UW Stroum Center for Jewish Studies

Grad Fellows: Reviving Languages & Teaching the Middle East
2018-05-14 12:30 - 14:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | HUB 145, UW Campus, 4001 E Stevens Way NE, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Join 2017-2018 Stroum Center Graduate Fellows Rob Keener and Sara Molaie as they share their research on human rights issues and diplomacy in Israel and other countries in the Middle East.
A light lunch will be served.

Rob Keener, Israel Studies Program Fellow
“Constructing a Project-Based Learning Curriculum to Teach the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict”
Robert Keener was born in Houston, Texas, where he attended St. Thomas High School and Texas Tech University. After college, Robert spent two years working in the oil and gas industry in Houston before academia came calling. He attended Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi, where he took two courses on the history of the Middle East that sparked an interest in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The multi-sided presentation of the conflict by his mentor, Dr. Nikolas Trepanier, was far different than the single-sided polemics that he had previously heard. While at Ole Miss, Robert focused on studying systems of oppression such as apartheid, Jim Crow and imperialism. After earning his MA in history, Robert enrolled in the University of Washington’s Multicultural Education doctoral program, where his research centers on teaching controversial topics in social studies, global citizenship education, and the construction of knowledge. When he is not working as a research assistant at the Center for Multicultural Education or trying to earn his doctorate, Robert enjoys hiking in the mountains with his wife Emily and their chocolate lab named Rylee.

Sara Molaie, Robert & Pamela Center Fellow
“Hebrew and Persian Revival Movements in the 19th Century”
Sara Molaie is pursuing her Master’s in Comparative Religion in the Jackson School.  As a member of the minority Baha’i community in Iran where she grew up, Molaie has had to overcome many challenges. After she immigrated to the United States in 2009, she focused her post-secondary education on religious studies, in an effort to contribute to raising awareness of the possibilities for multicultural coexistence. With a focus on Judaism and Islam, she completed elementary biblical and modern Hebrew and intermediate Arabic in her undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Washington. Working on her MA thesis, which is related to the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language, she is going to advance her Hebrew in the summer as an FLAS awardee.

I Alone Can Fix It: Tales from the New Dystopia with Gary Shteyngart
2018-05-09 19:00 - 20:30 | Kane Hall 120, 4069 Spokane Ln, Seattle, WA, 98195, US
The Stroum Center for Jewish Studies proudly announces its 2018 Samuel and Althea Stroum Lecture series with Gary Shteyngart.

A decade and a half ago, with the publication of his 2002 novel The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, the writer Gary Shteyngart launched a new wave of literary production by Jewish writers who immigrated to North America from the Soviet Union at a young age, and who took up the pen in English, their adopted tongue. By now, works by award-winning and bestselling writers Anya Ulinich, David Bezmozgis, Boris Fishman, Lara Vapnyar, Irina Reyn, Nadia Kalman, Sana Krasikov, and others easily fill an impressive—and growing—bookshelf. Coinciding with the flourishing of English-language literature by authors of diverse national, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds such as Jhumpa Lahiri, Junot Díaz, and Chang-rae Lee, this cohort of writers placed the experience of Russian Jewish immigrants on the map of contemporary American fiction.
Shteyngart followed his debut with two more satirical novels. Absurdistan (2006) was a whimsical yet darkly comic take on both Vladimir Putin’s oligarchy and George W. Bush’s America. Super Sad True Love Story (2010) presented a dystopian vision of America’s decline that was filled with prophesies on issues ranging from surveillance technology to economic disparity that have gradually—and stunningly—been coming true in the years since. Vastly different in their breadth and set in a range of real and imagined locations the world over, Shteyngart’s first three novels explored different versions of a series of nebbishes who, in parodic ways, resembled the author himself.
With the publication of his memoir Little Failure in 2014, Shteyngart appears to have closed a chapter of his career that built rich fictional worlds on his satirized autobiography. Little Failure—a humorous, touching, and deeply honest exploration of his family’s and his own history delved deeply into the 20th century experience of Jews in the Soviet Union and during immigration that sat at the core of Shteyngart’s earlier fiction. In his anticipated new novel, Lake Success, to be published in autumn of 2018, Shteyngart is poised to pivot in a new direction and to train his perceptive gaze on unfolding American realities. Set during a time that Shteyngart’s narrator defines as “the first summer of Trump,” the novel launches its American Jewish protagonist—a hedge fund broker of dubious accomplishments and a failed father and husband—on a life-changing trip across the United States aboard a Greyhound bus. Semi-cognizant of other literary protagonists who had previously undertaken similar journeys of self-discovery and failed, and not entirely unaware that such pursuits of lost time tend to yield disappointing results, Shteyngart’s new hero offers profound observations of a native country he hadn’t known before, its fabric of fragile human relationships rapidly and starkly fraying all around him.
The 2018 Stroum Lectures with Gary Shteyngart will offer an opportunity to look back on the first fifteen years of the writer’s career and to look ahead to his future literary pursuits. In a series of conversations with Sasha Senderovich, Assistant Professor of Russian and Jewish Studies at UW, and readings, Gary Shteyngart will explore the questions of the role of humor and comedy in today’s world, immigration and the Jewish experience, prescient issues in Russian-American political and cultural relations, and the satirist’s role in authoritarian societies.
This event is free and open to the public, but RSVP is required. Please register for the May 9 lecture at the bottom of this page, and for the May 7 lecture on its event page.
The Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies are an annual series of talks given by luminaries in the field of Jewish Studies, hosted by Stroum Jewish Studies at the University of Washington. For more than thirty years, through the generosity of Samuel and Althea Stroum, Jewish Studies has been able to bolster public scholarship around Judaism. View highlights from the past thirty years below, or scroll further to learn more about the history of the lectures and view the full archive.

