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Tam Institute for Jewish Studies Seminar Series:
Spring 2009

Co-sponsored by the Emory University Graduate School's New Thinkers, New Leaders Fund

(Brunch is served following morning seminars. Please RSVP to Tobi Ames at 404-727-0896, or )

Upcoming event(s):

"Inside Out: A Multimedia Auto-Ethnography on Contemporary Hasidism"
- Pearl Gluck (Visiting Lecturer, Department of Film Studies and Tam Institute for Jewish Studies, Emory University)

Ten years after leaving her Hasidic home in Brooklyn, Pearl Gluck received a Fulbright grant to collect oral histories from Yiddish speakers in areas of Hungary once home to thriving Hasidic communities, including Satmar, her family's original sect. At heart, she is a zamler, a collector. In the spirit of the oral tradition of her youth, but in the face of its patriarchal trajectory, she tells stories of travels, transformations, and travails, mapping her way back to Hasidism with a camera and a microphone. What evolves is a collaborative ethnography documenting and interweaving those who still live within the Hasidic community, and those who have found their way out, but remain inspired by the richness of its traditions.

Listen to stories, discuss its implications, and examine clips of Gluck's audio/visual work in Divan, Wiliamsburg, Goyta, and Where Is Joel Baum. Works feature Frank London (of the Klezmatics), Levi Okunov, Basya Schechter (of Pharoah's Daughter), and Amichai Lau LaVie (of Storahtelling).

Friday, March 20th, 2009
9:30-11:00 a.m.
Candler Library 125

"Freedom of Conscience as an Inquisitorial Defense: The Case of Isaac de Castro Tartas"
- Miriam Bodian (History Professor, University of Texas)

Presented in conjunction with the Vann Seminar in Pre-Modern European History

The enigmatic young Isaac de Castro Tartas - from a crypto-Jewish family, educated in Jesuit schools in France, schooled in rabbinic Judaism in Amsterdam and Dutch Brazil - defended himself before inquisitors in Lisbon in the 1640s with a set of arguments that reflected a shift away from religious polemics to a reliance on universal principles of freedom of conscience, which he anchored in rabbinic sources.  His case throws light on a variety of undercurrents in early modern European society.

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
4:00-6:00 p.m.
Bowden Hall, Room 323 (J. Russell Major Seminar Room, History Department)

 

 

"Spinoza's Multitude and the Power of Democracy"
- Ericka Tucker (Emory University, Department of Philosophy)

This paper takes up a current use of Spinoza's conception of the multitude by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. Hardt and Negri mobilize Spinoza's conception “the multitude” to underwrite their global anarchist democracy. This presentation will argue that Spinoza is no anarchist, but that his conception of the power of individuals and democracy is even more useful than Hardt and Negri's approach would suggest for current problems in democracy theory. Spinoza's theory allows us to understand how the power of individuals accrues to the power of the state, both for those we include and those who are excluded.

Friday, April 24nd, 2009
9:30-11:00 a.m.
Candler Library 125

Previous events:

"Jewish Violence in the Middle Ages: Fantasies and Realities"
- Elliot Horowitz (Bar Ilan University)

with a response by Vincent Cornell (MESAS)

The history of Jewish liturgy contains various angry prayers expressing hopes for the downfall of Christendom. Previous scholarship has either downplayed them or seen them as part of a legacy of Jewish ressentiment rather than understanding them as drawing upon of a legacy of violence. This seminar will focus on the liturgy for two periods of the year among the Jews of early medieval Palestine and Italy and high medieval Franco-Germany, the High Holy Days and the season of Purim, and trace the implications of acknowledging and addressing the anti-Christian elements that survive in Jewish liturgy through the present.

Elliott Horowitz was born in New York City and educated at Princeton and Yale. He has taught in Israel since 1982, first at Ben Gurion University and then in the Dept of Jewish History at Bar Ilan University. He is co-editor of the Jewish Quarterly Review and author of Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (Princeton University Press, 2006; paperback, 2008) and many articles on Jewish social and cultural history. He is currently senior lecturer at Bar Ilan University. This lecture is part of the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies Seminar Series.

Co-sponsored by the Institute for Comparative and International Studies; the Vann Seminar in Pre-Modern European History; the Emory University Graduate School's New Thinkers, New Leaders Fund; and the LaBelle Birnbaum Tenenbaum Enrichment Fund.

