Seattle Sephardic Legacies | National Endowment for the Humanities
2019-06-02 14:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | HUB 160: Lyceum, 4001 E Stevens Way NE, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Trace the journey of Seattle’s Sephardic Jews from the Ottoman Empire to the Pacific Northwest through the letters, documents, books, and material artifacts transported from the Mediterranean world to the Puget Sound. Get a glimpse of the diverse and rich libraries of Ladino literature that they established right here in Seattle to transmit Ladino culture to future generations in the United States.
Do you have Ladino books, family letters, immigration documents, postcards, audio recordings, or other artifacts pertaining to the Sephardic experience? Bring your Sephardic treasures for evaluation, digitization, and inclusion in the Sephardic Studies Collection. Museum-quality professional scanning services will be available onsite!
The program will recognize and acknowledge the individuals and institutions from Seattle and beyond who have contributed their treasures to the UW Sephardic Studies Program’s Sephardic Studies Collection–now one of the largest repositories of Ladino artifacts in the world.
2:00 pm Multimedia presentation by Devin Naar, the Isaac Alhadeff Professor of Sephardic Studies and Chair of the Sephardic Studies Program
3:30 pm Exhibition, open house scanning, and kosher reception.
More information on Open House Scanning at 3:30 pm:
Do you have books, family letters, immigration documents, postcards, photographs, artifacts including tapestries, ritual items, oral histories, audio recordings, or other items related to the Sephardic Jewish experience and Ladino culture? Please bring them in for evaluation, digitization, and possible inclusion in the UW Sephardic Studies Collection. For more information contact the Sephardic Studies Research Coordinator, Ty Alhadeff, at tda2@uw.edu.
This event is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities Common Heritage Grant.

STUDENT EVENT: Meza de Ladino ~ Ladino Table
2019-06-06 11:30 - 13:00 | SMITH 320
Join Sephardic Studies at the University of Washington to explore Ladino, a Mediterranean language that blends Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Turkish, Arabic, Greek, Italian & French all into one!
Delicious Sephardic and Mediterranean treats will be provided. This week we’ll be joined by special guest Lela Abravanel, a native Ladino speaker and Holocaust survivor from the city of Salonika. You can learn a little more about her history and learn some beautiful Refranes from her gust spotlight at our 2014 International Ladino Day HERE.
Open to undergraduates, graduates, and the UW community.
All language levels welcome.
RSVP here.

Katja Petrowskaja: A Family Story Between Memory and Forgetting
2019-10-07 18:00 - 19:30 | Communications 120, UW Campus, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98105, United States
The writer Katja Petrowskaja will discuss family history and memory with Sasha Senderovich.
About the speaker
Katja Petrowskaja was born in 1970 in Kyiv, Ukraine, studied literature at the University of Tartu in Estonia, and was awarded fellowships to study at Columbia University and Stanford University. She received her doctorate in Moscow. Since 1999, she has lived and worked as a journalist in Berlin. Maybe Esther (English translation in 2018 by Shelley Frisch) is her first book, was awarded the prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 2013 in Germany, and was shortlisted for the 2019 Pushkin House Prize in the U.K.
About this talk
How do you talk about what you can’t know, and how do you bring the past to life?
The writer Katja Petrowskaja wanted to create a kind of family tree, charting relatives who had scattered across multiple countries and continents, some of whom lived through and others died in the 20th century’s many calamities, including Stalinism and the Holocaust.In the stories of her travels to Russia, Ukraine, Germany, Poland, and the United States, Petrowskaja reflects on a fragmented and traumatized century and brings to light family figures who threaten to drift into obscurity. Maybe Esther is a poignant, haunting investigation of the effects of history on one family as well as a deeply affecting exploration of memory.
This talk is hosted by the departments of Germanics and Slavic Languages & Literatures. It is co-sponsored by the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, the Simpson Center‘s Translation Studies Hub and the Transcultural Approaches to Europe Colloquium Series, and the Goethe Pop Up Seattle.
Free and open to UW students, faculty, staff, and the larger public.
RSVP: https://bit.ly/PetrowskajaUWEvent

