

Nadav Eyal is a leading Israeli journalist, Adjunct Professor at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and Senior Scholar. He is winner of the Sokolov Award (Israel’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize) and recipient of the B'nai B'rith World Center Award for Journalism. He writes columns for Yediot Ahronot and Ynet, and serves as a commentator for Channel 12. 

Nadav chaired the Movement for Freedom of Information, which promotes transparency and accountability in Israel from 2021-2026. His recent book HOW DEMOCRACY WINS (if it does) (2023), was lauded by Haaretz as a major contribution to the study of democracy. He has also produced major documentary projects, including: Trumpland (2016), Syrian refugee crisis (2015), and Hate on rising anti-Semitism (2014). 

Since October 7, 2023, he has focused on covering the Hamas attack, Gaza war, and northern border, including field reporting and victim accounts.

Avi Shilon is a historian who specializes in Israel Studies. His PhD dissertation focuses on the attitudes of the leaders of the Revisionist Movement toward Jewish religion from 1925 to 2005.

He is the author of Menachem Begin’s biography, Menachem Begin: A Life (Yale University Press, 2013); Ben Gurion: His Later Years in the Political Wilderness (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016); and The Decline of the Left-wing in Israel: Yossi Beilin and the Politics of the Peace Process (I.B. Tauris, 2020).

Shilon was a visiting scholar at NYU from 2019 to 2022, teaching courses at the Hebrew University and Ben-Gurion University in Israel, as well as at NYU and Rutgers University in the U.S, and Tsinghua University in Beijing. Last year, he taught at Columbia University.

Shilon is also the editor of the non-fiction section at Am-Oved Publishing House and writes op-ed columns for Yedioth Ahronoth. He is currently teaching at the Tel-Hai Academic College in Israel.

The panel is available to view in full below.

IIJS Film@Home: "Running on Sand" Q&A with Director, Producer Adar Shafran

IIJS opened its Fall 2025 Film Series with Running on Sand. Guests were invited to screen the film from the comfort of their homes, then join us via Zoom for a Q&A with the film’s director and producer Adar Shafran, led by IIJS Film Programmer Stuart Weinstock.

Aumari, a young Eritrean refugee living in Israel, is about to be deported. At the airport, he is mistaken for Maccabi Netanya's new star player from Nigeria. Despite having no soccer skills, Aumari seizes the opportunity and finds himself lifting up the floundering team while bonding with the team's female CEO. Nominated for four Ophir Awards (Israel's Oscars), including Best Film, and winning the Audience Award at both the Palm Springs International Film Festival and the Boca International Jewish Film Festival, Running on Sand combines Ted Lasso-style humor with an empathic depiction of refugees' struggles, shedding light on the unseen and unheard in Israeli society.

Adar Shafran is a producer and co-owner of Firma Films, a Tel-Aviv-based production company making feature films, television series, and short-form content. He has produced films and a series with Haredi filmmaker Rama Burshtein (Fill the Void, The Wedding Plan, and Fire Dance) and with the comedy duo Guy Amir and Hanan Savyon (Maktub, Forgiveness, and Bros), among others. Running on Sand is Adar's first feature film as director.

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

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

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IIJS Hosts Q&A with Columbia Film Professor Annette Insdorf on “The Wild One”

IIJS closed its Summer Film Series with the documentary The Wild One. Guests were invited to screen the film from the comfort of their homes, then join us via Zoom for a Q&A with Columbia University Film Professor Annette Insdorf, moderated by IIJS Film Programmer Stuart Weinstock.

The Wild One illuminates the journey of an unsung artist, Jack Garfein – Holocaust survivor, celebrated Broadway director, Actors Studio West co-founder, and controversial filmmaker. This documentary delves into how his experience in the concentration camps shaped his vision of acting as a survival mechanism and propelled his engagement with themes of violence, power, and racism in postwar America in two explosive films: The Strange One (1957) and Something Wild (1961). The Wild One examines Garfein's legacy as an artist and his contributions to the mid-century revolutions in stage and screen acting, alongside other Jewish artists, that continue to define performance today.

