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22nd Annual Contemporary Israeli Voices

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The first event in the series the 22nd Annual Contemporary Israeli Voices introduced the audience to the wonderful world of translation. Best-selling and acclaimed author, Maya Arad, conversed with the renowned translator, Jessica Cohen, regarding the relation between the author and her translator and tackled the question: whose text is it? Once again, the Wesleyan audience was privy to segments from Arad’s latest novel, Happy New Years, which will only be published in summer of 2025. The next event in this series (on November 14 at 8PM at PAC 100) Noa Yedlin will talk about writing for TV and segments from her TV show Stockholm will be screened.

Annual Samuel and Dorothy Frankel Memorial Lecture

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The Annual Samuel and Dorothy Frankel Memorial Lecture was delivered on April 18 by Roger Cohen, New York Times Paris Bureau Chief, who worked for the Times as a foreign correspondent, foreign editor, and an Opinion columnist between 2009 and 2020. Roger Cohen’s work has been recognized with numerous awards, including a 2023 Pulitzer Prize and George Polk Award as part of The Times teams covering the war in Ukraine. As foreign editor, he oversaw post-9/11 international coverage in a year that The Times won seven Pulitzers. He is the author of five books, including a family memoir entitled “The Girl from Human Street: Ghosts of Memory in a Jewish Family” and the recent “An Affirming Flame: Meditations on Life and Politics.” In 1995, he won the Overseas Press Club of America Burger Human Rights Award for his investigation of torture and murder at a Serb-run Bosnian concentration camp. In 2017, he was awarded the Society of Publishers in Asia prize for Opinion writing for a series on Australian mistreatment of refugees. He won the same award in 2018 for a piece about the Rohingya crisis in Burma. In 2021, Mr. Cohen received the Légion d’Honneur from the French Republic – France’s highest order of merit – for his work over four decades.

Roger Cohen was introduced by Wesleyan president, Michael Roth, who reviewed his memoir The Girl from Human Street. The title of Roger’s presentation was “Over the Edge: A Story of Israeli and Palestinian Failure”. The lecture was fully attended and a lengthy conversation with Roger Cohen followed with several thought-provoking questions presented by a very engaged audience.

The lecture was sponsored by Emil Frankel and the Center for Jewish Studies. It was organized by Dalit Katz, the Center’s Director. I hope you will join us for our annual Frankel lecture next year.

Professor Ethan Kleinberg Publishes New Book

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Congratulation and Mazal Tov to Professor Ethan Kleinberg whose book , Emmanuel Levinas’s Talmudic Turn: Philosophy and Jewish Thought will be published this October in the Cultural Memory in the Present Series from Stanford University Press.

In this rich intellectual history of the French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas’s Talmudic lectures in Paris, Ethan Kleinberg addresses Levinas’s Jewish life and its relation to his philosophical writings while making an argument for the role and importance of Levinas’s Talmudic lessons.

Pairing each chapter with a related Talmudic lecture, Kleinberg uses the distinction Levinas presents between “God on Our Side” and “God on God’s Side” to provide two discrete and at times conflicting approaches to Levinas’s Talmudic readings. One is historically situated and argued from “our side” while the other uses Levinas’s Talmudic readings themselves to approach the issues as timeless and derived from “God on God’s own side.” Bringing the two approaches together, Kleinberg asks whether the ethical message and moral urgency of Levinas’s Talmudic lectures can be extended beyond the texts and beliefs of a chosen people, religion, or even the seemingly primary unit of the self.

Touching on Western philosophy, French Enlightenment universalism, and the Lithuanian Talmudic tradition, Kleinberg provides readers with a groundbreaking investigation into the origins, influences, and causes of Levinas’s turn to and use of Talmud.

 

 

Why Hollywood Loves Israeli TV shows

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Due to the pandemic, The 18th Annual Fall Series Contemporary Israeli Voices, 2020  (curated by Dalit Katz) has moved online with two live multi-media presentations with Q/A sessions with the audience. The theme for the series this year was the success of Israeli artists in Hollywood. The series was inaugurated with renowned actress Ayelet Zurer who talked about Acting and the Brain’s Plasticity. Zurer spoke about her acting in American movies such as Angels & Demons and Man of Steel as well as acting in Israeli movies and the successful TV show Shtisel. The presentation included screenings of video trailers from her work. In the second presentation, which coincided with the official release of the trailer of the much anticipated TV show Valley of Tears, writer and scriptwriter, Ron Leshem, talked about Why Hollywood Loves Israeli TV Shows. Each presentation was followed by a Lunch and Learn meeting in which Hebrew students conversed with the speakers in Hebrew.  All presentations were opened to the public and were well attended. The Wesleyan community eagerly anticipates welcoming Ayelet Zurer and Ron Leshem again in the near future, hoping for in person  visits to our campus.

