Haverim Fall 2022

Haverim Haverim Haverim

A Newsletter for the Friends of the Northeastern University Jewish Studies Program

LORI LEFKOVITZ

COLORS, CULTURES AND FLAVORS OF THE JEWS

Dear Haverim (Friends),

The Colors, Cultures, and Flavors of the Jews: The Jews are an ancient, global, and peripatetic people, and Jewish Studies — a distinctly interdisciplinary enterprise — is challenged to represent, somehow, the great varieties of Jewish cultural expressions; the multiplicity and diversity of Jews; the complexity of Jewish histories; the fullness of Jewish textual and lived traditions. That said, this richness and variety is

balanced by remarkably shared dimensions of being Jewish: lifecycle ceremonies; holy days and holy books; resurgent antisemitism; and the centrality of Zion in the Jewish imagination over millennia. Jews — who come in every color in the human rainbow and speak a Babel of tongues—have also been a self-described “tribe,” and over the course of history, thought of as a “race” unto themselves.

The example of the Jews reminds us that although the consequences of racial identity in America cannot be overstated, race is a fraught and fluid category. Responsive to Northeastern University’s commitment to support diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, last academic year we inaugurated a continuing series of events, with the support of the Ruderman Family Foundation, under the banner, “The Colors, Cultures, and Flavors of the Jews.” As you will read in these pages, we hosted Professor Eric Goldstein (Emory University) who spoke in conversation with Professor Kabria Baumgartner. Goldstein’s pathbreaking 2008 book, The Price of Whiteness, about when and how American Jews transitioned into white privilege, put American Jewish white identity into historical and theoretical contexts. We also hosted Rabbi Mira Rivera, the first Filipina rabbi, who spoke on a panel about varieties of Asian-American identities.

By different estimates, today 10-25% of US Jews are nonwhite. On October 20, we will welcome Ruderman lecturer, Professor Laura Arnold Leibman (Reed College), who will speak about multi-racial

1) Jewish identity in early America, a breathtaking story that embraces Jews who were both enslaved and slaveholders. Please join us.

Our colleagues at Northeastern have long been students of Jewish diversity. Professor Jim Ross, who recently retired, published Fragile Branches in 2000 about his “travels throughout the Jewish Diaspora,” describing remote Jewish communities around the globe; Professor Bill Miles has a longstanding interest in African Jewish communities, and this year hosted conversations about shared Jewish and Muslim communities, with a special event that featured Jewish music from the Muslim world. We look forward to hearing Professor Jonathan Kaufman speak about his recent book, The Last Kings of Shanghai, which describes the epic histories of two Baghdadi Jewish families (the Kadooris and Sassoons) and their roles in the development of Hong Kong and Shanghai.

I want to take this opportunity to congratulate Professor Jim Ross, who chaired the Jewish Studies program when I was hired, on his many accomplishments and wish him well in his retirement.

Professor Jeffrey Veidlinger’s brilliant lecture about antisemitism “in the midst of civilized Europe” looked at precursors to the Holocaust and complemented a talk by Professor Jan Grabowski about how new laws in contemporary Poland are distorting Holocaust research today and interfering with the work of historians, including his own. Warm congratulations to our new Holocaust Legacy Foundation Gideon Klein scholar, Ethan Rogers, who is working to model and uncover the secrets of the recently discovered synagogue in the Terezin concentration camp. Thank you to The Holocaust Legacy Foundation, Todd Ruderman, and Jody Kipnis for supporting this student scholarship fund.

Our commitment to learning about Jewish diversity extends to reviewing our syllabi and curriculum and incorporating more of the wealth of new research on Jewish diversity.

I want to give special thanks to Professor Simon Rabinovitch, with whom I led the Dialogue of Civilizations to Israel this summer, for his partnership and wish him Mazal Tov on the singular honor of being appointed Stotsky Professor of Jewish and Historical Studies.

Professor Rabinovitch chairs our Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee, and as you will also read here, our program last year included several conversations about how the history of antisemitism speaks to our own times. Menachem Kaiser — whose book Plunder recounts his efforts to recover family property in Poland — was in conversation with University Distinguished Professor of Law Margaret Burnham about the subject of reparations.

At the Passover Seder, an annual biblicallymandated ritual observed by Jews across time and place that recalls the foundation story of the Jewish people, the liberation from slavery, charoset is a ritual food designed to recall the mortar that the enslaved Hebrews used to build pyramids. But tasting of this delicacy — whether it is composed of apples or dates, walnuts or pistachios, or flavored with cinnamon or coriander — may tell us something about the heritage of the Jews around the table. Henry Higgins in Shaw’s Pygmalion could identify a person’s origin within a block from her accent; some Jews can tell you from which part of Poland a family descends depending on whether or not the noodle kugel (pudding) is sweet or savory and whether the vowel is pronounced as a short “u” or a long “ee” (kugel or keegel). And then, following the ethnic logic of geography, one may go on to infer whether these ancestors were solemn Talmud scholars or exuberant tradesmen.

Please participate with us as we deepen our understanding of the colors, cultures, and flavors of the Jews. We are grateful for your engagement with the Jewish Studies program at Northeastern University. A final word of thanks to our administrator, Deborah Levisohn Stanhill, for everything she does for our busy program and faculty.

With wishes for a sweet, productive, and peaceful New Year.

Lori Lefkovitz Ruderman Professor of Jewish Studies

LORI LEFKOVITZ, RABBI MIRA RIVERA, TED LANDSMARK, LILY SONG, PHIL THAI, MATT LEE

ANNUAL MORTON E. RUDERMAN MEMORIAL LECTURE

Jewish Studies is participating energetically in Northeastern University’s commitment to address issues of diversity, equity, justice, and inclusion in all aspects of our educational and experiential learning program. With gratitude, as ever, to the Ruderman Family Foundation for their support, our annual Morton E. Ruderman Memorial Lecture this year took the shape of a series that we called “The Colors, Cultures, and Flavors of the Jews.”

Working closely with Professors Jonathan Kaufman (School of Journalism) and Ted Landsmark (School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs), Jewish Studies designed two lectures as part of the Fall 2021 Myra Kraft Open Classroom “Repairing a Divided America” (see page 4).

On October 6, Professor Kabria Baumgartner of Northeastern conducted a conversation with Professor Eric Goldstein of Emory University on the topic of his book, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity. Professor Goldstein discussed the ways in which immigrant Jews in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries negotiated the process of redefining themselves according to American racial and social constructs, and how, post-World War II, Jews entered the mainstream white establishment with attendant social, class, educational, and economic implications. It was as late as this period of history that Jews in America came to be seen as “white,” a label that both affords privilege and entails losses and compromises for some Jews, whether because they want to maintain a sense of distinctiveness as Jews, identify with minority experiences, are of non-European background, or experience antisemitism by white racists.