STUDENT EVENT | A Colloquium with Katja Petrowskaja on Language, Memory, and the Holocaust
2019-10-08 12:00 - 13:30 | WA
Graduate students, undergrads, and faculty are invited to join acclaimed Ukrainian-German author, literary scholar, and journalist Katja Petrowskaja for a lunchtime colloquium on the process of writing and translating a multilingual, transnational family history whose archives have been erased by the Holocaust. Petrowskaja garnered wide international acclaim with her book Vielleicht Esther (Maybe Esther) which was published in 2014 with Suhrkamp Verlag and has been translated into more than twenty languages. “An unfinished family history” in which Petrowskaja “writes about her journeys … reflecting on a fragmented and traumatized century, and placing her focus on figures whose faces are no longer visible” (Suhrkamp). For an excerpt from its fifth chapter, titled “Maybe Esther,” she was awarded the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 2013.
Moderated by Jason Groves (Germanics)

Lunch will be provided and a limited number of copies of Maybe Esther will be available to confirmed participants beforehand.Please RSVP to Prof. Sasha Senderovich at senderov@uw.edu for location.

***

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Germanics, the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, and the Goethe Pop Up Seattle. It is affiliated with the Simpson Center-sponsored 2019-2020 colloquium on Transnational Approaches to Europe and the Translation Studies Hub.

10/29 TALK | No Pasarán!: Jewish Collective Memory in the Spanish Civil War
2019-10-29 17:30 - 18:50 | HUB 145, UW Campus, 4001 E Stevens Way NE, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Dr. Amelia Glaser of the University of California, San Diego, will speak about how three Jewish poets who wrote in Yiddish, Soviet Peretz Markish, American Aaron Kurtz, and Mexican poet Jacobo Glantz, addressed the fight against fascism in 1930s Spain, the massive participation by international volunteer soldiers, including many Jews, and the long, troubled history of Jews in Spain.
About this talk
“I am yet again your guest!,” wrote the Soviet Yiddish poet Peretz Markish in his 1936 poem, Spain, “The honor makes me sad!” The Spanish Civil War (1936-1938) united the anti-fascist left around the world. Jewish leftists, in particular, took the rallying cry of “No Pasarán” (“They must not pass”) to signify not only the necessity of the Spanish struggle against the monarchists, but a united struggle against Hitler, Franco, and Mussolini.
William Gropper, illustration in Jacobo Glantz, Fonen in blut [Bloodied Flags] (Mexico City: Gezbir, 1936) The Soviet journalist Melech Epstein went so far as to declare that “No ethnic group in Europe or the United States was so deeply touched by the Spanish civil war as was the Jewish …”Although many antifascists across ethnic groups traveled to Spain to join the war effort, others fought on a literary front. This lecture will present and analyze three book-length poetic cycles about Spain in Yiddish, by the Soviet poet Peretz Markish, the American poet Aaron Kurtz, and the Mexican poet Jacobo Glantz. Markish, Kurtz, and Glantz merge collective Jewish memory of the Spanish Inquisition with descriptions of the Spanish Civil War to yield visions of a collective future for Spain that Jews were participating in creating. As these works help to demonstrate, the Spanish Civil War can be considered the beginning of a decade-long international struggle against the rising threat of fascism.
About the speaker
Amelia Glaser is Associate Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature at UC San Diego, where she also directs both the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Program and the Jewish Studies Program. She is the author of Jews and Ukrainians in Russia’s Literary Borderlands (Northwestern U.P., 2012), the translator of Proletpen: America’s Rebel Yiddish Poets (U Wisconsin Press, 2005), and the editor of Stories of Khmelnytsky: Competing Literary Legacies of the 1648 Ukrainian Cossack Uprising (Stanford U.P., 2015). Her co-edited anthology, with Steven Lee, Comintern Aesthetics, is forthcoming next year with U. Toronto Press. She is currently completing her second monograph, provisionally titled Passwords: Yiddish Poetry in the Age of Internationalism.
Glaser will also give a lunchtime talk on translation studies in the Simpson Center on October 29. For more information on that event, visit the Simpson Center’s calendar here.
This event is cosponsored by the departments of Spanish and Portuguese, Slavic Languages and Literatures, & the Translation Studies Hub initiative at the Simpson Center for the Humanities.

