Publications, Lectures and Awards
Publications, Lectures and Awards
May 3, 2019
Professor Bernadette J. Brooten, Kraft-Hiatt Professor of Christian Studies and Founding Director of The Feminist Sexual Ethics Project at Brandeis will be honored at a Symposium on Friday, May 3, 2019 at 1 p.m. at Brandeis University, Mandel Center for the Humanities, G3 Auditorium followed by a 2:30 p.m. reception in the Atrium of the same building.
April 17, 2019
Esther Brownsmith, NEJS PhD student, will be a Scholar in Residence at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute for the 2020 spring semester. While in residence she will work on her project, 'Inconspicuous Consumption: Conceptual Metaphors of Women as Food in the Dueteronomistic History.'"April 17, 2019
The Wexner Graduate Fellowship/Davidson Scholars Program Announces Class 32, which includes 4 of the 20 winners with ties to Brandeis University.
Wexner Fellows
Hannah Kober graduated 2016 Magna cum Laude with Highest Honors from Brandeis University with a B.A. in Judaic Studies and Linguistics, with an honors thesis on the motivations and experiences of Jewish Israeli university students pursuing Arabic studies. She served as an undergraduate representative for the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, and worked as a Research Assistant at the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education. In the fall, she will begin the Ph.D. program in Educational Linguistics with a concentration in Jewish Studies at Stanford Graduate School of Education.
Ezra Cohen graduated 2018 Summa cum Laude with Highest Honors from Brandeis University with a Bachelors' Degrees in Psychology and Near Eastern/Judaic Studies, where he wrote a senior honors thesis on the Jewish legal treatment of depressive disorders and received the Finstein Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement. He is a first-year rabbinical student at Yeshiva University's Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary.
Davidson Scholars
Molly Goldmeier and Lauren Luger are both students seeking dual degrees in the Brandeis Hornstein Program---an M.A. in Jewish Professional Leadership and an M.B.A. in Non-Profit Management at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management.
Congratulations to all!
April 9, 2019
NEJS Alum Glenn Dynner (Sarah Lawrence College), Brandeis B.A. 1993, Brandeis PhD 2002, has been awarded a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship. Scholar of East European Jewry, with a focus on the social history of Hasidism and the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment). Author of Men of Silk: The Hasidic Conquest of Polish Jewish Society, which received a Koret Publication Award and was a National Jewish Book Awards finalist. Received textual training in several Israeli yeshivas and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Additional interests include Polish-Jewish relations, Jewish economic history, and popular religion. Recipient of the Fulbright Award.
Guggenheim Fellowships are intended for individuals who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts. On April 9, 2019, the Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation approved the awarding of Guggenheim Fellowships to a diverse group of 168 scholars, artists, and writers. Appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise, the successful candidates were chosen from a group of almost 3,000 applicants in the Foundation’s ninety-fifth competition.
April 1, 2019
The Brandeis Graduate School of Arts and Sciences has awarded two 2019 University Prize Instructorships to NEJS Students.
Sarah Fein, NEJS PhD student, received an award for her course, "Gender, Sex and the Family in the Ancient Near East and Beyond," which has been assigned NEJS 129a and will be offered Spring 2020.
Maham Ayaz, NEJS PhD student, received an award for her course, "The State and the Individual" which is planned to be offered Fall 2020.
March 26, 2019
Yehudah Mirsky participated in a panel discussion at the UN Headquarters, "The Genocide Convention at 70: From Definition to Implementation" with the Raphael Lemkin Award for exemplary work in the fight against genocide recipient: Father Patrick Desbois. This event was organized by the Permanent Mission of Rwanda to the United Nations and the World Jewish Congress marking the 25th anniversary of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda where more than 800,000 people were systematically killed, overwhelmingly Tutsi but also moderate Hutu, Twa and others. On this Day, we honor those who were murdered and reflect on the suffering of those who survived.March 26, 2019
Benjamin Ravid, Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University, publishes "The Ghetto" in The Tablet as he concludes his history of the Jews of the Venetian Republic. 503 years after the first Jewish enclave was instituted in Venice, what does the word 'ghetto' mean today?March 22, 2019
Ji Min Bang, NEJS PhD student, received the 2019 Best Student Paper Award at the 2019 New England/Eastern Canada Regional Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, for his paper "Judah’s Two Bodies: The Body Politic and the Gendered Representation of the Exile in Jeremiah and Ezekiel."March 15, 2019
Celene Ibrahim's, PhD '18, first book is now available for sale. It is an edited anthology born of the conviction that open-hearted engagement across our differences is a prerequisite for healthy civic life today. From the publisher, "The collection offers inspiration to faith leaders, social-justice activists, and secular readers alike, while simultaneously providing an accessible window onto lived Islam. Taken as a whole, One Nation, Indivisible highlights principles and practices of anti-racism work, and its contributors argue for a robust vision of American pluralism. While most of the contributors reside in the United States, through their stories of encounter, they bring a global perspective and encourage us all, wherever we may be, to find ways of traversing our otherwise isolating enclaves."