Annette Insdorf is a Professor of Film at Columbia, and Moderator of the "Reel Pieces" series at the 92nd Street Y. Her books include Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust (with a foreword by Elie Wiesel), and Cinematic Overtures: How to Read Opening Scenes. Read Professor Insdorf’s full bio here.

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

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

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Dr. Alexandra Birch Awarded Douglas Chalmers Graduate Scholars Lectureship

The Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies is proud to share that Dr. Alexandra Birch, a Mellon Teaching Fellow at the Harriman Institute and Lecturer in History, has been awarded the prestigious Douglas Chalmers Graduate Scholars Lectureship by Emeritus Professors in Columbia (EPIC). This honor recognizes outstanding graduate students whose work exemplifies intellectual distinction and a strong commitment to teaching and public engagement.

The Selection Committee commended Dr. Birch for a distinctive scholarly voice that merges performance and research, with particular attention to recovering music lost during the Holocaust and honoring composers whose legacies have long been overlooked.

Congratulations to Dr. Alexandra Birch on this well-earned recognition.

New Research by Professor Rebecca Kobrin on October 7 and Its Impact on Israeli Students at Columbia

We are proud to share recent research by IIJS Co-Director Professor Rebecca Kobrin, examining the events and aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. This work offers critical insight into the surge of antisemitic and anti-Israel incidents on U.S. college campuses, including the experiences of Israeli students at Columbia.

Her study examines how the October 7 Hamas attacks and ensuing campus activism affected Israeli students’ sense of belonging at Columbia University, arguing that the concept of “anti-Israelism” is essential to understanding these dynamics fully. 

Read her research in detail, linked below:

Anti-Israelism, Social Media and the College Campus in the Aftermath of October 7: The Case of Columbia

Rebecca Kobrin is the Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History at Columbia University, specializing in modern Jewish migration, immigration history, urban studies, and business history. She earned her B.A. from Yale and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, followed by postdoctoral fellowships at Yale and NYU. Kobrin is the author of Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora, which won the Jordan Schnitzer Prize, and has edited several volumes, including Chosen Capital and Salo Baron. Her forthcoming book, A Credit to the Nation (Harvard University Press, 2024), explores the world of East European immigrant bankers in America. She has received Columbia’s Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award for her exceptional teaching and mentoring and is a principal investigator of the award-winning Historical NYC Project, a digital humanities initiative mapping New York City’s demographic shifts from 1850 to 1940.

Israel at War with Iran: A Briefing from Tel Aviv with Avi Shilon

The Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies welcomed Professor Avi Shilon for a historical overview of Israel and Iran in the context of the ongoing war. The session, held via Zoom on Wednesday, June 18 and moderated by IIJS Co-Director Rebecca Kobrin, was cut short due to red alert sirens warning of an incoming missile attack. In the days that followed, Professor Shilon responded to audience questions posted during the webinar.

Professor Shilon’s talk is available to view in full below, accompanied by the written Q&A.

Avi Shilon previously served as a visiting faculty member with IIJS in the recent spring 2025 semester as well as spring 2023, where his course, History of Modern Israel, was exceptionally well received. He has been the Visiting Scholar and Israel Institute Fellow at the Taub Center for Israel Studies at New York University, as well as a postdoctoral fellow at the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and at Tsinghua University, China. He is the author of 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). His articles have appeared in Middle Eastern Studies, The Jewish Quarterly Review, and Middle East Journal, and he is a contributor to Yedioth Ahronoth (YNet). Dr. Shilon earned his Ph.D. from Bar-Ilan University, Israel, in 2015.

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

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Announcing the New Issue of Iggrot Ha’Ari: Columbia’s Undergraduate Journal of Jewish Scholarship

We are pleased to share the latest issue of Iggrot Ha'Ari, Columbia's undergraduate journal of Jewish scholarship, now available online.

Published each spring with advisory from the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, Iggrot Ha'Ari is an open-access, interdisciplinary journal that features student research engaging with Jewish texts, identity, and religious thought. Its name—The Lion's Letters—pays tribute both to Columbia's mascot and to the rabbinic tradition of Responsa.

The journal seeks to foster thoughtful academic discourse on topics relevant to contemporary Jewish life while encouraging a wide range of analytical approaches. The journal aims to make writing an academic article on a Jewish topic accessible while giving writers the resources they need to create a high-quality piece that engages with and furthers the existing corpus of Jewish academia.


