Table of Contents From the Editors 3 From the President 4 From the Executive Director 5 The Freedom Issue Experiences of Freedom A Refusenik Protest Remembered 6 Maxim D. Shrayer At Liberty 8 Adam Mendelsohn Freedom and Constraint in Teaching the Reading of Talmud 11 Jane L. Kanarek Freedom in the Bible: A Jewish Theological Perspective 14 Marvin A. Sweeney Freedom and the American Experiment Comments on the Topic of Jews and American Freedom 20 Tony Michels Talking about American Freedom 24 Dianne Ashton Jewish Immigrants and the Dialectics of Freedom in the United States 32 Tobias Brinkmann Institutions of Freedom and Slavery Under Freedom 37 Karla Goldman Blurred Boundaries between Slaves and Free Persons in Ancient Judaism 44 Catherine Heszer Wissenschaft des Judentums, Freedom, and Hegel’s State 46 Sven-Erik Rose Directors’ Forum Administering Freedom “Freedom and Collaboration” by David M. Freidenreich 52 “The Freedom to Teach across Boundaries” by Cecile E. Kuznitz 53 “Liberating the Conversation on Academic Freedom” by Jeffrey Shoulson 54 “Jewish Studies and Academic Freedom” by Todd Samuel Presner 55 “To Hillel and Back: One Jewish Studies Program’s Sojourn on the Borderline between Jewish Community Professionals and Academic Freedom” by Benjamin Schreier 56 Read AJS Perspectives Online at perspectives.ajsnet.org AJS Perspectives: The Magazine of President Please direct correspondence to: the Association for Jewish Studies Pamela Nadell Association for Jewish Studies perspectives.ajsnet.org American University Center for Jewish History 15 West 16th Street Vice President / Publications Editors New York, NY 10011 Christine Hayes Jonathan M. Hess Yale University Voice: (917) 606-8249 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Fax: (917) 606-8222 Laura S. Lieber Vice President / Program E-Mail: [email protected] Duke University Jeffrey Veidlinger Web Site: www.ajsnet.org University of Michigan AJS Perspectives is published bi-annually Editorial Board Vice President / Membership Carol Bakhos by the Association for Jewish Studies. and Outreach University of California, Los Angeles Magda Teter The Association for Jewish Studies is an Zachary Braiterman Fordham University affiliate of the Center for Jewish History. Syracuse University Secretary / Treasurer © Copyright 2016 Association for Michael Brenner Zachary Baker Jewish Studies ISSN 1529-6423 American University Stanford University Alanna Cooper AJS Perspectives reserves the right Case Western Reserve University AJS Staff Rona Sheramy to reject advertisements or other Lesleigh Cushing Executive Director items not consonant with the goals Colgate University and purposes of the organization. Shira Moskovitz Copy may be condensed or rejected Nathaniel Deutsch Program and Membership University of California, Santa Cruz because of length or style. AJS Coordinator; Manager, Perspectives disclaims responsibility Ken Koltun-Fromm Distinguished Lectureship Program for statements made by advertisers Haverford College Ilana Abramovitch and contributors. Adam Mendelsohn Conference Program Associate University of Cape Town Susan Sapiro Ophir Münz-Manor Development Associate Open University of Israel Heather Turk Eva Mroczek Event Strategist University of California at Davis Amy Weiss Devin Naar Grants and Communications University of Washington Coordinator Riv-Ellen Prell University of Minnesota Joshua Schreier Vassar College Jacqueline Vayntrub Brandeis University Yael Zerubavel Rutgers University Managing Editor Karin Kugel Graphic Designer Ellen Nygaard Front Cover: Manischewitz matza box cover issued in honor of the Tercentenary depicting 1654 arrival of 23 souls big and little to New Amsterdam. Box 7, Folder 5, AJHS American Jewish Tercentenary Celebration Collection, I–11 : Series IV, American Jewish Historical Society, Boston, Mass. and New York, N.Y. 2 AJS Perspectives From the Editors Dear Colleagues, “Once we were slaves, but now we are free.” So asserts the Passover shape and delimit intellectual and experiential freedoms. A collection Haggadah in its narration of the foundational biblical story, the of essays on the American experiment offers a more historically Exodus from Egyptian servitude. But as simple as that story can be in grounded examination of a distinctly Jewish experience of freedom in the retelling, the concept of freedom is almost impossibly complex. “the land of the free.” At the same time, institutions of freedom—and Within the biblical canon, the Israelites flee human enslavement for institutions that constrain liberty or compel individuals to curtail the yoke of Torah at Sinai; the rabbis, while celebrating freedom, were their own freedoms—are also explored. untroubled by the institution of slavery; and in more recent centuries