Failure is an Option: Immigration, Memory, and the Russian Jewish Experience with Gary Shteyngart
2018-05-07 19:00 - 20:30 | Kane Hall 120, 4069 Spokane Ln, Seattle, WA, 98195, US
The Stroum Center for Jewish Studies proudly announces its 2018 Samuel and Althea Stroum Lecture series with Gary Shteyngart.

A decade and a half ago, with the publication of his 2002 novel The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, the writer Gary Shteyngart launched a new wave of literary production by Jewish writers who immigrated to North America from the Soviet Union at a young age, and who took up the pen in English, their adopted tongue. By now, works by award-winning and bestselling writers Anya Ulinich, David Bezmozgis, Boris Fishman, Lara Vapnyar, Irina Reyn, Nadia Kalman, Sana Krasikov, and others easily fill an impressive—and growing—bookshelf. Coinciding with the flourishing of English-language literature by authors of diverse national, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds such as Jhumpa Lahiri, Junot Díaz, and Chang-rae Lee, this cohort of writers placed the experience of Russian Jewish immigrants on the map of contemporary American fiction.
Shteyngart followed his debut with two more satirical novels. Absurdistan (2006) was a whimsical yet darkly comic take on both Vladimir Putin’s oligarchy and George W. Bush’s America. Super Sad True Love Story (2010) presented a dystopian vision of America’s decline that was filled with prophesies on issues ranging from surveillance technology to economic disparity that have gradually—and stunningly—been coming true in the years since. Vastly different in their breadth and set in a range of real and imagined locations the world over, Shteyngart’s first three novels explored different versions of a series of nebbishes who, in parodic ways, resembled the author himself.
With the publication of his memoir Little Failure in 2014, Shteyngart appears to have closed a chapter of his career that built rich fictional worlds on his satirized autobiography. Little Failure—a humorous, touching, and deeply honest exploration of his family’s and his own history delved deeply into the 20th century experience of Jews in the Soviet Union and during immigration that sat at the core of Shteyngart’s earlier fiction. In his anticipated new novel, Lake Success, to be published in autumn of 2018, Shteyngart is poised to pivot in a new direction and to train his perceptive gaze on unfolding American realities. Set during a time that Shteyngart’s narrator defines as “the first summer of Trump,” the novel launches its American Jewish protagonist—a hedge fund broker of dubious accomplishments and a failed father and husband—on a life-changing trip across the United States aboard a Greyhound bus. Semi-cognizant of other literary protagonists who had previously undertaken similar journeys of self-discovery and failed, and not entirely unaware that such pursuits of lost time tend to yield disappointing results, Shteyngart’s new hero offers profound observations of a native country he hadn’t known before, its fabric of fragile human relationships rapidly and starkly fraying all around him.
The 2018 Stroum Lectures with Gary Shteyngart will offer an opportunity to look back on the first fifteen years of the writer’s career and to look ahead to his future literary pursuits. In a series of conversations with Sasha Senderovich, Assistant Professor of Russian and Jewish Studies at UW, and readings, Gary Shteyngart will explore the questions of the role of humor and comedy in today’s world, immigration and the Jewish experience, prescient issues in Russian-American political and cultural relations, and the satirist’s role in authoritarian societies.
This event is free and open to the public, but RSVP is required. Please register for the May 7 lecture at the bottom of this page, and for the May 9 lecture on its event page.
The Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies are an annual series of talks given by luminaries in the field of Jewish Studies, hosted by Stroum Jewish Studies at the University of Washington. For more than thirty years, through the generosity of Samuel and Althea Stroum, Jewish Studies has been able to bolster public scholarship around Judaism. View highlights from the past thirty years below, or scroll further to learn more about the history of the lectures and view the full archive.

STUDENT EVENT: Discuss Gary Shteyngart's "Little Failure"
2018-04-30 18:30 - 20:00 | RSVP for location
In advance of the 2018 Stroum Lectures with the bestselling author and satirist Gary Shteyngart, read excerpts from Shetyngart’s memoir Little Failure and engage in a discussion over dinner with Prof. Sasha Senderovich.
Little Failure is a humorous, touching, and deeply honest exploration of Shteyngart’s history – and his family’s – that delves deeply into the 20th century experience of Jews in the Soviet Union and follows them as immigrants to the United States.

RSVP below for location; dinner provided. Copies of Little Failure available.

Register for the May 7 & 9 2018 Stroum Lectures here.

Get ready for the conversation
Check out Jewish in Seattle ‘s related coverage:

Q&A with Gary Shteyngart (in drawings)
“Immigrant Literature Should Make You a Little Uncomfortable” by Sasha Senderovich

Gary Shteyngart was born in Leningrad in 1972 and immigrated to the United States seven years later. He is the author of three bestselling novels: The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (2002), Absurdistan (2006), and Super Sad True Love Story (2010). His newest novel, Lake Success, will be published in 2018.

Sasha Senderovich is an Assistant Professor of Slavic and Jewish Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. He teaches courses in Jewish literature and culture as well as Russian literature and film.

Pre-Lecture Discussion of Gary Shteyngart's "Little Failure"
2018-04-29 14:30 - 16:00 | Stroum Jewish Community Center, 3801 East Mercer Way, Mercer Island, WA, 98040, United States
In advance of the 2018 Stroum Lectures with the bestselling author and satirist Gary Shteyngart, read excerpts from Shteyngart’s memoir, Little Failure, and engage in a discussion facilitated by Prof. Sasha Senderovich at the Stroum Jewish Community Center.
Little Failure is a humorous, touching, and deeply honest exploration of Shteyngart’s history – and his family’s – that delves deeply into the 20th century experience of Jews in the Soviet Union and follows them as immigrants to the United States.
RSVP below for the selection from Little Failure; PDF versions are available. Check the registration confirmation to download the PDF of the reading.
Get ready for the conversation
Check out Jewish in Seattle ‘s related coverage:

Q&A with Gary Shteyngart (in drawings)
“Immigrant Literature Should Make You a Little Uncomfortable” by Sasha Senderovich

Register for the May 7 & 9 Stroum Lectures here.
Gary Shteyngart was born in Leningrad in 1972 and immigrated to the United States seven years later. He is the author of three bestselling novels: The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (2002), Absurdistan (2006), and Super Sad True Love Story (2010). His newest novel, Lake Success, will be published in 2018.
Sasha Senderovich is an Assistant Professor of Slavic and Jewish Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. He teaches courses in Jewish literature and culture as well as Russian literature and film.

