Haverim Newsletter Summer 2021

SUMMER 2021

Haverim

FROM THE DIRECTOR

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

LO R I L E F KO V I T Z

NEW HORIZONS Dear Haverim (Friends), A scene from fall semester 2020: Professor Simon Rabinovitch and his Jewish History students out and about in the city of Boston, where they stay outdoors, and wearing masks, visit and learn about historic Jewish sites, charting changes to the neighborhoods and making maps. The students then pursued independent research and created online resources that showcased what they learned. In these pages, Professor Rabinovitch celebrates his students’

JEWISH STUDIES NOT ONLY ACCOMMODATED TO NEW, UNFORESEEN REALITIES BUT ALSO REACHED WIDER AUDIENCES.

IN THIS ISSUE

achievements. Out of the classroom and into the open air exemplifies how Jewish Studies adjusted, in a fashion true to the entrepreneurial and experiential character of Northeastern University, to the circumstances of a global pandemic that surprised us all with its persistence.

In the pages of this year’s newsletter, you can also read about how Jewish Studies not only

PG 3 Annual Ruderman Lecture

PG 8 Desert Ecology Series

PG 4 Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week

PG 9 Student Reflection on Desert Ecology Series

PG 6 Annual Morton Lecture with David Nirenberg

PG 10 Jewish Studies and the Digital Humanities

PG 7 Survivor Talk with Esther Adler

accommodated to new, unforeseen realities but also reached wider audiences, took advantage of new technologies, and strove to bring the expertise of Jewish Studies scholars to changing circumstances.

Mine were not the only pair of eyes visibly moist on the Zoom screen when Yael Sheinfeld ’21 presented her animation of the children’s book The Children’s Tree of Terezin to a national audience that included the book’s author Dede Harris and illustrator Sara Akerlund. I recall that as a first-year student Yael approached me with a vision of bringing to life for schoolchildren this inspiring story about how a teacher brought hope to children confined in a concentration camp, by planting and nurturing a sapling. Although most of those children did not survive, the tree did, and saplings from the tree are planted the world over

PG 11 Student Reflection on Website Project PG 12 Jewish Studies Additions to the Library PG 13 Tribute to Debra Mandel

(continued on page 2)

PG 13 News Notes from the Library

PG 15 Congratulations

PG 14 Faculty News

PG 16 Looking Forward

FROM THE DIRECTOR (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1)

ANNUAL MORTON E. RUDERMAN MEMORIAL LECTURE to honor their short lives. I remember thinking that this confident student’s ambitions were unrealistic.

With a full complement of difficult coursework and an astonishing leadership portfolio of co-curricular commitments, how could she possibly manage such an undertaking? The following year, we awarded Yael a Gideon Klein scholarship, offered her faculty support, and encouraged her to pursue her dream. Now I am convinced that Yael’s animated film, complete with historical contextualization and an interview with the book’s creators, will find its way into classrooms everywhere.

Yael (who graduated this year with a prestigious Huntington 100 award) and the other students represented in these pages worked with talented faculty and library staff (a heartfelt shout out to our dedicated Jewish Studies librarian Debra Mandel, who retired this summer) to use advanced technologies for learning and to create shareable resources.

Ordinarily, our annual Ruderman event fills a university hall, and we enjoy a festive dinner with distinguished guests to extend the evening’s discussion. This year, we asked ourselves how the Jewish Studies Program could best take advantage of the Ruderman Family Foundation’s generosity to offer something that would be a unique and far-reaching contribution to address the current circumstances of transition and trauma, when most people were not yet venturing out. The Zoom platform enabled us to reach an international audience and include international experts. We learned from Professor of Psychiatry and recognized expert in traumatic stress studies, Rachel Yehuda, Danny Brom, a clinical psychologist

and founding director of the Israel Center for the Treatment of Psychotrauma in Jerusalem, and Eva Fogelman, a pioneer in the treatment of psychological effects of the Holocaust on survivors and their descendants.

Haverim—Friends—the most important takeaway for me from that conversation, and perhaps the most important takeaway from this extraordinary year in Jewish Studies at Northeastern University, is that communities of learning, and the creativity and flexibility that they foster, help us to adapt to harsh realities. Jewish knowledge, and knowledge of Judaism, Jewish history, and Jewish wisdom, are specialized resources from which we can draw to carve paths forward.

This year—like every year, but more so—I am grateful to Deborah Levisohn Stanhill, the Jewish Studies Administrative Specialist, my talented colleagues from across the university who form a sustaining community, our dedicated and invariably smart and entertaining students, and the College of Social Sciences and Humanities at Northeastern University that enables the successes of the Jewish Studies Program.

Wishing you, our extended community, a happy (Jewish and academic) New Year, and hoping for improved circumstances in all areas of our lives.

Thank you all.

Lori Lefkovitz Ruderman Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of the Jewish Studies Program

THE JEWISH STUDIES BLOG Don’t forget to check out our blog – which now has 34 posts and counting, and hundreds of views. Posts are written by faculty, staff, students and guests, and often reflect current research, programming, or Jewish-themed projects.

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nujewishstudiesblog.org

The global pandemic abruptly altered routines, demanded adjustments within families and workplaces, and exposed many of society’s stress lines and inequities. Many people suffered losses; personal and financial security was compromised, and varieties of vulnerabilities were exacerbated.

We confronted racism, political polarization, and governmental dysfunction. With the transition to a new government and the promise of an unsteady return to a different “normal,” a committee of Jewish Studies faculty reflected on what the field of Jewish Studies could best contribute at this fraught moment. The Jewish historical experience of dislocation and trauma and the ongoing experience of assaults on mental health caused by violence in Israel convinced us that Jewish trauma researchers had relevant expertise to share. For the annual Morton E. Ruderman Memorial Lecture on March 8 we convened a panel discussion on Trauma, the Jewish Experience, and Lessons for Post-Covid Mental Health. Generously supported by the Ruderman Family Foundation, which is committed to addressing mental health issues, the conversation took place on Zoom and reached a live international audience of more than 400 participants; many more have since viewed the recording.

