Albert and Liese Eckstein Scholar-in-Residence

January 24, 2022

Pamela Nadell

Author of America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today, winner of the 2019 National Jewish Book Award–Jewish Book of the Year. A professor and Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender History at American University in Washington, DC, she is a recipient of the university’s highest faculty award, Scholar/Teacher  of the Year. As past president of the Association for Jewish Studies, she has also received the American Jewish Historical Society’s Lee Max Friedman Award for distinguished service to the profession. Currently, she is working on a book about the history of American antisemitism.

• Monday, January 24 | Zoom 
  "Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution"
  “Women are no longer imprisoned by man-made myths. We are coming down from our pedestal and up from the laundry room.” When Bella Abzug wrote these words in 1972, she was just one of 14 women in the United States Congress. The other 521 were men. In the feminist movement of her day, Abzug stood among a striking cohort of Jewish leaders. This lecture looks back at some of these feminist icons and analyzes why Jewish women played outsized roles in this revolutionary movement.

view lecture recording

February 21, 2021

Jeffrey S. Gurock

Yeshiva University. Author or editor of eighteen books. His works include the award-winning A Modern Heretic and a Traditional Community: Mordecai M. Kaplan, Orthodoxy; American Judaism and Jews In, Gotham: New York Jews and their Changing City; and The Jews of Harlem: The Rise, Decline and Revival of a Jewish Community.

• Sunday, February 21 |  Zoom
  "American Jewry’s Contemporary Scorecard: Anti-Semitism and Tolerance in the United States"
  In recent days, American Jews have been confronted with a spate of anti-Semitic attacks—often ideological and sometimes violent. However, even as these difficulties exist, American Jews still live in a nation that is uncommonly tolerant of them. Through an examination of how one of America’s foremost establishments—the world of organized sports—has treated Jews, now and in the past the problems of today can be better understood.

view lecture recording

January 27, 2020

Libby Garland

Associate professor of history at the Graduate Center, The City University of New York and the author of After They Closed the Gates: Jewish Illegal Immigration to the United States, 1921-1965,  winner of the American Jewish Historical Society’s Saul Viener Book Prize and the American Historical Association’s Dorothy Rosenberg Prize in 2015.

• Monday, January 27 | Lattie F. Coor Hall, room 4403, ASU Tempe campus
  "American Jewish Studies and the Scholarship of Migration"
  Intersections and divides between the study of American Jewish immigration history and broader fields of U.S. immigration history, migration, and border studies.
• Monday, January 27 | Cutler-Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center
  "Jews & Immigration: History and Moral Obligation"
  In the 1920s, the U.S. Congress passed laws designed to drastically limit the immigration of foreigners considered inferior and a threat to the nation. Many Jews, along with others targeted by immigration restrictions, entered the United States anyway, in violation of the law, with the aid of smugglers or forged documents. This lecture discusses this dramatic history and how it helps us understand our current historical moment.

February 26, 2018

Matt Goldish

Samuel M. and Esther Melton chair of Jewish history at The Ohio State University. He previously taught at the University of Arizona. He received masters and doctoral degrees at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Matt’s work focuses on Sephardic life after the Spanish expulsion, Jewish-Christian intellectual relations, and messianism. His books include Judaism in the Theology of Sir Isaac Newton, The Sabbatean Prophets, and Jewish Questions: Responsa on Sephardi Life in the Early Modern Period.

• Monday, February 26 | Lattie F. Coor Hall, room 4401, ASU Tempe campus
  “The Sephardim of Amsterdam and the Dawn of Modernity”
• Monday, February 26 | Cutler-Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center
  “What Happened to Conversos After They Converted? Strands of the New Christian Experience”

January 30, 2017

Bernard Cooperman

Former director of the Center for Jewish  Studies and the Center for Historical Studies at the University of Maryland, and has written on many aspects of early modern and modern Jewish history, including the papal practice of tolerance towards Iberian Jewish refugees; the economic and cultural life of Jews in Italy; urban and community histories of Jews in Rome, Bologna and Livorno; the impact of print on Jewish culture; and business competition and sexual scandal among Roman Jewish moneylenders. He is finishing a book on the constitutional history of Roman Jews, and working on a comparative history of the European ghetto.

