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From the Director Jewish Studies in the Digital Age

Dear Friends,It is a great honor to begin my first year as the Director of UCLA's Center for Jewish Studies. I invite you to look over our calendar and hope to see you at many of our events over the coming year! I am also excited to share with you three major new initiatives of the Center, broadly connected under the banner of "Jewish Studies 20/20"—a vision for the next decade.

1. Mapping Jewish LA: What if you could "go back in time" and visit Boyle Heights in the

1920s? What if you could hear the music and voices coming out of Zellman’s

Menswear or Ginsberg’s Vegetarian Café? Through a research and teaching

partnership with the UCLA Library and various community archives, the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies is embarking on an ambitious, five-year initiative to create a multimedia, digital archive of Jewish LA. The archive will be accessed by an innovative web portal that will allow visitors to "drill down" at particular places throughout the city to uncover the traces and history of Jewish LA and stimulate new research and teaching.

2. Applied Jewish Studies: Building on the foundational work of David N. Myers, past Director of the Center, Applied Jewish Studies transforms knowledge into practice. To date, the study of Jewish thought in the university has clarified the content and context of great thinkers from the past, but it has not applied this knowledge in a systematic fashion to important questions of the day. This initiative will make service learning, community engagement, and social justice defining elements of Jewish Studies. It will help to prepare the next generation of leaders and encourage real-world advances by marshalling the riches of Jewish ethics, intellectual history, and political philosophy.

Affiliated Jewish Studies faculty will design new courses that address contemporary issues in social justice, global politics, public policy, and information technologies and provide students with transformative experiences to apply their knowledge in real-world settings.

3. Digital Jewish Studies: The medium in which Humanities scholarship is generated and published is undergoing massive transformation with advances in digital technologies. Using geographic information technologies, for example, fields such as history, sociology, archaeology, and anthropology have become completely redefined, as computational methods have allowed scholars to ask and answer new research questions. The Center is eager to facilitate innovative scholarship and publications in Jewish Studies by supporting students and faculty undertaking such research as well as developing a cutting-edge publication platform to present that research to the world. In 2009, the Center launched an online journal called Perush ("Interpretation") dedicated to publishing new research in Jewish Studies. Over the next few years, we will refine this platform and partner with a university press to unveil the next generation of Jewish Studies scholarship.

Through the generosity of our supporters we have blazed a path to excellence that has defined the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies over the past eighteen years. In our next decade, we look forward to continuing to engage you and to forging new partnerships in order to fully realize the groundbreaking initiatives of “Jewish Studies 20/20."

Very sincerely yours,

Todd Samuel PresnerSady and Ludwig Kahn Director, UCLA Center for Jewish Studies

Professor, Germanic Languages and Comparative LiteratureChair, Digital Humanities Program

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From the Director Jewish Studies in the Digital Age

Netta Avineri, a doctoral candidate in Applied Linguistics, has served as the Center’s Civic Engagement Fellow since 2008. Born in Israel and raised in the U.S. in a home where multiple languages were spoken, Netta is committed to scholarship that reflects lived experience and serves community needs. She speaks English, French, Spanish, Hebrew, Yiddish, and some Romanian and Italian.

At the Center, Netta has worked with Community Affairs Coordinator Mary Pinkerson to develop opportunities for students to enrich their classroom studies through service learning. Professor Presner’s Fiat Lux course, German 19, “Bearing Witness: Interviewing Holocaust Survivors in a Digital Age,” exemplifies this initiative. In June, Netta and Dr. Pinkerson presented a workshop at the National Faith Justice and Service Learning Conference in Chicago.

“Jewish Studies Service Learning is intended for students of diverse backgrounds collaborating primarily with Jewish community organizations to assist those in need,” Netta noted. The Center’s effort began in 2008. Since then, it has expanded through the Center's commitment to Applied Jewish Studies, an approach which links "book learning" with real world problem-solving and community engagement.

An accomplished student, Netta is the recipient of a Ross Summer Fellowship from the Center. She has also been recognized with the Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Assistant Award, one of only five awards given out across the campus annually.

Applied Linguistics is an interdisciplinary field focused on the investigation and solution of ‘real-world’ language-related problems. Netta’s dissertation research epitomizes the field, as she is studying Yiddish language socialization within secular educational contexts. In order to capture the interactional patterns she observed in ethnographic fieldwork, Netta has developed the novel notion of a metalinguistic community, a community focused primarily on valuing an ‘endangered’ language that many members do not speak.

