CROWN FAMILY CENTER FOR JEWISH AND ISRAEL STUDIES

Working Memory: Present Day Uses of the Jewish Past

January 14, 2021

This discussion series was presented as the 2021 Manfred H. Vogel Lecture in Judaic Studies.

In the Jewish tradition (as in any tradition), collective memory is not merely a sterile recall of past events --it is a conveyer of meaning, a way of selecting, shaping, and transmitting the values and commitments of the past in order to shape the present and future. Recent scholarship in the fields of Jewish and Israel Studies has taken this insight in innovative and provocative new directions. 

Over the course of two panel discussions, some of today's leading scholars discussed the ways in which Jewish memory has been crafted, augmented, instrumentalized, and contested: from debates over how to memorialize antisemitism in pre-modern Europe, to Jewish perspectives on Confederate memory in the southern US, and to the rise of nostalgia as a modern Jewish mitzvah.

Event video:  Working Memory: Nostalgia Panel