Tauber Institute Events
Upcoming Events
October 24, 2023
The Tauber Institute welcomes Ildikó Barna of Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Budapest to the Jewish Studies Colloquium. She will present her paper "Interdisciplinary Exploration of Post-Holocaust History through Digital Tools: Opportunities and Limitations" at 12:45pm on October 24, 2023 in Lown 315 and stream live on Zoom.
The event is free and open to the public, and a light kosher lunch will be served at 12:30pm. The paper will be available two weeks in advance. Register now!
November 14, 2023
The Tauber Institute welcomes Hadar Feldman Samet of Tel Aviv University to the Jewish Studies Colloquium. She will present her paper "Sabbatian Covert Life in the Late Ottoman Empire: External and Internal Perspectives" at 12:45pm on November 14, 2023 in Lown 315 and stream live on Zoom.
The event is free and open to the public, and a light kosher lunch will be served at 12:30pm. The paper will be available two weeks in advance.
December 5, 2023
The Tauber Institute welcomes Paola Tartakoff of Rutgers University to the Jewish Studies Colloquium. She will present her paper "The Stories They Told: Jewish Converts and Miracles in the Medieval Pyrenees" at 12:45pm on December 5, 2023 in Lown 315 and stream live on Zoom.
The event is free and open to the public, and a light kosher lunch will be served at 12:30pm. The paper will be available two weeks in advance.
January 23, 2024
The Tauber Institute welcomes Jonathan Crane of Emory University, Emily Filler of Washington and Lee University, and Mira Wasserman of Reconstructionist Rabbinical College to the Jewish Studies Colloquium. They will present their paper "Introducing Modern Jewish Ethics, 1970-Present" at 12:45pm on January 23, 2024 in Lown 315 and stream live on Zoom.
The event is free and open to the public, and a light kosher lunch will be served at 12:30pm. The paper will be available two weeks in advance.
February 27, 2024
The Tauber Institute welcomes Kirsten Collins of the University of Chicago Divinity School to the Jewish Studies Colloquium. She will present her paper "That Other Fornication: Race and Judaism in Foucault's Concept of Critique" at 12:45pm on February 27, 2024 in Lown 315 and stream live on Zoom.
The event is free and open to the public, and a light kosher lunch will be served at 12:30pm. The paper will be available two weeks in advance.
March 12, 2024
The Tauber Institute is proud to present our own Eugene Sheppard—the associate director of the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry and faculty member in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and the History of Ideas Program at Brandeis University—at the Jewish Studies Colloquium. He will present his paper "Towards a Philosophical Critique of Hegel and Antisemitism" at 12:45pm on March 12, 2024 in Lown 315 and stream live on Zoom.
The event is free and open to the public, and a light kosher lunch will be served at 12:30pm. The paper will be available two weeks in advance.
April 4, 2024
Susannah Heschel, the Eli M. Black Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College, will deliver the 60th Annual Simon Rawidowicz Memorial Lecture on Thursday, April 4, 2024 at 4:30pm Eastern at Brandeis University. The event will be in person, with a reception to follow. More information is forthcoming.
The Simon Rawidowicz Memorial Lecture is named for Simon Rawidowicz (1896–1957), one of the most innovative Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century and a founding member of the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. Recordings of Rawidowicz lectures from 2018 to 2023 can be viewed on our Lectures page.
April 16, 2024
The Tauber Institute welcomes Hasia Diner of New York University and Lois Dubin of Smith College to the Jewish Studies Colloquium. They will present their paper "Moveable Feasts: Jews and Food Across Time and Space" at 12:45pm on April 16, 2024 in Lown 315 and stream live on Zoom.
The event is free and open to the public, and a light kosher lunch will be served at 12:30pm. The paper will be available two weeks in advance.
Recent Events
September 12, 2023
The Tauber Institute hosted Miriam Goldstein of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for the first installment of the Jewish Studies Colloquium of the 2023-24 academic year on September 12, 2023. She presented her paper "The Bible in Baghdad: A Medieval Karaite Interprets Genesis." A recording of the event will be availble soon.
April 27, 2023
"The Soviet Jewish Bookshelf: Jewish Culture and Identity Between the Lines" author Marat Grinberg discussed his book over Zoom with Prof. ChaeRan Freeze.
"Here is the untold story of [Soviet Jews'] ongoing, multigenerational struggle for self-determination as told by a native son with great clarity, thoroughness, and empathy. Were this not enough, Marat Grinberg has also redefined Jewish literature as that which a living polity has rescued through conscious acts of creative rereading." — David G. Roskies, Sol & Evelyn Henkind Emeritus Professor of Yiddish Literature and Culture, The Jewish Theological Seminary
April 25, 2023
The Tauber Institute welcomed Sven-Erik Rose from the University of California, Davis, for the final installment of the Jewish Studies Colloquium of this academic year. He presented his paper "Making and Unmaking Literature in Nazi Ghettos in Poland." The event was exclusively streamed live on Zoom at 12:45 p.m. on Tuesday, April 25, 2023.
April 18, 2023
Prof. Eugene Sheppard's class "Spinoza Now" (NEJS 157A) featured Michael Rosenthal of the University of Toronto as he gave a talk entitled "Spinoza & Revolution." The event was scheduled for 11:10am in Schwartz 103 on the Brandeis campus.
