The Spectacular Story Of S. Ansky’s
The Dybbuk and How it Transformed American Jewish Theatre
Jul 26, 2021 By Edna Nahshon | Public Event video | Video Lecture
Since its premiere in 1920 The Dybbuk has been revived countless times in both Jewish and non-Jewish languages and inspired a substantial corpus of works in various media: it was famously filmed in Yiddish 1936 in Warsaw, and to this day has fired the imagination of artists and writers around the globe. Join Dr. Edna Nahshon to discuss this unique play and its various interpretations, focusing on its two foundational productions and the 1936 Polish Yiddish film.
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Finding Hijar: A Scholar’s Quest to Uncover the History of Her Jewish Community Through the Journey of Its Books
Jul 19, 2021 By Marjorie Lehman | Public Event video | Video Lecture
With Dr. Marjorie Lehman and Dr. Lucia Conte Aguilar of Universitat Pompeu Fabra
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Flight, Return, and Emigration:
The Wanderings of a Yiddish Writer During and After the Holocaust
Jul 12, 2021 By David Fishman | Public Event video | Video Lecture
The Yiddish poet Chaim Grade fled his native city of Vilna, known to Jews as “the Jerusalem of Lithuania”, in late June 1941, as the Germans invaded the city. He spent the next four years as a refugee in the Soviet Union, homeless and malnourished. When Grade returned to Vilna in 1945, he found the city in ruins – and learned from survivors of the Vilna ghetto that his wife, mother, friends and colleagues had been murdered by the Nazis. We will follow his journey of exile and redemption through selections from his works.
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Judah Halevi: Poet and Pilgrim
Jun 28, 2021 By Raymond Scheindlin | Public Event video | Video Lecture
In the summer of 1141, Judah Halevi, a distinguished doctor, poet, and religious thinker sailed from his homeland, Spain, for the Holy Land, leaving behind his family, his medical practice, and his position as a distinguished leader of the Jewish community. Although little is known of his life before the pilgrimage, we can trace his journey in detail thanks to letters preserved in the Cairo Geniza. More importantly, we can follow Halevi’s inner religious journey through the stirring poems that he composed in anticipation of and during the voyage. In this session with Dr. Raymond Scheindlin, we will touch on both the external and internal journeys by drawing on the letters and the poems, all in translations by Dr. Scheindlin.
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Preparing for the Final Journey:
The Tahara Ritual and its Significance
Jun 21, 2021 By Eliezer B. Diamond | Public Event video | Video Lecture
The period between death and burial is understood in Jewish tradition as a moment of transition in which the deceased is suspended between this world and the next. Join Rabbi Eliezer Diamond to study the ritual known as Taharah, which prepares the body of the deceased for burial. It will show us that Jewish tradition assumes the continued existence of our individual identities even after death. The Taharah ritual, through word and action, radically transforms our understanding of the body of the deceased as we prepare it for the journey to the next world.
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Home and Exile, Center and Periphery: Ambivalent Journeys in the Torah
Jun 14, 2021 By Benjamin D. Sommer | Public Event video | Video Lecture
The theme of the journey—to home, and from home—plays a prominent role in the Torah. But repeatedly, these stories force us to wonder what is home and what is exile. Join Dr. Benjamin Sommer to read narratives from Genesis and Exodus that present a tangled-up view of center and periphery. This persistent ambivalence about the nature of a journey carries weighty implications for biblical understandings of God as nearby but hard to grasp, and about authority and autonomy in religious Judaism.
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“If I forget Thee, O Jerusalem”: The Idea of the Retun to Zion in Jewish History
Jun 7, 2021 By Shuly Rubin Schwartz | Public Event video | Video Lecture
Chancellor Shuly Rubin Schwartz explores the implications of living in a state of longing, how Jews attempted to reconcile the dream of return with the reality of Jewish exile, and how this dream was adapted and transformed with the emergence of modern Zionism and a thriving Jewish diaspora.
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“It is not up to you to finish the work” (Pirkei Avot 2:21): On Striving for the Unattainable
Dec 13, 2021 By Alan Cooper | Public Event video | Video Lecture
Some of the most dramatic moments in the Tanakh describe the completion of work—the creation of the world (Genesis); the fabrication of the Tabernacle (Exodus); and the construction of the Temple (Chronicles). In contrast, at the end of chapter 2 of Pirkei Avot, Rabbi Tarfon admonishes us that while we are under pressure with much work, a tight deadline, a penchant for laziness, and a demanding boss, nevertheless “it is not up to [us] to finish the work.”
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