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2013 Events

“The 9th Annual Gainesville Latino Film Festival and the Center for Jewish Studies are pleased to bring you “Salsa Tel-Aviv directed by Yohanan Weller. The film will be shown on Saturday, October 5, 2 pm at the Harn Museum of Art and Sunday, October 6, 2 pm at the Alachua Branch Library.
When Vicky and Yoni meet on a plane from Mexico to Tel Aviv, Vicky is dressed as a nun trying to find her estranged salsa-dancing husband. Yoni, a university professor, considers the situation a bit strange and he can’t figure it all out. Still, he helps Vicky get through customs, and the two seem to part ways. But not quite. Somehow, Vicky and Yoni keep running into each other. What could that mean? “Salsa Tel Aviv” is a charming, funny film with a fresh take on foreign workers in Israel.

  • Made possible through the Betty & Herman Schram Memorial Fund and the Latina Women’s League.

 

“The Future of the Jews: How Global Forces are Impacting Jewish People” a talk by Stuart Eizenstat. 6pm, Monday, September 30, 2013 at the Bob Graham Center.
Former ambassador and author Stuart Eizenstat will present his provocative analysis on how major geopolitical, economic, and security challenges are reshaping the Jewish world and its relationship with the United States. During a decade and a half of public service in three US administrations, Ambassador Eizenstat held a number of key senior positions, including chief White House domestic policy adviser to President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981); U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs, and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton Administration (1993-2001). Eizenstat’s latest book, The Future of the Jews, traces how shifting global power away from the United States and Europe to the emerging powers in Asia and Latin America poses particular challenges for the Jewish community, and raises particular issues for the relationship between Israel and the U.S.

  • Made possible through the “Bud” Shorstein Professorship, the Bob Graham Center and the Department of Political Science.
  • See the postcard for this event

“With Us Now, More Then Ever” a talk by Yoram Bilu. 7pm, Monday, September 23, 2013, Smathers Library Conference Room, 1A.
Jewish history is replete with proclaimed and self-proclaimed messiahs. The most striking case in our own time is the messianic fervor that has swept Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidism. During the final years of the movement’s seventh and last president, the charismatic Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, many were led to believe that he was the designated Messiah. Following the childless Rebbe’s death in 1994, a schism has emerged within the headless movement with some, especially among Israeli adherents, the “Meshichistn,” denying the death of the Rebbe.

Yoram Bilu is professor emeritus of anthropology and psychology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His research interests include the anthropology of religion (focusing on saint worship, messianism, and religious healing), culture and mental health, the sanctification of space in Israel, and Moroccan Jewish culture. He is the recipient of the Israel Prize in sociology and anthropology for 2013. His most recent book is The Saints Impresarios: Dreamers, Healers, and Holy Men in Israel’s Urban Periphery (2010).

  • Made possible through the Mikki and Morris Futernick Endowment of the Center for Jewish Studies. Open to the community, the lecture is co-sponsored by the Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica.

“Playing for Peace: A Concert of Persian, Arab and Jewish Music”. A live concert featuring Naser Musa, Hamid Saeidi-Santur, Dror Sinai, Yair Dalal Saturday, April 13 at 9:00 pm in the Ustler Hall Atrium and again Sunday, April 14 at 12:30 pm, Jacksonville Jewish Center.

  • See the poster for this event: frontback
  • The Gainesville concert is made possible through a grant from the Jewish Council of North Central Florida, Betty & Herman Schram Memorial Fund, Eileen G. Breier Visiting Fellowship, Arthur& Violette Kahn Visiting Scholar Endowment, Mikki & Morris Futernick Visiting Professorship, Dr. Warren Bargad Endowment, and Friends of Jewish Studies Tree of Life Fund.
  • The Jacksonville concert is made possible through a gift from the Levin and Shorstein Families.
  • See the band playing live.

“From Point to Breathturn: Poetic Space in Cixous and Celan” A talk by David Wills Wednesday, April 3, 3-5 pm in Pugh Hall 212.
David Wills is professor of French and English at SUNY-Albany and a fellow of the London Graduate School. His major work, on the originary technicity or prostheticity of the human,is developed in Prothesis (Stanford, 1995), Dorsality (Minnesota, 2008), and in the forthcoming Inanimation. He has also co-authored or co-edited books on Thomas Pynchon, Derrida and film theory, deconstruction and the visual arts, and edited a text on Godard’s Pierrot le fou. He is translator of a number of works by Jacques Derrida, including The Gift of Death and The Animal That Therefore I Am, and Jean-Luc Nancy’s On the Commerce of Thinking.

  • Co-sponsored by the France-Florida Research Institute, Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, and German Foundation Fund.

“Parcere Subiectis: Roman Imperialism, Jewish Apocalypticism, and Universal Justice in the First Century CE” a talk by Megan Williams Tuesday, April 2, 2013 in the Dauer Hall Keene Faculty Center.
Williams is Associate Professor of History at San Francisco State University, where she teaches late antique and early medieval history, and the history of Christianity through the ninth century. She is the author of The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship and Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius and the Library of Caesarea.

