Author: Pamela Weathers

Adane Zawdu Awarded Predoctoral Fellowship

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Adane Zwadu

With the support of the Graduate School, the Center for Judaic Studies has awarded Center Graduate Assistant Adane Zawdu a predoctoral fellowship for his summer research. Congratulations, Adane!

Adane, who teaches Ethiopian Jews in Ethiopia and Israel, was awarded the fellowship in recognition of his excellent work in Judaic Studies this year.  For the second consecutive year, Adane organized a panel discussion at UConn for students in his class to present their final papers. The theme of the 2018 Borderlands Graduate Symposium was “Cartographies of the Body: Subversions, Surveillance, Crossings.” 

Daniel Hershenzon Awarded 2018 NEH Grant

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Daniel Hershenzon

Congratulations to affiliated faculty member, Daniel Hershenzon (Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages) for receiving a 2018 NEH Grant. The grant was awarded for Daniel's project, "Jewish Manuscripts in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Between Piracy, Redemption, and the Spanish Inquisition." His research will lead to the publication of a book-length study of religious artifacts and piracy in the early modern western Mediterranean.

Stuart Miller Awarded Humanities Institute Fellowship

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Stuart MillerMany congratulations to Stuart Miller on being awarded a Humanities Institute faculty fellowship for the academic year 2018/19. During the fellowship, he will be working on a volume devoted to the dynamics of Jewish life in the centuries following the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E. titled From Temple to Home to Community: The Survival and Transformation of Ancient Jewish Life in the Wake of Catastrophe. The fellowship is indicative of his outstanding achievements as a scholar, and it showcases the cutting-edge research conducted in Judaic Studies at UConn. Mazal tov, Stuart!

Jeffrey Shoulson Appointed Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Affairs

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Jeffrey ShoulsonMany congratulations to Jeffrey Shoulson on his appointment as Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Affairs. The appointment is testimony to his outstanding achievements as a scholar and administrator. We’re deeply grateful for his outstanding leadership of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life since his arrival at UConn in 2012, and we wish him all the best for this important new function within the university administration. Mazal tov, Jeffrey!

Interactive Dance Workshop with Shamel Pitts

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Shamel PittsCome enjoy an evening of dance with Shamel Pitts, one of the most revered performers in the Tel Aviv-based Batsheva Dance Company! Shamel will speak about his experiences in Israel, then lead an interactive dance workshop in Gaga, the movement language developed by Batsheva choreographer Ohad Naharin, that highlights intimate physicality on groove and the subtlety of small gestures.

The event takes place on Friday, April 20, at 6:00 PM at UConn Hillel (54 N. Eagleville Road, Storrs). 

Shamel Pitts grew up in Brooklyn, studied at Juilliard, and began his career with Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Hell’s Kitchen Dancers and later Ballets Jazz Montréal. He now performs with the Batsheva Dance Company in Tel Aviv.

This event is made possible by the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life, UConn Hillel, and the Consulate General of Israel to New England.

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

2018 Borderlands Graduate Symposium

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2018 Borderlands Graduate Symposium

Theme: “Cartographies of the Body: Subversions, Surveillance, Crossings”

UConn, Storrs, March 30, 2018

March 30

11a-12:15p

Session 1A: Body and Faith: The Struggle for Symbolic Recognition and Political Inclusion Among Afro-Jewish Communities in The Context of The Middle East and East Africa [ASIAN AMERICAN CULTURAL CENTER, STUDENT UNION 428]

Moderator: Adane Zawdu (University of Connecticut)

1)    Janae McMillan (University of Connecticut) | From Deuteronomy to Dimona: An Analysis of the Identity Formation of the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem

2)    Muwaffag (Moi) Ibrahim (University of Connecticut) | Black and White or Blue and Yellow?: Identity, Inclusion and Disillusion

3)    Sangjae (Jae) Lee (University of Connecticut) | Police Power in Israel As a Religiously Homogeneous and Multi-Racial State

 

Discussant: Greg Doukas (Political Science, University of Connecticut).

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

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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.

Dr. Ofer Dynes to Present The End of the World and the Beginning of Hasidic Literature on March 26

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Ofer Dynes

On March 26, at 12:30 pm, Dr. Ofer Dynes of McGill University will present "The End of the World and the Beginning of Hasidic Literature" for the Center for Judaic Studies Faculty Colloquium series. The talk will be held in Oak Hall, room 236. A complimentary kosher lunch will be served.

Please RSVP to attend: https://cjsoferdynes.eventbrite.com

This event is co-sponsored by the Humanities Institute and the Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages.

About the Presentation

Dr. Dynes will discuss his book, The Fiction of the State: The Information Revolution in Eastern Europe and the Beginning of Modern Jewish Literature (1772-1848), which centers on the rise of Hasidic literature. Traditionally, scholars have interpreted the tales of Nahman of Bratslav (1772-1810), a Hasidic leader, as an esoteric expression of his relationship with God. Fittingly, the political themes in the tales, the legends on the lives of kings, queens, princesses, and nobles, were understood to be thinly veiled kabalistic allegories, void of concrete historical experience or historical reference. This talk offers a new interpretative model of Nahman’s tales and their allegorical structure and, more generally, of his theological-political-literary vision. Drawing on Nahman’s vernacular literary theory, as well as on his recently discovered “scroll of secrets,” his encoded messianic prophecy, Dr. Dynes will show how we can read the tales both as allegory and as mimetic, concrete reference to the political reality in partitioned Poland. 

About the Speaker

Ofer Dynes (PhD Harvard, 2016) is the Ethel Flegg Postdoctoral Research Fellow at McGill University where he teaches Hebrew and Yiddish literature and Jewish cultural history. His research has been supported by the Posen Society of Fellows, the Center for Jewish History, the Center for the Study of Law and Culture at Columbia University, the Lviv Center for Urban History of East Central Europe, and the Austrian Fund for Social Sciences, among other institutions.

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