Calendar of Events

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To add your name to the email list for announcements of events in Jewish Studies at Middlebury, contact Vijaya Wunnava, Program Coordinator (Email: vwunnava@middlebury.edu; Tel.: 802.443.5009802.443.5009

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2014 SPRING TERM EVENTS

Wednesday, March 19, 2014, 4:30 PM

The Ambiguity of Virtue: Gertrude van Tijn and the Fate of the Dutch Jews. 

Bernard Wasserstein/University of Chicago

Professor Bernard Wasserstein, Univeristy of Chicago, will speak on his new book, The Ambiguity of Virtue: Gertrude van Tijn and the Fate of the Dutch Jews.                                                                  

The book touches on some of the central moral-historical issues of the twentieth century. Gertrude van Tijn was a German-born social worker who served from 1933 to 1941 as secretary of the Amsterdam Jewish Refugees Committee. From 1941 to 1943 she headed the emigration department of the Nazi-appointed Jewish Council in Amsterdam. In May 1941, with Nazi approval, she flew from Amsterdam to Lisbon in an attempt to negotiate the departure from occupied Europe of large numbers of German and Dutch Jews. She then courageously returned to Holland where she continued her work until her arrest, with other leaders of the Jewish Council, in September 1943.

The Ambiguity of Virtue tells the story of Van Tijn's efforts to organize Jewish emigration from Nazi territory. The book discusses the methods that she deployed, while facing difficult moral choices, to enable thousands of Jews to escape with their lives. Some called her a heroine; others denounced her as a collaborator. The lecture will raise crucial questions about German policy towards the Jews, about Jewish reactions to the Nazi menace, and about Dutch, American and British responses to the genocide of the Jews.  In part, Wasserstein’s intent is to rebut the simplistic picture of the Jewish councils presented in Hannah Arendt's still-influential Eichmann in Jerusalem, seeking to understand van Tijn’s conduct and objectives in the context of the time, and to reach a balanced view of the 'ambiguity of virtue.'  Sponsored by the Program in Jewish Studies and the Department of History.

McCardell Bicentennial Hall 220

Sponsored by the Program in Jewish Studies and the Department of History

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April 27, 2014, 7:30 PM

The Hannah A. Quint Lectureship in Jewish Studies

On Radical Judaism

Rabbi Art Green/Rector, Hebrew College

Rabbi Art Green, theologian and historian of Jewish religion, is the Irving Brudnick Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts.  He was also the founding dean of the Rabbinical School there and now serves as its rector. He has taught Jewish mysticism, Hasidism and theology to several generations of students at the University of Pennsylvania; the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, where he served as both dean and president; Brandeis University; and Hebrew College. He remains a leading independent figure in the Jewish renewal movement. He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books; the most recent are Radical Judaism (Yale Univ. Press, 2010) and Speaking Torah: Spiritual Teachings From Around the Maggid's Table (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2013).   This is the 26th Annual Hannah A. Quint Lecture in Jewish Studies, sponsored by the Religion Department and the Program in Jewish Studies.  For further information, contact Vijaya Wunnava, Tel. 802.443.5009802.443.5009 or Email: vwunnava@middlebury.edu.

McCardell Bicentennial Hall 216

Sponsored by the Hannah A. Quint Lectureship in Jewish Studies  and the Department of Religion

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Program in Jewish Studies

Robert S. Schine, Director
Munroe Hall 309
802.443.5151802.443.5151
schine@middlebury.edu