Our panel of distinguished experts included: Dr. Danny Brom, an internationally renowned expert on trauma and resilience in the face of terror and disaster; Dr. Eva Fogelman, a psychologist who has pioneered therapeutic techniques for generations of the Holocaust; and Dr. Rachel Yehuda, a professor of psychiatry who is a leader in the field of traumatic stress studies, including epigenetics and intergenerational transmission of trauma.

Dr. Lori Lefkovitz moderated the discussion. Each panelist brought their own research and anecdotal experiences from the pandemic to discuss what people have experienced this year, how that affects people psychologically, and what to expect going forward, with suggestions for positive coping mechanisms.

Dr. Yehuda described how her treatment and study of Holocaust survivors and their children led to findings of genetic imprinting of stress reactors, such as resiliency and coping skills when facing adversity. Dr. Fogelman discussed the mental health implications of the pandemic on survivors and others whose vulnerabilities were triggered, and held out

hope that with social community, self-reflection, and new resources, each may come out stronger.

Dr. Brom elaborated on the strength of social bonds formed under threat, the identification of a spectrum of reactions to trauma less extreme than PTSD, and the importance of forums for vulnerable populations to process experiences, so that lingering trauma may be treated.

Among the topics they The 2021 Morton E. Ruderman Memorial Lecture touched upon were: The Jewish Studies Program and the Northeastern Humanities Center Present:

• the differences between stress and trauma • the long-term neurological responses to experiences of stress

Trauma, the Jewish Experience, and Lessons for Post-Covid Mental Health

• generational resiliency in the face of adversity

SPEAKERS

• the importance of community to alleviate the stresses of the pandemic • the creation of new modes of communal gathering to combat isolation and to continue to observe Jewish ritual, lifecycle and communal events

MONDAY, MARCH 8, 2021

RACHEL YEHUDA , professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine; director of the Traumatic Stress Studies Division and the Center for Psychedelic Psychotherapy and Trauma Research

The Jewish experience includes a history of dislocation, trauma,

EVA FOGELMAN , psychologist, writer, filmmaker and a pioneer in the treatment of psychological effects of the Holocaust on survivors and their descendants

survivors, Israeli soldiers, and their families. What lessons can

DANNY BROM ,

5:00 pm via webinar

clinical psychologist and founding director of the Israel Center for the Treatment of Psychotrauma of Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem

and resilience. World-renowned experts in the fields of trauma, epigenetics, and mental health will discuss the implications of the research and clinical work they have done with Holocaust we learn as we recover from a global pandemic, and confront systemic racism and assaults on our democratic institutions?

Reservations and details: http://bit.ly/2021Ruderman For any questions contact d.levisohn@northeastern.edu

SPONSORED BY

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. RESERVATIONS ARE REQUIRED.

• the importance of finding purpose, or common purpose, to counteract mental health challenges • the phenomenon of accelerated learning under trauma (the Passover Seder exemplifies a ritualized response of dedicating one night a year to relive and learn from a remembered historical trauma) • the specific effect on children of the diverse messages of danger during the pandemic • the importance of finding support in shared experiences as we transition out of the pandemic and of acknowledging the losses of the past year • the numerous ways people will change how they live and what they do in the future, finding meaning and creating personal growth The audience included many Jewish communal professionals and members of Holocaust survivor networks. You can access the conversation here.

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Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week 2020/2021

JESSIE SIGLER ’20 AND YAEL SHEINFELD ’21

KALAH KARLOFF ’21

Presenting their projects in September, Jewish Studies’ students Yael Sheinfeld ’21 and Jessie Sigler ’20 (2019–2020 Gideon Klein Scholar and 2019 Ruderman Scholar, respectively) reflected on how their work contributed to making each of them activists for Holocaust education, especially for a younger generation.

Sheinfeld created an original animated film based on the children’s book The Children’s Tree of Terezin, presented in a video that included interviews with the author and illustrator. For her senior capstone project, Sigler worked with Debra Mandel at the Northeastern University Library to add transcription and metadata tags to the archive of survivor testimony. In her presentation, Sigler explained what she had done, what she learned, and why this work is important for researchers of all kinds.

This student work promises to have continued impact. Because of Sigler’s efforts, not only is the entire archive now more accessible and searchable, the University Library also added a transcript of this year’s Survivor Lecture to the archive, alongside the video recording. Sheinfeld’s video, which is available on YouTube, was shown this year in a local Jewish day school for Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. We anticipate many more such events exposing children to the Holocaust in a form that is age-appropriate and meaningful.

The presentation is archived here.

In April, Kalah Karloff ’21, recipient of the 2020-2021 Gideon Klein Award, presented her work Music and the Holocaust: “We Made Music in Hell” in which she examined the Nazis’ use of music as torture. Playing clips of musical pieces used in camps, Karloff illustrated her conclusion that the context in which a piece of music is heard changes our reaction to it.

Beloved Professor Emeritus Joshua Jacobson reminded us of the many ways students have used this award to research, learn about, and present the role of music during the Holocaust, in his presentation Music and the Holocaust: A Retrospective on the Gideon Klein Award. The presentations by both Karloff and Jacobson can be found here.

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PROFESSOR EMERITUS JOSHUA JACOBSON

Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week 2021 also included the annual Robert Salomon Morton Lecture and Philip N. Backstrom Jr. Holocaust Survivor Talk.

