STUDENT EVENT: The Rabbis on Love
2019-02-14 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Los_Angeles)
Painting: “The Bride and Groom at the Eiffel Tower” by Marc Chagall, 1939.
This Valentine’s Day, join Mika Ahuvia, assistant professor of Jewish studies and comparative religion at the Jackson School of International Studies, for insights on love and relationships, courtesy the influential rabbis of the classic era, when Rabbis Hillel and Shammai lived and worked.
Learn about and discuss rabbis’ perspectives on love, desire, and relationships, and benefit from the collective wisdom of deep thinkers from centuries past. Open to all undergraduate and graduate students!
Coffee and pastries provided. RSVP to Lauren Kurland for location (a coffee shop on the Ave).
To request disability accommodation, contact the Disability Services Office at 206-543-6450 (voice), 206-543-6452 (TTY), 206-685-7264 (fax), or dso@uw.edu. The University of Washington makes every effort to honor disability accommodation requests. Requests can be responded to most effectively if received as far in advance of the event as possible, preferably at least 10 days.

Can Patients Refuse Lifesaving Treatment? A Comparative Review of Secular, Jewish & Israeli Perspectives
2019-02-20 19:00 - 20:30 | Thomson Hall 101, 2023 King Lane, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Scenarios where patients refuse lifesaving care raise difficult ethical and legal questions. Physicians are faced with the decision of whether to forgo beneficial therapy, or alternatively force treatment on an unwilling patient. In these undesirable situations, the ethical principle of respecting the patient’s autonomy is in direct conflict with the ethical principle of beneficence.
In this talk, Dr. Hadar Khazzam-Horovitz will examine whether it is morally and legally permissible for healthcare professionals to treat patients without consent in order to save their lives. To answer this question, Khazzam-Horovitz will review two different approaches: secular ones as well as Jewish-rabbinic discourses. She will also discuss the Israeli legal system’s attempt to find a compromise that incorporates both the secular and the Jewish perspectives.
About the speaker

Dr. Hadar Khazzam-Horovitz is a lecturer of bioethics and Modern Hebrew at Stroum Center for Jewish Studies at the Henry M. Jackson School ofInternational Studies. She earned her Ph.D. in Law from the University of Washington School of Law. She was a member of the Human Subjects Division committee (IRB) at University of Washington. Previously, she was an Israeli attorney specializing in insurance litigation.

STUDENT EVENT: Learning from the Holocaust in the Age of Trump
2019-02-26 10:30 - 12:00
How can history help us to make sense of the Trump era, when the president and other politicians regularly stoke fears about immigrants, minorities, and people from other countries for their own political benefit?
Join Richard Block, associate professor of Germanics and Jewish Studies, for a discussion of Nazi Germany and how its history of weaponized fear against “the other” can inform our present-day understanding of hate against immigrants and minorities in the United States and elsewhere, especially after the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018.
No prior knowledge required! Attendees will learn from Professor Block, engage with a short reading, and participate in an informal discussion of the issues. Coffee and pastries will be provided.
All undergraduate and graduate students are welcome.
Please RSVP to kurlandl@uw.edu for location (a cafe on the Ave).
Richard Block will be teaching a related class in the spring, “German/Jewish Writers: The Immigrant Experience” (GERMAN / JEW ST 295).
To request disability accommodation, contact the Disability Services Office at 206-543-6450 (voice), 206-543-6452 (TTY), 206-685-7264 (fax), or dso@uw.edu. The University of Washington makes every effort to honor disability accommodation requests. Requests can be responded to most effectively if received as far in advance of the event as possible, preferably at least 10 days.

