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To learn what Yom Ha-zikaron (Memorial Day) means for Israelis, view the following documentary film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oFt3El4qf0&feature=share  

Register now for

Summer and Fall 2011

Judaic Studies Courses

Follow the links to view the

Summer 2011 and Fall 2011 Judaic Studies courses.

Annual Judaic Studies Departmental Awards to Students were presented on May 3, 2011, to Morris Betesh (Abraham S. Goodhartz Memorial Scholarship), Aleeza Chanowitz (Holocaust Studies Memorial Award), Habib Hymie Chera (Kennedy Human Relations Award), Loraine Cohen (Israel Gerber Memorial Award), and Michael Widroff (Faculty Hillel Associates in Judaic Studies Award).

Michael Widroff                    Morris Betesh                         Habib Hymie Chera

Aleeza Chanowitz (right, with mother)          Loraine Cohen (right, with mother and sister)          

                                                   Dean Donna Wilson       Department Chair

                                                                                    Prof. Sara Reguer

 Prof. Sharon Flatto                                              Dean Donna Wilson          Associate Provost

                                                                                                             Jerry Mirotznik

Prof. Jonathan Helfand        Prof. Itzhak Kerstein       Prof. Sid Leiman           Prof. Itzhak Kerstein

 .

            Mr. and Mrs. Michael Widroff

Prof. Herbert Druks                      Prof. Jonathan Helfand                  Mrs. Margaret Brummell

Mrs. Donna Brigando                 Dr. Ilana Abramovitch          Prof. Robert M. Shapiro

Recently promoted to Full Professor, Dr. Robert Moses Shapiro is completing his seventh year at Brooklyn College, where he teaches courses about East European Jewry, the Holocaust, Yiddish Language and Literature, and the Jewish Diaspora. He has been awarded a sabbatical fellowship for the 2011-12 academic year, to complete several book projects related to his previous publications on the Lodz ghetto and Auschwitz.

The April 28, 2011, the Brooklyn College Interdisciplinary Colloquium on North Africa and the Wider World, attracted a very large audience to hear presentations about North Africa from antiquity to the present. Judaic Studies Chair Prof. Sara Reguer spoke on "The Western Allies Invade North Africa . . . in 1942."

Prof. Vivian Mann of the Jewish Theological Seminary delivered this year's Frances Haidt, '44, Memorial Lecture, on March 24, 2011, at the Tanger Auditorium. The lecture was co-sponsored by the Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities with the Department of Judaic Studies and the Department of English. Prof. Mann's illustrated lecture topic was "Islamic Art: A Project of Muslims, Jews, and Christians."

Prof. Sharon Flatto

Biographies of American Jewish Soldiers Killed in Action in Afghanistan and Iraq

Follow the link 135331 to see photographs and short profiles of American Jewish fighting men and women who were killed in action in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. Some examples:

Sgt. Elijah Tai Wah Wong ‘From IDF to U.S. Army’

Elijah Tai Wah Wong came from a poor family on New York City’s Lower East Side projects. His father was of Chinese descent, but Wong and his siblings were raised with Modern Orthodox Jewish values through their Jewish mother. Wong is remembered by his sister as an outgoing, funny and mischievous child who attended grade school at Yeshiva Rabbi Jacob Konvitz and from there went on to Israel to finish high school on a kibbutz. After graduation, Wong joined the Israel Defense Forces and served in the Golani corps.

Returning from Israel, Wong enlisted in the Air Force, married his wife, Lizeth, and became a father of three children. “Eli didn’t wait for someone to say to do something, he just went ahead and did it. He was always positive and a bit sarcastic at times.… He always saw the good side of everything and always tried to make people laugh,” his wife told the Forward.

Wong is remembered as someone who would always learn jokes just to make people laugh. He was also a talented artist, even though he did not spend a lot of time drawing as an adult. “Eli was the kind of person who tried to save the world one person at a time and truly believed he could…. Eli believed that humanity is good and ultimately good will prevail,” his sister wrote the Forward.