• Monday, January 30 | Lattie F. Coor Hall, room 4403, ASU Tempe campus
  “Reconsidering the Ghetto: Salo Baron’s Dream of a Happier Life”
• Monday, January 30 | Cutler-Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center 
  “Five Hundred Years Ago in Venice: Why Jews were Happy to Live in Ghettos” 

February 1, 2016

Lynn Rapaport

Author of Jews in Germany after the Holocaust: Memory, Identity, and Jewish-German Relations, recipient of the 1998 Most Distinguished Publication Award in the Sociology of Religion from the American Sociological Association. She is also the co-editor of Lessons and Legacies IX: Memory, History, and Responsibility: Reassessments of the Holocaust, Implications for the Future. She is currently working on a project on how the Holocaust is portrayed in American popular culture from the 1940s to present day.

• Monday, February 1 | Lattie F. Coor Hall, room 4403, ASU Tempe campus
  “The Holocaust in Popular Culture: a Close Look at Schindler’s List”
• Monday, February 1 | Cutler-Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center 
   “Anti-Semitism on College Campuses”

February 23, 2015

Ken Frieden

B.G. Rudolph Chair in Judaic Studies at Syracuse University, and the author of Classic Yiddish Fiction, and anthologies of Yiddish literature in translation, such as Tales of Mendele the Book Peddler and Classic Yiddish Stories. He edits the series Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music, and Art; translates from Yiddish and Hebrew; and has edited collections of short stories by Israeli authors Etgar Keret and David Ehrlich.

• Monday, February 23 | Lattie F. Coor Hall, room 4403, ASU Tempe campus 
  “Travelling to Zion and Beyond: Sea Travel, Translation and the Rise of Modern Literature”
• Monday, February 23 | CutlerPlotkin Jewish Heritage Center
   “American Cinema and the Yiddish Tradition”

February 10, 2014

Hasia Diner

Director of the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History at New York University. Her research focuses on the intersection of American and Jewish history. Her numerous publications include The Jews of the United States, 1654 to 2000 and a book examining ways in which Jews in post-World War II America went about the process of creating a public culture memorializing the Holocaust.

• Monday, February 10 | Cutler-Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center
  "Coming to Arizona: the Jewish Presence in the Southwest"
  In the great age of Jewish migration, from the 1820s through the 1920s, what brought Jews from Europe to the American southwest? Despite the vast distances of tens of thousands of miles, across two continents, handfuls of Jews made the decision to cast their lot with region, remote even by American standards. What familial and business magnets drew them to the area and how did their migrations resemble and depart from those of Jews who chose other, more accessible, places?

February 25, 2013

Zvi Gitelman

Preston R. Tisch Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. He received his doctorate at Columbia University, and his current research focuses on ethnicity and politics, especially in former Communist countries, Israeli politics, East European politics, and Jewish political thought and behavior. Gitelman's most recent book is Jewish Identities in Postcommunist Russia and Ukraine: An Uncertain Ethnicity (2012). It draws on two large surveys at the beginning and end of the 1990s conducted with two colleagues in Russia. He is currently working on a project on ethnic relations in the Soviet armed forces during the war and Soviet policy regarding the Holocaust, based on hundreds of oral testimonies of Soviet Jewish veterans of WWII, and on Soviet archives.

• Monday, February 25 | Cutler-Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center
  "Can Israel be both a Democratic and Jewish State?"
  Prime Minister Netanyahu demands the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state and outgoing Foreign Minister Lieberman wants Israeli Arabs to take a loyalty oath. With 1.25 million Arab citizens and several hundred thousand other non-Jews, can Israel claim to be both a democracy, meaning all citizens are equal, and a “Jewish state”—a state for and by Jews? Does Israel treat its Arab minority as equal citizens? If not, can it claim to be a democracy? On the other hand, if there is no distinction between Jews and others, in what sense would Israel be a “Jewish” state?

January 30, 2012

Kenneth W. Stein

Director of the Emory Institute for the Study of Israel, and has taught Middle Eastern History, Political Science and Israeli Studies. He has authored numerous books and scholarly publications on the development of modern Israel, American foreign policy towards the Middle East, origins and development of the Arab-Israel conflict, and modern Arab history, including: History Politics and Diplomacy of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, A Documentary Source Compilation on CD and Heroic Diplomacy: Sadat, Kissinger, Carter, Begin and the Quest for Arab-Israeli Peace.

• Sunday, January 30 | Cutler-Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center 
  "Narratives and History: Telling Israel’s Story Without Polarization"
  Because there is so much emotion involved in telling, understanding and connecting with Israel’s history, it is difficult at times to tell what is history and what is narrative, what is accurate and what is invented. How can Israel’s story be told without polarization and how can it be taught with equal attempts at objectivity? Looking back into 150 years of Zionist and Israeli history and using the investigative tools of the historian informs these answers.