Read the new issue here: https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/ari/issue/view/Iggrot25

New Perspectives in Jewish Studies Award recipient, Ido Ben Harush, delivers his talk titled, "The Ban on Images Goes Digital: Vilém Flusser and German Jewish Thought"

IIJS hosted Ido Ben Harush, a recipient of the IIJS’s New Perspectives in Jewish Studies Award for 2024-2025, for his talk titled, “The Ban on Images Goes Digital: Vilém Flusser and German Jewish Thought.”

Modern German Jewish thinkers often addressed the question of the role of mediation in understanding the divine and the world through the lens of the Second Commandment's prohibition on graven images. Philosophers like Moses Mendelssohn and Hermann Cohen approached visual mediation with suspicion, arguing that images could obstruct a true encounter with God and truth, potentially leading to idolatry. This presentation introduces the Prague born media theorist Vilém Flusser (1920-1991) as a Jewish philosopher, and examines his contribution to this discussion. Flusser argues that digital images are different from “traditional images” as they do not reflect or distort reality but generate visual entities entirely independent of the physical world. Understood as such, the digital image is not an intermediary and therefore escapes standard theological problems associated with idolatry and mediation. By positioning Flusser within the German Jewish tradition, this presentation brings to the fore a neglected voice in 20th-century Jewish philosophy and explores the applicability of traditional questions to our digital age.

Ido Ben Harush is a PhD candidate in the department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Yale University. He is a scholar of modern German Jewish philosophy and literature, with interest in theories of image, gesture and secularization. His dissertation examines the literary variations and afterlives of the prohibition of idolatry and the biblical ban on images (Bilderverbot) in the work of modern German Jewish authors and shows how concerns about idolatry are retrieved and repurposed in philosophical, political, and aesthetic discourses.

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

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Hannah Pollin-Galay delivers the 2024-2025 Naomi Prawer Kadar Annual Memorial Lecture

The Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies & The Naomi Foundation hosted the 2023-2024 Naomi Prawer Kadar Annual Memorial Lecture with Prof. Hannah Pollin-Galay. Her virtual talk, titled “Turning Holocaust Slang into Art: Between K. Tzetnik and Chava Rosenfarb,” took place on Monday, March 3, at noon.

The Yiddish language drastically changed in the ghettos and camps of Nazi Europe. By one estimate, roughly 3,000 new words and phrases were added to the language. Many of these neologisms were of a vulgar nature, relating to topics like theft and sex work. While some people found these new words embarrassing, unseemly and just plain ugly, others attempted to uplift them and transform them into art. Among the writers that incorporated Khurbn Yiddish (Yiddish of the Holocaust), into their postwar poetry and prose, the authors K. Tzetnik and Chava Rosenfarb stand out. Each extracted and presented the aesthetic potential of Khurbn Yiddish words in different ways.  K. Tzetnik emphasized the horrifying, bizarre side of Khurbn Yiddish words, molding them into an expressionistic scream. Rosenfarb, by contrast, shined a light onto the small acts of resilience contained within Khurbn Yiddish words, memories of self-expression and communication against the odds. Her ghetto terms become beautiful in the way they invite readers into scenes of everyday life under Nazi rule, moments from the margins of history that are rarely considered worthy of notice. The two authors also clash on the topic of female sexuality—and the ways that words relate to the body.

Hannah Pollin-Galay is Associate Professor in the Department of Literature at Tel Aviv University, where she is also Head of the Jona Goldrich Institute for Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture. Pollin-Galay researches and teaches primarily in the fields of Yiddish literature and Holocaust Studies, and has recently begun to foray into the field of ecocriticism. Her first book, Ecologies of Witnessing: Language, Place and Holocaust Testimony came out with Yale University Press in 2018 and her second, Occupied Words: What the Holocaust Did to Yiddish (U Penn Press, 2024) asks how the Holocaust changed the Yiddish language. She is currently working on a project exploring the fraught connections between Jews and non-human nature, across time and space. In addition to being a 2024-2025 Senior Scholar at the Fortunoff Archive for Holocaust Testimony at Yale University, Pollin-Galay is also a Yiddish Book Center Translation Fellow, where she is translating Yiddish ecopoetry from the Holocaust.

