Seal the deal

joselitFebruary 19, 2017November 16, 2017Leave a comment

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.

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.

On your feet

joselitJanuary 29, 2017November 16, 2017Leave a comment

As nearly everyone has acknowledged by now, the march in New York, much like its sister demonstration in DC, heartened and uplifted the spirits. Even though it fell on Shabbat -- or, better yet, precisely because it coincided with the traditional Jewish day of rest -- amcha, the people in all their variegatedness, myself included, were on the move, bringing their collective values into the public sphere and onto the street. A memorable experience, from start to finish.

On the heels of the march, while back in DC a few days later, I tripped over my own feet, landing in the emergency room at GW’s hospital where I, along with many, many others, spent the better part of an entire Tuesday awaiting treatment. All I could think of as I sat there, just a few blocks away from the White House, was the chip, chip, chipping away of our health care system.

While subsequently nursing my wounds, I had occasion to make my way through Radical Bodies, the catalog that accompanies a brand new exhibition in Santa Barbara, at the University of California’s Art, Design & Architecture Museum. Focusing on the contributions of Anna Halprin, Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer to post-modern dance, Radical Bodies argues, among other things, that the experience of being Jewish in postwar America -- displacement and loss on the one hand, the plasticity and adaptability of Jewish values on the other -- inspired all three women.

I look forward eagerly to seeing this exhibition when it comes to New York’s Public Library for the Performing Arts later this year and to thinking further about the relationship between Jewishness and dance. In the meantime: On your feet, everyone!

Anticipation

joselitJanuary 9, 2017November 16, 2017Leave a comment

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.

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.

Term limits

joselitDecember 11, 2016November 16, 2017Leave a comment

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.

History lesson

joselitNovember 27, 2016November 16, 2017Leave a comment

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.

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.

Man-o-Man…

joselitOctober 30, 2016November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Long before gefilte shrimp appeared on the menu of an upscale Manhattan eatery and bagels were studded with bacon bits, there was Manischewitz, a sweet, kosher wine with a wide appeal in postwar America. Hailed as the nation's very first cross-over product, it was as likely to be found in African-American homes as in American Jewish ones. Drawing on a peppy radio jingle -- “Man-O- Manischewitz, what a wine!” -- as well as on advertisements in Ebony magazine, its manufacturers celebrated the virtues of “wine like mother used to make.”

The relationship between the palate and the pocketbook, between culinary preferences and consumer practices, lies at the heart of a fascinating new book: Kosher USA: How Coke Became Kosher and Other Tales of Modern Food. Its author, Roger Horowitz, director of the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library, brings to bear a wealth of sources and a lively historical imagination as he uncovers what earlier generations of Americans ate and drank.

The book is a must-read for anyone interested in America’s culinary history. But you don’t just have to read all about it, for Mr. Horowitz is coming to town. Thanks to the generosity of GW’s Food Institute and the Program in Judaic Studies, he’ll be on hand to deliver a talk titled “Man-O- Manischewitz: How A Kosher Wine Became Big with the American Public.”

The date: November 9, 2016
The time: 7 p.m – 8 p.m.
The place: The Edlavitch DC-JCC, 1529 16 th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C.

Be there for what promises to be a lively and spirited presentation.

Street cred

joselitOctober 10, 2016November 16, 2017Leave a comment

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.

Source material

joselitSeptember 4, 2016November 16, 2017Leave a comment

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.

The mother of invention

joselitAugust 8, 2016November 16, 2017Leave a comment

In what can only be construed as an accident of timing, two films have just been released, one right after the other, that showcase the experience of earlier generations of American Jews. One is Woody Allen’s Café Society, the other is Indignation, a cinematic interpretation of the Philip Roth novel of the same name.

The first film, set amidst the tony New York supper clubs and swanky Beverly Hills homes of the interwar years, follows the ups and downs of Bronx-bred Bobby Dorman as he seeks both his fortune and sense of self in Hollywood and among the belle monde.

The second, set in the early 1950s amidst a handsome, leafy college campus somewhere in Ohio (it’s actually Princeton), follows the trajectory of Marcus -- a k a “Marky” -- Messner -- as he, too, leaves the nest -- Newark, New Jersey, in his case -- for the wider world.

Apart from their geographical distinctiveness, the two films have much in common. Their cast of characters, often verging on stock and stereotype, includes earnest, hungry young men from lower middle class American Jewish families; their anxious and inept fathers, and their strong willed, fierce mothers who find it increasingly difficult to bite their tongues as their sons take flight.

Both films seek to lay bare -- sometimes in a heavy handed way and at other moments, much more subtly -- the costs of integration, or what academics like to call “acculturation.” In plain language: What happens when the lure of the supper club trumps the lure of the seder table and escargot take the place of brisket?

Well, nothing that we haven’t seen before, which is why the release of these two films and their attendant popularity -- at my local movie house, they’re packin’ em in -- puzzles me. Leaving aside their respective cinematic merits -- I’ll leave you to decide which one is more absorbing and compelling -- I can’t help wonder what is it about upwardly mobile, starry-eyed American Jewish sons and their more hidebound parents that renders that tale so evergreen.

It can’t only be a matter of nostalgia or a collective wistfulness for a seemingly simpler era. I’d like to think there’s more to it than that. Then again, given the zeitgeist in which we currently find ourselves, perhaps retrospection is more attractive than thinking about what lies ahead.

Summer school

joselitJune 27, 2016November 16, 2017Leave a comment

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.