Elijah Tai Wah Wong was killed February 9, 2004, in Iraq, while defusing a bomb. He was 42 years old.

Capt. Michael Y. Tarlavsky ‘Religious Refugee’

Born in Latvia when it was still part of the Soviet Union, Michael Tarlavsky was 5 years old in 1979, when his family immigrated to the United States as religious refugees. He was placed with a sponsor family in the New Orleans Jewish community. The family later moved to Clifton, N.J.

Sociable and friendly, Tarlavsky was popular and athletic in high school and studied sports medicine at Rutgers University. An adventurer, Tarlavsky was a scuba diving master, went skydiving and loved to travel on a whim. “He lived 90 years in his 30,” his sister, Elina Tarlavsky, told the Forward. Always knowing that he was going to be in the military, Tarlavsky joined the ROTC in college.

When he was deployed to Korea’s demilitarized zone, he had a chance to meet Benjamin Netanyahu and give him a tour of the area. Later, because Tarlavsky spoke Russian, he became valuable in Afghanistan and spent a great deal of time meeting tribal leaders and establishing relationships.

After his first tour, Tarlavsky married his fiance, Tricia, an Army captain who shared his love of adventure and the outdoors. He also had a chance to deliver his son, Joseph Michael, and was in Tennessee for the first nine months of his son’s life before he was sent to Iraq. Tarlavsky was killed only a month into his deployment.

The night before he was killed, Elina received an instant message from her brother, wishing her a happy birthday.

“When we would fight as children, my father always told us, ‘When your mother and I are gone, you’ll only have each other,’ and not having that now is probably the hardest thing,” Elina said.

Michael Tarlavsky was killed August 12, 2004, when his unit was attacked in Najaf, Iraq. He was 30 years old.

Follow the link to improve your Yiddish idioms and enjoy: www.yiddishwit.com.

Spring 2011 Yiddish 2 meets Mon.-Wed., 8-9:15 PM, at James Hall.

Register for Spring 2011 Judaic Studies Courses

View the full list of Spring 2011 courses.

Early Photos of Palestine before the First World War, collected by the Palestine Exploration Fund, can be viewed on-line can be viewed on-line.

Visit the World-renowned On-Line Leiman Library

The Leiman Library is a private collection of Judaica located in Kew Gardens Hills, N.Y. Its primary strengths are in Bible, Talmud, Rabbinics, Jewish Thought, and Jewish History. Its over 100,000 items consist of some 30,000 books, plus an even larger collection of pamphlets, scholarly essays, newspapers, newspaper clippings, posters, postcards, photographs, stamps, coins, and related items. The purpose of its on-line website is to make available to the public some of the treasures of the collection. Curator of the Library is Prof. Shnayer Leiman of Brooklyn College's Department of Judaic Studies. To tour the On-line Leiman Library Website, follow the link Leiman Library on-line website.

Making the Secret Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto Accessible at the YIVO Archives

Prof. Robert M. Shapiro and YIVO's Chief Archivist Emeritus Marek Web compiled a new, detailed catalog and finding aid to the Hersh Wasser Collection at the YIVO Archives in the Center for Jewish History at 15 West 16th Street. Most of the Wasser Collection consists of documents smuggled out of postwar Poland by Hersh Wasser, who had been a key member of Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum's clandestine Oyneg Shabes Archive team that buried thousands of documents that were retrieved from the rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1946 and 1950. Probably motivated by fear for the safety of the precious secret ghetto archive, Wasser surreptitiously removed hundreds of pages of documents and sent them by various means to the YIVO Institute in New York City. Professor Shapiro also published The Warsaw Ghetto Oyneg Shabes-Ringelblum Archive: Catalog and Guide, co-edited by Tadeusz Epsztein, with an introduction by Samuel D. Kassow (Indiana University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, 2009).

