Judaic Studies – From Under the Fig Tree

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.

Crossroads

joselitNovember 25, 2014November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Last week, I was quite literally on the road, travelling on trains, planes and buses. No matter the destination -- New York; D.C.; College Park, Maryland; and Cincinnati, Ohio -- the conversation at hand had to do with the future of Judaic Studies. At the risk of sounding like the doomsayers who find their worst fears confirmed by the Pew Center study on contemporary Jewish life, I've come away from my wanderings rather concerned about the ongoing vitality of Judaic Studies. The field is currently celebrating, or about to mark, its 40th birthday on many a college campus, amidst dwindling enrollments and exceedingly anxious university administrators who measure success, or viability, solely in terms of metrics.

Thomas Guignard At the crossroads — "At the crossroads." Flickr/Thomas Guignard

For all its maturity, Judaic Studies is a veritable start-up, especially when compared with other longstanding disciplines in the humanities such as History, English or even Semitics. Along the way, it has experienced more than its fair share of growing pains. Some have to do with the circumstances under which the field is constituted, others with the nature of the academic economy, much less the vagaries of the marketplace, and still others with the vexing matter of its intellectual utility.

University deans decide whether Judaic Studies ought to be administered as a program or as a department, a seemingly insignificant semantic decision whose implications run deep; donors, in turn, provide the financial incentive to set things in motion. The faculty, meanwhile, answers not only to these two constituencies, but to its colleagues as well, many of whom, even forty years on, are still not persuaded that Judaic Studies is a legitimate academic enterprise, with its own distinctive methodologies, body of practices and conceptual concerns.

There’s not too much we can do about university administrators, donors or the economy. But, as Judaic Studies approaches its next forty years, perhaps we could do something about our presence on the academic landscape. Much as I’d prefer to think otherwise, we who traffic in Judaic Studies inhabit an intellectual ghetto, whose gates we zealously monitor. Privileging the mastery of traditional Jewish texts at the expense of other kinds of sources and clinging tightly, stubbornly, to a static and internal hierarchy of interpretive values, we have not always been the most welcoming of neighbors.

Before the next significant birthday rolls around, here’s hoping we can do better.

Paper chase

joselitMarch 9, 2014November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Many of us live in the moment, texting and tweeting away as if there’s no tomorrow. But now and again, the long arm of the past casts a hulking shadow over our contemporary lives, compelling us to reckon with the power of history.

Last Books: Recovering the East European Jewish Past flyer (click to enlarge)

The recent release of the film, “Monuments Men,” is one case in point. Another is the discovery in Munich of a cache of more than a thousand paintings that had been looted from museums and private Jewish homes by the Nazis. Believed to have been lost or destroyed, these valuable artworks have now resurfaced in what some call a triumph of good over evil. A third case in point is “Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937,” a forthcoming exhibition at New York’s Neue Galerie, which provides a context in which to situate the Nazis’ attempts to purge 1930s Germany of modernist art and those who championed it.

And, yes, there’s more. On Tuesday evening, March 25th at 7 p.m., the Embassy of the Republic of Poland, in partnership with GW’s Program in Judaic Studies, will host the Frieda Kobernick Fleischman Lecture in Judaic Studies, whose roster of distinguished speakers over the years has included Pierre Birnbaum, James Loeffler and Alisa Solomon. This year, Jonathan Brent, the executive director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, will do the honors. (To register, please send an email to Washington.amb@msz.gov.pl)

Titled “The Last Books: Recovering the East European Jewish Past,” Mr. Brent’s presentation explores an issue of considerable delicacy: the fate of Jewish books and manuscripts whose readers are no more.

The story he tells -- one of pathos and hope in equal measure -- deserves a wide hearing. I hope you’ll be able to join us for this latest brush with history.

School days

joselitJanuary 13, 2014November 16, 2017Leave a comment

I start the new academic term, which is right around the corner, with butterflies in my stomach. And yet, unlike the Sunday evenings before the Monday mornings of yesteryear when I experienced a similar sensation, this one is born of excitement, not anxiety.

Sunlit chair in old classroom. Flickr/Jason Pier in DC

Each semester brings with it a sense of possibility as my colleagues and I set about exposing our students to the fullness of the human condition and, concomitantly, of bringing out the best in them. Spring 2014 is no exception. The varied courses GW’s Program in Judaic Studies offers are designed to do just that.

Immersing our undergraduates in rabbinic thought and Jewish philosophy, the Jewish literatures of Latin America and the United States, Jewish women’s history and the history of the ghetto, to name just a few of our offerings, should make it abundantly clear that there’s so much more to Jewish education than Hebrew school.

Our public programs, which are open to the community, also make that point, expanding our intellectual as well as our geographical horizons. Over the next few months, East European Jewry looms especially large in our sights. For starters, Professor Marek Kucia, a sociologist from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, will be on campus in mid-March where, among other things, he’ll be delivering a talk on the Europeanization of Holocaust memory.

A week or so later, the Program’s annual Frieda Kobernick Fleischman Lecture will feature Jonathan Brent, the executive director of the YIVO Institute in New York, who will be speaking about his recent bibliographic adventures in Vilna, where thousands of once well-thumbed Jewish books remain, inert, on the shelves. Co-sponsored by and held at the Polish Embassy, Mr. Brent’s talk promises to affect both our intellect and our emotions.

This is as it ought to be. Judaic Studies, I’ve come to see, and hope you do, too, is not just a discipline or a field of study. It’s also a way of contemplating the world – and of emerging just a bit wiser for it.