Celene has also accepted a position for the fall on the faculty of Groton School teaching religious studies and ethics.
February 26, 2019
Amber C. Taylor successfully defended her dissertation entitled, "Contest and Controversy in the Creation of the Brigham Young University Jerusalem Center, 1984 - 1987." Her faculty advisors included Professors Ilan Troen, Jonathan Sarna, and David Holland from the Harvard University Divinity School. She is expected to receive her PhD in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies in May.
Amber will start her position as Historian/Writer at the History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
February 17, 2019
"What's a Nation-State for?" Yehudah Mirsky delivers Myer Lecture in Jewish Law at Cardoza Law School.February 1, 2019
Malka Z. Simkovich, PhD 2015 Brandeis, is the Crown-Ryan Chair of Jewish Studies and director of the Catholic-Jewish Studies program at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.
Discovering Second Temple Literature: The Scriptures and Stories That Shaped Early Judaism is her second book. Exploring the world of the Second Temple period (539 BCE–70 CE), in particular the vastly diverse stories, commentaries, and other documents written by Jews during the last three centuries of this period, Malka Z. Simkovich takes us to Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, to the Jewish sectarians and the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus, to the genizah in Cairo and the ancient caves that for centuries kept the secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls. As she recounts the history of Judaism during this vibrant time, she presents samplings of some of the period’s most important works and analyzes them for both known and possible meanings—illuminating the perspectives of Jewish writers, leaders, and readers in this formative era.
January 15, 2019
Elizabeth Imber, who received her BA in 2009 and MA in 2010 in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis before receiving her PhD at Johns Hopkins University in 2018, has been appointed Assistant Professor of History and the Michael and Lisa Leffell Chair in Modern Jewish History at Clark University. Elizabeth had been Assistant Professor at the College of Idaho.
Elizabeth will be presenting a Brandeis Schusterman Scholars Seminar on April 16, 2019 on "Empire of uncertainty: Zionism, British Imperialism, and the Future of the Yishuv."
January 15, 2019
Jason Lustig who received his BA in 2008 and MA in 2009 at Brandeis before going to UCLA, where he wrote a Ph.D. (2017) with David Myers has been awarded the Wasserman Prize from the American Jewish Historical Society for his article entitled, "Building a Home for the Past: Archives and the Geography of American Jewish History," 102, no. 3 (July 2018): 375-399. The prize committee wrote: "The article's creative interrogation into how ideological differences, regional considerations, and administrative practicalities shaped the ways that scholars have and continue to produce American Jewish history speaks to the core goal of this prize. It asks the journal's readers to think about the pillars of the field and the broader materiality of historiography, as it demands all historians to pay attention to the forces that condition how we research the American Jewish past.
He is currently the Harry Starr Fellow in Judaica, Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University.
Jason will be offering a Brandeis Schusterman lunchtime seminar on January 24, 2019 discussing the development of archives in Israel during the 1950s and 1960s and recent changes regarding digitization.
January 14, 2019
Golan Moskowitz, PhD, '18, has accepted the prestigious Ray D. Wolfe Postdoctoral Fellowship in Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto, 2019-2021. He is currently working to transform his PhD thesis entitled, "Wild, Outside, in the Night: Maurice Sendak, Queer American Jewishness, and the Child" into a book.January 9, 2019
Jonathan Decter, Edmond J. Safra Professor of Sephardic Studies, was the winner in the category of Sephardic Studies for his Dominion Built of Praise: Panegyric and Legitimacy Among Jews in the Medieval Mediterranean (University of Pennsylvania Press).
January 9, 2019
Lynn Kaye, Assistant Professor of Rabbinic Literature and Thought, was a finalist in the category of Scholarship for her Time in the Babylonian Talmud: Natural and Imaged Times in Jewish Law and Narrative (Cambridge University Press).
January 9, 2019
Daniel Judson, Dean of the Rabbinical School at Hebrew College (Newton), was a finalist in the category of American Jewish Studies for Pennies for Heaven: The History of American Synagogues and Money (Brandeis University Press). He received his PhD in 2015 at Brandeis University, Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies.
