CENTER
FOR JEWISH
STUDIES
“Transmitting and
transforming Jewish
scholarship for over 40 years”
Annual Magazine
2024
t would be a gross understatement to say that this past
year, after October 7, was difficult, challenging, and end-
lessly painful for a great many people, and this was no less
true for those in the field of Jewish Studies. Across the
United States and Canada, scholars in the field have shared
one overriding experience: the hard realization that not just
the students, but many of the faculty and administrators do
not understand the complexity of Jewish identity, know
next to nothing about antisemitism, its history and tropes,
and when it comes to the history of Israel/Palestine and the
ongoing conflict, operate in a factual and historical vacuum.
All of which means that Jewish studies programs
are more important than ever because it is our mission to
educate about these things. When confronted with totalizing
and dehumanizing narratives--and no one “side” is the sole purveyor of these--that deny complexity and
prefer polemic over nuance, what we, as scholars and teachers of Jewish studies, can offer instead is
critical thinking based on a foundation of actual knowledge.
The good news at the University of Minnesota: there have been many who are willing to learn
and who have been responsive to feedback. From administrators who revised their language in response
to critique, to the Office of Equity and Diversity that in response to detailed feedback heavily revised—
not once but twice--their proposed trainings intended to address the on-campus protests and the
antisemitism as well as Islamophobia that became attached to them, to multiple units on campus that
agreed to host educational seminars on the complexity of Jewish identity and the history of antisemitism,
there are partners on campus who want to learn more themselves and who support our educational
mission.
I remain optimistic about the future of the Center for Jewish Studies and its indispensable role on
campus and within the broader community. I hold onto my optimism because I am an educator, one who
believes people can do the amazing: gain a significant degree of knowledge about a subject they knew
nothing about in a semester of only fifteen weeks, or even more impressively, unlearn a great deal about
a subject that they thought they knew well and then learn that subject again more accurately.
To support greater learning on campus and off, and in response to the rhetoric of this past year, our
upcoming 2024-2025 Community Lecture Series is devoted in its entirety to exploring the complexity of
Jewish identity. As we have framed the series:
Jewish identity is complex. It is diverse. And yet this past year, Jews experienced having their
identity flattened and defined for them–mostly from outside but also from within the Jewish
community– in ways most (especially in the U.S.) have never before experienced. Many struggle
to know how to respond. This lecture series is therefore focused on basic questions about Jewish
identity: who, what, where, how? By exploring the diversity within the Jewish community as well
as the forces that shape Jewish identity, this lecture series aims to engage with fundamental
questions and assumptions about Jewishness that nevertheless shape public rhetoric, feed
antisemitism, and inform responses post-October 7.
Eric Alterman will be speaking about “America’s Fight over Israel,” exploring the evolving role Zionism has
played in American Jewish identity and in American politics. Noah Tamarkin will address “Jewish Identity,
Genetics, and Indigeneity: Remapping Jewish Histories and Futures.” Samira Mehta will teach about
FROM THE DIRECTOR
Natan Paradise
“Jews of Color: One Term and Many Communities.” Maurice Samuels will speak on “The Dreyfus Affair
and the Transformation of Jewish Identity.” Orit Avishai will share her scholarship on “Queer Jews: The
Struggle for Judaism’s Straight Soul,” and I will be exploring in “Performing Jews Performing Jewish” how
Jews in America have routinely, even reflexively, turned to humor in navigating their identity. If you did
not receive a brochure, contact our office to get on our mailing list and visit our website, jwst.umn.edu, to
get information about all our events.
We invite you to show your support for reasoned discourse and for the ongoing role that the
Center for Jewish Studies plays in educating multiple communities by coming to as many of our events
as possible. And if you wish to show your support in other ways, know that your contributions make a
difference. Thank you to all our generous donors who have helped support and sustain our programs thus
far, and thank you in advance to all of you who are able to join their ranks.