STUDENT/FACULTY EVENT: Writing Displacement: A Seminar on Memoir with Author Ayelet Tsabari
2019-02-28 11:30 - 13:00 | RSVP for venue
At this lunchtime seminar for UW graduate students, faculty, and advanced undergraduates, the writer Ayelet Tsabari will speak about her new memoir, “The Art of Leaving,” and lead a discussion of a short excerpt from the book that will be made available to the participants ahead of time. Tsabari will also discuss the process of writing and publishing a memoir.
“The Art of Leaving” traces Tsabari’s journey from her childhood home on the outskirts of Tel Aviv to Vancouver and Toronto — and from her native Hebrew to her adopted English — alongside the story of her grandparents’ migration from Yemen to the land of Israel in the 1930s. An astute observer of lives of Mizrahi Jews (Jews of Arab lands) in Israel and beyond in her award-winning short story collection “The Best Place on Earth” (2016), in “The Art of Leaving” Tsabari delivers a powerful coming-of-age story that reflects on identity and belonging and explores themes of family and home — both inherited and chosen.
Please RSVP to jewishst@uw.edu by February 27 for location and a PDF copy of the reading; a vegetarian lunch will be provided.
Are you an undergraduate student? Ayelet Tsabari will discuss the book and her writing process with undergrads over coffee on Friday, March 1, from 10:00am – 11:30am. Learn more and RSVP for this undergrad discussion group here.
This event is organized by the Simpson Center for the Humanities and the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies. Ayelet Tsabari’s visit to UW is further supported by the Israel Studies Program, the Sephardic Studies and Canadian Studies Programs, the Middle East Center, the departments of English; Comparative Literature, Cinema & Media; Near Eastern Languages & Civilization; and Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies.
About the speaker
Ayelet Tsabari lives and teaches Creative Writing in Toronto and was born in Israel to a large family of Yemeni descent. Her first book, “The Best Place on Earth,” won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award and was longlisted to the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Learn more on her website.
To request disability accommodation, contact the Disability Services Office at 206-543-6450 (voice), 206-543-6452 (TTY), 206-685-7264 (fax), or dso@uw.edu. The University of Washington makes every effort to honor disability accommodation requests. Requests can be responded to most effectively if received as far in advance of the event as possible, preferably at least 10 days.

"The Art of Leaving" with Author Ayelet Tsabari: Language, Longing, and Belonging
2019-02-28 17:30 - 19:00 | Ethnic Cultural Theater, 3940 Brooklyn Ave NE, Seattle, WA, 98105
Author Ayelet Tsabari will discuss her new memoir, “The Art of Leaving,” with Professor Sasha Senderovich (Slavic & Jewish Studies) in this evening of conversation and selected readings from the book.
“The Art of Leaving” traces Tsabari’s journey from her childhood home on the outskirts of Tel Aviv to Vancouver and Toronto — and from her native Hebrew to her adopted English — alongside the story of her grandparents’ migration from Yemen to the land of Israel in the 1930s.
An astute observer of lives of Mizrahi Jews (Jews of Arab lands) in Israel and beyond in her award-winning short story collection “The Best Place on Earth” (2016), in “The Art of Leaving” Tsabari delivers a powerful coming-of-age story that reflects on identity and belonging and explores themes of family and home — both inherited and chosen.
Please RSVP for this event at the bottom of the page.
About the Author
Ayelet Tsabari was born in Israel to a large family of Yemeni descent. Her first book, “The Best Place on Earth,” won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award and was longlisted to the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.
“The Best Place on Earth” was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice selection and a Kirkus Review best book of 2016, and has been published internationally. Excerpts from her memoir, “The Art of Leaving,” have won a National Magazine Award, a Western Magazine Award, and The New Quarterly’s Edna Staebler award. In 2014, Tsabari was awarded a Chalmers Arts Fellowship. She is a graduate of the Creative Writing MFA Program at Guelph and teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto.
About “The Art of Leaving” & “The Best Place on Earth”
Author Ayelet Tsabari begins her new memoir, “The Art of Leaving” (2019), with the story of her father’s promise on her tenth birthday to publish her childhood writings as her first book. A lawyer who had published one poem as a young man and who spent a lifetime assiduously writing verse and prose on sheets of paper kept in his bedside drawer, he bequeathed to his daughter an insatiable desire for wordsmithing and storytelling. Tsabari’s father fell ill within days of making this promise and died shortly thereafter. It would take Ayelet Tsabari another two and a half decades to see her first book published—not in her home country of Israel or in her native Hebrew, but in Canada, her adopted homeland, and in English, her adopted tongue.
In that first book, “The Best Place on Earth” (2013), Tsabari made her debut as an intricate teller of stories about a kind of protagonist she did not see in the Israeli literature she avidly read during her childhood: Mizrahi Jews. Jews who trace their families’ lineage to North Africa and the Middle East— Tsabari’s family had come from Yemen — had been largely invisible in the Ashkenazi-centric literary culture of Israel. Mizrahi voices had also been absent in English-language Jewish literatures in Canada and the United States. Tsabari’s first book — a collection of astutely observed stories about women, lovers, children, soldiers, poets — had opened up this theretofore underexamined experience; it won the prestigious Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature in 2015.
In “The Art of Leaving,” which will be published a week before her visit to Seattle, Tsabari weaves together stories of her own migration from the outskirts of Tel Aviv to Vancouver and Toronto, by way of much global peregrination, with the stories of her grandparents’ travel, on foot, to the Land of Israel through the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. In essays on heartbreak and loss of beloved people and native language, drug-fueled wanderlust and the discovery of dark family secrets, betrayal and abandonment, motherhood, and the ever-unquenched thirst for writing, Tsabari explores how the past haunts and shapes the stories that define us and that we tell ourselves.
Ayelet Tsabari’s visit, scheduled for February 28 – March 1, 2019, is sponsored by the Israel Studies Program at the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies and is co-sponsored by the Sephardic Studies Program, the Canadian Studies Center, and the Middle East Center, Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies; and the Departments of English; Comparative Literature, Cinema & Media; Near Eastern Languages & Civilization; and Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies; as well as the Simpson Center for the Humanities.