[WATCH THE RECORDING]

On October 20, Rabbi Mira Rivera joined Professors Phil Thai, Matt Lee, and Lily Song of Northeastern University to discuss “Asian Americans in a MultiRacial and Multi-Religious Democracy.” While Professors Thai, Lee, and Song discussed the different backgrounds of Asian Americans and the history of prejudice and discrimination, Rabbi Rivera shared personal stories of being not only Asian American but also Jewish, and the kinds of reactions she has experienced both within and outside the Jewish community to her being not only Jewish, but a rabbi. Rabbi Rivera’s personal story is moving and inspiring.

[WATCH THE RECORDING]

In a hybrid format, in person and livestreamed, with a recording available online, these two lectures reached a combined audience of well over 500 people.

The Series resumes this fall, beginning with Laura Arnold Leibman speaking on October 20 about mixed raced Jews in early America, some of whom had been enslaved and some of whom became slave holders. Exploring the diversity of the Jewish people and the complexity of the Jewish experience reshapes Jewish communal self-understanding and will have an impact on Jewish Studies curricula at Northeastern and more widely.

SHARON RUDERMAN SHAPIRO, LORI LEFKOVITZ, KABRIA BAUMGARTNER, ERIC GOLDSTEIN, JAY RUDERMAN

RABBI MIRA RIVERA, PHIL THAI, MATT LEE, LILY SONG

JEWISH STUDIES CONTRIBUTES TO THE FALL 2021 OPEN CLASSROOM

The Myra Kraft Open Classroom is a semester-long course run by the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, combining an intensive weekly classroom seminar, followed by a lecture with guest experts, open to the public. In the Fall of 2021, the topic was “Repairing a Divided America: Race, Hate Crimes, and Reconciliation.” Professor Lori Lefkovitz, Director of the Jewish Studies Program, worked closely and intensively with Professors Jonathan Kaufman and Ted Landsmark to craft the multiple open classroom sessions particularly relating to antisemitism, racial dialogues, and addressing social justice. The Morton E. Ruderman Memorial Lecture Series sponsored two classes (see page 3), while the Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee sponsored the penultimate class devoted to a discussion of reparations, and what might be learned from the Jewish experience (see page 6). In addition, Professor Lefkovitz and Professor Simon Rabinovitch, Stotsky

Associate Professor in Jewish Historical and Cultural Studies, were guest lecturers in the classroom seminars.

[MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE FALL 2021 MYRA KRAFT OPEN CLASSROOM AND LINKS TO THE RECORDINGS MAY BE FOUND HERE.]

DIALOGUE OF CIVILIZATIONS

With COVID restrictions on travel lifted, in May and June 2022 Professors Lori Lefkovitz and Simon Rabinovitch led a long-awaited Dialogue of Civilizations to Israel. Entitled “Representing Israel in Law and Literature,” the course provided students with opportunities to read Israeli and Palestinian literature, learn about desert ecology, and engage with representatives of various religious communities in Israel. Along the way they visited some of the country’s most ancient and most modern sites, while based in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, with a stop at the Arava Institute in the desert. They had an opportunity to learn about Jewish attitudes toward religion and state from retired Supreme Court Justice Yitzhak Englard, to talk with an Israeli poet, to meet judges from the Muslim and Druze religious courts, and to hear from an Arab former member of the Knesset (Israeli parliament) about advocating for equal rights.

Students received credit for two Northeastern courses while on the Dialogue. They could also choose to fulfill their final requirement for Professor Rabinovitch’s course with a digital humanities project. Those projects, along with a daily diary of the trip, and extensive photographs, can be found at northeasterninisrael.blog.

CLASS ON THE BEACH WITH DR. MOSHE SHASHAR

TED LANDSMARK, RABBI MIRA RIVERA, AND PHIL THAI

AT THE ARAVA INSTITUTE, LORI LEFKOVITZ’S DIALOGUE STUDENTS JOINED THEIR FELLOW NORTHEASTERN STUDENTS STUDYING THERE ON A DIALOGUE LED BY BECKY ROSENGAUS

“Together, we have trekked to Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Masada, Nazareth, the Dead Sea, to Kibbutz Keturah and finally, we are returning home stronger, wiser, and more likely to tell people we studied abroad in Israel without being asked.”

“Getting to hear from people talking about the development of the law in Israel’s brief history has been very eye-opening, as I had never really thought about or experienced a society that is still figuring out so much of its law…”

“As a Christian, today was an incredibly important day. I got to visit sites that I had learned about in Church all my life, and see it for myself.”

JUDGE EHSAN HALABI, FAR RIGHT, IN THE DRUZE COURT, AKKO

CATHOLIC CHURCH, NAZARETH

-JARED HAIME

“I find it interesting the different ways each community runs its court system in Israel.”

-YARENDY LOPEZ

-CHIARA JURCZAK

-FRANK MASTROIANNI

Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee

BY SIMON RABINOVITCH

In the fall of 2021, the Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee co-sponsored, as part of the Myra Kraft Open Classroom, a program on “Plunder, Reparations, and Historical Justice,” which featured Menachem Kaiser, author of the book Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure, in conversation with University Distinguished Professor of Law Margaret Burnham, the Director of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project. Mr. Kaiser explained the motivations behind his efforts to seek restitution of property owned by his family in Poland before the Holocaust and had a lively discussion with Professor Burnham about philosophical questions relating to the purpose of restitution and how or whether restorative justice is something that can be achieved.

The Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee has long relied on the generosity of the Giessen and Morton families in sponsoring what is the keynote lecture of our annual Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week, the Robert Salomon Morton Lecture, which showcases a prominent scholar or public figure working in the fields of antisemitism research, Holocaust history, or genocide prevention. This year we expanded the Morton program into a lecture series, featuring the work of three prominent historians doing important work on antisemitism and historical memory.

The first lecture was by Jeffrey Veidlinger, Joseph Brodsky Collegiate Professor of History and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, who talked about his new book, In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust. Professor Veidlinger gave his lecture on February 28, just four days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and was able to explain not only how anti-Jewish violence during Ukraine and Russia’s civil war operated as a precursor to the Holocaust, but also led a broader discussion of how much Ukraine has changed in the decades since the end of the Soviet Union.

