Join the Harriman Institute for an in-person book talk on Thursday, December 5, at 4:00 p.m. for Antisemitic Arithmetic: The “Jewish Question” and Higher Education in Central Europe, 1880-1945 with Michael Miller of Central European University in Vienna and moderated by Columbia University’s Prof. Rebecca Kobrin.

In 1920, the Hungarian parliament introduced a Jewish quota for university admissions, making Hungary the first country in Europe to pass antisemitic legislation following World War I. The recent book, “Quotas: The “Jewish Question” and Higher Education in Central Europe, 1880-1945,” edited by Michael L. Miller and Judith Szapor, explores the ideologies and practices of quota regimes and the ways quotas have been justified, implemented, challenged, and remembered from the late nineteenth century until the middle of the twentieth century. Miller’s talk will examine the origins of quotas, the moral, legal, and political arguments developed by their supporters and opponents, and the social and personal impact of these attempts to limit access to higher education.

Michael L. Miller is Associate Professor in the Nationalism Studies program at Central European University in Vienna, and Academic Director of its Jewish Studies program. Michael completed his PhD in Jewish History at Columbia University.  His research focuses on the impact of nationality conflicts on the religious, cultural, and political development of Central European Jewry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  Miller is the author of “Rabbis and Revolution: The Jews of Moravia in the Age of Emancipation” (Stanford, 2011), co-editor (with Scott Ury) of “Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and the Jews of East Central Europe” (Routledge, 2015), and co-editor (with Judith Szapor) of “Quotas: The “Jewish Question” and Higher Education in Central Europe, 1880-1945” (Berghahn, 2024). He has contributed to “Prague and Beyond: Jews in the Bohemian Lands” (University of Pennsylvania, 2021), and he is currently working on a history of Hungarian Jewry, titled “Manovill: A Tale of Two Hungarys.”

Join the Norman E. Alexander Library on Zoom on Thursday, December 5, at noon for Brawls, Sickbeds, and Barnard: The Annual Norman E. Alexander Celebration of Collections with Prof. Rowan Dorin of Stanford University, Dr. Edward Loss of University of Bologna, Dr. Pavel Sládek of Charles University, Dr. Cynthia Francis Gensheimer, and Norman E. Alexander Librarian for Jewish Studies, Michelle Margolis.

This event features Inquisition documents from Bologna, a personal narrative shedding light on the Jews of Prague, and a local story about a late nineteenth-century attempt to create scholarships for young Jewish women at the newly established Barnard College.

The program will include the following talks:

Blood and Money: Jews and Justice in the Archives of a Late Medieval Italian City (Rowan Dorin, Stanford University)

The story of illness and recovery of Isaac Poppers of Prague (1772) from a previously unknown manuscript (Pavel Sládek, Charles University, Prague)

"To raise the standard of Jewish women:" 1890s Scholarships for Jews at Barnard? (Cynthia Francis Gensheimer, Independent Scholar)

Rowan Dorin is Associate Professor of History at Stanford University, where he is also Director of the Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies and core faculty of the Taube Center for Jewish Studies. His recent book, No Return: Jews, Christian Usurers, and the Spread of Mass Expulsion in Medieval Europe (Princeton UP, 2023), was awarded the American Academy of Jewish Research's Salo Baron Prize for the best first book in Jewish Studies.

Edward Loss is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Medieval Studies and Digital Humanities at the University of Bologna, where his research focuses on the institutional and archival history of late medieval Bologna.

Pavel Sládek is an associate professor in the Hebrew and Jewish studies program at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague. His research interests and publication topics include sixteenth-century rabbinic literature, the history of Jewish book culture, and practices of reading in the early modern period. He has held fellowships at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Jewish Studies and at Houghton Library of Harvard University. He has been the recipient of research grants from the Czech Science Foundation and the Oxford Bibliographical Society. He is a co-founder of the Prague Centre for Jewish Studies.

Cynthia Francis Gensheimer is a PhD economist who has worked at the Congressional Budget Office in Washington, D.C., and taught economics at Vassar College. As vice president of the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Kansas City, she decided to look to the past to try to understand how to motivate Jews to be more philanthropic. Drawn in this way to the study of American Jewish history, she has focused on the religious, charitable, and educational lives of 19th century Jewish women. She is now writing a book about the Jews who attended the Seven Sisters colleges at the turn of the twentieth century.

Michelle Margolis is responsible for developing the current library collections, both rare and general, as well as supporting research in Judaic and Israel Studies from around the world and in all languages.  Ms. Margolis is also available to help with any level of questions in research of Judaic or Israel studies.  Michelle represents the library to students and faculty.  Columbia Libraries' Judaica collection includes materials from the 10th to the 21st centuries, and represents Jews from across the globe. Columbia's Judaica manuscript collection is the third largest in the United States  A 2012 exhibition highlighted some of the most important manuscripts in the collection, and an exhibition in 2016 displayed highlights from Columbia’s Yiddish collection. More information about Judaica in the libraries, including subject specific guides to the collection, can be found here. 

Please join us for the Second Annual Educational Presentation to Mark the Departure and Expulsion of Jews from Arab Countries. This event on Monday, December 2, 2024, from 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. at Dodge Room in Earl Hall includes a film presentation and panel discussion featuring Dr. Benjamin Berman-Gladstone, IIJS Postdoctoral Fellow; Rabbi Gadi Capela, Co-Founder of Project-Genesis Interfaith; Dr. Seth Ward, Director Emeritus of the University of Denver’s Institute for Isalmic-Judaic Studies; and Michelle Simone Miller, Executive Producer/Host at Mentors on the Mic.

The event is open for in-person attendance to those with an active Columbia University ID card.

The event is available virtually for the broader community. Please use the Zoom link below to join the event at its scheduled time.
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/945492769?pwd=VVdLbVA0cURuM1hMUkFRZDM0M3hkQT09

Join the Institute virtually on Zoom on Monday, November 25, at 12:00 PM for a webinar with Olga Gershenson (University of Massachusetts Amherst). Prof. Gershenson will be discussing her latest book, New Israeli Horror: Local Cinema, Global Genre.

