Why we need more history lessons
By David N. Myers In the cascade of one major news story after another, President Donald Trump has decided somewhat quietly to send his son-in-law and close adviser, Jared Kusher, along with chief negotiator Jason Greenblatt, back to the Middle East to try to revive peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians. While the chances of […]
Munich 1923 / Charlottesville 2017
By Todd Samuel Presner As a scholar of German-Jewish history, I’m reluctant to make overstated analogies with the past. But if I had to suggest a parallel, I would start in Munich in 1923. The Nazi party, founded three years earlier out of the political disillusionment of Germany’s loss in World War I, started […]
“Ninette of Sin Street” released (Co-edited by Sarah Abrevaya Stein and Lia Brozgal)
Published in Tunis in 1938, Ninette of Sin Street is one of the first works of Tunisian fiction in French. Ninette’s author, Vitalis Danon, arrived in Tunisia under the aegis of the Franco-Jewish organization the Alliance Israélite Universelle and quickly adopted—and was adopted by—the local community. Ninette is an unlikely protagonist: Compelled by poverty to […]
UCLA Jewish Studies Faculty Statement on Immigration Ban
January 31, 2017 As Jewish Studies faculty at UCLA, we condemn the recent Executive Order by President Trump to deny access to immigrants and refugees from seven, predominantly Muslim countries. As scholars of the Jewish past, we know all too well what the consequences have been when Jews have been denied entry to countries merely […]
Stein is winner of a 2016 National Jewish Book Award
Sarah Abrevaya Stein, UCLA professor of history and the Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies, is the winner of the 2016 National Jewish Book Award in the category of Sephardic culture. The Mimi S. Frank Award in Memory of Becky Levy is given to the winner of this category by the Jewish Book Council, which […]
Art exhibit celebrates history of Boyle Heights neighborhood
The exhibit “From Brooklyn Avenue to Cesar Chavez: Jewish Histories in Multiethnic Boyle Heights,” is on display until Wednesday, honoring the naming and launch celebration of the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies. Leve, who graduated in 1951, donated $5 million to the Center for Jewish Studies in 2015. The gallerycelebrates both the namesake […]
New book from Sarah Abrevaya Stein – “Extraterritorial Dreams: European Citizenship, Sephardi Jews, and the Ottoman Twentieth Century”
We tend to think of citizenship as something that is either offered or denied by a state. Modern history teaches otherwise.Reimagining citizenship as a legal spectrum along which individuals can travel, Extraterritorial Dreams explores the history of Ottoman Jews who sought, acquired, were denied or stripped of citizenship in Europe in the late nineteenth and […]
First Director of Jewish Studies and Israel Studies at UCLA gives major lecture on Israel Independence Day
Arnold Band, Professor Emeritus of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, University of California at Los Angeles, delivered the Annual Arnold Band Distinguished Lecture in Jewish Studies, on May 12th to a crowd of 150 people at UCLA. Coinciding with Israeli Independence Day, the lecture was sponsored by the UCLA Alan. D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, […]
