DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE

WE’VE MOVED!! In fall 2004, webegan our second term in residence inour new building, itself a new additionto the campus, just opposite the JosephHenry House and a step or two fromNassau Street. Firestone Library is justacross the way. We have our own offices

on the second floorand our own handsome-ly furnished seminarroom, which is equippedwith state-of-the artmedia capabilities. Anumber of our coursesnow meet there and itis large enough toaccommodate visiting

speakers in a small seminar format. Thespacious windows there overlook thenewly renovated East Pyne-Chancellor

Green building,which along withour building andthe Henry Houseare now knownas the AndlingerHumanities

Complex. The architecture and landscapedesign, with connecting walkways andeasy access among the different buildingssituates Judaic Studies as an integral partof the entire grouping. As I wrote onthis page last year, this prime location

gives evidence of the administration’scommitment to a strong Judaic Studiesprogram with high visibility on campus.Our experience now over these lastmonths has more than fulfilled ourexpectations. We urge you to come andsee for yourselves.

BULLETIN! Late breaking news.Our new accommodations have beenhoused in the Humanities ProgramsBuilding – an accurate, if rather unmem-orable, designation. But by the time youget this newsletter (in early 2005), thebuilding will be called Scheide CaldwellHouse. The donor is none other thanWilliam Scheide, ’36, noted musicologistand owner of the fabulous private librarycollection that is associated with theDepartment of Rare Books and SpecialCollections in Firestone Library. TheScheide Library is located in FirestoneLibrary and among other treasures holdsthe world’s first four printed Bibles: theGutenberg Bible, the Mentelin Bible,the 36-Line Bible and the 1462 Bible.There will be an official dedication ofthe building in spring 2005.

THE ACADEMIC FRONT.2003-04 was a very active year with thereturn of several of our faculty fromleave, two visiting professors from Israel,and the introduction of several newcourses. In fall 2003, Dan Rabinowitz,a noted Israeli sociologist and anthropol-

ogist, gave a course on ethnic minoritiesin Israel (for Near Eastern Studies) andduring the spring semester Israel Yuvalof the Hebrew University, renownedscholar of medieval Judaism, teamtaught a course with our own PeterSchäfer, on Christianity and the Rabbisin late antiquity.

The core of any Judaic Studies programrevolves, of course, on a roster of cours-es that focus directly on topics in Jewishhistory, religion, thought, and culture.But we also take pride in the number ofour offerings that seek to integrateJudaism and Jewish life within a largerhistorical and intellectual framework.Thus, for example, a regular part of our

curriculum includes “Jews, Christians,and Gentiles in the Ancient World,”taught by John Gager (Religion) and

WINTER 2004-2005

2 Courses3 Students3 Class of 2004

3 Alumni 2004

4 Senior Theses 2004

6 Graduate Fellowships

7 Graduate Students9 Summer Funding

13 Studying Arabic in Israel

15 Committee15 Advisory Council16 Faculty Research and News19 Adjunct Faculty

19 Visitors 2003-2004

22 Events

In th i s I s sue

Our new building is theScheide Caldwell House.

NEWSProgram in Judaic Studies

P E R E L M A N I N S T I T U T EP R I N C E T O N U N I V E R S I T Y

(Director’s Message continued on page 20)

COURSESFALL SEMESTER2003The Golem: The Creation of an Artificial ManPeter Schäfer

From Pale to Pampa: Jews andJudaism in Latin American LiteratureEdna Aizenberg (Marymount Manhattan College)

Modern Jewish History and theUrban ExperienceJenna Weissman Joselit

Rabbinic Judaism: Literature,History, and BeliefsPeter Schäfer

Religion and Literature In the Old Testament: Through theBabylonian ExileMartha Himmelfarb

Jewish Thought and Modern SocietyLeora Batnitzky

Jews, Gentiles, and Christians in the Ancient WorldJohn Gager

Masterworks of Hebrew Literature in TranslationJames Diamond

Jews, Muslims, and Christians in the Middle AgesMark Cohen

Minorities in Contemporary Israel and the Middle EastDan Rabinowitz (University of Tel Aviv)

Readings in Judeo-ArabicMark Cohen

Elementary HebrewEsther Robbins

Intermediate HebrewEsther Robbins

Aspects of Israeli Culture in HebrewEsther Robbins

On leave: Barbara Mann [NES] and Olga Litvak [History]

SPRING SEMESTER2004Introduction to Judaism: Religion, History, EthicsBurton Visotzky (Jewish Theological Seminary)

Culture Mavens: American Jews and the ArtsJenna Weissman Joselit

A Literary Tour of the Middle East:Short Stories from Israel and theArab WorldJames Diamond

The Jewish Enlightenment and Its CriticsOlga Litvak

Christianity and the Rabbis in Late AntiquityPeter Schäfer and Yisrael Yuval (Hebrew University)

Judaism in the Greco-Roman WorldMartha Himmelfarb

Reason and Revelation in Jewish ThoughtLeora Batnitzsky

Special Topics in the Study ofReligion: Rabbinic Cosmology and Its ContextsPeter Schäfer & David Stern (University of Pennsylvania)

Land-Identity-Nation: AnIntroduction to Israeli LiteratureBarbara Mann

Problems in Near Eastern JewishHistory: Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of the Geniza WorldMark Cohen

Elementary Hebrew IIEsther Robbins

Intermediate Hebrew IIEsther Robbins

Advanced Hebrew IIBarbara Mann

FALL SEMESTER2004Topics in Judaic Studies: Prejudice on Trial: Antisemitism, the Courts,and the LawJenna Weissman-Joselit

Texts and Images of the HolocaustFroma Zeitlin

Modern Jewish History: 1750-PresentOlga Litvak

Topics in Germanic Culture andSociety: “Nation and “Diaspora” in German Jewish LiteratureAndrea Schatz, Society of Fellows

The Jewish Presence in ModernFrench Fiction and FilmDavid Bellos

Jewish Mysticism: From theBeginnings to KabbalaPeter Schäfer

Religion and Literature of the Old Testament: Through theBabylonian ExileMartha Himmelfarb

Jewish Thought and Modern SocietyLeora Batnitzky

Jews, Gentiles, and Christians in the Ancient WorldJohn Gager

Studies in Greco-Roman Religions:Genres of Rabbinic LiteraturePeter Schäfer

Jews, Muslims, and Christians in the Middle AgesMark Cohen

The Ancient Near East: From City-State to EmpireBeate Pongratz-Leisten

Readings in Judeo-ArabicMark Cohen

Elementary HebrewEsther Robbins

Intermediate HebrewEsther Robbins

Advanced Hebrew: Aspects of Israeli CulturePhillip Hollander

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STUDENTS

THE CLASS OF 2004

JUDAIC STUDIES CERTIFICATE STUDENTS

We are proud to congratulate Minda Lee Arrow, ElizabethRose Bailey, Andrea Joy Campbell, Daniel Freuman, BethGordon, Orly Lieberman, and Delia Ugwu-Oju the 2004Princeton University graduates who earned the Certificate inJudaic Studies.

THE CAROLYN L. DRUCKER (CLASS OF 1980) PRIZE

Through the generosity of the Drucker family, the Programawards an annual prize for the best senior thesis in Judaic

Studies. Before the establishment of the program, the prize wasoffered under the auspices of the Committee for Jewish Studies,the program’s predecessor.

The 2004 Drucker winners were Elizabeth Rose Bailey for“The Quest of the Commentary Intellectuals: Anti-Semitism,Racism and the Search for Identity in Postwar America 1945-1955,” and Orly Lieberman for “Wrestling with Ambiguity:Jewish and Christian Exegetes by the River Jabbok,” both inthe Department of Religion.

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Drucker Prize winners Liz Bailey and Orly Lieberman.

ALUMNI 2 0 0 4

Minda Lee Arrow is a research assistant at the WashingtonInstitute for Near East Policy in Washington, DC.

Elizabeth Bailey is working for the Erie County Commissionon the Status of Women as the Coordinator of the WomenBelow 30 Initiative. The Commission, she observes, has notbeen adequately addressing the needs of the under-30 femalepopulation in the county; they brought her on as an intern todesign, implement and oversee an initiative to introduce theCommission to the target population and assess the population’sneeds so that the Commission may readjust its goals accordingly.She is also volunteering for the Literacy Volunteers of Buffaloas an ESL reading tutor, singing with the Contemporary MusicEnsemble at her father’s Church, and studying for the LSATs.She will be applying for Peace Corps soon, but might put it offuntil after law school.

Andrea J. Campbell is currently living in NJ and working indowntown Manhattan at a maritime law firm – Freehill, Hogan,& Mahar, LLP. 80 Pine Street, NY, NY 10005. Her hope is towork there for a year while she begins to apply to law schools.

Daniel E. Freuman is currently working at J.P. Morgan in theinvestment banking division. He writes, “I am working in thenatural resources group covering companies in the followingsectors: oil & gas, metals & mining, chemicals, and power. Tosum up what I do in one sentence, I help these companies bygiving them strategic advice regarding their financial situationsand advise them on mergers and acquisitions as well as capitalraising (via debt and equity issuances).”

Beth Gordon is spending this year as a Jewish Campus ServiceCorps (JCSC) Fellow at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore,MD. She spends her days meeting and engaging students bygoing for coffee, attending lectures, organizing sports activities,and running many programs involving free food for students!!She plans on applying to graduate school to study UrbanPlanning beginning next fall.

Orly Lieberman is happily living in New York City and studyingat the Drisha Institute, engaged in full time Jewish text study.

Delia Ugwu-Oju is a legal assistant at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind,Wharton & Garrison in New York City, planning to take herLSAT’s later this year and tentatively apply to law school forthe next year.

2004 Certificate Students.

JUDAIC STUDIESSENIOR THESES2004

Minda Lee ArrowRealist Kings: Pragmatic Foreign Policyin Saudi Arabia, 1948-1973

My thesis examines Saudi foreign policyduring the Arab-Israeli wars. It demon-strates the invalidity of scholarshipasserting that Israel constituted thegreatest threat to Saudi Arabia and rep-resented Riyadh’s most serious foreignpolicy concern. Instead, through theextensive use of primary sources fromWashington’s National Archives, thepaper demonstrates that Israel has beena secondary or even tertiary concern forSaudi policy-makers. Thus, even duringtimes of war, Saudi Arabia avoided activeengagement against Israel. AlthoughRiyadh engaged in rhetoric and propa-ganda against Israel, its primary goal wasto protect itself in inter-Arab battles.Indeed, during the period surroundingthe 1948 Israeli War of Independence,the 1956 Suez Crisis, and the June Warof 1967 other Arab states representedthe greatest threats to the al-Saudmonarchy. While the West’s relationshipwith Israel was faulted for the 1973 oilembargo, the huge profits earned bySaudi Arabia during this time suggestthat other motivations were at workbehind this decision. In all these cases,Saudi foreign policy developed in amanner consistent with traditionalinternational relations theories on realismand should not be seen as motivated byideological considerations.

Elizabeth Rose BaileyThe Quest of the CommentaryIntellectuals: Anti-Semitism, Racismand the Search for Identity inPostwar America 1945-1955

This thesis employs a close reading ofrelated articles in Commentary andPartisan Review from 1945 to 1955,analyzing the relationship between thesource material, the time period, andconceptions of Jewishness. It deals witha peculiar decade sandwiched betweentwo explosive moments in history, the

Holocaust and the beginnings of theCivil Rights Movement. My findingsreflect a broader idea that Jewishness isdefined by a constant effort to reconstructone’s ideas of identity and selfhood. 1945marked both the end of World War IIand the beginning of Commentary maga-zine, a left-wing Jewish journal producedby a group known to historians as theNew York Intellectuals. These thinkers,who also staffed Partisan Review, spent aconsiderable amount of time writingabout anti-Semitism. At the same time,they wrote many articles about race andracism, and cultivated professional rela-tionships with several members of theAfrican-American intelligentsia, the mostnotable including Richard Wright,Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin. Whywould a group of white, Jewish intellectualswrite about racism or publish African-American writers? The Commentaryintellectuals were struggling with theirown Jewishness, so they attempted toconstruct an ethnic Jewishness, inwhich Judaism or a belief in God wasnot a necessary component. Instead ofreligiosity, their Jewishness was dependenton a common association with a historicaland cultural tradition. In addition toconsiderations of Jewishness as an ethnicity,these intellectuals were constantly debatingthe role of anti-Semitism in the construc-tion of Jewish identity. These interestsinformed their relationships with theAfrican-American writers, because theJewish intellectuals were interested in theparallel role of racism in the constructionof African-American identity. Since theJewish intellectuals did not award them-selves the authority to write aboutAfrican-American identity, they turnedto African-American writers as proxies toprovide an otherwise inaccessible pointof view from which the Jewish thinkerscould draw insight into their own situa-tion. The result was a mass of articles inboth journals about identity, both Jewishand African-American, in the face ofexternal persecution. These articles wereconnected by a broader conversationabout Jewishness and Jewish identityconducted by the Commentary intellectualsin the postwar decade.