Before 2010, there were no Israeli horror films. The next decade saw a blossoming of the genre by young Israeli filmmakers. New Israeli Horror is the first book to tell their story and analyze their films, from inception to reception. What triggered this sudden development? Why did Israeli filmmakers turn to horror? How do their films portray Israel? What kind of horror scenarios do they depict and how? These questions are particularly poignant now, in light of the attack on October 7, which pitted the real-life horrors against the fictional ones. This talk will include clips from relevant films. No advance viewing is required.

Olga Gershenson is Professor of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies and of Film Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. A multi-disciplinary scholar, her interests lie at the intersection of culture, history, and film. She is the author of New Israeli Horror: Local Cinema, Global Genre (2023), The Phantom Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and Jewish Catastrophe (2013), Gesher: Russian Theater in Israel (2005), as well as editor of Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender (2009). She is currently working on a volume titled The Oxford Handbook of Judaism and Film.

Supported by the generosity of the Radov and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

Join the Institute on Wednesday, November 20, at 6:00 PM for this year’s Yosef Yerushalmi Annual Memorial Lecture, “On Jewish Suffering, Jewish History, and the Need to Rethink Antisemitism”, with Magda Teter. This is a hybrid event, you may attend in-person at 617 Kent Hall or virtually via Zoom. Please register using the appropriate link below.

In 2022, graffiti was found in Bethesda, MD., saying, “No Mercy for Jews.” Since October 7th, outbreaks of virulent antisemitism, contempt, and lack of empathy for Jewish suffering have been manifest widely. In this talk, Magda Teter will explore the deep habits of thinking about Jews and traditional scholarly approaches to antisemitism, and seek to reframe our understanding of anti-Jewish animus and antisemitism.

Magda Teter is Professor of History and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University. Teter is the author of Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland (Cambridge, 2005), Sinners on Trial (Harvard, 2011), which was a finalist for the Jordan Schnitzer Prize, Blood Libel: On the Trail of An Antisemitic Myth (Harvard, 2020), Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism (Princeton, 2023), and of dozens of articles in English, Hebrew, Italian, and Polish. Her book Blood Libel won the 2020 National Jewish Book Award, The George L. Mosse Prize from the American Historical Association, and the Bainton Prize from the Sixteenth Century Society. Teter is the recipient of prestigious fellowships, including from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University, the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and the NEH. She has served as the co-editor of the AJS Review and as the Vice-President for Publications of the Association for Jewish Studies. Teter is currently the President of the American Academy for Jewish Research.

Supported by the generosity of the Knapp and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

Join the Institute on Thursday, November 14th, at 12:00 PM for a hybrid lecture with Benjamin Berman-Gladstone, the Warren and Susan Stern Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish Thought at Columbia University. You may attend in-person at 617 Kent Hall or virtually via Zoom. Register using the appropriate link below. Please note that registration for in-person attendance will close on Wednesday, November 13 at 3:00 p.m.

“Zionism” is often defined in a vacuum, sometimes (especially by its advocates) as a national liberation movement, and sometimes (especially by its opponents) as a colonial plot. In this lecture, Dr. Gladstone will argue for a history of Zionism not as an abstraction but as a social and intellectual movement embedded in myriad cultural and political contexts across Southwest Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Zionist thought has rarely been reducible to a concrete/static set of principles. Rather, it has operated as a network of overlapping institutions and initiatives or as a space of contestation over issues like labor, gender, culture, and colonialism. By understanding the fragmented and complex development of Zionism across the Jewish world before and since 1948, we can better understand not only its roles in Jewish history but also its manifestations inside and outside Israeli society today.

Benjamin Berman-Gladstone (B.A. Brown University; Ph.D. New York University) is the Warren and Susan Stern Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish Thought at Columbia University. He was previously a Fulbright Research Fellow in Israel and a Wexner Graduate Fellow. He specializes in Middle Eastern Zionist thought, Middle Eastern Jewish migration history, and Adeni history. His dissertation, completed in 2024, focused on colonialism and resistance in the Aden protectorates, Adeni Jewish political activism and migration from Aden and Yemen to Israel, and enslavement and the slave trade in the Eastern Aden Protectorate (in its Red Sea and Indian Ocean contexts) in the 1930s and 1940s.

This event was made possible by the generosity of Warren and Susan Stern and the Kaye family.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

Join the Institute in-person at 617 Kent Hall on Tuesday, October 29, at noon for a book talk with Yosefa Raz (University of Haifa), who will be launching her new book, The Poetics of Prophecy: Modern Afterlives of a Biblical Tradition.

Since the mid-1700s, poets and scholars have been deeply entangled in the project of reinventing prophecy. Moving between literary and biblical studies, The Poetics of Prophecy reveals how Romantic poetry is linked to modern biblical scholarship’s development. On the one hand, scholars, intellectuals, and artists discovered models of strong prophecy in biblical texts, shoring up aesthetic and nationalist ideals, while on the other, poets drew upon a countertradition of destabilizing, indeterminate, weak prophetic power. Yosefa Raz considers British and German Romanticism alongside their margins, incorporating Hebrew literature written at the turn of the twentieth century in the Russian Empire. Ultimately, she explains the weakness of modern poet-prophets not only as a crisis of secularism but also, strikingly, as part of the instability of the biblical text itself.

Yosefa Raz is a senior lecturer in the department of English Literature at the University of Haifa, where she specializes in the study of the Bible and its reception, poetry and poetics, and Romantic and contemporary poetry. She is also a poet and translator, with work recently published in The Brooklyn Rail, Boston Review, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.

Supported by the generosity of the Appel and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

Join the Institute in-person at 617 Kent Hall on Monday, October 28, at 6:00 PM for a discussion with Amanda Miryem-Khaye Siegel, co-editor of Women on the Yiddish Stage, and Caraid O’Brien, contributing author.

The integration of women into public Jewish performance (Yiddish-language theater by 1877 and Hebrew-language theater by about 1918) was a revolution in modern Jewish culture. While a great deal of seasoned Yiddish-speaking male talent preexisted theater in the form of cantors, choristers, and tavern singers, East European Jewish women had no experience participating in public Jewish performance. From the theater’s first days, women assumed positions of authority, security, and visibility in great numbers. Rapidly, by the 1890s, when the center of the Yiddish theater shifted from cities throughout Romania and the Russian Empire where it first launched in the late 1870s to cities across the globe — including London, Buenos Aires, and New York City by the turn of the century — substantial numbers of female Yiddish actors enjoyed celebrity on par with their male counterparts. Women on the Yiddish Stage presents an array of scholarly essays that challenge the existing historical accounting of the modern Yiddish theater; highlight pioneering artists, creators, and impresarios; and map sources and methodologies of this rich area of forgotten history.

