JEWISH STUDIES BULLETIN A PUBLICATION OF THE UC SAN DIEGO INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND HUMANITIES • SPRING 2019 IN THIS ISSUE FACULTY NEWS PAGE 3 INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR MIRA BALBERG PAGE 4 HOLOCAUST LIVING HISTORY WORKSHOP PAGE 5 The joint UC San Diego-University of Haifa Marine Archaeology team on the beach at Tel Dor, Israel. UC San Diego-Led Expedition Investigates Long-Term Climate Change and Rising Sea Levels in Israel In July 2018, a transdisciplinary UC San Diego- School, where undergraduate and graduate may be part of collapsed structures connected University of Haifa team investigated the students from Haifa and UC San Diego gained to the Iron Age port. During the course of impact of long-term climate change and rising hands-on experience working in the ancient the excavations, eighty lead weights—which sea levels on the cultures along the coast of bays surrounding Israel’s biblical site of Tel Dor. served as sinkers for fishing nets—were also Israel. The four-and-a-half-week mission— discovered. The ability to find, identify, and headed by Professor Tom Levy of the The underwater excavations took place near leave the small weights in position so they can UC San Diego Scripps Center for Maritime numerous submerged stone ashlar blocks be photographed using 3-D photogrammetry Archaeology (SCMA) and Professor Assaf where the ancient mound of Tel Dor merges was an important contribution to the Yasur-Landau of the Department of Maritime with the sea. It was assumed these blocks technology of data recording for underwater Civilizations at the University of Haifa—helped were accidently dropped by boats transporting archaeology. Other research activities included establish the joint Marine Archaeology Field them in antiquity, but new excavations indicate that the extensive distribution of the blocks (CONTINUED ON PAGE 2) 2 • SPRING 2019 3 A Note from the Director archaeology and ancient Near Eastern cultures and the Friends of Judaic Studies and will work at Tel Aviv University, received his PhD in to recruit new members who are prepared anthropology from UC San Diego in 2010. to support the Jewish Studies Program in Dear Friends of Jewish Studies, Ben-Yosef joins us this year to teach courses financial and intellectual ways. We would It brings me enormous pleasure to welcome in natural resources in Israel, environmental like to encourage you to become active in Professor Mira Balberg to the UC San Diego hazards in Israel, and the role of archaeology in the Community Council by attending regular faculty. Balberg joined the faculty as a full building a national narrative. Gilad Shtienberg, Jewish Studies Program events, making a professor of history this fall as the new who received his PhD at the University of tax-free donation, and considering becoming a Endowed Chair in Ancient Jewish Civilizations. Haifa in coastal geomorphology, is visiting member of the Council’s Executive Committee She comes to us from Northwestern UC San Diego this year, where he is teaching in the coming years. University, where she gained an international courses in sea level change, coastal geo- It is one of our goals in the Jewish Studies reputation as a scholar of Judaism in antiquity morphology, and environmental change. Program to inspire students to move beyond (200 BCE–500 CE). She is the author of Purity, It has been thirty-one years since the founding their comfort zones—to learn about Jewish Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature of the Jewish Studies Program (formerly thought and read texts in unexpected ways. and Blood for Thought: The Reinvention of Judaic Studies). Since its inception, the Thanks to your support, we at UC San Diego Sacrifice in Early Rabbinic Literature, for which program has relied on the UC San Diego Board are offering students a broad variety of courses she recently won the Association for Jewish Gilad Shtienberg, UC San Diego postdoctoral researcher from Israel, examines sediment cores representing more than of Visitors and the Friends of Judaic Studies to in Jewish culture, including literature, history, Studies Jordan Schnitzer Book Award. She 6,000 years of climate and environmental data in the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Deep Sea Drilling Lab. raise funds in order to bring visiting scholars and anthropology, from Eastern Europe to began teaching this winter and we are thrilled from around the world, support graduate and the Middle East. As the world becomes more to have Balberg as a colleague. undergraduate students with scholarships, and tightly connected, we feel it is important to EXPEDITION (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1) sampling. The field training took part in a forward camp on the coast This year, we have been very happy to host colleagues from