Chasing the zoom

joselitAugust 21, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Many, many years ago, when I was a graduate student in history at Columbia, aspiring historians like me were inclined to give the university’s computer center a wide berth. It wasn’t just that the place was downright inhospitable: noisy, freezing cold, airless and even a tad scary. It was also a matter of illiteracy. Much as I tried, I simply could not summon up the requisite digital skills.

DEC 10 main frame computer operations at BYU -- Circa 1969 — DEC 10 main frame computer operations at BYU, c. 1969. Flickr/arbyreed

If you had told me way back when that, someday, I would be involved with a project that sought to deploy the latest digital technology in the study and teaching of Jewish history and culture, I would have laughed myself silly.

But lo & behold, there I was earlier this week, back on Morningside Heights to participate in a remarkable initiative, the New Media in Jewish Studies Collaborative, whose objective, among other things, is to energize the discipline of Jewish Studies through the sustained and thoughtful use of the latest digital tools.

I came away from my two day campus visit in the company of web savvy colleagues, dedicated teachers and the imaginative technologists of Columbia’s Center for New Media Teaching & Learning all agog about the possibilities of enriching my teaching and, in turn, the experiences of my students were I to engage more fully -- and strategically -- with the marvels of the digital universe. I also acquired a brand new vocabulary, whose lingo ran the gamut from “multi-modal presentation” and “web-based environment” to “digital assets,” “demo-ing” and “chase the zoom,” a reference to a practice particular to Prezi.

I can’t wait to brandish these new words. More to the point, I look forward with keen anticipation to putting them to good use and, with a battery of technologists by my side, to coming up with ways to enlarge my students’ capacity for wonder. Here’s to revelation, ca. 2013!

Let’s face the music

joselitMarch 7, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Meteorologists thundered and the skies glowered as a major snowstorm loomed large on the horizon, threatening to thin the ranks of the audience for Zalmen Mlotek’s concert, “One Hundred Years of Yiddish Music,” which took place earlier this week at the DC-JCC.

Happily, music trumped meteorology. Showing their support for and interest in the sounds and sensibility of Yiddish, people -- some of them even wielding canes -- came out in force.

Their efforts were rewarded by a concert that not only showcased Zalmen Mlotek’s artistry and that of his special guest, Cantor Arianne Brown of Congregation Adas Israel, whose filigreed rendition of that old chestnut, Mein Yidishe Mame had the audience in tears. It also underscored the ways in which music constitutes community.

These days, we’re apt to think that the best way to engage with music is to listen to its rhythms within the confines of our own personal, digitally-enhanced space. I don’t disagree. But going by my experience, and that of my seatmates, at Mr. Mlotek’s performance the other evening, there’s something to be said for listening within the company of others.

For a few hours on a wintry Tuesday, it offered a form of communion with history and sentiment and, above all, with one another, that is increasingly hard to find.

joselitApril 15, 2012November 16, 2017Leave a comment

These days, people (i.e. parents) often ask me about the utility of Judaic Studies, especially when it comes to finding a job in a rocky economy like ours. In response, I go on and on about the ways in which Judaic Studies hones one’s critical skills, facilitates a multi-disciplinary approach to problem solving and brings to bear a global perspective on the world – qualities that would certainly stand any job-hunting candidate in good stead.

If they’re still listening, I also invoke the work of historian Lucy Dawidowicz who, years ago, published a book with the provocative title, What’s the Use of Jewish History? In it, she cited a story by Y.L. Peretz in which two gentlemen, sitting on a park bench in Warsaw, exchange pleasantries about this and that. As their conversation picks up steam, gentleman number one glumly remarks on the recent passing of Heinrich Graetz, the great German historian of the Jews, seeking some measure of shared consolation. But gentleman number two has nothing to say. Having never heard of Graetz, all he can muster is a feeble, “Was he from around here?” ...continue reading "LinkedIn"

All shook up 1

joselitAugust 28, 2011November 16, 20171 Comment

I can think of no better way to sum up the meteorological events of the past week than by invoking the Elvis Presley song, All Shook Up. “My hands are shaking and my knees are weak,” he croons. “I can’t seem to stand on my own two feet.” Presley, of course, had love on his mind, not the weather. Even so, the song seems apposite.

The start of a new term is always a busy one. But Mother Nature complicated matters by sending us an earthquake and a hurricane in quick succession.

Hopefully from here on out, the only thing that gets shaken, tossed, tumbled and upset is the imagination, as our students encounter new ideas and engage in novel ways of thinking.

Toward that end, the Program in Judaic Studies kicks off the academic year with a roster of lively courses. In his “Jewish Civilization,” Professor Daniel Schwartz provides students with an opportunity to learn more about one of the oldest and most continuous civilizations in the western world, while Professor Masha Belenky’s course “Promises and Betrayals” casts a searching eye on the fraught relationship between modern France and its Jewish citizens.

Professor Lauren Strauss examines the fate of the Yiddish language in her “Writers, Radicals and Rugelach,” Professor Faye Moskowitz takes the measure of American Jewish literature, Professor Max Ticktin explores the ways in which the Bible enriches the modern novel, and Professor Robert Eisen focuses comparatively on the role of violence and peace within Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

I, in turn, make my way through the length and breadth of the American landscape in search of Jewish communities large and small, and, together with Professor Leslie Jacobson, also train my sights on Venice, Italy, and the celebrated Shakespeare play that is set within its precincts, The Merchant of Venice.

With such a wonderful array of courses from which to choose, there’s no reason not to rock and roll this semester.