STUDENT EVENT: Conversation with author Ayelet Tsabari
2019-03-01 10:00 - 11:30 | RSVP for location
Undergrads are invited to meet with Ayelet Tsabari, author of the award-winning collection of short stories “The Best Place on Earth” and the new memoir “The Art of Leaving.”
Coffee and pastries provided. Participants will receive a complimentary copy of “The Art of Leaving.”
RSVP to Student Engagement Director Lauren Kurland for location.

“The Art of Leaving: A Memoir” (2019), Tsabari’s new book, traces the writer’s journey from her childhood home on the outskirts of Tel Aviv to Vancouver and Toronto — and from her native Hebrew to her adopted English — alongside the story of her grandparents’ migration from Yemen to the land of Israel in the 1930s. An astute observer of lives of Mizrahi Jews (Jews of Arab lands) in Israel and beyond, in “The Art of Leaving” Tsabari delivers a powerful coming-of-age story that reflects on identity and belonging and explores themes of family and home — both inherited and chosen.
Tsabari will also be speaking at the UW on February 28, 2019. Tickets are free and all undergraduate students are welcome.
About the speaker

Ayelet Tsabari was born in Israel to a large family of Yemeni descent. Her first book, “The Best Place on Earth,” won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award and was longlisted to the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. She currently lives and teaches creative writing in Toronto.

To request disability accommodation, contact the Disability Services Office at 206-543-6450 (voice), 206-543-6452 (TTY), 206-685-7264 (fax), or dso@uw.edu. The University of Washington makes every effort to honor disability accommodation requests. Requests can be responded to most effectively if received as far in advance of the event as possible, preferably at least 10 days.

3/4 TALK | New Language, New Story: How Translation Changed the Bible for Sephardic Jews Across History
2019-03-04 18:00 - 19:30 | Thomson Hall 101, 2023 King Lane, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
The Torah, as Heinrich Heine is said to have written, is the portable homeland of the Jews. As Jews move from place to place, the land that is the setting for the Bible (or “Tanakh,” in Hebrew) is the one place that does not change. In their diaspora, Jewish communities learn new languages with each move, and use these languages to reinterpret the stories of the Bible anew.
In this talk, Dr. David Wacks of the University of Oregon will discuss the history of how new translations affected Sephardic Jews’ understanding of the Bible and biblical stories, from medieval Arabic translations to later translations into Ladino and Judeo-Spanish.
Wacks will explore how generations of Sepharadim (Jews in the Mediterranean) used translations, commentaries and legends from their own time periods to reinterpret the Bible in new ways for the world in which they lived, and offer insights into how translation might influence our own understandings of important texts.
Get ready with a related essay by David Wacks: “Rabbis, a Spanish Biblical History, and the Roots of Vernacular Fiction.”
This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Spanish & Portuguese Studies.
About the speaker
David Wacks is Head of the Department of Romance Languages and Professor of Spanish at the University of Oregon. He earned his PhD in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from UC Berkeley in 2003. In 2006 he was Harry Starr Fellow in Judaica at the Harvard Center for Jewish Studies.
Wacks is author of “Framing Iberia: Frametales and Maqamat in Medieval Spain,” (Brill, 2007), winner of the 2009 La corónica award, and “Double Diaspora in Sephardic Literature: Jewish Cultural Production before and after 1492″ (Indiana University Press, 2015), winner of the 2015 National Jewish Book Award in the category of Sephardic Culture, and co-editor, with Michelle Hamilton, of “The Study of al-Andalus: The Scholarship and Legacy of James T. Monroe” (ILEX Foundation, 2018). His most recent monograph, “Medieval Iberian Crusade Fiction and the Mediterranean World,” is forthcoming in 2019 from University of Toronto Press.
He blogs on his current research at https://davidwacks.uoregon.edu.

