The Stroum Center for Jewish Studies is proud to announce our 2026 Samuel and Althea Stroum Lecture series, featuring Professor Rafael Neis from the University of Michigan.

Registration link coming soon. 

Lecture 1: Did ‘Men’ and ‘Women’ Always Exist? What the Talmud Can Tell Us

May 12, 7:00-9:00pm, Kane Hall, Walker-Ames Room 225

In recent years advocates for transgender people have been making the claim that “trans and nonbinary people have always existed.” Scholars (including in Jewish studies) have gone on to find examples of trans and nonbinary people in a variety of historical sources. Professor Rafe Neis turns the question around and asks us to consider whether we can be sure that the categories of “woman” and “man” have always existed. What kinds of readings are possible if we forego the assumption that these categories are stable foundations, on the basis of which we can read rabbinic texts? Posing this question to Talmudic texts, Neis offers us some intriguing avenues for how the rabbis understood gender. Please join us for an informal reception following the lecture.

Lecture 2: Monsters, Hybrids, and Holy Images – Rethinking Bodies in Ancient Jewish Art  

May 14, 4:00-5:30pm, HUB, 214

Images of human and nonhuman beings populated the visual culture of the ancient middle east: in public buildings, religious centers, bathhouses, in the streets, and in domestic structures across the ancient Middle East. Focusing on a few examples of this visual culture in Jewish contexts, Neis asks us to reconsider art historical interpretation beyond our modern concepts of species and sex. What might we discover if we cast aside our cisheteronormative and anthropocentric construction of the present and past?

About the Speaker

Rafael Neis is a scholar and artist. Neis is the Jean and Samuel Frankel Professor of Rabbinic Literature and is appointed in the Department of History and Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. As Faculty Director of Arts Learning at Michigan’s Arts initiative, Neis supports campus-wide art-integrated pedagogy. Their second book, When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven: Rabbis & the Reproduction of Species, was published in 2023 by University of California Press. Their artwork has been featured in shows and in many publications.

The Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies is a nationally-renowned series of public lectures, which have brought Jewish studies luminaries from around the globe to the University of Washington for more than fifty years.  Made possible through the support of the Samuel and Althea Stroum Lectures Endowment, this annual series is a cornerstone program of UW’s Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, leading to impactful conversations, groundbreaking scholarship, and award-winning publications. You may view the full Stroum Lectures archive here and review corresponding books published by University of Washington Press here.