Amanda Miryem-Khaye Seigel is a Yiddish singer, songwriter, actor, recording artist and scholar in Yiddish music and culture who “exemplifies the attempt to bring a centuries-old language and culture into the contemporary world” (New York Times). She has performed internationally and released a CD of original and adapted Yiddish songs called "Toyznt tamen=A thousand flavors" in 2015. Miryem-Khaye is co-editor (with Alyssa Quint) of Women on the Yiddish Stage (Legenda, 2023) and a member of the Digital Yiddish Theatre Project. Visit http://www.memkhes.com for more information.

Caraid O'Brien has been translating and performing the plays of Sholem Asch since her debut production of God of Vengeance "set Show World aflame" according to the Village Voice in 1999.  She has received three new play commissions from the Foundation for Jewish Culture and was commissioned by Theater J and Solas Nua in DC to write The Rabbi's House, her adaptation of Sholem Asch's Ibsen inspired drama Rabbi Doctor Silver.  She was a 2019 Translation Fellow at the Yiddish Book Center and Sholem Asch Underworld Trilogy, her translation of three Asch plays was published by White Goat Press. Caraid co-curated the theater section of Yiddish: A Global Culture, the permanent exhibit at the Yiddish Book Center and studied Yiddish theater history and performance with legendary Yiddish actors Luba Kadison and Seymour Rexite.   caraidobrien.com

Supported by the generosity of the Radov and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

Join the Institute on Tuesday, October 22, at 7:00 PM for an in-person screening of Israeli film Delegation, introduced by IIJS Film Programmer Stuart Weinstock. Prof. Weinstock will also lead an audience discussion after the screening.

Delegation dramatizes a common Israeli rite of passage: the high school class trip to Holocaust memorial sites in Poland before teenagers begin their IDF service. On this particular trip, shy boy Frisch, aspiring artist Nitzan, and class heartthrob Ido struggle with love, friendship, and politics in the crucible of a busy itinerary through traumatic history. Their experiences are both universally teenage and uniquely Israeli.
(105 minutes; English, Hebrew, and Polish with English subtitles)

Supported by the generosity of the Kaye and Radov families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

Join the Institute on Zoom on Tuesday, October 8, at 12:00 PM for a discussion led by IIJS Co-Director Rebecca Kobrin featuring Professor Arnie Eisen of the Jewish Theological Seminar, Professor David Feldman of Birkbeck, University of London, Professor Susannah Heschel of Dartmouth College, and Professor Derek Penslar of Harvard University.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas invaded Israel and perpetrated the most deadly assault on Jews since the Holocaust.  This attack upended many assumptions both scholars and the public held about Jewish sovereignty, security, and politics.  The activism and protests that exploded throughout the world in the aftermath of this attack raised questions about antisemitism and Israel's place in the world.

Now that a year has passed, scholars must begin to frame and analyze all that took place on and since October 7 within the broader scope of Jewish history.  What are the best frameworks through which to think about, conceptualize, and narrate the events of the past year?  What will this date signify for Jewish history in the future?  Should October 7 be considered a turning point in Jewish history?  

In this webinar, Professor Rebecca Kobrin will lead a discussion with Professor Arnie Eisen [JTS], Professor David Feldman [Birkbeck, University of London], and Professor Susannah Heschel [Dartmouth College]. Together, they will reflect on the significance of the past year from various vantage points in Jewish Studies and provide fresh frameworks for understanding the new terrain in which Jews in Israel and the Diaspora find themselves today.

Rebecca Kobrin is the Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History at Columbia University, specializing in modern Jewish migration, immigration history, urban studies, and business history. She earned her B.A. from Yale and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, followed by postdoctoral fellowships at Yale and NYU. Kobrin is the author of Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora, which won the Jordan Schnitzer Prize, and has edited several volumes, including Chosen Capital and Salo Baron. Her forthcoming book, A Credit to the Nation (Harvard University Press, 2024), explores the world of East European immigrant bankers in America. She has received Columbia’s Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award for her exceptional teaching and mentoring and is a principal investigator of the award-winning Historical NYC Project, a digital humanities initiative mapping New York City’s demographic shifts from 1850 to 1940.

Arnie Eisen is Chancellor Emeritus and Professor of Jewish Thought at The Jewish Theological Seminary. He is a leading authority on American Judaism, and has made significant contributions to Jewish thought and education. Serving as JTS chancellor from 2007 to 2020, he transformed the training of Jewish leaders, emphasizing innovation and authenticity in Jewish life during times of rapid change. Eisen spearheaded the development of JTS’s 21st Century Campus and launched initiatives to expand access to Jewish learning through online resources, public courses, and digitization of JTS’s library. His scholarship includes Galut and Rethinking Modern Judaism, and he has taught at Stanford, Tel Aviv, and Columbia universities. Eisen also serves on advisory boards for the Tanenbaum Center, Covenant Foundation, and Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture.

David Feldman is Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism and a Professor of History, specializing in the history of antisemitism, Jewish history, racialization, and migration in modern Britain. Since joining Birkbeck in 1994, he has been actively engaged in research which addresses public policy, leading a pan-European project on contemporary antisemitism in Western Europe. Feldman has advised institutions such as the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and Human Rights Watch, as well as UK bodies like the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism. His writings on antisemitism have appeared in publications including The Guardian, Financial Times, and Haaretz. His latest book, co-edited with Marc Volovici, is Antisemitism, Islamophobia and the Politics of Definition (2023).

Susannah Heschel is the Eli M. Black Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College, where she chairs the Jewish Studies Program and is a faculty member in the Religion Department. Her scholarship focuses on 19th- and 20th-century Jewish and Protestant thought, the history of biblical scholarship, Jewish scholarship on Islam, and the history of antisemitism. Among her many publications are Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus, which won a National Jewish Book Award, and The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany. She has a forthcoming book, co-written with Sarah Imhoff, The Woman Question in Jewish Studies with Princeton University Press. Heschel has held visiting professorships at the Universities of Frankfurt, Cape Town, and Princeton. Heschel has been honored with five honorary doctorates and the Mendelssohn Prize of the Leo Baeck Institute. Currently, she is a Guggenheim Fellow and is writing a book on European Jewish scholarship on Islam and serves on the academic advisory council of the Center for Jewish Studies in Berlin and the Board of Trustees of Trinity College.