Iranian Jews in the Twentieth Century: Between Iranian Nationalism, Communism, and Zionism
2019-03-07 19:00 - 20:30
The 2019 Afrassiabi Distinguished Lecture in Persian and Iranian Studies with Lior Sternfeld, Assistant Professor of History and Jewish Studies, Penn State University
In the early 20th century, the Iranian Jewish communities were largely disenfranchised, marginalized, and impoverished. About 80% belonged to the lowest social and economic classes, 10% were part of the emerging middle class, and 10% counted among the country’s elites.
By the 1979 revolution, that situation had changed: only 10% were impoverished, while 80% belonged to the middle classes and 10% remained in the elite. By the 1979 revolution, Jews played a role in every Iranian political camp: as supporters of the monarchy or the revolutionary movements.
This talk analyzes the institutional history of the Jewish communities in Iran — and the pivotal role they played in facilitating integration and other social developments. The examples to be discussed will help us understand how Iran’s Jews adjusted to a rapidly changing post-revolutionary society, especially in light of the regional conflict between their respective spiritual and national homelands, Israel and Iran.
About the speaker
Lior Sternfeld is an assistant professor of history and Jewish studies at Penn State University. He is a social historian of the modern Middle East with particular interests in the histories of Jews and other minorities of the region. His first book, titled “Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran,” examines, against the backdrop of Iranian nationalism, Zionism and constitutionalism, the development and integration of Iran’s Jewish communities into the nation-building projects of the last century. Dr. Sternfeld completed his Ph.D. at the University of Texas, Austin. His current research project examines the origins of “Third-Worldism” in the Middle East.
This event is hosted by The Department of Near Eastern Languages in conjunction with the Persian and Iranian Studies Program at the University of Washington and the Israel Studies program at the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies.
The lecture is free and open to the public. To RSVP, visit the NELC event page here.

3/13 CONCERT | Singing the Sephardic Diaspora: Mediterranean Elements in Judeo-Spanish Choral Arrangements
2019-03-13 19:30 - 21:00 | Kane Hall 220, 4069 Spokane Ln, Seattle, WA, 98195, US
**Note: The location of this event has changed. It will take place in Kane Hall, room 220.
Ladino songs reflect a wealth of musical influences, from Turkish scales to Balkan rhythms. In this lecture-recital, recent Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) graduate Sarah Riskind will discuss Mediterranean features of Sephardic music and how these elements can be highlighted in arrangements for chorus. The Seattle Jewish Chorale (directed by Jacob Finkle) will perform a selection of classic Judeo-Spanish songs, including “Par’o Era Estrellero,” “Durme, Durme,” and “Cuando el Rey Nimrod.”
Please RSVP for this event at the bottom of the page.
Get ready with Dr. Riskind’s brief explainer: What makes music sound Jewish (2018)
Did you miss the event? Check out the UW Daily’s writeup, which includes a number of audio excerpts.
About the speaker
Sarah Riskind is a choral conductor, composer, vocalist, and music educator based in Seattle. She recently received her DMA in choral conducting from the University of Washington, completing a dissertation entitled “Informed and Informative: New Choral Arrangements of Sephardic Music,” and she is the Music Director at Magnolia United Church of Christ. With previous degrees from Williams College and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, she has directed ensembles at the University of Washington, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Williams College, the German International School of Boston, and the First Parish Church of Berlin, MA; she has also assistant-conducted the Renaissance choir Convivium Musicum and the Boston Children’s Chorus. Her compositions have been performed by the Seattle Jewish Chorale, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Triad: Boston’s Choral Collective, the Bennington Children’s Chorus, and other college, community, synagogue, and church choirs across the country. Dr. Riskind enjoys folk and classical improvisation on violin, which led her to pursue doctoral research on choral improvisation in addition to Renaissance and Sephardic music. Riskind participated in the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies Graduate Fellowship program during the 2017-18 academic year.