Netta notes an interesting relationship between people engaged in secular programs and those teaching and learning Yiddish within Hasidic communities. “Whereas within some Hasidic communities Yiddish is used as a daily language, within many secular contexts Yiddish is experienced and constructed as an ‘endangered’ language and as a symbol of heritage and history. Those engaged with the language in secular contexts seem to be invested in the notion that Yiddish is endangered.”

Her analysis thus far demonstrates that participants relate to Hasidic Yiddish speakers in one of three ways: 1) their Yiddish is frequently looked down upon as not ‘pure’ or grammatical; 2) they are considered speakers of the language but not individuals interested in other aspects such as literature or history, and/or 3) their use of Yiddish is invoked strategically as a counterexample to the ‘endangerment’ narrative. Ultimately, Netta hopes to use what she has learned in order to contribute to curriculum and materials development for Yiddish university- and community-based courses.

Box 951485los Angeles, CA 90095-1485

www.cjs.ucla.educjs@humnet.ucla.edu

at the

centerבמרכז

Center for Jewish studies

editor mary enid Pinkerson

design David wu

Netta Avineri Scholarship that Solves Community Problems

Our Cover: Student Interns Master the GlobeSummer interns Patrick Tran, Andy Trang, Alison Karol and Samantha Solomon are masters of the world through geographic information technologies. The Center interns spent the summer researching the stories of Holocaust survivors and mapping their journeys digitally. The projects grew out of Prof. Todd Presner’s Fiat Lux seminar, "Bearing Witness: Interviewing Holocaust Survivors in the Digital Age." The course, German 19, involved a partnership with Jewish Family Services’ Café Europa, Hillel at UCLA, and The “1939” Club.

Patrick Tran and Andy Trang earned an award from the W.M. Keck Digital Cultural Mapping Program for their project which involved pinpointing the locations of specific events in the lives of survivors they interviewed and combining maps with archival photographs and text. They used "HyperCities," a digital mapping platform, to carry out the project.

Alison Karol received a Sarah & Eugene Zinn Memorial Scholarship for Holocaust Studies and Social Justice for her efforts to document the life of Holocaust survivor Toby Tambor. Bringing together historical artifacts, photographs, and narrative, Karol is both authoring a book and creating an interactive digital map of Tabor's life journey.

Samantha Solomon’s award winning project is a chronicle of the history of the Transylvanian Jewish experience during WWII and its immediate aftermath. Her monograph will interweave the experiences of her grandfather and those of others she met through the Bearing Witness class.

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Center Awards First Zinn Scholarships

Three seniors are the first winners of the Sarah & Eugene Zinn Memorial Scholarship for Holocaust Studies and Social Justice. Alison Karol [History] was selected for her efforts to document the life of Holocaust survivor Toby Tambor. Awards also went to Deborah Shamsian [Biology] who founded a service club that brings art and music to residents of nursing homes and underprivileged youth; and to Adina Wolkenfeld [Bioengineering] who is working to raise awareness of domestic violence in the Jewish community.

Anat Mooreville [History] received a grant from the Ahmanson Foundation, and Alma Heckman [History] received a FLAS (Foreign Language and Area Studies) Fellowship from the U.S. Dept. of Education.

Faculty Awards■ Ra’anan Boustan has been awarded a Harrington Fellowship for 2011-12 by the Office of the President of the University of Texas at Austin.

■ Todd Presner has been awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to direct a summer institute for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities in Summer 2012. The institute will explore the intersection between geography and history, focusing specifically on time-space visualizations, modeling, and mapping techniques.

■ Sarah Abrevaya Stein has won a National Endowment for the Humanities grant for her book project, Misfits: Classifying Jews and the Persistence of Empire, exploring Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Jewish encounters with evolving 20th century legal systems. Prof. Stein and co-editor Julia Philips Cohen also received a Hadassah-Brandeis Institute Research Award for their book, The Sephardic Studies Reader.

■ The Michael and Irene Ross Endowment supports research by UCLA faculty members working in Jewish studies. Summer research and travel grants for 2011 were awarded to Professors Ra’anan Boustan, Aaron Burke, Gil Hochberg, Eleanor Kaufman, Miriam Koral, Kenneth Reinhard, Shelley Salamensky, William Schniedewind and Jeremy Smoak.

The goal of the Zinn scholarships is to support internships or research projects that apply the knowledge of the Jewish experience, and especially the lessons of the Holocaust, to contemporary society and social justice issues. This support is made possible by a gift to the UCLA College of Letters and Science by siblings Harry Zinn and Helene Zinn, and their friends and family, in memory of their parents, Sarah & Eugene.