With gratitude and wishes for a more peaceful year,
Natan Paradise
Director of the Center for Jewish Studies
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Two-Day Symposium on Hebrew Printing .... 3-4
Undergraduate Student Spotlight ................... 5-6
Scholarship Winners ................................................. 7
Graduate Student Spotlights ............................ 8-10
Faculty News & Notes ..................................... 11-13
Alumni News ............................................................... 14
In Memorium: Miriam Segall ................................ 15
Center for Jewish Studies Donors ............. 16-17
Faculty Year in Review .................................... 18-22
Building Housing CJS to be Renamed Back Page
To make a gift, scan the QR code below,
or see page 17 to learn more about our
funding priorities.
https://z.umn.edu/CenterforJewishStudies
Cover image: Exhibit
display (with Noam Sienna)
at the “Letters that Link
Us”symposiusm cohosted by the
Center for Jewish Studies
April 10-11, 2024
IN THIS EDITION
n April 10-11, 2024, the Center for Jewish Studies co-hosted an interdisciplinary symposium on
Hebrew printing, “Letters That Link Us: Histories and Mysteries of Hebrew Type.” Noam Sienna (PhD
Jewish History 2020; currently a postdoctoral fellow, University of Toronto) organized the symposium as
a Junior Fellow in the Andrew Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at the Rare Book School
(UVA), along with co-organizer and Twin-Cities-based artist Robyn Awend. The symposium also had
support at the University of Minnesota from the Center for Austrian Studies, the Center for Premodern
Studies, the Program in Religious Studies, and the UMN Libraries and The Upper Midwest Jewish Archives,
as well as support from the Minneapolis Jewish Federation, Open Book and the Minnesota Center for
Book Arts, and the Hidden Stories project (University of Toronto). The event included seven panels, a
keynote lecture, a theatrical performance, an interactive printing workshop, and an accompanying gallery
exhibition.
Jewish printing with movable type began not long after Gutenberg, with the first Hebrew books
appearing in Rome around the year 1470. By 1600, there were dozens of Jewish presses operating across
Europe and the Ottoman Empire. As explored at the symposium, the world of “Hebrew printing” includes
not only texts in the Hebrew language, but a wide variety of Jewish vernaculars written in Hebrew
script, such as Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, and many others. Today, physical Hebrew type is still being
designed, manufactured, collected, and used by book artists and letterpress printers around the world.
CJS CO-HOSTS
Two-Day Symposium on Hebrew Printing
Noam Sienna printing symposium
keepsakes with vintage Hebrew
type on a foot-treadle Golding
Pearl press (ca. 1910), previously
owned by Frank Schochet, who
ran Schochet Press in Minneapolis
from 1926 until 1965.
This symposium aimed to explore questions both historical — “how was Hebrew printing shaped
by collaborations, conflicts, and contacts across religious, ethnic, and linguistic boundaries?” — and
contemporary — “How can the challenges and joys of working with Hebrew type today in all its forms
inspire creativity in contemporary book arts?” The gathering brought together an international slate of
vibrant speakers, representing a diversity of perspectives, institutions, disciplines, genders, ages, and
affiliations, and the event was well-attended by local community members. Topics covered by the speakers
included Hebrew printing and type design in the European Renaissance; using digital tools to catalogue
and recreate historical Yiddish typefaces; the influence of modernist ideologies on 20th-century Hebrew
type design; and the work of Jewish printers past and present from across Europe, Israel, and North
America, including even Minnesota!
In his opening remarks, Sienna observed:
We are all here because we know that books are both material and social objects. They are brought
into being through social processes, through networks of social connection; they live within the
communities who read, circulate, and collect them. Their lives, like our own, are shaped by many
factors, great and small; and like us, they form relationships with others who came before and
after… Hebrew printing is and has always been rooted in an intersectional space: in movement
between local and global connections, in creativity between historical and contemporary contexts,
and in collaboration between Jewish and non-Jewish communities. Our challenge over the next
two days will be to hold all these tensions and paradoxes as we explore the plural histories and
mysteries of the letters that link us.
Combining academic presentations with experiential activities, the symposium culminated with a one-
person excerpted performance of Mikhl Yashinsky’s new Yiddish play about printing, Di Psure Loyt Khaym,
and a hands-on printing workshop at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, in which participants took
home souvenirs that they hand-printed themselves on vintage presses. As one participant observed, “It
was a perfect mix of academic and artistic perspectives. Very inspiring and it made me look further than
‘just’ the academic field. I wasn’t aware that there are so many people interested in Hebrew Typography.”
Attendees were uniformly enthusiastic about the programming, and there was strong encouragement
toward making this an annual event.