Seattle Jewish Film Festival Sephardic Spotlight | Children of the Inquisition
2019-03-24 13:00 - 15:30 | AMC Pacific Place, 600 Pine Street, Seattle, WA, United States
Carlos DeMedeiros, one of the subjects featured in “Children of the Inquisition”
Join the Seattle Jewish Film Festival for this year’s Sephardic Spotlight film, the 2018 documentary “Children of Inquisition,” directed by Joseph Lovett.
Imagine discovering a hidden past that shakes your worldview and sense of self. For New York Times journalist Doreen Carvajal, learning of her family’s Jewish roots in Spain challenged her Catholic identity and led her on a journey of historical and self-discovery.
This documentary follows Carvajal and other descendants of Spanish and Portuguese families and “conversos” (the Spanish term for Jews converted to Roman Catholicism) as they uncover their complicated and nuanced roots.
“Children of the Inquisition” uses a familiar travelogue style to trot around the globe and delve into the global mass conversion resulting from the Spanish Inquisition. Original manuscripts dating as far back as the 14th century and oral traditions secretly passed down through the generations unearth hidden histories of the Jews of Spain and Portugal.
The film features University of Washington historian Devin Naar and members of Seattle’s Sephardic Congregation Ezra Bessaroth.
Buy tickets and learn more on the Seattle Jewish Film Festival website.
Followed by an echar lashon (coffee klatch) with coffee, tea, biscochos, and our special guests.

Seattle Jewish Film Festival | The Tobacconist
2019-03-26 20:35 - 22:30 | SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave N, Seattle, WA, 98109, United States
Bruno Ganz as Sigmund Freud
**The Stroum Center has a limited number of complimentary tickets available. If you are interested, please contact jewishst@uw.edu. Include your contact information and the number of tickets you’d like.
Join the Seattle Jewish Film Festival for the 2018 film “The Tobacconist,” directed by Nikolaus Leytner.
Franz, a 17-year-old boy from rural Austria, comes to Vienna to apprentice in a smoke shop. Although tyranny under the Nazi occupation and hatred towards Jews has worsened oppression and conditions, the tobacco store remains a small sanctuary for newspaper- and cigarette-seekers. He gradually befriends Sigmund Freud, the renowned psychoanalyst and a regular customer. When the shop’s politically outspoken owner is taken away by the Nazis, Franz and Freud stand at the crossroads of survival.
Based on Austrian writer Robert Seethaler′s novel of the same name, “The Tobacconist,” is a tender and gripping coming-of-age story under tragic circumstances through the Freudian lens of dreams, libido, and death that transform a boy to a man. Actor Bruno Ganz (“Wings of Desire”) plays Freud.
Buy tickets and learn more on the Seattle Jewish Film Festival website.

STUDENT EVENT: Meza de Ladino ~ Ladino Table
2019-04-03 11:30 - 13:00, 2019-05-01 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.
Open to undergraduates, graduates, and the UW community.
All language levels welcome.
Please RSVP here for the location.

