NONPROFIT 2014 –2015 Carolina Center for Jewish Studies Fall 2014 U.S. POSTAGE Pettigrew Hall, Campus Box 3152 PAID Public Events Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3152 News from the Center UNC-CHAPEL HILL Fall 2014 UPCOMING EVENTS September 15 The Christopher R. Browning community events academic lectures The Talmud’s Dispute of Religiosity What is the Meaning of Bagels and Falafel? The Talmud’s Great Dispute of Religiosity November 17 FACULTY NEWS Research and Travel Grant What is the Meaning of Bagels and Falafel? Eli N. Evans Distinguished Lecture in Jewish Studies The Morris, Ida and Alan Heilig Lectureship in Jewish Studies Andrea Cooper joins Nov. 17, 7:30 p.m. September 15, 5:30 p.m. January 26 for Students Working in Holocaust Studies the Center and Carolina’s William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education Hyde Hall Soviet Jewish Women and Acculturation Department of Religious MENACHEM FISCH, professor and director of the February 23 On May 2nd, the University celebrated the private gifts, including the Director’s Discretionary SHAUL STAMPFER , professor at Hebrew University Studies this semester as and author of books on Eastern European Jewry Center for Religious and Interreligious Studies Project The Landscape of Monotheism remarkable career of retiring professor Christopher Fund and donations made specifically to support the the the Leonard and Tobee including Families, Rabbis and Education and at Tel Aviv University, has published on the history of Browning with a full day seminar titled The grant. An initial private gift was made by the Valone April 18 COOPER Lithuanian Yeshivas of the Nineteenth Century , will science and mathematics, confirmation theory and Uhlman Family Seminar, Jewish Literature Kaplan Fellow in Modern Holocaust as History: A Symposium family of Raleigh. T. Fielder Valone graduated from rationality, and talmudic literature and legal reasoning. Jewish Thought. She holds a Ph.D. from point out the history and hidden symbolic meaning April 20 in Honor of Christopher Browning . Carolina in 2011 and is now pursuing a Ph.D. at the In his talk he will explore the Talmud’s dispute of New York University and we will profile behind two classic modern Jewish foods: bagels, an Crossing the Boundary from Gentile to Jew The seminar was sponsored by the University of Indiana, with a focus on Modern iconic food of American Jewish cuisine, and falafel, religiosity, the dispute about the very moral perfection of her in the next edition of this newsletter. Department of History, Carolina Center Central and East European History and Holocaust which has a similar role as an Israeli Jewish food. In his talk he will God and his Word. But what can it mean to be religiously obligated, faith - for Jewish Studies, North Carolina Studies. His family made a gift of $3,000 to the highlight the process of how bagels and falafels became a national ful or committed, it asks, to a morally flawed deity and religious system? Please visit our Web site at jewishstudies.unc.edu Joseph Lam has been BROWNING German Studies Seminar Series, research grant in recognition of the mentorship food, which illuminates not only the history of food but also the for more event information. If you’d like to receive promoted to a tenure- Center for European Studies, and the Institute and inspiration provided by Professor Browning. societies who created the food. updates about upcoming events, please join our The Landscape of Monotheism track assistant professor listserv by emailing us at [email protected]. In the email for the Arts and Humanities. “Professor Browning’s teaching and advising Kaplan-Brauer Lecture on the Contribution of Judaism to Civilization message, please provide both your email and position in Classical Previously, on April 19th, the Center’s faculty made a tremendous impact on our family, and in fact, Golde and Her Daughters: Soviet Jewish Women February 23, 5:30 p.m. mailing addresses. Hebrew, Department of and advisory board celebrated his many contribu - led our son on a whole new career path,” said Tom and the Schizophrenic Model of Acculturation Location TBA LAM Religious Studies. He holds tions to Jewish Studies at Carolina. Valone. “We are pleased to help the Center continue Eli N. Evans Distinguished Lecture in Jewish Studies II BARUCH HALPERN , the Covenant Foundation a Ph.D. from University of Chicago and “Christopher’s work literally transformed the to inspire future Holocaust scholars by supporting Jan. 26, 7:30 p.m. Professor of Jewish Studies at University of Georgia, joined Carolina in 2011 as lecturer for field of Holocaust studies,” said Ruth von Bernuth, this new research grant.” William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education co-director of archeological excavations of the ancient Classical Hebrew. director of the Center. “But those of us who work Browning joined Carolina in 1999; he previously city Megiddo in Israel and author of various books ELISSA BEMPORAD professor at Queens College, with him also know how instrumental he has been taught at