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In what has become an annual tradition come late August, GW’s Program in Experiential Education & Jewish Cultural Arts welcomes its new, and hopefully merry, band of students to town by hosting a whirlwind orientation called Mosaic.

Click on image to read the brochure

Drawing loosely on the theme of building blocks, this year’s Mosaic had us both poolside, sipping cocktails, and in an old-fashioned parlor, playing the 21st century equivalent of parlor games.

When not sitting down, we walked around Dupont Circle, taking in its architectural delights; made our way downtown to Sixth and I for a lively exchange about institutional sustainability; and took the measure of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s deployment of space. We ate a lot, too.

The point throughout was to think about what it takes to build relationships, institutions and community. Without literalizing matters too much, the big idea behind this year’s Mosaic was to cast a searching eye on the constituent elements — the building blocks — that the students will draw on in the course of their training
as well as in their subsequent careers.

What kind of “structures” will they end up fashioning? It’s too early to tell, of course, but over the course of the next 13 months, they will have ample opportunity to pick up and assemble the right tools.

Eight years, 10 months and 5 days after I started out on the cultural trek that resulted in my writing a book about America’s fascination with the Ten Commandments, Set in Stone comes into the world. I never imagined this project would take as long as it did.

Book cover, Set in Stone.
Book cover, Set in Stone.

From past experience, I was keenly aware that book-making takes time and patience. Even so, in working on this particular project I felt one with my forebears, the ancient Israelites wandering around the desert with no end insight. Would I ever reach my destination? Or, more to the plaintive point, why was this taking so long?

I could point an accusatory finger at the intrusions at the outside world, at least for starters. Aging parents and their subsequent deaths in quick succession, coupled with a new academic position, replete with administrative responsibilities, diverted me from my appointed rounds. These challenges demanded my immediate attention to the exclusion of all else. The Ten Commandments would have to wait.

But that was just the half of it. Writing about the ancient dos and don’ts, let alone coming up with something new to say about them, turned out to be a daunting enterprise -- far more than I bargained for. Calling for the patience of a Job and the mental agility of a Sherlock Holmes -- and I was neither -- it entailed sifting through a voluminous and varied body of material: texts upon texts, paintings and poster art, comic books and court cases, music and film.

Having abundant material on which to draw was a mixed blessing. It wasn’t so much a matter of competing voices, though that certainly slowed things down, as it was the absence of a clear through-line. Discerning a pattern, an argument, a claim about these biblical passages and their tenacious hold on the American imagination eluded me.

Sure, I could have taken the curatorial high road, showcasing the Ten Commandments of this and that and the third thing. But I was writing a book, not mounting an exhibition, even one with the potential to be lively and engaging. I was in need of a narrative.

To be continued….

Back in the day when I was a high school student at the Yeshivah of Flatbush, the teachers of Judaic subjects such as Bible, Hebrew literature and Jewish history took attendance. They would call out a name and the person attached to it would respond -- or not.

Set in Stone America’s Embrace of the Ten Commandments
Introduction to Jenna's website, designed by Erik Mace.

What rendered this rather ordinary practice somewhat unusual was the variety of responses to it. A simple, unreflective answer would simply not do. A competitive bunch in this and everything else, we vied with one another as to the most creative or humorous reply. Some of us stood up when our names were called; others acknowledged the teacher’s authority with a flourish of the hand. Still others stayed in their seats, their hands at their side, and either bellowed or whispered a world-weary “yes.” A number of my classmates who liked the sound of their names repeated them. A few of us, myself included, preferred the directness of the Hebrew expression: “po,” we would say. “Here.”

At the time, I thought the use of “po” was not only strategic, but amusing, too. Such a tiny word -- more of a sound than a concept -- struck me as funny. Though my particular brand of adolescent humor has long since disappeared along with my youth, I still find “po” funny -- or, perhaps more to the point, endearing. Although I was hardly mindful of it when in high school, there’s an innocence, a sweetness, to the manner in which the word registers presence.