4/3 PANEL | Perspectives on the 2019 Israeli Parliamentary Elections
2019-04-03 12:30 - 14:00 | HUB 214, UW Seattle Campus, 4001 E Stevens Way NE, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Image by Yonatan Popper, for the Israeli magazine The Liberal.
The upcoming elections in Israel are drawing worldwide attention. The indictment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shaken up the political arena and led to surprising coalitions and the formation of new parties.
What are the stakes of these elections for Israel’s various populations and political constituencies? What effect might they have on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? What role will Trump’s “deal of the century” play in these elections? Join faculty and graduate students from the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies for a pre-election discussion of these issues and more.
Panelists
Dr. Noam Pianko, director of the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies
Marwa Maziad, journalist and Ph.D. candidate at the Near and Middle East interdisciplinary program
Hayim Katsman, Ph.D. student at the Jackson School of International Studies
Moderator:
Dr. Liora Halperin, Associate Professor of International Studies and History; Jack and Rebecca Benaroya Endowed Chair of Israel Studies

4/17 COLLOQUIUM | International Politics, History, and Jews
2019-04-17 12:00 - 13:30 | HUB 145, UW Campus, 4001 E Stevens Way NE, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Join 2018-2019 Stroum Center Graduate Fellows Berkay Gülen and Kerice Doten-Snitker as they share their fellowship research.
A light lunch will be served. Please RSVP at the bottom of the page if you plan to attend.
Berkay Gülen, Robinovitch Family Fellow
“Discussing Turkey-Israel Relations in Israel: Common Themes, Different Perspectives”
Berkay Gülen is a Ph.D. candidate in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. She received her MSc degrees in International Relations from the Middle East Technical University, Turkey, and in International Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Berkay’s academic interests led her to conduct research at the Moshe Dayan Center of Tel Aviv University in 2013 and the Institute of National Security Studies in Tel Aviv in 2018. Her doctoral research is on foreign policy decision-making and Turkey-Israel relations after 1991.
Faculty respondent: Liora Halperin, Benaroya Chair in Israel Studies, Jackson School of International Studies
Read about Gülen’s research on Israeli/Turkish foreign policy:

“Why doesn’t Israel have a minister of foreign affairs?” (2019)
“Interviewing foreign policy makers during a crisis” (2019)

Kerice Doten-Snitker, Rabbi Arthur A. Jacobovitz Fellow
“Jewish Expulsions in the Medieval Holy Roman Empire”
Kerice is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at the University of Washington. She double-majored in Sociocultural Studies and International Relations at Bethel University (Minnesota) before completing an MA in Sociology at the University of Washington. Her scholarly interests include processes of inclusion and exclusion in society. Her current work examines the roles of political institutions, economics, and religion in the exclusion of Jews in medieval times, focusing on the Rhineland (western Germany). In Fall 2017 she was a visiting student at the Arye Maimon Institute for Jewish History at Universität Trier in Trier, Germany, funded by the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD). In addition, she works at the University’s Center for Evaluation and Research for STEM Equity, which focuses on increasing equity — and the participation of systematically excluded students and professionals — in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math.
Faculty respondent: Annegret Oehme, Assistant Professor of Germanics
Read about Doten-Snitker’s research on anti-Semitism in medieval Europe:

“How anti-Semitism was used to gain political power in medieval Germany” (2019)

5/6 TALK | "More Mexican than the Nopal": From Ottoman Jew to Mexican Diplomat in Vichy France, or the Story of Mauricio Fresco
2019-05-06 15:30 - 17:00 | Thomson 317, UW Campus, 2023 Skagit Lane, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Dr. Devi Mays will use the life of Mauricio Fresco — an Ottoman Jew and Mexican diplomat — as a foil for exploring the multiple tensions, at times coexisting and at times conflicting, that undergirded global Sephardic life in the tempestuous years of the late interwar and World War II eras. Mays’ research draws the narrative of transnational Sephardic networks into a period in which they began to break down just as they were most crucial.
While in many ways an exceptional character, Fresco nonetheless embedded himself within, contributed to, and drew on Sephardi ties within and without Mexico. Simultaneously, he rocketed to prominence as a Mexican diplomat, traveling the world and bearing written witness to some of the era’s greatest calamities — the Japanese invasion and occupation of Manchuria, the Nazi occupation of Paris and its subsequent liberation, and Spanish Civil War refugees languishing in French concentration camps.
About the speaker
Devi Mays is Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies and History at the University of Michigan. She received her Ph.D. in Jewish History from Indiana University and was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Jewish Theological Seminary. She is currently revising a book manuscript tentatively entitled “Forging Ties, Forging Passports: Migration and the Modern Sephardi Diaspora.”
This event is co-sponsored by the Sephardic Studies Program at the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, the Middle East Center and Latin American & Caribbean Studies Program of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies; the Department of History, and the Turkish and Ottoman Studies Fund at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization (NELC).