David Nirenberg, Dean of the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, who delivered the Morton Lecture, made a compelling case that anti-Semitism is rooted in the much older historical phenomenon of anti-Judaism. In his talk, Does the Past History of Anti-Semitism Tell Us Anything About its Future?, Dr. Nirenberg discussed his definition of anti-Judaism, how that relates to what we think of as anti-Semitism, and how we see both in evidence today. During the question period, an engaged online audience, including both Northeastern faculty and guests from across the country and abroad, asked many thought-provoking questions. Simon Rabinovitch, Associate Professor of History at Northeastern and core faculty of the Jewish Studies Program, shares his response to Dr. Nirenberg’s talk on page 6.

ADLER SHARED NOT ONLY ONE OF HER OWN POEMS, BUT A POIGNANT LETTER SHE WROTE DURING THE WAR, AGONIZING OVER THE FATE OF JEWS IN EUROPE. Esther Adler, the featured speaker for the Philip N. Backstrom Jr. Survivor Talk, mesmerized an online audience of well over 100 participants, many of them Northeastern students, with her vivid descriptions of growing up in Germany during the Third Reich, her determination to leave and to emigrate to British Mandate Palestine, and her years of separation from family during the war. A writer and poet as well as life-long teacher, Adler shared not only one of her own poems, but a poignant letter she wrote during the war, agonizing over the fate of Jews in Europe. She was introduced by Professor Lori Lefkovitz who credited “Mrs. Adler” with setting her on the path to Jewish Studies some 55 years ago (!) when the young Lefkovitz was Adler’s Hebrew School pupil.

Morgan Knight ’23, the 2021 Ruderman Scholar, shares a student’s perspective on page 7.

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HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDE AWARENESS WEEK

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THE 28TH ANNUAL ROBERT SALOMON MORTON LECTURE:

REMEMBERING THE SHOAH:

DAVID NIRENBERG ON HISTORICAL ANTI-JUDAISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM TODAY

A CONVERSATION WITH ESTHER ADLER

BY SIMON RABINOVITCH

This year’s Morton Lecture featured David Nirenberg, Dean of the Divinity School and Professor of History at the University of Chicago. Professor Nirenberg is one of the world’s leading scholars of medieval history, and specializes in the relations between Jews, Christians, and Muslims in medieval and early modern Europe.

He is also the author of the important and widely influential book Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition. In a public (online) event on April 7 as part of Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week, the Northeastern community was deeply enriched by Professor Nirenberg’s lecture, Does the Past History of Anti-Semitism Tell Us Anything about its Future?

In his lecture, Professor Nirenberg explored the question of whether anti-Semitism, as it exists in a given place and time, can be understood without relating it to the longer history of anti-Judaism. His starting point for the discussion was the philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt, who saw the anti-Semitism she witnessed in Europe in the 1930s as a product of immediate economic and social realities, disconnected from the history of ideas.

As a corrective to Arendt, Nirenberg traced in his lecture the ways that Jews and Judaism have been, and are still, used to explain the world—what anxieties different societies project onto Jews, real or imagined.

Nirenberg’s thesis in the Morton Lecture, as in AntiJudaism: The Western Tradition, was that since the rise of Christianity, European societies have described elements within them that they fear, or desire to overcome, as “Jewish.” The Gospels presented Judaism as a fundamentally confused way to see the world; early Christian descriptions of the Jews as blind (to the truth) or associated with the devil would have, according to Nirenberg, a long future. Jews also became a convenient screen to project social anxieties about money and debt, the best example being Shakespeare’s character Shylock. Shakespeare may have written the play The Merchant of Venice, without ever having met a

Jew, but that did not prevent opponents to Jewish emancipation in nineteenth-century England from using Shylock as an illustration of why one should fear Jewish political rights. The idea that Jews worship the god of money was one picked up and propagated most famously by Karl Marx.

His book Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition came out in 2013, and in his lecture Professor Nirenberg related the ideas he developed there to much that has transpired since. In sum, many of the concepts we use to think about the world—our habits of thought—are still laden with anti-Judaism.

Nirenberg sees this in the language deployed by the alt-right movement in the United States, in allusions to George Soros by politicians in Hungary and Eastern Europe, and in the fixation with Israel in societies around the globe where few-to-no Jews live. In all of these examples, Jews and Judaism stand in as an imagined agent for what is seen to threaten one’s own society. This delusion infected the murderer at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, who blamed Jews for a host of what he considered American ills, not least immigration.

Professor Nirenberg’s lecture ignited a lively conversation with the audience. People were particularly interested in the connection between—or distinction from—anti-Semitism and forms of racial prejudice.

Nirenberg ended his lecture by proposing that the best antidote to anti-Semitism is to acknowledge the degree to which anti-Judaism can influence our current thinking. For reasons of self-interest, I like the idea that historians can play a role in fighting anti-Semitism, and I take seriously Nirenberg’s warning that if we focus too much on specific examples of anti-Semitism in isolation, we risk obscuring the continuities in how our societies think about Judaism. For educators and others who want to raise our collective historical consciousness, David Nirenberg provides us with important tools to do so.

Simon Rabinovitch is Associate Professor of History and core faculty in the Jewish Studies Program.

BY MORGAN KNIGHT

Poet, teacher, and survivor Esther Adler spoke via Zoom to students, staff, and members of our community this past Yom HaShoah, as a culmination of Northeastern’s annual Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week. Professor Lori Lefkovitz introduced Adler, whom she has known for more than half a century; Adler was her 3rd and 5th grade teacher in Hebrew School. Lefkovitz’s introduction expressed Adler’s philosophy, which focuses on acknowledging and memorializing grief to find the beauty and celebration of life.

Even from behind a computer screen, 97-yearold Esther Adler’s wit, humility, and unfathomable knowledge was potent as she described her own personal history. Adler escaped Germany at only 15 years old, seeking refuge with a Jewish youth group and ending up in Palestine. Her early escape from Nazi Germany is pivotal to her identity as a “survivor,” which she explained as she described the increasing hostility in her home city of Breslau after the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. Even from a young age, Adler knew that what was happening was not right, that something horrifying was on the horizon.

