3 minute read
Annual Ruderman Lecture
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.
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.
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.
