2018 FALL/WINTER JEWISH STUDIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA Penn offers a comprehensive program in Jewish Studies through its three components: the Jewish Studies Program, the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, and the Judaica Collections at the Penn Libraries. The Jewish Studies Program (JSP) is an interdisciplinary academic group with over twenty faculty members drawn from nine departments that coordinates all courses relating to Jewish Studies in the University. Through this design, the JSP integrates the riches of Jewish culture and history into the humanities and social sciences. Faculty members associated with the Program teach an average of 400 undergraduate students per year. Undergraduates may declare a major or a minor in Jewish Studies. Graduate students in different departments and schools at Penn convene conferences and reading groups within the Jewish Studies Program. The Community: Numerous JSP-sponsored events per year are open to the broader community at Penn and in the Philadelphia area. The Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies This post- doctoral research institute in the heart of historic Philadelphia enables eighteen to thirty selected scholars, at different stages in their careers and working in a variety of disciplines to join in intellectual community, united by an annual theme. The highly competitive selection process attracts gifted applicants from North America, Israel, Europe, and Latin America. The weekly seminars in which Katz Center Fellows present their research are also attended by Penn faculty members and graduate students. Penn graduate students have the opportunity to study with Katz Fellows in an annual modular course. By presenting their research within the colloquia and lecture series of various Penn Departments and Programs, Katz Center Fellows broaden awareness of Jewish culture’s integral place in the Liberal Arts curriculum. The 2018-2019 theme is “Jewish Life in Modern Islamic Contexts.” The Penn Libraries is home to a world-class collection of Judaica resources, including manuscripts, rare printed books, the classics, digital content, and cutting-edge scholarship for research and study by Penn faculty, students, visiting scholars and the general public. Contents PP. 2-3 GREETINGS PP. 4 COURSES PP. 5-6 UNDERGRADUATES PP. 7-9 GRADUATE STUDIES PP. 10-13 FACULTY PP. 14-16 CULTURAL PROGRAMS PP. 17-20 KATZ CENTER Decorative Papercut Mizrah, indicating the eastern direction to face for prayer, early 20th century. Gift of Joseph T. Moldovan, C’76 and Susan Alcalay Moldovan, C’76. PP. 21-25 LIBRARY PP. 26 GIFTS PP. 27 KEDMA REVIVAL 2018 FALL/WINTER Greetings from the Director, Jewish Studies Program At the start of Spring semester 2019, I look back to The Jewish Studies celebrate some of the highlights of the rich array of some Program cosponsored twenty events and programs that took place in the Jewish two major conferences Studies Program last year, in 2017-2018. organized by faculty this year: Beth Wenger We framed our programming in the fall and the spring with co-organized the 2018 two exceptional speakers who summoned the Holocaust and Biennial Scholars’ its aftermath. In Fall 2017, for the 32nd Alexander Conference on Colloquium, Omer Bartov, spoke on “Anatomy of American Jewish a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called History, “Fractured Buczacz,” about the devastating interactions between the Paradigms: Rethinking Jewish community and their Polish and Ukrainian neighbors the Study of American during the Nazi period. For the 22nd Silvers Visiting Jews,” at the Scholar Program, we welcomed Nobel Prize winning brain National Museum of scientist, Eric Kandel to speak on his experiences as a American Jewish young refugee during the war, and on the science of History in Philadelphia; memory, in “From Vienna to New York: Memory of a Life and I co-organized in Two Worlds.” The annual Kristallnacht Commemoration “China and Ashkenazic lecture, cosponsored with the Department of Germanic Jewry: Transnational Encounters,” at Nanjing University, Languages and Literatures, was given by Sara Horowitz, on supported by Penn’s China Research and Engagement Fund. a Prague Jewish writer who wrote in German, “Belated Encounter: The Recovered Literary Legacy of H. G. Adler.” As in each of the past eighteen years, Jewish Studies hosted the annual Manfred R. Lehmann Memorial Master As in past years, Jewish Studies sponsored a range of Workshop on the History of the Jewish Book. lectures that stimulated thought and feeling, and addressed some of the pressing current issues. Collaborating with the Jewish Studies has been fortunate to collaborate with many Katz Center, Penn’s School of Law, and a number of departments and programs at Penn to bring such a wealth of