Grad Fellows: Israeli Diplomacy, Jewish Refugees and Sephardic Soldiers in the 20th & 21st Centuries
2018-04-27 12:30 - 14:00 | HUB 145, UW Campus, 4001 E Stevens Way NE, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Join 2017-2018 Stroum Center Graduate Fellows Samuel Gordon, Pablo Jairo Tutillo Maldonado, and Ozgur Ozkan as they share their research on migration, the Israeli state, and military participation in this academic panel.
A light lunch will be served.

Sam Gordon, Rabbi Arthur A. Jacobovitz Fellow
Paper title: “21st Century Israeli Diplomacy: Challenges and Opportunities in a New Era”
Sam Gordon is currently a first-year master’s student at the Jackson School for International Studies concentrating on the Middle East. He is from Florida and attained a bachelor’s degree in 2014 from Florida State University majoring in History and International Affairs. After graduation, Sam moved to Jerusalem and worked as a research assistant at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He conducted research on topics including diplomacy and human rights in the Middle East. He also spent nine months living and working in Prague, where he absorbed a great deal about Jewish communities of Central Europe. For his Graduate Fellowship project, Sam plans to investigate the role Israel will play in the newly forming international order as well as the challenges and opportunities it faces on a global scale. His research interests include Israeli foreign policy, geopolitics of the Middle East, and the intersection between technology and foreign policy.

Pablo Jairo Tutillo Maldonado, Mickey Sreebny Memorial Scholar
Paper title: “Neither Zionist, nor Egyptian: The Forced Migration of the Jews of Egypt in the 1950s”
Pablo Jairo Tutillo Maldonado, who hails from Connecticut, will pursue an MA in Middle East Studies at the Jackson School in the Fall 2017. Pablo obtained his BA in International Relations and a minor in Arabic Studies from Connecticut College. Pablo has studied at Alexandria University in Egypt and at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. At UW, Pablo is interested in researching the intersection of history and politics of countries in the Middle East, particularly the political and historical narratives of Jewish refugees from the Arab world. He speaks conversational Arabic, Hebrew and Turkish.

Ozgur Ozkan, Mervin & Georgiana Gorasht Fellow
Paper title: “Seattle’s Sephardic Connections to the Northern Aegean: War, Military Service, and Migration in the Early Twentieth Century”
Ozgur Ozkan is a PhD candidate in the Jackson School of International Studies’ doctoral program. He holds a BS degree in Systems Engineering and an MA degree in Regional Security Studies from the US Naval Postgraduate School. Ozgur’s research covers nationalism, ethnic politics, and civil-military relations in the Middle East. He has been conducting research on non-Muslims’ experiences in the Ottoman Army in the early twentieth century. He is planning to study Sephardic Jewish heritage in the northern Aegean and southern Marmara, especially in Canakkale and its vicinity, as well as Jewish participation to the Balkan Wars and the First World War.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the 20th Century
2018-04-26 19:30 - 21:00 | Kane Hall 110, 4069 Spokane Lane, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Please note that the talk will take place in Kane 110. The event is also being livestreamed online – anyone can watch it! More information here.
From Timothy Snyder, one of America’s leading historians and public intellectuals, comes an essential guide to survival and resistance in our times.
Through a series of twenty lessons drawn from the twentieth century, Snyder will help us to understand the frightening parallels that exist between our current reality and the reality faced by twentieth century Europeans as totalitarian leaders rose to power. Using his knowledge of history, Snyder shows us how to effectively resist and bring about change in times of political trouble.
Overflow seating with an on-site livestream will be available in Kane Hall for this sold-out event.
About the Speaker
Timothy Snyder is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University, a member of the Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and a permanent fellow of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. His latest book, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (Tim Duggan Books; February 28, 2017), has resonated with a world-wide audience. On Tyranny has been published in over a dozen countries and is a #1 New York Times Bestseller.
A frequent guest at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, he has spent about ten years in Europe, and speaks five and reads ten European languages. He is a regular commentator on radio, TV and in print publications, and an award-winning author of books such as Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin and Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning.
Snyder received his doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1997, where he was a British Marshall Scholar. Before joining the faculty at Yale in 2001, he held fellowships in Paris, Vienna, and Warsaw, and an Academy Scholarship at Harvard.

Judeo-Spanish (Ladino): Language Endangerment & Revitalization
2018-04-25 17:00 - 18:30 | Thomson Hall 101, 2023 King Lane, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
A 1913 article in the New York Tribune quotes a Sephardic man as saying, “The language is almost extinct,” in reference to his mother tongue, Judeo-Spanish.
More than a century later, however, the language can still be found in a number of areas across the United States and abroad. What, then, is the status of this language?
In this presentation, Prof. Bryan Kirschen (SUNY Binghamton) will consider what it means for a language to be endangered. How do linguists measure the vitality of a language, and how do these measures apply to varieties of Judeo-Spanish?
After examining the processes of language endangerment, Prof. Kirschen will review preservation efforts and revitalization practices, describing the benchmarks of success that Judeo-Spanish and its speakers have achieved, as well as obstacles they continue to face in the twenty-first century.
About the Speaker
Bryan Kirschen is an assistant professor of Hispanic Linguistics at SUNY-Binghamton. His research focuses on Judeo-Spanish, which is also the subject of his documentary film, Saved by Language.