I’ve been given to thinking about my “po” days as I launch a brand new website to mark the imminent release of my new book, Set in Stone: America’s Embrace of the Ten Commandments. Working closely with the imaginative and witty, thoughtful and oh-so patient web designer, Erik Mace, I conjured up a digital presence for myself. A complicated bit of business, an exercise in self reflection if ever there was one, it called on me to do a lot more than simply answer “po.”

These days, when someone wants to know if I’m in the room, I respond: www.jennajoselit.com.

In a recent New York Times column about the Trump administration’s rending of the social fabric, David Brooks referred to a discussion among the founding fathers about what kind of seal the newly formed United States had in mind to present to the world.

Great Seal of the U.S.
Great Seal of the U.S./Wikipedia

Then, as now, a nation’s seal was a big deal. Steven Fine relates in his richly textured new book, The Menorah, that much was at stake when it came time for the brand new State of Israel to come up with an appropriate image, a process documented at length in Israeli archives.

Some citizens wanted to see a representation of the ancient, seven-branched candelabrum displayed on the Arch of Titus; others preferred something far less fraught with the history of defeat and persecution. Ultimately, a contemporized version of a menorah, but a menorah all the same, won out, but not before tempers flared, prompting one concerned citizen to pronounce the proposed seal an “aesthetic horror.”

Diverse opinions likewise attended the creation of the Great Seal of the United States. Both Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson championed the notion of putting Moses at its very center. After all, who better epitomized the United States of America than the biblical figure who had successfully led a ragtag band of people to freedom and into the Promised Land? Moses’s appeal to these two founding fathers also rested, Brooks writes, on how he “bound his people to law.”

In the end, though, Franklin and Jefferson’s proposition did not carry the day. Moses was supplanted by the American eagle, which come to think of it, makes a lot of sense. The eagle soars while people remain earthbound.

I had big plans for winter break, which I was spending at home, in the Big Apple. Thoughts of enjoying the sights on Fifth Avenue, taking in a couple of recently released movies, visiting a number of highly publicized exhibitions and filling my belly at celebrated restaurants danced like sugarplums in my head.

Louvre queue
Louvre queue. Flickr/hurikat

It was not to be. Everywhere I turned, there was someone else ahead of me, or, more to the point, multiple someone elses. The movies I had wanted to see were sold out; the exhibitions I looked forward to relishing were so dense, so crowded, with visitors you couldn’t get close enough to the paintings or the display cases to make out what all the fuss was about and the city’s major thoroughfares, subways and buses were so thronged you could barely move. As for securing a restaurant reservation, never mind.

The surge in population was enough to dent my holiday spirits, rendering me grumpy and out-of- sorts. But then I read Wesley Morris’s marvelous salute to the National Museum of African American History and Culture and with it, his paean to waiting on line and, presto, I had a change of heart: Bring on the crowds!

“Standing around is simultaneously boring and one of the happiest, most poignant things I’ve ever done with monotony,” Morris writes, linking stasis to the power of anticipation. Much of what he describes has to do with the particularities of African-American history, noting that “building waiting into the experience feels right for a place that tells the story of a people who’ve had to wait for everything else.”

You could also apply Morris’s insight about the resonance of anticipation to other, less fraught, circumstances in which that emotion reigns supreme: the start of a new academic term, say, or the release of a new book.

Both await. This term, I’ll be teaching two seminars. One is an undergrad history course that explores the impact of crisis and controversy on American Jewry’s sense of itself. The other, a graduate course called “Multiple Lives,” explores the life-cycle of celebrated Jewish cultural phenomena that range from the dybbuk and the golem to Fiddler on the Roof and the Borscht Belt.

Also in the wings is my brand new book. Titled Set in Stone: America’s Embrace of the Ten Commandments, it explores the ways in which the ancient biblical text imprinted itself on the modern American imagination. You’ll be hearing more about the book in the weeks preceding its release, which is scheduled for the very first of May.

In the meantime, anticipation is in the air.

Sometimes, an academic semester seems to drag on and on; at other moments, it zips by in a flash. Happily, Fall 2016 fell into the latter category. It moved at a fast clip, which was somewhat surprising given the intellectual ambitions of my two courses. One was an undergraduate seminar called “Pious Forgeries” that explored a raft of celebrated textual and artifactual fabrications from the ancient Near East on into the United States of the 19th century and then Israel of the 21st; the other was a graduate seminar that took the measure of contemporary Jewish life in all of its bewildering variegatedness. Both trafficked in detail, heaps of it.

