Our Guest Speaker, Paola Tartakoff, who will be presenting a Public Lecture and Research Seminar next week, was featured in the Jewish ledger this week. “In 1341 in Aragon, a Jewish convert to Christianity was sentenced to death, only to be pulled from the burning stake and into a formal religious interrogation. His confession was as astonishing to his inquisitors as his brush with mortality is to us: the condemned man described a Jewish conspiracy to persuade recent converts to denounce their newfound Christian faith. His claims were corroborated by witnesses and became the catalyst for a series of trials that unfolded over the course of the next 20 months.” This is the setting of Paola Tartakoff’s book,Between Christian and Jew: Conversion and Inquisition in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (University of Pennsylvania Press, Middle Ages Series, 2012), which lays bare the intensity of the mutual hostility between Christians and Jews in medieval Spain. … (excerpt from article – read full article here.)
Author: Bhupender Singh
Mazel Tov to Joan Seliger Sidney
1/16/2014: Mazel Tov to Joan Seliger Sidney, whose latest collection of poetry, Bereft and Blessed, will be published some time in the coming year by Antrim Press. JOAN SELIGER SIDNEY is writer-in-residence at the University of Connecticut’s Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life. She also facilitates “Writing for Your Life,” an adult writing workshop. Her dream-came-true job was teaching creative writing at the Université de Grenoble, France.
UConn faculty continues to lead in social science research – The Social Science Research Council & CLAS honor recent faculty book publications
The Social Science Research Council and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences hosted a book publication celebration to honor the recent work of UConn faculty in the field of social sciences this Thursday. The event was energized with discussion about past successes throughout the discipline and promise for the upcoming years.
Since the release of its first edition in 1899, the American Jewish Year Book has been the continuous record of what is happening to Jewish culture. However after production ceased in 2008, Arnold Dashefsky, of the Department of Sociology and director of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life, and Ira M. Sheskin of the University of Miami partnered with an international publishing company out of the Netherlands to revive the series. The yearbook contains reference articles on contemporary trends and demographics. For example, at the time of the first release in 1899, there were 2,500 Jews in Florida, however now there are about 600,000. The 2012 edition is out, and the 2013 is in final stages of editing.
Faculty Receive Endowed Professorships
By Christine Buckley – November 6, 2013
Jeffrey Shoulson, who is director of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life, Professor of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, and Professor of English, was invested as the Doris and Simon Konover Chair of Judaic Studies. The Konover Chair takes its name from the two founding supporters of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Life at UConn, Doris and Simon Konover, and supports teaching and research by a leading scholar of Jewish life, history, and religion. Shoulson’s scholarship focuses on Jewish-Christian relations in the medieval and early modern periods, especially the ways in which Jews and Judaism are represented within Christian writings and Christianity influences Jewish writings.
AN ARCHAEOLOGY FAIR
A celebration of Archaeology Awareness Month (10/19/13)PROGRAM – Sponsored by Friends of the Office of State Archaeology (FOSA) and the Archaeological Society of Connecticut (ASC) 11:00 – New England Hebrew Farmers of Emanuel Society Site: UCONN Judaic Studies Summer Field School Nick Bellantoni and Stuart Miller, University of Connecticut (Nick Bellantoni, State Archaeologist, Presenter)Over 120 years ago, this Chesterfield, CT site was home to a cluster of Russian Jewish families who had relocated from the teeming neighborhoods of New York City’s Lower East Side to make a living as poultry and dairy farmers. Although the community was essentially defunct by World War II, the area still has the remains of the synagogue, the creamery, dairy barn, ritual slaughter house and a mikveh. In July 2012, UCONN’s Judaic Studies Program coordinated with the Office of State Archaeology to conduct a field school at the mikveh complex. These excavations were built on prior work at the site by the Public Archaeology Survey Team, Inc. and Historical Perspectives, Inc. The site is on the National Register of Historic Places and is listed as a State Archaeological Preserve.
Nicholas F. Bellantoni serves as the state archaeologist with the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History and Archaeology Center at the University of Connecticut. He received his doctorate in anthropology from UCONN in 1987 and was shortly thereafter appointed state archaeologist. His duties are many, but primarily include the preservation of archaeological sites in the state. His research background is the analysis of skeletal remains from eastern North America. He has been excavating in Connecticut for over 30 years. Stuart Miller is Professor of Hebrew, History, and Judaic Studies Academic Director, Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life at the University of Connecticut. He is an expert on ritual baths in ancient Israel and has conducted archaeological excavations at Sepphoris. Read more.
