Jewish Studies

Professor Ted Sasson will speak on his new book The New American Zionism (NYU Press, November 2013). Sasson argues that, at the core, the new relationship between American Jews and Israel is being fundamentally misunderstood. Conflicting viewpoints and strategies regarding the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and the Iran deal reflect sharpening polarization in the American Jewish community. But contrary to what many observers have claimed, the fracturing of a unified voice within the Jewish community does not reflect diminished attachment to Israel.

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.

Jewish education in “Ottoman Beirut: The case of the Tif’eret Israel School, Al-Madrasa al-wataniyya al-Isra’iliyya”. The case of Tiferet Israel, a Jewish school that was founded in Beirut in 1874, falls within the broader subject of the modernization of Jewish education (and generally, Jewish life) in the Middle East in the late Ottoman period. Dr.

Jewish Studies Lecture by David Freidenreich, Colby college

Professor Sammy Smooha, Haifa University & NYU How western is Israel?

“Israel’s Strategic Position in a Volatile Middle East” by Daniel Kurtzer, professor in Middle Eastern Policy Studies at Princeton University, former Ambassador of the United States to Israel (2001-2005) and Egypt (1997-2001). Sponsored by Rohatyn Center for International Affairs, Department of Political Science, Scott Center for Spiritual, Religious Life, Jewish Studies Program and Hillel.

Screening and discussion with Toby Perl Freilich, director of the documentary Inventing Our Life: The Kibbutz Experiment, which opened in New York in April 2012. Set against the backdrop of the glorious 100-year history of the Kibbutz, the film reveals the heartbreak and hope of Israel’s modern kibbutz movement as a new generation struggles to ensure its survival. Can a radically socialist institution survive a new capitalist reality? How will painful reforms affect those who still believe in the kibbutz experiment, and continue to call it home?

Neo-Hasidism: Origins and Prospects A lecture by Professor Art Green

When, in the late 19th century, many Eastern European Jews made their way to Burlington, then a bustling lumber port, they created “Little Jerusalem” a thriving, traditional Jewish community in Old North End. Vestiges of the community’s heritage still remain today. Vermont Public Television’s “Little Jerusalem” captures the rich history of this community in archival images and interviews with historians and descendants of the original settlers. “Little Jerusalem” has received the 2013 Richard O.

Film Screening followed by a discussion with Prof. Robert Schine and Rabbi Ira Schiffer. A devout 18-year-old Israeli is pressured to marry the husband of her late sister. Declaring her independence is not an option in Tel Aviv’s ultra-Orthodox Hasidic community, where religious law, tradition and the rabbi’s word are absolute. For more information, see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2219514/ Sponsored by the program in Jewish Studies (Aquinnah Fund) and Hillel