SUPPORT JEWISH STUDIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
The Center for Jewish Studies has been able to grow through generous
gifts from community members who recognize the importance of
Jewish scholarly inquiry and dialogue. Your contribution will help
provide scholarships to Jewish studies students, support our lecture
series and academic programs, help bring distinguished scholars to
the University of Minnesota campus and the community, and ensure
the continued growth of the CJS. Please show
your support by making a gift to the center today.
Gifts by mail may be sent to (make out checks to U of M Foundation
with “Center for Jewish Studies” on the subject line):
Center for Jewish Studies
University of Minnesota Foundation
PO Box 860266
Minneapolis, MN 55486-0266
To fnd out more about how you can support
Jewish Studies at the University of Minnesota,
contact Peter Rozga in the CLA Ofce of Institutional
Advancement, rozga001@umn.edu or 612-624-2848.
Thank you for your vital support.
©2024 Regents of the University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota is an equal opportunity educator and employer.
COMMUNITY LECTURE SERIES 2024-2025
Center for Jewish Studies
University of Minnesota
216 Pillsbury Drive S.E.
Room 251
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Dr. Natan Paradise, Director
Dr. Renana Schneller, Director of Hebrew Language Instruction
The Center for Jewish Studies is a premier center for scholarship,
education, and dialogue about Jewish history and culture. With
20 faculty members, the center is an intellectual hub for scholars
from diverse felds. Home to an undergraduate program in Jewish
studies, the center sponsors classes and conferences, supports
emerging scholars, partners with the community on cultural
activities, and brings to the community outstanding scholarship in
the feld of Jewish Studies.
The University of Minnesota Center for Jewish Studies is
pleased to present its 22nd Annual Community Lecture
Series, hosted by Minnesota JCC, in cooperation with
Adath Jeshurun Congregation, Bet Shalom Congregation,
Beth El Synagogue, Beth Jacob Congregation,
Congregation Darchei Noam, Mayim Rabim Congregation,
Mount Zion Temple, Sharei Chesed Congregation, Shir
Tikvah, Temple of Aaron and Temple Israel. Join us as
writers and scholars from varied felds address intriguing
questions relevant to the Jewish experience today.
Visit our website for more about our programs
and for bios of our distinguished faculty: jwst.umn.edu
To receive announcements of programs and events on campus and
in the community, please write to jwst@umn.edu to join our email list.
Faculty:
Patricia Ahearne-Kroll
Stephen Ahearne-Kroll
Shir Alon
Natalie Belsky
Bruno Chaouat
Michael Cherlin, emeritus
Gary B. Cohen, emeritus
Kate Dietrich, afliate
Sheer Ganor
Michelle Hamilton
Amy Kaminsky, emerita
Ronald R. Krebs
Hanne Løland Levinson
Bernard M. Levinson
Michael Lower
Alex Lubet
Leslie Morris
Rick McCormick, emeritus
Karen Painter
Jonathan Paradise, emeritus
Natan Paradise
Riv-Ellen Prell, emerita
Andrew Scheil
Renana Schneller
Daniel Schroeter
Melissa Harl Sellew, emerita
Rotem Tamir
Rachel Trocchio
Meyer Weinshel, visiting
Gifts also may be
facebook.com/JWSTumn
Marial Coulter, Outreach Coordinator • jwst@umn.edu
made online at
https://cla.umn.edu/
jewish-studies/about/support
Events are free
and open to the public.
For the beneft of those who
cannot attend, each Community
Lecture is recorded.
Please allow two weeks for
the most recent lecture to be
uploaded. Videos may be viewed
at:
This Lecture Series is part of
the Center’s investment in the
community, creating a bridge
between the University and
community members who share
an interest in the feld of Jewish
Studies. We hope you will attend
our lectures in person when
possible and continue to watch
online whenever you like. We
invite you to share the link
to these lectures with others you
know who are also interested
in Jewish Studies.
Jewface, Secret
Handshakes, and Everything
in Between: Performing
Jews Performing Jewish
Natan Paradise,
University of Minnesota
Tuesday, December 10, 2024 • 7:30 pm
Minnesota JCC Capp Center
1375 St. Paul Ave., St. Paul
Jews in America have routinely, even refexively, turned
to humor in navigating their identity. This talk explores
how Jewish comedians have done so on stage, screen,
and in print, publicly enacting but also modeling—
for Jewish and non-Jewish audiences—the varying
strategies Jews have turned to in fguring out how to be
both Jewish and American. Those strategies have varied
considerably from the earliest decades of the twentieth
century until today, ranging from openly performing
“Jewish” and all the complicated relationships to
stereotypes that implies, to trying to hide Jewish
identity from everyone except other Jews. This lecture
will survey that history, with plenty of comic examples,
and with particular attention to gendered diferences
in strategy as Jews in America tried to negotiate the
complicated identity we call “Jewish.”.
