2020 Judaic Studies Newsletter

Program Kudos

• Professor Masha Belenky published Popular Literature from Nineteenth-Century France, a scholarly edition and accompanying translation, which features a text by Eugenie Foa, the first professional Jewish women author.
• Barry R. Chiswick, professor of economics and chair of GW’s Department of Economics, published Jews at Work: Their Economic Progress in the American Labor Market, which documents, analyzes and explains the reasons for the remarkable success in educational achievement, occupational standing and income of American Jews from 1860 to the early 21st century.  
• Eric Cline’s Digging Up Armageddon: The Search for the Lost City of Solomon, has been published by Princeton University Press. It tells the story of the ancient mound at Megiddo, also known as Armageddon, and the ways in which it has become regarded as key to unlocking biblical archaeology ever since archaeologists from the University of Chicago made stunning discoveries at this site during the 1920s and 1930s.
• Arie M. Dubnov, the Max Ticktin Chair of Israel Studies, served as guest editor of a special publication marking the centenary of the British mandate of Palestine. It was published as vol. 27 of the journal Israel: Studies in Zionism and the State of Israel, vol. 27 (Tel Aviv University; winter 2021) [in Hebrew]. In addition, Dubnov published an essay discussing the life, thought and legacy of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism in Hebrew, in the Israeli journal Hazman Haze. He also co-authored an encyclopedia entry about Jabotinsky in the International Encyclopedia of the First World War. Following these publications, Professor Dubnov was invited to meet with Israeli President Reuven (“Rubi”) Rivlin, who reported that he read them with much interest and expressed a desire to meet with the author. 
• Jenna Weissman Joselit, the Charles E. Smith Professor of Judaic Studies and professor of history, continues to publish a monthly column on American Jewish history and culture in Tablet magazine. In addition, she published two critical review essays this past year in the Jewish Review of Books, one on the relationship between material culture and history (“History with a Flourish”), the other on the kosher dairy restaurant over time and space (“The Milchik Way”). Professor Weissman Joselit has also developed several new courses, among them an undergraduate seminar on food and drink in American history and a graduate seminar on the ways in which history makes itself felt in the United States, Israel and Europe. She has also been actively engaged in the "It's Material" project, a university-wide initiative that explores the relationship between objects and the study of history.
• Congratulations to Kyla Percival, who graduated with honors in May. Under the tutelage of Professor Daniel Schwartz and with the assistance of Professors Orian Zakai and Arie Dubnov, Kyla wrote an outstanding senior thesis on the portrait of Israeli Jewish female characters in recent Israeli and American television series. For excellent performance in the study of Hebrew language, culture, and literature, Kyla was awarded the annual Yael Moses Award for a graduating senior from the Hebrew Program. 
• Thanks go to Professor Christopher Rollston from the Department of Classical Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, who met with Judaic studies students, shared with them his research and talked about “Jokes and Puns in Biblical Hebrew.” 
• Daniel B. Schwartz’s latest book, Ghetto: The History of a Word (Harvard University Press, 2019), received rave reviews from the LSE Review and the AJS Review. Schwartz, the outgoing director of the Judaic Studies Program and chair of the History Department, has taken upon himself an ambitious task: to trace the centuries-old shifting meanings of the word “ghetto,” from Venice of the sixteenth century to contemporary America. The result is a fascinating account of the changing nuances of this highly charged and slippery term, as it traversed time and place in a long transatlantic voyage. He was profiled in the CCAS Spotlight magazine.
• Hebrew contributes to our academic excellence as a flagship research institution. Once a month on Thursday evenings, the Hebrew Café brings Hebrew speakers and Hebrew learners at GW together to converse in Hebrew, under the leadership of Professor Orian Zakai, assistant professor of Hebrew language and culture and coordinator of the Hebrew program. During fall 2020, Hebrew Café participants enjoyed an evening of contemporary Hebrew slang and attended an inspiring workshop led by Eyal Rivlin from the University of Colorado at Boulder, on Nonbinary Hebrew, an innovative third-gender grammatical system that seeks to make Hebrew more inclusive for nonbinary people and promote more egalitarian use of the language. 
• Advanced Hebrew students Yonatan Altman Shafer and Corey Feuer are working under the guidance of Professor Orian Zakai on the translation from Hebrew to English of the Memorial Book of the community of Mizocz (Poland/Ukraine) exterminated in the Holocaust. The project is a collaboration of the Hebrew Program with the nonprofit organization JewishGen. Publication of the first chapter is expected in early 2021. 
• The Mayberg Center for Jewish Education and Leadership hosted three post-election Leadership Lunches and are planning additional lectures for the spring semester. Dr. Erica Brown, director of the center, is also engaged in a large teen leadership initiative to be completed in 2021.

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Class Notes

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Donor Recognition

The Judaic Studies Program would like to gratefully acknowledge the following generous donors who made a gift to the program from July 1, 2019–December 31, 2020.

+ Faculty/Staff | # Parent | ~ Student | * Friend

Yael Moses +

Nachama Moskowitz, BA ’74

Lori Ross, BA ’84

Steven Ross, BBA ’81

Rabbi A. James Rudin, AA ’55, BA ’55

Yonni Wattenmaker, BA ’93
 

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