  • Made possible by the Alexander Grass Chair in Jewish Studies.
  • See the postcard for this event

“Cultural Intimacy and Its Limits: Central Asia Jews and Their Muslim Neighbors” A talk by Chen Bram Wednesday, March 10, 2013.

“Trading on Identity: Jewish Merchants in the Medieval Islamic World” A talk by Jessica Goldberg (University of Pennsylvania) Monday, March 18, 6 pm at Smathers Library East.
Professor Goldberg’s research focuses on the history of merchants in the Islamic and Italian eastern Mediterranean of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Her recent research interests have led her to study the practical minutiae of how business, manufacturing, and trade worked; and ideas and practices of both religious and secular law; merchants ideas of region, regional identity and market spaces. She has held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Stanford Humanities Fellows Program, and the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and she was a 2012 Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies. Goldberg’s book, Trade and Institutions in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Geniza Merchants and Their Busines World, was recently published by Cambridge University Press.

  • Made possible by the Bruce I. Greenberg Endowment in Jewish Studies and co-sponsored by The Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica.
  • See the postcard for this event

“FDR and the Holocaust” a talk by Richard Breitman, American University. Thursday, March 14, 2013, 7:30 pm at Smathers Library Grand Reading Room.
Breitman is the author of The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution, Official Secrets: What the Germans Planned, What the British and Americans Knew and American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 1933-1945.

  • Made possible by the Norman and Irma Braman Chair for Holocaust Studies and co-sponsored by The Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica.
  • See the postcard for this event

“Judaization, Europeanization, or Germanization: Lódz and the Politics of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Poland” a talk by Winson Chu Monday, February 18, 2013, 7pm at Hillel.
Chu is from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is the author of The German Minority in Interwar Poland.

  • Made possible by the Braman Chair in Holocaust Studies and the Harry Rich Endowment at the Center for Jewish Studies.
  • See the postcard for this event

“Hidden Heresies, Obfuscation, Appropriation: What is all the fuss about Maimonides?” A talk by Dr. Daniel Davies (University of Cambridge) Wednesday, February 13, 7-8pm, University of Hillel, Norman H. Lipoff Hall.
Dr. Daniel Davies is a Research Associate at the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit at Cambridge University. He also teaches at Canterbury Christ Church University. Davies is the author of Method and Metaphysics in Maimonides Guide for the Perplexed, Oxford University Press, 2011.

  • Sponsored by the Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica, the University of Florida Hillel and the Jewish Council of North Central Florida. Light refreshments served.
  • See the poster for this event.

“Maimonides: Faith, Doubts, and Secrets” a Symposium at the University of Florida Tuesday, February 12, 2013, 2-4 pm in the History Department Conference Room 005 Keene-Flint Hall.
With speakers Kenneth Seeskin (Northwestern University), Edward C. Halper (University of Georgia), and Daniel Davies (University of Cambridge). Chaired by Nina Caputo (University of Florida). Comments by Yehuda Halper (Tulane University).

  • Sponsored by the Center for Jewish Studies, the Department of Philosophy, the Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica, the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere, and the Department of Religion, University of Florida.
  • Pre-circulated papers available on February 4, 2013: maimonides
  • See the poster for this event

“Is Judaism Really Monotheistic: A Maimonidean Inquiry” a talk by Kenneth Seeskin Monday, February 11, 2013 at 7:30pm, Smathers Library.
Seeskin is Philip M. and Ethel Klutznick Professor of Jewish Civilization at Northwestern University. He specializes in Jewish Philosophy, Ancient and Medieval Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion. His work uses classic texts in the history of philosophy to shed light on problems of perennial interest. He has published seven books on Jewish philosophy and ethics, most recently, Jewish Messianic Thoughts in an Age of Despair.

  • Made possible by the Bruce I. Greenberg Endowment in Jewish Studies and co-sponsored by The Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica.
  • See the postcard for this event

“An English Tale: The Legend of Child-Murder in Medieval Norwich” a talk by Miri Rubin Monday, February 4, 2013 at 7pm, Smathers Library East, Room 1A.
Miri Rubin is Professor of Medieval History at Queen Mary University of London and currently serves as Head of the School of History. Educated in Jerusalem and Cambridge, she has held posts at Cambridge and Oxford too, and has spent several visiting periods in the US. Her interests range over aspects of the religious cultures of medieval Europe, with special interest in Jewish-Christian relations. She enjoys inter-disciplinary interaction as well as public dissemination of scholarship.

  • Made possible by the Annual Alexander Grass Endowed Lecture in Jewish Studies.
  • See the postcard for this event

“Frozen Time, Liquid Memories (1942-2012)” a two-part film by Dragan Kujundzic. Part one: “The Racija”; the Danube, Novi Sad, January 1942. Part two: “They Were Children”; Vel d’Hiv, Paris, July 1942. The screening will be followed by the author’s explanation of the project—Wednesday, January 23, 2013 at 6pm, the Harn Museum.
The footage filmed by Dragan Kujundzic commemorates the seventy years since the two round-ups of the Jews, one in Novi Sad (today Serbia) in January 1942, and the other in Paris in July 1942. In Serbian and French, with subtitles in English.

  • Made possible by the Center for European Studies, Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research, English Department, France-Florida Research Institute and Department of Languages, Literature and Cultures.
  • See the postcard for this event