Natan Paradise directs the Center for Jewish Studies
at the University of Minnesota. He teaches courses in
Jewish history and cultures, Jewish American literature,
and Jewish humor, in addition to his research and writing
on the American Jewish experience, antisemitism, and
strategies for advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion
that are both efective and truly inclusive. He regularly
serves as an invited speaker to local, national, and
international audiences on antisemitism and DEI.
Co-sponsors:
Department of Classical Near Eastern Religions
& Cultures, Department of English, Department
of History
Jewish Identity, Genetics,
& Indigeneity: Remapping
Jewish Histories & Futures
Noah Tamarkin,
Cornell University
Wednesday, November 13, 2024 •7:30pm
Minnesota JCC Sabes Center
4330 Cedar Lake Rd S., Minneapolis
This talk explores questions about Jewish identity
through ethnographic research with Lemba people,
a group of Black South Africans who in the 1980s and
1990s participated in genetic studies that aimed to
demonstrate their Jewishness. The studies sparked
international interest among Jewish people about the
possibilities of connecting with Lemba people based
on a shared Jewishness. At the same time, the studies
ofered Lemba people new ways to frame their Jewish
identity that instead centered their simultaneous
identities as Black indigenous South Africans. This talk
shows how Lemba Black Jewish indigenous identity can
provide openings through which we might rethink and
ultimately remap Jewish histories and futures.
Noah Tamarkin is an associate professor of Anthropology
and Science & Technology Studies at Cornell University
and a research associate at the Wits Institute for Social
and Economic Research (WISER) at University of the
Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. His book
Genetic Afterlives: Black Jewish Indigeneity in South Africa
(Duke University Press, 2020) received the 2022 Jordan
Schnitzer Prize in Social Science, Anthropology, and
Folklore from the Association for Jewish Studies.
Co-sponsors:
Department of Anthropology, Department of
History, Institute for Global Studies, Department
of Sociology, Center for Race, Indigeneity,
Disability, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Jay
Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies at the
University of St. Thomas
America’s Fight Over Israel:
Where Did It Come From?
Where is it Going?
Eric Alterman,
Brooklyn College
Wednesday, October 30, 2024 • 7:30 pm
Minnesota JCC Sabes Center
4330 Cedar Lake Rd S., Minneapolis
American views of Israel, especially American Jewish
views of Israel, are in a period of transformation. This has
happened before. The Zionist movement founded by
Theodore Herzl was initially opposed by most American
Jews but supported by many Christians. This changed
in the 1920s and was completely transformed by the
Holocaust and by the creation of the state of Israel in
1948. It changed again in 1967 when Israel became the
focal point of American Jewish identity and Israel rose
to become a key issue in US politics. As Israel became
an occupying power, and most recently with its battles
with the Palestinians in the West Bank and especially
Gaza, the intensity of the fght over Israel has increased,
especially on America’s campuses. This lecture will seek
to give historical context for the arguments we have
over Israel and ofer some tentative suggestions about
where they may go in the future.
Eric Alterman is Distinguished Professor of English,
Brooklyn College, CUNY. He has served as a senior
fellow of the Center for American Progress, the World
Policy Institute, and The Nation Institute, and a Media
Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a
Schusterman Foundation Fellow at Brandeis University,
and a Fellow of the Society of American Historians.
A regular columnist and contributor to the most
prominent media outlets, Alterman is the author of
twelve books, including We Are Not One: A History of
America’s Fight Over Israel (Basic Books, 2022).
Co-sponsors:
Department of English, Institute for Global
Studies, Department of History, Hubbard
School of Journalism and Mass Communication,
Department of Political Science, Department of
Sociology
This series is made possible
by a generous gift
IN MEMORY OF
JULIA K. & HAROLD SEGALL
The Dreyfus Afair and the
Transformation of Jewish
Identity
Maurice Samuels,
Yale University
Sunday, February 9, 2025 • 4:00 pm
Minnesota JCC Capp Center
1375 St. Paul Ave., St. Paul
In 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish ofcer in the French
army, was falsely accused of selling military secrets to
Germany. After a hasty court martial and humiliating
degradation ceremony, he was sent to Devil’s Island
to serve a brutal life sentence. Over the next twelve
years, the Dreyfus Afair transformed French society,
leading to an outpouring of antisemitism. The Afair
also transformed the nature of Jewish identity, changing
how Jews saw their place in the world and their relation
to other Jews. This talk explores Jewish reactions to
the Afair in diferent national contexts, with particular
attention to the efect of the Afair on Jewish political
ideologies. With antisemitism once again on the rise,
the Dreyfus Afair has much to teach us about the causes
of antisemitic hatred, but also about the ways that
antisemitism can be resisted.