Living in a densely-Jewish-populated region, Esther experienced the early forms of torture and indoctrination that the Nazis spread throughout Germany even before the mass transportation to camps began. Loudspeakers were placed throughout her neighborhood, constantly playing a stream of Hitler’s speeches down streets and alleys; any time Adler was outdoors, she could hear the evil in his voice.

As the grandchild of Holocaust survivors, I have spent my entire life hearing and learning from survivors, and was honored and intrigued to hear Adler’s perspective, as she escaped Germany before she could be interned in a concentration camp.

Adler stated that she grapples with the idea of calling herself “a survivor,” an identity that she used to ascribe exclusively to those who suffered in camps and ghettos. Adler’s perspective changed when Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, said that “anyone who lived under Hitler’s regime is entitled to the designation of survivor.”

“I want to start by telling you that I don’t like to use the word ‘Holocaust;’ I like to use the word ‘Shoah,’” Adler said to begin her story. While the word ‘holocaust’ is Greek, meaning ‘burnt offering,’ Shoah is a Biblical term (Isaiah 10:3) meaning ‘catastrophic destruction.’ Adler acknowledged that tragically and undeniably, ‘burnt offering’ was an accurate description of the genocide, but prefers Shoah as a linguistic recognition of the tragedy.

Adler immediately reminded me of my grandmother—a survivor who, like Adler, spoke English sprinkled with Yiddish and stood under 5 feet tall.

As I grow older, and enter my personal study of the Holocaust on a deeper level, I am endlessly moved by the people, like my own grandparents and Adler, who, within their identity as survivors, stand as representatives of lives well lived against all odds.

Through retelling her own story, Adler serves as an

97-YEAR-OLD ESTHER ADLER’S WIT, HUMILITY, AND UNFATHOMABLE KNOWLEDGE WAS POTENT AS SHE DESCRIBED HER OWN PERSONAL HISTORY embodiment of the relationship between grief and beauty. In her words and through her writing, she explains the duality of the two extremes, resolving that witnessing the deepest horrors allows her to experience and appreciate the joys of life at a greater level. Adler calls for remembrance and acknowledgment of the grief of her generation and their descendants, in order to stress that “never again” is a call to action. As her parting words, Adler reminded us to speak to and listen to survivors while they are with us, and carry on the dialogue created on Yom HaShoah into our personal lives and practices of remembrance.

Esther Adler’s full works, including Best Friends: A Bond that Survived Hitler, and Poems of Sorrow, Solace, and Spirituality, are available on Amazon, and serve as a testament to her life as a teacher and storyteller dedicated to remembering the Shoah.

Morgan Knight ’22 is majoring in Political Science and minoring in Jewish Studies, Law & Public Policy, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She is the 2021 Ruderman Scholar. See page 15.

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FOCUSING ON THE ENVIRONMENT: THE DESERT ECOLOGY SERIES

A STUDENT REFLECTION ON THE DESERT ECOLOGY SERIES This spring, the Jewish Studies Program cosponsored an eight-part public Sunday seminar series Re-Envisioning the Middle East Ecosystem: Desert Ecology and Environmental Diplomacy. Collaborating with directors, faculty, and alumni from the Arava Institute and Kibbutz Lotan, the program was inspired by a desire to provide some of the educational richness that Northeastern University students would have enjoyed on the Dialogue of Civilization programs to Israel that had been suspended because of the global pandemic. The planning committee, which included Professor Lori Lefkovitz, met weekly for many months to design and implement the series.

This open-to-all series of seminars (which convened by Zoom for two hours on consecutive Sundays from February to May) focused on various aspects of sustainable living in the desert, with an emphasis on the Negev desert in Israel and on the relationship between desert ecology and environmental diplomacy, using the case of Israel/ Palestine. The purpose of the series was to introduce

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participants to cutting-edge scientific developments in desert ecology and ongoing cross-border environmental, peacebuilding collaborations.

The seminar series was organized by Mr. Fareed Mahameed (a graduate of the Arava Institute and educator in Israel/Palestine) and Dr. Rebeca Rosengaus (Associate Professor of Marine and Environmental Science at Northeastern University), and cosponsored by Northeastern University’s Humanities Center and Jewish Studies Program (College of Social Sciences and Humanities), the Department of Marine and Environmental Sciences (College of Science), the Friends of the Arava and the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in the Negev, and the Center for Creative Ecology at Kibbutz Lotan. Each session featured guest experts from diverse disciplines, cultures, religions, and backgrounds, whose topics included renewable energy, water management, conservation, biomimicry, and desert ecology, with a special focus on cross-border collaborative environmental efforts through which sustainable living can be achieved in the desert regions of the Middle East. With over 400 registrations, there were 219 participants, 54 of whom earned certificates of completion for having attended seven or more seminars. Through this series, we hope to have contributed to building an international community of like-minded young people interested in sustainable living, diplomacy, public policy, and environmental activism. We also hope that some of the dozens of Northeastern students who took part will be inspired to take one of the Dialogue of Civilization courses in Israel in the summer of 2022.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE ARAVA INSTITUTE

BY SOPHIA COUTO

The desert ecology series was a fascinating and thorough experience in which participants were able to learn in depth about the Middle East ecosystem and ongoing progress towards a more sustainable future.

Among the series co-sponsors was the Arava Institute, an Israeli research institute that strives to educate students about environmentalism and sustainability studies in order to adapt to the changing world. The Arava Institute has centers for transboundary water management, renewable energy and conservation, sustainable agriculture, arid socio-ecology, and even a Jordan-Israel community center for environment and research. The Institute is a leader in developing environmental education programs for students of all backgrounds, and provides an excellent wealth of research resources for students. Additionally, the Institute offers a variety of ways to get involved and participate in the collection of knowledge for anyone who is interested in becoming a better environmentally-educated citizen.