STUDENT EVENT | Lessons on Communicating with the Media from a Middle East Commentator
2019-11-06 11:45 - 13:30 | RSVP for venue
Dr. Marwa Maziad, regular BBC political commentator on global affairs, will speak about her experiences as a journalist and political analyst for a variety of networks and will offer tips for speaking effectively with the media.
Lunch provided.
Open to undergraduate and graduate students.
Please RSVP to Student Engagement Director Lauren Kurland at kurlandl@uw.edu for the location.

11/19 TALK | American Jews and Israel in the Trump Era: Polarization and Protest
2019-11-19 19:00 - 20:30 | Kane Hall 110, 4069 Spokane Lane, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Dov Waxman (UCLA) will give the 2019 Jack and Rebecca Benaroya Endowed Lecture in Israel Studies, on the topic of how American Jewish support for Israel is shifting in the context of the Donald Trump presidency.
Note: Seating for this lecture is first come, first served. Doors will open at 6:45 p.m. We cannot guarantee late seating.
About the talk
In his 2016 book Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict Over Israel (Princeton University Press), Dov Waxman argued that the age of uncritical and unconditional American Jewish support for Israel is over, and that Israel is now becoming a source of division in the American Jewish community.
In this talk, he will discuss how the Presidency of Donald Trump has deepened American Jewish divisions over Israel, heightened communal concerns about anti-Semitism, and mobilized a new generation of Jewish activists. As a result, American Jewry’s relationship with Israel, and American Jewish politics, is being reshaped.
About the speaker
Dov Waxman is the incoming Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Chair in Israel Studies and director of the Nazarian Center for Israel Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is currently the director of Northeastern University’s Middle East Studies program and the co-director of its Middle East Center.

An award-winning professor, he previously taught at the City University of New York, Bowdoin College, and the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. He has also been a visiting fellow at Tel Aviv University, Bar-Ilan University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Oxford University. He has a BA in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from Oxford University, and an MA and PhD in International Relations from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. Professor Waxman’s research focuses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israeli foreign policy, U.S.-Israel relations, and American Jewry’s relationship with Israel.
He is the author of dozens of scholarly articles and four books: The Pursuit of Peace and The Crisis of Israeli Identity: Defending / Defining the Nation (Palgrave, 2006), Israel’s Palestinians: The Conflict Within (with Ilan Peleg, Cambridge University Press, 2011), Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel (Princeton University Press, 2016), and most recently, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs To Know (Oxford University Press, 2019). He has also been published in The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Atlantic Monthly, Salon, Foreign Policy, The Forward, and Haaretz.
Light vegetarian reception to follow.

Ladino Day 2019: Exploring Sephardic Life Cycle Customs
2019-12-05 19:00 - 21:00 | HUB 160: Lyceum, 4001 E Stevens Way NE, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
De la fasha asta la mortaja: From the cradle to the grave
Ladino Day 2019 will survey the life cycle customs and traditions unique to Sepharadim from the Ottoman Empire. From berit mila to bar mitsva, weddings to funerals, the program will highlight a selection of major life events and explore shifts in Sephardic culture and the Ladino language through textual and material artifacts, oral histories, and photographs. Performances of Ladino songs by the Ladineros, Seattle’s long-time Ladino conversation group, a Ladino reading by Anna Jacoby (Northwest Yeshiva High School ’22), and a multimedia presentation by Professor Devin Naar will bring memories of these Sephardic traditions to life.
Share your memories and photos with us

The Sephardic Studies Program is actively collecting photographs for the Sephardic Studies Digital Collection. We are specifically interested in photos that document:

birth
berit mila (circumcision)
pidyon ha-ben (ceremony for the first born son)
zeved ha-bat (baby naming for a girl)
bar/bat mitsva (Jewish coming of age)
weddings
funerals/mourning