The second Morton Lecture for 2022 was by Charles Gallagher, Professor of History at Boston College, who spoke about his new book, Nazis of Copley Square: The Forgotten History of the Christian Front, 1939-1945. Professor Gallagher told the story of how Catholic theology fueled both antisemitic violence and a Nazi spy ring in Boston during the years of World War II and the Holocaust, and he did so from the perspective of both a historian and a Catholic priest (see page 9).

Our final Morton Lecture, held during Holocaust and Genocide Awareness week, featured Jan Grabowski, Professor of History at the University of Ottawa and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Professor Grabowski spoke about the dangers of a new form of Holocaust distortion spreading through Eastern Europe, where countries admit the Holocaust happened, but deny and repress evidence of complicity in the event. Professor Grabowski discussed his own first-hand experience of facing legal action in Poland for his research and publishing (see page 11).

MENACHEM KAISER AND MARGARET BURNHAM

SIMON RABINOVITCH, LORI LEFKOVITZ, MENACHEM KAISER, MARGARET BURNHAM, UTA POIGER, TED LANDSMARK, JONATHAN KAUFMAN

Each of these fascinating Morton Lectures dealt with an aspect of how the Holocaust is remembered, not remembered, or distorted to meet specific political or national ends; the corrective work these scholars shared left our community enriched and better informed about the challenges of sustaining an accurate history of the events of the Holocaust.

The programming of Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week in 2022 similarly highlighted questions of memory and justice. One of the highlights of each Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week is the exposition of student work through a presentation by the Gideon Klein Scholar, a student selected to receive a scholarship supporting their work on music and the arts and the Holocaust. Zachary Richmond,

a graduating senior in the Music Industry Program in the College of Arts, Media, and Design, gave a gripping presentation and performance called “Syncopating Freedom: The Third Reich’s Use of Jazz as Propaganda,” in which he walked the audience through instances when the Nazis appropriated and distorted the work of jazz musicians for their own propaganda. His presentation featured the performance of the original works live with his own band. The Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee is thrilled to announce that the continuation of the Gideon Klein Scholarship has been secured by a new and generous endowment established through a gift of the Holocaust Legacy Foundation, founded by Todd Ruderman and Jody Kipnis.

RICHMOND’S PRESENTATION FEATURED THE PERFORMANCE OF THE ORIGINAL WORKS LIVE WITH HIS OWN BAND.

(continued on page

Student and Faculty Visit to the Armenian Heritage Park

Wednesday April 6 2022

10:30 a.m. ET

Armenian Heritage Park Rose Kennedy Greenway, Boston

Join

APRIL 5, 2022

The link to the

Park

Agnes Kaposi delivered the 2022 Philip N. Backstrom Jr. Survivor Lecture virtually from London. Dr. Kaposi spoke about her childhood in Hungary, how she survived the Holocaust there, her reasons for immigrating to the United Kingdom from communist Hungary, and the problems with Holocaust memory in Hungary today. Dr. Kaposi is very prominent in the UK, both as an engineer and a Holocaust educator; she was only the third woman elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and in 2021 Queen Elizabeth II awarded her the honor of Member of the British Empire for her work in Holocaust education.

In a first for Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week, we also featured a “Third Generation Student Presentation,” as Northeastern student Randall Evers spoke about his late grandfather George, and we listened to a recording of George Evers telling his story of survival in and after Auschwitz.

Finally, Northeastern’s Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee has worked to expand its mission to commemorate and understand all forms of genocide. Students and faculty were led on a guided visit to the Armenian Heritage Park, a memorial to

the Armenian Genocide on the Greenway, and were introduced to the park and memorial by its architects, Barbara and Don Tellalian. Students and faculty also learned in a lunch seminar from Nicole Fox, the author of After Genocide: Memory and Reconciliation in Rwanda, about her experiences on the ground in Rwanda as a scholar documenting ordinary Rwandans’ efforts to memorialize genocide.

The importance of the Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee’s work seems only more urgent each year, as members of the generation who experienced or bore witness to the Holocaust leave us, and humans continue to demonstrate their capacity for hate and violence. As committee chair, I continue to feel particular pride in our students’ engagement in Holocaust education and their energy and commitment to study, learning, and memorialization. With all the difficulties our world faces, we can take a measure of solace from the seriousness, compassion, and intellect of the next generation.

Simon Rabinovitch is Stotsky Professor of Jewish Historical and Cultural Studies

Video recordings of all of these events may be found on the Humanities Center website, and will be permanently

at the Northeastern Library’s Holocaust Awareness Archive.

FEATURING DR. AGNES KAPOSI, MBE, RFEng

REGISTRATION

PHILIP N. BACKSTROM JR. SURVIVOR LECTURE

Register Here!

ROBERT SALOMON MORTON LECTURE SERIES:

CHARLES GALLAGHER

BY LAUREL LEFF

Before the Proud Boys, there was the Christian Front. In January 1940, the U.S. government charged 17 members of the antisemitic and anticommunist Catholic organization with seditious conspiracy – the same charge, seeking to overthrow the U.S. government, currently facing the Proud Boys. Five months later, in June 1940, a jury acquitted all 17 men and seemingly relegated the Christian Front to a footnote in history.

But Charles R. Gallagher, an associate professor of history at Boston College and Jesuit priest, suspected there was more to the story. An expert on Catholics in mid-twentieth century America, Professor Gallagher spent 10 years researching in archives and having documents declassified. The result: his 2021 book, Nazis of Copley Square: The Forgotten Story of the Christian Front, that demonstrates the Christian Front was more important then, and now, than historians have claimed. On March 21, Professor Gallagher delivered a compelling lecture on the Christian Front to the Northeastern community as part of the Robert Salomon Morton Lecture Series.

Gallagher demonstrated that the Christian Front’s alignment with Nazism, and even real-life Nazis, was deeper, scarier and more rooted in theology than previously thought. The Christian Front plotted sedition, engaged in espionage, and provoked attacks. It counted on the Boston police to look the other way and the FBI to fumble investigations. Gallagher also presented lessons for the present. He showed how people who seem to be in the mainstream – respected Catholic lay leaders, influential priests – can be radicalized and, through grievance, competition, and unholy religious ideals, can be radicalized to antisemitism in particular. Gallagher relied upon compelling photographs to illustrate his themes, including one of the German Consulate in Boston flying a swastika flag two blocks from the State House, and another of five Christian Fronters showing off their semi-automatic rifles.

Father Charles Coughlin, a Detroit priest with a radio program that drew 30 million listeners each week, started the Christian Front in 1938. Coughlin had become “a full-blown antisemite” by then, Gallagher said. Coughlin wanted an organization

to engage in what he saw as a worldwide conflict between Christianity on one side, and JudeoBolshevism on the other.