■ Seniors Stacey Miller and Sarah Hadburg have been awarded Hermine and Sigmund Frey Scholarships for Civic Engagement Research. Stacey went to Israel over the summer to work with the Cotsen Institute of Archeology field school in Old Jaffa. Sarah worked with the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability to create an on-line catalog of American Jewish environmental organizations and investigated how they connect their work with Judaism.

Graduate Student Awards■ Sara (Simchi) Cohen [Comparative Literature] has been awarded the Jack H. Skirball Fellowship in Modern Jewish Culture for 2011-12 to support her dissertation, which concerns the notion of the zombie or “living dead” as it is figured in both Yiddish literature and American Jewish literature and popular culture.

■ Michael and Irene Ross Fellowships in Yiddish Language and Culture were awarded to Netta Avineri [Applied Linguistics] and Max Sloves [Spanish & Portuguese].

■ Rachel Schley [History] has received support from the Maurice Amado Program in Sephardic Studies for work on her dissertation. Also in Sephardic Studies,

Roter Research Project Looks at Friendships

The research project of Chaskel and Sara Roter fellow Lisa Mendelman [English] examines friendships between Black and Jewish American women in American literature of the Modernist era exemplified by the 1934 film, Imitation of Life, featuring Claudette Colbert (right) as Bea Pullman and Louise Beavers (left) as Delilah Jackson, two women who make a life and a fortune together selling pancake mix.

Additional Roter Research Fellowships have been awarded to Jason Lustig [History], Yehuda Sharim [World Arts and Cultures], Alexandra Shilling [World Arts and Cultures], and Kathleen Wiens [Ethnomusicology]. The fellowships were endowed by Professor Emerita Ellen Dirksen in honor of her parents.

To request event updates, email cjs@humnet.ucla.edu.

Imitation of Life, 1934 (Universal Pictures)

(L-R) Alison Karol, Deborah Shamsian, and Adina Wolkenfeld

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Symposium Examines Jewish Role in Unifying Italy

Italian Ambassador Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata has been invited to mark the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy at an international conference to be held at the Italian Cultural Institute, Nov. 17-20. The first day of the symposium, “Italy Made! Passions and Projects,” will be cosponsored by the Center and gather scholars from Italy and the U.S. to examine the surprising role that passions, poetry, music and Jewish leadership played in the unification of Italy.

Jews have lived in Italy from Roman times and played a critical role in shaping Italian identity. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Jews were one of the most fervent nationalist groups in the nascent Italian State as they hoped unification and liberalism would lead to equal rights and a new form of citizenship. Italy was one of the last countries in Europe to eliminate the ghetto with the liberation of Rome in 1870 as part of the Italian unification movement.

“Thanks to the commitment of the President of the Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, the anniversary has been a highly significant occasion to reassert the value of a modern, democratic, united nation, within the European Union,” according to Political Science Professor Giulia Sissa, the conference organizer.

“To be Italian is not easy,” she noted. “We are always negotiating our interrupted history and our paradoxically divisive national project. Such an unconventional, unfinished identity requires more than celebration and self-praise: our conference will question the passions that made Italy

and make the Italians—those that are still missing and those that are, alas, overwhelming.”

Scholars will reflect on the role played by the Jews of Venice in the 1849/50 revolution; the self-representation of Italian Jews from 1861 to 1918; and the role of music and opera composed and performed by Jews in cultivating national identities.

Conference organizers also include the Network of Italian Scholars Abroad (NISA) and the Italian Institute of Human Sciences (SUM and Fondazione SUM) with support from the Viterbi Family Program in Mediterranean Jewish Studies, the UCLA Italian Department and the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Space is limited and advanced reservations are required. Email cjsrsvp@humnet.ucla.edu or call 310-267-5327.

Seeking American Judaism at Conference in FebruaryWhat are the prospects for American Judaism in the 21st century? Reform Rabbi and author Lance J. Sussman observes that with the exception of some Orthodox communities and a few other bright spots, American Judaism is in precipitous decline.

Enrollment is down in non-Orthodox Jewish religious educational programs, so is synagogue affiliation. Philanthropic giving in the religious sector of the Jewish community is also declining. For rabbis, Jewish educators, and communal leaders, it is a difficult moment. Jews are flourishing in America, but organized, institutional Judaism

seems to be in trouble, particularly after the recent economic crisis.

Carol Bakhos, Associate Professor of Near Eastern Languages and

Cultures, notes that it is not just Jewish religious movements that are

experiencing profound change. “American religious institutions across

the spectrum have weakened and are more fragmented. As a result,

the task of studying organized religion in this country has become

exceedingly complex. We can no longer rely upon denominational

pronouncements to gauge the quality of American religious life.”

