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2006 Events

Motti Inbari, “The Disengagement as a Religious Dilemma.” Sunday, December 10th, 2:00pm, 

Museum of Arts and Sciences, Daytona Beach, FL.

Jewish existence is encapsulated in two opposing rabbinical perceptions-Exile and Redemption. Although Zionism represents to some degree the fulfillment of end-of-time prophesies, the state of Israel does not obey religious law which creates a dilemma for religious authorities: Is Israel a continuation of Exile or the beginning of Redemption? If the state of Israel is the first step in Redemption, how can it give back lands even as part of a peace settlement?

Motti Inbari (Ph.D. Hebrew University ) is the Schusterman Visiting Israel Scholar, Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Florida. He is currently revising his dissertation King, Sanhedrin and Temple: Contemporary Movements Seeking to Establish a “Torah State” and Rebuild the Third Temple 1984-2004. Inbari is the co-editor of “Who Is a Jew” in Our Days? Discussions on Jewish Identity (Tel Aviv: 2005) and The War of Gog and Magog: Messianism and Apocalypse in the Past and in Modern Times (Tel Aviv: 2001).

  • Co-sponsored by the Center for Jewish Studies, UF, the Endowment Fund of the Jewish Federation of Volusia/Flagler County.
  • See the brochure for this event

August 27th, September 10th, October 22nd, and November 5th
“Let’s Talk About It!” 2006.

Please join us for a reading and discussion series like no other. Led by UF English professor Andrew Gordon, Let’s Talk About It! Jewish Literature will feature lively discussion of five books on the common theme of A Mind of Her Own: Fathers and Daughters in a Changing World.

Daniel Boyarin, “Literary Fat Rabbis: The Rabbis & the Syriac Connection.” Thursday, November 1st, 7:30pm, at Hillel.

Daniel Boyarin is the Hermann P. and Sophia Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture for the Departments of Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric, University of California at Berkeley. Professor Boyarin is the author of Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man (1997), Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (1999), and Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (2004).

  • The Alexander Grass Distinguished Lecture in Jewish Studies
  • See the postcard for this event

Mitchell Hart, “The Pathological Circle: Zionism and the ‘Health’ of European Jewry.” Sunday, October 29th, 2:00pm, Museum of Arts and Sciences, Daytona Beach, FL.

European Zionists relied heavily on language and imagery drawn from medicine. Many early Zionists, such as Leo Pinsker and Max Nordau, were in fact physicians, and many others had at least studied medicine at university. Their analyses of Jewish life in the Diaspora was often cast as a prognosis of a sick and dying patient, with Zionism cast as the cure. Moreover, the Land of Israel itself was described in terms of health and disease, and Zionism represented as a cure for current ailments. Thus, for Zionists in the pre-State period, Jews and Palestine were diseased and degenerate, in need of revitalization and regeneration that could only come through the nationalism. In presenting their case Zionists reproduced much of the antisemitic language and imagery about Jews circulating at the time. An exploration of the connections between Zionism, health, and medicine thus offers an opportunity to illuminate a key component of early Zionist thought, and examine some of the profound continuities and discontinuities between Jewish and European thought during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Hart is Associate Professor of History and holds the Alexander Grass Eminent Scholar Chair in Jewish Studies. He is the author of Social Science and the Politics of Modern Jewish Identity, (Stanford U. Press, 2000), and the forthcoming book, The Healthy Jew: The Symbiosis of Judaism and Modern Medicine (Cambridge University Press).

  • Co-sponsored by the Center for Jewish Studies, UF, the Endowment Fund of the Jewish Federation of Volusia/Flagler County.

Motti Inbari, “Gush Emunim’s Rabbinic Responses to the Disengagement”, Wednesday, October 25th.

In August 2005, Israel vacated the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip – mainly in Gush Katif – as well as four settlements in northern Samaria. This action, known as the “Disengagement,” constituted a profound crisis for a significant section of the Israeli population that is most closely identified with religious Zionism and with the settlement movement in the Territories. The crisis was not only on the national level, as the state destroyed communities that it had established and nurtured for decades, but also on the community level, as thousands of people were removed from their homes. The Disengagement also caused a religious crisis, testing the very foundation of the beliefs that had guided the political and religious behavior of this section of the population.

The talk addresses the theological dilemmas raised by Israel’s withdrawal plan and reveals a widening fault line within the dominant school of Mercaz Harav Yeshiva–one of the most important educational institutions of modern religious Zionism–regarding the question of the status and religious significance of a Zionist state in light of a volatile reality. The talk examines how a group of Zionist rabbis in response to profound disillusionment with the behavior of the state, moved towards a religious radicalization as a way of coping with their feelings of religious and messianic failure.

  • This event is for faculty and graduate students only.