STUDENT EVENT: Queer Jews in Nazi-Era Berlin
2019-05-08 14:00 - 15:15 | RSVP for location
For our quarterly Jewish Studies Coffee Hour, Prof Laurie Marhoefer (History) will present on research methods and challenges she has encountered while researching queer Jews in Nazi-era Berlin.
Coffee and pastries provided.
Open to undergraduates and graduate students only.
Space is limited to 18 students.
Please RSVP for location.

5/14 STROUM LECTURE | Jewish Manuscripts in the Digital Age: Lost Archives, Sacred Wastebins, and Jews of the Medieval Islamic World
2019-05-14 19:00 - 20:30 | Kane Hall 220, 4069 Spokane Lane, Seattle, WA, 98103, United States
Dr. Marina Rustow of Princeton University will deliver the 2019 Samuel & Althea Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies, considering the place of ancient manuscripts in our digital age. Focusing on documents from the Cairo Geniza, a cache of more than 300,000 pages preserved in an Egyptian synagogue that came to light in the late 19th century, Rustow will discuss the strange position these documents inhabit in an online era.
About the speaker

Marina Rustow is the Khedouri A. Zilkha Professor of Jewish Civilization in the Near East and Professor of Near Eastern Studies and History at Princeton University. Her first book, “Heresy and the Politics of Community: The Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate,” was published in 2008, and she is currently working on another volume looking at state documents found within the Cairo Geniza. She runs the Princeton Geniza Lab.
In 2002, Rustow was the Hazel D. Cole Fellow in Jewish Studies at the University of Washington, and in 2015, she received a MacArthur Fellowship supporting her work. She is the co-editor of “Jewish Studies at the Crossroads of Anthropology and History: Authority, Diaspora, Tradition” (2011) and has published scholarly articles in such journals as “Past & Present, Jewish History, al-Qantara, Mamlūk Studies Review, and Ginzei Qedem: Geniza Research Annual.”
Photo via the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

STUDENT EVENT: Meza de Ladino ~ Ladino Table
2019-05-15 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.
Open to undergraduates, graduates, and the UW community.
All language levels welcome.
RSVP here.

5/16 STROUM LECTURE | Jewish Manuscripts in the Digital Age: Manuscripts, the Digital Revolution, and the New Materiality
2019-05-16 19:00 - 20:30 | Kane Hall 220, 4069 Spokane Lane, Seattle, WA, 98103, United States

5/21 COLLOQUIUM | Jewish Memory, History & Thought
2019-05-21 12:00 - 13:30 | HUB 145, UW Campus, 4001 E Stevens Way NE, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Join 2018-2019 Stroum Center Graduate Fellows Vincent Calvetti-Wolf, Pablo Jairo Tutillo Maldonado and Hayim Katsman as they share their research.
A light lunch will be served. Please RSVP at the bottom of the page if you plan to attend.
Vincent Calvetti-Wolf, Mickey Sreebny Memorial Scholar
“Protocols and Protest: The Yemenite Babies Affair, the Mizrahi Struggle, and Struggles of Interpretation”
Vincent is a first-year student in the Near and Middle Eastern Studies Interdisciplinary PhD Program. He holds a BA in Liberal Arts from The Evergreen State College and obtained a Master of Arts in International Studies, with a focus in Comparative Religion, from the University of Washington in 2017. His research explores the histories and politics of social movements led by Mizrahi Jews in Israel. His current project focuses on the strategies used by grassroots movements in Israel to raise awareness about the Yemenite, Mizrahi and Balkan Children Affair that took place in the early 1950s. Vincent is graduate student co-coordinator of the Israel/Palestine Research Colloquium.
Read about Vincent’s research on the Yemenite Babies Affair and Mizrahi history:

“Remembering the thousands of children who disappeared in the “Yemenite Babies Affair”” (2019)

