UW Stroum Center for Jewish Studies

3/28 LECTURE | Sonic Ruins of Modernity: Ladino Folksongs Today
2024-03-28 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Kane Hall 220, 4069 Spokane Lane, Seattle, WA, 98103, United States
Drawing on his forthcoming book, “Sonic Ruins of Modernity: Judeo-Spanish Folksongs Today,” musicologist Edwin Seroussi will examine a repertoire of Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) folksongs transmitted by Sephardic Jews, a process made possible by a complex network of people and forces extending from the distant past to the “post-tradition era” of the present.
In addition to the lecture, Ke Guo, musician and Ph.D. candidate in the UW School of Music, will perform Sephardic folksongs.
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Also register for Edwin Seroussi’s talk on Wednesday, March 27, at 7:00 p.m.:
A Spark of King David: The Musical Poetry of Rabbi Israel Najara Then and Now

About the speaker
Edwin Seroussi is the Emanuel Alexandre Professor Emeritus of Musicology at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Chair of the Academic Committee of the Jewish Music Research Centre, Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College and, in 2023/4, Fellow at the Herbert G. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on Jewish musical cultures of the Mediterranean and Middle East and their interactions with Islamic cultures, Judeo-Spanish song and music in Israel. He explores processes of hybridization, diaspora, nationalism and transnationalism in diverse contexts and historical periods such as the Ottoman Empire, colonial Morocco and Algeria, Germany’s Second Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Zionist settlement in Palestine and the Judeo-Spanish-speaking diaspora.

This series is cosponsored by the UW Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, the UW Middle East Center, the UW Near and Middle East Studies Ph.D. Program, ArtsUW, part of the College of Arts and Sciences, and by the Ethnomusicology Program at the University of Washington.
It is presented by the Hazzan Isaac Azose Fund for Community Engagement, created in partnership with the Isaac Alhadeff Foundation and the Benoliel Family Fund, with additional support provided by Congregation Ezra Bessaroth, the Seattle Sephardic Brotherhood and the Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation, as well as Jack I. Azose, Howard Behar, Harley and Lela Franco, Jeff and Jamie Merriman Cohen, Jack Schaloum and Marlene Souriano Vinikoor.

The University of Washington is committed to providing access and accommodation in its services, programs, and activities. To make a request connected to a disability or health condition contact Grace Elizabeth Dy at (206) 543-0138 or by emailing jewishst@uw.edu at least 10 days before the event.

4/11 LECTURE | Contemporary Ethiopian Artists in Israel and the Question of Hyphenated Identity
2024-04-11 19:00 - 20:30 | Thomson Hall 101, 2023 King Lane, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Artist and researcher Efrat Yerday will draw upon the work of several contemporary visual artists, including Zauditu Yossef-Seri, Tgst Ron Yossef, Michal Mamit Worku, and Nirit Takele, as well as the works of younger artists, including Ephraim Wasse, Jenet Belai, and Rachel Aniyu, to illustrate the challenges faced by Ethiopian Jewish artists in Israel today.
Yerday will discuss how Israeli artists of Ethiopian descent often feel forced to choose one side of their identity in their lives and work, along with the diverse strategies these artists use to navigate these challenges.
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About the speaker
Efrat Yerday is an artist and researcher, poet and cultural entrepreneur. She is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Tel Aviv University, writing about Ethiopian Jews in Israel between 1955-1975 and the struggle for citizenship. Yerday is also the chairwoman of the Association for Ethiopian Jews and in 2020 won New Israel Fund’s Gallanter Prize for emerging Israeli social justice leaders.
Yerday is the co-editor of “The Monk and the Lion: Contemporary Ethiopian Visual Art in Israel” (Achoti Press, 2017) and wrote the epilogue for the 2018 Hebrew translation of Zora Neal Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” In 2018, Yerday joined film director Bazi Gete in coordinating the Atesib! African film festival, the first of its kind in Israel.
Her scholarly work has appeared in the journal Anthropology of the Middle East and she was a panelist and presenter at the Annual Israeli Sociological Society Conference in 2020 and 2021.

This event is cosponsored by the UW African Studies Program.
The University of Washington is committed to providing access and accommodation in its services, programs, and activities. To make a request connected to a disability or health condition contact Grace Elizabeth Dy at (206) 543-0138 or jewishst@uw.edu at least 10 days before the event.