2019 Jeremy Zwelling Lecture

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On April 15, Sarah Imhoff, Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and the Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University, delivered the Fifth Annual Jeremy Zwelling lecture. The presentation was entitled Manliness and Its Opposites: A Brief History of American Jewish Gender. The animated presentation was delivered to a full house with a diverse audience consisting of students across the curriculum, Wesleyan faculty, people from the community and prospective students, all were intrigued by the subject matter.

2019 Samuel and Dorothy Frankel Memorial Lecture

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The Center for Jewish Studies hosted last night the Annual Samuel and Dorothy Frankel Memorial Lecture. Professor Devin Naar, the Isaac Alhadeff Professor of Sephardic Studies and Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of Washington, where he directs the Sephardic Studies Digital Collection, the largest repository of digital Ladino texts in the world, delivered a fascinating and animated presentation entitled The Rise and Fall of Salonica, the Jerusalem of the Balkans. Following the presentation there was an extensive Q/A session. To learn more about the subject check out Professor Naar’s book , Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece, which won a National Jewish Book Award and the grand prize from the Modern Greek Studies Association.

From left: Devin Naar, Dalit Katz, Emil Frankel

Call for Papers: 2018 Best Student Paper in Jewish Studies Award

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The Center for Jewish Studies is inviting applications for the  2018 Best Student Paper in Jewish Studies award. Did you write a good paper on the architecture of synagogues? Remember that work you did on Jewish hip-hop? Or that A-paper on Kafka that you wrote last year? From urban planning to philosophy, from music to religion, from literature to anthropology, students at Wesleyan are working on various Jewish topics using diverse methodologies. This new award is meant to showcase the excellent work being done by students in all fields of Jewish Studies broadly understood. Regardless of your major or minor, the participation is open to all students.

A committee of faculty members will select the best essay.

Submission guidelines:

  1. The paper should be on a Jewish topic (pretty obvious, right?)
  2. The paper has been awarded a grade of B+ or higher.
  3. For the 2018 Award, we accept submissions of papers from the years 2016-2017.
  4. Yes, you are welcome to revise your paper based on your professor’s comments, but please keep it to the standard final paper length.

Deadline: the deadline for submission is March 9, 2018. Results will be notified in April.

Question? Feel free to contact Prof. Yaniv Feller (yfeller@wesleyan.edu).

Please email your paper to Sheri Dursin at sdursin@wesleyan.edu, indicating “Jewish Studies Award Submission” in the subject line.

Good luck!

Dalit Katz, Director of the Center for Jewish Studies

Center for Jewish Studies Welcomes Nitzan Gilady

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As the director of the Center for Jewish Studies, it is my pleasure to welcome Nitzan Gilady, 2018 Silverberg Distinguished Scholar in Residence. Nitzan’s beautiful film Wedding Doll, inaugurated last year’s 10th Annual Ring Family Wesleyan University Israeli Film Festival and was introduced by Professor Jeanine Basinger, Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies.  Professor Gilady will teach an exciting new course CJST 248: Designing Reality in Israeli Documentary which will count towards the Certificate in Jewish and Israel Studies as well as the minor in the Film Department. In addition, he will introduce the recent Israeli Film Scaffolding, the fifth film in this year’s Israeli Film Festival. Please check our website for more information about the Film Festival at http://iff.site.wesleyan.edu/. Professor Gilady will meet with students of the Center for Jewish Studies as well as students in Hebrew classes. He plans to deliver a WESeminar during graduation weekend. The cold weather has not dampened our Israeli visitor’s enthusiasm towards Wesleyan and he looks forwards to meeting our students. Baruch Haba (welcome)!

Ruth Nisse Promoted to Professor of English

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Ruth NisseMazal Tov to Ruth Nisse, a faculty member in the Center for Jewish Studies, who was promoted to Professor of English. Professor Nisse is a scholar of medieval literature. Her recent book, Jacob’s Shipwreck: Diaspora and Translation in Jewish-Christian Relations in Medieval England (Cornell University Press, 2017), introduces a new approach to ideas of Jewish Diaspora in medieval Western Europe based on an examination of the transmission and reception of Hebrew and Latin post-biblical literature.