Derek Penslar is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History at Harvard University. He is the director of undergraduate studies within the history department and directs Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies. Penslar is a resident faculty member at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES) and is also affiliated with Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Penslar takes a comparative and transnational approach to modern Jewish history, which he studies within the contexts of modern nationalism, capitalism, and colonialism. His books have engaged with a variety of approaches and methods, including the history of science and technology, economic history, military history, biography, and the history of emotions. Penslar is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the American Academy for Jewish Research and is an honorary fellow of St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford.

Supported by the generosity of the Radov and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

Join the Institute on Tuesday, September 24, at 7:00 PM for our first film event of the fall semester: an in-person screening of Israeli film Arugam Bay, introduced by IIJS Film Programmer Stuart Weinstock. Prof. Weinstock will also lead an audience discussion after the screening.

After completing their military service, three Israeli surfers in their early 20s travel to the southeast coast of Sri Lanka while grieving their friend’s death in combat near Beirut. As they explore the tropical paradise of Arugam Bay, meeting both locals and other expats, the bonds of their friendship are tested. With an outstanding ensemble cast starring Joy Rieger (Valley of Tears), Maor Schwitzer (IIJS’ June 2024 film, Matchmaking), and Yadin Gelman (Image of Victory), Arugam Bay captures a uniquely Israeli coming-of-age journey that resonates deeply today.

(97 minutes; English, Hebrew, and Sinhala with English subtitles)

Supported by the generosity of the Kaye and Radov families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

Join the Institute for a hybrid event, both in-person at 617 Kent Hall and on Zoom, on Monday, September 23, at 12:00 PM for a lecture with Robin Judd (The Ohio State University). Prof. Judd will be discussing her latest book, Between Two Worlds: Jewish War Brides after the Holocaust.

Facing the harrowing task of rebuilding a life in the wake of the Holocaust, many Jewish survivors, community and religious leaders, and Allied soldiers viewed marriage between Jewish women and military personnel as a way to move forward after unspeakable loss. Proponents believed that these unions were more than just a ticket out of war-torn Europe: they would help the Jewish people repopulate after the attempted annihilation of European Jewry.

In Between Two Worlds, Historian Robin Judd, whose grandmother survived the Holocaust and married an American soldier after liberation, introduces us to the Jewish women who lived through genocide and went on to wed American, Canadian, and British military personnel after the war. She offers an intimate portrait of how these unions emerged and developed—from meeting and courtship to marriage and immigration to life in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom—and shows how they helped shape the postwar world by touching thousands of lives, including those of the chaplains who officiated their weddings, the Allied authorities whose policy decisions structured the couples' fates, and the bureaucrats involved in immigration and acculturation. The stories Judd tells are at once heartbreaking and restorative, and she vividly captures how the exhilaration of the brides' early romances coexisted with survivor's guilt, grief, and apprehension at the challenges of starting a new life in a new land.

Robin E. Judd is a specialist in Jewish, transnational, and gender history, with particular interests in Holocaust studies, the history of antisemitism, the history of religion, the history of leadership, and the history of migration. She is the author of the award winning Between Two Worlds: Jewish War Brides After the Holocaust (University of North Carolina Press, 2023) and Contested Rituals: Circumcision, Kosher Butchering, and German-Jewish Political Life in Germany, 1843-1933 (Cornell University Press). Between Two Worlds won two National Jewish book awards and was named by the Jewish Women's Archive as one of its Summer 2024 Book Club picks.  

Professor Judd teaches courses on Holocaust studies, modern Jewish history, German history, gender history, and history of migration. Judd recently served as the President of the Association for Jewish Studies; she also serves as the Vice Chair of the Leo Baeck Institute’s Advisory Board, and is on the Hadassah Brandeis Institute’s Academic Review committee, and the Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook’s Editorial Board. Judd has received several fellowships and grants, including an ACLS, Hadassah Brandeis Institute Senior Fellowship Award, an NEH summer stipend, the College of Humanities' Virginia Hull Research Award, and the Coca-Cola Grant for Critical Difference.

Supported by the generosity of the Radov and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

Join the Institute in-person at 617 Kent Hall on Monday, September 16, at 12:00 PM for a lecture with Jonathan Gribetz (Princeton University). Prof. Gribetz will be discussing his latest book, Reading Herzl in Beirut: The PLO Effort to Know the Enemy.

In Reading Herzl in Beirut, Jonathan Marc Gribetz tells the story of the PLO Research Center from its establishment in 1965 until its ultimate expulsion from Lebanon in 1983. Gribetz explores why the PLO invested in research about the Jews, what its researchers learned about Judaism and Zionism, and how the knowledge they acquired informed the PLO’s relationship to Israel.

Jonathan Gribetz is Professor of Near Eastern Studies and Judaic Studies at Princeton University. He directs the Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia and co-edits the AJS Review, the journal of the Association for Jewish Studies. Gribetz is the author of Defining Neighbors: Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist-Arab Counter (2014) and Reading Herzl in Beirut: The PLO Effort to Know the Enemy (2024). He earned his BA from Harvard University, an MSt in Modern Jewish Studies from the University of Oxford, and his PhD in History from Columbia University. 

Supported by the generosity of the Radov and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

Join the Institute virtually on Zoom on Thursday, September 12, at 12:00 PM for a webinar with Fabio Fantuzzi, Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellow at Columbia University and Ca’ Foscari University. Dr. Fantuzzi’s lecture is titled “Norman Raeben: The Wandering Art, A cultural and artistic itinerary from Sholem Aleichem to Bob Dylan.”

Many scholars have underscored the great relevance of artist Norman Raeben’s figure, particularly for his influence on Stella Adler and Bob Dylan’s careers. Yet, due to the scarcity of studies about his oeuvre, his profound impact on prominent Jewish artists and cultural circles in the United States remains largely unknown. Even forty-six years after his death, most of the works and writings of Sholem Aleichem’s last son have yet to be unveiled to the public. The EU-funded POYESIS project, a joint postdoctoral research fellowship between Ca’ Foscari University and Columbia University, is set to illuminate his art, ideas, and legacy, creating a retrospective exhibition of his works, which will open at the Jewish Museum in Venice on November 10, 2024, and providing the first comprehensive catalog of his works. 