“Looking for Judaism in [Un]conventional Places,” a conference

to be held February 12-13, 2012, sponsored by the UCLA Center for

Jewish Studies and organized by Prof. Bakhos and Jack Wertheimer

[Jewish Theological Seminary], will probe the significance of these

transformations and highlight emerging pockets of energy and

innovation. Jonathan Sarna [Brandeis] and Dana Evan Kaplan [University of Miami], authors of books on American Judaism, will offer

their reflections at the conference. Steven M. Cohen [HUC] and Sylvia

Barack Fishman [Brandeis] will examine the strength of commitment

to the Reform and Conservative movements and the significance of

efforts to create a religious life beyond them. Other speakers will present

developments specific to Jewish religious life in Los Angeles. Support is

provided by the NEH Jewish Civilization Endowment and the Joy & Jerry

Monkarsh Family Fund.

Before unification the Italian peninsula was a patchwork of small city states and kingdoms. Image courtesy of Marjie Bloy

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History Unlimited: Probing the Ethics of Holocaust Culture

Recognizing the significance of Professor Friedländer’s research, Claudio Fogu (UCSB), Wulf Kansteiner (Binghampton University) and Todd Presner are organizing History Unlimited: Probing the Ethics of Holocaust Culture, April 22-23. The conference is co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies and UCLA Department of History with generous support from the "1939" Club, and the UC Humanities Research Institute.

The aim of the conference is to address the question of representation and the ethics of Holocaust culture in a manner appropriate to the current scholarly-cultural moment. Professor Presner explains that the debates on the "nature of representation" are no longer as central as they were in the ’80’s and ‘90’s; the hotly debated key words of those times—relativism, postmodernism, poststructuralism, discourse analysis—no longer dominate discussions in the humanities and social sciences. Today, new concerns have taken

center stage, and, while not displacing the question of representation (historical and other), they have reframed it.

“We depart from two key intellectual premises. First, today one cannot separate ‘the Holocaust’ as event from the representation of the Holocaust and its academic-political role in American culture, society, and politics. In this respect

the first 'Probing the Limits' conference is itself part of a very specific history of American academic culture. Second, the central questions in the humanities no longer rotate around representation and discourse, but the globalization and digitalization of knowledge. They also respond to a paradigm shift in the identification of the humanities with the artistic and the creative, rather than the critical or the theoretical,” he explained.

“Given this new context we see the relationship between the globalizing humanities and Holocaust culture somewhat reversed: today, expressions of Holocaust memory and culture are suspect for their explicit or implicit claim to singularity. Accordingly, they may be criticized on ethical grounds as Euro-American bastions of resistance to the cultural winds of globalization and digitalization. What, then, are the ethical questions that representing the Holocaust today raises for both artists and scholars?”

Twenty years ago saul friedländer asked a number of historians and theorists to reflect on whether or not the Holocaust posed ethical or aesthetic limits to its representation in fiction and non-fiction. The resulting volume, Probing the limits of representation (1992), had an impact far beyond the circle of Holocaust scholars, and, over time, it has assumed the contours of a ‘classic’ in history and theory. The Holocaust’s perturbing singularity, as both a historic event and an intellectual field of inquiry probing the boundaries between memory and history, assumed the proportions of 'the' test case for all theoretical reflections of an entire generation of scholars.

A career capstone for Prof. Saul Friedländer

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History Unlimited: Probing the Ethics of Holocaust Culture

"History Unlimited," an interdisciplinary conference, April 22-23, 2012, will address the ethics of contemporary Holocaust culture through a series of dialogues involving scholars in the fields of history, film and media studies, architecture, geography, and literary studies. Image of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe designed by Peter Eisenman.

Celebrating Intergenerational Dialogue

In order to address this question, the organizers imagine a dialogical event involving scholars in the fields of history, film and media studies, architecture, geography, and literary studies as well as non-academics whose creative acts of representation address the new challenges of Holocaust representation in a range of media contexts. "History Unlimited" is first and foremost a celebration of different generations of UC faculty. In fact, the conference offers “possibly the last chance for a personal intergenerational dialogue between some of the key intellectual protagonists of the 1980s and 90s and their successors,” Prof. Presner said.

A number of theoreticians and critics have been invited to produce a close reading of a specific work of fiction or non-fiction, with the author of the work responding to that reading. The first pair of speaker-respondents will be Saul Friedländer and Hayden White, the two protagonists of the

original “Probing the Limits of Representation” conference. This time, however, Hayden White will reflect on the question of historical representation and ethics by offering a close reading of Friedländer’s The Years of Extermination (2007).