The event was sponsored by the Tauber Institute, with the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, the Center for German and European Studies, and the History of Ideas Program.
March 14, 2023
The Tauber Institute's Jewish Studies Colloquium hosted Jordan Katz of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, as she presented her paper "Registers of Belonging, Registers of Difference: Early Modern Jewish Midwives and their Records." The event was held on Zoom on Tuesday, March 14, 2023.
March 9, 2023
Susan Neiman delivered the 59th Annual Simon Rawidowicz Memorial Lecture, "Racism, Antisemitism, and Rethinking Historical Reckoning," on Thursday, March 9, 2023, in Rapaporte Treasure Hall, Brandeis University.
Susan Neiman is an American philosopher and writer, and the director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, Germany. She has written extensively on the Enlightenment, moral philosophy, metaphysics, and politics.
The Simon Rawidowicz Memorial Lecture is named for Simon Rawidowicz (1896–1957), one of the most innovative Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century and a founding member of the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University.
February 14, 2023
Elias Sacks, director of the Jewish Publication Society, presented the paper "Do Citizens Need to be Philosophers? Nachman Krochmal's Diasporic Jewish Politics" at the Jewish Studies Colloquium.
January 24, 2023
Joshua Picard of Princeton University presented the paper "The Precedents and Origin of Djerba's Or Torah Fund," at the Jewish Studies Colloquium.
December 5, 2022
For the launch of "Dynamic Repetition: History and Messianism in Modern Jewish Thought"—the newest title in the Tauber Institute Series for the Study of European Jewry at Brandeis University Press—author Gilad Sharvit was in conversation with Professor Eugene Sheppard, discussing the book described by Martin Jay as "[a]nalytically rigorous, boldly imaginative, and lucidly written" that "demonstrates how that most improbable of hopes is itself a revenant that refuses to die."
November 4, 2022
Elisabeth Gallas of the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture-Simon Dubnow, and fellow at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, presented the paper, "A Jewish Bill of Indictment: The New York Black Book of 1946," at the Jewish Studies Colloquium.
October 25, 2022
Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, associate professor in the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, presented the paper, "Ifra Hormiz: Talmudic Stories of the Persian Queen Mother and the Bavli's Redaction," at the Jewish Studies Colloquium.
September 13, 2022
Na'ama Rokem, associate professor of Modern Hebrew Literatureand& Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago, presented the paper, "Pedagogy, Language, and Labor Politics in Kafka's Hebrew Notebooks," at the Jewish Studies Colloquium.
April 12, 2022
The Tauber Institute co-sponsored a free screening of the new digital restoration of Memories of the Eichmann Trial (Dir. David Perlov, 1979, Hebrew & Polish w/ English subtitles) at the Wasserman Cinematheque at Brandeis University. The event was presented by the National Center for Jewish Film.
The screening was followed by a panel discussion featuring filmmaker Yael Perlov, Professor Laura Jockusch, and NCJF Executive Director Sharon Pucker Rivo, introduced by Professor Jonathan Sarna.
David Perlov’s 1979 documentary, "Memories of the Eichmann Trial," reveals the trial’s pivotal role in Israeli society through intimate interviews with Holocaust survivors, Israelis of the second generation, and others directly involved in the case. Broadcast only once on Israeli television, the film was rediscovered and restored by the Perlov family in partnership with the Yad Vashem Visual Center, with support from the Forum for the Preservation of Audio-Visual Memory in Israel.
April 12, 2022
Kim Wünschmann, director of the Institute for the History of the German Jews, Hamburg, presented the paper, "How to Draw German-Jewish History? The Graphic History Project 'Oberbrechen: A German Village Confronts its Nazi Past," at the Jewish Studies Colloquium.
April 7, 2022
The 58th Annual Simon Rawidowicz Memorial Lecture featured Annette Yoshiko Reed of New York University presenting "Forgetting Second Temple Judaism: History, Memory, and the Dead Sea Scrolls." The event streamed live on Zoom. The recording will be posted on the Tauber Institute website.
Reed is a professor in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and Department of Religious Studies at New York University. Her research spans Second Temple Judaism, early Christianity, and Jewish/Christian relations in Late Antiquity, with a special concern for retheorizing religion, identity, and difference. Her books include "Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity" (Cambridge 2005), "Jewish-Christianity and the History of Judaism" (Mohr Siebeck, 2018), "Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages" (with John Reeves; Oxford 2018), and "Demons, Angels, and Writing in Ancient Judaism" (Cambridge 2020).
March 15, 2022
Shira Billet of Yale University presented the paper "Hermann Cohen's Virtue Ethics: Power and Agency within the Experience of Marginalization" at the Jewish Studies Colloquium.
February 15, 2022
Daniella Farah of Rice University presented the paper, "From the 'Wretched' to the 'Bourgeoisie': Jews in Modern Iran," at the Jewish Studies Colloquium.
January 18, 2022
David Shyovitz of Northwestern University presented the paper, "Soul Food and Salvation in Medieval Ashkenaz: the Ambrosian Bible's 'Heavenly Banquet' Revisited," at the Jewish Studies Colloquium.