Regarding the desert ecology series in particular, the seminars covered topics ranging from climate change to biomimicry to water conservation efforts in the region. Through this series, an intersectional approach was taken in which the predominant religious beliefs and the unique ethnic identities of the region’s groups were discussed along with the wide range of environmental topics. The series zeroed in on the interaction between people and the environment, and new sustainable solutions to environmental problems being created every day. Combining a team of lecturers from the Middle East region, the series also featured guest lecturers as experts on particular topics in order to enrich the learning experience. Each of the guests contributed a unique set of experiences and perspective on the week’s topic, thereby adding not just information, but a new style of engaging with the material.

The unique part about this series was that it not only focused on environmentalism, but community and culture as well. For example, the fifth meeting was about transboundary environmental cooperation in the Middle East region, and how it can be augmented further. This considered the different groups in the region and how they are working together to achieve common goals. The last meeting of the

series summarized all the ideas that had emerged throughout each week, and focused on how the principle of environmentalism can be applied in the real world using the abilities and talents of real people.

Through this series, I have learned an extensive amount about environmentalism at the ground level that I had not known previously. As an environmental science major with a passion for nature, I feel as if I am emerging from this series having gained knowledge about not just the science behind sustainability, but the people behind the efforts. There are communities

I FEEL AS IF I AM EMERGING FROM THIS SERIES HAVING GAINED KNOWLEDGE ABOUT NOT JUST THE SCIENCE BEHIND SUSTAINABILITY, BUT THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE EFFORTS.

all across the Middle East and the rest of the world that are growing together and creating better ways of interacting with our environment. Goals that once seemed daunting are being achieved, perhaps not all at once, but steadily. Through cooperation we are able to reach heights that grow every day. One of the main ideas I am left with after this series is the awareness that progress is occurring today, and building off practices that have long been utilized, and our drive towards sustainability only increases in importance as time passes. More than that, though, I know that there is a place for all who are willing to learn, not only at the Arava Institute, but in communities everywhere as we work together towards a sustainable future.

Sophia Couto ’23 is a Northeastern student majoring in Environmental Science with a minor in Biology.

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Jewish Studies Engages in the Digital Humanities, and a New Website is Launched

BY SIMON RABINOVITCH

Fall 2020 featured a new Northeastern Jewish Studies class, and the launch of a new website by Northeastern students and faculty exploring the history of the Jews of Boston. The class, Digital Histories of Ethnic Boston, focuses on the Jewish community when it is taught by Jewish Studies faculty.

The class uses Boston’s Jewish history to teach digital humanities tools and scholarship, and digital history as a method to study Boston’s Jewish history. Given the strength of Northeastern’s History Department in digital humanities, the class was designed to be taught about any or all of Boston’s ethnic communities, depending on the specialty of the instructor.

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In our class, I used the city of Boston as a laboratory to explore Jewish history and experiment with digital humanities. With a 360-degree camera and a spreadsheet of addresses of former synagogues and Jewish sites, we went by foot into East Boston, Beacon Hill, the North End, South End, Roxbury, and Dorchester. We also benefited from the expertise of specialists at Northeastern and in Boston. We had workshops (by Zoom) with pros from the Northeastern University Library’s Digital Scholarship Group and its Archives and Special Collections, with digital humanities specialists in the NUlab for Texts, Maps, and Networks, with a professional cartographer from Beehive Mapping, with an archivist and educator at the Wyner Family Jewish Heritage Center at New England Historic Genealogical Society, and with colleagues in the History Department who specialize in spatial history and 360 degree reconstructions.

At least by measure of the sophistication of the students’ work (and I hope too by how much they learned), the class was a success. In December we launched the site DHJews of Boston that exhibits the two collaborative projects created in this intimate seminar.

Harrison Beiser, Kayla Lavelle, and Shira Weiss worked together to create a digital story-map called Mapping Shared Spaces: A Visual History of Boston’s Black and Jewish Communities. This interactive story-map allows readers to explore neighborhoods where Boston’s Jews and Blacks lived together during different periods of Boston’s Jewish history. The map’s narrative begins with Black sacred spaces that became synagogues in today’s Beacon Hill (formerly West End), and moves on to synagogues and Jewish communal and educational institutions that became predominantly Black churches and communal institutions in the South End, Roxbury, and Dorchester. One institution, Freedom House, served as a center of both Black and Jewish activism and integration, and is still an important community institution in Dorchester. In building the map, students used their own photographs (still and 360), Northeastern’s Archives and Special Collections, and Google’s 360 mapping, in addition to extensive reading and research. The result is a beautiful tour of these important shared spaces.

Jasper Trouerbach mapped the migration of Boston’s Jewish community in a different way, using historical data about the founding and closing of synagogues, using the software program Tableau.

In Shifting Neighborhoods: How Boston’s Jewish Communities Moved, 1850-2000, Trouerbach created a series of maps and explanations plotting the Jewish community’s decade-by-decade migration within and out of Boston. From Trouerbach’s visualizations, a clear picture emerges of the Jewish community’s steady suburbanization. These maps and charts show the movement of Jews outward, from the North End to the West End, into newer suburbs eastward into East Boston and Chelsea, and westward into Brookline. Most significantly they reveal the steady founding of new synagogues progressively southward in the city, first in the South End, then Roxbury, then Dorchester, then Mattapan (which was at the time part of Dorchester). As Trouerbach points out, Jews began

leaving the city, including fairly newly established neighborhoods, in significant numbers beginning in the 1930s, well before government engineered redlining in the late 1960s had a devastating effect on the remaining Jewish community in the southern part of the city. (Read Trouerbach’s perspective below.)