Please share your photos on this form.
We are also interested in hearing your memories, reflections, and impressions of Sephardic life cycle events that you experienced. Did your wedding have a Sephardic twist? Does your family have unique traditions related to celebrating birth, death, or anything in between? Share your memories with us here.
Beyond Ladino Day: Sephardic life cycles digital exhibit
The Sephardic Studies Program will be piloting a new digital exhibit with the same theme as this year’s Ladino Day celebration. The exhibit will go live online the evening of December 5th and will offer a deeper dive into the themes, questions, and artifacts presented at the public Ladino Day program. Make sure you are following the Sephardic Studies Program on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and are signed up for our e-newsletter, to receive updates about the digital exhibit!
Register for the event
If you are a UW student or faculty member, please register for a UW student or faculty ticket.
Because of a high level of interest in the program, our remaining general-audience tickets are very limited!

This event is made possible through the generosity of the Lucie Benveniste Kavesh Endowed Fund for Sephardic Studies. Cosponsored by the Departments of Spanish & Portuguese Studies, Linguistics, History, and Anthropology; The University of Washington Libraries; The Turkish and Ottoman Studies Fund at the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations; Sephardic Bikur Holim, Congregation Ezra Bessaroth, and the Seattle Sephardic Network.

1/28 TALK | Behind the Scenes with NPR's Correspondent in Jerusalem
2020-01-28 19:30 - 21:00 | Kane Hall 130, 4069 Spokane Lane, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States

2/4 TALK | "Family Papers" Book Talk with Sarah Abrevaya Stein
2020-02-04 19:00 - 20:30 | The Seattle Public Library Central Library, 1000 4th Ave, Seattle, Washington 98104, The Seattle Public Library, Central Library, 1000 4th Ave, Seattle, Washington 98104, Seattle, WA, 98104, United States
About the event
Join the Sephardic Studies Program at the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies and the Seattle Public Library for a conversation with Dr. Devin E. Naar and Dr. Sarah Abrevaya Stein about her new book, Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century.
Note: Seating for this lecture is first come, first served, and no RSVP is required. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. We cannot guarantee late seating.
About the book
Explore the intertwined histories of Sephardic Jewry through the personal correspondence of the Levy family from Salonica. In “Family Papers,” Stein weaves together a narrative of the Sephardic diaspora through the lens of one family during the most tumultuous moment in European history.
About the author
Sarah Abrevaya Stein is the Maurice Amado Endowed Chair in Sephardic Studies and Sady and Ludwig Kahn Director of the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies at the University of California Los Angeles. She is also co-editor (with David Biale of UCD) of Stanford University Press Series in Jewish History and Culture and co-editor (with Tony Michels and Ken Moss) of Jewish Social Studies. She is the author or editor of nine books, and her books and articles have won numerous prizes, including two National Jewish Book Awards, the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

2/12 STUDENT EVENT | Crossroads: Exploring Anti-Immigrant and Anti-Semitic Sentiment
2020-02-12 17:00 - 19:00 | The HUB
Learn and talk about the relationship between anti-Semitism and anti-immigrant sentiment from historical and contemporary perspectives, with a particular focus on Jewish and Latinx immigration.
UW professors Devin Naar, Kathie Friedman and Angelina Godoy will speak on a panel to their area of expertise, followed by Q&A.
Doors open for registration, check-in, and food (vegetarian) at 5PM.
You must register to attend this free event! https://tinyurl.com/CrossroadsUW
You can also learn more on our Facebook event page.
This event is intended for current undergraduate and graduate students. A limited number of seats are available for members of the general public, as well.
Organized by the Antisemitism Working Group RSO, a student organization at the University of Washington.