Prof. Hannah Pollin-Galay’s talk is available to view in full below.

This lecture was made possible 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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"When does Anti-Zionism turn into Antisemitism?" a lecture with Prof. Dina Porat

Prof. Dina Porat joined the Institute on Wednesday, February 26,
at 1:30 PM for a virtual lecture titled "When does Anti-Zionism turn into Antisemitism?"

In this talk, Prof. Porat explores:

  • The definition of anti-Zionism and antisemitism 

  • Is anti-Zionism any better than antisemitism?

  • Should antisemitism and anti-Zionism be dealt with separately?

  • When does anti-Zionism turn into antisemitism?

  • What did Martin Luther King actually say in this regard?

In preparation for her talk, Prof. Porat invited guests to explore the readings below. These materials provide valuable context for her discussion on the distinctions and intersections between Anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

Dina Porat is the founding head of the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry. She served as head of the Department of Jewish History at the Rosenberg School for Jewish Studies and as the incumbent of the Alfred P. Slaner Chair in Antisemitism and Racism, all at Tel Aviv University.

She served as Yad Vashem's chief historian from 2010 to 2021 and is currently its academic advisor. Prof. Porat has mentored 30 M.A. and 20 Ph.D. students, has been awarded prizes for many of her publications, and was named TAU's Faculty of Humanities Best Teacher in 2004. In 2012, she received the Raoul Wallenberg Award and was included in The Marker Magazine's list of the 50 Leading Israeli Scholars in 2013, as well as Forbes' list of the 50 Leading Women in Israel in 2018.

Dina Porat has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Columbia, New York University, Venice International University, and the Hebrew University. She has also served as an expert on Israeli Foreign Ministry delegations to UN world conferences and as the academic advisor for the International Task Force on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research (now IHRA).

The lecture is available to view in full below.

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

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Guest Essay by IIJS Visiting Professor and journalist Avi Shilon in The Forward

On February 24, IIJS Visiting Professor Avi Shilon published a guest essay in the Forward titled “Students were expelled for protesting my Columbia class on Israel. Here’s what they taught me.” In this piece, Dr. Shilon reflects on how Israeli and American Jews understand this kind of incident through very different frameworks.

Following the success of his course, History of Modern Israel, in spring 2023, Dr. Shilon returned to IIJS as a visiting faculty member for the 2025 spring semester. He has been the Visiting Scholar and Israel Institute Fellow at the Taub Center for Israel Studies at New York University, as well as a postdoctoral fellow at the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and at Tsinghua University, China. He is the author of 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). His articles have appeared in Middle Eastern Studies, The Jewish Quarterly Review, and Middle East Journal, and he is a contributor to Yedioth Ahronoth (YNet). Dr. Shilon earned his Ph.D. from Bar-Ilan University, Israel, in 2015.

Click here to read Avi Shilon’s full essay in the Forward: https://forward.com/opinion/699100/columbia-israel-campus-protest-barnard/

IIJS Hosts “Torn” filmmaker and participants for a virtual panel discussion

IIJS’s Israeli Film@Home Series opened this semester with Torn, a new documentary by Nim Shapira. The filmmaker was joined for a virtual panel discussion by film participants Alana Zeitchik and Julia Simon, whose family members are hostages; Nitzan Mintz and Dede Bandaid, creators of the Kidnapped poster; and activist Elisha Fine. IIJS Film Programmer Stuart Weinstock moderated the discussion.

Torn, a new documentary by Israeli-born, New York-based filmmaker Nim Shapira, delves into the controversy surrounding the “Kidnapped from Israel” poster campaign, a grassroots effort to raise awareness about the 240 hostages taken by Hamas. With empathy and thoughtfulness, Torn explores the motivations of those who put up and tear down the posters in and around New York City, unraveling the complexities of this intense proxy battle, fought thousands of miles from the actual conflict.

Watch the trailer and find upcoming screenings on the documentary's website, linked here.

The panel discussion is available to view in full below.