January 31, 2011

Mel Scult

Graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Harvard University and holds a doctorate in Judaic Studies from Brandeis University. He is a premiere scholar on Mordecai Kaplan, and has published several volumes including Dynamic Judaism: The Essential Writings of Mordecai Kaplan; Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century: A Biography of Mordecai M. Kaplan; and Communings of the Spirit: The Journals of Mordecai M. Kaplan, 1913-1934.

• Monday, January 31 | Cutler-Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center
  "Mordecai Kaplan: The Challenge of His Heresy"
  Exploring the radical implications of Mordecai Kaplan’s thought and will discuss the historical significance and relevance of Kaplan’s ideas for American Jewry in the 21^st century.

February 15, 2010

Derek J. Penslar

Samuel Zacks Professor of Jewish History at the University of Toronto. His publications focus on modern European Jewry, the history of the Zionist movement and the state of Israel. He is author or editor of numerous books, including Shylock’s Children: Economics and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe (2001); Orientalism and the Jews (2005); and Israel in History: The Jewish State in Comparative Perspective (2006). At the time of his lecture he was writing two books: The Origins of the State of Israel, 1882-1948: A Documentary History (with Eran Kaplan, under contract to the University of Wisconsin Press) and Uniform Identities: Jews and the Military in Modern History (under contract to Princeton University Press). Penslar is co-editor of Jewish Social Studies and The Journal of Israeli History and vice-president of the Association for Jewish Studies. He has been a Directeur d’études invité at the École Pratiques des Hautes Études in Paris, the Nachshon Visiting Professor of Israel Studies at Harvard and a visiting professor of Israel Studies at Columbia. 

• Monday, February 15 | Lattie F. Coor Hall, room 4403, ASU Tempe campus 
  "The Politics of Knowledge: Israel Studies, Jewish Studies and Academia"
• Monday, February 15 | ASU Kerr Cultural Center
  "Jewish Origins of the Israeli Army"

February 11, 2008

Mark Z. Brettler

A graduate of Brandeis University where he is currently the Dora Golding Professor of Biblical Studies and former chair of the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. He has taught at several universities and adult education settings, including the Wexner Heritage Program, the Me’ah program in Boston, and as scholar in residence for the Foundation for Jewish Studies in Washington, DC.  

• Monday, February 11 | ASU Tempe campus
  “The Dead Sea Scrolls”
• Monday, February 11 | Temple Chai 
  “The Ten Commandments in the Bible and in American Life”

March 21-22, 2007

Judit Bokser Liwerant

Head of the Graduate School of Political and Social Sciences, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), and Chair of the Academic Committee of the Universidad Hebraica in Mexico City. Her books include: Imágenes de un Encuentro. La Presencia Judía en México durante la primera mitad del siglo XX, (Images of an Encounter. The Jewish Presence in Mexico During the First Half of the 20 Century), 1993; Encuentro y Alteridad. La vida y la cultura judía en América Latina, (Encounter and Otherness. Jewish Life and Culture in Latin America), with Alicia Backal, 1999; and Jewish Identities in an Era of Globalization and Multiculturalism.

• Wednesday, March 21 | Temple Chai 
  “Latin American Jewish Communities and their Present Challenges”
• Thursday, January 19 | Physical Education Building East, ASU Tempe campus
  “Times of Globalization: Jews in Latin America Today”

January 18-19, 2006

Omer Bartov

John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History, and Professor of German Studies, at Brown University. He received a B.A. from Tel Aviv University and Ph.D. from St. Antony's College, Oxford. Considered one of the world's leading authorities on the subject of genocide, his research has been honored with numerous fellowships from institutions including Harvard, Princeton, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the National Endowment of the Humanities.

• Wednesday, January 18 | Temple Chai 
  “The Death of a Shtetl: The Holocaust in Buczacz, Ukraine, in Fact and Memory”
•  Thursday, January 19 | Memorial Union, Turquoise Room, ASU Tempe campus 
  “Jews, Arabs and the Holocaust in Recent Israeli Cinema”

January 25, 2005

Ronit Matalon

Acclaimed writer and prominent cultural critic who explores the divergent components of Israeli identity, Ronit Matalon's characters struggle between the demands of the collective and the needs of the individual. Born to Jewish-Egyptian parents in a new immigrant town near Tel Aviv, Matalon studied comparative literature and philosophy at Tel Aviv University. She has worked as a journalist, on Israeli television and at Ha'aretz, covering the first intefada, and commenting on Israeli culture. Matalon taught creative writing and literature at the Camera Obscura School of the Arts in Tel Aviv and at the Sam Spiegel School of Film and Television in Jerusalem. She is senior lecturer of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at Haifa University, and teaches creative writing.