Coughlin subscribed to the idea that Jews were behind the Russian Revolution and they continued to push communist ideology across the globe.

Coughlin selected two lay leaders as his “foot soldiers,” Gallagher said: John Cassidy in New York City and Francis P. Moran in Boston, both of whom were “wildly anticommunist” and “extremely well versed in Christian theology.” The Christian Front’s New York chapter got off to a faster start, with

CHARLES GALLAGHER, S.J.

more adherents and some support from the local Catholic hierarchy. But then the FBI raided the group’s offices in early 1940, seizing guns, bombs, and bombmaking material. The U.S. government filed charges against the New York leaders of the Christian Front, including Cassidy.

Gallagher said that the weapons the government found indicated that the group’s plot to overthrow the government was more serious than many historians have claimed. “For 85 years historians thought these folks were clownish and this was just a comedic caper,” Gallagher said.

But the guns they possessed, M1903 Springfield rifles, were “a weapon of war, a really dangerous rifle.”

CHARLES GALLAGHER (CONTINUED

The government made a serious tactical era in prosecuting the men however, Gallagher found. The government assumed the Christian Fronters stole the rifles from National Guard armories; they couldn’t possibly obtain them in any other way. The government was wrong. A codicil to the U.S. Army code allowed NRA members to buy the rifles and have them shipped to their homes – which is what the Christian Fronters did.

Another problem the prosecution faced was proving seditious conspiracy to overthrow the government in Washington, D.C., when the weapons and training were in Brooklyn. (A problem the prosecution of the Proud Boys doesn’t face, Gallagher added wryly, because its members stormed the Capitol.) “The trial fizzled because of these issues,” Gallagher said.

AS AN UNDERGROUND MOVEMENT, THE CHRISTIAN FRONT PROVOKED CATHOLIC ON JEWISH GANG WARFARE IN BOSTON IN FALL 1943.

With the New York chapter shut down by the FBI, Boston became the center of Christian Front action. Moran, who had studied to be a priest and spoke fluent German, organized in Dorchester, Roxbury, South Boston, and Mattapan. After the New York trial and acquittal, membership in Boston spiked to 30,000 members. The Christian Front began opening chapters throughout New England.

Moran tried to get the Boston archdiocese to recognize the Christian Front as an official diocesan group, but Cardinal O’Connell wouldn’t go along, Gallagher said. Another source of funds presented itself. Herbert W. Scholz was the German consul in Boston, which served as diplomatic cover for his espionage activity. Scholz also was a member of the SS and “a pure ideologically driven Nazi,” Gallagher said. He identified Moran as a “target” to enlist in espionage.

Moran jumped and Scholz reciprocated, paying for a suite of offices for the Christian Front at the Copley Square Hotel, across from the Hynes Center.

Scholz was “very charming, very handsome, very debonair,” Gallagher said. “You can see how a working-class Irish kid from South Boston comes under the aegis of someone like this and becomes his agent. He does his bidding.”

The bidding included lobbying to convince the U.S. military to adopt the Johnson rifle as its semiautomatic weapon of choice. Germany had acquired tens of thousands of Johnson rifles when it took over the Netherlands. It hoped for additional guns and parts from stepped up U.S. manufacture. Under the German government’s direction, the Christian Front organized a drive that delivered thousands of letters pushing the U.S. government to adopt the rifle. “Ostensibly, the Christian Front is a neighborhood religious group,” Gallagher said, but the government never wondered why it was lobbying for the military to adopt a certain rifle. “Federal agencies never figured out that it was a spy and agent,” he added. The U.S. government ultimately stuck with the rifle it already had in use. British Intelligence also became involved with the Christian Front -- through an operation to suppress it. A British intelligence agent helped form another Boston neighborhood group to counter the Christian Front, the Irish-American Defense Association. The defense association convinced the Boston Police to clamp down on the Christian Front. Gallagher described the police action as ineffective in curtailing the group, instead pushing the Christian Front into more dangerous, underground activities. As an underground movement, the Christian Front provoked “Catholic on Jewish gang warfare in Boston in Fall 1943,” Gallagher explained. “This violence against Boston Jews is not a spontaneous upswell from the streets but the blowback from a very successfully run British intelligence operation.”

Gallagher also explained why it took so long to recognize this intrigue and violence as an important missing chapter in the history of the American right. “There are a lot of spies in this story, and spies cover their tracks,” he said. It took “a lot of digging and sniffing and hunches” to uncover the information. “Most of the documents used to write the book were previously classified,” Gallagher added. Besides, “the government did not have an interest in publicizing the case after 1945 and neither did the Catholic Church,” he said.

Many of the historians who studied this period didn’t consider the Christian Front important enough to do all that digging, Gallagher explained. They tended to be “political historians who missed the theological impulses that prompted political actions

on

THE 29TH ANNUAL ROBERT SALOMON MORTON LECTURE:

PROFESSOR JAN GRABOWSKI

BY JESSIE SIGLER

This year’s Morton lecturer was someone you may have seen in the news. Jan Grabowski, Professor of History at the University of Ottawa, was sued for defamation in a Polish court after co-editing a book concerning the complicity of non-Jewish Poles in the Holocaust. The court ruled against Professor Grabowski, along with his co-editor Barbara Engelking, but the verdict was later overturned by an appeals court last August.

The book in question is Night Without End, a twovolume history about the fate of Jews in Germanoccupied Poland during the Second World War. The book includes a brief passage quoting a Holocaust survivor who accused an elder in the village of Malinowo of collaborating with the Nazis. The case, brought by that village elder’s niece, was financed by a group called the Polish League Against Defamation. Grabowski and Engelking were ordered to apologize, but in the appeal a judge stated that the lawsuit was “an unacceptable violation of the freedom of scientific research and the freedom of expression.”

The wider context is the rule of Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice party, who for years has been trying

(continued on page 12)

CHARLES GALLAGHER (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10)

on the part of the members of this group.” Previous historians assumed that if it didn’t involve electoral politics, it didn’t matter, he said.

Plus, they weren’t oriented toward religious explanations. “Most historians of this period were trained in the Marxist critique,” Gallagher said, “and one of the gaps I saw was Marxists had a blind spot toward religion.” They weren’t going to focus on religion as a possible motivator for political action.

Finally, academics weren’t oriented toward studying the political right. “Before Trump if you tried to do a serious academic study of right-wingers, people were suspicious of you,” Gallagher said. “They were saying: are you trying to glorify the right and do we really want to give academic credibility to the right?” Gallagher went ahead anyway. “I just found it fascinating from a religious perspective,” he said.