This close reading will set the tone for the following dialogues of the conference, each of them dedicated to a specific area of Holocaust culture and a specific artist/author/curator: architecture-monuments (Peter Eisenman, Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe), the archive, (Stephen Smith, USC-Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education), film (Peter Forgacs, Maelstrom, and Yael Hersonski, A Film Unfinished), the historiographical synthesis (Christopher Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution), and geography (Anne Kelly Knowles, Geographies of the Holocaust). All presentations and discussions of the conference will be video-cast and archived.

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New publications

AFFIlIAteD JewIsH stuDIes FACultY

CAROL BAKHOS*

Associate Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. FIELD: Midrash and rabbinic Judaism.

ARNOLD J. BAND

Professor Emeritus of Hebrew and Comparative Literature. FIELD: Modern Hebrew and Jewish Literature.

RA’ANAN BOUSTAN

Associate Professor of History and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. FIELD: Jewish history and ancient Mediterranean religions.

LIA BROZGAL

Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies. FIELD: 20th and 21st cen. French and Francophone literature and Judeo-Maghrebi literature.

AARON BURKE

Associate Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology. FIELD: Archaeology of Ancient Israel and Early Judaism.

NANCY EZER

Lecturer in Hebrew. FIELD: Modern Hebrew Literature.

SAUL FRIEDLÄNDER

“1939” Club Professor of Holocaust Studies and Professor of History. FIELD: History of the Holocaust.

LEV HAKAK

Professor of Hebrew Literature. FIELD: Modern Hebrew Literature.

GIL HOCHBERG*

Associate Professor of Comparative Literature. FIELD: Israeli, Palestinian, and North African Literatures.

ELEANOR KAUFMAN*

Professor of Comparative Literature and French. FIELD: 20th Century French Philosophy and Jewish Diaspora.

MIRIAM KORAL

Lecturer in Yiddish. FIELD: Yiddish literature and language.

DAVID N. MYERS

Professor and Chair of History. FIELD: Jewish History and Thought.

TODD S. PRESNER*

Professor of Germanic Languages. FIELD: Modern German-Jewish Literature and Intellectual History, Art History, and Visual Culture.

KENNETH REINHARD

Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and English. FIELD: Hermeneutics, Religion, and Modern Jewish Literature.

YONA SABAR

Professor of Hebrew and Aramaic. FIELD: Aramaic, Hebrew, Jewish Languages, and Jewish and Near Eastern Folklore.

SHELLEY SALAMENSKY*

Assistant Professor of Theater. FIELD: 19th through 21st Century British, European, and Jewish Literature, Drama, Performance, and Culture.

ARIEH SAPOSNIK

Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Chair in Israel Studies and Associate Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. FIELD: History of Zionism and Israel, Jewish nationalism.

WILLIAM SCHNIEDEWIND*

Kershaw Chair of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies, Chair of the Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures and Professor of Biblical Studies and Northwest Semitic Languages.

JEREMY SMOAK

Lecturer in Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East. FIELD: Inner-biblical Exegesis, Israelite Religions.

SARAH ABREVAYA STEIN*

Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies and Professor of History. FIELD: Jewish cultural diversity in the modern period.

JEwISH StUDIES At tHE CROSSROADS OF ANtHROPOLOGy AND HIStORy: AUtHORIty, DIASPORA, tRADItIONUniversity of Pennsylvania Press, 2011

Ra'anan Boustan, Oren Kosansky and Marina Rustow: Editors

Over the past 30 years, the field of Jewish studies has expanded to encompass an unprecedented range of research topics, historical periods, geographic regions,

and analytical approaches. Yet there have been few systematic efforts to trace these developments and consider their implications. This groundbreaking volume brings together scholars in anthropology, history, religious studies, comparative literature, and other fields to chart new directions in Jewish studies across the disciplines.

The writers explore forms of Jewish experience that span the period from antiquity to the present. In addition to text, full consideration is given to ritual, spatial, and visual materials through which Jewish life emerges. Moving beyond inherited approaches and conventional academic boundaries, the volume reconsiders the core concepts of authority, Diaspora and tradition, reorienting our understanding of the dynamic relationships between text and practice, continuity and change in Jewish contexts, and provoking inquiry into theoretical problems in a range of other areas.

