And God Laughed: Humor in the Bible – Joel Kaminsky
Since the Hebrew Bible is a sacred text for Jews and Christians many readers naturally assume it cannot contain any humor. This talk will explore several biblical narratives that employ […]
Unpacking my Father’s Book Store – Laurence Roth
During its nearly thirty years in business, J. Roth / Bookseller of Fine & Scholarly Judaica was a microcosm of the Los Angeles Jewish community and one of the premier […]
Embracing Exile: The Case for Jewish Diaspora – David Kraemer
Jewish people have always wandered. From the time of the Babylonian Exile in the early 6th century BCE, diaspora became the Jews’ normal condition, and though they may have hoped […]
Black Lives Under Nazism: Making History Visible in Literature and Art – Sarah Phillips Casteel
In a little-known chapter of World War II, Black people living in Nazi Germany and occupied Europe were subjected to ostracization, forced sterilization, and incarceration in internment and concentration camps. […]
Saving our Survivors: How American Jews Learned about the Holocaust – Rachel Deblinger
Drawing on previously unexamined archives and postwar cultural materials, Saving Our Survivors explores how American Jews constructed meaning out of devastation—and how humanitarian aid became intertwined with public memory. The […]
Webs of Life: Domestic Jewish Worlds in Early Modern Venice – Federica Francesconi
This lecture explores domestic life in the Venetian ghetto as both a site of physical segregation, housing scarcity, and oppression, and a space of cultural negotiation and transformation. Drawing on […]
The Yiddish Supernatural on Screen: Dybbuks, Demons and Haunted Jewish Pasts – Rebecca Margolis
The Yiddish language is often treated as humorous or nostalgic in television and in movies. As an ancestral language associated with trauma and dispossession, Yiddish on screen additionally reconstructs haunted […]