Ancient Jewish Magic
2018-04-17 15:30 - 17:00 | Odegaard Library 220, 4060 George Washington Lane NE, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Ancient magical artifact (a bowl) depicting demons, ringed with Aramaic. Found in Iraq. From the University of Pennsylvania Museum *collection.
*ROOM CHANGE! By popular demand, we’ve moved this event to a larger space: Room 220 in the Odegaard Undergraduate Library*
NOTE: If the event sells out, we still encourage you to come. Seats typically open up, though we can’t guarantee seating.
What is magic? What is Jewish magic? Who are the witches that the rabbis worry about?
In this talk, Prof. Ahuvia will share evidence from her recent and forthcoming publications about Jewish engagement with magic, angels, and demons in the ancient world. She will discuss how practices we might deem “magical” have influenced Jewish rituals, liturgy, and beliefs to this day.
To whet your appetite: According to scholar B. Barry Levy, the ancient magical artifact at the right “was prepared to protect Abuna bar Geribta and Ibba bar Zawithai from a series of evil forces. Its writer drew his power from the garment of Hermes and the Creator of heaven and earth. He threatened the destructive forces with the curses of the Leviathan and Sodom and Gemorrah.”
About the Speaker
Mika Ahuvia was born in Kibbutz Beit Hashita in northern Israel. She researches the formative history of Jewish and Christian communities in the ancient Mediterranean world. Specializing in Late Antique Jewish history, she works with Rabbinic sources, liturgical poetry, magical texts, early mystical literature, and archaeological evidence. Her dissertation was on angels in Jewish texts from the fourth to eighth century CE.
Ahuvia is fascinated by the daily life of ancient Jews and investigates the different ways they struck a balance between their local religious environment (whether Roman, Christian, or Zoroastrian) and biblical, rabbinic, and other Jewish traditions.
She co-authored an article with John Gager on the portrayal of Mary the mother of Jesus in the Toledot Yeshu, an early medieval Jewish satire of Jesus’ life as recorded by the gospels. There she paid careful attention to the sympathy shown to Mary in the Jewish sources and how it might reflect broader Jewish interest in the figure of a messianic mother. In another article in a volume on Jewish and Christian Cosmogony in Late Antiquity, Ahuvia analyzed depictions of the abyss in late antique church mosaics in the Transjordan region and the Near Eastern, Greco-Roman, as well as Jewish and Christian sources that may have inspired emphasis on this abstract concept.
Professor Ahuvia currently holds the Marsha and Jay Glazer Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies.

Impossible Exodus: Iraqi Jews in Israel
2018-04-09 15:30 - 17:00 | HUB 214, UW Seattle Campus, 4001 E Stevens Way NE, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Cover of “Impossible Exodus: Iraqi Jews in Israel” (Stanford University Press, 2017)
*Note that the location of this event has changed since our winter events postcard was mailed. The correct room is HUB 214.*
Between 1949 and 1951, 123,000 Iraqi Jews immigrated to the newly established Israeli state. Lacking the resources to absorb them all, the Israeli government resettled them in maabarot, or transit camps.
Rather than returning to a homeland as native sons, Iraqi Jews were newcomers in a foreign place. Impossible Exodus: Iraqi Jews in Israel, Professor Orit Bashkin’s new book, tells the story of these Iraqi Jews’ first decades in Israel.
Faced with ill treatment and discrimination from state officials, Iraqi Jews resisted: they joined Israeli political parties, demonstrated in the streets, and fought for the education of their children, leading a civil rights struggle whose legacy continues to influence contemporary debates in Israel.
Orit Bashkin sheds light on the everyday lives of this population and their determination to thrive in a new country, uncovering their long, painful transformation from Iraqis to Israelis. In doing so, she shares the resilience and humanity of a community whose story has yet to be told.
About the Speaker
Orit Bashkin is Professor of Modern Middle East History at the University of Chicago.
She is the author of New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq (Stanford, 2012) and The Other Iraq: Pluralism and Culture in Hashemite Iraq (Stanford, 2008). She currently directs the center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago.

This event is co-sponsored by the Middle East Center, part of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies.

Seattle Jewish Film Festival: Praise the Lard
2018-03-13 18:50 - 21:00 | SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave N, Seattle, WA, 98109, United States
About the Film
The untold story of the pork industry in Israel, an industry that has raised ethnic tensions and heated struggles over the country’s short history.
Sitting firmly between Israel’s essential identity issues and the fundamental right to freedom of choice, this taboo in Jewish tradition has become one of the secular state’s most prominent symbols.
Director Chen Shelach traces pig farming back to the Zionist movement’s attempt to create a “new Jew” in the land of Israel, not beholden to old traditions, and explores this new identity’s struggle to survive in the face of fierce resistance from religious and observant Jews. PRAISE THE LARD presents a sharply fascinating, little-discussed take on the outsized role one farm animal has historically played in the Holy Land.
The film will include an introduction by Stroum Center Professor Sasha Senderovich.
Learn more about the film, and purchase tickets, on the Seattle Jewish Film Festival website.

Seattle Jewish Film Festival: "Trezoros" Sephardic Spotlight
2018-03-11 13:00 - 15:00 | AMC Pacific Place, 600 Pine Street, Seattle, WA, United States
About the Film
A coastal city renowned for its idyllic beauty, Kastoria was once home to a harmonious and vibrant population of Jews and Christians.
Illuminating the moving, individual stories of the Greek Sephardic families forced from their homes when Nazis took control of the town, this carefully crafted documentary serves as a tribute and reminder of the many displaced communities forced out and afflicted by Nazi occupation.
Using never-before-seen archival footage and interviews with survivors scattered across the diaspora, TREZOROS stitches together a compelling and affecting portrait of a unique and dynamic Jewish community.
The film will be followed by a discussion with Professor Devin Naar of the Stroum Center’s Sephardic Studies Program, director Lawrence Russo, and Larry Confino; then by a post-film Sephardic coffee klatsch (echar lashon) with coffee/tea and biscochos. Included in ticket price.
Learn more about the film, and purchase tickets, at the Seattle Jewish Film Festival website.

