Jewish Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania

“The 1948 War in the Eyes of the World: From the Local to the Global"

Derek J. Penslar (Harvard)

Feb 5, 2024
5:15pm | Zoom webinar

Register here: https://upenn.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_d1MLOtA5QWeGGLoEhCWiPg #/registration

Derek J. Penslar is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History, and the Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University. He is based in the Department of History, where he is the Director of Undergraduate Studies. Penslar is a resident faculty member at the Center for European Studies and is affiliated with the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

This is the 28th Annual Silvers Visiting Scholar Program. The Silvers Visiting Scholar Program is endowed by David, C’71, and Patricia, CW’72, Silvers.

More information: https://jwst.sas.upenn.edu/events/2024/02/05/derek-j-penslar-1948-war-eyes-world-local-global

Research Awards Available for Summer 2021

Goldfein Research Awards, Brenner Special Opportunity Awards, and Schwartz Awards are open to both undergraduate and graduate University of Pennsylvania students, and are intended to cover research projects and study programs in or related to Jewish studies.

Students can apply for funding to support travel, research material, and other assistance related to the research.
The deadline to apply is Friday, March 19, 2021.

For more information, please visit Penn's Jewish Studies Program website at: https://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jwst/research-0

Research | Jewish Studies Program Each fall and spring the Jewish Studies Program offers Goldfein Research Awards, Brenner Special Opportunity Awards, and Schwartz Awards to both undergraduate and graduate Penn students.

Kedma Call for Submissions for Spring 2021 Journal
DEADLINE: February 14th
Kedma is Penn’s undergraduate journal on Jewish thought, Jewish culture, and Israel. Kedma provides a forum for Penn students to discuss, debate, and challenge ideas of intellectual and social significance. We accept academic articles (between 2,500 and 5,000 words) using Chicago-style endnote citations. We also accept book reviews and creative pieces such as poetry, short stories, photography, and other works of art. Please submit your work no later than February 14th to [email protected].

Translating poetry and literature is an intellectual, artistic, and even political act, according to Emily Wilson, Huda Fakhreddine, Dagmawi Woubshet, and Nili Gold. In this OMNIA feature, they invite readers into their processes.

This article appeared in Penn's Omnia in November 2020. Professor Nili Gold, of the Jewish Studies Program, speaks about translating Hebrew.

Lost and Found Translation is an art that allows us to communicate across cultural difference.

Announcing Spring 2021 Jewish Studies Meltzer Internships

The Jewish Studies Meltzer Internship Program enables students to explore the intellectual dimensions of Jewish studies outside the classroom. During the semester, interns will develop and organize one event for students. Programs might include a discussion with a scholar, a panel discussion, a performance, or any other event that raises issues relevant to Jewish studies. The Meltzer Faculty Advisor and Grad Coordinator will assist with conceptualization and with clarification of financial and technical needs. Each intern will have a programming budget of around $200 for the Meltzer event, and each will receive a $200 research stipend.

Submit your application via email by Wednesday, February 17, 2021.

The application and further information can be found on our website at https://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jwst/undergraduate/jewish-studies-internships

Jewish Studies Internships | Jewish Studies Program The Jewish Studies Meltzer Internship Program enables students to explore the intellectual dimensions of Jewish studies outside the classroom. During the semester, interns will develop and organize one event for students. Programs might include a discussion with a scholar, a panel discussion, a perf...

Kedma: Penn's Undergraduate Journal on Jewish Thought, Jewish Culture, and Israel

You can read Issue 2, Number 5 Spring & Summer 2020 here: https://repository.upenn.edu/kedma/

Kedma: Penn's Journal on Jewish Thought, Jewish Culture, and Israel | University of Pennsylvania Thank you for choosing to read our journal, Kedma. Kedma was founded on Penn’s campus in 2005 and last published in 2013 before the Spring 2018 semester when it was revived. Luckily, Professor Heather Sharkey, who continues to be an outstanding mentor, helped initiate Kedma’s revival. We now hav...

Article appeared in October 30 Penn Today: An intimate conversation with a famed Israeli author. Speaking to a packed room, Judith Katzir shared her thoughts about the global literature scene, plus the backstories to some of her best-known—and extremely personal—works.

https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/intimate-conversation-famed-israeli-author-Judith-Katzir

Announcing Fall 2019 Jewish Studies Meltzer Internships

The Jewish Studies Meltzer (formerly Bassini) Internship Program enables students to explore the intellectual dimensions of Jewish studies outside the classroom. During the semester, interns will develop and organize one event for students. Programs might include a discussion with a scholar, a panel discussion, a performance, or any other event that raises issues relevant to Jewish studies. The Meltzer Faculty Advisor and Grad Coordinator will assist with conceptualization and with clarification of financial and technical needs.