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Andrea Joy CampbellThe Representation of Conflict,Competition and Consensus BetweenBlacks and Jews in Black New YorkNewspapers Between 1950 and 1979

Prior to WWII, few people wrote on therelationship between blacks and Jews.Following the ravages of Nazism, scholarsand journalists attempted to connect thehistorical persecution of the Jews andthe discrimination against the blacks inthe United States. In the 1950’s and1960’s researchers began to produce aplethora of material, including books,articles, reports, and studies, on thepossibility and reality of a black-Jewishalliance. These researchers believed ablack-Jewish partnership existed prior toWWII, but differed as to what happenedto that alliance following the war.Some argued that black-Jewish relationsimproved, while others contended thatthere was greater conflict between thetwo groups. Despite opposing viewsabout black-Jewish relations after WWII,what cannot be denied is that a connec-tion between blacks and Jews did exist.

For this thesis, I chose to closely examineblack attitudes toward the Jews between1950 and 1979. Based on articles fromtwo black New York newspapers – theNew York Amsterdam News and the NewYork Age – I selected several controversialcase studies – the black-Jewish alliance,the Quota-Merit Debate, the AndrewYoung resignation, and the Arab-IsraeliDispute – to test my hypothesis. Thishypothesis claims the existence of ablack-Jewish alliance following WWII,however the black community differedin its opinions regarding the necessity ofthat alliance. Key to determining theseattitudes was the ways in which theyperceived the respective plights of blacksand Jews. For instance, (1) many blacksthought the plight of blacks and Jewswas the same. They believed the alliancewas necessary in the fight against racismand discrimination and tended to ignoreor minimize conflict. (2) Other blacksperceived their problems as differentthan those of the Jews. They thoughtthe alliance was unnecessary and empha-sized conflict by forming committees,

protests, rallies, and riots. Rather thanfocusing on the issue at hand, they rantangential issues that sought to blamethe Jews for their plight. (3) Although aminority view, some blacks agreed withthe second group that black and Jewishproblems were dissimilar. Yet, instead ofblaming the Jews for their plight, theyinsisted that blacks could learn aboutadvancement and mobility from the Jews.

Beth Hannah GordonTesting Tradition: The Effects of Intermarriage on American Jewish Identity

To the American outsider, Judaism is aculture with inimitable traditions; language, food restrictions, and customarypractices remind the non-Jew that he/sheis not a member of the community. It isthe existence of these, and other, bound-aries that has raised many questionsabout American Jewish identity. Howdo Jews maintain their boundaries? Howhas modern Judaism tested theseboundaries, and what makes the Jewishcase different from others? How doesthis community respond when its bordersare threatened? I define the term“community” as a word implying thecharacter of American Jews as a whole, asthey constitute a national communityunited by a commonality of shared customs, traditions, affiliations, mem-berships, and contributions to certainorganizations. The most prominentthreat to American Jewry is theincreasing trend of intermarriage, orJewish-Gentile marriages.

After surveying the literature regardinggroup boundaries, membership, andspecifically the Jewish communal responseto intermarriage practices, I evaluatedemographic trends in order to definehow the American Jewish population hasbeen changing. I then move from thenational demographic trends to theinconsistency between practices of secularand religious Jews and ideologies ofJewish community leaders. Here, itbecame necessary to incorporate datafrom a tangible local Jewish communityand for my thesis I chose Tucson, AZ.Exploring a single community that is

representative of the non-mainstreamJewish enclave provides a rich resourceand illuminates many of the issues athand. These conflicts of boundaries inthe Jewish community manifest them-selves in marital relationships whereGentile spouses commit to a marriagewith someone whose Jewish identity is atop priority in family life. I incorporatereports of the interviews I conductedwith 11 different individuals involvedin various aspects of Tucson’s Jewishcommunal life.

While American Judaism does not have asingle voice, it is important for Jews tocontinue to have one identity, especiallyin the face of Jewish-Gentile unions.There are borders that will always remain,but I argue that the entire communityshould be as welcoming to the inquisitiveoutsider as possible. By educating andsharing Judaism with non-Jews, it ispossible to reinforce Jewish culturewhile reaching further across its bordersinto American life.

Ellen HorrowCold War in a Hot Land: The UnitedStates and the Partition of Palestine,1946-1948

This thesis examines the role played byU.S. Cold War policy in the creation ofU.S. policy towards Palestine. That policyhas presented scholars with a significantdilemma, since at times U.S. policyappeared to support the establishmentof a Jewish state in Palestine, while otherpolicies acted to prevent this fromoccurring. Prior explanations havefocused on competing interests withinthe U.S. government, namely PresidentTruman’s desire to support the State ofIsrael and the State Department’s desireto support Arab interests. My thesisseeks to explain these seemingly contra-dictory U.S. decisions and the ultimate

decision to support the establishment ofthe State of Israel by examining the issuewithin the larger context of the beginningsof the Cold War. Using State Departmentdocuments procured from both the pub-lished Foreign Relations of the UnitedStates series as well as additional researchfrom the National Archives, I proposethat U.S. policy makers applied an explicitformulation of U.S. foreign interests –that is, the containment of the SovietUnion in Europe — to the Palestinesituation. With the development of projects aimed at bolstering Europeansecurity, namely the European RecoveryProgram or Marshall Plan, came thedesire to reduce U.S. involvement inother areas of the world because suchendeavors threatened to reduce theresources the U.S. could expend in pro-tecting the security of Western Europe.At every major juncture within thePalestine controversy U.S. policy makersmade decisions designed to minimizethe extent of U.S. commitments inPalestine. As the situation within Palestineand Europe changed from 1946 through1948, U.S. policy makers altered theirspecific policies within the Palestine areato concur with their overall policyframework designed to pursue neitherJewish nor Arab interests, but ratherAmerican interests.

Orly LiebermanWrestling with Ambiguity: Jewish and Christian Exegetes by the River Jabbok

My thesis explores how Biblical com-mentators approach the Bible. I lookedat how various sources, including differenttranslations and targums of the Bible,midrash, and the writings of earlyChristians authors, responded to thestory of Jacob crossing the river Jabbok

(Senior Theses continued on page 6)5

2004 Judaic Studies Theses Students.

found in Genesis 32. This narrative alsocontains the momentous struggle withthe angel and the renaming of Jacob as“Israel”. In the course of this study, itbecomes apparent that through theirclarifications and illuminations of thestory the Biblical translators and com-mentators strove to maintain the applica-bility of the Bible to their present lives.

Delia Virginia Ugwu-OjuBrothers of a Different Color:Reflections of the Black-JewishAlliance During the Civil RightsMovement

Although blacks were the prime focusand contributors toward the Americanstruggle for freedom, the battle for civilequality could not have been won ifnot for the participation of non-blackAmericans. As American society movedfrom earlier periods of black docilityand Jim Crow to the landmark legisla-tion of the mid-sixties, it was only afterthe American Jewish community joinedthe civil rights movement thatAmerica witnessed an unparalleledchange in political and socialdynamism. The end of the SecondWorld War witnessed a peak in Jewishinvolvement in the fight for civil rights.My intent was to chronicle this initialperiod of activism and demonstratethat the special alliance between Jewsand blacks dictated, in very importantways, the direction this country washeading with regard to racial equality.Blacks and Jews each brought some-thing of their own to the table, andboth were able to change the racialdirection of the country in a variety ofways. What, modern historians ask,made Jews privy to civil rights involve-ment? Why were these two groups,Jews and blacks, so distinctively alignedin the American fight for equality? Asmentioned earlier, Jewish involvement,gave the black struggle for equality agreater impact. Conversely, the courageof black activists, exposing the wrongs of American segregation, encouragedAmerican Jews to fully combat the‘good ol’ boy’ system which also discriminated against Jews.

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(Senior Theses continued from page 5 )

GRADUATE FELLOWSHIPS

Anew initiative was implemented for 2003-04 graduateschool applicants who demonstrate a major interest in some

aspect of Judaic Studies. In consultation with the relevant depart-ment, the Program is now offering top up fellowships, with theunderstanding that the students will maintain research interests inJudaic Studies throughout their graduate careers. Additionally,

there are opportunities for draw-downand dissertation assistance later on in students’ graduate careers.

The following 2003 incoming stu-dents were the first to benefit fromthe new Judaic Studies graduate fel-lowships: Gregg Gardner in the

Department of Religion studies ancient Judaism withinGreco-Roman and Christian context, specifically focuses onthe economy of ancient Palestine during the Mishnaic andTalmudic periods; Danielle Shani in the Department ofPolitics concentrates on political theory relating to Israel’sattempt to reach a constitution by consensus; JamieSherman in the Department of Anthropology studies tiesbetween gender and power and the prescriptive models embed-ded within representations, fictional and ‘real,’ in the contem-porary Middle East: and Uriel Simonsohn in theDepartment of Near Eastern Studies focuses on social historyof non-Muslim communities in the Middle Ages, namely Jewsand Christians, and hopes to conduct comparative work throughthe extensive use of documents found in the Cairo Geniza andcontemporary Christian literature.

The following 2004 incoming students were awarded JudaicStudies fellowships:

Yaron Ayalon in the Department of Near Eastern Studies willexplore the history of the lower social strata in Middle Easternand Ottoman contexts; Adam Jackson in the Department ofReligion will investigate Jewish experiences of and attitudestoward Roman rule and culture during the empire and lateantiquity; Meir Soloveitchik in the Department of Religionwill study Jewish and Christian theology, particularly the theologyof thinkers who ponder the relationship between these twofaiths.; AlanVerskin in the department of Near Eastern Studieswill primarily focus on the study of social and intellectual interac-tions between Jews and Muslims in the medieval period; andMoulie Vidas in the Department of Religion is interested ininterpreting rabbinic literature in the context of religious theory.

Additionally, Holger Zellentin, a fourth year student in theDepartment of Religion was awarded a research fellowship forhis dissertation preliminarily titled “Late Antiquity Upside Down:Rabbinic Parodies of Jewish, Christian and Gentile Literature.”

The Program is now offering top up

fellowships.

Although the Program in Judaic Studies is designed forundergraduates, there are many graduate students at

Princeton who are pursuing topics relevant to Judaic Studieswithin their home departments. At the present time, theseinclude Anthropology, Architecture, Comparative Literature,English, Germanic Languages and Literature, History, Music,Near Eastern Studies, Politics, and Religion.

Abby Bender, English, is a 2004-2005 Woodrow WilsonFoundation Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Fellow. Herdissertation, entitled “Out of Egypt and into Bondage: Exodusand the Location of Irish Identity from the Revival to theRepublic,” investigates the ways in which the Biblical story ofExodus—a narrative that lends itself to a range of politicalideologies—has been appropriated, interrogated, and reinventedin the Irish national imagination.

Jesse Ferris, Near Eastern Studies, is a second year PhD candidate.He holds a BA in History from Yale University and is writing adissertation on the Cold War in the Middle East.

Gregg Gardner, Religion, is a second year student focusing onJewish history and literature in the Greco-Roman period. He isinterested in the socio-economic history of ancient Judea andGalilee, a fusion of his B.A. studies in economics atBinghamton University and M.A. studies in Jewish history andarchaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He hasrecently investigated market activity in first century Jerusalem,ancient synagogues, benefaction in Hellenistic Judea, andastrology in late antique Jewish society. A participant in theProgram in Judaic Studies and Program in the Ancient World,Gregg spent the summer of 2004 at an archaeological excavationin Yotvata, Israel.

Philip Lieberman, Near Eastern Studies, is a second year studentwho earned an MA in Talmud and Rabbinics from the JewishTheological Seminary of America. His dissertation will concernthe economic life of the Jewish community of Egypt in themedieval period, specifically involving networks of Jewish tradersin the 11th-13th centuries. His current projects involve anunsigned responsum which he believes can be traced to ElishaGallico (16th c, Safed), concerning married life, and the self-conception of the Babylonian Yeshivot as seen through Genizadocuments, focusing specifically on language used in appealsfor charitable donations.

Edward Muston, Comparative Literature, is currently a secondyear student who works on post-war fiction in German, French,and English. At present he is completing course requirementsand compiling his generals reading lists.

Kevin Osterloh, Religion, is a fifth-year student in the Programsin the Ancient World and Judaic Studies. His dissertation,“Constructing the Ethnos-Politeia: Reinventing JudaeanCommunal Identity in a Hellenistic World Contending withRome,” analyzes collective identity and cultural appropriationamongst Judaeans, Romans, and Greeks. He intends todemonstrate how Judaean elites of the 2nd-century BCE rein-

(Graduate Students continued next page) 7

vented their communal identity through the appropriation andsubversion of elements of Greekness. He graduated summa cumlaude in Hebrew and Ancient History & Classics from OhioState University, received an MA in Hebrew and Judaic Studiesfrom New York University, and was a 2003-04 dissertationfellow at the Princeton Center for the Study of Religion.