Mikhl Yashinsky, in costume as Khaym Einspruch, performing
a monologue from his Yiddish play Di Psure Loyt Khaym (The
Gospel According to Chaim).
Ryken Farr is a 3rd year undergraduate in History and Jewish Studies, with
a focus in Holocaust history. He is the recipient of the Leo and Lillian Gross
Scholarship in Jewish Studies for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 academic
years. Ryken spent this past August working with the Nathan and Theresa
Berman Upper Midwest Jewish Archives at the University of Minnesota, and
he is continuing work as a student worker with the University of Minnesota
Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
(My Yiddish Summer)
A Short shpiel of my Time in the
Steiner Program
During June and July, 2024, I was able to take part in the Steiner Summer Yiddish Program at the
Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. I was one of nineteen students who were invited to
study Yiddish intensively over the course of seven weeks.
The Steiner Program is an intensive language-learning program where students cover a year’s
worth of Yiddish curriculum over the course of two months. Through living, eating, and studying
together, Steiner Program students are immersed in Yiddish language and culture and are meant to
come out of the program with not only skills in Yiddish language, but an appreciation and knowledge of
Yiddish history and culture. I can confidently say that after my time in the program, the Steiner Program
succeeds in these goals.
It was amazing to have been able to participate in the Steiner Program this summer. During the
program, my peers and I attended talks given by visiting Yiddish scholars, translators, and curators
from the Yiddish Book Center. We were invited to participate in workshops ranging from behind-the-
scenes looks at the Yiddish Book Center to workshops in Yiddish song and dance. Through all of these
opportunities, in addition to more traditional classes in language and cultural study, the Steiner Program
ensured that we students received a well-rounded and varied exposure to everything Yiddish has to
offer.
Ryken Farr
Ryken Farr Studies at the Yiddish Book Center
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT SPOTLIGHTS
I really enjoyed the intensive nature of the Steiner Program’s curriculum and the immersiveness
of the Program’s atmosphere. Living with a small group of extremely passionate students made the
environment a very welcoming space, and one that helped me learn a language with which I had no prior
experience. I participated in the program as a ‘Beginner’ student with one half of the cohort, with the other
half of the students participating as ‘Intermediates.’ Like me, my fellow Beginners had no previous formal
Yiddish experience, while many of the intermediate students had taken college-level Yiddish courses, or
had previously been Steiner Program Beginners.
The way that the Steiner Program was structured around these two groups helped me learn
Yiddish in a very unique way. While our two groups attended class separately, the workshops were held
with both groups at the same time. Additionally, all nineteen of us students were housed in the same
dormitory on the Hampshire College campus, across the street from the Yiddish Book Center. This meant
that while the other Beginner students and I were getting introduced to Yiddish, we were interacting with
Intermediate students who were speaking Yiddish, playing Yiddish music, and even using Yiddish in our
program group chat.
While at the beginning of the Steiner Program this overwhelmed me, as I started to learn more
Yiddish it was very rewarding to start participating in conversations around the dining hall taking place in
Yiddish. This unique learning experience came out of the immersive nature of the Program, and it would
not have been possible if we weren’t housed on campus, or if the Program were held over Zoom.
I believe that I will always look back at my time in the Steiner Program as a major step both in my
academic life and also in my personal life. Not only did I experience success in an intensive study program,
but I was also able to spend lots of time in regions I had never visited before, enjoying all of the nature and
ice cream that rural Massachusetts has to offer, and seeing lots of the country on the 20+ hours of driving
each direction to get from my home in Minneapolis to Amherst, Massachusetts.
Academically, I am so excited to have Yiddish as a research skill for future work, a skill I have already
used in work for the Upper Midwest Jewish Archives here at the U this August. I am so thankful to all of my
instructors, donors, and fellow Steiner students who helped make this summer experience so memorable,
and I can’t wait to keep studying Yiddish, using it for research, and doing all of it while listening to Klezmer
musicians like The Klezmatics and Daniel Kahn.
Find us on Social Media:
f @JWSTumn
t @JWSTumn
Yiddish Book Center
JEWISH STUDIES SCHOLARSHIP WINNERS
Supporting our excellent cohort of undergraduate and graduate students is central
to our mission. Congratulations to our 2024 award winners!