Submit your application via email by Friday, September 21

The application and further information can be found on our website at https://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jwst/undergraduate/jewish-studies-internships

Jewish Studies Internships | Jewish Studies Program The Jewish Studies Meltzer (formerly Bassini) Internship Program enables students to explore the intellectual dimensions of Jewish studies outside the classroom. During the semester, interns will develop and organize one event for students. Programs might include a discussion with a scholar, a panel...

Penn’s Jewish Studies Program offers Goldfein Research Awards, Brenner Special Opportunity Awards, and Schwartz Awards to both undergraduate and graduate Penn students.

Apply for travel, living expenses, tuition, and research equipment and supplies for your winter/spring research. Application deadline is Friday, November 8, 2019.

For more information about guidelines and the application procedure, please visit the Jewish Studies Program website: https://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jwst/research-0

Contact The Jewish Studies Program with any questions regarding your application. Email: [email protected] or Call 215-898-6654.

Kedma editors—3rd issue launch party 4-30-2019. Kedma is Penn's Journal on Jewish Thought, Jewish Culture, and Israel.

On April 30, 2019, students and faculty attended an event to learn about - and celebrate - original research in Jewish Studies produced by Elana Burack and Eric Eisner.

Ibrahim Miari’s play, In Between, won the Best show (First Place) at Thespis festival in Germany!!!

The jury’s comments: “ Starting from a personal experience within the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Ibrahim Miari with delicacy and subtle irony poses the problem of identity, of being in the no man’s land, but rejected by everyone, or at least looked on with suspicion. A very original point of view, a sort of cinematographic subjective of the protagonist, gently transports is to the depth of his feelings. Although, paradoxically, surrounded by persons that being absolute and radical truths, it is the only character who has no voice in the chapter, is not represented on the scene, and on the scene does not pronounce a word: a metaphor of a human condition.”

Penn students can apply for travel, living expenses, tuition, and research equipment and supplies for winter & spring research. For more information: https://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jwst/research-0
Application deadline is Friday, November 9, 2018.

Sonia Gollance (PhD Penn, 2017) has won the Coalition for Women in German Award for Best Article for “‘Spaß mit der schönen Jüdin’: Mixed Space and Dancing in Karl Emil Franzo’s Judith Trachtenberg,” which appeared in Austrian Studies. This is how WIG describes her accomplishment: “In the article, she analyzes the topic of dance as mixed-sex leisure culture in nineteenth-century literature through close-readings of Austrian writer Karl Emil Franzos’s Judith Trachtenberg (1891). Gollance focuses on the depiction of the dance floor as a significant social space in traditional Jewish communities of Galicia; by contextualizing the literary space of the dance floor within the European discourse on corporeality and Jewishness in the era of Emancipation, she shows how Franzos engaged the topic of dancing to spark conversations around social reform by depicting the limitations in social mobility for Jews. Gollance creatively employs literary dance studies methodologies to analyze the quadrille as a literary tool, and thereby lucidly presents this popular didactic text for its social and class-based transgressions from a new angle. Her conclusion that the text makes a broad point about how Habsburg society has failed Jews in general and Jewish women in particular makes a significant contribution to interdisciplinary and intersectional gender studies, Habsburg scholarship, and literary dance studies.” Sonia is currently a Moritz Stern Fellow in Modern Jewish Studies: Cultural, Intellectual and Literary History at the Lichtenberg-Kolleg in the Göttingen Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Göttingen.

