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Frankely Speaking JEAN & SAMUEL FRANKEL CENTER FOR JUDAIC STUDIES FALL 2017 FRANKELY SPEAKING INSIDE 2 From the Director 3 Art Spiegelman 4 New Faculty 5 Visiting Faculty 6 2017-18 Fellows 8 Alumni Spotlight 9 Students 12 Retiring Faculty 14 Mazel Tov! 15 Books Joshua Scott at the Huqoq 16 Save the Date Excavation project in Israel. From the Director Lessons from the Ancients By Jeffrey Veidlinger, Director of the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies and Joseph Brodsky Collegiate Professor of History and Judaic Studies hat can we moderns learn from But the ancient sages also believed that many the ancients? This is one of the boundaries were artificial—they struggled many questions the Frankel intensely in defining gender boundaries, for Center will be investigating this instance, recognizing that gender identification Wyear through the Frankel Institute’s “Jews and was more fluid than the laws imagined. The the Material in Antiquity” theme year. Eleven rabbis were also engaged in efforts to demarcate scholars from around the world will be in the borders between human and beast, and residence at the University of Michigan to between human and divine. They were interested examine how ancient Jews and those in their orbit in understanding how we as humans fit into and understood the physical world around them. impact our physical environment. We will also be using this opportunity to look The ancients were also interested in the production afresh at the world around us. of knowledge. They endeavored to figure out I am not a historian of ancient Judaism myself, but which sources of information were real and I have learned a lot reading applications for the which were fake. Eventually whole new sets of year. I learned that ancient Jews were very aware texts emerged that were regarded as authoritative that they functioned in a multicultural No matter how high the walls of Jerusalem world. They certainly would never have used were built, they could not block out that term, but they new ways of looking at the world. were in constant conversation with by some and rejected by others. Even the ancient other cultures, sages struggled to get it right every time. The adapting foreign information bubble they constructed was technologies and intended to be impervious to foreign ideas, but, wrestling with again, constant contact with new and different different ideas. worldviews had its impact, leading to the diverse Cultural boundaries in the ancient world were and ever-changing traditions we cherish today. fluid—no matter how high the walls of Jerusalem Over the course of the year, the Frankel Center were built, they could not block out new ways of will be sponsoring a series of public events looking at the world. and exhibitions on the theme of Jews and the At the same time, the ancients, like us, were Material in Antiquity. I hope this gives us an eager to draw boundaries between themselves opportunity to reflect on what the ancients can and those they considered different. Improved teach us about the modern world. technologies like the codex, for instance, caught on quickly. But many Jews insisted on continuing to use the scroll, because that’s just who they were. In time, the scroll came to define Jewish difference. Like the hipsters who have helped bring about a revival of vinyl records, ancient Jews saw something of value in the older technology. 2 FRANKE LY SPEAKING — FALL 2017 Events Art Spiegelman Pulitzer Prize-winning Artist/Illustrator & Author artoonist and author Art and Nazis as cats. Spiegelman has Spiegelman will be visiting continued to be active since the the University of Michigan publication of Maus, producing several campus this fall for a lecture works, including The Ghosts of Ellis Cco-sponsored by the Frankel Center Island, Be a Nose, The Wild Party, and for Judaic Studies, Stamps School of Art Co-Mix. But he is aware that Maus will and Design, and the Conflict and Peace be a big part of his legacy. “I’ve got an Initiative. The lecture is part of both the obituary coming and it talks about a Frankel Speakers Series and the Penny Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series. called Maus. So I’m aware of that, and His talk takes place November 9th at I’m grateful I suppose for it. But I 5 pm at the Michigan Theater. haven’t fully internalized that I’ve been Spiegelman has been drawing since he in rebellion against that fact ever since was 15 and has been creating innovative and haven’t found anything that has the through this is some of my love for a and provocative comics since the 1960s. same purchase on people’s brains that medium that I really think has not just “As a kid I would go to the Maus does.” been sold short for most of its life, but newspaper library to