Trump’s presidency and his continuing political impact have made such studies more acceptable, he said. A change in the Catholic Church also has made it easier for Gallagher. Asked by an audience member whether it was hard for Gallagher, as a priest, to criticize the Church, Gallagher said his previous writings had drawn criticism from some Catholics. When the current pope opened more of the Holocaustera Vatican archives, however, Pope Francis “said Catholics should not be afraid of their history,” according to Gallagher. “I always thought that but now to have a pope say that was really consoling, especially as this book was going to press.”

[WATCH THE RECORDING]

Laurel Leff is Professor of Journalism at Northeastern University, and Core Faculty in Jewish Studies

GRABOWSKI SHARED ALARMING EXAMPLES OF STATE-SPONSORED HOLOCAUST DISTORTION BEYOND HIS PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.

JAN GRABOWSKI (CONTINUED FROM

to sanitize history by promoting Polish heroism, and erasing Polish complicity, in the Holocaust. In 2018, an “anti-defamation” law was passed in Poland penalizing public speech that attributes responsibility for the Holocaust to Poland or the Polish nation.

At the 2022 Robert Salomon Morton Lecture, entitled “From Holocaust Denial to Holocaust Distortion: The State-Sponsored Attack on the Memory of the Holocaust in Poland,” Professor Grabowski provided chilling context to the backlash against his work, and gave an illustrative account of how the freedoms of Polish historians are being curtailed.

He spoke about the insidiousness of Holocaust distortion—which, in his words, is a “state- financed and state approved methodology of distorting our understanding of history, or denying the history itself.” Grabowski shared alarming examples of statesponsored Holocaust distortion beyond his personal experience, including government commemoration (in the form of a plaque at the Treblinka railway station) of a Pole who allegedly brought water to Jews in transport trains awaiting extermination. There is no credible historical proof of this action, but those who have read Jan Gross’s Golden Harvest will have heard accounts by survivors of extortion (not charity) at the Treblinka station, where Poles sold water at the price of any money or valuables a Jewish victim had left.

With this type of government commemoration, the focus is shifted away from Jewish victimhood and onto Polish national pride. Grabowski explained that this distortion can be enticing to those who wish to put a “positive spin” on history, but in reality, no one is redeemed by stories from Treblinka.

In his lecture, Grabowski also brought forth examples of how Polish state institutions, such as the Institute of National Remembrance, employ hundreds of professional historians and are geared towards Holocaust distortion in service of the state. A former director of the second-largest branch of the Institute of National Remembrance, Tomasz Greniuch, resigned in 2021 after it came to light that he previously demonstrated with a far right group and was photographed giving the Hitler salute.

When Grabowski touched on his own court case during the lecture, he highlighted how concerning to academic freedom the original ruling was. He explained that the verdict, “recognized that, indeed,

national pride and national dignity are personal goods which can be defended in a court,” and that if someone feels their national pride has been offended by a historian, they can go to court. He also shared that the verdict asserted historians “have no right to judge importance, have no right to create differences of value between different historical sources.” Had this decision not been overturned, its consequences would have been disastrous and far reaching. Despite being overturned, the original decision still created a chilling atmosphere, and showcases disturbing forces in Polish society that are not going away.

Polling from 1992 through 2021 shows that more and more Poles believe that Poles and Jews suffered equally (or that Poles suffered more) during the Holocaust.

I first heard Professor Grabowski speak on a Northeastern Dialogue trip to Poland, led by Professor Jeff Burds, back in 2018. Professor Grabowski gave a timely and engaging guest lecture on Polish Jews in hiding during the Holocaust and touched on the dangerousness of the anti-defamation law, which had been passed merely weeks prior. This year’s Morton lecture was a fascinating bookend, a chance to hear from Professor Grabowski again, this time on the other end of his wearying odyssey of censorship (this one, at least). I highly recommend giving his lecture a listen.

Jessie Sigler is an alumna of the Northeastern Jewish Studies Program and a past member of the Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee

[WATCH THE RECORDING]

JAN GRABOWSKI AND SIMON RABINOVITCH

STUDENT CAPSTONE PROJECT

Jewish Studies minors work on a capstone project in their last semester that combines their major area of study with a topic in Jewish Studies. Here, Morgan Knight ’22 writes about her capstone project on the subject of Operation Paperclip.

BY MORGAN KNIGHT

The facts of the Operation Paperclip and the relocation of Nazi scientists are readily available, but not widely known. Operation Paperclip was a United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 high-profile Nazi scientists, doctors, and engineers (and their families) were brought to the United States for government employment. The program ran from 1945 to 1959, and its stated goal was to harness Germany’s intellectual power and technology.

I learned about Operation Paperclip from a TV show. My roommates and I clicked on an Amazon Original about fictional Nazi hunters, starring our childhood crush, and passively took in a story I could vaguely resonate with; the main character’s grandparents were Holocaust survivors who sought vengeance after being liberated from the camps. (My Zaide [grandpa] was a partisan fighter, and I always thought his story would make a great script.) I’ve known about the events of the Holocaust in great detail for my entire life. Between my Hebrew-school upbringing and personal interest in studying genocide, I had compiled a trove of knowledge about the events leading up to and carried out during the 1940s. As we’re watching this show, I answered all my friends’ questions: “What does ‘kvetch’ mean?” “Where was Auschwitz located?” “Is Logan Lerman really Jewish?” But when a conversation about Operation Paperclip happened on screen, my non-Jewish roommates looked at me, blinking. “Um… is that real?” A quick Google search later, I became obsessed with compiling information about American weaponized complicity during and after WWII.

After 1945, the United States was desperate to harness Germany’s scientific and technological advancements in order to obtain a military advantage in the Cold War. An American intelligence group known as the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) began interrogating scientists and seizing

documents as German research facilities were taken over by Allied forces. Mysteriously, they discovered a file known as the Osenberg list in a toilet at Bonn University in Germany. The list contained the names and occupations of thousands of engineers, scientists, and inventors who worked for the Third Reich. At the time, President Harry Truman forbade JIOA from actively recruiting any scientists who were Nazi members or supporters.

