Past Events
2024
"Oct. 7 One Year Later: Currents in Israeli Society"
"The Creation of Sound and the Sound of Creation", with Victoria Hanna
"Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism"
"The Continuing Controversy Over the Silence of Pope Pius XII During the Holocaust"
Israel's Black Panthers
Israel and Palestine: Joint Speaker Series Exploring Fundamental History
Sayed Kashua on Humor, Hope, and Hopelessness
2023
Difficult Conversations on Israel and Palestine
Teach-In on Current events in Israel and Gaza
American Shtetl: The Intriguing Story of Kiryas Joel, a Booming Hasidic Town in Suburban New York
"The Freudian Lullaby Contest: How the Yiddish Press Covered Psychoanalysis"
2022
"S.Y. Agnon and Gustave Flaubert: Hebraizing a French Master"
"A Multiracial Jewish Family in Early America"
Renée and Lester Crown Speaker Series: A Conversation with Author Joshua Cohen
New Books in Israel Studies Series: "Judah Magnes: The Prophetic Politics of a Religious Binationalist"
New Books in Israel Studies Series: Dear Palestine: A Social History of the 1948 War
New Books in Israel Studies: The Oldest Guard: Forging the Zionist Settler Past
New Books in Israel Studies Series : Educating Palestine, Teaching and Learning History under the Mandate
2021
"The New Jew" Conversation with Series Creators Guri Alfi and Moshe Samuels
Arab-Jewish Culture, Identity, and Language: Past and Present
Performance and conversation with Yonatan Blumenfeld, one of Israel’s leading poetry slam artists
Professor Lila Corwin Berman of Temple University discussed her award winning book "The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex"
“Es iz schwer tzu sein a Yid: It is hard to be a Jew"
A Conversation with Yotam Ottolenghi
Jewish and Israeli Cuisine and Culture: A Conversation with Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook
Working Memory: Present Day Uses of the Jewish Past
2020
Bilingualism in Jerusalem
"I Am an Arab Jew” with Sami Chetrit
2019
"Israel Facing a New Middle East: Challenges and Responses"
"The Revival of the Jewish-Christian Debate in the 19th Century: Missionaries, Meshummadim and Maskilim"
Nicole Krauss: A Literary Conversation
Protecting the Faith: Censoring Benjamin of Tudela's Book of Travels
Israel at a Crossroads? Electoral Politics in a Divided Nation
What is Antisemitism? Historical, Political and Personal Perspectives
My Fingers for War: A Prayer for Jewish Militiamen in Colonial Suriname
2018
A German-Jewish Hermeneutics Conference
Between Jesus and Paul: From Apologetics to Jewish Theological Affirmations in 20th Century Germany
Sephardic Religious Revival in Israel
Joseph Ringel, Northwestern University
Talmud: a Biography, Podcast Interview with Professor Barry Wimpfheimer
New Books Network: Listen to the podcast
Last Yiddish Heroes: Lost & Found Songs of Soviet Jews During World War II
Remembering 1492: Ottoman Jews and the Spanish Past
Julia Phillips Cohen, Vanderbilt University (Co-sponsored by Chabraja Center for Historical Studies, Partially funded by the Sava Ranisavljevic Fund)
Towards a Social History of Medieval Jewish Marriage: Individuals and Communities
Elisheva Baumgarten, Hebrew University (Co-sponsored by Medieval Studies)
Between the Ottoman Empire and Italy: The Jews of Rhodes, 1880-1938
Aron Rodrigue, Stanford University (Co-sponsored by Chabraja Center for Historical Studies, Partially funded by the Sava Ranisavljevic Fund)
Songs of Praise in a Broken World: Leonard Cohen From "Story of Isaac" (1969) to "You Want it Darker" (2016)
Like Negros...and Mohammedans: Sephardic Jews in the American Racial Imagination
Devin Naar, University of Washington (Co-sponsored by Chabraja Center for Historical Studies, Partially funded by the Sava Ranisavljevic Fund)
Israel's Great Paradox: Strong Macro, Poor Micro
Manual Trajtenberg, Tel-Aviv University (Co-sponsored by Economics)
Violence and the Politics of Identity in Ancient Jewish Literature
Yonatan Miller, University of Toledo
Israel at 70: Social Fissures, Shared Aspirations
Recent publications panel with faculty from the Jewish Studies Program
Consumption and the Economic Turn in Jewish History: When Women Disappeared
Riv-Ellen Prell, University of Minnesota
The Forgotten Pioneer: Jean Carroll, the First Jewish Female Comedian
Grace Kessler Overbeke, PhD Candidate, Theatre, Northwestern University
Performance and Text in Jewish Ritual
Yair Lipshitz, Tel Aviv University (Co-sponsored by Religious Studies)
2017
One Jew, Two Opinions: The Social Role of Responsa in the Medieval Islamic World
Phil Lieberman, Vanderbilt University (Co-sponsored by MENA)
Life, Love and Judaism: A Conversation About Writing and Spirituality
Israel at a Crossroads: The View from 30,000 Feet
Dan Ben-David, Department of Public Policy, Tel-Aviv University
Water in Israel and the Middle East: Regional Water Sustainability and Resilience
The Wandering Jew Between the Middle Ages and Modernity
Galit Hasan-Rokem, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State
The Jewish Encounter with American Freedom: A New Variation on an Old Theme
Challenges for U.S. Middle East Policy Under the Trump Administration
Yiddish Drama & the Aftermath of the Holocaust
Joel Berkowitz, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Media and Collective Memory in Israel and Beyond
Noam Tirosh, Ben Gurion University
The Talmud and the Two-Headed Man
Sarah Wolf, PhD candidate in the Department of Religious Studies, Northwestern University
Sins of the Parents in Rabbinic and Early Christian Literature
Dov Weiss, University of Illinois
2016
Composing a New Self: Assimilation and German-Jewish Identity in Post-Emancipation Musical Circles
Amanda Ruppenthal Stein, PhD candidate at the Bienen School of Music, Northwestern University
Two She-Bears: Reflections on Israeli Society
Allan and Norma Harris Day of Jewish Study
"Late Marriage" Film Screening
The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity
Yona Wallach: Deconstructed Through Film
Water in Israel and the Middle East - Symposium
Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947
Neighboring Faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam
Matisyahu in Concert and Conversation
Jewish American World War II Novels: Young Lions
The Allan and Norma Harris Day of Jewish Study
2015
The State of Jewish Studies in the CIC: Reports, Discussion and Collaboration
Between Baghdad and Haifa - A Tribute to Israeli Author Sami Michael
Dealing with 'Difficult' Prayers: Jewish Liturgy in an Age of Jewish-Christian Dialogue
