The Center for
Jewish Studies was established in 1990 to coordinate scholarly research,
educational programs and cultural affairs, seeking to generate greater
interest in Jewish history, literature and culture. Independently,
as well as through its close cooperation with UMass Hillel, the
Center serves as an important public forum for scholarly exchange,
culture and fellowship. Scroll down for upcoming events.
The
Robert and Pamela Jacobs
Distinguished Lecture in Jewish Life & Culture:
Daniel Libeskind (Architect)
Breaking Ground
Tuesday, May 9, 2006 at 4:30PM in Bowker Auditorium, UMass
Naomi Chazan
Israeli Peace Options: Thinking Outside the Box
Noami Chazan is a former member of Knesset.
She is currently Professor of Political Science and African Studies,
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Tuesday, April 27, 2004 at 4:00PM in Memorial Hall, UMass
Dennis Ross
(Ambassador)
Missing Peace in
the Middle East
For more than 12 years, Ambassador Dennis B. Ross played a leading
role in shaping U.S. Involvement in the Middle East peace process.
In this inaugural lecture, Ambassador Ross will discuss the inside
story of efforts to negotiate peace between Israel and the Palestinians
over the last decade and the key lessons he has drawn from these
experiences.
Wednesday, May 7, 2003 at 4:30PM in Bowker Auditorium, UMass
Department Lectures and Visitors
October 18, 2007The Felix Posen Distinguished Lecture in Secular Judaism Fall 2007
Alanna Cooper, Cultural Anthropologist
Culture, Diaspora, Gender: Whither Jewish Studies
April 5, 2007
Rebecca Stein, Duke University
Tourism, Israeli Identity, and Cultural Terms of the Oslo Process
Co-sponsored by the Departments of Anthropology, Communication, Political Science and Sociology, UMass Amherst and the Dean of Faculty, Hampshire College
March 13, 2007
Idith Zertal, University of Basel, Switzerland
Israel's Memory of the Holocaust and the Israeli-Arab Conflict
Co-sponsored by the UMass Office of Jewish Affairs
February 15, 2007
Larissa Remennick, Bar-Ilan University
The Gender Perspective in Immigration Research: The Case of Former Soviet Jews in Israel and in the West
Co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology, Department of Sociology, the Slavic and East European Studies Program and the Women's Studies Program, UMass Amherst and the Five-College Slavic Seminar
February 6, 2007
Adolfo Roitman, Israel Museum, Jerusalem
and Schecter Institute of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem
From Biblical Land to Secular Country
November 13, 2006
John Davis, University of Connecticut
The Jews of San Nicandro: An unlikely tale of collective conversion in 20th century Italy
November 7, 2006
Dorit Naam, Queen's University, Canada
DiaDocuMEntary
November 2, 2006
James E. Young, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Out of Egypt by Andre Aciman (book discussion)
September 12, 2006
Chaim Cohen, Ben Gurion University, Israel
The Ancient Critical Misunderstanding of Exodus 21:22-25 and Its Implications for the Current Debate on Abortion
May 3, 2006 The Felix Posen Distinguished Lecture in Secular Judaism Spring 2006
at 5:00PM, in
601 Herter Hall, UMass
Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi (Duke University) and Bernard Avishai (Duke University)
Jerusalem, Politics, and Poetry
April 18, 2006
Matthew Bogdanos (Author)
Thieves of Baghdad: The Journey to Recover the World's Greatest Stole Treasure
April 4, 2006
Jay Berkovitz (UMass Amherst), Tayeb El-Hibri (UMass Amherst) and David Mednicoff (Legal Studies)
Recent developments in Israel and Palestine. A panel discussion on the new political landscape in Israel and Palestine after the Israeli disengagement from Gasa, the victory of Hamas in the recent Palestinian elections and of the ne Kadima Party in Israel, and the resulting prospects for peace negotiaions. This event was co-sponsored by the Office of Jewish Affairs.