Watch the video of Dr. Eric Kandel lecture at the Annenberg School for Communication, April 17, 2018, on "From Vienna to New York: Memory of a Life in Two Worlds."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_-UaVAhU8Y&feature=youtu.be

From Vienna to New York: Memory of a Life in Two Worlds April 17, 2018 | Annenberg School for Communication Eric R. Kandel

Penn's Jewish Studies Program Funds Summer 2018 Research. Undergrad and grad students can apply for travel, living expenses, tuition, and research equipment and supplies. Application Deadline: Thursday, March 15, 2018.
For more information, please go to the JSP website: https://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jwst/

On November 8, 2017, Alexander Botwinik, Yiddish instructor at the University of Pennsylvania, was featured on "The Yiddish Voice" (Dos Yidishe Kol), Boston's weekly Yiddish-language radio show. The broadcast program is available as a podcast at:
https://media.zencast.fm/the-yiddish-voice-podcast/episodes/113

In the interview, Alexander (Sender) Botwinik discusses the recently released CD of Yiddish art songs composed by his father, the Vilna-born Montreal composer David Botwinik. Alexander served as producer and musical director on the CD as well as playing piano on several tracks. The program includes several excerpts from the CD with vocal performances by internationally acclaimed opera singers Lisa Willson, John Packard, and Ian DeNolfo, as well as the late world-renowned tenor Louis Danto.

The CD is titled "From Holocaust to Life", and is a companion to the book of the same name published by the League for Yiddish (www.leagueforyiddish.org) in 2010 containing 56 original musical compositions by David Botwinik, with lyrics by various Yiddish poets. Fifteen of the songs are found on the new CD.

For further information on the book and CD, as well as background information on David and Alexander Botwinik and all the musicians, visit: http://www.botwinikmusic.com or https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/davidbotwinik

Sender Botwinik | The 'Yiddish Voice' Podcast | The 'Yiddish Voice' Podcast

Sephardic Music and Food Event -- "Beyond the Bagel: Traditional Jewish Food Club" Nov. 1 at Penn Hillel 6pm

Prof. Nili Gold's Book Party (photo credit: Etty Lassman)

After a fascinating talk by Mark Gelber on Kafka and Nathan Birnbaum.

An Opportunity for Penn Undergraduates

The faculty of the Jewish Studies Program at Penn stands in sorrow, outrage, and solidarity, with the families and friends of those Jews whose graves in North Philadelphia were damaged and desecrated. This vile and cowardly act of hatred against Jews is an occasion for all Americans to affirm this country’s fundamental opposition to prejudice and the violence and pain it produces. We as a community, and as Americans devoted to protecting the glories of liberal democracy, demand and expect that this hate crime, and all other hate crimes spreading across our country in this difficult period of our national life, are prosecuted swiftly and effectively so that those who would hurt innocents and endanger our collective life will be brought to justice and exposed as the cowards they are.

Apply for summer travel, living expenses, tuition, and research equipment and supplies. Application deadline: Wednesday, March 15, 2017.

Research | Jewish Studies Program Each fall and spring the Jewish Studies Program offers Goldfein Research Awards and the Brenner Special Opportunity Awards to both undergraduate and graduate Penn students.

JSP Faculty Statement on U.S. Executive Order Restricting Immigration

As faculty in the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania, we join our colleagues at Penn and at other universities in condemning the executive order put into effect by President Donald Trump on Friday, January 27, 2017. The order, which bars citizens of seven Muslim nations—Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen—from entering the United States for 90 days and cuts back on the number of refugees who can resettle in the United States, effectively imposes an unconstitutional religious test on those seeking entry to the United States and violates international laws that prohibit sending refugees back to countries where they will be persecuted. This disgraceful order undermines the democratic principles of the United States that prohibit discrimination based on religion and nationality, and it has shaken the world’s belief in America as a beacon of hope for those “yearning to breathe free.”

We who study and teach the history and culture of the Jewish people know the deadly consequences of turning away refugees from violence and war. Seventy-five years ago, based on the pretext that there were N**i spies among them, the United States rejected Jewish refugees from Hitler’s Europe and sent them to their deaths. On the very day he acknowledged the memory of the Holocaust, President Trump showed a similar callousness in closing the nation’s doors to refugees fleeing violence and persecution in today’s war-torn countries. We join the millions who are outraged by this action.

We call on President Trump to reverse this counter-productive and inhumane order. If, as he declared in a brief statement released on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, he wishes to honor the victims of the Holocaust, he can do so by opening America’s gates even more widely to the persecuted and the desperate, not slamming them shut.