William Plevan, Religion. Bill Plevan is in the third year of the Religion department’s program in Religion and Philosophyafter earning his rabbinic ordination from the Jewish TheologicalSeminary. He is interested in modern Jewish thought, philosophyof religion, and moral, political and legal philosophy. He iscurrently working on a paper entitled “Democracy and theJewish Tradition: Mordecai Kaplan and the Democratization ofJudaism” for the 2004 American Academy of Religion Conferencein San Antonio, Texas.

Elliot Ratzman, Religion. This year, Elliot is finishing up in theReligion, Ethics and Politics program, and is an adjunct instructorat Vassar College. His dissertation, “Jewish Thought and theProblem of the 20th Century” examines issues of political andethical agency in the light of recent diaspora Jewish philosophers(Michael Wyschogrod, Gillian Rose, Michael Walzer, DavidNovak, Steven Schwarzschild, Emil Fackenheim, and EmmanuelLevinas). He is also working on a book about his years in Israel,tentatively entitled “After Zion: Israel in Theory and Practice.” Anative of Cincinnati, Ohio, he has a BA and MA in Philosophyfrom Ohio University, a MTS from Harvard Divinity School, andstudied at the Hebrew University from 1997-1999.

Danielle Shani, Politics. She is a second year student whose workis in the field of public opinion and political psychology, withspecial interest in the implications to democratic theory. Shecame to Princeton after completing a BA (in Political Science andPhilosophy) and MA (in Political Philosophy) in Tel-AvivUniversity, both summa cum laude. The title of her MA thesiswas “Aristotle, Politics, and the Virtue of Emotions”. Apart fromher studies, she also worked in the Israeli Institute forDemocracy (2001-2003) on two projects: (1) led the “IsraeliDemocracy Index”, a project which was established to evaluateannually the quality and functioning of Israeli democracy, inwhich she co-authored the book “Auditing the Israeli Democracy– 2003.” (2) engaged in the project “Constitution by Consensus,”which includes extensive and intensive deliberations, involvingvarious segments of Israeli society, a process through which anational constitution is to evolve. Her task was to evaluate thisinitiative, examine the outcome of the deliberations, andrecommend guidelines for activity. Before joining the IsraeliInstitute for Democracy she worked in journalism (1994-2001),first as a reporter in the Israeli Army Radio Station (Galei-Zahal),one of the most popular networks in the country, and later as aneditor in Yediot Acharonot, Israel’s most widely circulated newspaper.

Jamie Sherman, Anthropology. She is a second year graduatestudent and holds a BFA in Theatre Arts from the Universityof Tel Aviv (1992) and an interdisciplinary MA from NYU in

GRADUATE STUDENTS

gender, Hebrew Bible, and Performance Studies. The title of her Master’s Thesis was “Roadside Attractions: TextualExcavation of Ancient Near Eastern Gender Relations and theNotion of Sacred Prostitution as Evoked in Genesis 38.” Hermain areas of interest are topics of gender/body/performanceand also memory, presence and absence.

Uriel Simonsohn, Near Eastern Studies. In his second year,Simonsohn earned his undergraduate and graduate degreesfrom Tel Aviv university in Jewish and Islamic history. The titleof his Masters thesis was “The Status of non-Muslim Communitiesin Fatimid Egypt,” in which he compared the judicial work of thesupreme Fatimid legislator of the 10th century, al-Qadhi al-Nu’man,concerning non-Muslim issues, with evidence found in the CairoGeniza and Christian historiography. His main interest is thesocial history of non-Muslim communities in the Middle Ages,namely Jews and Christians, and hopes to conduct comparativework through the extensive use of documents found in the CairoGeniza and contemporary Christian literature.

David Snyder, Architecture. He is a fifth-year graduate studentwith a BA from Columbia University (1988), a BA from theJewish Theological Seminary (1988), and a Master ofArchitecture from Yale (1991). His dissertation is entitled“Jewish Space and the Modern Metropolis: Urban Renewal inPrague and Warsaw, 1885-1950.” It is an investigation of thearchitectural and urban qualities—both imagined and real—thatconstituted the particular ghetto spaces in postwar Warsaw andfin-de-siècle Prague in order to determine what role the figureof the Jewish ghetto played in urban renewal schemes in bothcities. By positioning the ghetto space as the archetypal markerof difference in the modern city, this project will ultimatelysuggest a series of linkages and points of tension — 1) betweenethnicity, multiculturalism, liberalism, and the construction ofidentity, 2) between perception and physical reality, and 3)between modernity and history. From these perspectives, theghetto space, it is argued, elucidates the shifting concerns withinthe discourses of modern architectural and urban planning.The Program in Jewish Studies granted him summer funds in2003 to pursue archival research in Berlin and Prague in supportof his dissertation. He was awarded a Fulbright fellowship forstudy in Poland (1992) and was the recipient of a research fel-lowship at the Center for Jewish History in New York City (2004).

Adriana X. Tatum, Comparative Literature, is entering herfourth year of graduate study. Her research focuses on modernHebrew poetry of the 20th century, with an emphasis on issuesof translation, multilingualism, and national canon-building. Sheworks closely on the poetry of Esther Raab, Leah Goldberg,and Harold Schimmel. Adriana graduated in 1998 from theCollege of William and Mary with a B. A. in Literary andCultural Studies. As an undergraduate, she studied LatinAmerican Modernist poetry and published several translationsof Ecuadorian poetry. Prior to coming to Princeton, she attendedthe Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Alan Verskin, Near Eastern Studies, is a first year doctoral student.He received his B.A. from the University of Toronto and hisA.M. from the Divinity School at the University of Chicago.His primary area of research is the study of social and intellectualinteractions between Jews and Muslims in the medieval period.He presently holds a doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciencesand Humanities Research Council of Canada (2004-2008). Hehas published Reading Strauss on Maimonides: A New Approach(Textual Reasoning Vol. 3, No. 1, June 2004,) and a bookreview of Lenn Goodmans Islamic Humanism (Journal ofReligion, October 2004).

Natasha Zaretsky, Anthropology, is a fifh year graduate studentwho is currently writing her dissertation on the Jewish communityin Buenos Aires, Argentina, entitled “Memory, Violence, andthe Politics of Belonging: European Jews in Buenos Aires,Argentina”. She just returned from her fieldwork in Buenos Aires,supported by a Fulbright IIE grant (2003), and has beenawarded a fellowship from the Fellowship of Woodrow WilsonScholars (2004-2005). She received her BA from DartmouthCollege in anthropology in 1997, where she also earned aSenior Fellowship (1996-1997) for a project entitled“Negotiating Identities, Transcending Boundaries: Soviet Jewishimmigrants in Brooklyn, New York.” Her most current projectsinclude “Singing towards Justice: Memory, Performance, andSocial Change in a Yiddish Chorus of Buenos Aires,” LatinAmerican Jewish Studies Association Research Conference,Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH (June 2004); “Walls ofMemory: Security, Violence, and Belonging in Buenos Aires,Argentina,” American Ethnological Society Conference,Atlanta, GA (April 2004); and “Reflections on CommemorativePractices and Security after the AMIA Bombing”, MemoryStudies Group, Institute of Economic and Social Development(IDES), Buenos Aires, Argentina (November 2003)

Holger Zellentin, Religion, is a fourth year student in the fieldof Late Antiquity. His dissertation is preliminarily titled “LateAntiquity Upside Down: Rabbinic Parodies of Jewish, Christianand Gentile Literature.” He received his undergraduate educationin France and holds one Masters Degree in Divinity, and one inHebrew and Aramaic Language, both from the University ofAmsterdam. Before coming to Princeton he studied in Jerusalemand Berlin. He is currently organizing a conference on Heresyin Late Antiquity under the auspices of Professor Peter Schäfer.

Other graduate students working in areas relevant to JewishStudies are the following: Seth D. Abelson (ComparativeLiterature), Yaron Ayalon (Near Eastern Studies), Amit Bein(Near Eastern Studies), Soelve I Curdts (Comparative Literature),Joshua Derman (History), Joshua Dubler (Religion), EduardIricinschi (Religion), Adam Jackson (Religion), Hannah Johnson(English), Ernestina Osorio (Architecture), Hanoch Sheinman(Philosophy), Amy Shuster (Politics), Maya Soifer (History), MeirSoloveitchik (Religion), Bella Tendler (Near Eastern Studies),Natasha Tessone (English), Moulie Vidas (Religion), Keri Walsh(English), and Eric Yellin (History).

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SUMMER FUNDING

In the summer of 2004, the Programin Judaic Studies assisted four under-

graduate and nine graduate students withspecial funding grants for summer projects.Jonathan Chavkin (’05) studied Hebrewfor thesis research; Henryk Jaronowski(’06) served as an intern at the JewishMuseum in Vienna; Sarit Kattan (’06)studied Arabic to use primary sources forher senior thesis; and Rena Lauer (’05)studied intensive French to prepare herfor the primary research she will do forher senior thesis on medieval FrenchJewry. The graduate students varied inlevel from I-IV. Jesse Ferris (NES 2nd

year) to fund pre-dissertation research inIsrael and study Arabic; Gregg Gardner(REL 1st year) to participate in anexcavation in Israel; Eduard Iricinschi(REL 2nd year) to study intensive Hebrewat JTS; Edward Muston (COM 1st year)for the study of exile literature in the SwissNational Museum; Kevin Osterloh (REL4th year) for research and German language study; Jamie Sherman (SOC 1st

year) for an ethnographic project inMorocco on the public lives of Jewishwomen and to study Arabic; PhilippaTownsend (REL 3rd year) for study inIsrael; and Holger Zellentin (REL 3rd

year) for dissertation research in theNetherlands and Germany. These are wellworth reading. They give a sense of thevariety of opportunities for research inJudaic Studies and are proof, if proof wereneeded, of the vitality of such studies at Princeton.

JONATHAN CHAVKIN

This summer I took an intensive beginningHebrew course, which gave me a greatbase in Hebrew. I plan to continue mystudy of Hebrew after graduation, perhapspursuing a graduate degree in Jewishstudies or attending rabbinical school.

HENRYK JARONOWSKI

I want to thank the Program in JudaicStudies for its generous summer grantwhich allowed me to do a nine-weekinternship at the Jewish Museum in Vienna.

My internship at the Jewish Museumcovered two major tasks. The formerwas to catalog a collection of 130 LPs ofYiddish folk songs which had been trans-ferred onto CD. I needed to copy downall the pertinent information on therecord cover and organize this informationinto a catalog. I wanted to use a MARClibrary-style catalog system, but it wasn’tavailable to me, so I put all the informa-tion into an organized text file, the codesand conventions of which I put in a shortcatalog manual. The major problems werestandardizing my transliteration of Yiddishout of Hebrew characters and standard-izing reconstructions of transliterationsbased on the varying transliterationswhich appeared on the record covers.

My second task was to write for theexhibition catalog of two exhibitions byan Israeli artist, Oz Almog, who some-times works in conjunction with theJewish Museum. He wanted the text inEnglish for the introductions to his exhibi-tions “Colors of War” and “Camouflage”,as well as other text for “Colors of War”.Over the course of weeks, I wrote a 13-page introduction for “Colors ofWar” and a 5-page introduction for“Camouflage”, as well as text for theIsrael section of “Colors of War”.

Before I came to Vienna, I contacted theChief Rabbi of Vienna, Paul ChaimEisenberg, asking if a congregant of hishad a spare room for the summer. He putme in touch with a member of the con-gregation who, in coordination with threeof her friends, offered me accommodationsin various apartments over the course ofthe summer. Through this congregant, Ihad the opportunity to have Shabbes atvarious friends’ houses over the summer:an Orthodox banker, an Orthodox furmerchant, and a Chasid. I also went toall kinds of synagogues: I got an aliyahin the little schtibl where those twoOrthodox men prayed, I attended a BarMitzvah at the mainstream Stadttempel,built in 1815, and I also went to theReform synagogue where my host playsthe piano. I also visited Prague andKrakow during the summer, and saw thesynagogues and Jewish cemeteries inboth cities. The one in Krakow was

especially meaningful to me, since myfamily was from Krakow and I evenmanaged to happen upon some of myfamily names in the New JewishCemetery there.

The fact that my university’s Program inJudaic Studies supported my efforts withthe Jewish Museum to preserve theJewish culture of Eastern Europe (throughcataloging the Yiddish folksongs) andbring the art of a Jewish Israeli artist toVienna is meaningful to me. Moreover, Iwas moved by the opportunity to liveand be a part of Jewish life in a city whichmy grandmother, who grew up in Berlinand Krakow, visited as a girl. It is thekind of experience that one remembersfor a lifetime.

SARIT KATTAN

I am grateful for the Judaic Studies’ generosity in funding my studies at theMiddlebury College Arabic LanguageProgram this summer, where I completedmy third year of Classical Arabic andsolidified my grasp on the structure ofthe language as well as my speakingskills. In addition to language study, Iwrote my final Arabic research paper forthe program, entitled “Jewish, Christianand Muslim Polemics in the Middle Ages,”which allowed me both to begin earlypreparation for my fall Junior Paper as wellas use my newly-acquired language skills toread select texts in their original language.