• Tuesday, January 25 | Temple Chai
  “’I am sorry to tell you, but…’: On Writing in Israel on Identity, Femininity and Two Billion Hungry People”
• Tuesday, January 25 | Memorial Union, Gold Room, ASU Tempe campus
  “Out of Place, Inside Time: Reflections on Place, Identity and Writing"

February 12-13, 2004

James Kugel

Starr Professor of Hebrew Literature at Harvard University from 1982-2003, is currently the Director of the Institute for the History of the Jewish Bible at Bar Ilan University in Israel, where he also serves as the Meisler Professor of Bible. A specialist in the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Kugel is the author of some forty research articles & ten books: The God of Old (The Free Press, 2003), The Great Poems of the Bible (Simon & Schuster, 1999), Traditions of the Bible (Harvard, 1998), The Bible As It Was (Harvard, 1997), In Potiphar's House (HarperCollins, 1990), On Being A Jew (HarperCollins, 1990), Poetry and Prophecy (Cornell, 1990), Early Biblical Interpretation (Westminster Press, 1986), and The Idea of Biblical Poetry (Yale, 1981). His book The Bible As It Was was a finalist in the National Book Critics Circle Award for non-fiction, & the winner of the Grawemeyer Prize in Religion in 2001.

• Thursday, February 12 | Temple Chai
  “The Bible’s Most Ancient Interpreters”
• Thursday, February 12 | Computing Commons Auditorium, ASU Tempe campus
  “The God of Old: Representations of the Divine in Biblical Literature”
• Friday, February 13 | The New Shul
  “Parshat Yitro: Shemot (Exodus) 18:1 - 20:23“ 

January 30-31, 2003

David Kertzer

Paul Dupee University Professor of Social Science, as well as professor of anthropology and Italian studies at
Brown University. He had previously been the William Kenan Professor of Anthropology at Bowdoin College, and has been a visiting faculty member at the Universities of Catania and Bologna in Italy, at Trinity College, Cambridge, England, and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is an authority on Italian politics, society, and history and political symbolism, and the recipient of many honors, including Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Humanities, and two Fulbright fellowships.

• Thursday, January 30 | Temple Chai
  “The Popes Against the Jews: Responding to My Critics”
• Friday, January 31 | Memorial Union, Alumni Lounge, ASU Tempe campus
  “Snowballs in Rome: Anti-Semitism in Restoration Italy (1814-1859)

January 23-24, 2002

Ruth R. Wisse

Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University. She introduced courses in Yiddish literature and helped to found the Jewish Studies Department at McGill University in Montreal, where she grew up. She has published several books including The Modern Jewish Cannon: A Journey Through Language and Culture, I.L. Peretz and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture, and The Schlemiel as Modern Hero.

• Thursday, January 25 | Physical Sciences Building room 210, ASU Tempe campus
  “The Diadoche of the Rabbis”
• Thursday, January 25 | ASU Kerr Cultural Center
  “The Birth of the Study House: A Talmudic Archaeology”

January 25, 2001

Daniel Boyarin

Hermann P. and Sophia Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture, Department of Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric, the University of California at Berkeley. Professor Boyarin has received numerous awards and fellowships including those from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. His books include: A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (1994); Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man (1997); Habbassar Shebaruah: Siah Hamminiut Bassifrut Hattalmudit [The Flesh in the Spirit: The Discourse of Sexuality in the Talmudic Literature] (1999); and Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (2000).

• Thursday, January 25 | Physical Sciences Building room 210, ASU Tempe campus
  “The Diadoche of the Rabbis”
• Thursday, January 25 | ASU Kerr Cultural Center
  “The Birth of the Study House: A Talmudic Archaeology”

February 9-10, 2000

Sander L. Gilman

Henry R. Luce Distinguished Service Professor of the Liberal Arts in Human Biology and Chair of the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago. Before coming to Chicago, he was a member of the humanities and medical faculties at Cornell University, where he held the Goldwin Smith Professorship of Humane Studies.