departments, Jewish Studies brought distinguished scholars scholarship to our students, faculty, and the wider to Penn to speak on a variety of topics, from Franz Kafka community. Our partners last year included: the and Yiddishism, to Walter Benjamin and modern Scripture, Departments of Africana Studies, Anthropology, Germanic to Sephardi-Mizrahi Jewish music and culture, to the Languages and Literatures, History, Medical Ethics and archeological mystery of the “Mistress of the Lions” in Tel Health Policy, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Beth Shemesh, to Jewish law in the medieval Islamic Philosophy, Religious Studies; the Programs of Art and context, to Talmudic civil law, and to the philosophical and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World, Cinema Studies, religious influences on Einstein’s thought. Comparative Literature and Theory, Global Medieval Studies, and the Visual Studies Program; the Centers of This year, in cooperation with the Katz Center and the Ancient Studies, Italian Studies, Katz Center for Advanced Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, Jewish Studies Judaic Studies, Middle East Center, Neuroscience co-hosted two workshops on of the treasures in the and Society, and the Penn Law School, as well as Schoenberg collection, by experts from Paris. MindCORE, the Office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences, and Penn Hillel. From manuscripts to movies, Jewish Studies co-sponsored four screenings of new films, partnering with the I am grateful to be working with Steven Weitzman, director Department of Africana Studies, and the student group, of the Katz Center to develop our many joint projects. PB&J to screen Rosenwald: The Remarkable Story of a Jewish Partnership with African American Communities, With best wishes, and to host a discussion with the director, Aviva Kempner. We brought director Jon Kean (C’89) to campus to show After Auschwitz: The Stories of Six Women, and screened the Israeli film, Brave Miss World, followed by a discussion with editor and producer, Inbal Lessner. Kathryn Hellerstein We celebrated the publication of new books by colleagues in Ruth Meltzer Director, Jewish Studies Program Jewish Studies, Nili Gold and Steven Weitzman, and we co- Associate Professor (Yiddish), Department of Germanic sponsored the 21st Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Lecture Languages and Literatures in Judaic Studies, presented by David Ruderman. 2 2018 FALL/WINTER Greetings from the Director, Katz Center After a year of exploring the connections between Jewish studies and the history of science and medicine, the Katz Center turns its attention in 2018-19 to the study of Jewish life in modern Islamic contexts. The study of modern Jewish experience and culture in areas like North Africa, Yemen, Iraq and other regions shaped by Islamic culture has taken great strides in recent decades, and proof of how vital this subfield is comes in the form of the cohort of outstanding fellows who will be at the Katz Center and Penn during the year. They represent an outstanding and diverse group of scholars from around the world, including a 2018 winner of the Israel Prize and scholars coming from places like Turkey and India. The year is about the relationship between Judaism and Islam, and the third key term is modernity—we are aiming for a year that will also look at modernity in new ways by moving beyond the more familiar European, American and Israeli contexts in which it is normally situated. This latter Judaica library, promoting the stellar work of the Jewish issue is the focus of our opening seminar at the Katz Center, Quarterly Review as the flagship journal of Jewish Studies, that launches the year with a panel discussion about the or building bridges between scholars in North America, meaning(s) of modernity in Jewish-Islamic contexts. Israel and the rest of the world, please feel most welcome to contact me at [email protected]; and I would be grateful As in years’ past, we seek to welcome the university for the chance to explore the possibilities with you. community and the larger public into our quest through public programs scheduled in the community or on campus With appreciation, that involve our fellows and other scholars whose work bears on our theme. In the early fall, we will be launching a new website for the Katz Center where you can find updated information about our programs, peruse a blog with articles, interviews with fellows, and other fascinating tidbits, and make use of other features we hope will be helpful. The fellowship is just one part of what the Katz Center does. Dr. Steven Weitzman This last summer, thanks to support from Garry Rayant we Ella Darivoff Director, Herbert D. Katz Center were able to offer another year of our very successful for Advanced Judaic