Start line, finish line
Flickr/Andrew Hurley

At no point in the semester, though, did I feel that the students had lost their way. On the contrary. Both the undergraduates and the graduate students seemed to relish the complex array of issues that were brought to bear: issues of identity, belonging, improvisation, accountability and faith, the weight of the past. Over the course of the term, they grew bolder, more confident in their ability to parse a text, to keep conversation afloat, to value one another’s ideas.

We ended on a good note, too. In our last class together, the undergraduates were treated to a behind-the-scenes tour of the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History where, among other things, we peeked inside a laboratory given over to the study of ancient bones, held in our hands both authentic and fraudulent pieces of ancient statuary and learned what it takes professionally to distinguish one from the another. The vastness of the museum, whose stairwells alone were enough to take one’s breath away, added to the expansiveness of the experience.

Although the graduate students didn’t travel too far afield, they had an opportunity to present their final projects amid the high spirits and good eats of a potluck supper. The display of intellectual camaraderie was heartening and uplifting -- and the food wasn’t too shabby, either.

All in all, a good run….But in this instance, as in so many others, term limits do come in handy. ‘Best to end before the intellectual momentum gives out. Besides, a new semester with its own set of challenges awaits.

In my never-ending quest to make the study of the past vital, energizing and, yes, relevant, I tell my students they’re living through history. Most of the time they nod their heads and smile indulgently, making me feel as if I’m just some old professor talking through her hat.

History
Source: Sydney Morning Herald

A case in point: Just the other day, in my graduate seminar on Contemporary Jewish Life, we were discussing how much has changed over the past decade for LGBTQ Jews and their relationship to the Jewish community. Or rather, I was holding forth. Most of the millennials seated around the table were not convinced. From their perspective, the ‘sea-change’ to which I repeatedly alluded was not far-reaching enough, the pace of integration much too slow. Invoking the past, calling on those in the room to compare 1996, much less 1916, with 2016, went nowhere. History had no claims on them.

That was then. A week or so later, in the wake of the election, my students suddenly understood all too well what I meant what I said they were living through history. Words that had once seemed academic such as ‘turning point,’ ‘watershed’ and ‘sea-change’ now assumed an outsized, and immediate, presence in their lexicon.

Walloped by history-in-the-making, they gave voice to a wide array of emotions: dismay, outrage, fear, confusion. Some of my students were so flattened out, so hollowed, by the results of the election that their voices were stilled.

As the term draws to a close, we continue to reckon with what lies ahead. I have no easy answers. But one thing is certain: the presidential race of 2016 is one history lesson my students are not apt to forget anytime soon.

I'm offering a new course this term called "Pious Forgeries." A GW Honors seminar, it explores a wide range of fabricated objects and texts from antiquity through the present-day, all of which pivot on the issues of faith and religious authority.

Manishtushu cruciform monument
Grants and privileges bestowed on the Shamash Temple by the Akkadian king Manishtushu (2269 B.C. - 2255 B.C.), a known forgery written many centuries later/British Museum

What makes this seminar particularly exciting is not just its subject matter, but the opportunity to share teaching responsibilities with one of my most distinguished colleagues, Christopher Rollston, a leading epigrapher who, over the years, has had a hand in unmasking any number of ancient texts as forgeries.

An exercise in both collegiality and interdisciplinarity, “Pious Forgeries” makes good on GW’s commitment to breaking down the boundaries that exist between the disciplines.

Imagine, then, my surprise when just the other day another eminent colleague expressed surprise of his own at my involvement with the course. Apparently, it was one thing for Professor Rollston, a scholar of the ancient world, to offer it, quite another for me, an avowed modernist, to do so. “I hope you won’t be insulted by my question,” said my colleague, “but I don’t understand what you’re doing here.”