I was able to return to school with astrong enough Arabic background tobegin studying Judaeo-Arabic withProfessor Mark Cohen and write a JPabout the relationship of specific

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Judaeo-Arabic religious phraseology tolater Hebrew translations. I am research-ing the Early Middle Ages text “PolemusNestor haKomer, Polemic of Nestor thePriest” to better understand the transla-tion methods used when the documentwas translated from Judaeo-Arabic toHebrew, focusing on ancient Hebrewwords which, as a result of the translationprocess, adopted new definitions basedon the definition of Arabic cognates. Inthe Judaeo-Arabic course, we readSaadya and Maimonidies as preparationfor reading Cairo Geniza manuscripts,which are important for future studies inJewish social and religious history. I planon focusing my spring JP on Judaeo-Arabic magical (and mystical?) documentsfound in and out of the Geniza.

Learning about the Geniza has been anunparalleled experience for me, as thedocuments in the Geniza span manycenturies and continents. The Genizahas become the framework in which Ican place within a common historymany different communities, ideologies,traditions, schools of thought and cultures,that have in the past been compartmen-talized within scholarship. This new per-spective is invaluable to my understandingof time and space in Jewish history.

RENA LAUER

This summer, with the generous help ofthe Program in Judaic Studies, I wasable to take an intensive French languagecourse. I had no prior French experience,and now am able to read thesis sourcesin French.

This language is important for my thesisbecause I am translating and writingabout a Parisian manuscript in Hebrewdetailing a little-known thirteenth-centurydisputation between the Jews of Parisand a convert to Christianity. This man-uscript has never been translated intoEnglish, only into French, and has onlybeen written about in one small Frenchmonograph. The French language skills,therefore, allow me to explore both theFrench translation of the text as well asthe short secondary work.

JESSE FERRIS

This summer, funds provided by PrincetonUniversity and the Program in JudaicStudies enabled me to travel to Israel inorder to begin dissertation research andstudy Arabic. I am in the initial stages ofresearch towards a dissertation on theCold War and the Middle East. Morespecifically, I am examining the policiesof the Soviet Union and Egypt from theoutbreak of the civil war in Yemen untilthe outbreak of the Arab-Israeli war ofJune 1967. I devoted last summer tohoning my Russian language skills inRussia. I dedicated this summer mainlyto Arabic.

I enrolled in an intensive course inadvanced spoken and written Arabic atthe Jewish-Arab Center for Peace inGivat Haviva, Israel. I studied Arabic forsix hours a day in the classroom with asuperb team of Jewish and Arab teachersfrom the region. Some classes empha-sized journalistic and literary language,while others focused on the localPalestinian dialect through the study ofsongs and folk tales. After class, studycontinued with several hours of writtenhomework, oral practice, and listeningexercises. Then, in the evenings, I wouldspeak Arabic as a guest residing with anArab family in the nearby village of KafrKara. The home-stay program added acultural dimension of inestimable valueto the classroom experience. Anothercultural aspect was a tour of the sur-rounding Arab villages and a visit to anArab middle school in the city of Ummal-Fahm. Overall, the course was superband I made excellent progress.

In the remainder of the summer, I con-tinued to take private lessons in writtenArabic with an Islamic scholar of theAhmadiya movement in Haifa. We workedon Arabic newspapers and biographicalmaterial of the sort I will need to use inmy research. I also met with local Arabson a less formal basis to continue mystudy of the spoken language. In myspare time, I read Arabic newspapers andbiographies of Egyptian generals andprepared written transcriptions of recordedArabic radio and television programs.

Since the beginning of September, Ihave turned to initial research on mydissertation. I was able to attain affiliatestatus at the University of Haifa andborrower status at the university library.I have begun to read through the corpusof literature about the Yemeni civil war,Soviet policy in the Middle East, and thebackground of the Six Day War. If timepermits, I will begin primary sourceresearch at the archives of the IsraeliForeign Ministry before returning toPrinceton in the Spring.

GREGG GARDNER

As my research interests, the socio-economic history of Judea and Galilee in late antiquity, demand a strong command of archaeological evidence, Ispent this past summer participating inan archaeological excavation in Yotvata,Israel - located about a half-hour northof the Red Sea. Under the supervision ofProf. Jodi Magness of the University ofNorth Carolina at Chapel Hill, Prof.Gwyn Davies of Florida InternationalUniversity, and Dr. Uzi Avner of theArava Institute for EnvironmentalStudies, I excavated a Roman militaryinstallation that had operated from thethird through sixth centuries CE. Thedig supervisors took time to teach meimportant excavation skills, such as

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Gregg Gardner at Yotvata, Israel

drawing balks, land-surveying, takingelevation points, artifact preservationand recording methods. My knowledgeof Hebrew came in handy as I was twiceasked to supervise groups of Israelisfrom local kibbutzim who had come toour site to dig for the day. I also deliveredan evening lecture to the excavationparticipants on my recent research atPrinceton on the Babylonian Talmud.The program also included a tour oflocal archaeological sites, such asMasada, which are related to my field ofinterest. Following the excavation, Ispent a day in Beit Shemesh examiningartifacts at the Israel AntiquitiesAuthority’s storehouses. This past summerI learned a great deal about archaeologywhich could only be learned “in thefield” and am very grateful to theProgram in Judaic Studies for providingfinancial assistance.

EDWARD IRICINSCHI

For four weeks, between July 12 andAugust 6, 2004, I studied ModernHebrew. To begin with, I registered forthe summer Ulpan organized atColumbia University/Barnard Hillel,New York, by Rothberg InternationalSchool at the Hebrew University ofJerusalem. Classes met Monday, Tuesday,Thursday, and Friday, 9am -1:30pm, andWednesdays 9am-2:30pm. At the end ofthe course, I received five credit points,representing the equivalent of a semester,which were done at the rate of twenty-five weekly hours.

After taking the placement test, I wasassigned to the class Aleph/2 (advancedintroductory level), and studied for therest of Ulpan from the following text-book: Hebrew from Scratch, under thesupervision of Prof. Rachel Garber, fromthe Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I amproud to say that my final grade was A,reflecting a score of 94 on a scale of 1to 100. It may be also useful to add thatthis final grade includes the grades Ireceived for weekly written homeworkand class-tests, the oral final project, andthe final exam.

How do my summer studies in Hebrewhelp my academic development atPrinceton University? Currently, I pre-cept for an introductory course in theHebrew Bible, offered by Prof. MarthaHimmelfarb (REL 230). On the otherhand, as part of my preparation for thegeneral examination in Second TempleJudaism and Rabbinic Literature, thisfall I am auditing an advanced readingcourse in Genres of the RabbinicLiterature, offered by Prof. PeterSchaefer (REL 504). Needless to say,access to the original Hebrew texts,crucial for both these academic tasks, hasbeen greatly facilitated by my Hebrewsummer studies. On a more personalnote, I must say I am pleased to recom-mend this summer course for all thePrinceton students who would like tofurther their knowledge of the Hebrewlanguage.

EDWARD MUSTON

Thanks to the support of the Programin Judaic Studies, I was able to conductpre-generals research at the SwissNational Library in Berne during thesummer of 2004. My research focusedon the plight of refugees in Switzerlandduring WWII, specifically, the difficultiesfaced by refugees who sought to sustainthemselves through the production ofliterary works. The policies of the Swissgovernment forced these writers to thevery margins of society, insofar as theywere prohibited from contributing toliterary journals and newspapers. Thus,for many refugees, asylum in Switzerlandbecame a delicate balancing act of earningenough money to survive withoutjeopardizing their residence permits.

This research highlighted the contrastbetween the actual conditions of asylumin Switzerland during the war and theidealized recollection of these conditionsthat defined Swiss national identity afterthe war.

It is, precisely, the way in which thesexenophobic policies and cultural tenden-cies disappear from cultural consciousnessafter the war as ‘everyday life’ reassertsitself that becomes a major concern not

only for Swiss, but also Austrian andGerman writers. Thus, this research hasprovided me with an invaluable insightinto the type of selective memory andintentional forgetting that appearsrepeatedly in my study of post-war litera-ture in German, French, and English.

KEVIN LEE OSTERLOH

The funding I received this past summer2004 enabled me to complete severalresearch and study goals. It allowed meto meet the cost of living and researchhere in Princeton and to pay for the costof tuition and living expenses in Munich,Germany, where I studied in August atMunich’s Goethe Institute.

While in Princeton from June throughJuly, I continued work on two chaptersof my dissertation, one on Polybius’view of the Roman politeia, the other onthe nature of collective organization inthe Classical Mediterranean during theHellenistic period. With respect to thePolybius chapter, I met on two occasionswith my adviser in the Classics Dept.,Harriet Flower, in order to gain feedbackon the first draft. I then proceeded tolocate and begin the reading of thosesecondary sources outlined by her ascontaining necessary information for thenext stage of this chapter’s evolution.

My work on the chapter on the natureof collective identity in the 2nd centuryBCE Mediterranean was assisted by anongoing dialogue with Tessa Rajak, avisiting fellow during the past year at thePrinceton Institute for Advanced Studieswho is on faculty at the University ofReading, England. Before her departurein August, I submitted drafts of mydissertation proposal to her for review,with an eye toward accessing her viewson the issue of collective identity.Amongst much else that we discussedwere the works of Jonathan M. Hall,(1997) Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity,and his more recent (2002) Hellenicity.These discussions have helped to forgea proper working methodology for thecontinued research and writing of this chapter.

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From August 16-27, I attended a 2-week,super-intensive German language courseat the Goethe Institute in Munich.Despite the dominance of English as themodern-day intellectual lingua franca,German remains a key secondary sourcelanguage for research. Not only must Ibe able to comprehend the insights oflate 19th and early 20th century Germanscholarship in the field of Jewish Studiesand Classics, much work in the fieldtoday continues to be written in theGerman language, e.g. Schröder’s Dieväterlichen Gesetze (1996) and Habicht’s2. Makkabäerbuch (1976). The super-intensive program was a great success. I am presently working throughSchröder’s work at a much improvedpace, and my adviser Peter Schäfer canattest to the marked improvement in myGerman language skills. Not only am Inow able to reference German scholarshipwith much greater ease, a new world oftangible scholarly exchange with futureGerman colleagues in my field has becomea real possibility.

Many thanks for Judaic Studies’ generousassistance over the past summer. It has, asin summers past, provided an inestimablecontribution to my scholarly profile.

JAMIE SHERMAN

I spent this summer doing languagestudy and exploratory fieldwork inMorocco. The first part of the trip wasspent traveling to Casablanca, Marrakesh,and Essoueira. I then attended a languageprogram in colloquial Moroccan Arabicat the Arabic Language Institute in Fez.I attended a conference held by theAIMS Institute in Tangier on Jews inthe Maghreb (that region of NorthAfrica). I also spent a few days in thecapital city of Rabat, and even manageda weekend trip into the Sahara before Ileft. It was an informative and productivetrip. I got a good sense of the geographyof the country, not to mention a closeacquaintance with the public transporta-tion system (which is quite good andaffordable). Aside from the languagestudy, which was excellent and vastlyimproved my ability to communicate, Ilearned a great deal about the make up

Morocco, about Judaism, about anthro-pology (my field) and my future fieldworkprojects. It enabled me to make valuableprofessional contacts, and to improve mylanguage skills. It wasn’t always an easytrip, but it was an invaluable academicand personal experience.

PHILIPPA TOWNSEND

With the generous financial assistanceof the Program in Judaic Studies, I wasable to spend this summer studyingHebrew and exploring historical sites inIsrael that are relevant for my research.My dissertation project focuses on firstto third-century Christianity, and whilemost of the texts I work on are in Greek,Latin or Coptic, I wanted to developgreater competence also in Hebrew inorder to be able to refer to rabbinicsources.

During the first part of the summer, Itook intensive Hebrew language classesat the School of Oriental and AfricanStudies in London, in order to improvemy basic Hebrew skills. Then in August,I traveled to Israel to visit some of thehistorical sites that are central to ourunderstanding of the first century JewishSociety of Jesus and his followers. I stayed in Jerusalem’s Old City anddivided my time between exploring theabundance of archeological remains andmuseums in Jerusalem itself, and travel-ing to other places of interest. A high-light of my time was a visit to Qumran,to see the desert site of the Dead SeaScrolls community. I was also able toview the scrolls themselves, which arenow beautifully displayed in the IsraelMuseums Shrine of the Book. Otherplaces I was able to visit included

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and character of the dwindling Jewishcommunity that still lives in Moroccotoday. At the AIMS conference I heardpapers by scholars working in the regionfrom a variety of disciplinary perspectives,from History to Literature toAnthropology. I made contact withseveral anthropologists whose work wasrelevant to my own interests in the area.In Casablanca, I had the chance to visitone of the small, working synagogues,and chat in a combination of Englishand limping French (mine) with someof the women who were sitting in thehallway during services. I was surprisedby the number of young women withyoung children and babies, given thatliterature tends to emphasize the elderly.Casablanca, however, is home to the vastmajority of Jews living in Moroccotoday, and there are about 5,000 JewishMoroccans in Casablanca. The women Iencountered were urbane and francophone,speaking French not only to me, but toeach other and to the children as well.Interestingly, I heard no Arabic in thebuilding. In Fez, because I spent moretime there, I was able to spend sometime at the Jewish community center.There, more in keeping with my expec-tations, the community was mostly elderly.There too, French dominated the con-versation, though a few spoke Arabichere and there. The community centerran a kosher restaurant in their courtyard,and functioned as a meeting place forthe eighty-odd Jewish residents of Fez. I had several very interesting meetingswith the administrator of the center,who had emigrated to Israel as a youngman, but returned to Fez following thedeath of his father, to claim some inheri-tance. Since then, and for the past fiveyears, he has spent part of his year ineach place. I also sat for some time withthe Rabbi of Fez’ Jewish community. Hetold me many stories about the characterand history of Fez’ Jewish community,beginning with the influx of SpanishJewry in 1492, and the disputes betweenMoroccan Jewish residents and theSpanish newcomers.

