2015 FALL REVIEW March 2016 news CJS IN THIS ISSUE Faculty & Staff News ........ 1 Lectures & Events .......... 4 Named Funds and Friends News from the Center for of the CJS................. 6 Jewish Studies at From the CJS Mailbox . 10 Harvard University Student News ............ 15 Online at cjs.fas.harvard.edu Course Listing ............ 17 DIRECTOR Jay M. Harris ADMINISTRATION Rachel Rockenmacher, Administrator Lincoln Rose by photo Sandy Cantave Vil, Staff Assistant Dena Davis, Assistant CHAIR, FRIENDS OF THE CENTER FOR JEWISH STUDIES NOAH FELDMAN Peter J. Solomon MEMBERS OF THE CJS EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE CONGRATULATIONS ON THE Shaye J.D. Cohen, Luis Girón Negrón, ESTABLISHMENT OF THE Peter Gordon, Jay M. Harris, Jon Levenson, JULIS-RABINOWITZ PROGRAM Peter Machinist, Eric Nelson, David Stern IN JEWISH AND ISRAELI LAW ADVISORY COMMITTEE AT HARVARD LAW SCHOOL Irit Aharony, Charles Berlin, Noah Feldman, Marshall Goldman, Stephen Greenblatt, The Center for Jewish Studies is pleased to share the news Jeffrey Hamburger, Kevin Madigan, Kay of the establishment of a new program on Jewish and Israeli Shelemay, Doris Sommer, Susan Suleiman, Law at Harvard Law School. Noah Feldman, the Felix D. Andrew Teeter Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and member of the Center for Jewish Studies Advisory Com- CENTER FOR JEWISH STUDIES mittee, will serve as the program’s inaugural director. Harvard University 6 Divinity Avenue http://today.law.harvard.edu/gift-from-mitch-and-joleen- Cambridge, MA 02138 julis-and-family-will-establish-the-julis-rabinowitz-pro- PHONE: 617.495.4326 gram-in-jewish-and-israeli-law-at-harvard-law-school-2/ FAX: 617.496.8904 E-MAIL: [email protected] WEB: cjs.fas.harvard.edu FACEBOOK: facebook.com/ CenterForJewishStudies TWITTER: @HarvardCJS PHOTOGRAPHY: Marcus Halevi (unless otherwise noted) DESIGN: Erin Dowling Design photo by Tony Rinaldo photo by Tony David Stern by Jonah Stern FACULTY & STAFF FACULTY WELCOME, DAVID STERN by Shaye J.D. Cohen, Nathan Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations DAVID STERN is Harry Starr Professor of Classical and Professor Stern’s teaching focuses on the reading of primary Modern Jewish and Hebrew Literature, with joint appoint- sources, whether in the original language or in translation. ments in the Departments of Near Eastern Languages and In the former case, classes concentrate on foundational Civilizations and the Department of Comparative Literature. Jewish texts like Midrash and Talmud. Among the trans- Professor Stern joined the Harvard faculty in July 2015, after lation courses, several (e.g. “Catastrophe and Continuity teaching at the University of Pennsylvania for many years. in Jewish Literature” and “The Binding of Isaac”) span the For David, returning to Harvard was something of a home- entire length of Jewish literary history, from the Bible to the coming, since he received his present. Other courses in trans- Ph.D. in Comparative Literature Professor Stern has written lation include “Great Books of from Harvard, was a Junior Judaism” (Talmud, Bible com- Fellow in Harvard’s Society of articles, essays, and books on mentary, the prayerbook, and Fellows, and, more recently, was works from virtually every period the Passover Haggadah), and a Fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe of Jewish literary history from “Ancient Biblical Interpreters,” Institute. Over the years he has which tracks the comparative won many honors and awards. the early post-Biblical to the history of ancient and medieval contemporary. Jewish and Christian biblical in- The main subject of Professor terpretation. These courses will Stern’s scholarly work is the be offered by the two departments with which he is affiliated. history of Jewish literary creativity within its larger historical and cultural contexts, and he has written articles, essays, and The Center for Jewish Studies is delighted to welcome David books on works from virtually every period of Jewish liter- Stern to our ranks and we look forward to many years of ary history from the early post-Biblical to the contemporary. happy association. We are also delighted that his wife, Prof. His scholarship has focused on two areas: first, classical and Kathryn Hellerstein, a professor of Yiddish at the University medieval Hebrew literature, especially Biblical interpreta- of Pennsylvania, is spending this year at Harvard with him tion (Rabbinic midrash in particular); and second, on the as a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Near Eastern history of the Jewish book. On these and other topics David Languages and Civilizations at Harvard and as a Scholar in has written numerous books and articles; he is generally Residence at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute. recognized as one of the leading experts in the application of literary theory to the study of classical Jewish texts, and one (For further information about David Stern, including a list- of the pioneer scholars in the emerging field of the history of ing of his major