Jacqueline Adams is a sociologist and project scientist at the Center for Jewish Studies. Her scholarship focuses on the ways in which people cope with persecution and undermine the government that oppresses them. She is conducting research on Jewish refugee flight from France to Spain in the 1930s and 1940s, and on persons who helped the refugees in both countries. She has also worked on the resistance and survival strategies of impoverished and persecuted Chileans under the dictatorship of General Pinochet. Among other issues in this work, she has studied collective...
Koret Visiting Professor of Israel Studies, Helen Diller Center for Jewish Law and Israel Studies; and Visiting Professor of Education, School of Education
Hanan Alexander is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy of Education at the University of Haifa where he served as Dean of the Faculty of Education, Dean of Students, Head of the International School, and Head of the Center for Jewish and Democratic Education. He currently serves as Koret Visiting Professor of Israel Studies in the Helen Diller Center for Jewish Law and Israel Studies and Visiting Professor of Education in the School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. He also taught at American Jewish University, where he was Academic Vice President, UCLA...
Lecturer, Jewish Studies; Program Director, Antisemitism Education Initiative
Hired in January 2023, Dr. Gregg Drinkwater is the inaugural Program Director for the UC Berkeley Antisemitism Education Initiative (AEI), a project of the Center for Jewish Studies. An award-winning writer, educator, trainer, researcher, and organizational leader, Drinkwater’s work is rooted in fostering inclusive communities. He has been involved for decades with Jewish, LGBTQ, and social justice organizations throughout the United States and the world. He earned a PhD in U.S....
Sara Feldman has taught as a Hebrew and Yiddish Lecturer at Harvard University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and was a Frankel Institute Fellow at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. She received her doctorate in Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan in 2014 with a dissertation entitled, “Fine Lines: Hebrew and Yiddish Translations of Alexander Pushkin’s Verse Novel Eugene Onegin, 1899-1937.” Her primary scholarly focus is on the interplay between Yiddish, Russian, and Hebrew language and literature in modern, secularizing Jewish culture....
Librarian for Jewish Studies, Religious Studies, Philosophy and Rhetoric
Ruth Haber is the UCB Librarian for Jewish Studies, Religious Studies, Philosophy and Rhetoric. She completed her PhD in Jewish Studies at Berkeley with a dissertation on ancient travel tales. Ruth is here to help students and faculty find the materials they need for their coursework, research and writing – and to help scholars navigate the UC Library and the research process. Schedule an appointment with Ruth – or contact her at...
JennaKemp is a lecturer in Hebrew Bible in the department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures. She holds an MA in biblical studies from the Graduate Theological Union (2014) and a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley from the MELC department in the area of Hebrew Bible with a designated emphasis in Jewish Studies (2021). Before joining the faculty in MELC, she held a postdoc position at Universität Basel in the Theologische Fakultät (2021-2024), working on a project entitled “Transforming Memories of Collective Violence in the Hebrew Bible,” an Eccelenza research project...
Sarah Levin is a Lecturer in Jewish Studies. Levin’s research interests focus on Jewish communities of North Africa and the Middle East and Jewish-Muslim relations, particularly in cultural encounters and exchanges. Levin received her PhD in Jewish Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Folklore from UC Berkeley in 2017. She is currently working on a book manuscript, Poetic Dueling, Storytelling, and Joking: Moroccan Atlas Mountain Jews and Muslims Remember Each Other. This project examines 20th-century Jewish-Muslim relations through 21st-century memories (recorded from...
Yifat Moas is a cultural sociologist specializing in social movements and political mobilization. She completed her PhD at Tel Aviv University, where she conducted a cultural analysis of the recent wave of Mizrahi protest in Israel. Her PhD research is currently being developed into a book, scheduled to be published next year. Between 2023 and 2025, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at Bar-Ilan University. Her current research focuses on polarization, examining the cultural dynamics of recent protests and the role of social movements in intensifying political divisions in Israeli society...
Julia Peck is a PhD candidate in Linguistics at UC Berkeley, where she teaches Ladino language, history, and culture. Her research primarily focuses on Ladino language revitalization, as well as the linguistic effects of the language's contact with Turkish and French. Julia holds MPhil in Linguistics from University of Oxford, where she was an Ertegun Scholar in the Humanities.
Since coming to Berkeley, she co-founded the UC Berkeley Ladino/Judeo-Spanish Working Group and was awarded a Berkeley Language Center Fellowship to launch Ladino en Kaza (Ladino at Home), a...
Louis Schubert is a Professor of Political Science at City College of San Francisco, where he teaches a wide variety of courses ranging from Political Theory and Environmental Politics to American Government and Terrorism/Counterterrorism. He is lead author of The Irony of Democracy. His “Comics, Power and Society” course, a student favorite, turned his love of the comic book into an academic pursuit. Teaching the Jewish historical and ethical roots of comics at Cal has been a special joy. Being able to offer a course on the relationship between...