Goldenberg Prize for Outstanding Essays in Jewish Studies
Undergraduate Award:
Maria Navarre, Global Studies, minor in French. Paper title: “Divine Purpose: An Analysis of Divinity, Purpose,
and Humanity in the Babylonian and Israelite Creation Stories, The Epic of Gilgamesh, and Genesis 6 – 9.”
(Bernard Levinson, CNRC 1911.)
Graduate Award: Shared award between:
Kevin Sharpe, PhD candidate in Classical and Near Eastern Studies: Religions in Antiquity. Paper title:
“Educating Hagar: Philo on Genesis 16.” (Bernard Levinson, CNRC 8513.)
Sara Gardner, PhD candidate in Spanish and Lusaphone Literature, Cultures, and Linguistics. Paper title: “(Un)
Savory Sepharad: The Spanish Patrimonial Palate for Sephardic Memory.” (Michelle Hamilton. Published in
World History Bulletin, Vol. 39, Spring/Summer 2023).
Jonathan Paradise Modern Hebrew Study Prize
Lyla Prass, Foundations of Elementary Education, minors in Hebrew and Teaching English as a Second
Language.
The Leo and Lillian Gross Scholarship in Jewish Studies
Ryken Farr, History and Jewish studies, with minors in German and Museum and Curatorial Studies.
The Theresa and Nathan Berman Graduate Fellowship in Jewish Studies
Sara Gardner, PhD candidate in Spanish and Lusaphone Literature, Cultures, and Linguistics, in support of
travel to present papers at conferences in England and Spain, and in support of archival research at multiple
libraries in both countries in support of her dissertation, “Savoring Sepharad: Tasting and Tracing the Texts of
Medieval Sephardic Food and Identity.”
The Theresa and Nathan Berman 21st Century Graduate Fellowship in Jewish Studies
Walter Francis, PhD candidate, History, in support of travel to Paris to investigate the archival holdings at the
Alliance Israélite Universelle, as part of the research toward his dissertation, tentatively titled “(Re)building
Memory: Francophone Tunisian Jewry in the Aftermath of Vichy Rule and Nazi Occupation, 1945-1967.”
If you would like to contribute to any of these established scholarship funds or create a fund of your own, please contact
Peter Rozga in the CLA Office of Institutional Advancement, rozga001@umn.edu or 612-624-2848, or contact CJS
Director Natan Paradise parad004@umn.edu or 612-626-3149.
GRADUATE STUDENT SPOTLIGHTS
“
Tunisian Jews,” Walter
Francis writes, “hoped
to ameliorate the social
disruptions
of
World
War II and to rebuild
their communities and
remain
part
of
the
Tunisian Republic.” In his
dissertation, tentatively
titled
“(Re)building
Memory: Francophone
Tunisian Jewry in the
Aftermath of Vichy Rule
and Nazi Occupation,
1945-1967,”
Francis
(PhD
Candidate,
History,
supervised by Daniel Schroeter) focuses on the
attempts by Tunisian Jewish community leaders to
secure a place in the independent Tunisian Republic
for the Jews, in spite of the rising tide of Zionism and
Arab Nationalism.
Francis argues that by memorializing their
traumatic experiences during the Second World
War, which included occupation and imprisonment
by Nazi soldiers in forced labor camps, Tunisian
Jews expressed a communal identity that honored
both their Jewishness and their history in Tunisia.
Importantly, he notes, this hyphenated “Tunisian-
Jewish” identity was expressed in the medium of the
French language, as taught to the Tunisian Jews by
the Alliance Israélite Universelle.
To pursue this line of research, in November
Francis will be traveling to Paris, with assistance from
the Center for Jewish Studies and the Theresa and
Nathan Berman 21st Century Graduate Fellowship
in Jewish Studies, to investigate the Alliance Israélite
Universelle’s archival holdings. He writes:
It is my hope that by analyzing the pedagogy
of the AIU in the period from 1945 to
1967, when a large number of Jews were
still actively trying to negotiate a place for
themselves in the newly independent Tunisia,
I can discover more about how Tunisian Jews
were teaching their children about the Jewish
religion, their community’s history in Tunisia,
their understanding of their ties to the French
state and French culture, and the role of a
Francophone Jewish community in the Arab
Republic.