Prof. Reguer's Lecture at the Library of Congress

on October 25, 2010

Prof. Sara Reguer spoke on "The Cairo Genizah: The World of Jewish Women" at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, on Monday, October 25, 12-1 PM, at the African and Middle Eastern Reading Room in the Thomas Jefferson Building, LJ 220, 101 Independence Avenue, SE. The lecture was open to the public. For more information, contact Dr. Peggy Pearlstein at (202)707-3779 or ppea@loc.gov.

Meet BC Graduate Rabbi Chai Posner

2006 Judaic Studies graduate Rabbi Chai Posner has been appointed Associate Rabbi of Beth Tfiloh, the largest Orthodox congregation in Baltimore, MD. Rabbi Posner served as a rabbinic intern with the Beth David Synagogue in West Hartford, Connecticut and Kingsway Jewish Center in Brooklyn, New York, where he assumed full rabbinic duties, taught adult education classes and ran youth programs. He developed his interest in teaching and working with children through his years at the Flatbush Park Jewish Center Camp, where he served in a variety of capacities, including Division Head, Sports Director and Head of Judaic Studies. This spring, Rabbi Posner will graduate from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, founded by Rabbi Avi Weiss; he holds a B.A. in Judaic Studies from Brooklyn College and attended Yeshivot in Israel. He and his wife, Rachel, are the proud parents of a one and a half year old son, Roni.

September 26, 2010

There is a Yiddish Conversation Table at Princeton, led by a student seeking introduction of formal instruction in Yiddish language, pointing to the examples of Harvard, the Sorbonne, Columbia, U. of Pennsylvania, UCLA, and the U. of Texas. She could also have included Brooklyn College, where Yiddish has been taught for more than half a century. Follow the link for more http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/09/23/26312/

September 21, 2010

NEW VOICES OF THE

YIDDISH STAGE

Folksbiene National Yiddish Theater at Brooklyn College

Motl Didner, Associate Director of the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene, greeting the audience.

An audience of over 600 at Whitman Hall applauded, laughed, cheered, and grew teary as some of today's hottest young talents performed new Yiddish songs and new interpretations of the classics, under the direction of Maestro Zalmen Mlotek. Piano, bass, drums, guitar, clarinet, shepherd's pipe, and accordion accompanied songs in Yiddish, while supertitle translations into English and Russian were projected above the stage.

Beginner Yiddish student Greg Golod discussing Yiddish music with Prof. Sara Reguer, Chair of Judaic Studies.

The appearance by the National Yiddish Theater was made possible with the support of CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein and was co-sponsored by the departments of Judaic Studies, Modern Languages, History, English, Theater, Television and Radio, and by the Honors Academy and the Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities.

Yiddish has been taught at BC for almost 50 years. The current Yiddish instructor is Prof. Robert Moses Shapiro, who will be teaching both Yiddish language and Yiddish Literature in Translation in Spring 2011.

August 13, 2010

May 4, 2010

Judaic Studies Awards Party

Awards recipients with Prof. Sara Reguer, Chair of Judaic Studies, and Prof. William Tramontano, Provost of Brooklyn College.

Prof. Itzhak Kerstein, veteran Hebrew instructor at Brooklyn College.

Prof. Sid Leiman

Prof. Jonathan Helfand,

Director of Israel and Yeshiva Study Programs.

Prof. Sharon Flatto has been awarded a prestigious Wolfe Fellowship for 2010-11, as well as a PSC-CUNY research grant. The Littman Library has published Prof. Flatto's book, The Kabbalistic Culture of Eighteenth-century Prague: Ezekiel Landau And His Contemporaries.

Prof. Robert Moses Shapiro has been awarded a Tow Faculty Travel Fellowship and a PSC-CUNY grant in support of research comparing two major ghettos in Nazi-occupied Poland. Prof. Shapiro's book, The Warsaw Ghetto Oyneg Shabes-ringelblum Archive: Catalog and Guide, was published by Indiana University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. On April 25, 2010, Prof. Shapiro spoke at the Holocaust Memorial Park in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, in conjunction with the dedication of a new granite marker in memory of the Jewish communities in Zaglebie, Poland.