“‘Who?’ or ‘What?’—Jacques Derrida” A conference to celebrate the legacy of Jacques Derrida, October 9-11, University of Florida, Gainesville.

  • Click here for program schedule.

Galili Shahar, “The Language of Allegory: Yiddish in the Thought of Rosenzweig, Kafka, & Freud.” Thursday, October 5th, 7:30 pm, at Hillel.

Galili Shahar joins UF’s Department of German and Slavic Studies in January. He had been a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is spending the coming Fall semester in Berlin on an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship at the Free University. Shahar is the author of Verkleidungen der Auklarung: Narrenspiele und Weltanschauung in der Goethezeit (2005). His forthcoming works include Denkspiele im deutsch-judischen Diskurs der Moderne and Kafka’s Wound.

  • Made possible by the Gary Gerson Lecture Series in Jewish Studies
  • See the postcard for this event

Gwynn Kessler, “Before I Formed You in the Belly, I Knew You: Jacob & Esau in the Womb.” Thursday, September 28th, 7:30pm, at Hillel.

Gwynn Kessler received a Ph.D. in Rabbinics, with a specialization in Midrash from the Jewish Theological Seminary (May 2001). Her dissertation, The God Of Small Things: The Fetus and Its Development in Palestinian Aggadic Literature, is under review for publication. Her current research uses feminist and queer theories to interpret (and critique) rabbinic constructions of gender and the body.

Gwynn Kessler is Assistant Professor of Religion and has a Ph.D. in Jewish Theological Seminary. Her current research uses feminist and queer theories to interpret (and critique) rabbinic constructions of gender and the body. In addition to teaching courses on rabbinic literature, gender and the Hebrew Bible, and Introduction to Judaism, she teaches a course on GLBTQ Jews and Judaism and a course on biblical and rabbinic constructions of God’s gender.

  • Made possible by the Gary Gerson Lecture Series in Jewish Studies
  • See the postcard for this event

Sharon DiFino, “After Glikl: Jewish Women Writers in Germany and the Netherlands from the 18th Century to WWII”, Thursday, September 21st.

Professor Difino will discuss her book project on European Jewish Intellectual Life which focuses mainly on Jewish women writers and activists in Berlin and Amsterdam from the late 18th century up until WWII.

Sharon M. DiFino is an Associate Professor of Germanic Studies in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies. Her research interests include language acquisition and pedagogy as well as cultural and literary history of Germany and the Netherlands.

  • This event is for faculty and graduate students only.

“Let’s Talk About IT!” 2006.

Summer Holocaust Institute for Florida Teachers, June 12th-16th, University of Florida.

The Summer Holocaust Institute for Florida Teachers (SHIFT) is designed to enable classroom teachers to effectively incorporate the Holocaust into their teaching. SHIFT will: Provide participants with a background on the history of the Holocaust as well as its aftermath; help teachers present sensitive and potentially disturbing material to students; familiarize teachers with the vast number of resource materials (books, films, Web sites, etc.) available on the Holocaust; Instruct teachers on designing and implementing curriculum and lesson plans that place the Holocaust in the context of tolerance, multiculturalism, morality and civic education; show teachers how to make the Holocaust relevant to the lives of their students.

Dr. Simone Schweber, “Fundamental Funnels: How Christians & Jews Teach the Holocaust,” Thursay, June 15th at 7:30pm, Hillel.*

Schweber is a Goodman Professor of Education and Jewish Studies at University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is currently a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. She is studying how fundamentalist religious schools teach about the Holocaust and what students in them believe. In particular, she is comparing how the Holocaust is taught in the U.S. in both an evangelical Christian School and an ultra-orthodox Jewish yeshivah, examining how each construct the history of the Holocaust and the role that religion plays in such teaching. Simone Schweber holds a Ph.D in Education from Stanford University, and is the author of Making Sense of the Holocaust: Lessons from Classroom Practice, (Teacher College Press, 2004) which studies teaching and learning about the Holocaust in public high school classrooms.

Nina Caputo, “The Barcelona Disputation: An Event of No Significance?”, Sunday, April 23rd, 2:00pm, Museum of Arts and Sciences, Daytona Beach, FL.

Nina Caputo is Assistant Professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of Florida. Dr. Caputo recieved a Ph.D from the University of California, Berkeley and was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. She recently completed a monograph titled “At the Threshold of Redemption: Time and Community in medievel Jewish Aragon.” Dr. Caputo’s work focuses on Medieval Jewish cultural and intellectual history.

Peter Hayes, “German Corporate Complicity in the Holocaust: From Aryanization to Auschwitz” Thursday, April 6th, 7:30pm Reitz Union, Room 282.