Signed,

Dan Ben Amos
Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and Folklore

Joseph Benatov
Lecturer in Foreign Languages, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Michael Carasik
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Biblical Hebrew, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Isabel Cranz
Assistant Professor, Departmemt of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Ronit Engel
Director of The Modern Hebrew Language Program, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Talya Fishman
Associate Professor, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Nili Gold
Associate Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature and Language, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Kathryn Hellerstein
Ruth Meltzer Director of Jewish Studies Program and Associate Professor, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures

Arthur Kiron
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of History

Ian Lustick
Bess W. Heyman Chair in Political Science, Department of Political Science

Ibrahim Miari
Hebrew Lecturer, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Ben Nathans
Associate Professor of History, Department of History

David B. Ruderman
Joseph Meyerhoff Professor of Modern Jewish History, Department of History

Larry Silver
Farquhar Professor of Art History, Department of Art History

Liliane Weissberg
Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor in the School of Arts and Sciences, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures

Steven Weitzman
Abraham M. Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures, Department of Religious Studies

Beth S. Wenger
Mortiz and Josephine Berg Professor, Department of History

Julia Wilker
Assistant Professor, Department of Classical Studies

Yuval Jobani, assistant professor at Tel Aviv University and fellow at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies spoke about feminism, religious pluralism, democracy, and the public sphere.

This was a Penn Jewish Studies Program Bassini Internship Project by undergraduate Elizabeth Dunoff. Also supported by the Katz Center and Penn Hillel.

"Voices High and Low: Selections from an Accidental Archive" Curated by Jewish Studies Bassini Intern, Dalia Wolfson.

The Katz Center makes a MOOC!

The course will launch on June 1 — Please join the discussion!

Last summer the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies and the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries combined forces for this first in a series of collaborative distinguished fellowships meant to bring a first class scholar together with a rare manuscript from our collections. Professor Y. Tzvi Langermann of Bar-Ilan University came to Philadelphia to work on a medieval medical miscellany, and his research resulted in a public lecture, a graduate seminar, and a published article in the new Penn journal Manuscript Studies.

And now, beyond this, we are thrilled to announce the launch of our first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC):
The History of Medieval Medicine through Jewish Manuscripts

This online mini-course is a general introduction both to medieval medicine and to the value of manuscript study. Professor Y. Tzvi Langermann presents a case study that builds from a unique manuscript codex produced in the 15th century containing three important medical manuscripts in Judeo-Arabic (Arabic in Hebrew characters). Compiled in Sicily by a physician identified as David ben Shalom, the manuscript bears witness to the rich cultural exchanges among Latin, Jewish, and Arabic communities during this time, especially in the sciences. Professor Langermann not only walks the student through the basics of medical knowledge training and practice in the Jewish Middle Ages and beyond, but also shows how clues gleaned from elements of a particular manuscript (such as marginal notes, mistakes, and handwriting) shed light on the purpose, use, and readership of these texts. The course includes eight 5–7 minute long video lectures that explore the highlights of this extraordinary manuscript.

Langermann focuses on the manuscript’s three core texts:
(1) Sa’ īd b. Hibat Allāh, al-Mughnī fī Tadbīr al- Amrāḍ (All You Need to Manage Diseases)
(2) Abū ‘Alī Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna), al-Adwiya al- Qalbiyya (On Cardiac Drugs)
(3) Alī b. al-’Abbās al-Majūsī, al-Kāmil fī Ṣinā’at al- Ṭibb (The Complete Art of Medicine)


A complete digital facsimile of the manuscript, is available here. All images and metadata associated with UPenn MS Codex 1649 are available for restriction-free downloading and reuse through Penn Libraries’ open data resource OPenn.

The course (PennX - Katz1.1x) is offered free to anyone with an internet connection. It can be accessed at edX.org, where with just an email address you can create an account. The course is self-paced and takes about 2 hours to complete. The content will not be inaccessible to the novice but the nature of the material and the level of scholarship should interest graduate students and colleagues from a range of disciplines as well. There is an active discussion forum, and a link to the full manuscript in digital form. The course will initially be monitored by TA—Penn doctoral student in medieval Jewish history, Marc Herman. Professor Langermann himself will also occasionally participate in the discussions and respond to student queries.

The course will launch on June 1 — Please join the discussion!

The fellowship is funded in part with the David B. Ruderman Distinguished Visiting Fellowship.

The History of Medieval Medicine Through Jewish Manuscripts Learn about medieval Jewish medical training and thought by exploring and interpreting medical manuscripts.

Organized by Jewish Studies Program Bassini Interns: Debbie Schwartz, Danielle Novack, and Bryan Huang.

Students enjoyed hanging out with archaeologist Prof. Jodi Magness (UNC) after her masterful presentation, "Samson in Stone" on Feb. 2 in Cohen Hall.