Prof. Avinoam Patt was featured this week in Connecticut's Jewish Ledger, launching the community learning program titled "ALEPH: Institute of Jewish Ideas." The first year's theme is "Home and Exile", which will be opened by Deborah Dash Moore's talk this Sunday. The overall purpose of the program is to bring together different members and organizations of the community. [Read more]
The endowment by Doris and Simon Konover to the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life has made it possible for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to recruit an outstanding scholar and researcher, Associate Professor Avinoam Patt, to serve as the next Doris and Simon Konover Chair of Judaic Studies. The appointment was approved at the June 26 meeting of the UConn Board of Trustees.
Professor Patt will join the Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages and serve as the Director of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life beginning in Fall 2019. He comes to the University of Connecticut from the University of Hartford, CT, where he has served since 2007 as the Philip D. Feltman Professor of Modem Jewish History, the co-Director of the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies, and the Director of the Museum of Jewish Civilization.
As the Doris and Simon Konover Chair of Judaic Studies and Director of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life, Professor Patt will increase awareness of Jewish heritage in the University community, the state, and beyond. He will provide creative leadership for the Center and will develop its programs, as well as contribute to associated interdisciplinary programs.
In 2008, the Board of Trustees appointed Professor Arnold Dashefsky as the inaugural interim Chair. Upon Professor Dashefsky's retirement, the College launched an international search and recruited Professor Jeffrey Shoulson to succeed him and to serve in this role from 2012 to the present.
We are delighted to announce that Professor Avinoam Patt has accepted the position as Director of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life. He will begin the directorship in August 2019.
Professor Patt comes to UConn from the University of Hartford, where he has been the Philip D. Feltman Professor of Modern Jewish History and co-director of the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies. He has also served as the Director of the Museum of Jewish Civilization at the University of Hartford. Previously, he worked as the Miles Lerman Applied Research Scholar for Jewish Life and Culture at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Professor Patt is an accomplished scholar in the fields of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies and has published extensively on Jewish responses to the Holocaust, Jewish Displaced Persons in postwar Europe, and American Jewish Fiction. He is co-editor of a newly published volume, The Joint Distribution Committee at 100: A Century of Humanitarianism, and author of a forthcoming book on the early postwar memory of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, The Jewish Heroes of Warsaw (to be published by Wayne State University Press).
We know you share our enthusiasm and that of the other members of the search committee, Sara Johnson, Jacqueline Loss, and Frederick Roden (with special thanks to Pamela Weathers, our administrator) in congratulating and welcoming Avinoam Patt.
Sebastian Wogenstein (Interim Director)
Stuart Miller (Academic Director)
The Jewish Hartford: European Roots project hosted by UConn Global Affairs explores, documents and shares the rich diversity of European Jewish life before the Holocaust and its enduring legacy in our region.
With broad participation from the Greater Hartford Jewish community, the project supports lectures, field trips, adult learning, youth education, and other programming about Jewish life in Europe, discovering and connecting with this unique heritage.
The Jewish Hartford: European Roots project is generously funded by the Konover Coppa Family Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Hartford and is housed at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut.
Learn more on the Jewish Hartford: European Roots website
Image credit: Reconstructed vault and bimah in the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw. Photo shared by Magdalena Starowieyska, Dariusz Golik - Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Licensed under Creative Commons 3.0 Share-alike - Poland (CC BY-SA 3.0 PL)
The Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life at UConn extends warm wishes to Dr. Nehama Aschkenasy on her retirement. We offer her heartfelt thanks for her invaluable work in establishing the Center for Judaic and Middle Eastern Studies at UConn-Stamford!
Professor (Em.) of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, UConn
Founding Director (Em.), Center for Judaic and Middle Eastern Studies, UConn Stamford
Dear Friends, Supporters, and Students,
I’m now officially retired from my position as Professor and Director. This is a bitter-sweet moment; it’s tough to build from the ground up, but it is tougher to let go. The Talmud says that “the baker should not attest to the quality of his own dough.” I am the proverbial “baker” in this case, but, as I’m writing not only for myself but for all our loyal friends, and especially the founders of our Center, I’ll take this opportunity to reflect on our accomplishments.