avoid Maus is considered a turning still hasn’t been appreciated for what it being dragged into a baseball point in the legitimizing of is, a circuit board of brain activity. The game after school,” he comics as an art form; and things that happen from the way those explained in an interview with today, the graphic novel has words and pictures are deposited, I think Frankely Speaking. “I would become a mainstay of con- is much richer and denser…than almost look at what was in the bound temporary literature. (The any other medium I can think of.” newspapers and read these University of Michigan even old comics and really think offers a course on the Jewish Maus remains a best seller today, more about what they were, who made them, Graphic Novel, taught by Maya Barzilai.) than 30 years after its original publication. and why and so on.” Besides publishing Spieglman can take a lot of credit for It is also widely considered one of the many graphic novels, Spiegelman has these developments. “I think I can most important and accessible reflections held a wide variety of positions, ranging proudly say that comics as a medium on the Holocaust: “The fact that it from creative consultant for Topps has moved on to the point that it’s just managed to navigate through [the Bubble Gum Co., to teacher of history like every other medium like fiction and sensitive subject of the Holocaust] and and the aesthetics of comics at the film and theater, which is most of it is tell a story without the usual ceremonial School for Visual Arts in New York. With really shit. I think back in the day I was violin music behind it maybe helped,” his wife, Françoise Mouly, he co-founded just hoping comics would achieve a Spieglman noted. Today, He is concerned RAW, the comics magazine, and was also higher level of mediocrity and they have.” about the continued relevance of Maus: “Us humans haven’t gotten any smarter a staff writer and artist for The New Spiegelman’s talk, Comics is the Yiddish ultimately; if we have, it’s gone very Yorker from 1993 to 2003. of Art¸ will focus on the history of comic slowly. So, sadly, it remains relevant.... In 1992, Spiegelman won a Pulitzer Prize art and how Jewish artists have influ- We certainly don’t want to make it more for Maus, his graphic novel about the enced the form. “I guess what I would relevant.” Holocaust that portrays Jews as mice like people to take away once we go Mark Your Calendar: Art Spiegelman, November 9, 5 pm, Michigan Theater — FRANKE LY SPEAKING FALL 2017 3 Spiegelman photo: Enno Kapitza–Agentur Focus Spiegelman photo: Enno Kapitza–Agentur New Faculty Bryan Roby Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies The Frankel Center announces the history of Mizrahi social justice protests The scholarship being produced by my addition of Bryan Roby as Assistant in Israel during the 1950s and 1960s. I colleagues is innovative, intellectually Professor of Judaic Studies. Professor scoured through over a decade of declassi- rigorous, and simply fascinating. I look Roby is the author of The Mizrahi Era fied police reports documenting rebellions forward to contributing likewise during of Rebellion: Israel’s Forgotten Civil and protests against discriminatory this exciting time of growth for the Rights Struggle, 1948-1967, which was practices affecting them and Palestinian University. published in 2015 by Syracuse University citizens. What I found most surprising My favorite thing about the University Press. He received his PhD in Middle was how much Mizrahi Israelis felt of Michigan is the ease of access to a East Studies from the University of affinities with the Black Diaspora and multitude of resources and university- Manchester in 2013, and has since held looked to the African American Civil Rights led cultural initiatives. I was pleasantly fellowships at New York University’s Movement for inspiration. My current surprised by the student-led Palestine Taub Center for Israel Studies and at the research goes further along these lines Film Festival and watched some amazing Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic by exploring how Middle Eastern Jewry films. I also really loved the “Stumbling Studies. He previously taught at the embraced notions of Blackness in Israel. Blocks” art installations during the Aardvark Israel Program in Tel Aviv. I think that situating Mizrahi history bicentennial celebrations. It was inspiring Professor Roby’s current research within both Judaic and Black Studies to see how much the University of focuses on the relationships between traditions will produce a fruitful conver- Michigan values its student body and the civil rights movements in Israel and sation about race in Israel and will allow understands the importance of diversity America.
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