Faculty and Student News and Awards

Rutie AdlerRutie Adler

Lecturer in Hebrew. Linguistics, Hebrew linguistics.
Coordinator; Hebrew Language Program.

Recent Talks:

“The Use of Film Clips to Teach Contentious Israeli Issues in Elementary Hebrew,“ as part of a BLC panel titled “Teaching the Conflicts in Foreign Language Education.“ 4/9/2021

Robert AlterRobert Alter

Emeritus Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature 

Robert received several awards for his work, including the Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, the Panunzio Award from the University of California, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Jewish Book Council. In addition, his book The Art of Bible Translation was released by Princeton University Press.

Isaac L. BleamanIsaac L. Bleaman

Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics

Isaac recently published the following:

He also gave the following talks this past academic year:

  • 2021. “Borokhovs yidishe filologye un di legitimkayt fun der yidisher shprakh” [Borokhov’s Yiddish philology and the legitimacy of the Yiddish language]. Workshop (in Yiddish) at graduate research seminar on “The Yiddish Object,” University of Wisconsin-Madison, Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture (Zoom).
  • 2021. “The Yiddish sentence: Social meaning reflected in grammatical variation.” Lecture at graduate research seminar on “The Yiddish Object,” University of Wisconsin-Madison, Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture and Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies (Zoom).
  • 2021. “Der onhalt fun yidish in nyu-york un di batsiung tsum inyen shprakhnbayt” [Attitudes toward change in a maintained language: Yiddish in New York]. Talk (in Yiddish) given at the Ada Rapoport-Albert Seminar Series in Hasidic Yiddish, University College London (Zoom).
  • 2020. “Attitudes toward change in a maintained language: Yiddish in New York.” Talk given at AJS 52, Washington, DC (Zoom).
  • 2020. Respondent on panel, “Minority Jewish languages in Israel: Documentation and development,” AJS 52, Washington, DC (Zoom).

Robert BraunRobert Braun

Center for Jewish Studies faculty member and Assistant Professor of Sociology 

Robert received numerous awards for his book, Protectors of Pluralism, including the Barrington Moore Best Book Award and the Charles Tilly Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award 2020.

John EfronJohn Efron

Director, Center for Jewish Studies

In the Fall of 2020, I was on sabbatical, working on my book All Consuming: Germans, Jews, and the Meaning of Meat. On July 1, 2021 I assumed the directorship of the CJS. In 2021, I published  an essay on modern Jewish historiography, “Modern Jewish History in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research” in David Sorkin, ed., A Commitment to Scholarship The American Academy for Jewish Research, 1920—2020 (American Academy of Jewish Research, 2020), 157-204.

In 2019, the 3rd edition of The Jews: A History, a book that John co-wrote with Matthias Lehmann and Steven Weitzman was published by Routledge.

Ethan KatzEthan Katz

Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies

Recent Publications:

  • Antisemitism in Our Midst: Past and Present, co-written with Adam Naftalin-Kelman and Steven Davidoff Solomon, produced by Sarah Lefton (2021). Film. 11 minutes. Independently made.
  • “Muslims as Brothers or Strangers? French Jewish Thinkers Confront the Moral Dilemmas of the French Algerian War.” Extended interpretive essay followed by four short translations from French. Invited chapter in The Stranger in Early Modern and Modern Jewish Tradition, eds. Catherine Allache-Bartlett and Joachim Schlör (Leiden: Brill, 2021).
  • “Who Were the Jewish Underground of Algiers? A Sectorial Analysis of the Paths to Resistance,” in Aviad Moreno, et al., eds., The Longue durée of Jews from Islamic Lands [Hebrew] (Sde-Boker: The Ben-Gurion Institute for the Study of Israel & Zionism, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 2021).
  • “Les chemins variés de la Résistance vers le 8 Novembre 1942: Juifs et Musulmans,” in Nicole Cohen-Addad, Aissa Kadri, and Tramor Quemeneur, eds., 8 novembre 1942. Résistance et débarquement allié en Afrique du Nord (Vulaines-sur-Seine: Éditions du Croquant, 2021).
  • “Le décret Crémieux et son abrogation: Implications pour les participants au 8 Novembre 1942,” in Nicole Cohen-Addad, Aissa Kadri, and Tramor Quemeneur, eds., 8 novembre 1942. Résistance et débarquement allié en Afrique du Nord (Vulaines-sur-Seine: Éditions du Croquant, 2021).
  • “Sartre’s Algerian Jewish Question,” in Manuela Consonni and Vivian Liska, eds., Sartre, Jews, and the Other: Rethinking Antisemitism, Race, and Gender (Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, 2020).