• Wednesday, February 9 | Computing Commons Auditorium, ASU Tempe campus
  “Diaspora and Diasporas - Looking at the Models for a Jewish Self-consciousness in the Galut”
• Wednesday, February 9 | ASU Kerr Cultural Center
  “By a Nose: German, American, and Israeli Jews and Aesthetic Surgery”
• Thursday, February 10 | Hillel Jewish Student Center
   “Is Life Beautiful? Can the Holocaust be Funny: Some Comments on Older and Newer Films”

March 2-3, 1998

Todd M. Endelman

University of Michigan
Professor of Modern Jewish History

• Monday, March 2 | Memorial Union, ASU Tempe campus 
  “Some Jewish and Gentile Misunderstandings in the Age of Emancipation

• Monday, March 2 | ASU Kerr Cultural Center
  “Does Israel Have a Post-Zionist Future?

• Tuesday, March 3 | Memorial Union, ASU Tempe campus 
  “Gender and Radical Assimilation in Modern Jewish History”

November 19-20, 1996

Richard Elliott Friedman

University of California, San Diego
Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature

• Tuesday, November 19 | Memorial Union, ASU Tempe campus 
  “Kabbalah and the Big Bang.”

• Tuesday, November 19 | ASU Kerr Cultural Center
   “Who Wrote the Bible?"

• Wednesday, November 20 | Memorial Union, ASU Tempe campus
  “The Bible:  Literature or History?”

February 28-29, 1996

Rabbi Debra Orenstein

Wilstein Institute of Jewish Policy Studies in Los Angeles
Senior Fellow

• Tuesday, March 28 | ASU Kerr Cultural Center
  “An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism"

• Wednesday, March 29 | Memorial Union, ASU Tempe campus
  "Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav: A Hasidic Master of the Modern”

• Wednesday, March 29 | ASU Hillel Student Center
  “Jewish Faith: The Evolving Word"

March 28-29, 1995

Arthur Green

Brandeis University
Professor of Jewish Thought

• Tuesday, March 28 | ASU Kerr Cultural Center
  “An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism”

• Wednesday, March 29 | Memorial Union, ASU Tempe campus
  "Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav: A Hasidic Master of the Modern”

• Wednesday, March 29 | ASU Hillel Student Center
  “Jewish Faith: The Evolving Word"

November 1-2,1993

Rabbi Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, PhD

Stanford University
Professor, Department of Jewish Studies

• Monday, November 1 | ASU Hillel Student Center 
  “The Problem of the Body for the People of the Book”

• Tuesday, November 2 | Memorial Union, ASU Tempe campus
  "The Body of God: The Divine Cover-Up"

• Tuesday, November 2 | Memorial Union, ASU Tempe campus
  “God’s Body and Other Problems for Men in Monotheism”

February 1-2,1993

Rabbi Mark E. Washofsky, PhD

Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati
Associate Professor of Rabbinics

• Monday, February 1 | Social Sciences Building, ASU Tempe campus
  “Jewish Law in a Liberal Jewish World.”

• Monday, February 1 |  ASU Hillel Student Center
  “What are Jewish Medical Ethics?”

• Tuesday, February 2 | Temple Beth Israel, Phoenix
  “Do We Have a Right to Die: A Halakhic Perspective”

March 2, 1992

Raul Hilberg

University of Vermont
Professor of Political Science

• Monday, March 2 | Memorial Union, ASU Tempe campus
  “The Holocaust as a Phenomenon”

• Tuesday, March 2 | ASU Downtown Center at The Mercado
  “The Discovery of the Holocaust”

November 4-5, 1990

David Biale

Graduate Theological Seminary in Berkeley
Professor of Jewish History and Director, Center for Jewish Studies

•  Sunday, November 4 | Memorial Union, ASU Tempe campus
  “Zionism as an Erotic Revolution”

• Monday, November 5 | Social Sciences Building, ASU Tempe campus
  “Sex and the Chasid: Images of Sexuality in 18th Century Hasidism”

• Monday November 5 | ASU Hillel Student Center
  “Sexuality and Sexism in Judaism”
   

October 16-17, 1989 | Inaugural Eckstein Scholar

John K. Roth

Claremont McKenna College
Professor of Philosophy

• Sunday, October 16 | Squaw Peak Room, Phoenix
  “Asking and Listening, Understanding and Doing, Some Jewish and Christian Conditions for Responding to the Holocaust Religiously”
• Monday, October 17 | ASU Nursing Building, ASU Tempe campus
  “Dreams and Questions: Reflections on Antisemitism, American Culture and the Holocaust”