Officials within JIOA and the Office of Strategic Services (which later developed into the CIA) whitewashed the records of these Nazis, prioritizing their scientific knowledge over evidence of their involvement in war crimes. The relocation of Nazi scientists to the United States became known as Operation Paperclip (because the files of these scientists had been marked with a paperclip), and

officially began in May of 1945. Of the 1,600 men (and their families) relocated to the United States under Operation Paperclip, many were active Nazi supporters and/or high-ranking SS officials. These scientists and their families were relocated to the United States under “temporary, limited military custody,” but most stayed in the United States for the remainder of their lives. With their horrific actions erased from their records, many married,

Receiving the Ruderman Scholarship further empowered and affirmed my passion for Jewish Studies. The support of the Ruderman Family Foundation gave me the opportunity to confidently continue my research and studies. In the future, I hope to continue my education in Civil Rights law and/or policy.

–MORGAN KNIGHT

A GROUP OF 104 ROCKET SCIENTISTS (AEROSPACE ENGINEERS) AT FORT BLISS, TEXAS

(continued on page 17)

ATTENDEES AT THE WORKSHOP (ALAN VERSKIN AND BILL MILES ON LEFT; JOSEPH ALPAR SECOND FROM RIGHT)

BY BILL MILES

Muslim-Jewish Musical Relations in the Middle East was the theme of the concluding workshop on “Jews and Muslims in Shared Diasporic Lands,” organized by Professor William Miles (Political Science) and University of Rhode Island Professor Alan Verskin (History). Professor Joseph Alpar of Bennington College performed and lectured on Jewish music from Turkey, Syria, Yemen, and Morocco. The three-part series was funded by a grant from the American Academy of Jewish Research to promote collaborative, cross-institutional research in Jewish Studies. In addition to the Jewish Studies Program, the Department of Music co- sponsored the April 3, 2022 event.

In a virtuoso two-part presentation and performance, Professor Joseph Alpar shared his ethnomusicological expertise on Muslims and Jewish Musical Relations in the Middle East. An invited audience of faculty and students were treated to riveting presentations punctuated by slides and compelling, beautiful liturgical music. In Part I, Professor Alpar spoke about and performed sacred Jewish music from Turkey (Istanbul and Edirne, in particular) and a theo-pedagogic song from Aleppo, Syria. He also discussed his most recent research into the Turkish-influenced chanting of the Mishnaic book Pirke Avot (Sayings of Our Fathers), providing an audio example of it. In Part II of the Workshop, he provided the socio-historical context for, and then sang, magnificently, Hebrew poems from Yemen and Jewish wedding songs from Morocco, Greece, and Istanbul.

Bill Miles is Professor of Political Science, Affiliate Faculty in Jewish Studies, and co-convener of the workshop series Jews and Muslims in Shared Diasporic Lands. Information about the previous workshops can be found in Haverim Summer 2020, page 6.

JEWS AND MUSLIMS IN SHARED DIASPORIC LANDS SERIES CONCLUDES WITH MUSICAL WORKSHOP

IN A VIRTUOSO TWOPART PRESENTATION AND PERFORMANCE, PROFESSOR JOSEPH ALPAR SHARED HIS ETHNOMUSICOLOGICAL EXPERTISE ON MUSLIMS AND JEWISH MUSICAL RELATIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST.

A TRIBUTE TO PROFESSOR JAMES ROSS ON THE OCCASION OF HIS RETIREMENT

BY LAUREL LEFF

For years, Professor James Ross, who recently retired, embodied Jewish Studies at Northeastern. He followed in the formidable footsteps of Professors Joshua Jacobson and Debra Kaufman as the program’s chair, first from 1995 to 1998, and then again from 2004 to 2010. He taught Jewish Studies courses, including a memorable “American Jewish Film” class, and “Covering the Conflict,” on the Israeli/Palestinian struggle. He helped establish the Jewish Studies minor and a dual major in Religion and Jewish Studies. His dedication manifested in his having chaired the Holocaust Awareness Committee and steering search committees in Jewish Studies, including the one that hired our current director, Lori Lefkovitz. He was the Stotsky Professor of Jewish Historical and Cultural Studies. He wrote two acclaimed books on Jewish themes, Escape to Shanghai: A Jewish Community in China, and Fragile Branches: Travels Through the Jewish Diaspora. Jim did it all with good cheer and boundless energy.

To me the contribution Jim made that stands out the most is the programming he brought to the Northeastern community. Jim didn’t just bring luminaries to campus to deliver speeches. He always was on top of sensitive societal issues, undoubtedly a result of his journalism background, and developed creative ways to enlighten the community. His approach to the always difficult issue of tensions in the Middle East is illustrative. He hosted top journalists, Americans, Israeli Jews, and Arabs, for an intense panel discussion on covering the conflict. (Jim’s constant reminder was for speakers to discuss the coverage, not the conflict, to head off shopworn arguments about the conflict’s origins.) He invited one of the panelists, distinguished Israeli

journalist and historian Tom Segev, to teach a joint seminar with him on the topic. Segev taught another course at Northeastern on Holocaust denial. But Jim didn’t stop there. He obtained a grant from the U.S. Institute for Peace to run a three-week seminar for five Israeli and five Palestinian journalists on ways to improve coverage of the Middle East conflict. The young journalists gathered at Northeastern’s conference center in Ashland to learn about journalism and each other. Assisted by Israeli, Palestinian, and Lebanese journalists, Jim presented a program that combined lectures by experienced journalists, visits to nearby journalism institutions, and fervent, often revelatory, discussions. It was the most remarkable academic session I have ever experienced.

Jim continued his involvement with Jewish Studies once his chairmanship was done. His Middle East journalism course morphed into “Covering Conflicts,” a broader course that became a regular and popular part of Northeastern’s curriculum. Jim now writes an important and timely weekly blog by the same name. Jim served on the Jewish Studies Executive Committee, and on the Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee, which he chaired. A continuing interest in Jews and China resulted in his editing and writing a chapter for the book, The Image of Jews in Contemporary China

Jim took emeritus status last year. Given all he did, and continued to do for Jewish Studies, Jim’s absence has been felt in the program that he did so much to build.

Laurel Leff is Professor of Journalism at Northeastern University, and Core Faculty in Jewish Studies

I will always associate my introduction to Northeastern University with our colleague Jim Ross, who was the most gracious and generous host imaginable, a tireless promoter of Jewish Studies, and for many years, a strong partner in building Jewish Studies at Northeastern. The successes we have enjoyed over the last decade are built on the strong foundation of our founding directors, Jim Ross among them. I am personally enormously grateful to him.

The decision he made to bring me to Northeastern moved my career in wonderful new directions. All of us in the Jewish Studies Program wish him a fruitful and joyful retirement. As we say, “until 120!”