March 7, 2006
Jay Berkovitz (UMass Amherst) and Alanna Cooper (UMass Amherst)
The Forgotten Refugees, film screening. Following the screening, Professor Berkovitz and Cooper will lead a discussion on the film
February 2, 2006
Adolofo Roitman (Scholar and Curator of the Dead Sea Scroll Collection at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and senior lecturer at Schecter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem
The Significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls For Judaism and Christianity
October 19, 2005
Esther Dischereit (Poet, novelist, essayist, stage and radio dramatist)
reading and discussion of her recent work
September 21, 2005
Murray Baumgarten (University of California, Santa Cruz)
American Midrash: Urban Jewish Writing and the Reclaiming of Judaism
April 19, 2005
Julian Weiss (King's College in London)
The Clerics and the Jews: Narratives of Tolerance and Persecution in Thirteenth-Century Spain
February 16, 2005
Menachem Wiesenberg (Jerusalem Academy of Music)
A Composer’s Responsibility to a Society in a Pressure Cooker
February 10, 2005 The Felix Posen Distinguished Lecture in Secular Judaism Spring 2005
Rachel Elior (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Judaism and Democracy
November 17, 2004
Wolfgang Kohlhaase (Screenwriter)
The Naked Man on the Athletic Field
November 15, 2004
Wolfgang Kohlhaase (Screenwriter)
The Gleiwitz Case
November 15, 2004
Renata Stih and Frieder Schnocl (Artists)
Public Art and Social Sculpture
November 9, 2004
Avaraham Burg (Former Speaker of the Israeli Knesset and Geneva Accord Negotiator)
Struggling Towards Peace in Time of Terror
November 7, 2004
Daniel Goldhagen (Harvard University)
What is New About the New Anti-Semitism?
November 1, 2004
Marcie Herschman (Tufts University)
What is a Jewish American Writer?
October 26, 2004
Hanno Loewy (University of Konstanz, Germany)
Shadows and Innocence: Bela Balazs Methaphoric Childhood after the War and the Holocaust
October 21, 2004
The Felix Posen Distinguished Lecture in Secular Judaism Fall 2004
David Biale (University of California Davis)
God’s Language and the Making of Secular Jewish Culture
May 3, 2004
Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg (University of London)
Seduced into Eden: the Beginning of Desire
April 27, 2004 The Robert and Pamela Jacobs Distinguished Lecture in Jewish Life & Culture
Naomi Chazan (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Israeli Peace Options: Thinking Outside the Box
March 25, 2004
Jyl Lynn Felman (UMass)
The Death of Metaphor in Jewish Women’s Writing
March 30, 2004
Elizabeth Castelli (Columbia University)
Christian Commemorations of Suffering: Ancient and Modern Debates over Spectacles of Violence
March 23, 2004
Kenneth Stowe (Haifa University)
The Bread, the Children, and the Dogs: Continuity in the Jewish-Catholic Relationship
March 10, 2004
Olga Gershenson (Bridgewater State College)
Gesher: Russian Theatre in Israel; the Rhetoric of Cultural Colonization
March 9, 2004
Marjorie Agosin (Author and Poet)
The Angel of Memory/El Angel De La Memoria
November 13, 2003
Laura Levitt (Temple University)
Peering Out from under a Long Shadow: Remembering Ordinary Jewish Loss
November 10, 2003
Daniel Boyarin (University of California)
Thinking Hybridity in Language: The Semantics of Orthodoxy
November 4, 2003
Chaim Cohen (Ben Gurion University)
The New Yehoash Inscription in Biblical Hebrew: Fact or Fiction?
October 23, 2003
Alanna Cooper (UMass)
“If we are not Sephardi Jews then who are we?” Diaspora, Reunion and Bukharan Jewish Identity
May 7, 2003 The Robert and Pamela Jacobs Distinguished Lecture in Jewish Life & Culture
Dennis Ross (Ambassador)
Missing Peace in the Middle East
April 23, 2003
Horst Hoheisel (Renowned German Artist)
The Art of the Counter-monument
April 15, 2003
Mario Kessler (Center for Contemporary Historical Research in
Potsdam, Germany)
Zionism and the International Labor Movement
April 14, 2003
Hanno Loewy (University of Konstanz in Germany)
The Mother of All Holocaust Films? Wanda Jakubowska' Auschwitz-Trilogy
Lecture will be followed by a screening of Jakubowska's The
Last Stage
December 11, 2002
Tal Ilan (Harvard University)
Cooks/Poisoners, Healers/Killers, Religion/Witchcraft: Jewish
Women's Religion in Greco-Roman Antiquity.
November 19, 2002
Ruth Ellen Gruber (Author and Journalist)
Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe.