Though focused on the experiences of
Tunisian Jewry, Francis is also sensitive to the
broader implications of the historical narrative his
research is uncovering. Reflecting on the crises facing
our own world, he observes that “the Tunisian Jews’
experiences of the twentieth century give us our
opportunity to consider the intermingled effects of
major political and intellectual movements such as
colonialism, Zionism and nationalism, and studying
[the attempts of Tunisian Jewry] to rebuild their
community after the Second World War is illuminating
to many issues and questions that politicians, writers
and thinkers grapple with today.”
Walter Francis Researches Tunisian Jewry in the
Walter Francis Researches Tunisian Jewry in the
Aftermath of Nazi Occupation
Aftermath of Nazi Occupation
Walter Francis
Memorial for Tunisian
Jews killed in the Nazi
labor camp, Borgel
Cemetery, Tunis
Credit: Walter Francis
“
The Sephardic Jews constituted a key contributor to the multicultural milieu
of the medieval Iberian Peninsula,” observes Sara Gardner (PhD candidate,
Spanish and Lusaphone Literature, Cultures, and Linguistics) “and most
often, the significant contribution of the Sephardim to this cultural context
has been studied through the community’s outsize literary footprint.” But
there is more to a culture than its literary production, important though that
may be, and Gardner is studying an aspect of Sephardic textual production
that remains under-examined: food and what she identifies as “its consistent
use as a medium for the expression of identity.”
In her dissertation, written under the supervision of CJS faculty
member Michelle Hamilton and titled “Savoring Sepharad: Tasting and
Tracing the Texts of Medieval Sephardic Food and Identity,” she analyzes “the
gastronomic references in texts produced by the premodern Sephardim for
their evolving expression of Iberian Jewish identity, throughout the community’s journey from a highly
assimilated minority (10th-14th centuries) to a globally dispersed diaspora (after 1492).” In so doing,
she seeks to demonstrate that “food can be a critical means of understanding the dynamic trajectory of
this significant group within the greater Jewish diaspora – one whose scholarly analysis can enrich the
discourse on medieval Sephardic cultural expression in the fields of both the Iberian and Jewish studies.”
In the summer of 2024, Gardner traveled to England to present a paper at the International
Medieval Congress 2024 in Leeds, “Andalusi Prestige and Magical Migration: The Ritual and Diasporic
Legacy of the Sefer Ahavat Nashim,” in which she shared her research about a medieval magical-medical
manuscript from the Jewish community of Catalunya. She also participated in the Seminario ALCES 2024
in Santiago de Compostela in Spain, where she workshopped a chapter of her dissertation as part of a
seminar on the intersections of food and Iberian studies.
Between the two conferences, Gardner visited archives relevant to her research, including the
Bodleian Library in Oxford, the British Library in London, and the National Library and Library of the
Escorial Palace in Madrid. Visiting these institutions allowed her to consult and take images of key
primary source manuscripts for her remaining dissertation chapters, including collections of medieval
Hebrew poetry, Castilian moralistic literature, and early modern cooking manuals. Gardner reports
several notable finds in the British Library’s extensive collection of medieval Jewish medical and magical /
kabbalistic manuscripts, the extent of which Gardner found astonishing and notable in its own right. One,
a 16th century manuscript written in Sephardi script called Sefer HaLevanah, or The Book of the Moon,
she characterizes as “a magical/astrological/kabbalistic text on the various phases of the moon and what
to do during them.” Another, Ets Ha-da’at, or Tree of Knowledge, is a 16th century kabbalistic text from
Safed written in an Italian hand, which Gardner discovered had some similar recipes to a manuscript she
has been working on for her dissertation. Gardner observes that these are notable “not only because
they demonstrate the widespread copying, collecting, and reading of magical/medical/kabbalistic texts
throughout the medieval Jewish communities of the Mediterranean, but they also include some really
fun figural drawings that go a bit contrary to the commonly held belief that Jews did not engage in the
production of figural art, especially in the premodern period.”
Sara Gardner
Sara Gardner: Tasting and Tracing the Texts of
Sara Gardner: Tasting and Tracing the Texts of
Medieval Sephardic Food and Identity
Medieval Sephardic Food and Identity