—Lori Lefkovitz, Ruderman Professor of Jewish Studies

AWARDS

Professor Simon Rabinovitch, Associate Professor of History and Core Faculty in Jewish Studies, was selected for a three-year term as the holder of the Bernard A. Stotsky Professorship in Jewish Historical and Cultural Studies. The Professorship was established at Northeastern University in 1991 thanks to a generous gift from Bernard A. Stotsky. It is designed to support research on and teaching about the broad ethical, cultural, and social issues stemming from the Holocaust and to further new approaches to problems of social justice and modern Judaism.

Open to members of the full-time tenured faculty across the University, the holder of the Stotsky Professorship is selected by an interdisciplinary faculty committee. It is held for a three-year term, with the possibility of one renewal. The holder of the Professorship receives an annual research stipend and discretionary fund, and one course release over the course of the fellowship. The Stotsky Professor presents the results of his research to a formal convocation of the University community.

Dean Uta Poiger noted, “In his role as Chair of the Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee as well as his classroom teaching, Professor Rabinovitch is committed to providing a full picture of Jewish history, including highlighting histories of antiSemitism and anti-Judaism, the battles Jews have had to fight as well as the multi-faceted impact of Jews in history and culture.”

Professor Rabinovitch thanked the College and the Stotsky family for the appointment, saying “This appointment is a very special honor for me, and I appreciate everything the Stotsky family does for the university and for Jewish studies.”

The Gideon Klein Award, a $5000 scholarship awarded to a student for a project on the Holocaust and music, musicians or the arts, was established by Professor Bill Giessen in 1997 and supported by the Giessen family for 25 years. In that time, a treasure trove of original research and musical performances resulted from the award. Beginning in 2022-2023,

the Holocaust Legacy Foundation, founded by Todd Ruderman and Jody Kipnis, has graciously agreed to continue this legacy by awarding $5000 to a student at Northeastern doing research on the Holocaust and the arts or artists. The first Holocaust Legacy Foundation Gideon Klein Award was awarded to Ethan Rogers, who is planning to study the Secret Synagogue of Terezin, and will re-create a scale and digital model which he will present at Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week 2023.

“We are very grateful to the Holocaust Legacy Foundation for enabling us to sustain this important tradition at Northeastern,” said Lori Lefkovitz, Ruderman Professor of Jewish Studies. She added, “Ethan Rogers joins a remarkable cohort of Gideon Klein Scholars, students who have produced and presented extraordinarily moving and professional research projects over the years. As the first Holocaust Legacy Foundation Gideon Klein Scholar, Rogers promises to make a singular contribution to our knowledge about the Holocaust. He will showcase the bravery of Jews incarcerated in Terezin and who secretly designed, built, and even decorated a hidden space for prayer in a concentration camp.”

[RECORDINGS OF PREVIOUS GIDEON KLEIN PROJECTS CAN BE FOUND ON THE HOLOCAUST AWARENESS ARCHIVES OF NORTHEASTERN.]

[MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE AWARD CAN BE FOUND ON OUR WEBSITE. ]

SECRET SYNAGOGUE OF TEREZIN

MORGAN KNIGHT ETHAN ROGERS

CONGRATULATIONS TO:

Morgan Knight, on her graduation from Northeastern. The 2021 Ruderman Scholar in Jewish Studies, Knight majored in Political Science and minored in Jewish Studies, Law and Public Policy, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Working with Prof. Lefkovitz, Knight wrote her capstone project on Operation Paperclip, the post-war relocation of Nazi scientists (see page 13).

Ethan Rogers, on being named the Holocaust Legacy Foundation Gideon Klein Scholar for 2022-2023. Rogers is a third-year student majoring in Architecture and minoring in Urban Landscape Studies. For his project, Rogers will be studying the Secret Synagogue of the Terezin ghetto, and creating a scale and digital model. He will present his work during Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week 2023.

Professor Jim Ross, Associate Professor of Journalism, on his retirement from Northeastern University. Professor Ross served as chair of the Jewish Studies Program from 1995-1998, and 20042010, and also served a term as Stotsky Professor of Jewish Historical and Cultural Studies.

Northeastern Professor Emerita Debra Kaufman, who will receive the Marshall Sklare award given by the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry at the Association of Jewish Studies convention in December 2022 in Boston.

had American-born children, expanded their careers outside of military relations, and were able to live out their lives free from consequence.

How do we reckon with the ugly truth? The story unearthed by the facts of Operation Paperclip greatly differ from the heroic, all-American tales perpetuated in our history books. Although there is research on Operation Paperclip, the story has yet to permeate the United States’ public knowledge; the stories that we think we know are fabricated under layers of shame.

The events of the Holocaust and Operation Paperclip demonstrate that the United States’ weaponized complicity was not limited to ignoring the Shoah while it occurred. Instead, the U.S. government went above and beyond inaction to pardon and protect war criminals. As an American Jew and third-generation Holocaust survivor, I am deeply disappointed and hurt that the information outlined here required digging. My family members and millions of others were ignored

by the nation that I call home; their murderers were protected in the name of scientific advancement, and I had to find out about it through a television show. Until this information is not only widely available but is promoted through substantive Holocaust education, the United States will continue to erase its evils and benefit as the hero of a people that they did not truly save. As time moves further and further from the events of the Holocaust, we must acknowledge this dark aspect of United States’ history to ensure that “Never Again” is an action statement.

Morgan Knight recently graduated from Northeastern University with a degree in Political Science and minors in Jewish Studies, Law and Public Policy, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She was the 2021 Ruderman Scholar in Jewish Studies and is currently working for the Civil Division of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York as a paralegal specializing in Civil Rights and Civil Frauds.

DEBRA KAUFMAN

JIM ROSS

STUDENT CAPSTONE PROJECT (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 13)

Professor Max Abrahms wrote an op-ed for the New York Daily News about the killing of al-Zawahiri in July.

Professor Phil Brown was a panelist on an event held by The Forward, “The Borscht Belt and the rise of American Jewish comedy,” in September 2021. The recording is here.

Professor Jeffrey Burds has submitted for publication new research on bounty hunters in Galicia and Volhynia: Shmal’tsovniki: Civilian Bounty Hunters in German-Occupied Western Ukraine, 1941-1944. An expanded version of his book Holocaust in Rovno was published in Ukrainian in 2017 and in Russian in 2021. He also published “‘Turncoats, Traitors and Provocateurs’: Communist Collaborators, the German Occupation and Stalin’s NKVD, 1941-1943,” in East European Politics and Societies Volume 32, Number 3 (August 2018): 606-638.

