The Jews of Corfu: Between the Adriatic and the Ionian

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

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

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

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

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

IIJS@Home: Perfect Strangers

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

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

IIJS@Home: Let It Be Morning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IIJS@Home: Speer Goes To Hollywood

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

IIJS@Home: Forgiveness

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

A Look at How Salo Baron Transformed Jewish Studies in America

Professor Rebecca Kobrin has edited a book that examines the multifaceted, pioneering Jewish scholar.

By Eve Glasberg

In 1930, Columbia University appointed Salo Baron to be the Nathan L. Miller Professor of Jewish History, Literature, and Institutions, marking a turning point in the history of Jewish studies in America. Baron not only became perhaps the most accomplished 20th-century scholar of Jewish history, he was also the author of many books, including the 18-volume A Social and Religious History of the Jews. He created a program and a discipline, mentoring hundreds of scholars, establishing major institutions—including the first academic center to study Israel in the U.S.—and exerting an unparalleled influence on what it meant to study the Jewish past.

Click here to read the article.

Click here to purchase Professor Kobrin’s book, Salo Baron: The Past and Future of Jewish Studies in America

IIJS@Home: AJL Presents Salo Baron: Historian Of The Jews And Champion Of Libraries

Much has been written about the academic legacy of Salo Baron as a result of his scholarship and research. A recent book from Columbia University Press broadens our perspective of his legacy, by reflecting on the role he played in reshaping Jewish studies in the United States from his perch in Morningside Heights. Collecting articles from numerous scholars to mark the 90th anniversary of Baron’s arrival at Columbia University, this book features analysis of his impact as a public intellectual, the creator of the first academic center to study Israel, and champion of libraries. Rebecca Kobrin and Michelle Chesner discussed the recent book and how it informs Baron’s important impact on Columbia University and the world.

Rebecca Kobrin is the Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History at Columbia University, where she is also co-director of Columbia’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. Her book Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora (2010) was awarded the Jordan Schnitzer prize. She is the editor of Chosen Capital: The Jewish Encounter with American Capitalism (2012) and is coeditor with Adam Teller of Purchasing Power: The Economics of Jewish History (2015). Her forthcoming book, A Credit to the Nation: East European Immigrant Bankers and American Finance, 1870–1930, will be published by Harvard University Press.

In the News: Awards

  • Rebecca Kobrin (Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History; Co-Director, Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies) and historian Mae Ngai’s “Mapping Historical New York: A Digital Atlas” won two prizes as part of the Cartographic and Geographic Information Society of the Smithsonian Institution’s annual competition. They won Best in Digital/Interactive Map and Best in Show.

  • Dr. Tamar Menashe (Ph.D. ‘21) is the recipient of the 2022 Fritz Stern Dissertation Prize. Tamar’s dissertation reconstructs Ashkenazi and Sephardi German Jews' intensive pursuit of civil and religious rights before Germany's Imperial Supreme Court (Reichskammergericht, the Imperial Chamber Court) in the context of the wide-ranging religious and legal reforms in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The dissertation reveals that the study of Jews' surprising strategies of interconnecting law and religion in defense of themselves and their religious laws promoted Jews' civil rights in radical ways, and attained a de facto status of imperial citizenship for Ashkenazi and Sephardi-Portugese Jews.

IIJS@Home: American Comics: A History

On April 5, the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for Humanities celebrated the publication of Prof. Jeremy Dauber’s latest book, American Comics: A History.

Comics have conquered America. From our multiplexes, where Marvel and DC movies reign supreme, to our television screens, where comics-based shows like The Walking Dead have become among the most popular in cable history, to convention halls, best-seller lists, Pulitzer Prize–winning titles, and MacArthur Fellowship recipients, comics shape American culture, in ways high and low, superficial, and deeply profound.

In American Comics, Jeremy Dauber takes readers through their incredible but little-known history, starting with the Civil War and cartoonist Thomas Nast, creator of the lasting and iconic images of Uncle Sam and Santa Claus; the golden age of newspaper comic strips and the first great superhero boom; the moral panic of the Eisenhower era, the Marvel Comics revolution, and the underground comix movement of the 1960s and ’70s; and finally into the twenty-first century, taking in the grim and gritty Dark Knights and Watchmen alongside the brilliant rise of the graphic novel by acclaimed practitioners like Art Spiegelman and Alison Bechdel.

Dauber’s story shows not only how comics have changed over the decades but how American politics and culture have changed them. Throughout, he describes the origins of beloved comics, champions neglected masterpieces, and argues that we can understand how America sees itself through whose stories comics tell. Striking and revelatory, American Comics is a rich chronicle of the last 150 years of American history through the lens of its comic strips, political cartoons, superheroes, graphic novels, and more.

About the Author:

Jeremy Dauber is the Atran Professor of Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture and director of Columbia's Institute of Israel and Jewish Studies. He is the author of Antonio's Devils: Writers of the Jewish Enlightenment and the Birth of Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature (2004); In the Demon's Bedroom: Yiddish Literature and the Early Modern (2010); The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem (2013); and Jewish Comedy (2017). His research interests include Yiddish literature; comparative Jewish literature; the Yiddish theater; American Jewish literature and popular culture; and American literature and popular culture.

About the Speakers:

Marianne Hirsch is William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and Professor in the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Her work combines feminist theory with memory studies, particularly the transmission of memories of violence across generations. Her recent books include School Photos in Liquid Time: Reframing Difference, co-authored with Leo Spitzer (2020), and the co-edited volumes Imagining Everyday Life: Engagements with Vernacular Photograpahy (2020) and Women Mobilizing Memory (2019).

Rachel Adams is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She specializes in 20th- and 21st-century literatures of the United States and the Americas, disability studies and health humanities, media studies, theories of race, gender, and sexuality, and food studies. Her most recent book is Raising Henry: A Memoir of Motherhood, Disability, and Discovery, published by Yale University Press in 2013 and winner of the 2014 Delta Kappa Gamma Educators' Award.

Tahneer Oksman is a writer, teacher, and scholar. She is Associate Professor of Academic Writing at Marymount Manhattan College, where she teaches classes in writing, literature and comics, and journalism. Her interests revolve around comics and visual narrative, contemporary feminist literature, and memoir studies as well as twentieth- and twenty-first century Jewish American literature and culture. She is the author of "How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?”: Women and Jewish American Identity in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs (2016).

Victor Lavalle is Associate Professor of Writing at Columbia University. His most recent novel, The Changeling, was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2017 by Time Magazine and USA Today, and was a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle and more. He is also the author is Slapboxing with Jesus, The Ecstatic, Big Machine, The Devil in Silver, and The Ballad of Black Tom. He is also the writer/creator of a comic book, Destroyer. His awards include the Whiting Writers Award, a USA Ford Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Shirley Jackson Award and a British World Fantasy Award, among others.