Grad Fellows: Sephardic Culture: Music, Language & Literature from Spain to Seattle
2018-02-26 12:30 - 14:00 | HUB 145, UW Campus, 4001 E Stevens Way NE, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Join 2017-2018 Stroum Center Graduate Fellows Molly FitzMorris, Vivian Mills and Sarah Riskind as they share their research on the topics of Ladino language, Sephardic music, and the early-modern literature of Spain.
Professor Devin Naar of the Stroum Center’s Sephardic Studies Program will offer commentary on the Fellows’ work as the faculty respondent for this panel.
A light lunch will be served; please RSVP below to be included in the lunch order.

Molly FitzMorris, Isaac Alhadeff Sephardic Studies Fellow
Paper title: “The search for the shinedji: Using Ladinokomunita as a corpus to study Modern Ladino morphology”
Molly is a third-year PhD student in the Department of Linguistics.  She has a BA in Latin American Studies from New York University, and an MA in Hispanic Studies from the University of Washington.  Her research focuses on the documentation of Ladino in Seattle, and her two current projects explore the dialects of Ladino spoken in Seattle and the use of a common Turkish suffix in Ladino.  Molly helped organize the first three International Ladino Day celebrations in Seattle, and is an occasional student at the weekly Ladineros classes.

Vivian Mills, Richard M. Willner Memorial Scholar
Paper title: “Shem Tov of Carrión: Jewish Poetry and Moneylending in Fourteenth Century Castile”
Vivian is a second-year PhD student in Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Washington. She was born in Ecuador and moved to the United States with her family at the age of sixteen. She received a BA in Business Economics and an MA in Spanish from the University of South Florida. Her research focuses on identity and the building of textual authority in the literary works of Jewish, Converso and Morisco writers of late medieval and early-modern Iberia. Her latest research focuses on the works of Shem Tov of Carrion, a medieval poet and rabbi. When not reading poetry, you can find Vivian at work in her garden or spending time with her family.

Sarah Riskind, Robinovitch Family Fellow
Paper title: “Sephardic Music Reimagined: Modern Arrangements for Choir”
Sarah is a doctoral student in choral conducting in the UW School of Music. Originally from Boston, MA, she holds degrees from Williams College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition to conducting, singing, and teaching, she has composed choral and instrumental works that have been performed in Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Washington, many of which use Jewish liturgical texts in Hebrew and English. She is currently pursuing research on choral arrangements of Sephardic Jewish music.

Hebrew Traditions in Hellenistic Jewish Sources: Philo of Alexandria & the Epistle to the Galatians
2018-02-20 16:30 - 17:30 | Thomson 317, UW Campus, 2023 Skagit Lane, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Speculative portrait of Philo of Alexandria by 16th-century artist Andre Thevet. Via Wikimedia Commons.
Professors Michal and Elitzur Bar-Asher Siegal draw on their expertise in ancient Jewish and Christian texts to show how understanding contemporary Hebrew influences can help us to understand the Epistle to the Galatians.
Paul’s words in Galatians 4:21–31 evoke the ancient story of Sarah and Hagar and quote the prophetic book of Isaiah, assuring the Galatians that “we are not the children of the slave woman, but of the free woman.”
Assuming a Hebrew-based tradition in Paul’s use of biblical verses – one drawn on by the contemporary writings of Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria – can solve several interpretive problems that past readers of the Galatians passage have pointed out. More importantly, reading this text with a knowledge of Hebrew traditions emphasizes the importance these traditions held in Paul’s Jewish-Hellenistic world.
Light refreshments will be served.
About the Speakers
Michal Bar-Asher Siegal (PhD 2010, Yale University) is a scholar of rabbinic Judaism. Her work focuses on aspects of Jewish-Christian interactions in the ancient world and compares between early Christian and rabbinic sources. Her book, Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge University Press, 2013, winner of the 2014 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award) compared Christian monastic and rabbinic sources. Her upcoming book Jewish – Christian Dialogues on Scripture in Late Antiquity: Heretics Narratives of the Babylonian Talmud will focus on heretics’ stories in the Babylonian Talmud. She is an elected member of the Israel Young Academy of Sciences and holds the Rosen Family Career Development Chair in Judaic Studies at The Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Elitzur Bar-Asher Siegal (PhD 2009, Harvard University) joined the faculty of the department of Hebrew Language at Hebrew University in 2010, after being the lecturer in Semitics at Yale University. His areas of research include the history of the Semitic languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Akkadian), historical linguistics, formal semantics and typology. He also studies the history of linguistics using methodologies from the philosophy of sciences. In recent years, he has mostly worked in linguistics on reciprocal constructions, causative constructions and constructions with non-argument datives, both from the semantic and the historical point of views. He also publishes in fields related to rabbinic literature and Jewish Studies more broadly. Elitzur was a visiting professor at Harvard University and Yale University.

This event is co-sponsored by the University of British Columbia’s Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies and Diamond Chair in Jewish Law and Ethics, as well as by the University of Washington Department of Classical Studies, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Department of Philosophy, and Comparative Religion program.

Was the Etrog Jewish? Science, Trade & Religion in the 19th Century
2018-02-13 15:30 - 17:00 | Thomson 317, UW Campus, 2023 Skagit Lane, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Etrog fruits in a stall at an Israeli market. Via Wikimedia Commons.
This talk will explore the global history of the etrog fruit – a staple of the Jewish harvest holiday Sukkot – from the Sephardi eastern Mediterranean to Ashkenazi northern Europe during the nineteenth century.
Learn more about the etrog’s multiple incarnations – as a citrus fruit, a commodity, and a sacred object – as it passed from the hands of Muslim producers and Ottoman traders to Jewish consumers.
Light refreshments will be served.
About the Speaker
Constanze Kolbe is a scholar of Mediterranean Jewish history and global history with interests in economic, trans-national and cultural history, and is the Stroum Center’s Hazel D. Cole Fellow for the 2017-2018 academic year. She received her Ph.D. from the history department at Indiana University in 2017. Before coming to the US, she graduated from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
Her dissertation “Crossing Regions, Nations, Empires: The Jews of Corfu and the Making of a Jewish Adriatic, 1850-1914” examines how the Jews of the small Mediterranean island of Corfu created a regional commercial and cultural network in the Adriatic during the nineteenth century. The protagonists are the merchants, publishers and rabbis who lived in Corfu and created intimate ties with Corfiote and non-Corfiote Jews, Muslims, Catholics and Christian Orthodox peoples in several cities: Italian Padua, Ottoman-Albanian Scutari and Hapsburg Trieste. The Corfiote Jews created a distinctively Jewish regional space through circulating religious discourses and commodities such as the etrog fruit, soap, and people.

