Past Conferences

"German Jewish Aspirations in Music and Culture in 19th and 20th Century Germany"
November 14, 2011

Sponsored by: The American Society of Jewish Music’s Jewish Music Forum; Brandeis University's Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry; Center for German and European Studies; and the  Library and Technology Services. With thanks to the Department of Music, Hebrew College.

Additional information is available.

 

“Babi Yar in History and Memory: Seventy Years after a Mass Murder”
October 5, 2011

Babi Yar was the name of a ravine on the outskirts of Kiev where the single largest mass murder of Soviet Jews occurred on September 29-30, 1941.  This symposium explores four aspects of the event through different lenses: Babi Yar in history, Soviet responses to Babi Yar after the reoccupation of Kiev by the Red Army, representations of Babi Yar in Jewish literature, and its symbolic meaning for the Russian intelligentsia.

Presented by the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry. Cosponsored by the Sarnat Center for the Study of Anti-Jewishness, the Brandeis–Genesis Institute for Russian Jewry, the Center for German and European Studies, and the Brandeis Russian Club.

Additional information is available.

 

“Measure Their History”: Antony Polonsky’s The Jews in Poland and Russia
Sept. 19, 2011

To mark the publication of Antony Polonsky’s three-volume magnum opus, this symposium considered the impact of Professor Polonsky’s work on the field of Eastern European Jewish Studies.  The program featured a panel of distinguished scholars David Engel of New York University, Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska of Marie Curie-Skfodowska University, and Adam Teller of Brown University, as well as a keynote address by Ruth Franklin, book critic and senior editor at The New Republic and author of the recently published and critically acclaimed A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction.  A short film tribute to Professor Polonsky closed the evening.

This conference was a joint project of The Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, The Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry, and The National Center for Jewish Film with support from The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and The American Association of Polish-Jewish Studies.

 

“Patronage and the Sacred Book in the Medieval Mediterranean”
October 18-19, 2010

Sacred books (including Jewish Bibles, Christian Bibles, Qur´ans, prayer books, psalters, haggadot, translations of and commentaries on Scripture, etc.) were at the center of book production for Jews, Christians and Muslims throughout the Middle Ages. This conference investigated issues in the patronage, production, circulation and consumption of sacred books in the Western Mediterranean during the High and Late Middle Ages (roughly 10th-15th Century).

 

"Muslims, Jews and the European Question: Secularity and Religious Difference in Today's Europe"
April 21, 2010

Sponsored by Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry and Facing History and Ourselves

Additional information is available.

 

"Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyady as an Educator"
April 9, 2008

45th Annual Simon Rawidowicz Memorial Lecture
Immanuel Etkes, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Harvard University

 

“Babylonia and Jerusalem: The Politics and Thought of Simon Rawidowicz”
International Symposium, Brandeis University
April 10, 2005

 

“Literary Responses to Mass Violence”
International Conference, Brandeis University
September 16-18, 2003

  • Rachel Talshir, “Love Macht Frei”
  • Antjie Krog, “South Africa: Country of My Skull”
  • Siham Daoud, “Israel”
  • Kanan Makiya, “Iraq/United States: Cruelty and Silence”
  • Boubacar Boris Diop, “Senegal: Muramb”
  • Peter Dale Scott, “Canada/US: Coming to Jakarta: A Poem about Terror”

Co-sponsors: The International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life and the Department of English and American Literature, Brandeis University; Heksherim, The Research Center for Jewish and Israeli Literature and Culture, Ben Gurion University of the Negev

 

“The Rock: Jerusalem’s Sacred Space”
March 3, 2002

Symposium, Brandeis University
Kanan Makiya, Brandeis University
Co-sponsors: The International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life and the Jacob and Libby Goodman Institute for the Study of Zionism and Israel

 

“On Interpretation: Modern Hebrew Literature”
A Junior Scholars Colloquium, Brandeis University
October 6-8, 2002

  • Professor Arnold Band, Brandeis University
  • Professor Yigal Schwartz, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
  • Sylvia Fuks Fried, Brandeis University
Co-sponsors, The Jacob and Libby Goodman Institute for the Study of Zionism and Israel, Brandeis University, and "Heksherim," The Research Center for Jewish and Israeli Culture and Literature, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

 

“Israeli Historical Revisionism from Left to Right”
February 25-26, 2001

Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011