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

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Fabio Fantuzzi’s "Norman Raeben (1901–1978): The Wandering Painting" is Now Available

We are pleased to share that Fabio Fantuzzi, a Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellow who delivered a guest lecture on the legacy of Norman Raeben during the fall semester at IIJS, has now released the first retrospective catalog of Raeben’s works. This publication, based on research conducted at Columbia and Ca’ Foscari University as part of the EU-funded POYESIS project, offers the most comprehensive study to date on Raeben’s art and influence. The catalog is available for free in an open-access format through Sillabe Editore: Norman Raeben (1901–1978): The Wandering Painting.

Accompanying the catalog, a retrospective exhibition of Raeben’s work is currently on view at the Jewish Museum in Venice. Initially set to close in January, the exhibition has been extended until March 9 due to strong interest. In addition, RAI 3 has produced a short documentary on the exhibition, which can be viewed here: Il pittore errante – Sorgente di vita.

Fabio Fantuzzi is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, working on the EU-funded MSC project POYESIS (Perspectives on Yiddish Cultural Evolution and Its Legacy: Visual Arts, Theatre, and Songwriting Between Assimilation and Identity. A Case Study). He holds a Ph.D. in Anglo-American Studies, and his primary research interests lie in the intersections of poetry, music, and visual arts within the American Jewish and Italian American literary and artistic traditions.

He has published articles and essays in several academic journals, edited the volume Tales of Unfulfilled Times (Ca’ Foscari University Press, 2017), co-edited Bob Dylan and the Arts: Songs, Film, Painting, and Sculpture in Dylan’s Universe (Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2020), and curated the catalog Norman Raeben (1901–1978): The Wandering Painting (Sillabe, 2024). His current research examines the work and teachings of artist Norman Raeben and his influence on various leading artists as a means of exploring the evolution of Yiddish culture and art in 20th-century New York. As part of this research, he has curated the retrospective exhibition of Raeben’s works, "Norman Raeben (1901–1978): The Wandering Painting," which will be on display at the Jewish Museum in Venice until March 9, 2025.

In addition to his academic pursuits, Fantuzzi is a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter. With his band Le Ombre di Rosso, he has released the albums Momenti di lucidità (2016) and Da Sponda a Sponda (2021), which puts to music Luciano Cecchinel’s homonymous collection of poems (Arcipelago Itaca, 2020).

Dr. Fantuzzi’s IIJS fall lecture is available to watch–view it here.

IIJS Co-Director, Elisheva Carlebach, receives AJS Gender Justice Caucus Mentorship Award

Elisheva Carlebach, the Salo Wittmayer Baron Professor of Jewish History, Culture and Society and IIJS Co-Director, has been honored with the Association for Jewish Studies “Gender Justice Caucus Mentorship Award.” This award recognizes outstanding service in the profession through the mentorship of women scholars in Jewish Studies.

A leading professor in early modern European Jewish history, Professor Carlebach is celebrated for her transformative impact as a mentor, particularly her dedication to supporting women in the field. She has been a tireless advocate for emerging female scholars, offering guidance on navigating institutional gender biases and fostering their academic and personal growth. Her commitment to mentoring extends far beyond academic achievements, as she inspires confidence, nurtures intellectual curiosity, and creates supportive networks that uplift the next generation of scholars. Professor Carlebach’s unparalleled dedication has shaped countless careers and left an indelible mark on Jewish studies.

Prof. Olga Gershenson Joins IIJS for a Virtual Book Talk, "New Israeli Horror: Local Cinema, Global Genre"

Olga Gershenson (University of Massachusetts Amherst) joined IIJS on Monday, November 25, via Zoom to discuss her latest book, New Israeli Horror: Local Cinema, Global Genre, with IIJS Film Programmer, Stuart Weinstock.

Before 2010, there were no Israeli horror films. The next decade saw a blossoming of the genre by young Israeli filmmakers. New Israeli Horror is the first book to tell their story and analyze their films, from inception to reception. What triggered this sudden development? Why did Israeli filmmakers turn to horror? How do their films portray Israel? What kind of horror scenarios do they depict and how? These questions are particularly poignant now, in light of the attack on October 7, which pitted the real-life horrors against the fictional ones. This talk will include clips from relevant films. No advance viewing is required.