What I love about this ongoing project is how it will grow as students create new exhibits in different classes focusing on the digital history of the Jews of Boston. For example, Nate Gillin, a student in my spring 2021 class “Jews in the Modern World,” created a digital story-map called Boston’s Jewish Advocate: A Visual History of a Publishing Landmark. Gillin constructed an interactive map that narrates the history of Boston’s Jewish Advocate newspaper

from its origins as a source of revenue for the city’s Jewish hospital, to its association with the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, to its role in drawing out Louis Brandeis’s Zionism, and ultimately to its fading significance. Publishing for well over a century, the Jewish Advocate was a key element of both Boston Jewish and American Zionist history, and Gillin used his own photos, as well as archival, digital, and print sources, to create this compelling exhibit.

The creativity and diligence of these phenomenal Northeastern students shines in all of these projects. I hope the public learns from and enjoys them as much as I did.

Simon Rabinovitch is Associate Professor of History and core faculty in the Jewish Studies Program.

CREATING THE DHJEWS OF BOSTON WEBSITE A STUDENT’S PERSPECTIVE

BY JASPER TROUERBACH

My project, which focused on changing Jewish communities throughout Boston’s history, was a great way to combine my Economics degree and my passion for Jewish Studies, by looking at how economics affects demographics and mobility. It was interesting to look at how the experiences of the Jewish community moved them in different ways as the city grew and to see that Jews made decisions on where to live based on economic factors, in addition to cultural and religious factors. Of course, our field trips to areas throughout old Boston were a great bonding experience, as our small group of students would walk and learn the lesser-known history of older neighborhoods like the North End, and then stick around for a slice of pizza.

In February I spoke about the project at a College of Social Sciences and Humanities admissions event showcasing undergraduate research. Being able to present this project, and speak about my experiences at Northeastern to incoming students, provided a book-end to my college career that had ended feeling slightly off, due to graduating during the COVID pandemic. The incoming students asked great questions, focusing on how to navigate college,

and how to jump into their passion project as I had. I emphasized that building a personal connection with my professors and department, as I did with Professor Rabinovitch and the whole Jewish Studies Program, was the key to bringing my interests into my work. When our class began, none of us knew what we would focus on, and it was by learning research and visualization tools that I was interested in, as well as bringing in experience from my co-ops, that I started to see my path forward. Professor Rabinovitch and I went back and forth on design and scope, and he always pushed me to look at the larger picture (surprise, surprise, the Jews of Boston can only be properly understood by looking through the broader lens of Jews in Massachusetts). I truly felt that in that class students and the professor were peers collaborating together and I consider it one of many highlights of my time at Northeastern University.

Jasper Trouerbach graduated Northeastern in December ’20 with a degree in Economics and minors in Jewish Studies and International Affairs.

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RECENT LIBRARY PURCHASES CELEBRATE THE DIVERSITY OF THE JEWISH EXPERIENCE

BY DEBRA MANDEL

During the pandemic, Northeastern University’s library added new Jewish Studies books to its collection focusing on a broad range of topics and historical periods. I selected titles based on recommendations and reviews, including those from the Jewish Book Council and the Jewish Women’s Archives. I want to thank Deborah Levisohn Stanhill, Jewish Studies’ Administrative Specialist, for her engaging conversations about some of these books and her insights about emerging areas of research and scholarship in the department, such as diversity, equity and inclusion. Deborah also sent me H-NET updates for material I may not have discovered otherwise.

During the year I expanded the Jewish Studies Guide to better highlight collections and websites.

Here are seven recommended e-book titles. Each book is linked to the library’s catalog page; from there log in with your University credentials. For a complete list of new titles use this link.

• Danon, Dina. The Jews of Ottoman Izmir: A Modern History. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020. “Through the voices of both beggars on the street and mercantile elites, shoe-shiners and newspaper editors, rabbis and housewives, this book argues that it was new attitudes to poverty and class, not Judaism, that most significantly framed this Sephardi community’s encounter with the modern age.”

• Eisenfeld, Susan. Wandering Dixie: Dispatches from the Lost Jewish South. Columbus, OH: Mad Creek Books, 2020. “A Jewish Yankee journeys through the American South to explore the lesser-known Jewish culture, music, food, and history of the region; she engages with the civil rights movement and legacy of the Civil War and reckons with a changed perspective on her place in American history.”

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• Gad, Mara. The Color of Love: A Story of a MixedRace Jewish Girl. Chicago, IL: Bolden, 2019. “A memoir about a mixed-race Jewish woman who chooses to help her Great-Aunt Nette after she develops Alzheimer’s, a disease that erases Nette’s prejudices, allowing Mara to develop a relationship with the woman who shunned her in youth.”

• Ivester, Jo. The Outskirts of Hope: A Memoir of the 1960s Deep South. Berkeley, CA: She Writes Press, 2015. “Ivester uses journals left by her mother, as well as writings of her own, to paint a vivid, moving, and inspiring portrait of her Jewish family’s experiences living and working in an all black Mississippi town during the height of the 1960’s civil rights movement.”

• Limonic, Laura. Kugel and Frijoles: Latino Jews in the United States. Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press, 2019. “Kugel and Frijoles offers new insight with which to understand the diversity of Latinos, the incorporation of contemporary Jewish immigrants, and the effect of U.S. ethnoracial structures for immigrant assimilation.”

• Parfitt, Tudor. Hybrid Hate: Conflations of Anti-Semitism and Anti-Black Racism from the Renaissance to the Third Reich. New York, NY, United States of America: Oxford University Press, 2020. “…From the mid-nineteenth century to the Third Reich Jews and Blacks were increasingly conflated in a racist discourse which combined the two fundamental racial hatreds of the west. While Hitler considered Jews ‘Negroid parasites’, in Nazi Germany as in Fascist Italy, through texts, laws and cartoons, Jews and Blacks were combined in the figure of the Black/Jew, the mortal foe of the Aryan race.”

• Rifkind, Donna. The Sun and Her Stars: Salka Viertel and Hitler’s Exiles in the Golden Age of Hollywood. New York: Other Press, 2020. “The little-known story of screenwriter Salka Viertel, whose salons in 1930s and 40s Hollywood created a refuge for a multitude of famous figures who had escaped the horrors of World War ll. Hollywood was created by its “others”; that is, by women, Jews, and immigrants.”

