We’re very pleased to have been featured in UConn Today in an article reporting on a number of new developments at the Center for Judaic Studies including the release of the 2015 American Jewish Year Book (co-edited by Arnie Dashefsky), our spectacularly successful Judaic Studies Road Show, and our plans for the celebration of the Center’s 36th Anniversary this coming November.
Author: Pamela Weathers
Daniel Fisher Presents Dissertation Research to Faculty Colloquium: “Memories of the Ark: Cultural Memory, Material Culture, and the Construction of the Past in Biblical Societies”
Our first faculty colloquium of the fall semester introduced the work of Daniel Fisher, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, who is completing a dissertation entitled “Memories of the Ark: Cultural Memory, Material Culture, and the Construction of the Past in Biblical Societies.”
Fisher outlined the fascinating cultural history of the Ark, from its origins in the Biblical text as the movable throne of the Lord, to its function as a vessel to hold the tablets of the covenant, to its placement in the tent of meeting, to its ultimate loss. Fisher’s research charts the course of the Ark of the Covenant as its values change over time in response to different communal values or communal needs and, in so doing, examines how people understand themselves in terms of material objects and how the values placed on objects reveal how a community interprets its past and its desires for the future. Continue reading
Elka Klein Memorial Travel Grant
Elka Klein Memorial Travel Grant
Once again, applications are being accepted for the Elka Klein Memorial Travel Grant. Applications are welcome from doctoral candidates preparing to spend a month or more abroad conducting research in the summer of 2015. The winning grant recipient will be awarded $1500 based on contribution of the proposed research, which should relate to Prof. Klein’s own research interests of Sephardic Studies, medieval studies, gender studies, and Jewish studies. Applicants for the grant are asked to submit the following information by April 10, 2015:
- A CV
- A copy of the applicant’s dissertation proposal
- A description of the specific research to be undertaken abroad
- A working budget, including what other funds have already been secured
- A letter of recommendation from the applicant’s dissertation supervisor, addressing the applicant’s qualifications and the significance of the research s/he will be undertaking (Letters of recommendation should be printed on official stationary and scanned if sent by e-mail)
To submit an application by e-mail, or for more information, please contact Dr. Gail Labovitz, glabovitz@aju.edu<mailto:glabovitz@aju.edu>
Materials may be submitted in hard copy to:
Dr. Elka Klein Memorial Travel Grant
C/O Dr. Gail Labovitz
American Jewish University
15600 Mulholland Drive
Bel Air , CA 90077
Research Grants and Fellowships: Gerda Henkel Foundation
Deadlines: Friday 20 June, 2014. The annual call for Research Grants and Fellowships in the field of historical humanities is now open. For more details click here
The 2014 Fenia and Yaakov Leviant Memorial Prize
Modern Language Association – US
Deadline: Thursday 1 May, 2014. The 2014 Fenia and Yaakov Leviant Memorial Prize will be awarded to an English translation of a Yiddish literary work published between 2010 and 2013.
Honors Program invites proposals for new or revised interdisciplinary courses for the Honors Core
The Honors Program invites proposals for new or revised interdisciplinary courses for the Honors Core.
Honors Core courses serve as an introduction to a community of scholars for first and second year honors students. They are interdisciplinary in nature, meaning they combine different perspectives and diverse problem-solving expertise to study important and challenging themes and issues. The Honors Core epitomizes Honors education with smaller class sizes, active learning, and increased academic rigor. Teaching a Core course is fun and challenging!
Proposal deadline: February 24, 2014.
North American Jewish Data Bank Calls UConn Home
Abridged Reprint: Advance, Monday, February 7, 2005, Volume 23 No.19, By David Bauman
How many of America’s 5.2 million Jews are married to non-Jews? And how many of this nation’s Jewish adults attend religious services monthly?
Data that provide answers to such questions concerning the social and demographic characteristics of the American Jewish community are now available at an interactive website administered by UConn’s Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Life, in collaboration with the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research and supported by United Jewish Communities (UJC). The website, www.jewishdatabank.org, is available to all for non-commercial use.
“The website contains the most advanced database of social scientific studies of North American Jewry and allows researchers to better understand the size and composition of different Jewish populations in the United States,” says Arnold Dashefsky, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life. “Individuals can now download data from the archive over the web and conduct their own analysis of it.”
The website is the result of a new partnership between the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life and UJC, a New York-based philanthropic organization representing 155 Jewish community federations and 400 independent Jewish communities across North America.
Over two decades, the UJC has amassed the largest archive of social scientific and demographic studies of North American Jewry in an effort to promote understanding of changes within the Jewish Community. This archive, the Mandell L. Berman Institute — North American Jewish Data Bank, is now the principal repository of social scientific and demographic studies of the North American Jewish community. Included among its holdings are national surveys of the U.S. Jewish populations in 1971 and 1990, more than 90 local Jewish community studies from the 1960s to the present, and the National Jewish Population Survey of 2000-2001 reflecting the most recently collected data as well as studies of Canadian Jewry.
The archive, established in 1986 by one of the UJC’s predecessor organizations, the Council of Jewish Federations, originally was based at the City Unversity of New York’s Center for Jewish Studies. In 2004, the Data Bank was moved from Brandeis University, its second home, to UConn, under the auspices of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life. The UJC is also providing a three-year grant of $240,000 to support promotion of the Data Bank archive.
“We are so pleased to form this new partnership with the University of Connecticut,” says Mandell Berman, founder of the North American Jewish Data Bank. “University scholars, such as Dr. Arnold Dashefsky, will be able to effectively analyze the information housed in the Data Bank.” A critical link is UConn’s Institute for Social Inquiry or Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, the largest and oldest archive of public opinion data in the world. “This collection represents a valuable set of topical data for the broader social science community,” says Lois Timms-Ferrara, Associate Director of the Roper Center. “The attentiveness of the UJC to these data is evident in their decision to archive these studies at the Roper Center, where the application of contemporary archiving standards assure these data will be preserved in perpetuity.”