2/27 STUDENT EVENT | Visit to the Holocaust Center for Humanity
2020-02-27 15:00 - 17:00 | Holocaust Center for Humanity, 2045 2nd Avenue, Seattle, WA, United States
Undergrad and grad students are invited to join SCJS student engagement director Lauren Kurland for a guided tour of the Holocaust Center for Humanity in downtown Seattle.
Meet at 2:30 pm on the UW campus, or at the Center (2045 2nd Ave) at 3:00 pm.
We will watch a film, explore the permanent exhibit, and meet with Legacy Speaker Ron Friedman.
The tour will end by 5:00 pm.
Limit for the tour is 50 students.
Note that weapons of any kind are not allowed inside the building, including pocket knives and pepper spray. Please leave large bags and backpacks at home; otherwise, bags may be safely stored in our atrium, and/or are subject to search before bringing into the main building.
Attendees are invited for dinner at a local restaurant and reflection on the experience afterward. Note: Limit for dinner is 15 students.
No cost. Thanks to the SAMIS Foundation for underwriting the cost of the museum admission.
RSVP required. When you RSVP, please indicate: 1) where you will meet us (UW light rail or at the museum) 2) if you will be joining for dinner afterward

AUDIO | From Humanitarian Relief to Holocaust Rescue: The Story of Tracy Strong, Jr.
2020-03-03 19:00 - 20:30 | Kane Hall 110, 4069 Spokane Lane, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
An audio recording of this lecture is available:

Born in Seattle in 1915, Tracy Strong, Jr. served as a humanitarian relief worker in the Vichy internment camps for “undocumented” refugees, primarily Jews from central Europe, in southern France from 1941-42. Convinced that the most important goal should be to get people out of the camps, not improve life in the camps, Strong set up one of the first “safe houses” for refugees in the French rescue village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.
His story illustrates how individuals, working together with community and organizational networks, were able to oppose Nazi policies and save lives in World War II, and offers insights into how concerned citizens can organize to resist inhumane policies today.
About the speaker
Christopher R. Browning is the Frank Porter Graham Professor of History Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was formerly on the faculty at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA. He has published nine books on the Holocaust, including “Ordinary Men,” “Origins of the Final Solution,” and “Remembering Survival,” all of which won the National Jewish Book Award. He is currently a visiting instructor for the University of Washington’s Department of History.

This event is generously supported by Deborah and Doug Rosen.

POSTPONED | Hans Calmeyer and Holocaust Rescue in the Netherlands
2020-04-10 16:30 - 17:30 | Thomson Hall 101, 2023 King Lane, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States

STUDENT EVENT: Jewish Studies Virtual Coffee Hour
2020-04-30 14:30 - 15:15, 2020-05-04 11:30 - 12:15, 2020-05-12 14:00 - 14:45 | RSVP for Zoom link
Undergrads are invited to grab a cup of coffee or tea and join student engagement director Lauren Kurland and other students involved with the Stroum Center to hang out, get to know each other a little better, and hopefully laugh a little! Attendance limited to 5 students so we can all “see” each other and interact. Note, this coffee “hour” is only 45 minutes. Multiple coffee hours will be offered this spring to accommodate schedules.

6/1 COLLOQUIUM | Regional and Global Dimensions to Israeli Foreign Policy: Shifting Relationships with the Palestinian Territories, Ghana, and Taiwan
2020-06-01 11:30 - 13:00 | Zoom
University of Washington Jewish Studies graduate fellows Bret Windhauser, Francis Abugbilla and Eryk Waligora offer perspectives on Israeli foreign policy.
Presentation #1 — Bret Windhauser, M.A. student, Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations
“Over and Under the Border: Goods Smuggling in Israel/Palestine”
Presentation #2 — Francis Abugbilla, Ph.D. candidate, International Studies
“Diplomacy at the Crossroads of Recognition and Development: Israel-Ghana Relations Explained”
Presentation #3 — Eryk Waligora, M.A. student, International Studies
“Unrecognized: How Israel and Taiwan are Forging New Soft Power Relations”

VIDEO | Sasha Senderovich — Against Nostalgia: The Old Country in the Jewish American Imagination
2020-06-01 16:00 - 16:30 | WA
Join Dr. Sasha Senderovich, assistant professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Washington, for a 20-minute “quick talk” on immigrants’ perspectives towards “the old country” as seen in American Jewish literature, centering around a poem by the Yiddish poet Moyshe-Leyb Halpern (1886-1932).
This talk is available online:

About the talk
The vast majority of Jews who arrived in the United States at the turn of the 20th century were Yiddish-speaking Jews from the Russian Empire. Their progeny — Ashkenazi Jews who, by the turn of the 21st century, have been Americans for three or four generations — derive the understanding of their collective history, in part, from the popular representations of the “old country,” disseminated through such mass culture productions as the musical “Fiddler on the Roof.”
But the story — and history — is more complicated. In this talk we will look at the famous, caustic poem “Zlochov, My Home,” written by the modernist Yiddish poet Moyshe-Leyb Halpern, who immigrated to New York City in 1908. The discussion will focus on the poet’s imperative to think beyond and even against nostalgia for the “old country” as he tries to make sense of his new world.
This talk will offer a preview of the fall course Jewish American Literature and Culture, and will be followed by a Q&A session with questions submitted via http://www.slido.com and moderated by a staff member. Please RSVP below for more details.
Get ready

Read the poem “Zlochov, My Home,” in English translation (or Yiddish)
Learn more about Sasha Senderovich’s fall 2020 course, JEW ST 357, Jewish American Literature and Culture. This course considers ways in which American Jews assimilate and resist assimilation, while Jewish writers, filmmakers, comedians, and graphic novelists imitate and transform American life and literature — with particular emphasis on questions of immigration, identity, gender, sexuality, race, inter-generational trauma, and cultural memory. Bookmark the course on MyPlan.

About the speaker
Sasha Senderovich holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University (2010). His published work includes articles on Russian Jewish writers David Bergelson and Isaac Babel, as well as on contemporary English-language fiction by Russian Jewish émigré authors, including Gary Shteynart and Anya Ulinich. His and Harriet Murav’s critical translation, from the Yiddish, of David Bergelson’s “Judgment: A Novel” was published in 2017. He is currently at work on his first book manuscript, “How the Soviet Jew Was Made: Culture and Mobility after the Revolution.”
In addition to his academic work, Sasha has published journalism and public scholarship in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Tablet, Lilith, The Forward, The New York Times, The New Republic, and The New Yorker’s Page-turner blog (these articles can be found here). One of his additional regular activities involves summertime teaching as a faculty member of the Great Jewish Books program for high school students, in Amherst, Massachusetts.
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VIDEO | Chagall, Modigliani, & Jewish Painters from the Russian "Pale of Settlement"
2020-06-02 16:00 - 16:30 | WA
Join Dr. Galya Diment, professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Washington, for a 20-minute “quick talk” on how early 20th-century painters Marc Chagall and Amedeo Modigliani related to Jewishness in their lives and art — and how their work contrasts with that of other Jewish painters from the Russian “Pale of Settlement.”

This talk is available online:

About this talk
The Russian “Pale of Settlement” was the region of western Imperial Russia in which Jews were allowed to settle permanently. Many gifted painters emerged from this area in the early twentieth century, though few were as famous as Marc Chagall (1887-1985), a modernist painter famous for portraying biblical scenes and themes in his art.
In the talk, Galya Diment will discuss Marc Chagall’s career alongside that of his contemporary, Amedeo Modigliani. Then she will offer an overview of other Jewish painters in the “Pale of Settlement” region, previewing her fall 2020 course, RUSS 426, Painters from the Russian Pale of Jewish Settlement.
Learn more

Read Galya Diment’s new article on Chagall and Modigliani in Paris: “Judaism vs. Cubism in Paris” (Tablet, 2020).
Galya Diment will offer a course in early twentieth-century Jewish painters in fall 2020: RUSS 426, Russian Art and Architecture — Painters from the Russian Pale of Jewish Settlement, looking at the work of Marc Chagall, El Lissitzky, Leon Bakst, and others, and the history and debates around their work. Bookmark the course on MyPlan.

About the speaker
Galya Diment is professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor in the Humanities at the University of Washington. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, and has authored and edited six books, including “Pniniad: Vladimir Nabokov and Marc Szeftel” (2013), and “A Russian Jew of Bloomsbury: The Life and Times of Samuel Koteliansky” (2013).
Her essay about her grandfather, who was a rabbi near Vitebsk in present-day Belarus, was featured in a Vitebsk publication “Mishpoka” in 2013. Her articles have also appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, New York Magazine, and London Magazine. She is currently working on a book about Jewish painters from Vitebsk at the turn of the twentieth century, titled “Vitebsk and Beyond: Yehuda Pen, Marc Chagall, and Leon Gaspard.”