This summer’s travels were invaluable asa way to evaluate some of my own sup-positions and presuppositions about

Masada, where the last Jewish fightersheld out against the Romans during thefirst century revolt; Nazareth, the hometown of Jesus; Sepphoris, with itsbreathtaking synagogue mosaics; and inthe Palestinian territories, Bethlehemand the intriguing hill fortress ofHerodium. My trip was extremely educational on many levels, enablingme finally to explore for myself thegeographical and physical context ofancient Judaism and in particular theearly Jesus movement.

HOLGER ZELLENTIN

This summer I engaged in the follow-ing academic activities: July 1st – July8th I visited several archeological sitesin Asia Minor (Turkey), especially the Hellenistic city of Perge and theRoman theatre and aqueduct atAspendos, both in the region ofPamphylia.

I then returned to Europe and partici-pated in the annual congress of theEuropean Association of BiblicalStudies, held July 25th- 28th at theUniversity of Groningen in theNetherlands. My paper, titled “Is MagicNoteworthy- Rabbinic Perspectivesand a Modern Category” was wellreceived, and an ongoing discussionwith some of the specialists on thefield has ensued. Furthermore, theconference allowed for a continuedintellectual exchange with severalEuropean scholars.

The rest of the summer I spent inIsrael. I arranged a private class of bothliterary and spoken Arabic with UlpanAkiva, Netanya. The class was very effi-cient, combining intensive reading ses-sions of Modern Standard Arabic withspeaking exercises in the PalestinianDialect and daily contact with theArabic- speaking population. The classnow serves as a solid basis for furtherstudies in Arabic. In Tel Aviv andJerusalem, I also made use of the localacademic institutions and met withprofessors from Tel Aviv Universityand the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.I am truly indebted to the Program inJudaic Studies for its generous funding.

“urbut il-hmaar matrah ma biquul laksahbo,” or: “tie the donkey wherever hisowner tells you.” Here you are the ownerof the donkey and the plumber is a ser-vant who has given you excellent adviceon where to park your donkey, which youhave stubbornly rejected. Now how oftendoes a situation like that arise?

Or consider the usage of formal addressesand formulaic sayings. Even the mostbasic situations such as greetings and part-ings are regulated by a complex code. Atfirst, this is quite daunting to the non-native speaker, but mastering it is adelightful part of acquiring the languageand using it in practice. Take the simplesituation of asking a stranger for direc-tions. The English “excuse me!” is notenough in Arabic (although it will do inextremis). For a young man, use yazalame (O, man). For an older man, stickwith ya ammi (O, my uncle). For an educated person, employ ya ustaadh (O,teacher). Address a religious or aged per-son respectfully as ya sheikh (O, old manor chief). To someone who has been onpilgrimage to Mecca, say ya hajj (O, pil-grim). To a woman, in order to avoid anyappearance of a come-on, say ya ukhti (O,my sister). And so on!

It is often noted that Hebrew lacks swearwords. The oaths and curses used ineveryday parlance are overwhelminglyArabic (and some Russian). But the lin-guistic current flows in both directions.Hebrew words are increasingly used incolloquial Arabic, causing many Arab eld-ers to lament the loss of linguistic purity(a fictional notion that ignores centuriesof Ottoman-Turkish influence on spokenArabic before the creation of the state ofIsrael). To the Hebrew speaker, however,this is a fascinating phenomenon. Forsome modern technological concepts, like“computer,” local Arabs have simplyadopted the Hebrew makhshev, despitethe existence of a perfectly adequate (andclosely related) term in modern standardArabic, hasuub. For cell-phone, theHebrew pelefon (literally, “wonderphone,” pronounced in Arabic belefon) iscurrent, rather than the cumbersomehaatif nakkal (portable phone). There are

STUDYING ARABIC IN ISRAELby Jesse Ferris

This summer, the support of theJudaic Studies Program enabled

me to travel to Israel in order to begindissertation research and study Arabic.Since much of my stay involved suchthoroughly unremarkable activities aslibrary research, translation, and lan-guage classes, I would like to use thiscolumn to share an unexpected dimen-sion of my experience.

I enrolled in an intensive course inadvanced spoken and written Arabictaught by a superb team of Jewish andArab teachers at the Jewish-Arab Centerfor Peace in Givat Haviva, Israel. The mixof teachers proved ideal – the Jewishteachers were well attuned to the difficul-ties of learning Arabic as a foreign lan-guage, while the Arabs helped studentsgain fluency in the local dialect and provided an astonishing exposure to local culture. Many of us, who had come bententirely on language acquisition, were surprised at the extent to which under-standing the culture came to be inseparablefrom learning the language.

Consider the use of proverbs, for example.Unlike English, Arabic proverbs play amajor role in everyday speech. Correctusage depends on a sensitive understand-ing of local etiquette – what to say (andmore importantly, what not to say), aswell as when and how to say it. Arabiccontains a vast number of proverbs, andeach applies to a highly specific social sit-uation. One example will suffice. Imaginethat you are a homeowner who wants toinstall a second sink in your kitchen. Youinvite a plumber over to survey the sceneand do the job. He suggests locating thesink next to the existing one, but you saythat your wife prefers to have it on theopposite side of the kitchen, next to therefrigerator. He argues with you, explain-ing that his suggestion presents significantadvantages in terms of the existing pipeinfrastructure, efficiency, and of coursecost. But you are immovable. At last, witha sigh, he gives up and proceeds to tear upthe tile floor, muttering under his lip:

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even moremundaneexamplesof the pen-etration of

Hebrew into Arabic, such as beseder(Hebrew for OK), which frequently punc-tuates Arabic phone conversations, ortsamuud to designate fashionably tight-fit-ting clothing. Of course, both Jews andArabs in Israel widely employ the comicArabic-English hybrid “yalla, bye!” to endphone calls.

Studying Arabic in Israel is a unique andcontradictory experience. We may easilyforget that Israel is not only the focus ofconflict between Arabs and Jews, but ofgenuine attempts at coexistence and rec-onciliation. Coexistence may be tense andimperfect, but it is also very real, con-tributing richly to the multiculturalpanoply that is contemporary Israel. Adesire to go beyond classroom discussionson Arab culture led me to a decision tocomplement the classroom experiencewith a home stay in one of the surroundingvillages. This proved somewhat difficult toarrange. Many families were unwilling toincur the risk of hosting a Jew in the wakeof the violent riots that marked the begin-ning of the present Intifada. Moreover,the presence of an unmarried male amongthe women of the family may pose athreat to family honor. Finally, the matterwas arranged, and I began to spend myevenings and nights with a wonderful familyin the picturesque village of Kafr Qara‘,overlooking the valley of ‘Ara in north-central Israel.

Our encounter illustrated both the degreeof coexistence between Jews and Arabs inthe present and some of the major obsta-cles to be faced in the future. Iyad, ayoung lawyer and former deputy mayorof the village, is advancing to the top ofIsrael’s judiciary within the Muslim(Shari‘i) religious court system – whichdeals primarily with personal status laws inIsrael’s Muslim community. His wife Laylajuggles her job as a teacher of mathemat-ics at a local middle school, with raisingthree children and managing the house-hold. Despite their relative success, thecouple exemplifies the difficulties of pro-fessional advancement for educated Arabs

in Israeli society today. Like Layla, the vastmajority of educated Arabs in Israel areemployed in the field of education.Despite strict anti-discrimination laws,engineers, scientists, and other profes-sionals find it difficult to get hired in apredominately Jewish business sector.Lawyers in the private sector report thateven Arab clients prefer to hire Jewishlawyers, because they believe that Jewishlawyers can better navigate the peculiar-ities of the Israeli judicial system. As aresult, many Arab lawyers like Iyad feel astrong incentive to specialize in religiouslaw, in which there is a strict separationbetween the Rabbinic, Muslim,Christian,and Druze court systems, but theopportunities for advancement andwealth-creation are more limited.

Iyad’s parents live in a wing of the samehouse. In the evenings, numerous broth-ers, sisters and their families converge onthe homestead and remain until late atnight chatting on the porch and drinkingbottomless cups of Arabic coffee or strongherbal tea. My room on the bottom floorwas situated some fifty yards from the vil-lage mosque, and so I got accustomed tobeing awakened along with the rest of thehousehold by a piercing call to prayer atprecisely 4:50 each morning. On theother side of the house, the Islamicmovement was building a communitycenter. Men from the village would gathereach night after work volunteer a fewhours of their time to help with the con-struction. In such circumstances, evennon-religious families (the term “secular”does not apply) are pressed into a reli-giously regimented lifestyle that leaves lit-tle space or time for privacy and introspec-tion. Families or individuals who exhibitoutward signs of westernization are sub-jected to close scrutiny from family andneighbors, who exert a strong social forcefor social and religious conformity.

Marriage was a salient topic of conversa-tion both in the classroom and in the vil-lage. In the so-called “triangle” region ofnorth-central Israel, wedding and engage-ment gifts constitute the single largestexpense for a typical Arab household dur-ing the summer months. Arab weddingsare often huge events, involving many hun-dreds and often thousands of invitees. In a

closely-knit village society, where largefamilies organized in huge clans live undertight social constraints leading to anextraordinary degree of solidarity andsocial pressure, declining invitations is sim-ply not done. An average family typicallyreceives dozens of invitations over thecourse of one summer. The attendantexpenditure (not to mention the tightsocial calendar) is staggering, forcing manyinto debt and, occasionally, even causingbankruptcy.

Arab society is changing rapidly in tandemwith the rest of Israel. Nowhere is thistransformation more evident than in thedelicate question of the status of women.For example, the tradition of honor-killing– a practice of murdering female familymembers for committing offenses againstthe family honor – is gradually undergo-ing a fascinating evolution in certain strataof Israeli-Arab society. Under the impactof modernization and the rule of law, anon-violent version of this practice hasemerged, which entails public excommu-nication of the offender by the family,often through newspaper advertisements.At the same time, the very persistence ofsuch practices serves to illustrate the enor-mous differences that exist betweenJewish and Arab societies as a whole.These differences are astonishing, consid-ering how small and modern contempo-rary Israel is, and how closely the twocommunities interact in many spheres oflife. And yet, when one considers the deepdivisions within Jewish society in Israel –between Ashkenazis and Sephardis, ortho-dox and secular, rich and poor – perhapsthey are not so surprising after all.

It is often said that ignorance breeds con-flict. This suggests the panacea of learningas an answer to war. I think this is simplis-tic. It is too much to hope that mereunderstanding will eliminate real conflictsof interests between peoples and states.But an understanding of the cultural ori-gins of difference can at least help us man-age conflicts more wisely and minimizetheir consequences. To that end, learninglanguages abroad is as good a start as any.

Jesse Ferris is a third-year PhD candidatein the Department of Near Eastern Studies.He is writing a dissertation on the Cold Warin the Middle East.14

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JUDAIC STUDIES COMMITTEEAs of July 1, 2004

Froma Zeitlin, Director, Program in Judaic Studies, EwingProfessor of Greek Language and Literature, and Professor of Comparative Literature

Leora Batnitzky, Associate Professor of Religion, Richard Stockton Preceptor

David Bellos, Professor of French, Comparative Literature

Mark Cohen, Professor of Near Eastern Studies

Stanley Corngold, Professor of Germanic Languages andLiteratures, Comparative Literature

John Gager, William H. Danforth Professor of Religion

Anthony Grafton, Henry Putnam University Professor of History,Director, Humanities Council

Jan T. Gross, Norman B. Tomlinson ’16 and ’48 Professor of War and Society, Professor of History

Wendy Heller, Associate Professor of Music

Daniel Heller-Roazen, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature

Martha Himmelfarb, Professor of Religion, Chair

Stanley Katz, Lecturer with rank of Professor of Public andInternational Affairs; Faculty Chair, Undergraduate Program;Director, Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies

Ulrich Knoepflmacher, William and Annie S. Paton FoundationProfessor of Ancient and Modern Literature, Professor of English

Thomas Y. Levin, Associate Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures

Olga Litvak, Assistant Professor of History

Deborah Nord, Professor of English, Women & Gender Studies

Andrew Plaks, Professor of East Asian Studies, Comparative Literature

Theodore Rabb, Professor of History

Anson Rabinbach, Professor of History; Director, Program in European Cultural Studies (ECS)

Esther Robbins, Lecturer in Hebrew, Near Eastern Studies

Lawrence Rosen, Professor of Anthropology

Peter Schäfer, Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Judaic Studies,Professor of Religion

Esther Schor, Professor of English

Avrom Udovitch, Khedouri A. Zilkha Professor of JewishCivilization in the Near East, Professor of Near Eastern Studies

COMMITTEE

SUPPORT

Liz Bailey and Dr. Ruth Westheimer.