In this seminar, Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellow Fabio Fantuzzi will discuss the project’s findings with Professor Jeremy Dauber, commenting on various never-before-seen materials. They will also delve into how Raeben’s art and teaching activity impacted first-, second-, and third-generation Jewish American artists like Stella Adler, Bob Dylan, and Roz Jacobs, offering a unique opportunity to gain deeper insights into the careers of these leading artists and intellectuals.

Fabio Fantuzzi is a Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellow at Columbia University and Ca’ Foscari University, working on the EU-funded MSC project POYESIS (Perspectives on Yiddish Cultural Evolution and Its Legacy: Visual Arts, Theatre, and Songwriting Between Assimilation and Identity. A Case Study).

He holds a Ph.D. in Anglo-American Literature, Culture, and Language, and his primary research interests are the intersections between poetry, music, and visual arts in the American Jewish and Italian American literary and artistic traditions. He has published articles and essays in several academic journals, edited the volume Tales of Unfulfilled Times (Ca’ Foscari University Press, 2017), and co-edited the book Bob Dylan and the Arts: Songs, Film, Painting, and Sculpture in Dylan’s Universe (Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2020). His current research studies the work and teachings of artist Norman Raeben and his influence on various leading artists as a case to examine the evolution of Yiddish culture and art in New York in the 20th century. As part of this research, he is curating a retrospective exhibition of Norman Raeben’s works, which will open at the Jewish Museum in Venice on November 10, 2024, and is editing the catalog of his works.

As a multi-instrumentalist and a songwriter, together with the band Le Ombre di Rosso, he has published the albums “Momenti di lucidità” (2016) and “Da Sponda a Sponda” (2021), which puts to music Luciano Cecchinel’s homonymous collection of poems, which was awarded the 2020 Viareggio-Repaci Prize for Poetry.

Supported by the generosity of the Appel and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

The IIJS Summer Film Series concludes with “Checkout,” the Israeli hit from director and co-writer Jonathan Dekel. Join us online on Monday, July 15, at 12:00 PM for a virtual Q&A with the filmmaker and IIJS Film Programmer Stuart Weinstock.

In this spy comedy, Dov, an aging and feckless Mossad operative, has just been given notice of his mandatory retirement. About to leave his Istanbul hotel on a wave of self-pity, he decides to stay when he identifies an Arabic-speaking traveler as "Gilgamesh," a notorious terrorist. No spoilers: Dov's pursuit of Gilgamesh plays out more like Curb Your Enthusiasm than Fauda. (97 minutes; English, Hebrew, and Arabic with English subtitles)

Please register for the event below. You will receive an email with a link to watch the film at home on Friday, July 12th. This link will only be available until Monday, July 15th at 11:59pm EDT.

We will be hosting a Zoom Q&A session on Monday, July 15th at 12:00pm EDT with director and co-writer Jonathan Dekel. You will receive a separate email with the Zoom link for the Q&A before the event.

Please email iijs@columbia.edu with any questions.

Jonathan Dekel graduated from Jerusalem's Sam Spiegel School of Film and Television. His thesis film, April Fools, was shot on an iPhone and went on to win Israel's Academy Award (Ophir Award) for Best Short Film along with Best Short at the 2014 Jerusalem Film Festival. Dekel has directed and written for Israeli television and directed music videos. Checkout is his first feature film, and was developed with the Sundance Screenwriter's Lab and won the Emerging Filmmaker Award from the Jerusalem International Film Lab.

Supported by the generosity of the Appel and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

The IIJS Summer Film Series begins this year with “Matchmaking,” the Israeli hit from director and co-writer Erez Tadmor. Join us online on Monday, June 17, at 12:00 PM for a virtual Q&A with the filmmaker and IIJS Film Series Coordinator Stuart Weinstock.

A box office hit in Israel and on the Jewish film festival circuit, Matchmaking tells the comic story of Moti Bernstein, the ideal yeshiva bucher and the perfect match for any Haredi Orthodox bride-to-be. While Moti seems to be on a path towards marriage with an exceptional match, his Ashkenazi world is thrown into turmoil when he falls in love with Nechama, a Mizrahi girl. When the matchmakers of his Haredi community refuse to pair him with Nechama, Moti seeks an unconventional solution to bridge the social gap between them.  (98 minutes; Hebrew with English subtitles)

Please register for the event below. You will receive an email with a link to watch the film at home on Friday, June 14th. This link will only be available until Monday, June 17th at 11:59pm EDT.

We will be hosting a Zoom Q&A session on Monday, June 17th at 12:00pm EDT with director and co-writer Erez Tadmor. You will receive a separate email with the Zoom link for the Q&A before the event.

Please email iijs@columbia.edu with any questions.

Erez Tadmor is an Israeli-born filmmaker working across genre lines with diverse short and feature-length films. His internationally-acclaimed films include: A Matter of Size (2009), Magic Men (2014), the Ophir-Award-winning Wounded Land (2015), The Art of Waiting (2019), and Children of Nobody (2022). His 2004 short film, Strangers, won the Audience Award for Short Films at the Sundance Film Festival.

Supported by the generosity of the Appel and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

Join IIJS online for "Trying to Make Sense of October 7, its Horrors and its Consequences: Thoughts from a Hostage Parent," a webinar on Monday, June 10, at 12:00 PM, with Jonathan Dekel-Chen (Hebrew University of Jerusalem).

Jonathan Dekel-Chen is a member of Kibbutz Nir Oz, situated on the border with the Gaza Strip.  The Hamas attack on Nir Oz on October 7, 2023 resulted in the massacre of dozens of its members, the captivity of many dozens more as well as the physical destruction and looting of the kibbutz. His 35 year-old son Sagui – a father of three young girls – is among the 39 hostages from Nir Oz still held by Hamas in Gaza.

Jonathan is a dual USA-Israel citizen, born and raised in Connecticut. He emigrated on his own to Israel in 1981 and is a father of four and grandfather of eleven. Since the Hamas attack on his kibbutz, he has advocated in the US and Israel for release of the hostages, including meetings with President Biden, VP Harris, Secretary of State Blinken, National Security Advisor Sullivan, CIA Director Burns and many senior elected officials.  Jonathan has also made dozens of media appearances around the globe to inform the public about the plight of the hostages. 