Looking at the Irish with Envy: American Zionism and the Uses of Irish Nationalism
2018-02-07 11:30 - 13:00 | Thomson 317, UW Campus, 2023 Skagit Lane, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Irish nationalist Daniel O’Connell depicted in an 1847 Pennsylvania poster. Via Wikimedia Commons.
Of the minority nationalisms that American Zionists encountered in a United States context rife with nationalist activity, it was the Irish movement that they most admired. Why was this, and what lessons did Zionists take from Irish nationalism?
Historian Judah Bernstein will tackle these questions and others in this lunchtime talk.
This is a brown bag lunch event – bring a lunch to enjoy during the talk.
About the Speaker
Judah Bernstein received his Ph.D. at New York University in Hebrew-Judaic Studies and History. His dissertation examined the evolution of Zionism in America in the early 20th century.
He is currently an adjunct lecturer at Rutgers University and a faculty fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.

STUDENT EVENT: From Shylock to Charlottesville: Jews, money, and racism
2018-02-06 18:00 - 19:30
Virulent centuries-old tropes about Jews, money and power have reemerged in the public square. What is the history of these themes and their implications for people of all races and creeds?
Join Dr. Constanze Kolbe, UW’s 2017-18 Hazel D. Cole Fellow, for a conversation about these particularistic themes and their universal impact.
Dinner provided. RSVP for on-campus location.
Open to all undergrads and graduate students. Limited to 15 students.

Salud y Shalom: Jews in the Spanish Civil War
2018-01-30 15:30 - 17:00 | Thomson 317, UW Campus, 2023 Skagit Lane, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
American Jewish volunteer George Watt marches with his unit in Spain
Eighty years ago, nearly 3,000 Americans embarked for Europe to join the democratically elected Spanish Republic in its effort to repel a military coup led by Francisco Franco. Nearly one-third of the American volunteers were Jews.
In the early ’90s, Professor Joe Butwin interviewed dozens of these Jewish veterans of the Spanish Civil War, collecting their stories and inviting them to reflect on the connection between their Judaism and their decision to serve.
Now, in collaboration with the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, Professor Butwin has curated a new digital exhibit presenting the recollections of five of these volunteer service members – three soldiers and two nurses – who discuss their motivations, their experiences during the war, and their connections to Judaism, past and present.
From the “Salud y Shalom” homepage
This multimedia project brings together veterans’ voices, via original audio recordings of the interviews, and contemporary photographs and artifacts, creating a vivid portrait of a radically different period in the American Jewish past.
In this event, Professor Butwin will talk about the origins of the project, the war volunteers he spoke with in the 1990s, and the process he went through in translating his materials into an accessible online format.
Light refreshments will be served.
Note: We are expecting full capacity for this event. While we cannot guarantee space to guests who did not RSVP, there will be a first come, first served waitlist. We hope to be able to accommodate everyone who is interested in the program.
Explore “Salud y Shalom: American Jews in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939”:

STUDENT EVENT: Feasting with Faculty ft. Prof. Halperin
2018-01-29 18:00 - 19:30
Join Liora Halperin, UW’s new Benaroya Chair in Israel Studies and Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History while enjoying a free vegetarian dinner at a local restaurant.
Come hungry, and ready to share a student’s perspective on UW and learn more about Prof. Halperin.
RSVP for location.
Open to undergraduate and graduate students only. Limited to 10 students.

Fences: Jews as Dealers in Stolen Goods in Early Modern Poland
2018-01-18 12:00 - 13:20 | Thomson 317, UW Campus, 2023 Skagit Lane, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Prof. Shaul Stampfer
While most Jews in early modern Poland had standard occupations, there is a great deal of evidence that many of the limited numbers of “fences” (dealers in illicit goods) were Jewish.
The active presence of Jews as “fences” is well documented in other Ashkenazi communities across Europe, as well. Why is this? This talk will explore the reasons why Jews entered and succeeded as fences and the ways in which Jewish communities dealt with this illicit activity.
Jews and non-Jews had different concepts aroung the legal status of stolen objects, and these changing ideas explain why Jews regarded “fencing” in different ways than non-Jews did. While the Christian authorities in Poland could have clamped down on fencing,had they wanted to, it seems that the benefits to society outweighed the negative consequences.
This seemingly simple topic reveals many of the complexities of inter-group relations in diverse societies.
This will be a “brown bag” lunch event. Please bring your own lunch and learn while you eat!
Speaker Bio
Prof. Shaul Stampfer grew up in Portland, Oregon, went to college in New York, and continued eastward for his graduate and post-graduate studies. He earned his Ph.D. at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has been a resident of Jerusalem ever since.