November 13, 2002
John Felstiner (Stanford University)
"Still Songs to Sing": Holocaust Art, Music, and the
Translating of Poetry.
November 7, 2002
Laurence Thomas (Syracuse University)
Blacks and Jews: The Question of Group Autonomy and Narrative
Identity.
October 2, 2002
Hanno Loewy (University of Konstanz)
Survivor as Villain: Auschwitz Fantasies and Revenge in Popular
Films.
September 24, 2002
Frank Stern (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)
Vienna as the Cradle of Jewish Film: Freud meets Lot's Wife and
Moses Crosses the Danube.
May 7, 2002
Catherine Portuges (UMass)
Jewish Assimilation & European Identity in Szabo's film "Sunshine".
May 7, 2002
Larry Goldbaum (Office of Jewish Affairs, UMass)
The Challenges of Inter-Ethnic Collaboration at UMass.
April 23, 2002
James E. Young (UMass)
Looking into the Mirrors of Evil: Reflections on the Recent Jewish
Museum Exhibition.
April 18, 2002
Philip Graubart (National Yiddish Book Center)
Trends in Contemporary Jewish Narrative.
April 11, 2002
Deborah Lipstadt (Author)
Holocaust on Trial.
April 9, 2002
Susan Shapiro (UMass)
Gender and Judaism.
March 14, 2002
Maurianne Adams (UMass) and John Bracey (UMass)
Neighbors and Strangers: African-Americans and Jews.
March 7, 2002
Anita Diamant (Author)
Writing Women's Lives.
February 28, 2002
Federick Busi (UMass)
Gougenot des Mousseaux and his Impact on French and German Antisemitism.
February 21, 2002
Emanuel Rubin (UMass)
Music in Israel Today: National, Ethnic, and Religious Forms.
February 14, 2002
Jay R. Berkovitz (UMass) and Tayeb El-Hibri (UMass)
The Role of Religion in the MIddle East Conflict.
December 5, 2001
Candelario Saenz
The Secret Jews of Spain, Portugal, and the U.S.
December 4, 2001
Ralph Melnick (Williston Academy)
Doing Jewish Biography.
November 29, 2001
Julius Lester (UMass)
Ashkenazi/Non-Jewish Latino Relations in the U.S.
November 8, 2001
Harley Erdman (UMass)
Ashkenazim and Sephardim in Cuba.
October 18, 2001
Ilan Stavans (Amherst College)
Ashkenazi/Sephardi and Non-Jewish Latino Relations in Mexico.
October 15, 2001
Peter Stansky (Stanford University)
The Sassoons and John Singer Sargent: An Anglo-Jewish Collection?
May 10, 2001
Arnold Dashefsky (UConn)
Where is American Jewry Headed? A Sociological Analysis.
May 1, 2001
Larry Goldbaum (UMass)
The Challenges of Inter-Ethnic Collaboration at UMass.
April 24, 2001
Robert Rothstein (UMass)
Speaking Jewish: Jewish Languages and Jewish Identity.
April 17, 2001
Judith Plaskow (Manhattan College)
Judaism and the Feminist Challenge.
April 13, 2001
Eugene Pogany (B.U. School of Medicine)
A Lot to Think About: Jewish/Christian Relations; Family Relationships;
the Holocaust.
April 3, 2001
Aviva Ben-Ur (UMass)
The Jews of Suriname: Sephardic-Ashkenazic Rift.
April 3, 2001
Linda Gradstein (NPR)
Israel Currently.
March 27, 2001
James Young (UMass)
The Holocaust, Memory and Jewish Identity.
March 7, 2001
Margalit Matitiahu (Bar-Ilan University)
Ladino Poetry and Writing after Auschwitz.
February 27, 2001
Kenneth Stow (Haifa University)
The Church, the Pope, and the Holocaust.
February 13, 2001
Daniel Sinclair (Law School of the College of Management)
Separating Conjoined Twins: Jewish Bio-Ethical Perspectives.
November 14, 2000
Sandy Warren (Solomon Schechter Day School)
A Jewish Day School Grows in Northampton.
October 24, 2000
Jay R. Berkovitz (UMass)
Teaching Jewish History: Toward What Educational Aims?
October 11, 2000
Rona Sheramy (Bard College)
Defining Lessons: The Holocaust in American Jewish Education,
1945 to Present.