He is the Rabbi Edward Sandrow Chair in Soviet & East European Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he holds a dual appointment in the Department of Jewish History & Contemporary Jewry and in the Department of General History. His current research and publications deal with modern Jewish history, modern Israel, transnational philanthropy and advocacy, non-state diplomacy, agrarian history and migration. He served from 2007-2019 as the Academic Chairman of the Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian & East European Jewry and served as Chairman of the Russian Studies Department from 2006-2008, 2016-2020. He has served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Rutgers University, the Kennan Institute in Washington, DC and at the Harriman Institute in New York. Until October 7, Jonathan was a frequent commentator and interviewee on East European affairs and the Middle East for media outlets that include the BBC, AP, Reuters, Washington Post, Bloomberg, Radio France, the Voice of America and many others. 

Supported by the generosity of the Radov and Appel families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

Join the Columbia Journalism School and the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies on Wednesday, May 1, at 12:00 PM for a virtual panel discussion with John Daniszewski, David Folkenflik, and Steven Holmes, moderated by Jane Eisner.

How do newsrooms decide what words to use in covering a complex conflict? In a quick-moving story, how should journalists decide if and when information is solid enough to publish? Has the current war presented new challenges, and what policies have changed or grown out of it?

This panel discussion features:

• John Daniszewski, Vice President and Editor at Large for Standards, The Associated Press

• David Folkenflik, Media Correspondent, NPR News

• Steven Holmes, Former Executive Director, Standards & Practices, CNN; Pulitzer Prize winner for New York Times, "How Race Is Lived in America"

This panel will be moderated by New York-based journalist Jane Eisner, former Director of Academic Affairs, Columbia Journalism School, and former Editor-in-Chief, The Forward.

Supported by the generosity of the Knapp family.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

Join IIJS for a webinar on Sunday, April 28, at 3:00 PM with Dr. Ronit Levine-Schnur (Tel Aviv University) and Shany Granot-Lubaton (NYC Hostages Families Forum), titled “Fighting for Democracy: Reflections on the Israeli Democracy Protest Movement from the Post-October 7 World.”

The past year has been unprecedentedly dramatic and tumultuous for Israeli citizens. Ever since the newly elected far right-wing government declared its plan for a judicial overhaul in January 2023, there have been protests throughout the country—creating the largest protest movement in Israel’s history and one of the most persistent in recent global history—culminating after 9 months with the October 7th attack. With global democratic deterioration, and the upcoming contentious elections in the US, two leading Israeli organizers, Ronit Levine-Schnur and Shany Granot-Lubaton, will recount the challenges, successes, and failures of the democratic protest movement, reflect on the impact of October 7th events on the movement, and offer insights on fighting for democracy.

Dr. Ronit Levine-Schnur is a Senior Lecturer at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law. She was the co-founder and the leader of “The Israeli Law Professors’ Forum for Democracy” until Oct. 7th. Currently she is a co-leader of “The Day After the War Forum”.

Shany Granot-Lubaton is the leader of the New York City protests for Israeli democracy (the largest protest community outside of Israel). Right after Oct. 7th she co-founded the Hostages Families Forum in NYC. She was previously the chief of staff and spokesperson of the former head of the labor party, MK Shelly Yechimovich and deputy director of the “Darkenu” movement.

The event is organized and moderated by Maya Gayer - Journalist, Fulbright fellow in Public Humanities and MA student in the Oral History Program at Columbia University, who is building an oral history archive of the Israeli democracy protest movement as her thesis project.

Supported by the generosity of the Radov and Appel families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

Join us in-person at 617 Kent Hall at 12:00 PM on Wednesday, April 17, for the Professor Dan Miron Lecture in Hebrew Literature with bestselling Israeli-American author Maya Arad (Stanford University) and Prof. Shachar Pinsker (University of Michigan).

Pinsker and Arad will discuss the possibility of writing Hebrew in America, expanding the setting and characters of Hebrew literature beyond Israel. Using the translation of Arad's collection of novellas, The Hebrew Teacher (Translated by Jessica Cohen), which came out last month (New Vessel Press) as an example, we will raise the question of the place of Hebrew in today’s Israel, in America, and elsewhere.

Maya Arad is the author of eleven books of Hebrew fiction, as well as studies in literary criticism and linguistics. Born in Israel in 1971, she received a PhD in linguistics from University College London and for the past twenty years has lived in California where she is currently writer in residence at Stanford University’s Taube Center for Jewish Studies. Her most recent book, The Hebrew Teacher, will be released in English translation for the first time on March 19, 2024.

Shachar Pinsker is a Professor of Judaic Studies and Middle East Studies, and Associate Director of the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Jewish Research. His scholarly writings include two award-winning books: Literary Passports: The Making of Modernist Hebrew Fiction in Europe (2011), and A Rich Brew: How Cafés Created Modern Jewish Culture (2018). He is also the editor (with Sheila Jelen) of Hebrew, Gender, and Modernity (2007), Women’s Hebrew Poetry on American Shores (2016), and Where the Sky and the Sea Meet: Israeli Yiddish Stories (2021). He is currently writing a book on Yiddish in Israeli literature, and co-directing the NEH supported research project: The Feuilleton, the Public Sphere, and Modern Jewish Cultures.

Supported by the generosity of the Knapp family.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

Join Barnard College's Rennert Forum Fund and the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies at 12:00 PM on Monday, April 15, in-person at 617 Kent Hall, for a lecture with Prof. Jordan Katz (University of Massachusetts Amherst): "Roza the Midwife and Jewish Medical Women in Early Modern Europe."

Jordan Katz is Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies at University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is a historian of early modern Jewry, with a focus on Jewish cultural history, history of medicine, and women and gender in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Her current book project examines the role of Jewish midwives within communal, intellectual, and medical frameworks in the early modern Ashkenazic world. Through an exploration of Jewish midwives’ medical influences, their engagement with administrative knowledge systems, and their intellectual status in the eyes of prominent male leaders, Katz’s study offers a new understanding of the structures of knowledge and authority that undergirded early modern European society. More broadly, she is interested in the ways in which expertise and special skills created pathways for interaction between Christians and Jews, and between Jews of different socioeconomic classes, that have not yet been studied.