Advisory Council members Robert Alter and Mark Wilf with Froma Zeitlin.

JUDAIC STUDIES ADVISORY COUNCIL

We are grateful to the members of the Advisory Councilof the Program in Judaic Studies for their dedicationand support. Below is the list of members as of July 1,2004. Asterisks indicate new members. We tenderheartfelt thanks to Paula Hyman of Yale University andJames Shapiro of Columbia University, who served asmembers of our Council from December 2001 toJuly, 2004.

Robert Alter, University of California, BerkeleyMark Biderman ’67 Melvin Jules Bukiet, writer, Sarah Lawrence CollegeJoseph Fath, Princeton, NJRuth Fath, Princeton, NJ*Talya Fishman, University of PennsylvaniaFanya Gottesfeld-Heller, New York, NY*Marcella Kanfer Rolnick ’95*Ivan G. Marcus, Yale University*David N. Myers, University of California Los AngelesDebra G. Perelman ’96Ronald O. Perelman, New York, NYMark Podwal, artist, New York, NYEmily Rose GS ’01 Philip Wachs ’78 Ruth Westheimer, New York, NYMark Wilf ’84James Young, University of Massachusetts, AmherstBruce Zuckerman ’69, University of Southern CaliforniaSidney Lapidus ’59, Sits with Council

LEORA BATNITZKY, AssociateProfessor of Religion, has just completeda new book on the philosophies of LeoStrauss and Emmanuel Levinas, titledStrauss and Levinas: Philosophy and thePolitics of Revelation. She is also theauthor of Idolatry and Representation:The Philosophy of Franz RosenzweigReconsidered and the editor of the forth-coming Martin Buber: Schriften zurPhilosophie und Religion. Funded by athree-year New Directions Fellowshipfrom the Andrew Mellon Foundation,she is now beginning a new project onthe relation between modern legal theoryand religious thought. Since 2004 she isthe co-editor, with Peter Schäfer, of theJewish Studies Quarterly and currentlyserves as Director of Graduate Studies inthe Department of Religion. This pastyear she presented papers at BrandeisUniversity, Stanford University, ArizonaState University, as well as at three different international conferences inGermany. In 2003-2004 she publishedarticles in Cardozo Law Review, JewishStudies Quarterly, Yale French Studies, aswell as in the edited collections Religionafter Metaphysics and Women andGender in Jewish Philosophy.

DAVID BELLOS, Professor of FrenchLanguages and Literatures, was on leavein 2002-03. A specialist in literary biog-raphies (Georges Perec; Jacques Tati), heis currently writing a study of RomainGary (1914-80), a French novelist, filmdirector, and diplomat of Litvak origin,who twice won the Prix Goncourt (onceunder the name of Gary – itself a pseu-donym — and the other under a differentname). Gary has been described as “aromantic and tragic figure, whose fictionsextended well beyond his books.” Thissemester Bellos is teaching JDS/FRE367,“The Jewish Presence in French Fictionand Film since 1945”, where he intro-duces students to the writing of AndréSchwarz-Bart, Elie Wiesel, Albert Memmiand Robert Bober, alongside GeorgesPerec and Romain Gary.

MARK COHEN, Professor of NearEastern Studies, specializes in Jewish

history in the medieval Islamic worldand in the documents from the CairoGeniza. His most recent book, UnderCrescent and Cross: The Jews in theMiddle Ages (1994), has appeared inTurkish and Hebrew translations andwill soon appear in German. He com-pleted a two-volume project on povertyand charity in the Jewish community ofmedieval Egypt while a Fellow of theWissenschaftskolleg in Berlin in 2002-2003. These books will be published byPrinceton University Press in 2005.While on leave, he lectured in Berlin,Budapest, and Granada. In 2001-2002he was recipient of a project grant fromthe Center for the Study of Religion forhis research on poverty and charity andin May 2002 directed a conference on “Poverty and Charity: Judaism,Christianity, Islam” sponsored by CSR.He has edited the conference proceedingsand they will appear at the end of 2004as a special issue of the Journal ofInterdisciplinary History. In the summerof 2004 he directed a summer universitycourse on “Jews and Muslims in theMiddle Ages” at the Central EuropeanUniversity in Budapest with studentsfrom 16 different home countries, mainlyfrom the former communist bloc. Cohenis a member of the prestigious AmericanAcademy for Jewish Research.

STANLEY CORNGOLD recentlypublished a book on Franz Kafka entitledLambent Traces (Princeton UP, 2004),which treats Kafka as a neo-Gnosticthinker and writer. Norton will bring outin 2005 his Selected Stories of Franz Kafka,which he has newly translated with com-mentary. He recently returned from ayear’s leave spent half in residence at theInstitute for Advanced Study and half atthe Internationales ForschungszentrumKulturwissenschaften in Vienna. There helectured on “The Great War and ModernGerman Memory,” which will shortlyappear in the Cambridge Companion tothe Literature of the First World War. Hisessay on “Franz Kafka: The RadicalModernist” also appeared in theCambridge Companion to the Modern

German Novel. He has recently published“`Wie ein Fallbeil . . .’: Kafka über Kunstund Ethik,” in Skepsis und literarischeImagination (Munich: Fink); “Kafka andthe Dialect of Minor Literature,” inDebating World Literature (London:Verso); “Kraus and Nietzsche: Frèressemblables?” in Nietzsche and AustrianCulture (Vienna: Universitataets Verlag);“The Death of the Author: the Case ofPaul de Man” in Literary Research/recherchelittéraire and has several articles in press,incl. “Hegel, Schopenhauer, andCannibalism” and “Thirteen Ways ofSeeing a Vermin: Metaphor and Chiasmin Kafka’s Metamorphosis.” His next bookprojects are Kafka Before the Law, whichwill translate Kafka’s legal writings andcomment on their imbrication in hispoetic work, and a book of linkedessays entitled The Will to Art: or, theAesthetic Ideology.

JOHN GAGER is the DanforthProfessor of Religion. His scholarlyconcerns are the religions of the RomanEmpire, especially early Christianity, andrelations between Jews and Christians inthe early centuries of the common era.He is the author of Moses in Greco-RomanPaganism; Kingdom and Community:The Social World of Early Christianity;The Origins of Anti-Semitism; CurseTablets and Binding Spells from theAncient World; and Reinventing Paul.

ANTHONY GRAFTON, HenryPutnam University Professor and currently,Chair of the Council on the Humanities,

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Professor John Gager.

works on European intellectual history.His special interests lie in the history ofthe classical tradition, chiefly during theRenaissance, in the history of scienceand scholarship, and in the history ofbooks and readers. Author of JosephScaliger: A Study in the History ofClassical Scholarship, vol. 2: (1993);Commerce with the Classics (1997); TheFootnote: A Curious History (1997): andCardano’s Cosmos (1999), his mostrecent book is Leon Battista Alberti:Master Builder of the Italian Renaissance.He takes a strong interest in the waysthat Christian thinkers interpreted andappropriated Jewish magical practicesand exegetical techniques; in 1999-2000he was a member of a research groupstudying Christian Hebraism at theCenter for Advanced Judaic Studies ofthe University of Pennsylvania, and hehopes to join the Center again, in 2005-2006, for a year devoted to the Jewishbook. One of his current research projectsis a study of learned magic in RenaissanceEurope, which includes a close look atChristian versions of Kabbalah. In fall2002 he was awarded the internationallyprestigious Balzan Prize (Switzerland),in the field of the History of theHumanities. It carries a stipend of1,000,000 Swiss Francs.

JAN T. GROSS, the Norman B.Tomlinson ’16 and ’48 Professor of Warand Society in the Department of History,author of Neighbors: The Destruction ofthe Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland(2001), is finishing a book manuscriptentitled Fear – Anti-Semitismn in Polandafter Auschwitz: An Essay in HistoricalInterpretation. It will be publishednext year by Random House.

WENDY HELLER, Associate Professorof Music, was promoted to tenure lastspring. She is the author of Emblems ofEloquence: Opera and Women’s Voices inSeventeenth-Century Venice.

DANIEL HELLER-ROAZEN,Assistant Professor of ComparativeLiterature, is on leave from Princeton forthe 2004-2005 academic year with an

Andrew W. Mellon New DirectionsFellowship. His areas of interest includeGreek and Roman letters; the transmis-sion of classical learning to the Arabicworld and to the Latin West; the vernac-ular literatures of the European MiddleAges; medieval Arabic, Hebrew and Latinphilosophy; and twentieth-centuryphilosophy. He is the author ofFortune’s Faces: The Roman de la Roseand the Poetics of Contingency (TheJohns Hopkins University Press, 2003)as well as editor of Giorgio Agamben’sPotentialities: Collected Essays inPhilosophy (Stanford University Press,1999). He has written articles on classical,medieval, and modern literature andphilosophy published or forthcoming inDiacritics, Littérature, MLN, October,Paragraph, Parallax, Romania, andSouth Atlantic Quarterly. His next book,Echolalias: On the Forgetting of Language,with fascinating remarks about Hebrewand Yiddish, is forthcoming from ZoneBooks in March, 2005.

MARTHA HIMMELFARB, Professorof Religion and Chair of the Departmentof Religion, has completed ‘A Kingdomof Priests’: Ancestry and Merit in theSecond Temple Period and has begunwork on a book about apocalypses forBlackwell’s Brief History series.

STANLEY KATZ, Lecturer with rankof Professor in Public and InternationalAffairs, Faculty Chair of the WoodrowWilson School Undergraduate Program,Director of the Princeton UniversityCenter for Arts and Cultural PolicyStudies, Acting Director of Law andPublic Affairs, and Past-President of theCenter for Jewish Life. Together withBenny Gidron of Ben-Gurion University,he recently published a book, MobilizingFor Peace, on the role of nongovernmentalorganizations in the peace processes inNorthern Ireland, Israel and SouthAfrica (Oxford University Press, 2002).In Israel, the research team was led byTamar Hermann of the Tami SteinmetzCenter for Peace in Tel Aviv.

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ULRICH C. KNOEPFLMACHER,Professor of English and PatonFoundation Professor of Ancient andModern Literature, specializes inRomantic and Victorian literature aswell as children’s literature. He recentlypublished the Penguin editions of The Complete Fairy Tales of GeorgeMacDonald and Frances HodgsonBurnett’s A Little Princess, and is finishinga memoir called Oruro: Growing UpJewish in the Andes about his life as arefugee child in South America. Togetherwith Professor Claudia Johnson, hehas devised and taught courses on the intersection of Englishness andJewishness in British literature, mostrecently in spring 2002.

THOMAS Y. LEVIN, AssociateProfessor of Germanic Languages andLiteratures and Director of GraduateStudies, teaches courses that range fromthe history of aesthetic theory andFrankfurt School cultural theory to thehistory and theory of media (Weimarcinema, rhetoric of new media, archae-ologies of vision). A former fellow atthe Internationales ForschungszentrumKulturwissenschaften (Vienna) and atthe Institute for Advanced Study(Budapest), Levin has recently published

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Professor Ulrich C. Knoepflmacher.

a study of the origins of syntheticsound in the late 1920’s, and is currentlycompleting a small book on the workof Guy Debord and the SituationistInternational. In 2004-05, he is aFellow at the Getty Institute.

OLGA LITVAK, Assistant Professor ofHistory, has recently finished her firstbook, entitled Russia’s First JewishSoldiers in History and Memory, soon tobe published by Indiana University Press.She is currently working on a study ofthe Kishinev pogrom of 1903 as a cultur-al event and the origin of the Jewishtwentieth century. She is also planning abook on Jewish artists and the making ofthe Russian imperial image. Litvak serveson the editorial board of YIVO’s forth-coming Encyclopedia of EasternEuropean Jewish History and Culture, asthe editor of the section devoted topainting and sculpture. This fall, she isteaching her survey in modern Jewishhistory as well as a junior seminar on therelationship between literary and histori-cal narrative; in the spring, she will teacha sophomore seminar in historicalmethodology as well as a brand newcourse in Russian history, entitled “TheEast in the West: Russia, Europe and theSearch for Civil Society.”

DEBORAH NORD, Professor ofEnglish. Prof. Nord spent the 2003-04academic year on leave to finish a draftof her book, Myths of Origin: Gypsiesand the Nineteenth-Century British

Imagination. She is currently planninga conference, together with her col-league Maria DiBattista, for April 2005entitled “Women, Art, and Politics,1918-50.” Her essay “‘Return fromExile’: Community, Nation, and Genderin George Eliot’s Fiction” will appear ina Looking Forward, Looking Backward: AWomen’s Studies Reader (forthcoming).Prof. Nord serves on the advisory boardof the newly created North AmericanVictorian Studies Association.

