Author: Joscha Jelitzki

Israeli-Palestinian Film Screening: Tel Aviv on Fire

Posted on by

The Center for Judaic Studies is hosting a film screening connected to the Hartford Jewish Film Festival. The festival this year will run from March 5-15 at Mandell JCC.

On March 11 at 5:00 pm, we'll screen the Israeli/Palestinian comedy Tel Aviv on Fire on the UConn campus (Konover Auditorium, Dodd Center).

About the Film

TEL AVIV ON FIRE (2018) 97min –Arabic & Hebrew w/ English subtitles

Winner of top prizes at the Haifa and Venice film festivals, writer-director Sameh Zoabi’s satire follows Salam, a winsome slacker, as he fails upwards at his job on a sudsy Palestinian TV soap opera “Tel Aviv on Fire,” popular with both Israelis and Palestinians. Salam’s daily commute from the Ramallah set through the Israeli checkpoint leads to regular encounters with the IDF officer in charge. When the officer demands Salam change the show’s story line to make his wife happy, Salam struggles with concocting plot twists to suit viewers on both sides.

This event is free and open to the public. It is co-sponsored by the Hartford Jewish Film Festival / Mandell JCC.

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

The Center will be co-sponsoring two additional events in association with the Hartford Jewish Film Fest. On March 12, at 7:30 pm, at the Mandell JCC, a post-film discussion will be held following the screening of Holy Silence. Participants include Professor Avinoam Patt, Ph.D., UConn; Steven Pressman, Emmy-nominated writer, producer, and director; and Dr. Suzanne Brown-Fleming Director, International Academic Programs - Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Please visit the event website for more details!

On March 23, at 7:00 pm, a panel of expert guests will explore Israeli society through the lens of 6 Israeli films featured in the 2020 Hartford Jewish Film Festival. Panelists include UConn Director of Middle East Studies Prof. Jeremy Pressman, UConn Director of the Center for Judaic Studies Avinoam Patt, and Mandell JCC Israel Program Coordinator Tom Wainrich. For more details, please visit the event website.

Israeli Author Ayelet Tsabari to Present “Language, Longing, and Belonging” | February 18, 2020

Posted on by

Tsabari Headshot

Award-winning Israeli author Ayelet Tsabari will present "Language, Longing, and Belonging,"  a discussion of her new, critically acclaimed memoir The Art of Leaving.

Date: Tuesday, February 18, 2020 

Time: 4:30 pm

Place: Trinity College, Mather Hall, Wean Terrace Rooms ABC, 300 Summit Street, Hartford

The event is free and open to the public. The talk is sponsored by the Distinguished Scholar lecture by the Department of Language and Culture Studies at Trinity College, ALEPH: The Institute of Jewish Ideas, and the UConn Center for Judaic Studies.

For more information, please contact Lidija Petrus at 860-297-5121 or lidija.petrus@trincoll.edu.

About the Book 

In The Art of Leaving, Tsabari tells her story, from her early love of writing and words, to her rebellion during her mandatory service in the Israeli army. She travels from Israel to New York, Canada, Thailand, and India, falling in and out of love with countries, men and women, drugs and alcohol, running away from responsibilities and refusing to settle in one place. She recounts her first marriage, her struggle to define herself as a writer in a new language, her decision to become a mother, and finally her rediscovery and embrace of her family history--a history marked by generations of headstrong women who struggled to choose between their hearts and their homes. Eventually, she realizes that she must reconcile the memories of her father and the sadness of her past if she is ever going to come to terms with herself.

About the Author 

Ayelet Tsabari was born in Israel to a large family of Yemeni descent. She is the author of the memoir in essays The Art of Leaving, finalist for the Writer’s Trust Hilary Weston Prize, winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for memoir, and an Apple Books and Kirkus Review Best Book of 2019. Her first book, The Best Place on Earth, won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, and was long listed to the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. The book was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a Kirkus Review Best Book of 2016, and has been published internationally.

Dr. Marion Kaplan to lecture on Jewish Refugees in Portugal | Jan. 29, 2020 (Storrs)

Posted on by

Kaplan Book Cover

Please join us for a talk with NYU historian Dr. Marion Kaplan who will present the UConn Center for Judaic Studies Gene and Georgia Mittelman Lecture in Judaic Studies on Hitler's Jewish Refugees: Hope and Anxiety in Portugal. 

The event is free and open to the public. Attendance counts toward honors credit.

Date: Wednesday, January 29, 2020
Time: 1:45 pm
Place: Class of '47 Room, Babbidge Library, UConn Storrs

Exhibition opening “Beyond Duty” and reception will follow the lecture at 3:00 pm in the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center (across the courtyard from Class of 1947 Room, Babbidge Library).

