On November 2, the Yale Program in Jewish Studies and the Yale Jewish Alumni Association hosted a conference on the theme of “Resilience: Jewish Wisdom Meets the Moment.” Over 120 Yale faculty members, students, and alumni gathered together for a day of learning, reflection, community building, and conversations about how Jews have overcome political adversity, social discrimination, and intellectual challenges over time and space.
Yale’s Program in Jewish Studies and the Yale Jewish Alumni Association host conference on resilience in Jewish tradition
Dozens of attendees came for the day of lectures, panels, and discussions (photo credit: Mara Lavitt)
Eliyahu Stern, Chair of the Program in Jewish Studies, opened the conference by reflecting on what resilience has meant in Jewish history. Stern called on attendees to look at the model of Devorah Romm, who owned the largest Jewish printing press in Europe in the nineteenth century, for a model of intellectual resilience. Stern recalled how Romm had invested heavily in a new edition of the Babylonian Talmud when a series of pogroms swept across Eastern European Jewish communities in 1881. This was no time for study and reflection, communal leaders told Devorah. Yet, she remained steadfast in her belief that study and reflection were essential for Jewish survival and flourishing. Stern recounted how Devorah invested even more heavily in the printing of the ancient work and persevered. In 1886, when the corpus was completed, already over 22,000 copies of the Talmud had been purchased. Stern reminded alumni that “Jewish Studies is the intellectual bridge that allows students with different perspectives to understand and learn from one another, correct misunderstandings, and see what is thrilling, remarkable, confounding, and intellectually compelling about Jewish culture and knowledge.”
Gittel Hilibrand ‘90, Vice Chair of the Yale Jewish Alumni Association, welcomed alumni back to campus (photo credit: Mara Lavitt)
Neil Herbsman ‘85, Chair of the Yale Jewish Alumni Association, offered words of optimism and gratitude for the gathering. Gittel Hilibrand ‘90, Vice Chair of the Yale Jewish Alumni Association, spoke about her own family’s story of resilience and about the power of new beginnings. Professor Steven Wilkinson, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, welcomed alumni back to campus and shared an example of his engagement with Jewish Studies in his own scholarship on minorities and violence in South Asian Studies.
The conference’s first lecture was delivered by David Sorkin, Lucy G. Moses Professor of Modern Jewish History. Titled “Resilience in Modern Jewish Politics,” Sorkin examined three transitions in political practice. In response to Maria Theresa’s expulsion of Jews from Prague in 1744, a network of Court Jews replaced ineffective community intercessors. In 1878, at the Congress of Berlin, emancipationists successfully lobbied the Great Powers to gain guarantees of equality for Jews in the new states emerging in the Balkans, e.g., Romania. In 1919, emancipationists, Zionists, and other nationalists (autonomists) worked together, albeit not always harmoniously, to gain guarantees of national minority cultural rights in the new successor states in Eastern Europe, e.g., Poland. These transitions demonstrated different forms of resilience and creativity in the face of new political challenges.
David Sorkin, Lucy G. Moses Professor of Modern Jewish History, delivered a lecture about resilience in modern Jewish politics (photo credit: Mara Lavitt)
The second lecture, “The Dreyfus Affair and Jewish Identity,” given by Maurice Samuels, Betty Jane Anlyan Professor of French and the Chair of the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism, reflected on the lessons that Jewish communities throughout the world drew from the Affair. Samuels showed how as a result of the Dreyfus case, turn-of-the-century Jews of various political persuasions – Zionists, Integrationists, and Socialists – made the struggle against antisemitism central to their definition of what it meant to be a modern Jew. Samuels recently published Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair, in Yale University Press’ Jewish Lives series.
One of the day’s highlights included a panel featuring student research. Joshua Danziger ‘28 gave a talk - based on research he conducted in conjunction with a first-year Jewish Studies seminar he took last year - about England’s “Jew Bill” of 1753. He drew upon material held in Yale’s Lewis Walpole Library as well as research he conducted at the British Library over the summer. Anya Geist ‘28 discussed the history and evolution of the Workmen’s Circle in twentieth-century America, based on archival materials she found at Sterling Memorial Library at Yale and at YIVO in New York City for a paper she wrote for a modern Jewish history course she took with Sorkin last year.