Recent Talks:

  • “Jewish Resisters That History Forgot: How the Jewish Underground in Algeria Helped Win World War II,” Santa Fe Distinguished Lecture Series, March 17, 2021 (via Zoom).
  • “Jews and Antisemites: The Unlikely Alliance That Paved the Way for Operation Torch,” University of California-Santa Cruz, February 18, 2021 (via Zoom).
  • “Rebel Alliance in Algiers: The Unlikely Band of Jews and Antisemites That Helped Turn the Tide in World War II,” Yale University, Program for the Study of Antisemitism, 18 November, 2020 (via Zoom).
  • “Every Enemy a Nazi, Every Victim Like a Jew: The Omnipresence of Holocaust Talk in the French-Algerian War,” Keynote address, conference on Jewish Studies, the Study of Antisemitism and Postcolonialism: An Unacknowledged Kinship?, Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Studienwerk, Berlin, June 10, 2020 (via Zoom).

Recent Awards:

Honorable Mention for the Koren Prize, given annually for the best article on any subject of French History by a U.S. or Canada-based scholar, Society for French Historical Studies, for: “Jewish Citizens of an Imperial Nation-State: Toward a French-Algerian Frame for French Jewish History,” French Historical Studies 43, 1 (February 2020): 63-84.

Claude FischerClaude Fischer

Professor of Sociology

Recent Publications:
  • 2020 “Of Modernity and Public Sociology: Reflections on a Career So Far.” Annual Review of Sociology 46: 19-35.  https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-soc-110419-023001.
  • 2020  Fischer and Offer, “Who is Dropped and Why? Methodological and Substantive Accounts for Network Loss.” Social Networks (May) 61:70-86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2019.08.008.
  • In Press “From the Northern California Community Study, 1977-78, to UCNets, 2015-20.” In Personal Networks: Classic Readings and New Directions in Ego-Centric Analysis, eds. M.L. Small et al. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Recent Presentations:
  • 2020 Offer and Fischer, “How New is ‘New’? Who Gets Added in Panel Studies of Egocentric Networks?,” Accepted for Presentation to the Sunbelt Social Networks Conference, June, Paris (Online).
  • 2020 Ruppel, Child, Fischer, and Botchway, “Causal Relationships between Social Networks and Health: A Comparison of Three Modeling Strategies.” Presented to the American Sociological Association, August , San Francisco (Online).

Sarah LevinSarah Levin

Lecturer in Jewish Studies

Sarah has a chapter in the works:

“The Aḥwash: Jewish and Muslim Articulations of a Shared Amazigh (Berber) Cultural Tradition in Morocco and Its Diaspora,” by Sarah Levin,
in the volume: Jews and Muslims in Morocco: Their Intersecting Worlds. Lexington Books. 2021. (Series: Sephardic and Mizrahi Studies)

Tomer PersicoTomer Persico

Visiting faculty from Tel Aviv University

Tomer recently published “Judaism and Meditation” in The Oxford Handbook of Meditation (July 2020), and “Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (Shaga”r) in The New Jewish Canon (August 2020), as well as two articles in Haaretz English on new Jewish identities in Israel, and the sources of white supremacy and antisemitism today.   Persico’s second book, examining the way the idea of the Image of God influenced Modern Western civilization, will be published in Hebrew by Yedioth books in winter 2020.