Prof. Susan Zuccotti of Barnard College delivered this year's Frances Haidt, '44, Memorial Lecture presented by the Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities in cooperation with the Department of Judaic Studies and the Department of English. Prof. Zuccotti's topic at her lecture on Tuesday, April 22, 12:30-1:45 PM, at Tanger Auditorium, wase the controversial record of wartime Pope Pius XII.

German historian Thorsten Wagner of Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, spent two days at Brooklyn College on April 13 and 14, 2010, as a guest of the Judaic Studies Department, during which he presented a public lecture, sponsored by the Hillel Foundation, about revelations from his current research on the rescue of Denmark's Jews during the Holocaust. With support from the Core Curriculum Director, our German guest also visited several classes to talk about the rebirth of German Jewry since 1945 and how Germany remembers the Holocaust today.

Department Chair Prof. Sara Reguer was on sabbatical leave during Fall 2009, during which she used a Tow Faculty Travel Grant to research a chapter for her forthcoming book on the Jews of Italy. She spent almost a month on the island Sardinia in search of information about Conversos.

Prof. Robert Moses Shapiro spent two weeks in August 2009 in Lódz, Poland, as a guest lecturer at the University of Lódz Center for Jewish Research. Prof. Shapiro's stay was facilitated by the United States Embassy in Warsaw, with funds from the Fulbright-Hays Program. Prof. Shapiro presented several lectures about the history of Jews in Lódz, both before and during the Second World War, in conjunction with the commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the liquidation of the ghetto in Lódz, that was last and longest existing ghetto created by the Nazi Germans in occupied Poland.

Ephraim Kaye, director of International Teacher Training at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, Israel, spent two days in December 2009 at Brooklyn College as a guest of the Judaic Studies Department. With sponsorship from the Hillel Foundation, Mr. Kaye addressed students on how to deal with Holocaust deniers. Sponsored by the School of Education, Mr. Kaye made a special presentation for teachers on how to use the challenge of Holocaust denial as a teaching opportunity. With support of the Core Curriculum Office, Ephraim Kaye met with Prof. Shapiro's classes to talk about his own experience as an American Jew who chose to immigrate to Israel.

"Memoirs of a 'Jewminicana'" was the title of a presentation made by free-lance author and rebbitsn Aliza Hausman on March 17, 2009, using her own biography to illustrate a discussion of the diverse nature of Jewish identity. The event was co-sponsored by the Core Curriculum, History Department, Women's Studies Program, Honors College, and Phi Beta Kappa. Ms. Hausman is a first-generation Dominican-American Latina and Orthodox Jewish convert  blogging at http://www.alizahausman.net. Read her recent interview in the Jewish Press http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/43073.

New York Times Columnist Addresses the Question of How Well the Press Covers Israel

Clyde Haberman, a renowned newspaperman and CUNY graduate, who spent 13 years as a globetrotting foreign correspondent for The New York Times in locales such as Tokyo, Rome and Jerusalem before taking up his current assignment in 1995 as Metro section columnist for the paper, delivered this year's Frances Haidt, '44, Memorial Lecture presented by the Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities in cooperation with the Department of Judaic Studies and the Department of English.

The subject of Haberman's talk, which was held March 18, 2009, in the Woody Tanger Auditorium at the Brooklyn College Library, was "Covering Israel: Does the Press Get It Right?" His answer was usually, but not always. "Nobody always gets it right," he told his audience of more than 100 persons. "But, yes, mostly over all we get it right."

Haberman described how shortly after arriving in Jerusalem in 1991, he joined several other correspondents in covering an anti-Palestinian demonstration by Orthodox Jews. One of the protestors came up to him and bluntly asked, "Are you a Jew?" Haberman replied that he was and the man quickly rejoined his fellow demonstrators. Then one of Haberman's fellow journalists, a Briton, who also was Jewish, warned him not to tell people he was Jewish. "It will just cause trouble for you," he said.