The panel also included two graduate students. Shira Eliassian, a doctoral candidate in the Religious Studies Department, discussed her dissertation research on attitudes towards death in the Babylonian Talmud, and the ways in which rabbinic conceptions of death, post-mortem sentience, and resurrection engaged with various religious communities, including Syriac Christians, Zoroastrians, and Manicheans, among whom the ancient rabbis lived. She also reflected on her work on conceptions of motherhood, (in)fertility, and childbearing in late ancient Judaism, including in the Babylonian incantation bowls. Joshua Leifer, who is pursuing his doctorate in the History Department and recently published the award-winning book Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life, discussed the role of antisemitism and the Holocaust in liberalism and antiliberalism. The student panel was moderated by Paul Franks, Robert F. and Patricia Weis Professor of Philosophy and Judaic Studies and Chair of the Philosophy Department. The student talks highlighted the breadth of Yale’s Program in Jewish Studies and the excellence of emerging scholarship in the field.
Joshua Danziger, Joshua Leifer, Shira Eliassian, and Anya Geist shared their research with alumni (photo credit: Mara Lavitt)
An afternoon panel addressed teaching and research about Judaism and Israel at the university. Moderated by Edieal Pinker, a member of the Jewish Studies Executive Committee and a Professor in the School of Management, the panel included Peter Cole, a poet and Professor in the Practice in both Jewish Studies and Comparative Literature; Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Religious Studies and Jewish Studies; Shiri Goren, Director of the Hebrew Program and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations; and Jacqueline Vayntrub, Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at the Yale Divinity School. The discussion addressed wide-ranging topics and questions from alumni, including about the state of university education, student wellbeing, teaching, research, antisemitism, and academic freedom.
Alumni also heard from Konstanze Kunst, the Joseph and Ceil Mazer Librarian for Jewish Studies, and Sarit Kattan Gribetz about recent pop-up exhibitions hosted by the Program in Jewish Studies, in collaboration with units across campus, that have included dozens of students, postdoctoral associates, librarians, curators, faculty, staff and community members. “These exhibitions offer opportunities to create a community of learning around books and to share the beauty, diversity, and depth of Jewish culture, ritual, and history with members of the university,” Gribetz explained. “This is the vision that lies at the heart of Yale’s Program in Jewish Studies: joyful and inspiring wonder, welcoming and inclusive, serious and scholarly.”
Alumni received a collection of postcards featuring treasures from the Yale Judaica Collection, which comprises around 300,000 items in over 100 languages and is considered one of the finest and oldest in the country. The set of postcards, designed by Kunst, highlight the linguistic, geographic, cultural, and ritual diversity of Jews and Judaism, and represent items, including Haggadot, Mahzorim, Megillot, and other genres created all over the world - in Amsterdam, Berlin, Bohemia, Corfu, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Livorno, New York, North Africa, Persia, and Venice. All of the items on the postcards are those that were featured in previous pop-up exhibitions or that will be displayed in future exhibitions.
The Yale Klezmer Band performed during cocktail hour (photo credit: Sarit Kattan Gribetz)
The evening concluded with a conversation between Joshua Cohen, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning The Netanyahus and a visiting scholar at the Program in Jewish Studies, and Ruth Franklin, an award-winning author whose most recent book, The Many Lives of Anne Frank, was published this year by Yale University Press. Sam Moyn, Kent Professor of Law and History, facilitated the conversation, asking each author to reflect on the current state of Jewish publishing and reflecting on challenges and opportunities for Jewish authors in a fraught contemporary moment. The Yale Klezmer Band performed as well.
Stern noted that “every presentation contained the sophistication, seriousness, and accessibility that defines our intellectual community.” In a note of appreciation sent after the event, one alumni remarked that it was “an incredible experience” to interact with current Jewish Studies faculty members as peers, to learn from current students, and to spend the day together.