HADOR: tHE HEBREw ANNUAL OF AMERICA, VOL. 42011

Lev Hakak: Editor

Histadruth Ivrith of America, the Hebrew Language and Culture Association, was launched in 1916. When the organization closed in 2004 due to financial difficulties, its three publications (Hadoar, Lamishpaha

and Sulam Ya’akov) ceased. Hadoar was the longest running Hebrew periodical (1921-2004). As the last editor (2002-2004) of Hadoar, Prof. Lev Hakak refused to accept that American Jewry would remain without any Hebrew periodical in the U.S. He founded Hador: The Hebrew Annual of America in 2006 and it remains the only Hebrew periodical in the U.S. today.

Hador’s contributors are mainly Hebrew scholars at American universities. The journal publishes poetry, prose and articles in the fields of Hebrew literature, Hebrew language, Jewish art, Jewish education, the Jewish community in America, Bible, Israel Studies and book reviews in the fields of Hebrew and Jewish Studies.

*Faculty Advisory Committee member

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VisiTing faCulTY 2011-2012

ANDREW BERNS—Viterbi Visiting Assistant Professor of Mediterranean Jewish Studies

NAYA LEKHT—Lecturer in Slavic Studies

NAHID PIRNAZAR—Lecturer in Iranian Studies

STEVEN SPIEGEL

Professor of Political Science. FIELD: American Foreign Policy in the Middle East.

JONATHAN M. ZASLOFF

Professor of Law. FIELD: Law, Legal Theory, Ethical Treatises of Jewish Tradition, Moral Philosophy, and Jewish History.

tHE HIStORy AND ARCHAEOLOGy OF JAFFA 1Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, 2011

Martin Peilstöcker and Aaron Alexander Burke: Editors

The Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project (JCHP) was established in 2007 as a joint research endeavor of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.

Among the project’s diverse aims is the publication of numerous excavations conducted in Jaffa since 1948. This first volume lays the groundwork for this initiative. Together the twenty-five contributions to this work constitute the first major book-length publication to address the archaeology of Jaffa in more than sixty years of excavations.

Part I provides the historical, economic, and legal context for the JCHP’s development, while outlining its objectives and the unique opportunities that Jaffa offers researchers. The history of Jaffa and its region, and the major episodes of cultural change that affected the site and region are explored through a series of articles in Part II, including an illustrated discussion of historical maps of Jaffa from the nineteenth and early 20th centuries. Recent archaeological discoveries from Jaffa are included in Part III, while Part IV begins to publish the Jacob Kaplan and Hava Ritter-Kaplan legacy.

A JEwISH VOICE FROM OttOMAN SALONICA: tHE LADINO MEMOIR OF SA'ADI BESALEL A-LEVIStanford University Press, November 2011

Aron Rodrigue and Sarah Abrevaya Stein: Editors

Isaac Jerusalmi: Translation,

Transliteration, and Glossary

This book provides the first complete text of the earliest known Ladino-language memoir. Sa'adi Besalel a-Levi (1820–1903), a prominent journalist and publisher, wrote about Ottoman Jews' daily life at a time when the fabric of Ottoman society was just beginning to unravel as a result of profound political and social changes and the World Wars.

His vivid portrayal of life in Salonica, a major port in the Ottoman Levant with a majority-Jewish population, thus provides a unique window into a way of life before it disappeared. One of the most significant creators of modern Sephardic print culture, Sa’adi was also a rebel, accusing the Jewish leadership of Salonica of being corrupt, abusive, and bigoted. In turn, he was excommunicated from the Jewish community. The experience of excommunication pervades Sa'adi's memoir which documents a world that its author was himself actively involved in changing.

tHE MODERN ARt OF INFLUENCE AND tHE SPECtACLE OF OSCAR wILDEPelgrave Macmillan, available January 2012

S.I. Salamensky

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was the wittiest, most famous—and most infamous—writer and figure of his century. Indeed, the Irish essayist, playwright and poet was so far ahead

of his time as to seem more a part of our own. His fiction, essays, plays, and sparkling bons mots still enthrall us, while his obsessive, forbidden love and tragic trials continue to haunt us. The book traces the roots of modern anxieties over performance as mysterious, magical pathway to cultural power, with Wilde as nineteenth-century precursor of contemporary phenomena such as American Idol.

The Modern Art of Influence and the Spectacle of Oscar Wilde investigates the rich, complex work and tumultuous life of this unique artist and individual, his colorful era, his vibrant milieu of artists, scandalous women and men, Jews, and other "others," the mass frenzy that surrounded him and the implications of all that is "Wilde" for us today.