The exhibition, curated by the Consulate General of Israel to New England and timed for the United Nations International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, is co-sponsored by UConn Global Affairs and the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center. It will run through March 1. Center Director Avinoam Patt will provide introductory remarks.

About the Talk: Hitler's Jewish Refugees: Hope and Anxiety in Portugal depicts the travails of refugees escaping Nazi Europe and awaiting their fate in Portugal. Drawing attention not only to the social and physical upheavals of refugee existence, it also highlights their feelings as they fled their homes and histories while begging strangers for kindness. Portugal’s dictator, António de Oliveira Salazar, admitted tens of thousands of Jews fleeing westward but set his secret police on those who did not move on quickly. Yet Portugal’s people left a lasting impression on refugees as caring and generous.

An emotional history of fleeing, the book probes how specific locations touched refugees’ inner lives, including the borders they nervously crossed, the consulate lines they fretfully waited on, the smoky cafés they uneasily inhabited, or the overcrowded transatlantic ships that signaled their liberation. These sites induced feelings of frustration or relief – often both.

Life in limbo has at its core anxiety and fear, but also courage and resilience. Most refugees in Portugal showed strength and stamina as they faced unimagined challenges. For them, Lisbon emerged as a site of temporality and transition, a “no-man’s-land” between a painful past and a hopeful future. Paying careful attention to the words of refugees in Portugal may help us to understand Jewish heartbreak and perseverance in the 1940s and also to listen compassionately to refugees’ stories in our own times.

About the Speaker: Marion Kaplan is the Skirball Professor of Modern Jewish History at NYU. She is a three-time National Jewish Book Award winner for The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family and Identity in Imperial Germany (1991), Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (1998), and Gender and Jewish History (with Deborah Dash Moore, 2011) as well as a finalist for Dominican Haven: The Jewish Refugee Settlement in Sosua (2008). Her other publications include: The Jewish Feminist Movement in Germany, Jewish Daily Life in Germany, 1618-1945 (ed.), and Jüdische Welten: Juden in Deutschland vom 18. Jahrhundert bis in die Gegenwart (with Beate Meyer, 2005). She has edited several other books on German-Jewish and women’s history and has taught courses on German-Jewish history, European women’s history, German and European history, as well as European Jewish history, and Jewish women’s history. Her newest book, Hitler’s Jewish Refugees: Hope and Anxiety in Portugal, 1940-45 (Yale University Press) will be released in January, 2020. 

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

Dr. Marion Kaplan to lecture on Jewish Refugees in Portugal | Jan. 28, 2020 (UConn Stamford)

Posted on by

Kaplan Book CoverPlease join us for a talk with NYU historian Dr. Marion Kaplan who will present the UConn Center for Judaic Studies Maria and Ishier Jacobson Lecture on Hitler's Jewish Refugees: Hope and Anxiety in Portugal. At this lecture, clothing donations will be accepted for UConn Stamford's biannual Professional Clothing Drive, which benefits UConn students in need of attire for interviews, work, and internships.

Date: Tuesday, January 28, 2020
Time: Reception 5:00 pm, Talk 6:00 pm
Place: Main Auditorium (A1), UConn Stamford

Dr. Kaplan will also present this program at UConn Storrs the following day, Wednesday 1/29

About the Talk: Hitler's Jewish Refugees: Hope and Anxiety in Portugal depicts the travails of refugees escaping Nazi Europe and awaiting their fate in Portugal. Drawing attention not only to the social and physical upheavals of refugee existence, it also highlights their feelings as they fled their homes and histories while begging strangers for kindness. Portugal’s dictator, António de Oliveira Salazar, admitted tens of thousands of Jews fleeing westward but set his secret police on those who did not move on quickly. Yet Portugal’s people left a lasting impression on refugees as caring and generous.

