2022 Autumn IJS Public Lectures
IJS 2022 Autumn Lecture Series
19 October 2022
With the Institute For Polish-Jewish Studies.
Moshe Rosman (Bar-Ilan University), Chair: Antony Polonsky (Brandeis), Discussant: François Guesnet (UCL). At this book launch Professor Rosman will discuss some principles that have guided his research and writing. He will describe how these shaped and gained expression in Categorically Jewish, Distinctly Polish.
Recording not available.
26 October 2022
BOOK LAUNCH with the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies. Barry Trachtenberg (Wake Forest University), Chair: François Guesnet (UCL), Discussants: Antony Polonsky (Brandeis), Sonia Gollance (UCL).
This is not only a story about destruction and trauma, but also one of tenacity and continuity, as the encyclopedia’s compilers strove to preserve the heritage of Yiddish culture, to document its near-total extermination in the Holocaust, and to chart its path into the future.
Recording link: https://ucl.zoom.us/rec/share/CrCbKDcrb_cp7_QXIhGxXMWLgYIRVrgqYrrlQsanlxVfccIQjhsOTHilLjpUnhPw.PfSXh7ajo2IERjEz
Passcode: R=rXQ9p5
27 October 2022
A lecture when Tessa Rajak will talk about new views of Sefer Yosippon: rediscovering the Jewish past in the Middle Ages. Chaired by IJS director Mark Geller (UCL)
Recording link: https://ucl.zoom.us/rec/share/PtfHNAuwDvzqjtaAwqfXxt8HN21vc6YJLMN6Y7d446bP1KSIsRWzADkregbfzF92.Tnc0aKT8RHOmEuUL
3 November 2022
A fascinating exploration of the varied life and times of The Scholems - a German-Jewish family between emancipation and destruction. Jay Geller, Professor of Judaic Studies at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, will talk about the four sons of Arthur and Betty Scholem, all of whom took different paths in the ensuing years of war, revolution, fragile democracy and persecution. In the 1930s, their journeys variously led to exile, imprisonment, and international renown. Chaired by Michael Berkowitz of UCL.
Recording link: https://ucl.zoom.us/rec/share/81Is3QUPBzJ2KmmPyCVHFkBGzw1XB9VnDrdVDfnsOptnA-02skotZD9OTDbeuOZL.4LWZ20c-W1W3RWCP
9 November 2022
Anne-Christin Klotz (University of California, Berkeley), Chair: François Guesnet (UCL), Discussant: Antony Polonsky (Brandeis). By analyzing the Warsaw Yiddish daily press and additional sources, we can focus on how Polish Jews acquired and disseminated subversive knowledge of the goings-on in National Socialist Germany in spite of censorship and repression in Germany and Poland alike, and also on how they initiated campaigns of protest and solidarity to the benefit of the people being persecuted.
Recording link: https://ucl.zoom.us/rec/share/oQX36mU291XcQb9nrOCaexVyugvTeEUFKFe2nITuB0EXTIevMVLx0jLuGJBuV8HC.G4zUxFn11lO-SXgK
Passcode: U?U5J^P0
16 November 2022
Paul Michael Kurtz (Ghent University), Chair: Michael Berkowitz (UCL). Friedemann Boschwitz (1909–1974) was one of the last Jews to obtain a PhD during the Third Reich, Boschwitz bound many worlds together: the German and the Jewish, theology and history, academia and the arts, left-wing politics and Zionist nationalism. His is a fascinating and groundbreaking story.
Recording link: https://ucl.zoom.us/rec/share/imiiLKvtpJEktEEyNKT3VleW7iUMor0wprssCXt5Yejc06drtCM9tHszSqgQtOnT.Jlvov_YVtEsCCB_-
22 November 2022
Nili Samet (Bar-Ilan University), Chair: Mark Geller (UCL).
This lecture attempts to explore some of the potential of studying Qohelet within its Hellenistic Jewish context, and therefore the intellectual history of its time and place.
Recording link: https://ucl.zoom.us/rec/share/qf-GVJTVuulew5Ig3ikb4QmRO9PXp93GEuPY1OQ95CIiRPLe-pAxQHzC8yQzSnNL.GlIq7p0DcLpQtBf0
29 November 2022
BOOK LAUNCH with the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies.
Professor Mirjam Rajner, Professor Richard Cohen, Professor François Guesnet (chair) and Professor Antony Polonsky (discussant). Samuel Hirszenberg was born into a traditional Jewish family in Łódź in 1865.He gradually became attached to Polish culture and language as he pursued his artistic calling. His work, which deserves to be more widely known, intertwined modernism and Jewish themes, and he influenced many later artists of Jewish origin.
Recording link: https://ucl.zoom.us/rec/share/EUwJtph2YbOkTH7e1-TLZZiZr3mDoaLdrOiWF26alYofYxwXxqhl1nkvhseESG2d.DAzWkXgeN0AW3uFm
1 December 2022
Ra’anan Boustan (Princeton), Chair: Sacha Stern (UCL). This lecture considers the sophisticated visual strategies that were employed across the various zones within the synagogue’s mosaic program to structure and mediate the viewing experience. The composition, placement, orientation, and framing of the various mosaic panels or groups of panels in the synagogue conditioned how viewers would have moved through—and thus experienced—the carefully differentiated spaces within the building. This analysis demonstrates the value of an approach to synagogue mosaics that foregrounds their physical placement within the broader architectural environment.
We are sorry to tell you that we are not allowed to circulate the recording for this lecture. This is due to copyright issues with the images. Many apologies, we know this is very disappointing - for us as well as for you.
Up Next
Ada Rapoport-Albert seminar series on contemporary Hasidic Yiddish
This online seminar series is devoted to all aspects of Hasidic Yiddish language and linguistics, both historical and contemporary. Seminars and roundtable discussions will be held on Zoom one evening a month from August 2020 to July 2021. The series will include participants from a wide variety of academic backgrounds including linguistics, Yiddish studies, and Yiddish pedagogy, with speakers from within and outside Hasidic Yiddish-speaking communities. Talks are free and open to the public. The series comprises an element of our ongoing AHRC-funded research project on contemporary Hasidic Yiddish based in the UCL Departments of Linguistics and Hebrew & Jewish Studies. It is dedicated to the memory of Professor Ada Rapoport-Albert (1945-2020) and her scholarly work on the history of Hasidism.
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