CJs fellows 2011-2012

NETTA AVINERI—Civic Engagement Fellow

BRYAN KIRSCHEN—Jr. Civic Engagement Fellow

KAREN WILSON—Sady and Ludwig Kahn Research Associate,"Mapping Jewish LA" project

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Mae and Morris Gelb:A Legacy of Mutual Respect and Interdependence

Honor Roll 2010–2011The UCLA Center for Jewish Studies is grateful for the crucial support of our donors. Your generosity has enabled the Center to develop into one of the most distinguished crossroads of research and education in Jewish Studies in the world.

MANHIGIM (Leaders)Maurice Amado Foundation

Dr. Ellen R. Dirksen

The Sady Kahn Trust

Posen Foundation/Center for

Cultural Judaism

Resnick Family Foundation

AMUDIM (Pillars)Rose and Al A. Finci

Stephen O. Lesser

Chic Wolk

Elaine & Richard Lindheim

Abner & Roslyn Goldstein Living Trust

Sheila & Milton Hyman

Pamela & E. Randol Schoenberg

Lucille Ellis Simon Foundation

Elaine & Donald Wolf

BONIM (Builders) Sanford & Phyllis Beim

Charitable Foundation

Lya Cordova-Latta

Gelb Foundation Myers Fund

Dr. Gertrude & Dr. Samuel Goetz

Myra & Bruce Newman

Shirley & Ralph Shapiro

Sydney Stern Memorial Trust

METIVIM (Benefactors) Sadelle Brussell Birnbaum

Bernard Friedman

Helen & Dr. Isaac Kaplan

Hannah & Marshall F. Kramer

The Markowitz Family Trust

Daniel B. Spitzer

Arthur & Edith Stern Family Foundation

Marcie & Howard Zelikow

CHAVERIM (Friends)Jean & Jay Abarbanel

Dr. Emanuel Abrams

Sara & Dr. David Aftergood

Eva Ballo

Leah S. Barshap

Sydney H. Bash

New program to explore values that bind diverse communities together

“Scholarship, Religion, Activism” will be the theme for the inaugural Mae and Morris Gelb Inter-Faith and Inter-Cultural Forum at UCLA on Feb. 26, 2012. The Forum is the first of what is intended to be an annual event devoted to exploring the interplay of cultures, peoples, and faiths in Los Angeles and beyond.

Drawing on a mix of scholars, activists and Los Angeles religious leaders, the Forum is designed to break down barriers between the university and community, according to Prof. Ra’anan Boustan, Director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Religion. The Forum is a joint partnership of the Center for the Study of Religion, the University Religious Conference at UCLA, and the Myers-Gelb families, and is co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies.

“This gathering will explore what the academic study of religion can offer to and learn from grassroots religious activism in Los Angeles,” Prof. Boustan noted. A stimulus to the conversation will be the recently published Blessed are the Organized: Grassroots Democracy in America by Jeffrey Stout of Princeton. Prof. Stout has been invited to participate in a full day of activities, including a public forum on February 26 from 5-7 pm. For reservations, email csr@humnet.ucla.edu or call 310-825-8472.

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Mae and Morris Gelb:A Legacy of Mutual Respect and Interdependence