It has been great getting to know some of you over the years! Happy reading.

Debra Mandel retired in July 2021 from Northeastern, where she was Director of the Recording Studios at the University Library and the Jewish Studies Librarian, as well as a member of the Jewish Studies Advisory Board and the Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee. Please see page 13 for a tribute to Mandel.

DEBRA MANDEL, LAUREL LEFF AND LORI LEFKOVITZ

A TRIBUTE TO DEBRA MANDEL

BY LAUREL LEFF

Debra Mandel has been the perfect person to serve with on a committee. I joined Northeastern’s Holocaust Awareness Committee in 2010. Debra had already been a member for two decades. During our decade together, Debra always volunteered for what she could do, and then did it, cheerfully and well. She never seemed to take a side and yet always made her views known. She made time for meetings, and could be counted on to attend the often elaborate and numerous events that constituted Holocaust Awareness Week. When we had a question, she provided the answer, links to the appropriate information appearing in mailboxes seemingly before the inquiry was finished. Debra has been committed to the committee’s mission and its members.

Debra has been the perfect person to work with on a project. When Jewish Studies received a small grant to digitize the library’s Holocaust Awareness Committee records and to develop a public website to accompany them, Debra of course volunteered. When a semi-finished product was dumped in her lap, she didn’t flinch or complain. She worked well with me, who had strong ideas about where the project should go, but knew nothing about the technical steps required to get there. And she worked well with a graduate student in public history, who knew lots about the technical requirements, but very little about the Holocaust.

Debra bridged the gap without us even knowing there was much of one. Without her efforts, the site would never have launched.

Debra has been the perfect person to provide help as a librarian. When I started teaching a course on America and the Holocaust, I knew I wanted to use a lot of videos and I knew Debra could help me get them. Lucky for me, Media and Screen Studies, Music and Jewish Studies were her specialties as a Northeastern librarian. She tracked down everything I wanted and found things I wanted but didn’t know that I did. It wasn’t always easy. She located an American Joint Jewish Distribution fundraising film made in 1939 about the St. Louis, the ship with 900 Jewish refugees aboard, barred from landing in Cuba. I was delighted the library obtained DVDs of all these fairly obscure films, and Debra kept making suggestions for new ones. Then COVID hit. I was teaching remotely and not able to show a single DVD. Debra immediately went into action, getting streaming versions of everything I wanted, and, more impressively, getting the library to pay for them all. Other librarians might have been able to accomplish some of this, but only Debra could accomplish all of it in her sunny, unflappable fashion.

To evoke Mary Poppins, Deb is practically perfect in every way. Which is why it is so hard to face Debra’s well-deserved, yet distressing (to her colleagues) retirement. It is hard to imagine the Holocaust Awareness Committee without her. It is hard to imagine Jewish Studies without her. It is hard to imagine Snell Library without her. It is hard to imagine Northeastern without her. She has been that integral to each of those institutions for over three decades.

We will miss her greatly and wish her the very best.

Laurel Leff is Professor of Journalism and core faculty in the Jewish Studies Program at Northeastern.

NEWS NOTES FROM THE LIBRARY The Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee digital archive at Northeastern Library is now part of the Digital Commonwealth collection of Massachusetts, as well as the Digital Public Library of America.

Congratulations!

Temple Beth Elohim in Wellesley, MA, has added a video from the Northeastern archives to their Rescuing Hope project. The project records the testimony of Temple members who are Holocaust survivors, or whose parents are survivors.

Sam Natansohn, a survivor who spoke at Northeastern four times, the last in 2000, is the father of one of their members.

Brian Greene, Head of Information Delivery and Access Services at the University Library, will be the new Jewish Studies librarian, following Debra Mandel’s retirement.

The Jewish Studies Program’s collection of video recordings from the Morton E. Ruderman Memorial Lectures are now archived on the Digital Repository Service, and we expect them to also be added to the Digital Public Library of America.

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CONGRATULATIONS TO…

FACULTY NEWS In October 2020, Lori Lefkovitz, Ruderman Professor of Jewish Studies, delivered a graduate seminar guest lecture Jewish Studies Scholarship at York University, and in May 2021 she chaired a plenary session panel at Queer Jews: A 20th Anniversary Symposium in Memory of David Shneer: Queer Jews: A 20th Anniversary Symposium.

“Fighting Prejudice and Absorbing Refugees from Nazism: The National Committee for Resettlement of Foreign Physicians, 1939-1945,” co-authored with Robert E. Schoen, MD, The Annals of Internal Medicine, May 18, 2021. _________

Professor Lefkovitz contributed to two books: “In the Spaces Between,” chapter for multimedia conversation, Qorbanot, edited by Alisha Kaplan and Toby Kahn, SUNY Press, 2020.

“On Pivoting,” Creating Under COVID, Judy Baumel-Schwartz, ed., The Arnold and Leona Finkler Institute of Jewish Research, 2020, p. 82. Ebook: www. ourboox.com/books/creatingunder-covid/ _________ Well Worth Saving: American Universities’ Life and Death Decisions on Refugees from Nazi Europe by Laurel Leff, Professor of Journalism and core faculty in Jewish Studies, was a Finalist for a 2020 National Jewish Book Award.

Professor Leff published the following: “The New York Times Nazi Correspondent,” Tablet Magazine, June 3, 2021.

“Championing Humanity, Overlooking Atrocity: Edward R. Murrow and the Holocaust,” American Journalism, Fall 2020 37:4, 419-449.

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In April, Simon Rabinovitch, Associate Professor of History and core faculty in Jewish Studies, delivered the 2021 Ruth and Phil Sokolof Lecture in Israel and Jewish Studies at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. Professor Rabinovitch spoke over two days about Israel’s debate on its nation-state law, and about his current book, Religious Freedom and the Jews: Collective Rights in Modern States.