THEODORE K. RABB, Professor ofHistory, has written on various aspectsof the relationship between Jewish andgeneral history in early modern Europe,and taught a pioneering course on thissubject at Princeton with Mark Cohenand Natalie Davis. He serves on theBoard of Governors of the HebrewUniversity of Jerusalem, and is a memberand former chair of the AcademicAdvisory Committee for the HebrewUniversity’s Rothberg School forOverseas Students.

ANSON RABINBACH, Professor ofHistory and Director of the Program inEuropean Cultural Studies, specializes in20th century European history, with anemphasis on German intellectual history.He teaches courses on European culture,intellectuals, fascism, and the history oftechnology. Rabinbach is the author ofThe Crisis of Austrian Socialism (1983);The Human Motor (1990); and In theShadow of Catastrophe: GermanIntellectuals Between Apocalypse andEnlightenment (1997); and is also theco-editor of New German Critique.He is currently co-editing The NaziCulture Sourcebook (with SanderGilman). In Spring 2003 he organizedan international conference at Princetonon the Humanities under Nazi Germany,with publication of the papers expectednext year.

LAWRENCE ROSEN, W. N. CromwellProfessor of Anthropology. His book,The Justice of Islam, was published byOxford in 2000, and The Culture ofIslam, was published in 2002 by the

University of Chicago Press. Both bookscontain discussions of Muslim-Jewishrelations in North Africa. He is presentlycompleting a book entitled Drawn FromMemory that explores the lives of fourNorth Africans, both Muslim andJewish. He also retains an appointmentas an Adjunct Professor of Law atColumbia Law School.

PETER SCHÄFER, the PerelmanProfessor of Judaic Studies, returned toPrinceton after a year of leave as a full-time member of the faculty. His recentbook, Mirror of His Beauty: FeminineImages of God from the Bible to the EarlyKabbalah, was published by PrincetonUniversity Press (2002, paperback2004). Together with William Jordan(History) and Michael Cook (NearEastern Studies), he edits a series for thePress entitled Jews, Christians, andMoslems from the Ancient to the ModernWorld. Ten books have already beenpublished in this series, with more tocome. Schäfer also edits another seriesTexts and Studies in Ancient Judaismand the three most recent volumes arederived from three conferences spon-sored by Judaic Studies at Princeton:The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture III (2002); The BarKokhba War Reconsidered: NewPerspectives on the Second Jewish Revoltagainst Rome (2003), and The Ways thatNever Parted: Jews and Christians inLate Antiquity and the Early MiddleAges, Adam H. Becker and AnnetteYoshiko Reed, eds. (2003). In fall 2002,

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Peter Schäfer and advisee Orly Lieberman.

Professor Deborah Nord.

work was started on an ambitious long-term collaborative project under hisguidance: an edition, translation, andcommentary on Sefer Hasidim, animportant pietist text of the medievalperiod. Schäfer continues as editor,along with Leora Batnitzky (Religion),of the Jewish Studies Quarterly, withoffices now transferred to Princeton.

ESTHER SCHOR, Professor ofEnglish, is working on a biography ofEmma Lazarus for Schocken’s JewishLives series. Most recently, she has pub-lished a volume of poems, The Hills ofHolland, published by Archer Books(www.archer-books.com) and edited theCambridge Companion to Mary Shelley.Her teaching for the Program includes“The Bible as Literature,” “Introductionto Jewish Studies,” and a new courseslated for the near future on YiddishLiterature and Culture.

ABRAHAM L. UDOVITCH,Khedouri A. Zilkha Professor of JewishCivilization in the Near East, Departmentof Near Eastern Studies. He is co-editorof the journal, Studia Islamica and amember of the Executive Committee ofthe Encyclopaedia of Islam. He is also onthe World Executive Committee of theInternational Center for Peace in theMiddle East. He is a member of theBoard of Overseers of Koc University inIstanbul. His current research centers ona study of the social and economic life ofthe 11th century Mediterranean worldbased on a collection of about 500Geniza documents relating to the careerof a merchant by the name of Nahrayben Nissim. He is also working on ashort monograph on rural society in11th century Egypt as reflected in theGeniza documents. His other projectsinclude one on intercommunal relationsin the medieval Near East and another inthe field of Islamic law.

FROMA ZEITLIN, Director of theProgram in Judaic Studies is the CharlesEwing Professor of Greek Language andLiterature (in the Classics Department)and Professor of Comparative Literature.

ADJUNCT FACULTY

JAMES S. DIAMOND, Lecturer inthe Departments of Religion, NearEastern Studies, and ComparativeLiterature, regularly offers courses forthe Program. In 2003-04, he taught“Masterworks of Hebrew Literature inTranslation,” and “A Literary Tour ofthe Middle East: Arab and Israeli ShortStories.” In fall 2004 he taught aFreshman Seminar on the topic “TheProblem of Suffering,” and will teachJDS 201 “Introduction to Judaism:Religion, History, Ethics” in the spring.At the Annual Conference of theAssociation for Jewish Studies in Chicago

(2004) he participated in a RoundTable discussion on “Confronting theIsraeli/Palestinian Conflict in theCollege Classroom and Campus.” Hispaper was entitled “Israel on Campus:A Town vs. Gown Affair.”

JENNA WEISSMAN JOSELIT, notedhistorian, author, lecturer, and curator,specializes in the study of material cultureand its relationship to daily life. As aVisiting Professor, she regularly teachescourses at Princeton in such varied pro-grams as Freshman Seminars, AmericanStudies and, most particularly, JudaicStudies in collaboration with theDepartment of History. She has offeredseminars on “The Making of Americans:Material Culture and the ImmigrantExperience,” “The Exhibition inModern and Postmodern Culture,”“Getting Dressed” and on differentaspects of modern Jewish history,including “Modern Jewish History andthe Urban Experience.” In spring 2003,Joselit introduced a new course,“Culture Mavens: American Jews andthe Performing Arts,” that has beenoffered three times in as many years. Infall 2004, Joselit taught another newseminar, “Prejudice on Trial: Antisemitism,the Courts, and the Law,” which drewa wide range of students from thosemajoring in the sciences to those in thehumanities. Outside the classroom,Weissman Joselit has been heavilyinvolved in the nation-wide effort tomark the 350th anniversary celebrationof Jewish settlement in the UnitedStates. It has taken her from Omaha,Nebraska, where she delivered thekeynote address at a CreightonUniversity conference on popular cultureto the Library of Congress where shenot only delivered a public lecture onAmerican Jewish history but also con-sulted on the Library of Congress’sexhibition, “From Haven to Home.” Afrequent contributor to both The NewRepublic and TNR Online, as well as alongtime columnist for the Forward,Joselit is currently working on a newbook about America’s relationship tothe Ten Commandments.

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She was on leave 2003-04 at theInstitute for Advanced Studies inPrinceton, but continued to direct theProgram (with help from the committee).In addition to her recent publicationsin Classics, her essay entitled “NewSoundings in Holocaust Literature: ASurfeit of Memory,” appeared in acollective volume, Catastrophe andMeaning, eds. Moishe Postone and EricSantner (University of Chicago Press2003). In April 2004 she participatedin a conference at Dartmouth College,“Contested Identities of the Holocaust,”at which she gave a paper entitled, “thePlaces Where They Walked: Journeying toa Vanished World,” on the phenomenonof travel pilgrimages to Eastern Europe.In June 2004, she attended a conferencein Leiden, the Netherlands, on “TheGeneration After and Literature of theHolocaust,” where she gave a paper,“Imaginary Tales in the Land of thePerpetrators,” which treated three recentworks of fiction by authors in the US,Germany, and Britain, respectively. Shealso contributed an essay, “Teaching thePerpetrators,” to an MLA volume,Teaching the Holocaust (2005).

“Jews, Christians, and Moslems in the MiddleAges,” offered by Mark Cohen (NES). LeoraBatnitzky, our specialist in modern Judaism,looks at existentialist philosophy acrossJewish and Christian lines to include SorenKierkegaard, Martin Buber, Martin Heidegger,Jean-Paul Sartre, and Emmanuel Levinas in themix. Likewise, she uses a comparative approachin the field of religion and law. In the literarysphere, we experimented with a course onLatin-American writers, “From Pale to Pampa:Jews and Judaism in Latin American Literature,”and another on “Arab and Israeli Short Stories.”We will continue to encourage such combinationsand are hoping to introduce a team-taught semi-nar on Black-Jewish relations in the near future.

As we add up the ledger of losses and gainsamong our faculty, we bid a sad farewell to ourtwo “Barbaras” at the close of spring 2004. Inthe first instance, Barbara Hahn of the Germandepartment left to divide her time betweenVanderbilt University and Berlin, and BarbaraMann in the Near Eastern Studies departmentdeparted for the Jewish Theological Seminary.In both instances, we hope for speedy replace-ments – German-Jewish Studies in the case ofHahn, and modern Hebrew literature or perhapsIsrael Studies, more generally, in the case ofMann. On the other hand, we welcome Jan T. Gross, the new Norman B. Tomlinson ’16and ’48 Professor of War and Society, to theDepartment of History. I introduced him onthis page last year, noting his specialization inthe history of Eastern Europe. In spring 2005,for example, he will teach “HolocaustControversies: Historiography and Politics,”with Anson Rabinbach, and another, moregeneral course, “Between Resistance andCollaboration: The Experience of the SecondWorld War in Europe.” In addition to Gross,

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VISITORS2003-2004

EDNA AIZENBERG, A world-renowned Borges scholar,Prof. Aizenberg has been an activist for human rights in Latin America and an advocate for multiculturalism in LatinAmerican Studies. She is Professor and Chair of HispanicStudies at Marymount Manhattan College and AdjunctProfessor of Jewish Literature at the Jewish TheologicalSeminary of America. She taught “From Pale to Pampas: Jews and Judaism in Latin American Literature,”(Comparative Literature).

DAN RABINOWITZ, an anthropologist, is Senior Lecturerat the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel-AvivUniversity. His academic research areas include The Palestiniancitizens of Israel, Nationalism, Ethnicity; social aspects of envi-ronmental issues and demographic projections in ethnicallydivided states and regions. A regular contributor to the op-edpage of Haaretz, he is a leading commentator on politics, envi-ronmental issues and society in Israel and the Middle East. Hewas President of the Israeli Anthropological Association 1998 -2001, and is a Founding Member of PALISAD — a group ofPalestinian and Israeli academics involved in on-goingexchange and intellectual debate since 1998. He taught“Minorities in Contemporary Israel and the Middle East,”(Near Eastern Studies).

BURTON VISOTSKY holds the Nathan and Janet ApplemanChair in Midrash and Interreligious Studies at the JewishTheological Seminary. He has served as the Associate andActing Dean of the Graduate School (1991–96), as the foundingRabbi of the egalitarian worship service of the SeminarySynagogue and as the director of the Louis FinkelsteinInstitute for Religious and Social Studies at JTS. ProfessorVisotzky has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and avisiting fellow and life member of Clare Hall, University ofCambridge as well as a visiting faculty member at PrincetonTheological Seminary, Hebrew Union College and at theRussian State University of the Humanities. Dr. Visotzky alsois Adjunct Professor of Biblical Studies at Union TheologicalSeminary, New York. He taught JDS 201, “Introduction toJudaism: Religion, History, Ethics.”

YISRAEL JACOB YUVAL, a scholar of medieval Jewish-Christian relations at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, writesabout the continuous interchange between Judaism andChristianity. He is the author of Scholars in Their Time: TheReligious Leadership of German Jewry in the Late Middle Ages(1989) and Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews andChristians (2000). Yuval was a Stewart Fellow for the Councilof the Humanities in Religion in the spring and team taught acourse “Christianity and the Rabbis in Late Antiquity” withPeter Schäfer.

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Froma Zeitlin, Uli Knoepflmacher, and Jim Diamond hanging the new mezuzzah.

we welcome two other faculty membersto our committee. Wendy Heller, nowan associate professor in the Departmentof Music, is a specialist primarily inbaroque opera, but she has other talentsand interests as well. A practicing cantorfor over 15 years, she has an abidinginterest in Jewish music, from its begin-nings. She has already given a freshmanseminar on liturgical music in theJudaeo-Christian tradition, and we arelooking forward to a course on “JewishMusic from the Bible to Klezmer” in thenear future. Second is Daniel Heller-Roazen, Department of ComparativeLiterature, who ranges widely overmedieval literature and culture, with astrong interest in Hebrew and Arabic, inaddition to a host of other languagesand interests. One of the great virtues ofPrinceton as an institution is the cooper-ative spirit among faculty and betweendepartments and programs. As we con-tinue to build upon our previous successesand have become known in the universityat large for our excellent teaching andcollegiality, we note that our enrollmentsfor fall 2004 have nearly doubled in size.