Finally, we have embraced our own editorial freedom and replaced and decades, Jews—often searching for their own freedom to the Questionnaire section of Perspectives with a new occasional live as Jews—have sometimes found themselves accommodating feature, a “Directors’ Forum.” In this forum, directors of Jewish Studies institutions and regimes hostile to liberty, including chattel slavery programs from a variety of institutions reflect on the idea, experience, of African Americans, South African apartheid, or authoritarian and nature of freedom as they see it in their own contexts. In some forms of communism. cases, feelings run strong—and we have given the contributors free Freedom as a moral principle is easy to celebrate, and as a rein to express themselves. civic virtue, it is widely acclaimed. The practice of freedom, however, Taken together, the essays and reflections in this issue highlight offers a far more complicated challenge. Freedoms come into different definitions of freedom. There are freedoms “to” and freedoms conflict, and freedoms must in some fashion be limited and conflicts “from”; individual liberties and civil liberties; histories of constraint adjudicated. Certainly contemporary tensions concerning academic and experiences of self-censorship. We hope you will make free and freedom and freedom of speech on college campuses illustrate the creative use of the ideas expressed here to continue this conversation— difficult reality of conflicting definitions and practices of freedom unconstrained. on a day-to-day basis. In this issue of AJS Perspectives, we explore the concept of freedom Jonathan M. Hess from a range of perspectives and within a variety of frameworks. We University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have included reflections on experiences of freedom (and constraint), both in private life and in the classroom; these essays underscore how Laura S. Lieber context—whether the USSR, rabbinical school, or seminary—can Duke University The CENTER FOR JEWISH HISTORY offers FELLOWSHIPS The Center for Jewish History offers fellowships to support scholars and students as they conduct groundbreaking research that illuminates Jewish history using the collections of its five partner organizations – American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University Museum and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research The Center funds original research in fields including Jewish studies, Russian and East European studies, American studies and Germanic studies, as well as anthropology, history, linguistics, musicology, philosophy and sociology. If you are interested in becoming part of the Center’s vibrant community, visit fellowships.cjh.org. 15 WEST 16TH STREET | NEW YORK, NY 10011 | WWW.FELLOWSHIPS.CJH.ORG | WWW.CJH.ORG FALL 2016 3 From the President Dear Colleagues, We live in a rancorous age. I’ll admit that I am writing this in the late that we have planned be disrupted? Will events spiral out of our summer, and that, by the time this issue of AJS Perspectives arrives in control? We seek to promote freedom of expression, at the same time your conference totes, it will be early winter. The Talmud teaches that, that we feel the weight of campus and national politics, and wonder if since the destruction of the temple, only fools and children prophesy. the program is a good idea after all. We seek advice from those with Nevertheless, I suspect that my opening statement will still ring true experience handling such matters: our deans, administrators, when you read this at the end of the year: We live in a rancorous age. colleagues, and our friends in AJS. No one prescription works for all. This issue of our magazine presents thought-provoking History reminds us that this is not the first time that questions perspectives on the complicated notion of freedom and how different about Jews and Jewish matters, donors and opposing interests, have conceptions of freedom can produce rancor. Marvin Sweeney affirms challenged academic freedom and tested campus civility. In The that “concern with freedom, particularly the challenges and Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, responsibilities that freedom entails, runs deep in Jewish history and and Princeton, Jerome Karabel quotes an alumnus who had no thought. ” Maxim D. Shrayer writes evocatively of a verbal, nearly compunction writing Harvard’s president to protest, in 1925, that his physical, collision in his past as a refusenik. Jane Kanarek sees that school had become “Hebrewized” with the “skunks of the human studying Talmud teaches students to “acquire the freedom to race.” It is instructive to remember, as Paul Ritterband and Harold S. innovate.” But we can all think of innovations that sparked