I was more bemused than offended, at least at first, and furnished him with explanations. Tumbling forth, they included my research into fabricated versions of the Ten Commandments, a subject that figures prominently in my forthcoming book, Set in Stone, as well as my longstanding fascination with a fabricated Scythian gold crown, once the darling of the Louvre, that figures prominently in my next book project, and, and and…

My questioner seemed satisfied, or at least quieted, by my response and there the matter rested. But the more I thought about our exchange, the more troubled I became. There’s something off-putting, even unsettling, about the assumption that fueled his question: that of standing, of credentials, and with it, the policing of disciplinary boundaries.

I think the academy would be in much better shape were those who champion free and open inquiry to seek out and collaborate with colleagues beyond their immediate fields. What a wonderful opportunity it is to be exposed to new ideas, as well as different notions of, instruction. Co-teaching something on the order of “Pious Forgeries” should be seen as a gift rather than a breach, a stepping-on- toes, of academic protocol. Besides, it’s one way to avoid growing stale and dull.

After weeks of unstructured activity, it’s back to school for me, with its steady round of responsibilities and its seemingly endless array of to-do lists. But first: there’s Mosaic, a whirlwind, two day orientation designed to welcome to town the new cohort of students in GW’s Program in Experiential Education and Jewish Cultural Arts as well as those in its sister initiative, the MA in Jewish Cultural Arts.

Mosaic introduces the students to the wealth of institutional and cultural resources they’ll be drawing upon in the course of their training. This year, we attended a rehearsal of a play at Theater J and looked on as its set was assembled, bit by bit. We ventured into the vault where Folkways stores its historic recordings; spent time in the company of the director of GW’s Textile Museum as he escorted us around the building; walked about downtown D.C. in search of its Jewish roots under the direction of a recent graduate of the Program, who proudly -- and most ably -- strutted his stuff; and engaged in honest and searching conversation about the pull and push of community with two of Sixth & I’s leading lights.

The more I think about it, the more I’ve come to the realization that Mosaic is not only good for the students; it’s good for my colleagues and me, too. After a summer away, it gently eases us back into the rhythms of teaching. Thanks to Mosaic, we have an opportunity to familiarize ourselves with our students, and they with us, in an easy and relaxed setting, before settling into the more taxing business at hand. Mosaic is experiential education at its very best.

At some point in the proceedings, I told the students that if they found that their feet hurt and their head ached, Mosaic had done right by them. And so it has. If their reflection pieces are any indication, the students got a lot out of these two days, learning the ropes and the lingo while forming new friendships.

As for me, my feet throb and my head is swimming. More to the point, I can’t wait to get back into the classroom.

I just spent the past week in summer school. A just punishment for my sins, you might think. As it happened, the experience was anything but punishing. Though the loveliest of June days beckoned outside while a raging sinus infection had me reaching for a tissue every ten minutes, summer school turned out to be a real delight.

philadelphia
Philadelphia is home to Robert Indiana's celebrated sculpture. Flickr/vic15

Convened by Penn’s Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies in conjunction with The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, it brought together twenty graduate students and faculty from Europe, Israel and the United States to think through some of the complex issues in Jewish history and thought.

Manifestly, the theme of the week was “Shaking Foundations,” but the joys and challenges of interdisciplinary exchange lay at the heart of our collective inquiry as we explored a welter of sources from the Talmud and Levinas to medieval stories and early modern communal documents. The U.S. Constitution as well the Ten Commandments also came vividly into play, as did the demographics of postwar Poland and the latest anthropological theories about the relationship between researchers and their subjects.

Now and again we left the building -- to go on a walking tour of downtown Philadelphia, to visit a museum or two, to grab a snack (burnt sugar gelato, anyone?) from the many enticing eateries that have sprung up of late.

Most of the time, though, we sat around a large table. What was striking about this wasn’t so much our sedentary ways as it was the absence of hierarchy. Instead of occupying the head of the table, as is their wont, the chaired professors among us sat cheek by jowl with graduate students, their seasoned voices mingling freely with those of an emerging generation of scholars.

The symbolic power of the table was just as palpable. At a time when Judaic Studies and those who cherish it are increasingly marginalized and even demonized by the academy, taking one’s place at the table was a gesture of solidarity. The table both protected and validated those who sat around it.

“Shaking Foundations” turned out to be an exercise in restoration.