IIJS was pleased to welcome Naomi Seidman, in conversation with our own Clémence Boulouque, for the annual Yosef Yerushalmi Memorial Lecture on Wednesday, November 19.
This lecture honors the legacy of historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, whose work transformed the study of Jewish history and memory. This year’s program featured a conversation between Naomi Seidman and Clémence Boulouque, exploring questions of Jewish translation, storytelling, and cultural transmission. The event offered an engaging opportunity to reflect on Yerushalmi’s enduring influence and the vibrant scholarship it continues to inspire.
Naomi Seidman is the Chancellor Jackman Professor of the Arts in the Department for the Study of Religion and the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016 and a National Jewish Book Award in 2019. Her writings include the 2006 Faithful Renderings: Jewish—Christian Difference and the Politics of Difference; The Marriage Plot, Or, How Jews Fell in Love with Love, and with Literature (2016); and the 2019 Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement: A Revolution in the Name of Tradition. Her podcast, "Heretic in the House," was released in 2022. Translating the Jewish Freud (2024) is her fifth book.
Clémence Boulouque received her Ph.D. in Jewish Studies and History from New York University in 2014 and took postdoctoral training at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania. Her interests include Jewish thought and mysticism, interreligious encounters, intellectual history, and networks with a focus on the modern Mediterranean and Sefardi worlds, as well as the intersection between religion and the arts, and the study of the unconscious.
The full discussion is available to view below.
Supported by the generosity of the Kaye and Radov families.