Jewish Studies

Amos Oz, who died last year on the 28th of December, was a beloved Israeli writer, and probably the most widely known figure in modern Hebrew literature outside Israel. His works—novels, short stories, essays, memoir—have been translated into 45 languages. He was also one of the first, after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, to call for a two-state solution to the conflict between Palestinian Arabs and the State of Israel.

Sponsored by the Hebrew Program and the Jewish Studies Program.

Professor Orit Bashkin (University of Chicago) will discuss her new book Impossible Exodus: Iraqi Jews in Israel (Stanford University Press, 2017). Professor Bashkin’s book is co-winner of the 2018 Nikki Keddie Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association. The lecture will relate the experience of tens of thousands of Arabic-speaking Iraqi Jews who migrated to Israel between 1949-1951, and will survey their struggle for resettlement and civil rights during the 1950s, as well as the discrimination they faced from the Israeli government and Ashkenazi Jews.

Professor David Nirenberg of the University of Chicago will deliver the Hannah A. Quint Lecture in Jewish Studies on the topic: “What Does the History of Anti-Semitism Tell Us About its Future?” David Nirenberg is Dean of the Divinity School at the University of Chicago and the Deborah R. and Edgar D. Jannotta Distinguished Service Professor of Medieval History and Social Thought. This is the 32nd Annual Hannah A. Quint Lecture in Jewish Studies, established by the late Eliot Levinson, Class of 1964, in honor of his late mother, Mrs. Quint.

Ismar Schorsch will speak on National Pride and European Prejudice: The Creation of Jewish Studies.