event-archived

SUKKAH BUILDING PARTY

October 13, 2016
Organizer Graduate Theological Union Center for Jewish Studies

ROBBINS COLLECTION LECTURE ON JEWISH LAW AND THOUGHT: “Jewish Thought in American Judaism Today”

October 27, 2016
Organizer The Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law & Israel Studies

Ron Hendel “How Old is the Bible?”

February 28, 2019
Organizer Berkeley Center for Jewish Studies

Steve Weitzman “How Does the Story of the Jews Begin? Recent Debates on Origins and Ancestry”

March 7, 2019
Organizer Berkeley Center for Jewish Studies

Michael Morgan “Wartime! Emil Fackenheim’s Unpublished Radio Addresses, 1944-1948”

April 8, 2019
Organizer Berkeley Center for Jewish Studies

Jewish Disputes, Early Modern Courts, and Legal Pluralism

November 21, 2019

How did early modern Jews settle disputes “between Jew and Jew”? Stemming from a reflection upon the functions of the early modern kehillah/communal corporate body, Evelyne Oliel-Grausz’s current research questions the Jewish community as a legal resource/ forum for dispute resolution. If institution of the Bet Din is somewhat well known, and has the been the subject of several key publications of late, it was not the only available internal forum: in most Ashkenazi and Sephardi early modern communities, lay courts operated side by side with the rabbinical court, and in cooperation with it...

Still Lives: Jewish Photography under Nazism (co-sponsored by The Center for Jewish Studies)

November 21, 2019

Speaker: Ofer Ashkenazi

‘The talk considers photographs that were taken by non-professional Jewish photographers under the National Socialist regime. By the early 1930s, most German-Jewish families had avidly used pocket-sized cameras to document their experiences, from domestic routines and family vacations to participation in political gatherings, youth movement ceremonies, sports and religious events. I argue that, gazing at a rapidly changing environment after January 1933, amateur Jewish photographers utilized their cameras to reflect on the new reality, to...

De-Integration? Judaism and the Theater of Memory in Contemporary Germany (in English)

April 27, 2020

Max CzollekAuthor Max Czollek’s essay collection Desintegriert Euch! transformed the debate about the integration of minorities in Germany when it appeared in 2018. His perspective on the roles of contemporary Jews in German society and its remembrance culture—its “theater of memory”—struck a nerve not just among Jews, but other minority groups...

Harry Potter in Yiddish: Translating Across Languages and Cultures

March 4, 2021

Arun ViswanathArun Viswanath in conversation with Robert Alter (UC Berkeley).

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is the first book in the most-translated series of all time recently appeared in a new language: Yiddish (Heri Poter un der Filosofisher Shteyn). In this talk, Arun Viswanath, the translator, a native Yiddish speaker, will engage with...

Ode to Energy: Einstein, Feynman, and Oppenheimer at Mid-Century

February 3, 2021

Anne GoldmanAnne Goldman (Sonoma State University)

Stargazing in the Atomic Age counters the assumption that Jewish history largely chronicles tragedy. Designed for the common reader, its essays take the nadir of modern Jewish experience as their starting point. But they are not elegiac. Life for Jews in the United States, the...