Friday, September 12th
9:30-11:00 a.m.
Bowden Hall, Room 323

Lunch is provided. Please RSVP to Tobi at 404-727-0896 or tames2@emory.edu

"What you are" or "what's in your heart"? Competing definitions of religion among intermarried couples
-Jennifer Thompson (Emory University, Graduate Division of Religion)

with a response by Laurie Patton (Religion)

In intermarried couples, two different definitions of religion simultaneously govern the family's religious practices, conceptions of Jewishness, and relationship to the Jewish community. In my ethnographic research, conducted over four years in Atlanta, I found that Christian spouses define religion in American Protestant terms, rejecting hierarchy and valuing individualism, moral improvement, and religious tolerance. They often enthusiastically participate in, even spearhead, Jewish ritual in their families because it "touches their hearts." They see religion as essentially universal because it is individual. As a central cultural influence in American culture and history, Protestantism influences Catholic intermarried spouses' language as well, emphasizing faith and emotional experience and a personal relationship with God.   But in contrast to the Christian spouses' definition of religion, Jewish spouses define religion implicitly in both this Protestant way and as "what you are": "You do the traditions because that's what you are, not because of what you believe," said one intermarried Jewish woman.   Jewish and Protestant views of religion coexist uneasily within intermarried families, in part because they exist within critical discourses in the American Jewish community about intermarriage. These discourses draw on both definitions of religion, with a halakhic definition of Jewishness that conflicts with the dominant Protestant conception of religion in America. Intermarried couples are well aware of these discourses and respond to them in their own lives even though the discourses rarely take into account their responses.

Jennifer Thompson is a Ph.D. candidate in the Ethics and Society program of the Graduate Division of Religion. Her ethnographic dissertation analyzes the experiences of intermarried Jewish-Christian couples in Atlanta and the American Jewish discourses on intermarriage. She has been a Graduate Student Fellow at the Emory Center for Myth and Ritual in American Life, a Sloan Center for Working Families, since 2005. She holds an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School (2000) and a B.A. in English and American Literature from Brandeis University (1998). This lecture is part of the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies Seminar Series.

Cosponsored by the Graduate Division of Religion (GDR), Emory University Graduate School's New Leaders, New Thinkers Fund, and the LaBelle Birnbaum Tenenbaum Enrichment Fund.

Friday, October 24th
9:30-11:00 a.m.
Candler Library Room 212 (JS Seminar Room)

How Danaydah is becoming Dvorah: A Cuban Journey to Israel
-Ruth Behar (University of Michigan)

with a response by Joyce Flueckinger (Religion)

Globalization seduces women. It makes them dream of other places, far away, where they feel certain they will find the happiness that eludes them at home. Eighteen-year-old Danayda arrived in Beersheva in November, 2007. She is part of a small community of Cubans of Jewish heritage who are remaking their lives in Israel. As a black Cuban woman, Danayda faces race, class, and cultural prejudices daily. But there is no turning back. And so she concentrates on becoming Dvorah, a woman who didn’t exist in Cuba.

Ruth Behar was born in Havana, Cuba and grew up in New York City. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Award, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Distinguished Alumna Award from Wesleyan University. She has worked as a cultural anthropologist in Spain, Mexico, and Cuba. Her books include The Presence of the Past in a Spanish Village, Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza’s Story, and The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart. Her recent book, An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba, is a blend of memoir, ethnography, and photography that tells the story of her quest to get to know the Jewish community that remains on the island she left as a child. She is also co-editor of Women Writing Culture, and editor of Bridges to Cuba, a pioneering forum of culture and art by Cubans on the island and in the diaspora. Her latest anthology is The Portable Island: Cubans at Home in the World, co-edited with Lucía Suárez. In addition to scholarly work, she writes essays, poetry, and fiction, which can be found in King David’s Harp: Autobiographical Essays by Jewish Latin American Writers; Telling Stories: An Anthology for Writers; Burnt Sugar/Caña Quemada: Contemporary Cuban Poetry in English and Spanish; Sephardic American Voices: Two Hundred Years of a Literary Legacy; and Little Havana Blues: A Cuban-American Literature Anthology. Her work as a filmmaker led her to write, direct, and produce Adio Kerida/Goodbye Dear Love: A Cuban Sephardic Journey, a feature-length documentary distributed by Women Make Movies, which has been shown around the world. She is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. Further information about her work is available on her web site: www.ruthbehar.com. This lecture is part of the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies Seminar Series.

Co-sponsored by Emory University Graduate School's New Thinkers, New Leaders Fund and the LaBelle Birnbaum Tenenbaum Enrichment Fund.

Friday, November 14th, 2008
9:30-11:00 a.m.
Jones Room, Woodruff Library

SUMMARY OF RUTH BEHAR'S TALK

 

"How was spring trimmed at the apple gardens": Abba Kovner sings theHolocaust
- Ofra Yeglin (Emory University, Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies)

with a response by Shalom Goldman (MESAS)

Abba Kovner (1919-1987) was a leftist art student when he famously exhorted his fellow Jews in the Vilna ghetto to take up arms and not to go as sheep to the slaughter. A partisan commander and one of the founders of the Berihah (illegal emigration), he made his way back to Europe in 1945 armed with enough poison to kill six million Germans; he went on to become the officer of cultural activities during the Israeli war of Independence (1948), a central witness at the Eichmann trail (1961), and the creator of “The Diaspora House” (Beth Hatefutsoth), the museum of the Jewish people (1978), which established an entirely new concept of what a Jewish museum should be.