12/8 LADINO DAY | "The Familiar" with Author Leigh Bardugo
2024-12-08 10:00 - 11:30 | Kane Hall 210, 4069 Spokane Ln NE, Seattle, WA, 98105
In Ladino Day 2024, acclaimed fantasy author Leigh Bardugo (“Shadow and Bone”) discusses her new novel, “The Familiar,” which features a Sephardic Jewish heroine in 16th-century Spain who draws magic and power from her family’s secret language, Ladino, also known as Judeo-Spanish.

About the event

In this event, author Leigh Bardugo discusses her new novel, “The Familiar,” and its use of Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) with UW faculty member Canan Bolel, Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures.
In the novel, Bardugo follows the struggles of a “converso” heroine — from a family forced to convert to Christianity and keep its Jewish heritage secret in 16th-century Spain — who draws magic from her family’s secret language, Ladino, and the refranes (sayings) that preserve Sephardic Jewish wit and wisdom across time.
In the conversation, Bardguo discusses what drew her to this story and setting, how she wove Ladino into her narrative, the family history that inspired her, and the collaboration with Bolel that led to the selection of refranes included in the book.
About Leigh Bardugo & Canan Bolel

Leigh Bardugo is the New York Times bestselling author of “The Familiar” and “Ninth House,” and is the creator of the Grishaverse (now a Netflix original series) which spans the Shadow and Bone trilogy, the Six of Crows duology, the King of Scars duology. Her short fiction has appeared in multiple anthologies. She lives in Los Angeles and is an associate fellow of Pauli Murray College at Yale University.

Canan Bolel is a historian of the Ottoman Empire’s Jewish communities and is an assistant professor in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures. Her first book project, “Constructions of Jewish Modernity and Marginality in Izmir, 1860–1907,” explores how Sephardic Jews constituted their identities in imperial and communal settings, focusing on marginalized Jews — the diseased, criminals, and converts to Christianity. She teaches courses on Ladino every year at the UW, and consulted on the use of Ladino in “The Familiar.”

Ladino Day 2024 is supported by the Lucie Benveniste Kavesh Endowed Fund for Sephardic Studies. This event is cosponsored by the Departments of History, Middle Eastern Languages & Cultures, Spanish & Portuguese Studies and the Arts & Sciences Humanities Division at the University of Washington, as well as the American Ladino League, Congregation Ezra Bessaroth, the Seattle Sephardic Network and the Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation.

Stroum Lectures 2026 with Rafael Neis
2026-05-12 19:00 - 21:00 | Kane Hall 225, UW Campus
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.
Both events are free and open to all. 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
We often assume that the categories “man” and “woman” are timeless and self-evident. But what if they aren’t? In this talk, Professor Rafael Neis invites us to explore a surprising question: did “men” and “women,” as fixed and stable categories, always exist in the way we imagine them today? Turning to the Talmud, Neis shows how the rabbis wrestled with bodies, identity, and social roles in ways that don’t always fit neatly into modern assumptions. By setting aside what we think we already know about gender, we can discover fresh and unexpected ways of reading these ancient texts—and gain insight into how the rabbis themselves understood human difference. Along the way, Neis opens up intriguing new perspectives on rabbinic thought, revealing a tradition that is more curious, complex, and inventive than we might expect. 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
Walk through the ancient world and you would have been surrounded by images of all kinds of beings—human figures, animals, hybrids, and creatures that blur the line between the familiar and the fantastic. These images appeared everywhere: in streets and homes, bathhouses and synagogues, public buildings and sacred spaces. In this talk, Professor Rafael Neis explores a handful of striking examples from ancient Jewish art and asks what happens when we look at them with fresh eyes. Instead of sorting these figures into modern boxes about “human,” “animal,” “male,” or “female,” Neis invites us to step back and see how ancient artists and communities imagined bodies more broadly. By letting go of some of our present-day assumptions, we begin to notice new patterns and possibilities—and gain insight into how people in the ancient world understood identity, difference, and the sacred. The result is a richer, more surprising picture of Jewish visual culture, filled with creativity, complexity, and imagination.

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 has 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 and has led 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.

Image: 4th-7th c. incantation bowl written in Aramaic from Iraq. Photo by Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin via Wikimedia Commons.