outside UC San Diego help students and community members to geophysical mapping of the shore of Tel Dor’s south bay by SCMA at Tel Dor that featured diving equipment for thirty divers, a specialized host visiting scholars, with the help of the who give public events and collaborate with appreciate the history of religious thought and professor John Hildebrand and near-shore archaeological excavations barge and pump, and a tent for daily briefings. Once UC San Diego Murray Galinson San Diego-Israel Initiative. our faculty. Together with the current president Jewish culture. We want to thank you for your carried out under the direction of the University of Haifa’s professor students familiarized themselves with the equipment, they were joined Yahuda Goodman, professor of sociology of the Board of Visitors, Rabbi Philip Graubart, I continued support of our program! Ruth Shahack-Gross. by University of Haifa students for two weeks of joint excavations and and anthropology at the Hebrew University have updated our community support program diving side-by-side with staff from both universities. Warm wishes, of Jerusalem, joins the Department of policy. As of the current academic year, we will formally create a new title for our support UC SAN DIEGO STUDENTS WERE The excavations had numerous visitors including President Ron Anthropology this year to teach courses in AMELIA GLASER group—the UC San Diego Jewish Studies Robin from the University of Haifa and dean of Social Sciences Carol sociocultural anthropology, the anthropology Associate Professor of Russian and Program Community Council. The Community JOINED BY UNIVERSITY OF HAIFA Paden from UC San Diego. The joint UC San Diego-University of Haifa of mental health in Israel and the Diaspora, as Comparative Literature Council will automatically include all members expedition played a central role in the public outreach open-day for well as a graduate seminar in anthropology. Director, Jewish Studies Program STUDENTS FOR TWO WEEKS OF formerly listed under both the Board of Visitors the local community—attended by more than a hundred visitors from Erez Ben-Yosef, associate professor of JOINT EXCAVATIONS AND DIVING. Kibbutz Nahsholim—organized by Professor Ilan Sharon and Professor Becky Martin. Levy also led the student and faculty group on a two-day FACULTY NEWS Thanks to the Murray Galinson San Diego-Israel Initiative, twelve tour of Jerusalem where the group experienced the richness of Israeli UC San Diego students were awarded grants to the Marine Archaeology culture including Mahane Yehudah, Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, behind the scenes at the City of David Excavations, the Church Field School, which provides instruction in advanced underwater PROFESSOR At the same time, Hertz continues to present problems faced by Jews in contemporary of the Holy Sepulcher, and the Old City Moslem. techniques for archaeological work and environmental underwater DEBORAH HERTZ at conferences and publish articles set in the America. Her article, “Intersectionality and the By defining different submerged and semi-submerged Iron Age late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century Jews in the Age of Trump,” was first delivered Professor Deborah Hertz architectural features and combining the data with the paleo- era. Her keynote at a Berlin conference was as a talk at the American Historical Association is currently immersed environmental samples collected on land and at sea, this joint published as an article entitled “Henriette Herz in January 2018 and has been published in the in the many biographies UC San Diego-University of Haifa project is contributing to as Jew, Henriette Herz as Christian: Relation- Los Angeles Review of Books Blog. of Jewish political understanding changing sea levels in the eastern Mediterranean that ships, Conversion, Antisemitism.” A conference women who came into informs scholars about long-term trends in climate change in this part of paper delivered at the Jewish Museum in Ber- adulthood in the last PROFESSOR the world. The success of the 2018 field season has encouraged the joint lin in 2016 is forthcoming with the Leo Baeck three decades of the nineteenth century in LISA LAMPERT- UC San Diego-University of Haifa teams to plan further fieldwork and Institute Year Book in London. She is also the Russia. Two articles have been published from WEISSIG excavations in 2019. • author of a major encyclopedia article, “Juda- her book manuscript already, one on Rosa ism in Germany 1650–1815,” which appeared This year, Professor Lisa Luxemburg and one on Manya Shochat. A third in the Cambridge History of Judaism. Lampert-Weissig taught article was presented at the Gendering Inter- two graduate seminars. nationalism conference at Oxford University in Hertz usually reserves her intellectual work for The first traced