6/3 COLLOQUIUM | Violence, Victimhood & the "Natural Order" in the Armenian Genocide & Holocaust
2020-06-03 11:30 - 13:00 | Zoom
Jewish Studies graduate fellows Oya Rose Aktas and Derek Wiebke discuss victim / perpetrator relationships in history and literature.
Presentation #1 — Oya Rose Aktas, Ph.D. student, History
“Beyond Victim and Perpetrator: Understanding the 1915 Genocide Through the Jewish Press Between the Liberal and National Orders”
Presentation #2 — Derek Wiebke, M.A. student, Germanics
“Between Victim and Perpetrator: Reading the Holocaust as Ecological Wound in Elfriede Jelinek’s ‘The Children of the Dead’”

VIDEO | Richard Block —The 2015 Hungarian Drama "Son of Saul" and a New Chapter in Films About the Holocaust
2020-06-03 16:00 - 16:30 | WA
Join Dr. Richard Block, professor of Germanics at the University of Washington, for a 20-minute “quick talk” on how the 2015 Hungarian historical drama “Son of Saul” represents a turning point in how the Holocaust is portrayed in film.

The talk is available online:

About the talk
This talk explores how László Nemes’s 2015 film “Son of Saul” responds to the challenges put forth some two decades earlier by Claude Lanzmann’s groundbreaking 1985 documentary, “Shoah.” Specifically, Block will discuss how “Son of Saul” defies Lanzmann’s dismissal of any attempt to represent the Shoah, and offers instead “a biographical fable.”
Learn more

Richard Block will offer a fall 2020 course on portrayals of the Holocaust in film: JEW ST 175, Popular Film and the Holocaust. Bookmark the course on MyPlan.

About the speaker
Richard Block is professor of Germanics at the University of Washington. He received his Ph.D. in German literature and critical theory from Northwestern, and has published several books, including “Echoes of a Queer Messianic: From Frankenstein to Brokeback Mountain” (2018) and “The Spell of Italy: Vacation, Magic and the Attraction of Goethe” (2006).
He frequently teaches courses on Jewish-German relations and the Holocaust, and emphasizes placing philosophical, literary and cultural texts (including films) in dialogue with each other in his work with students.

VIDEO | The History of a Page: Reflecting on the Talmud as a Physical Book (and What I've Learned Since My Stroum Lecture 23 Years Ago)
2020-06-04 16:00 - 17:00 | WA
Dr. David Stern of Harvard University will discuss what he’s learned about the Talmud — a carefully curated collection of thousands of years’ worth of rabbinic commentaries on Jewish law and the Jewish Bible — and its shifting form over time, based on research related to his recently published book, “The Jewish Bible: A Material History,” part of the University of Washington Press’s Samuel and Althea Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies series.
This talk is available online:

A page from the Talmud, with commentary and notes surrounding central text. Example from YUTorah Online, a project of Yeshiva University’s Center for the Jewish Future.
About the talk
The layout of the Talmudic page, with its text in the center surrounded by a sea of commentaries, is the iconic page format of the Jewish book. Where does this page layout come from, and what is its history? What impact has it had on the reception of the Talmud, and the way the Talmud has been studied over the centuries?
In this special online presentation, Stern will reflect on what he’s learned about the Talmud and its physical form in the years since his original Stroum Lecture in Jewish Studies in 1997 — and will discuss how the physicality and formatting of books can profoundly impact the way we read and interpret them.
About the speaker
David Stern is the Harry Starr Professor of Classical and Modern Jewish and Hebrew Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature and the Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University. He has been the recipient of many fellowships and awards, including a junior fellowship in Harvard’s Society of Fellows and a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute.
The main topic of Stern’s scholarship is the nature of Jewish literary creativity within its larger historical and cultural contexts, and he has written articles, essays, and books on virtually every period of Jewish literary history from the early post-Biblical to the contemporary.
His work has primarily focused on two areas. The first of these is classical rabbinic and medieval Hebrew literature, with a special interest in biblical interpretation (Rabbinic midrash in particular) and its intersection with contemporary literary theory. The second field is the history of the Jewish book as a material object, and specifically the histories of the four classics works of Jewish literary and religious tradition: the Hebrew Bible, the Babylonian Talmud, the prayerbook, and the Passover Haggadah.