Olga Gershenson is Professor of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies and of Film Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. A multi-disciplinary scholar, her interests lie at the intersection of culture, history, and film. She is the author of New Israeli Horror: Local Cinema, Global Genre (2023), The Phantom Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and Jewish Catastrophe (2013), Gesher: Russian Theater in Israel (2005), as well as editor of Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender (2009). She is currently working on a volume titled The Oxford Handbook of Judaism and Film.

The lecture is available to view in full below.

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

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Prof. Magda Teter joined the IIJS for the 2024 Yosef Yerushalmi Annual Memorial Lectur

The Institute welcomed Prof. Magda Teter on Wednesday, November 20, at 6:00 PM for the 2025 Yosef Yerushalmi Annual Memorial Lecture, “On Jewish Suffering, Jewish History, and the Need to Rethink Antisemitism."

In 2022, graffiti was found in Bethesda, MD., saying, “No Mercy for Jews.” Since October 7th, outbreaks of virulent antisemitism, contempt, and lack of empathy for Jewish suffering have been manifest widely. In this talk, Magda Teter will explore the deep habits of thinking about Jews and traditional scholarly approaches to antisemitism, and seek to reframe our understanding of anti-Jewish animus and antisemitism.

Magda Teter is Professor of History and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University. Teter is the author of Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland (Cambridge, 2005), Sinners on Trial (Harvard, 2011), which was a finalist for the Jordan Schnitzer Prize, Blood Libel: On the Trail of An Antisemitic Myth (Harvard, 2020), Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism (Princeton, 2023), and of dozens of articles in English, Hebrew, Italian, and Polish. Her book Blood Libel won the 2020 National Jewish Book Award, The George L. Mosse Prize from the American Historical Association, and the Bainton Prize from the Sixteenth Century Society. Teter is the recipient of prestigious fellowships, including from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University, the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and the NEH. She has served as the co-editor of the AJS Review and as the Vice-President for Publications of the Association for Jewish Studies. Teter is currently the President of the American Academy for Jewish Research.

The lecture is available to view in full below.

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

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Dr. Benjamin Berman-Gladstone Delivers the Warren and Susan Stern Postdoctoral Fellowship Lecture

The Institute was proud to host the Warren and Susan Stern Postdoctoral Lecture, “Zionist Thought and the Jewish World: Identity, Gender, and Power Across and Beyond Southwest Asia” with Dr. Benjamin Berman-Gladstone on Thursday, November 14, at 12:00 PM.

“Zionism” is often defined in a vacuum, sometimes (especially by its advocates) as a national liberation movement, and sometimes (especially by its opponents) as a colonial plot. In this lecture, Dr. Gladstone will argue for a history of Zionism not as an abstraction but as a social and intellectual movement embedded in myriad cultural and political contexts across Southwest Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Zionist thought has rarely been reducible to a concrete/static set of principles. Rather, it has operated as a network of overlapping institutions and initiatives or as a space of contestation over issues like labor, gender, culture, and colonialism. By understanding the fragmented and complex development of Zionism across the Jewish world before and since 1948, we can better understand not only its roles in Jewish history but also its manifestations inside and outside Israeli society today.

Benjamin Berman-Gladstone (B.A. Brown University; Ph.D. New York University) is the Warren and Susan Stern Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish Thought at Columbia University. He was previously a Fulbright Research Fellow in Israel and a Wexner Graduate Fellow. He specializes in Middle Eastern Zionist thought, Middle Eastern Jewish migration history, and Adeni history. His dissertation, completed in 2024, focused on colonialism and resistance in the Aden protectorates, Adeni Jewish political activism and migration from Aden and Yemen to Israel, and enslavement and the slave trade in the Eastern Aden Protectorate (in its Red Sea and Indian Ocean contexts) in the 1930s and 1940s.

The lecture is available to view in full below.

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

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IIJS Professor and Director Emeritus Jeremy Dauber on Satanism, Psychopaths, and the Real American Horror Story

Columbia Magazine’s Julia Joy interviews Professor Jeremy Dauber about his new book, American Scary: A History of Horror, from Salem to Stephen King and Beyond, which traces the nation’s enduring fascination with the macabre. Dauber reflects on why the horror genre deserves serious attention, the historical events that shaped it, and the reasons people are drawn to its dark and unsettling stories.

Read the full article via this link.