Maurice Samuels is the Betty Jane Anlyan Professor of
French at Yale University, where he chairs the French
Department and directs the Yale Program for the
Study of Antisemitism. A recipient of the Guggenheim
Fellowship and the Cullman Center Fellowship at the
New York Public Library, he is the author of fve books,
including most recently Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the
Center of the Afair, published by Yale University Press in
2024.
Co-sponsors:
Department of French & Italian, Department
of German, Nordic, Slavic & Dutch, Center
for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, Institute
for Global Studies, Department of History,
Department of Political Science
Queer Jews: The Struggle
for Judaism’s Straight Soul
Orit Avishai,
Fordham University
Thursday, March 27, 2025 • 7:30 pm
Minnesota JCC Capp Center
1375 St. Paul Ave., St. Paul
In times of social upheaval, how do observant Jewish
communities decide who’s in and who’s out? What
happens when rules of belonging are challenged by
marginalized groups of Jews? This talk considers these
questions through the experiences of queer orthodox
Jews in Israel. Until recently, LGBTQ+ Orthodox Jews
could not imagine embracing their sexual or gender
identity and staying within the Orthodox fold. But
within the span of about two decades, Orthodox
LGBTQ+ people forged social circles and communities
and became visible. This talk ofers the compelling story
of how they created an efective social movement and
rewrote what it means to be Orthodox, pointing to
broader lessons about Jewish identity and community
to be drawn from their struggles.
Orit Avishai is a Professor of Sociology and Women’s,
Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Fordham University,
where she is afliated with the Center for Jewish Studies.
The author of Queer Judaism: LGBT Activism and the
Remaking of Jewish Orthodoxy in Israel (2023), she studies
how Orthodox Jews negotiate with Jewish frameworks
that regulate gender, sexuality, and desire. As part of
a study of religious freedom as a locus of 21st-century
culture wars, she is now writing about Yeshiva University
students’ attempts to start a pride club on their campus.
Co-sponsors:
Department of Anthropology,, Department of
Classical and Near Eastern Religions & Cultures,
Department of Sociology, Center for Race,
Indigeneity, Disability, Gender & Sexuality
Studies, Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious
Studies at the University of St. Thomas
Jews of Color: One Term and
Many Communities
Samira Mehta,
University of Colorado Boulder
Thursday, January 30, 2025 • 7:30 pm
Minnesota JCC Capp Center
1375 St. Paul Ave., St. Paul
Jews of color are much in the Jewish news. We hear
about how there are a lot of Jews of color—more than
we knew! We hear about how that is wrong—there
are not so many Jews of color after all! We hear that
politically, they are to the left of the Jewish community.
We hear that they experience racism within the Jewish
community. But who are Jews of color? This talk explains
the history of the term Jews of color; the wide array of
racial, cultural, and life experiences of the people we
call Jews of color; and touches on some criticisms with
the term Jews of color. After the talk, we will have a
conversation about how to make Jewish spaces more
welcoming to a diverse range of Jewish experiences..
Samira K. Mehta is the Director of Jewish Studies and
an Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies
at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is the author
of the National Jewish Book Award fnalist Beyond
Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Interfaith Family in the
United States (University of North Carolina Press, 2018);
a book of personal essays, The Racism of People Who
Love You (Beacon Press, 2023); and God Bless the Pill:
Contraception and Sexuality in American Religion (under
contract with University of North Carolina Press). She
is the primary investigator on a research project called
Jews of Color: Histories and Futures and is working on a
history of Jews of color in the United States over the past
100 years for Princeton University Press.
Co-sponsors:
Department of History, Hubbard School of
Journalism and Mass Communication, Institute
for Global Studies, Department of Sociology,
Center for Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender
& Sexuality Studies, Jay Phillips Center for
Interreligious Studies at the University of St.
Thomas
*NOTE 4PM*
Registration for the Center for Jewish
Studies Lecture Series is highly encouraged
to help our host this year, Minnesota JCC,
manage security details efectively and
economically. Please register individually
for each lecture you plan to attend.
The 2024-2025 Community Lecture season is dedicated to the memory of Miriam Segall, z”l
EricAltermanLecture
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NoahTamarkinLecture
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NatanParadiseLecture
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MauriceSamuelsLecture
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OritAvishaiLecture
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SamiraMehtaLecture
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