An emotional history of fleeing, the book probes how specific locations touched refugees’ inner lives, including the borders they nervously crossed, the consulate lines they fretfully waited on, the smoky cafés they uneasily inhabited, or the overcrowded transatlantic ships that signaled their liberation. These sites induced feelings of frustration or relief – often both.
Life in limbo has at its core anxiety and fear, but also courage and resilience. Most refugees in Portugal showed strength and stamina as they faced unimagined challenges. For them, Lisbon emerged as a site of temporality and transition, a “no-man’s-land” between a painful past and a hopeful future. Paying careful attention to the words of refugees in Portugal may help us to understand Jewish heartbreak and perseverance in the 1940s and also to listen compassionately to refugees’ stories in our own times.
About the Speaker: Marion Kaplan is the Skirball Professor of Modern Jewish History at NYU. She is a three-time National Jewish Book Award winner for The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family and Identity in Imperial Germany (1991), Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (1998), and Gender and Jewish History (with Deborah Dash Moore, 2011) as well as a finalist for Dominican Haven: The Jewish Refugee Settlement in Sosua (2008). Her other publications include: The Jewish Feminist Movement in Germany, Jewish Daily Life in Germany, 1618-1945 (ed.), and Jüdische Welten: Juden in Deutschland vom 18. Jahrhundert bis in die Gegenwart (with Beate Meyer, 2005). She has edited several other books on German-Jewish and women’s history and has taught courses on German-Jewish history, European women’s history, German and European history, as well as European Jewish history, and Jewish women’s history. Her newest book, Hitler’s Jewish Refugees: Hope and Anxiety in Portugal, 1940-45 (Yale University Press) will be released in January, 2020. 

The lecture is free and open to the public. If you require an accommodation to participate, please contact Stamford Coordinator for Judaic Studies Prof. Fred Roden at frederick.roden@uconn.edu or 203-251-8559.

UConn Brain and Behavior in Tel Aviv, Israel, Summer 2020

Posted on by

UConn Brain and Behavior in Tel Aviv is a summer study abroad program that provides students the opportunity to pursue their studies in Psychology, Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, PreMed, or PNB in Israel. The program is led by Dr. Etan Markus (UConn Psychology) together with colleagues at Tel Aviv University. Participants will take a UConn psychology class supplemented with a second, Tel Aviv University, course focused on regional history and/or culture as well as organized activities, tours, and an Israeli dinner/cooking class.

All coursework and activities will be conducted in English.  

There will be an information session on Monday, February 24, 5:00-6:00 pm in Bousfield 162. 

Learn more at the program website: https://tausummerneuroscience.uconn.edu/

TAU Summer Flyer

 

 

Two Notable Fellowships Available in the Field of Jewish Studies

Posted on by

Apply now for two fellowships available from Columbia University and from the JDC!

  1. The Rabin-Shvidler Fellowship at Columbia University and Fordham University
    Eligible: post-doctoral scholars in all fields of Jewish Studies
    Deadline for submission: December 31, 2019
  2. 2020 JDC Archives Fellowship Program
    Eligible: senior scholars, postdoctoral researchers, graduate students, and independent researchers
    Deadline for submission: January 21, 2020

Atina Grossmann Presents “Shelter from the Holocaust: German Jewish Refugees in Iran and India”

Posted on by

On November 7, 2019, Professor Atina Grossmann, historian from the Cooper Union, presented "Shelter from the Holocaust: German Jewish Refugees in Iran and India" for the UConn Center for Judaic Studies annual Kristallnacht remembrance lecture. The event was made possible in part by the Center for Judaic Studies Frances and Irving Seliger Memorial Endowment Fund. In expression of the Center's solidarity with the Jewish community in Halle, Germany, which suffered a terrorist attack on Yom Kippur, it was a partner event of the Jewish Culture Days in Halle. In case you missed the event, or want to re-listen to it, please find our video recording below. Apologies for the disturbing noise; it disappears after the first five minutes.

Grossmann Vid Image

Director Patt Featured in UConn Today

Posted on by

Dr. Patt lecturing

Christine Buckley from UConn Today interviewed Dr. Avinoam Patt, Director of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life, on the question of Jewish Humor. The phenomenon of many Jews being funny was explained by Patt through the position of the immigrant: As a coping strategy humor can bridge cultural differences and signal harmlessness to the majority of society. But there is also a specific epistemology to that position: From the margins, one is more likely to gain critical insights into society, which then takes the form of a joke. In his notion of Jewish humor being primarily an exilic feature, Patt transcends the particularism of Jewish humor to more universal questions of being a minority and the quest for identity.

Dr. Patt became the Center's Director in August 2019, and so Buckley's piece further uses the opportunity to offer a nuanced biographical portrayal of him, linking his academic interests to his personal experiences. Patt shares what it was like to grow up as the son of two Israeli parents in Houston, Texas, how he entered the field of Jewish Studies, and where he finds intersections between his current two main interests, Holocaust Studies and Jewish Humor, which "might seem incongruous" at first. As the new director, Dr. Patt set himself the goal of expanding the Judaic Studies section at UConn, while also strengthening the Center's outreach program beyond the borders of the campus.

The piece appeared in UConn Today on October 28, 2019, and can be read online in full length here.