Dr. Susannah Heschel to Present “Human Dignity in Judaism” on April 26, 2018

Susannah HeschelOn April 26, at 7:00 pm, Dr. Susannah Heschel will present "Human Dignity in Judaism." In this talk, Heschel explores the themes of human rights and dignity within Jewish religious texts and how they relate to the modern human experience. The event takes place at Charter Oak Cultural Center (21 Charter Oak Avenue, Hartford) and is free and open to the public. 

Visit Charter Oak's website for information on directions and parking.

The event is made possible by the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life Gene and Georgia Mittelman Lecture in Judaic Studies, Charter Oak Cultural Center, UConn Hartford, the Humanities Institute, and the Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages.

About the Speaker

Susannah Heschel is the chair of the Jewish Studies Program and Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College. Her scholarship focuses on Jewish-Christian relations in Germany during the 19th and 20th centuries, the history of biblical scholarship, and the history of anti-Semitism. Her numerous publications include Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (University of Chicago Press), which won a National Jewish Book Award, and The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton University Press). She has also taught at Southern Methodist University and Case Western Reserve University.

Heschel has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Frankfurt and Cape Town as well as Princeton, and she is the recipient of numerous grants, including from the Ford Foundation, Carnegie Foundation, and a yearlong Rockefeller fellowship at the National Humanities Center. In 2011-12 she held a fellowship at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. She has received four honorary doctorates from universities in the United States, Canada, and Germany. Currently she is a Guggenheim Fellow and is writing a book on the history of European Jewish scholarship on Islam. In 2015 she was elected a member of the American Society for the Study of Religion. 

The author of over one hundred articles, she has also edited several books, including Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays of Abraham Joshua Heschel; Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust (with Robert P. Ericksen); Insider/Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism (with David Biale and Michael Galchinsky). She serves on the academic advisory council of the Center for Jewish Studies in Berlin and on the Board of Trustees of Trinity College.

If you need an accommodation to participate, please contact Pamela Weathers at pamela.weathers@uconn.edu or 860-486-2271.