Enforcing Ethnic Nationalism: Partition and Population Exchange in the Modern Middle East
2018-01-11 15:30 - 17:00 | Thomson 317, UW Campus, 2023 Skagit Lane, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Over the past decade, pundits and diplomats alike have repeatedly proposed partition – and its twin, forcible population exchange – as “solutions” to what they depict as inveterate sectarian conflict across the Middle East. In this lecture, Laura Robson explores the twentieth-century history of such ideas, suggesting that proposals for partition and population transfer originated not from humanitarian concern for victimized communities but as concrete strategies for political and military intervention in the Middle East. In particular, she discusses how Zionism and other early twentieth century models of ethno-communal settlement contributed to a new rhetoric and practice of French and British colonial state-building via Assyrian and Armenian refugee resettlement in interwar Syria and Iraq, resulting in imperially produced geographies of ethnicity that permanently impacted the political landscape of these emerging states.
Speaker Bio
Laura Robson (PhD Yale, 2009) is an associate professor of modern Middle Eastern history at Portland State University. Her most recent book, States of Separation: Transfer, Partition, and the Making of the Modern Middle East (University of California,2017) explores the history of forced migration, population exchanges, and refugee resettlement in Iraq, Syria, and Palestine during the interwar period. She is also the author of Colonialism and Christianity in Mandate Palestine and editor of Minorities and the Modern Arab World: New Perspectives.

Book launch with Prof. Sasha Senderovich at Elliott Bay Books
2018-01-08 19:00 - 20:00 | The Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Ave, Seattle, WA, 98122, United States
Professor Sasha Senderovich will discuss his recently published translation of the 1929 Yiddish-language novel Judgment in this evening at The Elliott Bay Book Company. Prof. Senderovich’s translation, a collaboration with Professor Harriet Murav of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is the first time Bergelson’s portrait of a Jewish shtetl in the Russian Revolution has been rendered into English.
RSVP is not required for this event. Inquiries should be directed to the Elliott Bay Book Company. Learn more about this event here.
Book synopsis
Never before available in English, Judgment is a work of startling power by David Bergelson, the most celebrated Yiddish prose writer of his era.
Set in 1920 during the Russian Civil War, Judgment (titled Mides-hadin in Yiddish) traces the death of the shtetl and the birth of the “new, harsher world” created by the 1917 Russian Revolution. As Bolshevik power expanded toward the border between Poland and Ukraine, Jews and non-Jews smuggled people, goods, and anti-Bolshevik literature back and forth. In the novel’s fictional town of Golikhovke, the Bolsheviks have established their local outpost in a former monastery, where the non-Jewish Filipov acts as the arbiter of “judgment” and metes out punishments and executions to the prisoners held there: Yuzi Spivak, arrested for anti-Bolshevik activities; Aaron Lemberger, a pious and wealthy Jew; a seductive woman referred to as “the blonde” who believes she can appease Filipov with sex; and a memorable cast of toughs, smugglers, and criminals.
Ordinary people, depicted in a grotesque, aphoristic style—comparable to Isaac Babel’s Red Cavalry—confront the overwhelming, mysterious forces of history, whose ultimate outcome remains unknown. Murav and Senderovich’s new translation expertly captures Bergelson’s inimitable modernist style.
Bios
SASHA SENDEROVICH is an assistant professor of Russian and Jewish studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. He has published on Soviet Jewish culture and literature, including on Yiddish writer Moyshe Kulbak’s novel The Zelmenyaners, as well as on contemporary fiction by émigré Russian Jewish writers in America.
DAVID BERGELSON (1884–1952), a Jewish novelist, short-story writer, and literary editor, was born in Ukraine. He moved to Berlin in 1921 and traveled throughout Europe and the United States until Hitler came to power in Germany. He returned to the Soviet Union in 1934, where he was eventually executed under Stalin’s orders. The author of The End of Everything and Descent, Bergelson was one of the most widely read Yiddish-language writers of the twentieth century.
HARRIET MURAV is a professor of Russian and comparative literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of Music from a Speeding Train: Jewish Literature in Post-Revolution Russia and Holy Foolishness: Dostoevsky’s Novels and the Poetics of Cultural Critique.

Referendum on the Deli Menu: American Jewish Nostalgia and the Deli Revival
2017-12-07 18:00 - 19:00 | HUB 145, UW Campus, 4001 E Stevens Way NE, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
In recent years, there has been a nostalgic resurgence of interest in American Jewish cuisine. Restaurateurs are making American Jewish food fit for the twenty-first century, emphasizing sustainability, reliance on local goods, and the slow food movement. Through a playful, edible nostalgia for the Jewish deli, contemporary American Jews express their longing for authentic Jewish pasts, build community in the present, and pass on their values to future generations.
Bio
Prof. Rachel B. Gross is the John and Marcia Goldman Professor of American Jewish Studies in the Department of Jewish Studies at San Francisco State University. She is currently working on a book that examines the religious nature of contemporary nostalgic representations of American Jewish immigration history. She received her PhD in Religion from Princeton University in 2014.
Wenn man in seiner Jugend z.B. jeden Tag aktiv Sex hatte apothekeein.com, und das sogar mehrmals, dann ist mit 40-50 Jahren die Grenze der sexuellen Möglichkeiten erreicht – stimmt das? Physiologisch gesehen ist diese Aussage völlig unbegründet.

5th Annual International Ladino Day: Yasmin Levy in Concert
2017-11-11 20:00 - 21:30 | Stroum Jewish Community Center, 3801 East Mercer Way, Mercer Island, WA, 98040, United States
In celebration of the 5th Annual International Ladino Day, the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies is proud to present a concert with Sephardic singer Yasmin Levy, to be held at the Stroum Jewish Community Center in Seattle in conjunction with Town Hall Seattle.

In her haunting, deeply spiritual and passionate style of singing, Yasmin Levy preserves and revives the most beautiful, romantic songs of her Ladino/Judeo-Spanish heritage and fuses them with the distinctive, smoldering sounds of Andalusia. Yasmin uniquely blends old and new – traditional Sephardic Jewish ballads with new flamenco – and evokes the emotional rhythms and style of ancient Spain and the Middle East.

The performance will be followed by a Q&A with Prof. Devin Naar, the Chair of the Stroum Center’s Sephardic Studies Program, along with Jon Kertzer, co-curator of Town Hall Seattle’s Global Rhythms concert series.

Please note that tickets to this event will be sold by Stroum Jewish Community Center (SJCC) and are available online here.

Contact SJCC’s box office at BoxOffice@SJCC.org or 206.388.0833 for more details.