Pacific Lutheran University from 1974-1999. including David’s Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Archival Work at the National Library of Israel, Jerusalem The City University of New York, and author of Three of our faculty members — Ruth in helping build the Jewish Studies program, how he He has written extensively about Nazi decision- and Traitor, King , will discuss how and why monotheism ISRAEL the award-winning book Becoming Soviet Jews: WRITTEN BY SAMUEL J. KESSLER, graduate student, Department of Religious Studies has drawn promising graduate students to Carolina, policy-making in regard to the origins of the Final was institutionalized in ancient Judah and Jerusalem, von Bernuth , Evyatar Marienberg , The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk , will examine how this ideological strand continued after the exile, and influenced and Yaron Shemer — have recently and how his courses are in high demand by our Solution, the behavior and motives of personnel the complicated process of socialization and For anyone who spends even a little time in like an peculiarly designed game of office-wide —I began with evolving Judaism as a whole, and then Christianity and Islam, what gained tenure and have been promoted undergraduates.” involved in implementing Nazi Jewish policy, and acculturation into the Soviet regime as experienced Jewish studies, one quickly learns that the National Jenga. As you pass you see computers from the early number one and will occasioned the idea and its socialization and governmental imposition, To formally recognize his dedication and the use of survivor testimony. Some of his books by Jewish women, from the Bolshevik Revolution Library in Jerusalem is full of characters and ’90s half hidden by piles of papers in unendingly end with number 82. to Associate Professors. and what it signaled to religious traditionalists. contributions to the field and to Carolina, the Center include: Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave until the eve of World War II. an endless number of anecdotes about them. cluttered rooms. You see men and women hunched The excitement of this has created a new research grant for undergraduate Labor Camp , 2010; The Origins of the Final Solution: At conferences and after seminars, at Shabbat over keyboards or scraps of manuscript. Through life is in the minutia: I never Flora Cassen , the MA and graduate students working in the field of The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September Crossing the Boundary from Gentile to Jew seminars dinners and morning coffee breaks, it seems nearly another set of doors is the microfilm room, where quite know what I will find when I open each new and Sonja van der Horst impossible for anyone who has been to, or spent faded letters in a dozen languages reflect off eye - folder. Sometimes it is only a single letter, scribbled Fellow in Jewish History Holocaust studies. The Christopher R. Browning 1939–March 1942 , 2004; Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, in the 19th Century American South time around, the NLI to resist exchanging such tales. glasses and crinkled foreheads. Behind them, hidden on the back of a nondescript piece of paper, mostly and Culture and assistant Research and Travel Grant will be awarded for the German Killers , 2000; Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Sylvia and Irving Margolis Lecture on the Jewish Experience The Uhlman Family Seminar: Jewish Literature Which meant, for me at least, that walking into the from all who work in the spacious reading rooms two illegible from the moment of its creation more professor, Department of first time this academic year. Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland , in the American South This continuing education seminar featuring faculty from UNC and NLI building for the first time this summer came floors above, are the rows of desks for the archive, than 150 years ago and still so today. Sometimes all CASSEN History, will serve as faculty The new research grant will be funded through 1992; The Final Solution and the German Foreign April 20, 7:30 p.m. elsewhere is planned for April 18, 2015. Please check our Web site for with a certain amount of historical trepidation and and the revolving cast of workers who ferry back and I find are empty envelopes, their contents lost in Office , 1978. William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education liaison to the Center’s advisory board for seminar topics, speakers, and registration fees. This seminar is offered a heavy dose of humility. Is my work really worth forth from locked rooms the folders and boxes that— the vicissitudes of time. “We certainly wish Chris well in his retirement by the Program in Humanities and Human Values and is made possible this coming academic year. DANA KAPLAN , lecturer in Jewish Studies at the being given a desk in such a place? without fanfare or individuality—contain within But more often I open a folder and a small and take comfort knowing that he will stay a by a grant from the Uhlman Family Fund.