Kovner is also one of Israel's most profound and original poets. His lifetime endeavor to “sing the Holocaust” in ten lengthy poems encompasses all available genres, bringing the essence of poetic language “down” to the earth of history with compellingly surprising insight. In the era of the loss and disappearance of intimate personal Holocaust experiences and the decline of collective historical accounts and ceremonies—and after we have listened carefully to Paul Celan's poetry in German—it is time to listen to Kovner's Hebrew song of testimony.

Ofra Yeglin is Assistant Professor at Emory University's Department of Middle East and South Asian Studies. This lecture is part of the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies Seminar Series.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature, Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies, Emory University Graduate School's New Thinkers, New Leaders Fund, and the LaBelle Birnbaum Tenenbaum Enrichment Fund.

Friday, December 5th
9:30-11:00 a.m.
Candler Library Room 212 (JS Seminar Room)

"Coffee and the Moral Order: How Ethiopian Jewish Pentecostals and Messianic Jews are Challenging the Meaning of Jewishness in Israel"
- Don Seeman (Emory University, Religion Department)

with a response by Dianne Stewart (Religion)

A young Ethiopian-Israeli man refuses a gift of coffee beans from an old friend. Thus begins a reflection upon the nature of Jewishness and religious boundaries between Jews and Christians in the world today. For Ethiopian-Israelis, refusal to drink coffee with other Ethiopians has become a mark of having adopted a Pentecostal or Messianic Jewish faith, typically looked down upon by Ethiopian and other Jews in Israel. This seminar explores the meaning of coffee as a constituent of the moral order for Ethiopian Jews and Pentecostals alike, and explores how the drinking of coffee helps to raise a host of theological, cultural, and moral issues. How can someone who worships as a Pentecostal continue to identify strongly with Judaism and Jewishness, how does religion inflect nationality in the Israeli context, and how should believers of all kinds deal with ongoing war and terror, alienation from loved ones, and the desire for personal autonomy within a traditional religious framework? Does this phenomenon help to change the meaning of Jewishness for Israelis? And finally, how does the ethnographer balance his own religious and scholarly commitments in this research? This lecture is part of the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies Graduate Seminar Series.

Friday, January 30th, 2009
9:30-11:00 a.m.
Candler Library, Room 125

"Mysticism in Modern Hebrew Literature"
- Hamutal Bar Yosef (Professor Emerita, Ben Gurion University)

Presented in conjunction with Emory's Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies Department

Modern Hebrew writers inherited – sometimes indirectly - ideas, symbols and styles from Kabbala, Hasidism and earlier Jewish mysticism. Like earlier Jewish mystical texts, their texts were also influenced by contemporary non-Jewish cultural background: Western or Eastern Christian, and sometimes Moslem mysticism. During the 19 th century mysticism was considered to be alien to the "real" Judaism by "enlightened" Jews. The positive turning point in the evaluation of Jewish mysticism occurred at the turn of the 20 th century, under Russian and German influnces. Elements of mystical experiences, views and styles are frequent in 20 th century Hebrew poetry (H.N. Bialik, M.Y. Berdychevsky, U. Z. Greenberg, N. Alterman, P. Sadeh, A. Gilboa, D. Rabikovich, Zelda, Rivka Miriam, Y. Ozer, B. Shevili, H. Pedaia, and many others). Togetherness as a mystical experience is of special interest. A few texts in English translation will be presented and analyzed.

Ben Gurion University Emerita Professor Hamutal Bar-Yosef - a noted poet, translator, and literature researcher - will present a talk as part of the Tam Institute's ongoing 2008-2009 seminar series.

Thursday, February 12th, 2009
4:00-6:00 p.m.
Candler Library 207-D (African-American Studies Seminar Room)

The Aesthetics and Ethics of Mystification: Der Nister's "Flora"
- Erik Butler (Emory University, Department of German Studies)

with a response by Sander Gilman (ILA)

Der Nister, the penname adopted by the underappreciated Yiddish author Pinkhas Kahanovich (1884-1950), translates to "The Hidden One." The pseudonym points toward a strategy of concealment-and intermittent disclosure-that the author performs in his works.

This paper explores how, in the short story "Flora" (1946), Der Nister's signature, chiaroscuro style captures the ambiguities of "reality" (virklekhkayt). Far from merely representing an aesthetic tendency toward obscurity, Der Nister's riddling prose gives symbolic form to a historical situation-life under Nazi occupation-that was characterized by radical uncertainty and the ever-present possibility of betrayal. Through the author's skillful vagueness, the fiction transforms into something resembling actual fact, and dark deeds are revealed as sources of light in the historical night.

Although the paper examines the text primarily through the lens of literary criticism, I frame my reading with a discussion of relevant, Hasidic forms of piety, as well as reflections on the less-than-straightforward kinds of sociability that have been documented in the underground milieu in which Der Nister situates his tale.

Copies of Erik Butler’s English translation of “Flora” are available in the JS office or by contacting Tobi Ames.

Friday, February 13th, 2009
9:30-11:00 a.m.
Candler Library 125

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