December 19, 2018
Professor Yehudah Mirsky participated in a panel on Progressivism, Zionism and Messianism at the Halakhah Conference at Harvard Law School, December 19-20, 2018. Presentations were made by Don Seeman (“Secular Apostasy and the Limits of Progressive Law: The Case of the Feres Mura Jews in Israel”), Ronit Irshai (“Religious Feminism, Trapped between Halakhah, Essentialism and Nationalism”), Yehudah Mirsky (“Reflections on Teleology, Change, and the Nationalization of Halakhah in the State of Israel”).December 5, 2018
The Fifth Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies
Alliance of Virtues: An Opportunity for Global Peace
Dec. 5-7, 2018, Jumeirah Etihad Towers Hotel, Abu Dhabi
by Reuven Kimelman
Some remarkable interfaith initiatives have recently been coming out of the Arab Muslim world – not least of all those led by Sheikh Abdullah Bin Bayyah, recently appointed as head of the UAE’s supreme Fatwa Council. This octogenarian Islamic scholar, a former Mauritanian Minister and Professor of Islamic Studies in Saudi Arabia, has emerged as arguably the most authoritative and impressive opponent against violent Islamist ideology in the world today.
Bin Bayyah has gone further and called for interfaith partnership to combat violence and promote peace around the world. Less than a year ago he convened Muslims, Jews, and Christians in Washington D.C. for what he termed an Alliance of Values, and he has promoted an Abrahamic “caravan of dialogue” bringing this message to wider audiences. His peace fora held in the UAE, supported by the royal family, have brought Muslim leaders and thinkers together with representatives from the Christian and Jewish worlds.
Last week’s Muslim-Christian-Jewish gathering, during Hanukah, in Abu Dhabi to deepen interreligious understanding and work together to promote peace, was also remarkable for the broadening of the non-Muslim representation, especially from the Jewish side. Rabbis from Israel, the US, Europe and Australia were given prominent roles on the programme, including yours truly, Reuven Kimelman, who spoke on “The Biblical Meaning of an Alliance of Abrahamic Faiths.”
January 2, 2019
In this Tablet Magazine article, Yehudah Mirsky explores the legacy of key events in the year Israel of Israel's founding and the impact that continues to resonate today.
"2018 was, on top of everything else, one long procession of 70th anniversaries of the raft of monumental events of 1948. Those 70-year-old decisions were critical in creating the historical reality we have been living in for two generations, and, taken together, they comprise a set of ideas about what it takes to make a decent, livable world. Looking at those anniversaries together helps us better understand how and why that world is now coming apart, and what it might take to put at least some of it back together, and maybe even move forward..."
Allyson Gonzalez has won a Fulbright Fellowship to start Fall 2019. The title of her project, as well as the tentative book title, is "Petitions of Love: Antisemitism and Modern Sephardi Citizenship," which examines the affective practices of modern Sephardi citizenship based on extensive archival research and periodicals from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Allyson completed her PhD in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis; her dissertation title was "Finding a Place for the Past: Sephardic Reconfigurations of Spain and Palestine, 1914 - 1968."
October 28, 2018
Professor Yehudah Mirsky's essay in "The American Interest:" The New Jewish Question and the New Jew Hatred.
A new permutation of the oldest hatred manifested itself yesterday (October 27, 2018) in Pittsburgh.
September 28, 2018
Dominion Built of Praise: Panegyric and Legitimacy Among Jews in the Medieval Mediterranean
Panegyric texts were a constant feature of Jewish culture in the medieval Mediterranean and can tell us as much about the society that produced them as the individuals they portray. Decter looks at them from several perspectives—social, historical, ethical, poetic, political, and theological—and demonstrates how ideas of Islamic political legitimacy profoundly shaped the ways in which Jews conceptualized and portrayed their own leadership.
The Art of Mystical Narrative: A Poetics of the Zohar, available for pre-orders will ship on 10 October 2018.
- Argues for interpreting the Zohar, a Jewish kabbalistic text, as a literary work
- Breaks new ground while engaging extensively with traditional kabbalistic scholarship
- Places the Zohar in the literary context of its origin in the thirteenth century Spain
Pennies for Heaven: The History of American Synagogues and Money, is the first book-length treatment of how synagogues are financed in the United States.
Delving back from 1728 to the present, Judson examines how synagogues raised funds, financed buildings, and paid clergy. These records provide an array of new insights into the development of American synagogues and the values of the Jews who worshiped in them.
Boston Studies in Philosophy, Religion and Public Life, co-authored by Michael Zank (PhD, Brandeis University) and Allen Speight (PhD, University of Chicago) gives shape to several key facets of the relationship among politics, theology and religious thought.