Peter Hayes is the Theodore Z. Weiss Professor of Holocaust Studies at Northwestern University. He specializes in the history of Germany in the 20th century, particularly the Nazi period. He is the author or editor of seven books, including From Cooperation to Complicity: Degussa in the Third Reich (2004)and a prize-winning study of the IG Farben corporation in the Nazi era. He is currently working on two other books: Profits and Persecution: German Big Business and the Holocaust and The Failure of a Generation: German Elites and National Socialism. A recipient of the WCAS Distinguished Teaching Award and the Northwestern Alumni Association’s Excellence in Education Award, he has also held fellowships from the DAAD, the ACLS, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. He is a member of the Academic Board of the German Society for Business History and of the Academic Committee of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.

click to see the postcard for this event

Samuel Weber,”Parting With–Mediality In the Early Work of Walter Benjamin”, Thursday, March 23rd, 2:00pm, 219 Dauer.

Professor Weber is one of the foremost contemporary thinkers in the field of mass-media, philosophy and psychoanalysis. He teaches in the German Department at Northwestern University where he holds the title of Avalon Foundation Professor of Humanities.

  • *sponsored by Department of English, France-Florida Research Institute, Center for Jewish Studies, Department of Germanic & Slavic Studies

Eric Meyers,”Excavations at the Ancient Synagogue Site of Nabratein in Israel: New Evidence for the Chronology and Typology of the Synagogue” Thursday, March 23rd, 7:30pm Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art.*

Dr. Meyers is the Bernice and Morton Lerner Professor of Judaic Studies and the director of the graduate program in religion at Duke University. He has authored or co-authored nine books, edited many others and published widely in the fields of Hebrew Bible, biblical archaeology and Second Temple Judaism.

  • *co-sponsored by the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art.

click to see the postcard for this event

Benjamin Frommer,”People’s Courts and Popular Justice: The Punishment of “Nazis, Traitors and Their Accomplices” In Postwar Czechoslovakia” Wednesday, March 8th, 3:00pm 215 Dauer Hall.

Benjamin Frommer (Professor of History, Northwestern University) specializes in the history of East-Central Europe, with a focus on the periods of Nazi and Communist rule. He is primarily interested in collaboration and resistance under repressive regimes, the use of courts for political ends, the consequences of ethnic cleansing, and the development of modern nationalism. Frommer is the author of National Cleansing: Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

  • *co-sponsored by the Center for European Studies & the Department of Germanic & Slavic Studies.

Steven Zipperstein, “On Leaving ‘Darkest Russia’: Recollecting Jewish Mass Migration at the Turn of the 20th Century” Inaugural Grass Chair Annual Distinguished Lecture, Thursday, March 2nd, 7:30pm Reitz Union, Room 282.

Steven Zipperstein is a Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture & History at Stanford University. He is the author and editor of six books, and he writes often for newspapers including New York Times, Washington Post, and elsewhere. His books have won many awards, including the National Jewish Book Award, and the Smilen Prize. He has won the Judah L. Magnes Gold Medal from the American Friends of the Hebrew University, and for seven years he served as Chair of the Koret Jewish Book Awards.

Tony Michels,”New York’s Jewish Revolution: the Rise of Yiddish Socialism in America” Thursday February 16th, 7:30pm Reitz Union, Room 282.

Tony Michels is the George L. Mosse Associate Professor of American Jewish History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is also the author of A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York in which he examines the defining role of the Yiddish socialist movement in the American Jewish experience.

Gwynn Kessler, “Famous Fetuses in Rabbinic Narratives: Where Does Jewishness Begin?” Sunday February 12, 2:00pm Museum of Arts and Sciences, Daytona Beach.

Gwynn Kessler received a Ph.D. in Rabbinics from the Jewish Theological Seminary. She is currently completing a monograph titled Conceiving Israel: The Fetus in Rabbinic Narratives. Dr. Kessler’s research uses feminist and queer theory to interpret rabbinic constructions of gender and the body.

Long before ultrasound imaging enabled people to visualize the fetus developing in the womb, the rabbis of antiquity used their imagination to peer into women’s bellies. What they saw was a living, thinking, sometimes speaking, (little) person who was created and cared for by God. Tracing the motif of the fetus as it develops in rabbinic traditions from 3rd through 10th century C.E., and focusing specifically on what the rabbis said about biblical heroes in the womb, the talk suggests that the rabbis located the beginning of Jewishness already in the mother’s womb.

Noah Isenberg,”Fishke Out of Water: Edgar G. Ulmer’s Cycle of Yiddish Films” Thursday January 19th, 6:30pm The Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art.

Noah Isenberg is chair of humanities at the New School and, during the fall of 2005, a visiting associate professor of German at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include Between Redemption and Doom: The Strains of German-Jewish Modernism (Nebraska).