Professor Katz has received fellowships from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture; the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine; the Center for Jewish History; and the Leo Baeck Fellowship Programme. Her work has been published in Jewish Quarterly Review and Jewish Social Studies.

Supported by the Ingeborg, Tamara, and Yonina Rennert Forum Fund at Barnard College.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

Join the IIJS and the Columbia Alliance Program in-person at 617 Kent Hall at 12:00 PM on Thursday, April 11, for the 2024 Yosef Yerushalmi Annual Memorial Lecture with French historian and sociologist Pierre Birnbaum.

Pierre Birn­baum is a his­to­ri­an and polit­i­cal soci­ol­o­gist who is pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Paris 1 Pan­théon-Sor­bonne. His books in Eng­lish include Paths of Eman­ci­pa­tion: Jews, States, and Cit­i­zen­ship (coedit­ed with Ira Katznel­son, 1995), Jew­ish Des­tinies: Cit­i­zen­ship, State, and Com­mu­ni­ty in Mod­ern France (2000), The Anti-Semit­ic Moment: A Tour of France in 1898 (2011), and Léon Blum: Prime Min­is­ter, Social­ist, Zion­ist (2015). His most recent book, Tears of His­to­ry: The Rise of Polit­i­cal Anti­semitism in the Unit­ed States, was published by Columbia University Press in 2023.

Supported by the generosity of the Knapp and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

This event, initially scheduled for October 25th, 2023, has been rescheduled to April 8, 2024. We warmly invite you to join us in April for this lecture.

Please be in touch with us at iijs@columbia.edu with any questions.

Join the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies & The Naomi Foundation on Monday, April 8, at 12:00 PM, for the 2023-2024 Naomi Prawer Kadar Annual Memorial Lecture with academic and cultural critic Ilan Stavans, a virtual talk titled “Yiddish and Ladino: Forking Paths.”

This event is a virtual webinar on ZOOM.

Yiddish and Ladino have unique histories, each reflecting the sprawling civilizations they fostered. What elements do they share? How do we define their individual character? Was their route foreseeable? At what points have the two intersected and what has come from that encounter? Do the two have the same survivalist spirit? Born and raised in Mexico City in a Yiddishist milieu and among fervent Ladinists, Ilan Stavans reflects on the divergent, at times perplexing, and even tragic routes these two Jewish languages have taken.

Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, the publisher of Restless Books, and a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary. The recipient of numerous international awards and prizes, his books for adults and children include On Borrowed Words, Dictionary Days, Resurrecting Hebrew, How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish, Selected Translations: Poems 2000-2020, and The People's Tongue: Americans and the English Language. He has rendered Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, and Juan Rulfo into English, Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Bishop into Spanish, Isaac Bashevis Singer from Yiddish, Juan Gelman from Ladino, Yehuda Halevi and Yehuda Amichai from Hebrew, the Popol Vuh from K'iche',and Don Quixote, Alice and Wonderland and The Little Prince into Spanglish. An essayist, cultural commentator, linguist, translator, and editor, his work, translated into twenty languages, has been adapted into film, theater, TV, radio, and music. 

This event is supported by the generosity of the Naomi Foundation.

The Naomi Prawer Kadar Annual Memorial Lecture provides an opportunity for the public to explore topics of Yiddish language and linguistics, the history of Yiddish, Yiddish children’s literature and education. The lecture is supported by the Naomi Prawer Kadar Foundation, Inc., which is dedicated to reimagining education. The Naomi Foundation champions Yiddish, Naomi’s lifelong passion, as a vibrant, rich, and contemporary language. The Naomi Foundation advances the teaching and learning of Yiddish, particularly in academic and scholarly settings.

Join us in-person at 617 Kent Hall on Tuesday, March 26, at 12:00 PM for a lecture with Rachel Smith, the Mark and Anla Cheng Kingdon Postdoctoral Fellow in Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University.

This talk examines ethnographic writing about superstition among Sephardic communities of the late Ottoman Empire. I demonstrate how Sephardic reformers deployed the category of superstition in efforts to draw new social and intellectual boundaries that condoned various social groups—including women, the elderly, and traditional rabbis—and the knowledge they held as superstitious. I show how this was part of a larger political project to assert their newfound authority as an intellectual class at a time of great social, cultural, and political upheaval across the empire.

Rachel Smith is the Mark and Anla Cheng Kingdon Postdoctoral Fellow in Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University. Her research examines the history, politics, and ethics of knowledge production and representation among Ottoman Sephardic communities. Against the backdrop of expanding empires, the rise of anthropology, and shifting notions of race, she explores how travelers and teachers, rabbis and journalists produced, circulated, and mobilized ethnographic and racialized knowledge in service of different visions of reform. She earned her PhD in History from the University of California Los Angeles, and holds a BA/MA in Linguistic Anthropology from New York University and a dual-MA in Jewish History and Education from the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Supported by the generosity of Mark and Anla Cheng Kingdon and the Kaye family.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

Join us in-person at 617 Kent Hall at 12:00 PM on Wednesday, March 20, for a conversation with Jeremy Eichler and Jeremy Dauber.

An award-winning writer, scholar and critic, Jeremy Eichler is the author of Time’s Echo, a new book on music, war and memory that has been named “History Book of the Year” by The Sunday Times and hailed as “the outstanding music book of this and several years” by The Times Literary Supplement. Published by Knopf in North America and Faber in the U.K., Time’s Echo was a finalist for the UK’s premier non-fiction prize, and is currently being translated into six languages.

Eichler is the recipient of an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for writing published in The New Yorker, a fellowship from Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and a Public Scholar award from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He earned his PhD in modern European history at Columbia University and has taught at Brandeis University. His criticism has appeared in The New York Times and many other national publications, and since 2006, he has served as chief classical music critic of The Boston Globe. For more information, please see www.timesecho.com.

Jeremy Dauber is the Atran Professor of Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture and Director Emeritus of Columbia's Institute of Israel and Jewish Studies; he also teaches in American studies. He is the author of Antonio's Devils: Writers of the Jewish Enlightenment and the Birth of Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature (Stanford University Press, 2004); In the Demon's Bedroom: Yiddish Literature and the Early Modern (Yale University Press, 2010); The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem (Schocken Books, 2013); and Jewish Comedy: A Serious History (W.W. Norton, 2017). He is also the co-editor and -translator, with Joel Berkowitz, of Landmark Yiddish Plays (SUNY Press, 2006), an anthology of Yiddish drama. He is also editor, with Barbara Mann, of Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History, a leading journal in the field of Jewish literature.