Haberman, a 1966 graduate of City College of New York who is married and has three children and one grandchild, admitted that covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for four years was one of the most troublesome - even dangerous - assignments for the Times, with the exception of covering the Iraq War. He spoke of aspects of his time in the Middle East that bothered him and others that amused him, then took questions from his mostly elderly audience.

Prior to joining the Times in 1977, Haberman worked at the New York Post, where he covered a wide range of local and national stories, including the bloody Attica prison rebellion in 1971 and Jimmy Carter's 1976 campaign for President.

The Israelis and the Palestinians have many different words to describe the things they are fighting over, he said. But, he added, they both claim to be fighting for the same thing. The Palestinians call it "Salaam," the Israelis call it "Shalom." Both words mean "Peace." (BC Office of Communications, edited.)

Robert Moses Shapiro has been promoted to Associate Professor of Judaic Studies, in which he specializes in the history, culture and literature of East European Jewry, Polish Jews and the Holocaust, as well as Yiddish language and literature.

Prof. Sara Reguer, Chair of the Judaic Studies Department, used a prestigious research fellowship to travel to a series of archives in Italy during January 2008, pursuing her study of the figure of Judith in Italian Jewish liturgical and folklore traditions.

Prof. Sharon Flatto has been promoted to Associate Professor of Judaic Studies and was elected to tenure at Brooklyn College, in recognition of her scholarship, teaching and service to the community. Her study of Rabbi Ezekiel Landau, the prominent 18th century leader of Prague Jewry, is scheduled for publication by the Littman Press in 2008.

On September 20, 2007, the Judaic Studies Department cooperated with the Wolfe Institute for the Humanities and the English Department to sponsor a lecture, "Whose Story? Israeli and American Jewish Autobiography," presented by the distinguished scholar Hana Wirth-Nesher, who compared and contrasted the autobiographical writings of the Israeli Amos Oz and the American Philip Roth. Dr. Wirth-Nesher is professor of English at Tel Aviv University, where she also directs the study of the Jewish experience in the USA, and is director of the Goldreich Institute for Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture.

Prof. Robert M. Shapiro's translation of Isaiah Trunk, Lódz Ghetto: A History (Indiana University Press, 2006), was awarded a Bronze Medal in the ForeWord Magazine competition for Book of the Year in History. Lódz Ghetto: A History was issued in a new paperback edition in February 2008.

On October 28, 2007, Prof. Robert M. Shapiro participated in a symposium, "Jewish Resistance Reconsidered," at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. Dr. Shapiro spoke on "Popular History, Judaism, and Resistance." Other participants in the symposium were Israel Gutman and Yehuda Bauer of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, David Engel of New York University, Judy Baumel-Schwartz of Bar-Ilan University, and museum curator Yitzchak Mais.

The second Frances Haidt '44 Memorial Lecture was held on April 24, 2008, and delivered by Dr. Ruth Westheimer, noted family therapist, researcher, author, documentary filmmaker, and television personality. chair of New York Univeristy's Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. "Dr. Ruth" spent the early years of her career in the Heath and Nutrition Department at Brooklyn College. Her theme for the 2nd Haidt Lecture was "Heavenly Sex: The Jewish Family." She addressed the large audience in her renowned fashion that combines humor with serious observations about fundamental aspects of human relations and family life. She interwove recollections of her own life that began in Frankfurt, Germany, continued with refuge in a Jewish orphanage in Switzerland and immigration to then-Palestine, where she joined the Haganah and participated in the nascent Jewish State of Israel's fight for survival in 1948-49. After recovering from her injuries, "Dr. Ruth" left Israel to pursue education and a career in research, teaching, and writing in the USA.The lecture was co-sponsored by the Wolfe Institute for the Humanities.