Yosefa Raz launches her new book, "The Poetics of Prophecy: Modern Afterlives of a Biblical Tradition"

The Institute hosted Yosefa Raz (University of Haifa) on Tuesday, October 29th, for the launch of her new book, The Poetics of Prophecy: Modern Afterlives of a Biblical Tradition.

Since the mid-1700s, poets and scholars have been deeply entangled in the project of reinventing prophecy. Moving between literary and biblical studies, The Poetics of Prophecy reveals how Romantic poetry is linked to modern biblical scholarship’s development. On the one hand, scholars, intellectuals, and artists discovered models of strong prophecy in biblical texts, shoring up aesthetic and nationalist ideals, while on the other, poets drew upon a countertradition of destabilizing, indeterminate, weak prophetic power. Yosefa Raz considers British and German Romanticism alongside their margins, incorporating Hebrew literature written at the turn of the twentieth century in the Russian Empire. Ultimately, she explains the weakness of modern poet-prophets not only as a crisis of secularism but also, strikingly, as part of the instability of the biblical text itself.

Yosefa Raz is a senior lecturer in the department of English Literature at the University of Haifa, where she specializes in the study of the Bible and its reception, poetry and poetics, and Romantic and contemporary poetry. She is also a poet and translator, with work recently published in The Brooklyn Rail, Boston Review, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.

The book talk is available to view in full below.

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

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"Women on the Yiddish Stage": A Book Talk with Co-Editor Amanda Miryem-Khaye Seigel and Contributor Caraid O'Brien

On Monday, October 28, at 6:00 PM, IIJS hosted a book talk and discussion on Women on the Yiddish Stage with Amanda Miryem-Khaye Seigel, co-editor, and Caraid O’Brien, contributing author.

The integration of women into public Jewish performance (Yiddish-language theater by 1877 and Hebrew-language theater by about 1918) was a revolution in modern Jewish culture. While a great deal of seasoned Yiddish-speaking male talent preexisted theater in the form of cantors, choristers, and tavern singers, East European Jewish women had no experience participating in public Jewish performance. From the theater’s first days, women assumed positions of authority, security, and visibility in great numbers. Rapidly, by the 1890s, when the center of the Yiddish theater shifted from cities throughout Romania and the Russian Empire where it first launched in the late 1870s to cities across the globe — including London, Buenos Aires, and New York City by the turn of the century — substantial numbers of female Yiddish actors enjoyed celebrity on par with their male counterparts. Women on the Yiddish Stage presents an array of scholarly essays that challenge the existing historical accounting of the modern Yiddish theater; highlight pioneering artists, creators, and impresarios; and map sources and methodologies of this rich area of forgotten history.

Amanda Miryem-Khaye Seigel is a Yiddish singer, songwriter, actor, recording artist and scholar in Yiddish music and culture who “exemplifies the attempt to bring a centuries-old language and culture into the contemporary world” (New York Times). She has performed internationally and released a CD of original and adapted Yiddish songs called "Toyznt tamen=A thousand flavors" in 2015. Miryem-Khaye is co-editor (with Alyssa Quint) of Women on the Yiddish Stage (Legenda, 2023) and a member of the Digital Yiddish Theatre Project. Visit http://www.memkhes.com for more information.

Caraid O'Brien has been translating and performing the plays of Sholem Asch since her debut production of God of Vengeance "set Show World aflame" according to the Village Voice in 1999.  She has received three new play commissions from the Foundation for Jewish Culture and was commissioned by Theater J and Solas Nua in DC to write The Rabbi's House, her adaptation of Sholem Asch's Ibsen inspired drama Rabbi Doctor Silver.  She was a 2019 Translation Fellow at the Yiddish Book Center and Sholem Asch Underworld Trilogy, her translation of three Asch plays was published by White Goat Press. Caraid co-curated the theater section of Yiddish: A Global Culture, the permanent exhibit at the Yiddish Book Center and studied Yiddish theater history and performance with legendary Yiddish actors Luba Kadison and Seymour Rexite.   caraidobrien.com.

The lecture is available to view in full below.
*Please note that the audio of Miriam Kressyn’s rendition of Leonard Bernstein’s “Maria,” played during Caraid O’Brien’s lecture, is not currently available.

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

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