Lecture To Mark The 75th Anniversary Of Kristallnacht
October 05, 2013|Rae Asselin, UConn Center for Judaic Studies, Statewide The Center for Judaic Studies & Contemporary Jewish Life and the Doris and Simon Konover Chair of Judaic Studies at the University of Connecticut will be sponsoring a major lecture, free and open to the public (seating is limited and tickets are required), on Monday, Nov. 11, at 7:30 p.m., in the Library Building Auditorium of UConn’s West Hartford Campus, 1800 Asylum Avenue, West Hartford. The lecture will commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Kristallnacht programs. This government-sponsored violence throughout Germany and Austria on the night of Nov. 9-10, 1938 provided shocking evidence to the international community of the brutally anti-semitic agenda of the Nazi party and marked the beginning of the catastrophic end for Jewish communities throughout Europe.
Professor Shoulson Presents The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult
A Novel Group of Huskies – THE UCONN ALUMNI ASSOCIATION’S GLOBAL BOOK CLUB Judaic Studies Professor leads Webinar 7/27/13. The Doris and Simon Konover Chair of Judaic Studies, Jeffrey Shoulson, will be chatting with our book club over webinar about June’s book, The Storyteller. An article published on UCONN Today was shared, which talks about Professor Shoulson’s research on the role of Jews in England’s reformation.
Rare Discovery of Mikveh in New England Rewrites US Jewish History
Making waves in the field of Judaic Studies, is a recent discovery by State Archaeologist Nick Bellantoni and Professor Stuart Miller in Old Chesterfield, CT. Read about what they uncovered.The mikveh barely existed in 19th century American, where Jewish immigrants turned against religion. But one has been found in Connecticut, and it is more similar those in Israel than in the US. Nicholas Bellantoni, state archeologist, left, Stuart Miller, professor of Hebrew, history and Judaic studies look down into the site of a old US mikveh (Photo Credit: Peter Morenus/UConn Photo) Researchers in Connecticut have unearthed in a old farming community a 19th century mikveh that has totally changed view of Jewish history in the United States. Read more
UConn Celebrates Primo Levi
Posted by CindyMindell on February 27, 2013 in CT News,
STORRS – A quarter-century after his passing, Italian-Jewish philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi is the subject of a year-long academic series, a collaboration between the University of Connecticut’s Department of Literatures, Cultures and Languages and its Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life.
The program is organized by Dr. Philip Balma, who straddles the two academic foci, as both assistant professor of Italian Literary and Cultural Studies, and affiliated faculty member of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. Balma credits a high-school teacher for inspiring his admiration for the Italian-Jewish philosopher. “I must acknowledge, first and foremost, the efforts of the late Carla Serram,” he says. “She was my literature professor in the Italian public school system in the 1980s in Florence, Italy, and she was the person who introduced me to Primo Levi’s first autobiographical book, If This Is a Man, also known in English translation as Survival in Auschwitz. Prof. Serra planted a seed that, many years later, has grown into a much larger initiative on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, on the flagship campus of UConn in Storrs.” Read full story
Judaic studies introduced as vibrant, stimulating
By Kyle Constable, Campus Correspondent
Published: Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Updated: Friday, August 23, 2013 17:08
Professors from the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life introduced what they described as “a very vibrant and stimulating field of study” to students in the UConn Honors Program last night.
“Judaic Studies is not just for Jewish students,” Professor Jeffrey Shoulson said to a group of about a dozen students gathered in an Oak Hall classroom. “It asks interesting questions about identity, about ethnicity, about not just religious questions but political and social questions.”
The event, put on by the Honors Program, is the first in the “Take a Look” series that gives students an opportunity to see how taking courses in unique fields can supplement the education they are receiving at UConn.
Three professors associated with the center participated in the presentation and Q-and-A session with students. Leading the presentation was Professor Stuart Miller, who is in his 30th year of teaching at UConn. Shoulson and Professor Susan Einbinder joined Miller for the presentation, which also served as a makeshift introduction for these two professors who are both in their first year at the university.
“The Judaic Studies program has been totally reconstituted,” Miller said. “Whereas, over the last 30 years, I’ve been the only full-time person teaching Judaic Studies and I’m now very happy and very pleased to say there are three of us.” The retooling of the Judaic Studies program is expected to bring about new course offerings for students, some being in very unique areas. As Miller conceded, his “heart is in Antiquity,” which has set a limitation on which courses have been taught, with Judaism in the medieval period taking the largest hit.