At the Crossroads: New Directions in the Study of Rabbinic Literature
Is it Good to Give? The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex
2015 Knesset Elections: A Shift in Israeli Politics?
2014
Hollywood and the Holocaust: From Appeasement to Anti-Nazism, 1933-1945, Lawrence Baron
The Allan and Norma Harris Memorial Lecture in Jewish Studies
Still Falling: Gary Shteyngart Returns
Gaza and Beyond: Israel, The Palestinians, and the Arab World
Sholem Aleichem: A Life in Fact and Fiction, Jeremy Dauber
The Philip M. and Ethel Klutznick Lecture in Jewish Civilization
Same People, Different Worlds: Israel, America, and their Jews in the 21st Century, Yehuda Mirsky
The Manfred H. Vogel Lecture in Judaic Studies
2013
Revelation, Authority and Ambiguity in Deuteronomy, Benjamin Sommer
The Allan and Norma Harris Memorial Lecture in Jewish Studies
The Zionist Ideal in Israeli Culture: Dream and Reality
Jewish Democratic State: Israel between Nationalism, Religion and Liberalism, Moshe Halbertal
Renée and Lester Crown Speaker Series
Hasidism in the Modern Jewish Imagination, Arthur Green
The Philip M. and Ethel Klutznick Lecture in Jewish Civilization
Makom: The Place of Space in Jewish Cultures, Barbara Mann Simon
The Manfred H. Vogel Lecture in Judaic Studies
2012
The Ownership of Identity, Nathan Englander
Renée and Lester Crown Speaker Series
Beyond Survival: American Ultra-Orthodoxy as Religion
A Requiem for Kodachrome: Jewish (film) History in 'Nice Bright Colors', Michael Berkowitz
The Allan and Norma Harris Memorial Lecture in Jewish Studies
Dreamers or Pioneers? The Jewish Community in 19th Century Jerusalem, Israel Bartal
The Philip M. and Ethel Klutznick Lecture in Jewish Civilization
Private Faith, Public Religion: Tensions in Modern Jewish Thought, Leora Batnitzky
The Manfred H. Vogel Lecture in Judaic Studies
2011
German-Jewish Responses to the Rise of Hitler, Michael Brenner
The Allan and Norma Harris Memorial Lecture in Jewish Studies
The Cult of Synthesis in American Jewish Culture, Jonathan Sarna
The Allan and Norma Harris Memorial Lecture in Jewish Studies
Christian Missionizing and Jewish Responses over the Ages, Robert Chazan
The Manfred H. Vogel Lecture in Judaic Studies
Human Rights Derailed: Delegitimizing the State of Israel, Irwin Cotler
The Philip M. and Ethel Klutznick Lecture in Jewish Civilization
2010
Arabs in a Jewish State: Dilemmas of National Identity
Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century, Anthony Julius
The Philip M. and Ethel Klutznick Lecture in Jewish Civilization
How Jewish is Jewish History, Moshe Rosman
The Allan and Norma Harris Memorial Lecture in Jewish Studies
2009
Gender, Judaism and Freud: Confessions of an Orthodox Jewish Feminist, Tova Hartman
The Philip M. and Ethel Klutznick Lecture in Jewish Civilization
2008
Israel at Sixty, Reflections on the Past, Present and Future of the Jewish State
After Post-Zionism: Building the Israel That Could Be, Hillel Halkin
The Philip M. and Ethel Klutznick Lecture in Jewish Civilization
2007
Four Approaches to Studying Women in Jewish History, Judith Baskin
The Allan and Norma Harris Memorial Lecture in Jewish Studies
Guenter Grass and My German Problem-Again, Peter Gay
The Philip M. and Ethel Klutznick Lecture in Jewish Civilization
Lost Between Memory and History: Writing the Holocaust for the Next Generation, Daniel Mendelsohn
The Allan and Norma Harris Memorial Lecture in Jewish Studies
2006
The Election of Israel: Reflections of a Catholic Old Testament Scholar, Gary Anderson
The Allan and Norma Harris Memorial Lecture in Jewish Studies