Over thirty-seven years ago a group of visionary community leaders embarked on a collaborative effort with the local campus of the University of Connecticut, and founded the Center for Judaic and Middle Eastern Studies. Since its inception, our Center has had a dual mission: to develop and expand credit courses in all areas of Judaic Studies within the undergraduate curriculum and establish a forum for public discourse, in courses, seminars, and conferences, where both our regular students and community members would learn and discuss topics of current issues or of Jewish scholarship with the best and the brightest of today’s scholars, writers, and policy analysts.
On a personal note, I have had the privilege of working with some of the best individuals who advocated for us and made it financially possible for the Center to accomplish our phenomenal success. Reviewing the breadth of our offerings through the years and the caliber of guest speakers who addressed our groups, I am proud and also awed! Some of these speakers were already well known at the time, such as the late CHAIM POTOK and DR. IRVING HOWE, but I dare say that we also “discovered” junior scholars who then went on to brilliant careers, such as Political Scientist DR. SHIBLEY TELHAMI, (now the Anwar Sadaat chair at the University of Maryland, but then a young scholar only beginning to make his mark in the academic community), DR. FAWAZ GERGES (currently at the London School of Economics, who recently published a study of ISIS), and RON CHERNOW, the prominent, best-selling biographer (currently of “Hamilton” fame, who discussed at the time his book on the Jewish banking family, the Warburgs). We were fortunate to study with the brilliant orator, historian DR. HOWARD SACHAR, who was our guest speaker several times; we had the pleasure of learning from the internationally-acclaimed Israeli writer AMOS OZ, the renowned theologian DR. SUSANNAH HESCHEL of Dartmouth College, and, recently, DR. BRUCE HOFFMAN of Georgetown University, one of the foremost experts on contemporary terrorism. We also hosted twice the MOST REV. DR. DAVID JAEGER, member of the Roman Rota, the Vatican’s Supreme Court, who shared with us his vast knowledge as a theologian and unparalleled experience as peace maker. AMB. DR. DANIEL KURTZER, currently Professor of Middle East Policy at Princeton University and former U.S. Ambassador to both Israel and Egypt, addressed our audiences twice in recent years. And in our 2017 Annual Kuriansky Conference, we all enjoyed tremendously the knowledge and oratory of the renowned legal scholar, Dr. Jeffrey Rosen. Our topics have been varied and fascinating, from interfaith dialogues on women in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, or on the meaning of “A Just War” in the three Abrahamic religions, to various issues related to the Middle East and contemporary Israel, to discussions of “Jews and Capitalism,” Jewish mysticism, and a variety of themes in history, from Jewish revolts in ancient Palestine to life in the East European Shtetl, to episodes of resistance and heroism during the Holocaust.
Our credit courses introduced the wealth of the Judaic texts and history to students who came from a diversity of ethnic and religious backgrounds, focusing on the great contribution of Judaism to Western civilization and the meaning of studying a religion, a culture, and a people’s history in the context of secular academia. Our college-age students learned of the ethics of social justice advocated in the Judaic masterworks, of the tolerance and respect for other views and creeds enfolded in Judaic teachings, and of the highs and lows of the Jewish historical experience. We have been pioneers in introducing courses in Holocaust, the Bible as literature, and the Bible’s impact on the literary history of Western civilization, on women in Judaic literary tradition and in Jewish religion, and of contemporary Israeli literature with a special angle, studying these contemporary works in the context of Middle Eastern literature, society, and politics.
In one of Amos Oz’s stories, the protagonist reflects back on his life’s ambitions, and concludes that all he would leave are “footprints on the water.” I hope and pray that my life’s work, and the tireless efforts of our friends through the years, will amount to real footprints on solid ground, and that our Center will continue to flourish in future years.
Warm regards to all,
Nehama