Center for Jewish StudiesAdvisory Board

Rabbi Daniel Bouskila

Al Finci, Chair

Milton Hyman

Luis Lainer

Stephen O. Lesser

Elaine Lindheim

Jerry Monkarsh

E. Randol Schoenberg

Kerri Steinberg

Andrew Viterbi

Harold Williams

Chic Wolk

Elaine Wolf

Rabbi David Wolpe

Zev Yaroslavsky

Stephen & Dr. Susann Bauman

Elaine M. Berke

Martin H. Bernstein

Anne M. Bodenheimer

Dr. Gregory L. Charlop

Diana Dreiman

Doris & Arnold Dunn

Susan & Thomas Fineman

Jean & Jerry Friedman

Leley & Kenneth Geiger

Rochelle & Eli Ginsburg

Manuel Glaser

David A. Gorlick

Rabbi Michael Gotlieb, Kehillat Ma’arav

Green Family Living Trust

Lee & Harvey M. Grossman

Florence Irving

Nancy & Sheldon Jaffe

Kenneth L. Kahan

Myron Kayton

Shirley Kotler

Marsha Latiner

Peachy & Mark C. Levy

Family Trust

Michael D. Miller

Dr. Steven Moszkowski & Esther Kleitman

Dr. David N. Myers & Dr. Nomi Stolzenberg

Jeffrey L. Nagin

Sylvia & Lester Paley

Sandra Radoff-Bernstein

Barbara & Peter Rothholz

Carol & The Hon. Marvin D. Rowen

Rabbi Rachel Rudis-Bovitz & Dr. Greg Bovitz

Drs. Merilee & Zanwil Sperber

Eli Tabariai

Alice & Dr. Charles A. Trilling

Drs. Ann & Leonard Walts

Lillian Apodaca Weiner

Sylvia & Dr. Charles Weiner

Renee R. Weisenberg

Mary R. Weissmann

Marilouise & Dr. Albert Zager

Judith & Marvin Zeidler

AMITIM (Fellows)Dr. Helen Adelberg

Dr. Lilla & Edgar Aftergood

Eve Asner

Gail D. Aspinwall

Miryam Bachrach

Gerald Bubis

Adele Clark

Joan & Don Ermann

Eric Gordon

Hanna Grinberg

Dr. Abraham Havivi

Phyllis Johnston

Laraine & Allan Kolkin

Dov Malkin

Daniel J. Merritt

Patti & Dr. Albert Mizrahi

Irene & Donald Naftulin

Marilyn & Dr. Mark Nataupsky

Jerry A. Rabow

Marlene Rotblatt

Eli Rubin

Dr. Albert Sattin

Joyce B. Schwartz

Leah & Norman Schweitzer

Ellen D. Sever

Jo Sherman and Mary Jane Varley

Michelle & Josef Shwartz

Sondra & Dr. William Singer

Rose & Andrew R. Steinberg

Rachel & Thomas Tugend

Sarita Unger

Janet & The Hon. Henry A. Waxman

Maria Wigmore

Shirley Shore Williamson

Dr. Mae Ziskin

The Mae and Morris Gelb Forum is dedicated to the memory of two revered community leaders and beloved parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. According to Prof. David N. Myers, grandson of the Gelbs and Chair of the UCLA History Department,“the aim of the Forum is to perpetuate the legacy of the Gelbs in the various communities to which they were dedicated.”

A native of Hungary, Morris Gelb immigrated to America at the age of eight. He went on to earn a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and to a life of philanthropy and community service in which his wife Mae was also deeply involved. The Gelbs’ daughter, Sondra Myers, continues: “deeply steeped in the traditions of Judaism, both religiously and culturally, they were, at the same time, profoundly committed to humanity at large. Indeed, they were at home in both worlds, able to balance them effortlessly—not limited to one identity, but fully realizing their personal and civic lives as Jews, Americans, and human beings.

“Though surely not the first to do so, they ventured courageously into the larger, mainly Catholic community of Scranton, PA, with ease and conviction. And they lived, as George Washington envisioned, ‘without fear,’ maintaining their faith and yet committed to advancing the welfare of all those around them.”

The spirit of the Gelbs played a large part in the formation of a family tradition which their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren seek to uphold through programs that bring together people of diverse backgrounds to reflect on the values that bind people together. The project of instilling mutual respect and recognizing our interdependence is Mae and Morris Gelb’s enduring legacy.

More information on creating a named program as a living legacy is available by contacting the Center at cjs@humnet.ucla.edu or calling 310-825-5387.

At the CenterBox 951485Los Angeles, CA 90095-1485

Phone: 310.825.5387RSVP line: 310.267.5327cjs@humnet.ucla.edu

Business hours: M-TH 9am-12 pm, 1-5pm

Community PartnershipsCollaboration with other organizations and UCLA entities is an important aspect of the Center’s work. The Center for Jewish Studies is proud to have co-sponsored programs with these partners in 2010-11.

The “1939” Club

Austrian Consulate General

Autry National Center

Croatian Consul General

Goethe-Institut Los Angeles

Hillel at UCLA

Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles

Jewish Family Services' Café Europa

Jewish Music Commission of Greater Los Angeles

Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival

Sigi Ziering Institute at American Jewish University

Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills

UCLA Maurice Amado Program in Sephardic Studies

UCLA Center for European & Eurasian Studies

UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies

UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies

UCLA Center for Society and Genetics

UCLA Center for the Study of Religion

UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music

UCLA Humanities Division

UCLA Dept. of Germanic Languages

UCLA Dept. of History

UCLA Mickey Katz Chair in Jewish Music

UCLA Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for

Israel Studies

UCLA Program in Iranian Studies

UCLA Viterbi Program in Mediterranean

Jewish Studies

USC Casden Institute for the Study of the

Jewish Role in American Life

Villa Aurora

Prof. todd S. PresnerSady and Ludwig Kahn Director

Mary Enid Pinkerson, PhD Community Affairs Coordinator

Vivian Holenbeck Assistant Director

Briana Desmond Financial & Administrative Coordinator

Christina Dang Student Assistant

David wu Program Coordinator

at the

centerבמרכז

Center for Jewish studies