For all our successes, as we grow, westill have a way to go. We are hoping tomaintain (and increase) our offerings inAmerican Jewish Studies, and to gain astronger foothold in the social sciences,But topping the list of fundraising effortsis an endowed chair in Hebrew Bible,which is essential to any Judaic StudiesProgram as the gateway to any seriousstudy of Jewish culture and religion.Second is a visiting professorship, whichwould permit us to bring importantscholars and teachers to the campus on arotating basis, with fields of study open,and third, is an endowed post-doctoralfellowship specifically earmarked forJudaic Studies. We take pleasure, however,in the appointment of Andrea Schatzas a general member of the PrincetonSociety of Fellows for a three-year term(2004-2007). Schatz, a young Germanscholar, works on early modern andmodern Jewish culture, focusing onsocial and cultural transformations thatproduced new forms of knowledge andled to reinterpretations of Jewish historyand reconceptualizations of the diaspora.

In 2003-04, she was a Fellow at theCenter for Advanced Judaic Studies atthe University of Pennsylvania. In additionto her research, she will be teaching fivecourses of interest to JDS over the nextthree years.

GENERAL REFLECTIONS.Memory and commemoration are concepts that are deeply embedded inJewish thought and culture. 2004 wasan especially rich year in anniversaries,which I would like to mention here forthe record – in the fields of philosophy,history, and literature.

800: 2004 marks the 800th anniversaryof the death of the renowned medievalJewish philosopher, legal scholar andJewish leader, Moses ben Maimon orMaimonides (1138-1204). Maimonideswas the most original and influentialJewish thinker in pre-modern times. Inaddition to producing a centrally impor-tant corpus of legal and philosophicalwritings that shaped Jewish thinking andpractice in many regions of the worldover the centuries, his Guide to thePerplexed entered Western historythrough St. Thomas Aquinas who quotedMaimonides in Latin translation.Though born in Cordoba, Spain, helived most of his life in Egypt where heserved as physician to the Jewish com-munity and to the Moslem court.

350. 2004 marks 350 years of Jewishlife in America. 1654-2004. Thisreckoning takes as its starting point the arrival of Jewish refugees in NewAmsterdam, who were fleeing persecutionin Recife, Brazil. The 23 Recife Jewswere to become the first Jewish com-

munity in North America, althoughindividual Jews had been there possiblyas early as the Spanish conquistadors inthe west.

100: 2004 is the centennial year of themaster storyteller Isaac Bashevis Singer,who in 1978 became the seventhAmerican to be awarded the Nobel Prizefor Literature and the first author ingeneral, who wrote in Yiddish. A prolificwriter of novels, short stories, and auto-biographies, Singer came to the UnitedStates in 1935 and dazzled and oftenscandalized readers with the earthyrichness of his imagination.

See the next issue of our Newsletter forJDS contributions to the nation-wide celebrations.

The design of our logo represents the tradi-tional Jewish symbol of the seven-branchedMenorah, flanked by Princeton tigers. TheHebrew words, “strong as a tiger,” headsthe list of attributes in a famous line fromPirkei Avot (Sayings of Our Fathers), 5.23.

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MESSAGE

LECTURES AND EVENTS2003- 2004

The Program in Judaic Studies has become widely knownfor the variety of events we sponsor or co-sponsor,whether lectures, film series, symposia and panel discus-sions. 2003-04 was no exception. It is noteworthy thatwe began and closed the academic year with appearancesby two noted Jewish authors. Amos Oz gave a passionatelecture on “Israel: Peace and War,” and MichaelChabon, author of the Pulitzer Prize- winning novel,The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, attracteda rapturous crowd for “Golems and Charlotte Russes.”

FILMS: Spanning the entire year was an Israeli filmseries, coordinated by Hebrew lecturer Esther Robbins,featuring “The Smile of the Lamb,” “My Michael,”“Keep on Dancing,” “ROAD 181: Fragments of AJourney in Palestine-Israel,” “Channels of Rage,” “Aviv,”“Laisse Moi Taimer,” “Giraffes,” and “A Warrior ofPeace.” In several instances, the director of the film or afeature actor was present at the screening for discussion.

ISRAELI CULTURAL SERIES: An Israeli-ArabCultural Series, the Sallam-Shalom! Series, also coordi-nated by Robbins was an ongoing project throughout theyear. It proved a great success. The programs included atalk by Dr. Miriam Yahil-Wax, entitled “The Muse ofCensorship Jewish Arab Theatre in Israel,” a classicalmusic performance by Inbal Megiddo, cellist born inJerusalem, and Saleem Abboud-Ashkar, pianist born inNazareth, and a presentation by The Sultana Ensemble:An Israeli Moroccan Musical Experience.

FALL 2003 : A busy roster of lectures in the fall, eachco-sponsored with different departments, covered a rangeof topics, including music, architecture, history, and thecurrent Middle East. Jeffrey Summit, Tufts University,offered two lectures: “Melody as Code: Music andIdentity in Contemporary Jewish Worship” and“Abayudaya: The Music and Culture of the Jews ofUganda.” Noam Zohar, Bar Ilan University, presented“From Archaeology to Architecture: Renovating ourModel for the Study of Rabbinic Redaction,”; Three speak-ers each discussed a different Jewish community world-wide: Cormac O Grada, Davis Center Fellow fromUniversity College Dublin, spoke on “Jewish Ireland,Gaelic Golus: Towards an Economic and DemographicHistory c. 1870-1939” and “The Economic Demographyof Jewish Dublin: Culture, Class, and Social Networks,”Minna Rozen, Visiting Ertegun Professor, Princeton,lectured on “The Last Ottoman Century and Beyond:The Jews in Turkey and the Balkans 1808-1945, andEdna Aizenberg, Marymount Manhattan College, dis-cussed “Argentine Space, Jewish Memory: Memorials tothe Blown Apart and Disappeared in Buenos Aires.Finally, we heard Michael Walzer, Institute for AdvancedStudy, “The Four Wars of Israel-Palestine”; Dan

Rabinowitz, Tel Aviv University and visiting professor,Princeton, “Better Management or Deep Change? EthnicRelations in Israel After the Orr Commission Report”and “Between Morality and Pragmatism: The PalestinianRefugees and Peace in the Middle East”; and Amos Oz,Ben Gurion University, “Israel: Peace and War” on theGeneva Accord. The year ended with a panel discussionon “The Future of Zionism: Three Perspectives.”Featuring Michael Walzer, Bradley Hirschfeld, andZe’eva Cohen, with James Diamond, moderator.

Colloquium: On Sunday, February 29, our ownPerelman Professor of Judaic Studies, Peter Schäferspearheaded the fascinating colloquium “Sefer Hasidimand Jewish-Christian Relations in the Middle Ages.”He was joined by Israel Yuval of Hebrew University,Haym Soloveitchik of Yeshiva University, and TalyaFishman of the University of Pennsylvania, all of whomdelivered presentations on the topic ranging from “TheMidrash, Sefer Hasidim, and the Changing Faces ofGod” to “Jews and Christians in Sefer Hasidim.”William Jordan of Princeton was the respondent.

SPRING 2004 LECTURES: Our spring scheduleof lectures was so full that we often had two or threespeakers in one week. February and March welcomedShaul Shaked, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, “TheRabbi and His Neighbors: Magic Bowls from SassanianBabylonia and Their Jewish Setting”; David Berger,Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center,“Jewish Messiahs: Failures & Hope”; Gideon Libson,Hebrew University, “Jewish Law and Islamic Law to theTime of Maimonides”; Samuel Gruber, ResearchDirector of the U.S. Commission for the Preservationof America’s Heritage Abroad and President of theInternational Survey of Jewish Monuments, “Arise andBuild: The Art and Architecture of AmericanSynagogues”; Philip Alexander, University Manchester,“Targum Lamentations and the Tradition of ‘Mourningfor Zion’ in Judaism and Late Antiquity”; CarolineBynum, Institute for Advanced Study, “The Presence ofObjects: Medieval Anti-Judaism in Modern Germany”;Albert Baumgarten, Bar Ilan University, “ProphecyPower: The Pharisees of Ant. 17.41-45”; AdamSutcliffe, University of Illinois/Institute for AdvancedStudy, “The Enlightenment, Judaism, and the Paradoxes ofToleration”; Dominique Frischer, author, “Baron deHirsch (1831-1896) and the Resettlement of EuropeanJews in the New World”; Andrei S. Markovits, Universityof Michigan, “Anti-Americanism and Anti-Semitism: ASteady Tandem in West European Public Discourse”;Noam Zohar, Bar Ilan University, “How to Think aboutTiny Embryos: Exploring a Jewish Approach to Stem-cellResearch”; Yoav Peled, Tel Aviv University, “From Osloto the Hague: The Derailment of the Israeli-Palestinian

EVENTS

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Amos Oz Michael Chabon

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Peace Process and Its Consequences”; and visiting pro-fessor Minna Rozen, University of Tel Aviv, “Memoryand History: The Last Chief Rabbi of Thessaloniki.” Ouradditional speakers in April were: Tessa Rajak, Universityof Reading, UK/Institute for Advanced Study, “WhoseSeptuagint?: Recovering the Greek Bible”; Ian Balfour,York University, UK, “On the Judaic and the Sublime”;and Kenneth Gross, University of Rochester and visitingprofessor, Princeton, “The Presence of Shylock.” Finally,on March 23, there was a panel discussion betweenMurray Friedman of Temple University and HenryLouis Gates, Jr., of Harvard University on “TheRelationship Between African-Americans and Jews.”

In April, we hosted three named lectures.

BIDERMAN LECTURE (April 14): David Engel,the Maurice R. and Corinne P. Greenberg Professor ofHolocaust Studies, Professor of Hebrew and JudaicStudies, and Professor of History presented the 6th AnnualBiderman Lecture. An expert in modern Jewish politicalhistory, the history of the Jews in Eastern Europe, and theHolocaust, he is the author of numerous books and essays.His memorable lecture, entitled “Moral Judgment &Holocaust History: Jewish-Nazi Collaboration on Trial,”discussed the aftereffects of two case histories: MichalWeichert (Krakow) and Caleb Perechodnik (Otwock) todemonstrate changing attitudes on this painful subject.

MYTELKA LECTURE (April 22): Hana Wirth-Nesher of Tel Aviv University presented the 3rd AnnualJeannette Krieger and Herman D. Mytelka MemorialLecture on Jewish Civilization. She fascinated her audi-ence with the topic “The Accented Imagination:Speaking and Writing Jewish America.” The lecture drewupon her just completed book, Call It English: TheLanguages of Jewish American Writing. Wirth-Nesher isthe Haber Professor for the Jewish Experience in theUnited States at Tel Aviv University and in spring 2004 wasa visiting Starr Fellow at Harvard University. A specialistin Jewish literature (e.g., Henry Roth, Sholem Aleichem,I. B. Singer, and Abraham Cahan), she co-edited theCambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature (2003).

DRUCKER LECTURE (April 28): Michael Chabon,author of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988) and WonderBoys (1995), won the Pulitzer Prize for his third novel,The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000). Thetitle of his talk for the Carolyn L. Drucker ’80 MemorialLecture was “Golems and Charlotte Russes,” in whichhe read from his latest unpublished work to anenthralled capacity audience in Dodds Auditorium.

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HIGHLIGHTS OF FALL 2004

N O V E M B E R 4

Tony Kushner, “An Evening With Tony Kushner” TheBiderman Lecture featuring McCarter Theater Artistic Director Emily Mann.

N O V E M B E R 1 1

Ernst van Alphen, UC Berkeley & University of Leiden,“Visual Archives and the Holocaust.”

N O V E M B E R 2 2

Renata Stih, artist (Prof. University of Applied Sciences, Berlin)and Frieder Schnock, artist and art historian (Ph.D., lecturerTFH, Berlin), “Public Space and Memory,” Visual Presentationof “Places of Remembrance: Memorial in Berlin-Schoenberg,” “Bus Stop,” and lecture.

D E C E M B E R 7

Deborah Lipstadt, Emory University “American JewishResponses to Antisemitism: From Complacency to Hysteria,”The Faber Lecture.

Tony Kushner

PROGRAMS SPRING 2005

The following are some of the events scheduled forthe spring semester. Watch your mail and email forall of the details:

Ra’anan Boustan, University of Minnesota

Adrienne Cooper, Yiddish chanteuse

Nicholas de Lange, University of Cambridge

Susan Einbinder, Hebrew Union College

Isaiah Gafni, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Walter Laqueur, The Drucker Lecture

Daniel Lasker, Ben Gurion University

Daniel Mendelsohn, author

Paul Mendes-Flohr, University of Chicago

Anita Shapira, Tel Aviv University

Program in Judaic StudiesPrinceton University58 Prospect AvenuePrinceton, NJ 08544

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION

If you need further information please contact the

Program Manager:Marcie CitronProgram in Judaic Studies

Princeton UniversityScheide Caldwell HousePrinceton, NJ 08544(609) 258-0394e-mail: mcitron@princeton.edu

Program Director:Professor Froma I. Zeitline-mail: fiz@princeton.edu

Web Sitewww.princeton.edu/~judaic/

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