His research interests include Yiddish literature; comparative Jewish literature; the Yiddish theater; American Jewish literature and popular culture; and American literature and popular culture.

Supported by the generosity of the Radov and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

Join us in-person at 617 Kent Hall on Thursday, March 7, at 12:00 PM for a lecture with Britt Tevis, the Rene Plessner Postdoctoral Fellow in Antisemitism and Holocaust Studies at Columbia University.

Britt P. Tevis is the Rene Plessner Postdoctoral Fellow in Holocaust and Antisemitism Studies at Columbia University. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her J.D. at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Her research examines the intersections between Jews and American law and her work has appeared in American Jewish History, American Journal of Legal History, and the Journal of American History. She has held fellowships at the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism at Yale University, the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University.

Supported by the generosity of Rene Plessner and the Kaye family.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

The Spring 2024 IIJS Film Series continues on Monday, March 4, at 12:00 PM ET with Egypt, a Love Song, a film from writer-director Dr. Iris Zaki.

In 1940s Egypt, Souad Zaki was a popular Jewish Arab singer married to a renowned Muslim musician. After her husband abandoned her and their child, Souad was forced to flee to Israel and make ends meet by working as a domestic cleaner. Souad's granddaughter, Iris, tells Souad's tempestuous story in a documentary that incorporates intimate conversations with her father, family photos and movies, reenactments of key moments in Souad's life, and rare footage of Souad singing and acting. (74 minutes; Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles)

Please register for the event below. You will receive an email with a link to watch the film at home by Friday, March 1. This link will only be available until Monday, March 4, at 11:59pm EDT.

We will be hosting a Zoom Q&A session on Monday, March 4, at 12:00pm ET with writer-director Dr. Iris Zaki. You will receive a separate email with the Zoom link for the Q&A several days before the event.

Please note: at this time, only viewers in the United States will be able to stream the film.

Please email iijs@columbia.edu with any questions.

Dr. Iris Zaki is a Grierson award-winning artist-filmmaker with a signature cinematic style. Her first-person documentaries explore themes of complex identity, cross-cultural encounters and community representation. Her films, Women in Sink and Unsettling, have been shown at numerous festivals and universities worldwide, and have been featured on television and the NY Times’ OpDocs. Iris earned her PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London, and is teaching documentary filmmaking for BA and MA students at Sapir College in Israel.

Supported by the generosity of the Appel and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

**Barnard ID or CUID required for entry**

IIJS, Barnard College, and the Barnard Program in Jewish Studies are excited to bring you this event with Derek Penslar, William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History at Harvard University and Liora Halperin, Professor in International Studies and History and Distinguished Endowed Chair of Jewish Studies at University of Washington.

This event is part of the "Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Palestine and Israel" speaker series.

Join the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and the Leo Baeck Institute in-person at 617 Kent Hall on Wednesday, February 21, at 12:00 PM for a talk with Yaniv Feller (University of Florida) and Markus Krah (Leo Baeck Institute): "The Political Thought of Leo Baeck."

Leo Baeck was the revered leader of German Jewry during the Holocaust and one of the leading Jewish public intellectuals of the twentieth century. He was a man steeped in the religious discourse of his time, but he was not merely a religious thinker. Rather, Baeck was profoundly shaped by the imperial constellations in which he lived. This insight sheds new light on his work as a political thinker during the Wilhelmine Empire as well as his writings and decisions during the Holocaust. The result is a new appreciation of his thought, including as it emerges from Baeck’s unpublished manuscripts and his lectures in the Theresienstadt Ghetto.

Yaniv Feller is an assistant professor of Religion and Jewish Studies at the University of Florida. He is the author of The Jewish Imperial Imagination: Leo Baeck and German-Jewish Thought, which won the Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award of the Association for Jewish Studies. Yaniv has published articles on themes such as moral value of resentment, modern gnosis, and Christmas trees.  

Markus Krah is the Executive Director of the Leo Baeck Institute. An American-trained, Germany-based scholar, Krah earned his Ph.D. at the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, in Modern Jewish Studies with a dissertation that became the basis for his monograph, American Jewry and the Re-Invention of the East European Jewish Past (DeGruyter, 2019). In 2021, he was awarded the LBI’s Gerald Westheimer Fellowship to support his research on Salman Schocken’s efforts to promote a Jewish intellectual and spiritual renaissance in post-war America with the US Schocken imprint’s initial program of classic German-Jewish texts. He has published numerous peer-reviewed scholarly articles and served as editor of PaRDeS, the journal of the Association for Jewish Studies in Germany. Before he began his academic career, Krah worked for over a decade as a journalist, including as the chief correspondent of the German-language service in Reuters’ Berlin Bureau.

Supported by the generosity of the Radov and Kaye families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

The Spring 2024 IIJS Film Series begins on Monday, February 12, at 12:00 PM ET, with Love Gets a Room, a film by Rodrigo Cortes.

Inspired by true events, Love Gets a Room is the story of a Jewish stage actress who must make the gut-wrenching decision to follow her heart or escape the Warsaw Ghetto in the midst of a performance by her beleaguered theater company. Moving nimbly between the stage, the theater corridors, and the bleak Ghetto outside, Love Gets a Room balances life-and-death struggle with the art we create to survive and transcend it. (103 minutes; English with open captions)

Please register for the event below. You will receive an email with a link to watch the film at home by Friday, February 9th. This link will only be available until Monday, February 12th at 11:59pm EDT.

We will be hosting a Zoom Q&A session on Monday, February 12th at 12:00pm ET with writer, director, and editor Rodrigo Cortes. You will receive a separate email with the Zoom link for the Q&A several days before the event.

Please note: at this time, only viewers in the United States will be able to stream the film.

Please email iijs@columbia.edu with any questions.

Born in Spain, Rodrigo Cortes is a Goya-Award-Winning writer, director, and editor of the internationally-produced films Concursante, Buried (starring Ryan Reynolds), Red Lights (starring Sigourney Weaver and Robert DeNiro), and Down a Dark Hall.

Supported by the generosity of the Kaye and Radov families.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.