This event is sponsored by the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, the Sephardic Studies Program, the Stroum Jewish Community Center, and Town Hall Seattle. It is made possible by the Lucie Benveniste Kavesh Endowed Fund for Sephardic Studies.

Unsettling the Occupation: Israel and Palestine in 2017 with Prof. Gershon Shafir
2017-11-07 15:30 - 17:00 | Thomson 317, UW Campus, 2023 Skagit Lane, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Prof. Shafir will speak about his new book, A Half Century of Occupation
The Israel-Palestine conflict is one of the world’s most polarizing confrontations. Its current phase, Israel’s “temporary” occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, turned a half century old in June 2017.
Shafir will give a talk based on his new book, A Half Century of Occupation (University of California Press, 2017). In the book’s timely and provocative essays, Gershon Shafir asks three questions —What is the occupation, why has it lasted so long, and how has it transformed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Shafir demonstrates that at its fiftieth year, the occupation is riven with paradoxes, legal inconsistencies, and conflicting interests that weaken the occupiers’ hold and leave the occupation itself vulnerable to challenge.
Gershon Shafir is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego, and the founding director of its Human Rights Program. He has served as President of the Association for Israel Studies and is the author or editor of ten books, among them Land, Labor, and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882–1914. He is also the coauthor, with Yoav Peled, of Being Israeli: The Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship, which won the Middle Eastern Studies Association’s Albert Hourani Award in 2002, and the coeditor, with Mark Levine, of Struggle and Survival in Palestine/Israel.
Note: The contents of this event do not represent an official position of the University of Washington or the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies.
This event will take place on November 7, 2017 at 3:30pm in Thomson Hall 317. Refreshments will be provided; please RSVP below.

STUDENT EVENT: Feasting with Faculty ft. Prof. Senderovich
2017-11-02 18:00 - 19:30 | RSVP for location
Join Sasha Senderovich, a professor of Russian Studies and Jewish Studies, for informal conversation over a free vegetarian dinner.
Open to undergraduate and graduate students only.
No cost.
RSVP for location.
This event is limited to 15 students.

STUDENT EVENT: Medical Ethics: A Conversation with an Expert
2017-10-24 18:00 - 19:00 | THO 403
Meet other students and enjoy complementary Veggie Grill with Dr. Hadar Khazzam-Horovitz, who will challenge us with a compelling case study related to her upcoming Winter course, Bioethics: Jewish and Secular Perspectives.

In addition to being a sought-after lecturer in Hebrew, Dr. Khazzam-Horovitz received a PhD in Medical Ethics/Bioethics at the UW.

RSVP to reserve your spot.
Note: This conversation will be the main focus of the JSSAC meeting scheduled for this time.

Open to all undergrads.

Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architects of a New City
2017-10-17 19:00 - 20:30 | Kane Hall — Walker-Ames Room and 210, 4069 Spokane Ln, Seattle, WA, 98105, United States
Please join the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies and the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies for the inaugural Jack and Rebecca Benaroya Endowed Lecture.
Award-winning essayist and biographer Adina Hoffman will trace the footsteps of the three very different architects who helped to shape modern Jerusalem.
About this talk
The celebrated Berlin architect Erich Mendelsohn was a refugee from Hitler’s Germany, a man of fiercely held views about both politics and aesthetics, and the creator of several singular Jerusalem buildings. The “most private of public servants,” Austen St. Barbe Harrison, British Mandatory Palestine’s chief government architect from 1922-1937, arrived in the city steeped in the traditions of Byzantine and Islamic building, and left behind a number of remarkable structures. And the mysterious Greek-Arab architect Spyro Houris, once a fixture on the local scene, has been utterly forgotten, though his grand, Armenian-tile-clad buildings still stand, a ghostly testimony to the cultural fluidity that has historically characterized Jerusalem at its best.
Based on her critically acclaimed new book, Till We Have Built Jerusalem, Hoffman’s talk uncovers layers of one great city’s buried history as it asks what it means to be foreign and to belong.
Bio
Essayist and biographer Adina Hoffman writes often of the Middle East, approaching it from unusual angles and shedding light on overlooked dimensions of the place, its people, and their cultures. She is the author of House of Windows: Portraits from a Jerusalem Neighborhood, My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century, and, with Peter Cole, Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza, which won the American Library Association’s prize for the best Jewish book of 2011. The Los Angeles Times called her most recent book, Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architects of a New City, “brave and often beautiful,” and Haaretz described it as “a passionate, lyrical defense of a Jerusalem that could still be.” Her essays and criticism have appeared the Nation, the Washington Post, the TLS, the Boston Globe, and on the World Service of the BBC. A Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and one of the inaugural winners of the Windham-Campbell Literary Prizes, she divides her time between Jerusalem and New Haven.

This lecture is generously supported by the Jack and Rebecca Benaroya Fund for Excellence in Israel Studies.
The Jackson School and Stroum Center would like to thank the cosponsors of this event:
Department of Comparative Literature, Cinema & Media
Middle East Center – Jackson School of International Studies

Talking International Studies @ Dawg Daze
2017-09-29 11:30 - 12:30 | HUB 334, UW Campus, 4001 E Stevens Way NE, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Jewish Studies is one of seven majors offered by the Jackson School of International Studies.
Meet other International Studies students, advisers and staff to learn about classes, internships, study abroad and career possibilities all over the world.
We will have globally-minded food, fun and prizes.
Undergraduate, transfer, and graduate students welcome.

Learn Salsa with the Jackson School @ Dawg Daze
2017-09-29 10:30 - 11:30 | HUB 334, UW Campus, 4001 E Stevens Way NE, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
¡Vamos a bailar!
Learn and practice the basic rhythms and footwork of salsa dancing with Reinier Valdes, an Afro-Cuban master dancer and leader of the “La Clave Cubana” dance troupe. No dance experience or partner necessary. Free snacks.
Eat, Salsa and be merry!
Sponsored by the Jackson School of International Studies, the home of the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies.