Pablo Jairo Tutillo Maldonado, Richard M. Willner Memorial Scholar
“Politics and Society: The Role of Memory in the Moroccan Jewish Museum in Casablanca”
Pablo Jairo Tutillo Maldonado, who hails from Connecticut, is a second-year MA student in Middle East Studies at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. 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 the University of Washington, Pablo has been researching the intersection of history and politics in countries in the Middle East, particularly the political and historical narratives of Jewish refugees, Syrian refugees and other forced migrants from the Arab world. He speaks conversational Arabic, Hebrew and Turkish.
Faculty respondent: Noam Pianko, Professor, Jackson School of International Studies
Read about Pablo’s research on Mizrahi identity and history:

“How should we remember the forced migration of Jews from Egypt?” (2019)
“How Iraqi Jews are reclaiming their cultural legacy in Israel” (2018)

Hayim Katsman, I. Mervin & Georgiana Gorasht Fellow
“Contemporary trends in religious-Zionist thought and practice”
As a PhD student in International Studies, Hayim researches the interrelations between religion and politics in Israel/Palestine. Focusing on the religious-Zionist movement and the settlement enterprise in the West Bank and Gaza, Hayim’s research shows how developments in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have affected religious Zionists’ theological interpretations of the Israeli state. Before coming to the University of Washington, Hayim lived in a Kibbutz on the Israel/Gaza/Egypt border, where he works/ed as a car mechanic. Hayim received his BA in philosophy from the Open University of Israel and completed his MA thesis on the theology of Rabbi Yitzchak Ginzburg at the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University.
Faculty respondent: Noam Pianko, Professor, Jackson School of International Studies
Read about Hayim’s research on life in modern Israel:

“Protecting academic freedom in Israeli higher education” (2019)

5/23 TALK | Visualizing Resistance: From Conflict to Concord in a Synagogue Mosaic
2019-05-23 13:30 - 15:00 | Odegaard Library 220, 4060 George Washington Lane NE, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
“The elephant panel” from the Huqoq synagogue mosaic. Via the Journal of Roman Archeology’s blog.
Since 2011, the Huqoq Excavation Project has been excavating a late Roman (fifth century) synagogue in lower Galilee paved with stunning floor mosaics.
One mosaic in particular, dubbed the “elephant panel,” departs in significant ways from other ancient synagogue mosaics. Rather than depicting a narrative scene from the Hebrew Bible, the panel depicts a striking scene from the Hellenistic period: the bloody defeat of a Greek army by a Judaean force and the subsequent peace treaty between the two sides.
In this talk, Huqoq site historian Dr. Ra’anan Boustan will consider what this visual narrative — which juxtaposes conflict with mutual recognition — would have meant to a Jewish community living in the rapidly Christianizing Galilee of late antiquity.
Learn more about the Huqoq synagogue mosaics:

Man-eating fish, Tower of Babel revealed on ancient mosaic (2018)
Mind-blowing 1,600-year-old biblical mosaics paint new picture of Galilean life (2018)

This talk is supported by a Royalty Research Fund grant given to Stroum Center faculty member Mika Ahuvia for the 2018-19 academic year.
About the speaker
Ra‘anan Boustan is a research scholar in the program in Judaic Studies at Princeton University specializing in the study of ancient Judaism. Boustan completed his B.A. in classics at Brown University in 1994 and received a graduate degree in classics and religious studies (Vrij doctoraal letteren) from the University of Amsterdam. In 2004, he completed his Ph.D. in the Department of Religion at Princeton University.
Boustan is the author of “From Martyr to Mystic: Rabbinic Martyrology and the Making of Merkavah Mysticism” (2005) and co-author of “The Elephant Mosaic Panel in the Synagogue at Huqoq: Official Publication and Initial Interpretations” (2017). He has co-edited eight books or special issues of journals and has published his work in leading journals such as Harvard Theological Review, The Jewish Quarterly Review, and Medieval Encounters. He co-edits the journal Jewish Studies Quarterly and is currently the site historian for the Huqoq Excavation Project in Lower Galilee, working with Karen Britt on the mosaics in the Huqoq synagogue.

Seattle Sephardic Legacies | National Endowment for the Humanities
2019-06-02 14:00 - 17:00 | 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
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.

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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.