Professor Rabinovitch contributed an article to Haaretz on how a court case on “who is a Jew” continues to reverberate in Israel.

Bill Miles, Professor of Political Science and affiliated faculty in Jewish Studies, has published several pieces: “Open ‘Secrets’ and Uncomfortable Truths: Druze, Jews and Israel’s New Nationality Law,” Anthropology Now 12:3 (2021), pp. 56-63.

“The Unconscionable Abandonment of Israel’s Druze,” The Wisdom Daily, August 4, 2020.

“Other: Ashkenazi, Reflections on the 2020 Census,” The Wisdom Daily, October 30, 2020.

“Who Is An African Jew?” Book review of Noah Tamarkin’s Genetic Afterlives: Black Jewish Indigeneity in South Africa, Current History 120:825 (2021), pp. 200-202.

“Les Juifs de Madagascar,” Juifs d’Ailleurs. Diasporas oubliée, identités singulières, Edith Bruder, ed., Paris: Albin Michel, 2020, pp. 322-325.

Professor Miles has also offered several adult education lectures in the Boston area.

He also contributed to an online conference in January on digital Jewish studies, #DHJewish - Jewish Studies in the Digital Age, based on his digital history class and the resultant student projects. (See page 10.)

Professor Rabinovitch’s 2014 book, Jewish Rights, National Rites, has recently been published in Russian translation as part of the New Literary Observer’s Historia Rossica series, with a new introduction by scholar Valerii Dymshits.

2021 Ruderman Scholar Morgan Knight Morgan Knight ’22 is a third-year student majoring in Political Science and minoring in Jewish Studies, Law & Public Policy, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

After using a Jewish or civil rights lens in many of her courses and co-ops, including serving as a TA for Political Science Professor Candice Delmas, and a co-op at the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, Knight realized that minoring in Jewish Studies would allow her to synthesize many of her interests and coursework. Her major goal within Jewish Studies is to work towards a nation-wide mandate for Holocaust Education in high schools, and to investigate the intersections of Jewish thought, feminism, and social justice.

Involved in Hillel and the Jewish Student Union, Knight will be a full-time intern with the Anti-Defamation League of New England during the fall of 2021. She plans to pursue a legal career focused on civil rights and combatting anti-Semitism.

MORGAN KNIGHT ’22

2021-2022 Gideon Klein Award winner Zach Richmond Zachary Richmond ’22 has been awarded the 2021–2022 Gideon Klein Award.

He is a 5th year student in the Music Industry program in the College of Arts, Media and Design. He has focused his curriculum and co-ops on the field of music rights and representation. He is also a drummer and participates in various ensembles at Northeastern such as Jazz Ensemble and Fusion Ensemble.

Richmond’s Gideon Klein project will be conducting research on the Nazi Party’s ban of, and subsequent use of, jazz rhythm and music for its own propaganda purposes. He will investigate the idea that it sought out and used this music because of its connection to a free identity, thus imposing a false sense of freedom amongst its victims. He will present his project during Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week 2022.

ZACHARY RICHMOND ’22

And to: Yael Sheinfeld ’21, 2019-2020 Gideon Klein Scholar, on being named one of the Huntington 100 at Northeastern. Sponsored by the Office of Student Life, the Huntington 100 honors outstanding students for achievements which are commensurate with the university’s mission, ideals, values, and Academic Plan.

See page 4 for Sheinfeld’s Gideon Klein project.

Jasper Trouerbach on his graduation from Northeastern. Trouerbach majored in Economics with minors in Jewish Studies and International Affairs. See page 11.

Debra Mandel, Director, Recording Studios at the University Library, member of the Jewish Studies Advisory Board, and longtime member of the Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee, on her retirement from the University. Debra’s portfolio at the University Library included the Jewish Studies Program. Please see pages 12–13 for more.

Professor Bill Miles who was selected as a Fulbright Global Scholar, for a comparative study of public and private efforts to address the “brain drain” in three countries — India, Israel, and Morocco — while also examining the ties, ancient and modern, effected between these three countries through Jewish migration, and what may be learned towards reversing the brain drain.

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LOOKING FORWARD… The Jewish Studies Program has a full slate of co-curricular events planned for the 2021–2022 academic year. Aligning with Northeastern’s emphasis on race, equity, and inclusion, we will be highlighting the diversity of Jews and the Jewish experience, with a Morton E. Ruderman Memorial Lecture Series, entitled Colors, Cultures, and Flavors of the Jews. The first lecture will be in October.

Professors Jonathan Kaufman and Ted Landsmark have created an Open Classroom course for this fall, Repairing a Divided America, which will in part deal with anti-Semitism and with the Black-Jewish relationship in America, as well as larger issues of race, racism, and minority experiences in America. The Open Classroom model is a cross-disciplinary weekly seminar with a guest speaker component open to the public. We anticipate that several of our guests for the Ruderman series will be part of

LET’S CONNECT

this course. The course will be an elective for the Jewish Studies minor.

The Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee is looking forward to welcoming Menachem Kaiser, author of the new book Plunder, on December 1. This event will be co-sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, and will be part of an Open Classroom panel discussion on the issue of reparations.

Also in development for this coming year is an Israel Studies Lecture and the Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week, both in the spring.

The academic year will culminate with a Dialogue of Civilizations program to Israel/ Palestine led by Professors Lori Lefkovitz and Simon Rabinovitch, and including a multi-day visit to the Arava Institute.

Further details are forthcoming. Please watch our website, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for updates.

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DIRECTOR Lori Hope Lefkovitz ADMINISTRATIVE SPECIALIST Deborah Levisohn Stanhill 617.373.7045 jewishstudies@northeastern.edu northeastern.edu/jewishstudies 360 Huntington Avenue 450 Renaissance Park Boston, MA 02115

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