6/5 COLLOQUIUM | Tracing Unruly Edges: Jewish Embodiment from Babylonia to the Mediterranean
2020-06-05 11:30 - 13:00 | Zoom

Seattle Jewish Film Festival Sephardic Spotlight | The Final Hour
2020-06-17 19:00 - 2020-06-19 19:00 | WA, United States
Join the Seattle Jewish Film Festival for this year’s Sephardic Spotlight film, the 2019 documentary “The Final Hour,” directed by Ҫağlar Malli. The film will stream online from June 17 through June 19, 2020 as part of the Seattle Jewish Film Festival’s 2020 online programming.
About the film: Deniz Bensusan is a young Sephardic woman who has just come to the realization that her ancestral language, Ladino (also known as Judeo-Spanish), is on the verge of extinction. Alarmed by the imminent demise of her heritage, she embarks on a journey of discovery in an attempt to uncover the roots of her Sephardic culture, language, and traditions. She voyages across Europe through Turkey, Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Poland to visit sites where her relatives once lived and thrived.
Join producer Cem Kitapci, subject Deniz Bensusan, and UW Sephardic Studies Chair and Isaac Alhadeff Professor of Sephardic Studies Devin Naar for a Zoom discussion of the film on June 21 at 1:00 p.m.
About Cem Kitapci: Cem Kitapci has been in film production for ten years and is the cofounder of Case Productions UK Ltd. He coproduced “The Final Hour” with Selim Kemahli.
Buy tickets and learn more on the Seattle Jewish Film Festival website.

Insights from a Half-Century of Ladino Studies: David M. Bunis in Conversation with Devin E. Naar
2020-08-09 10:00 - 11:00 | WA
Join us for an online conversation between Professor David Bunis, internationally renowned expert on the Ladino language and chair of Ladino Studies at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Dr. Devin E. Naar, Isaac Alhadeff Professor of Sephardic Studies and chair of the Sephardic Studies Program at the University of Washington.
About this event
As a world-renowned authority on Ladino (also known as Judezmo) at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Professor David Bunis has dedicated his career to documenting and analyzing Ladino, and inspiring generations of students to take an interest in this endangered Sephardic language.
What led Professor Bunis, originally from New York City and interested in Yiddish, to delve into the realm of Ladino? What people, places, and experiences most shaped his scholarly trajectory? What major insights has Professor Bunis gleaned along the way? And what does the future hold for Ladino?
Register for this event
*NOTE: This event is an online webinar. Please register below to receive a link to attend. The link will be e-mailed to you several days in advance of the event, and again several hours before the event begins.*

About the speaker
David Bunis is the chair of Ladino Studies at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem and was a visiting professor at the University of Washington in 2013-2014. He is the world’s leading authority in the field of Ladino linguistics and one of most notable instructors of the language in the world. Professor Bunis received his Ph.D. in linguistics from Columbia University and has published extensively on Ladino, including in the fields of sociocultural linguistics, language and politics, and translation studies, including the translations of important Ladino texts from the 16th to 20th centuries. He has also authored a highly regarded Ladino language textbook and is an expert in soletreo, the traditional Sephardic Hebrew cursive script.

10/6 TALK | The History of Jewish Difference and Anti-Judaism as Ideology
2020-10-06 16:00 - 17:30 | Zoom

10/13 KEYNOTE | The Difficulty of Confronting the Holocaust — Mass Murder in Jedwabne, Poland
2020-10-13 19:00 - 20:30 | Zoom

10/20 TALK | Racism, Anti-Semitism, and the Lines of Solidarity
2020-10-20 16:00 - 17:30 | Zoom

10/25 CONFERENCE | Jewish Romance in the Middle Ages: Literature, Piety, and Cultural Translation
2020-10-25 08:00 - 11:00 | WA