publications, go to http://nelc.fas.harvard. the Jewish book. edu/people/david-stern.) n cjs.fas.harvard.edu/ n CENTER FOR JEWISH STUDIES 1 YIDDISH LANGUAGE The Center for Jewish Studies is very fortunate to have a Yiddish in fulfillment of their foreign language requirement. Yiddish Language program with classes taught at three levels: This helps keep the language alive and is also essential in elementary, intermediate, and advanced. We are pleased to sustaining our Yiddish program as a strong and vibrant part welcome Yuri Vedenyapin back to Harvard as our Preceptor of the University’s curriculum. in Yiddish this year. Yiddish language instruction also supports our Yiddish FACULTY & STAFF FACULTY We are extremely grateful for the generosity that enables us to literature program. We miss Ruth Wisse since her retirement support our Yiddish language instructor. The Morris and last year as the Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature Beverly Baker Foundation Yiddish Language and Professor of Comparative Literature, but we are looking Instruction Fund, established at the Center in 2000, forward to welcoming Saul Zaritt, who recently earned his provides essential funding for Yiddish language instruction. Ph.D. at the Jewish Theological Seminary and is currently a In addition, the more recent establishment in 2010 of the postdoctoral fellow at Washington University in St. Louis, as Joseph Morton Miller Endowed Fund for Yiddish our new Martin Peretz Assistant Professor of Yiddish Litera- Studies helps us to sustain the Preceptorship in Yiddish. ture and Associate Professor of Comparative Literature in the Thanks to this assistance, Harvard College students may take fall of 2016. YURI VEDENYAPIN Preceptor in Yiddish YURI VEDENYAPIN returned this fall to the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations as Preceptor in Yid- dish after a few years in the UK, where he had taught a Yiddish course at Cambridge University and conducted research on the use of Yiddish among London’s Hasidic population. Yuri is currently teaching three levels of Yiddish language courses (el- ementary, intermediate and advanced) and is also advising an independent study on approaches to Yiddish creative writing. Harvard College students may take Yiddish to satisfy their for- eign language requirement. Yuri explains that Yiddish students come from many different academic backgrounds, including linguistics, history, comparative literature, anthropology, theater, and music. “For some of them,” he says, “Yiddish is an essential part of family history; for others it is something more exotic.” He has taught Yiddish for over a decade and has “never stopped marveling at the diversity of [his] students’ motiva- tions and personal stories.” Yuri’s own story, which began in Moscow, Russia, has a few of the same elements as those of his students. He was drawn to Yiddish at a young age, even though the main language spoken in his family was Russian. As a child, he spent a lot of time with his great-grandmother, who was the last living member of his family to have been brought up in a shtetl in the so-called “Pale of Settlement.” To Yuri, Yiddish felt both intimately YURI VEDENYAPIN familiar and strangely mysterious (almost like the stories from 2 CJS NEWS n Fall Review 2015 the eight volumes of A Thousand and One Nights that he read Yuri’s current research is on Yiddish travel literature. One of in their entirety in his early teens). As a musician, he was also his goals is to explore ways in which the experience of travel & STAFF FACULTY attracted to Yiddish songs. He began playing guitar and sing- affected inter-war Yiddish writers’ understanding of their iden- ing at the age of ten, and Yiddish songs quickly became one of tity and the notions of home, homelessness, and homecom- the most popular parts of his repertoire. ing. He feels that he “learned so much from reading Yiddish travelogues—whether it’s about a visit to the Western Wall in It was not always easy to find native Yiddish speakers in Jerusalem in 1921, a meeting with Rabindranath Tagore in Moscow, but Yuri did discover a few, including actors, writers, India in the late 1920s, or an encounter with the only Jewish and rabbis. While in Kiev, Ukraine, in the late 1990s, he met immigrant of the Pacific island the Vilna-born Yiddish writer of Rarotonga.” Avrom Karpinovitch, whose “sophisticated literary Yiddish, “For some, Yiddish is an essential In addition to his teaching and charming personality, and part of family history; for others, research, Yuri has been working encouragement” inspired Yuri it is something more exotic.” on some unusual songwriting to start a Yiddish student society collaborations. One recent and to begin offering Yiddish —Yuri Vedenyapin project was with the New York- language classes. Around the based group, the Klezmatics. same time, he took a few trips to Israel, which allowed him to Frank London, the band’s founder, discovered an old klezmer meet a much larger community of Yiddish-speaking intellectu- instrumental piece and felt that this tune must be turned into a als.