Francesco SpagnoloFrancesco Spagnolo

Curator, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life

Francesco is also an Associate Adjunct Professor in the Department of Music and is a faculty affiliate in the Center for Jewish Studies. In 2020, he was appointed scholar-in-residence for the “Jews & Music” initiative of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. https://philharmonia.org/jews-music/

Student News and Awards

Aryan Sawant profile picAryan Sawant

Aryan is a 2024 recipient of the Goor Prize for his paper, Caste Dismemberment through Aliyah: How Cochin Jews Used Zionism as a Tool for Social Justice. The paper builds on David Mandelbaum and Walter Fischel’s analyses of social stratification within Cochin Jewish society, with an emphasis on the analysis of lost and undiscovered documents found at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life. The paper argues that— despite internal divisions and differing motivations, Cochin Jews unified in their struggle for aliyah and lessened barriers between their respective communities.

Aryan is a second-year Political Science major at UC Berkeley. His academic and research interests focus on Dharmic communities and their interactions with other sociopolitical groups, particularly through historical and epistemological frameworks.

Dylan Skolnik photoDylan Skolnik

Dylan is an undergraduate recipient of the 2024 Anne and Benjamin Goor Prize in Jewish Studies, and has been awarded $2,500. His winning essay was entitled, And Where a Spurt of Our Blood Falls Will Sprout: A Jewish Theory of Identity Creation as Founded in the Lack.

Shirelle Doughty photoShirelle Maya Doughty

Shirelle is a graduate recipient of the 2024 Anne and Benjamin Goor Prize in Jewish Studies, along with a cash prize of $2,500, for her paper, The “Sin of Writing” in the Yiddish Press: Kol mevaser (1862-73) and the Transition from Oral to Written Public Spheres.

Leo Franks photoLeo Franks

Leo Franks is a graduate student winner of the 2024 Anne and Benjamin Goor Prize in Jewish Studies, and has been awarded $2,500 for his paper, The anti-history of anti-antisemitism: Fred Kormis’ Holocaust sculpture.

Past News and Awards

2022-23 Goor Prize winners:

  • Shirelle Maya Doughty is the graduate recipient of the 2023 Anne and Benjamin Goor Prize in Jewish Studies, and was awarded $2,500 for her submission Rethinking the Relationship between Women and Haskalah Literature.
  • Hannah Hillers was an undergraduate recipient of the 2023 Anne and Benjamin Goor Prize in Jewish Studies, and has been awarded $2,500. Her winning paper was entitled Iraqi Jewish Identity from the Farhud to Israeli Mizrahi Identity Building.
  • Peter Colias was an undergraduate recipient of the 2023 Anne and Benjamin Goor Prize in Jewish Studies, along with a cash prize of $2,500, for his paper The History of the Samaritan Israelites.

2022-23 Brinner Graduate Fellowship winner:

  • Oren Yirmiya was a graduate student and student instructor in the Center for Jewish Studies. He is the winner of the 2023 William Ze’ev Brinner Graduate Fellowship, receiving a cash award of $1,500.

2021-22 Goor Prize winners:

  • Madeline Wyse (G) received $2000 for “Reverent Irreverence: Retelling the Tales of the Bible and Qur’an.”
  • Meghana Kumar (UG ) received $2000 for “What Moral? Sin and Redemption in the David and Bathsheba Story”
  • Juliette Rosenthal (UG) received $2000 for her paper “Newspaper Networks: A Jewish Journalist’s Continued Connections in the Modern Mediterranean.”

2020-21 Goor Prize winners:

  • Wyatt Grauman (UG ) received $1500 for “Analysis on the Generalization of Holocaust Memory and Display”
  • Oren Yirmiya (G) received $1500 for “Forgetting World Literature: Aggadah, Wisdom, and the Crisis of Tradition in Kafka’s On Parables and Tractate Shabbat 138b-139a”

CJS Outstanding GSI Achievement Award:

  • Oren Yirmiya taught JS 39 in Spring 2020 -“Escape Artists in Jewish Popular Culture and Literature: Houdini, Kafka, Kirby, Chabon” and JS 100 in Fall 2020 – “Travelers, Immigrants, Refugees: Introduction to Jewish History and Literature”- and received very positive feedback from his students.
Appointments

Jewish Studies Careers Launched

Our graduates are contributing to the field of Jewish studies on local, national, and international levels. Recent graduate students secured teaching positions at prestigious universities in Israel, Canada, and the U.S — Ben Gurion University, Haifa University, University of Minnesota, McGill University, University of Illinois, Northwestern, and Vanderbilt.