Director of Jewish Studies Lori Lefkovitz taught at the 2021 Limmud Festival on Jephtha’s daughter and other feminist reclamations

Professor Bill Miles delivered three lectures in Israel in June 2022 at the conclusion of his Fulbright Global Scholar award. He spoke At Tel Aviv University on “Brain Drain Reversal Policies in a Post- Pandemic Era: A Comparative and Diasporic Approach;” at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies on “Assimilation, Integration, and the Druze: A Comparative Analysis of the Nationality Law Pushback;” and delivered a paper at the Association of Israeli Studies conference at Bar Ilan University entitled “ ‘Fanonian Masks’ and ‘Rising Expectations’: Interpreting Druze Reactions to the 2018 Nationality Law.” Professor Miles also has an article in the most recent edition of The Jewish Quarterly 249, August 2022, entitled “My Jewish Martinique,” and in Relief: Revue Électronique de Littérature Francaise, 15(2), pp. 106–116, “How the Slave Trade and the Shoah Gave Rise to a Musical Marvel. An Interview with Jacques Schwarz-Bart.”

Simon Rabinovitch published an article in Haaretz, “A Jewish ‘Golden Age’ Ends in Spain and Portugal,” about Spain and Portugal’s Sephardic nationalities laws that ties into a book he is completing about Jewish collective

rights. He will also soon be launching an online interactive map of Jewish Collective Rights around the World that is the result of a Tier 1-funded project to map different forms of collective rights globally, built in collaboration with Martha Davis of the Law School. In September 2022, Prof. Rabinovitch presented and demonstrated his mapping project to a working group at the University of Vienna focusing on the theory and practice of nonterritorial autonomy in Europe.

During summer 1, 2022, Professor Becky Rosengaus led a Dialogue of Civilizations “Sustainable Living in a Harsh Desert Environment” to the Arava Desert in Israel. This DOC included two newly developed courses for NU students: “Desert Ecology” and “Energy in the Desert Ecosystem.” The program was affiliated with the Arava Institute and the Center for Creative Ecology. Dr. Rosengaus intends to take a new cohort of students in summer 1 of 2023.

Emeritus Professor Jim Ross is writing a weekly substack newsletter covering conflicts. A compilation with which he assisted with discographic research (Rivka Havassy and Edwin Seroussi, East Mediterranean Judeo-Spanish Songs from The EMI Archive Trust, 1907-1912, Jewish Music Research Centre, Hebrew University of Jerusalem) received a 2021 Award for Excellence from the Association for Sound Recorded Collections. The songs and the booklets are available free, in their entirety, at this link.

WHAT’S NEW IN THE JEWISH STUDIES LIBRARY

BY BRIAN GREENE

Thanks to the suggestion of Professor Bill Miles, we are pleased to announce a new subscription to the Jewish Quarterly. Edited by Jonathan Pearlman (Australian Foreign Affairs and the Saturday Paper), the JQ is an independent publication cultivating a high standard of literary journalism in an elegant book format. Each issue features a major political or cultural theme investigated in long-form essays by prominent voices from around the world. JQ’s mission is to investigate in-depth complex and pressing matters of politics, religion, history, and culture.

We also purchased a full set of the Cambridge History of Judaism. We now have access to all 8 volumes. The new volumes include:

Volume 5: Jews in the Medieval Islamic World

Volume 6: The Middle Ages: The Christian World

Volume 7: The Early Modern World: 1500-1815

Volume 8: The Modern World: 1815-2000

Another major acquisition is the Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature, which highlights the central role that Jewish writing has played in the formation of the national literature of the United States, from the Hebraic sources of the Puritan imagination to narratives of immigration and acculturation, as well as enriching global literature in its engagement with Jewish history and Jewish multilingual culture.

The Library continues to purchase a number of new books each year, mostly in e-format so they can be accessible to all Northeastern users across our global campus network. Here is a sample of our new books this year:

• American JewBu: Jews, Buddhists, and Religious Change Emily Sigalow tells the story of Judaism’s encounter with Buddhism in the United States, showing how it has given rise to new contemplative forms within American Judaism and shaped the way Americans understand and practice Buddhism.

• Gendering Modern Jewish Thought

Andrea Dara Cooper offers a gendered reading that challenges the key figures of the all-male fraternity of twentieth-century Jewish philosophy (Franz Rosenzweig, Emmanuel Levinas) to open up to the feminine, revealing new ways of illuminating questions of relational ethics, embodiment, politics, and positionality.

• Jewish Mysticism: From Ancient Times Through Today

Marvin Sweeney surveys Jewish visionary and mystical experience from biblical and ancient Near Eastern times through the modern period and the emergence of modern Hasidism.

• Trans Talmud: Androgynes and Eunuchs in Rabbinic Literature

A Memoir of the 1960s Deep South Showing how rabbis employed eunuchs and androgynes to define proper forms of masculinity, Strassfeld emphasizes the unique potential of these figures to not only establish the boundary of law but exceed and transform it.

• Waste Not: A Jewish Environmental Ethic Winner of the 2020 Canadian Jewish Literary Award, Tanhum S. Yoreh traces the development of bal tashchit, the Jewish prohibition against wastefulness and destruction, from its biblical origins to the contemporary environmental movement.

For a complete list of new titles in Jewish Studies, please view this list created in Leganto, the Library’s new reading list tool. Leganto is an easy way to share library materials and course content with students and can easily be linked to a Canvas course site. To our faculty and students, I hope you’ll make time to check out some or all of these new resources. I’d be interested to hear your feedback on them. If you have suggestions or other recommendations for purchases, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Brian Greene, Head of Information Delivery and Access Services, is the Library’s Liaison for Jewish Studies. He can be contacted at br.greene@northeastern.edu.

LOOKING FORWARD…

Please join us on October 20 at 5:30 pm, when Laura Arnold Leibman joins us to talk about “Jews of Color in Early America” as part of the Morton E. Ruderman Lecture Series on “The Colors, Cultures, and Flavors of the Jews.” In this talk, Professor Leibman reveals the early history of multiracial Jews in the United States and Caribbean and explains how their stories got lost in common representations of Jewish American history.

Professor Leibman is Professor of English and Humanities at Reed College, VP of Program (AJS), and the author of The Art of the Jewish Family: A History of Women in Early New York in Five Objects (Bard Graduate Center, 2020) which won three National Jewish Book Awards. Her latest book Once We Were Slaves (Oxford UP, 2021) is about an early multiracial Jewish family who began their lives enslaved in the Caribbean and became some of the wealthiest Jews in New York.

THANK YOU

To the faculty, staff, students, parents, alumni, and community members who made donations to the Jewish Studies Program this past year. Your support is meaningful and goes toward enriching our programming for students.

Gifts to the Jewish Studies Program may be made through Northeastern University.