Publications and Awards
February 3, 2023
| Tamar will be using this award to conduct research for her dissertation project, which is about the transmission of memory from Holocaust survivors to their grandchildren, and from perpetrators to their grandchildren. She is interested in comparing how survivors and perpetrators spoke about their experiences during the Holocaust and the Third Reich to how grandchildren speak about their grandparents’ experiences, as well as comparing how each set of grandchildren retells and interprets their grandparents’ experiences.
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Rabbi Susan Harris ’78 (right) with Spencer Raifman (left) in Berlin Chapel on the Brandeis campus.
December 30, 2021
As director of spiritual care at Boston Children's Hospital, Rabbi Susan Harris ’78 helps kids and families withstand the trials of hospitalization and serves as a supportive advocate for young patients, like Spencer Raifman.December 28, 2021
Based on Bar Guzi's nearly finished dissertation, his article, "The Promise of Jewish Theistic Naturalism for Environmental Ethics," was published in Worldviews recently.November 30, 2021
"The inaugural recipient of the YU Center for Israel Studies’ (CIS) Leon Charney Book Award in Israel Studies is Dr. Alexander Kaye, the Karl, Harry, and Helen Stoll Assistant Professor of Israel Studies in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University for The Invention of Jewish Theocracy: The Struggle for Legal Authority in Modern Israel."
An award ceremony will take place on Thursday, December 16th, 2021 at 4:30PM via Zoom.
December 1, 2021
"SBL, with the newly constituted LGBTIQ+ Scholars and Scholarship and the Status of Women in the Profession Committee, is delighted to announce a new award: the Bernadette J. Brooten Award for Scholarship in Gender, Sexuality, and Embodiment."
November 19, 2021
Jonathan Sarna publishes "Conspiracies about a ‘catastrophic takeover’ by Jews have long been an American problem" in The Conversation.November 5, 2021
Jonathan Sarna publishes "Inside the Unraveling of American Zionism" in the New York Times Magazine.
November 5, 2021
The Association for Jewish Studies named Alexander Kaye's book, The Invention of Jewish Theocracy: The Struggle for Legal Authority in Modern Israel, a 2021 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award finalist in the category of In the category of Philosophy and Jewish Thought.The essay is a follow up to the essay that he previously produced as part of the same project, “A New Paradigm of Jewish Literacy.”
September 12, 2021
Abstract:
"This article analyzes depictions of Jewish lay people who advocate for their interests before rabbinic judges in adjudication narratives, a genre of brief case stories in the Babylonian Talmud (c. 200-550 CE). Adjudication narratives are distinguished by their portrayal of a specific judge’s hearing and ruling on the case, which grants the opportunity to portray dramatic interactions between litigants and judge. The extensive editing process of the Talmudic corpus, as well as the possibility that some of these narratives may have been composed as riffs on the same case, means it is difficult to ascertain how accurately they depict historical reality. However, narratives illustrating forum shopping, actions that change the facts of the case, interruption and finally, argumentation, each offer an opportunity to assess when and why tactics are effective for the petitioner. The stories suggest that tactics of lay advocacy are likely to be treated favorably by the Talmud’s authors when the petitioners’ actions support the authority of the judge and the traditions of rabbinic culture. Their inclusion in the Talmud also instructs future judges about the potential opportunities and challenges offered by lay people who advocate for their needs in court. Most important, perhaps, is that these adjudication narratives incorporate lay people’s concerns, and in some cases, their “backlash,” into Jewish legal reasoning, training, and tradition."
September 9, 2021
Full announcement:
"This year’s award goes to Alexander Kaye’s The Invention of Jewish Theocracy: The Struggle for Legal Authority in Modern Israel. With methodological sophistication and historical empathy, Kaye traces the rise of the belief that Jewish law should be the law of the new State of Israel. Rabbi Isaac Herzog, first chief rabbi of the State of Israel and a leader of Religious Zionism, occupies a central role in this study. Due both to its deep historical engagement with rabbinic texts, its sophistication, and the continued significance of Rabbi Herzog’s legacy within the living memory of contemporary Jewry, including Yeshiva University, we believe that Kaye’s book is most deserving of the Leon Charney Book Prize. We congratulate Alexander Kaye on this achievement and look forward to officially awarding him the prize at a Zoom event in December.
The finalist for this year’s award was Anat Helman, for her recent book, Deganyah Pinat Holivud: Tarbut Tserikhah U’Pnai B’reshit Ha-Medinah [Consumer Culture and Leisure in the Young State of Israel). Advancing the subtle argument that nostalgia for the collectivism of the Yishuv grew in the early State of Israel as its culture grew more consumerist, Helman’s book effortlessly flows between theory and fact and is built on a diverse array of primary sources. We congratulate Anat Helman and look forward to hosting her on our podcast series, YU Voices, later this fall.
Finally, congratulations to all of you on your major contributions to the field of Israel Studies."
August 24, 2021
"Coming to Terms with America examines how Jews have long 'straddled two civilizations,' endeavoring to be both Jewish and American at once, from the American Revolution to today," (Project MUSE).
August 3, 2021
Deborah E. Lipstadt, MA’72, PhD’76, H’19 will serve as a special envoy to monitor and combat anti-semitism.July 16, 2021
"By identifying biblical intertexts and parallel phrases, we can better understand the flow, the imagery, and even the core message of Eichah, Lamentations."
July 1, 2021
Szobel's Flesh of My Flesh: Sexual Violence in Hebrew Literature and Israeli Culture explores the literary history of sexual assault in Hebrew literature.July 1, 2021
Abstract:
"This article argues that medieval Arabic-speaking Jews, unlike the rabbis of Late Antiquity, adopted a comparative framework for analyzing their beliefs, practices, laws, exegetical methods, and so on as analogous to those possessed by other groups. The paradigm shift is reflected in Judeo-Arabic writings that adopt al-yahūdiyya as the name of an independent entity that is a species of a broader genus. While it might be anachronistic to call this species “Judaism” and its genus “Religion,” the Jewish adoption of an entity that enfolds many of the elements scholars identify with the category Religion marks a milestone in Jewish thought. In the context of Islamic and Christian writing in Arabic, this article focuses on Judeo-Arabic sources composed between the tenth and twelfth centuries that present al-yahūdiyya as an emic term and then turns to Hebrew sources through the fifteenth century that also reflect a comparative framework."
Within the same journal (The Journal of Religion, Vol. 101, Number 3) is a transcription of a lecture on faith and reason that was delivered by Alexander Altmann at the University of Chicago in 1961 titled, "The Encounter of Faith and Reason in the Western Tradition and Its Significance Today."