UCLA CJS 2008 Newsletter & Calendar of Events by Scarlett Freund

‫במרכז‬

center at the

ART: I and Thou © R.B. Kitaj Estate. Image courtesy of Marlborough Fine Art

Newsletter volume 16 Flash version: cjs.ucla.edu/newsletter

Center for Jewish Studies

Portrait of a Jewish Artist kitaj exhibit inaugurates archive of jewish culture

new 2008–09 calendar

10 Michael Ross endows Chair in Yiddish 16 Viterbi Family expands program 17

From the Director

Looking back toward the future

This is the inaugural issue of at the Center, the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies’ newsletter. We have had an annual newsletter before, but this year’s version marks an important new stage in our development. The title at the Center —and its Hebrew equivalent, ‫ — במרכז‬have multiple meanings, both as description and aspiration. Thus, in the first instance, we aim to report on key developments at the CJS, which has emerged as one of the most active and diverse centers for Jewish studies in North America — and arguably the most active and diverse. Our longstanding goal of nurturing a lush garden of Jewish cultures has achieved a new degree of realization, especially with the creation of the Viterbi Program in Mediterranean Jewish Studies, the Ross Endowment in Yiddish and Jewish Studies, and the arrival to campus of Professor Sarah Abrevaya Stein as the Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies. As a result of these steps — and of the 70 courses and 50 public events we sponsor every year in Jewish studies at UCLA — we have fortified our place at the center of one of America’s great public universities. And yet, our work is far from finished. The corners of Jewish civilization are vast, and much uncharted terrain remains to be explored. We must continue to seek out the best teachers for our students—and the best students for our teachers. We must also continue to encourage worldclass scholars to push the bounds of research further, both lishma—for its own sake—and for the sake of understanding ourselves and our lives better. At the Center, we value both pure and applied research, recognizing the virtues and necessity of each. With the support of our many friends on campus and beyond, we have assumed a position of leadership in Jewish studies at the local, regional, and national levels. And with your ongoing support, we will be able to ascend to the next madregah of excellence. Please do not hesitate to contact me at the CJS office or by email (myers@history.ucla.edu) to discuss our work and/or your interests. And please do join us at the Center as we bring the rich Jewish past into conversation with the vibrant Jewish present.

— Kerri Steinberg, Ph.D. Board Chair

Professor of History and Director

‫במרכז‬

center

Center for Jewish Studies

True to its mission, the Center for Jewish Studies continues to nurture human and creative resources to establish UCLA as a first-rate institution for the study of Jewish culture and history. The founding of an Archive of Jewish Culture and the newly endowed Viterbi Family Program in Mediterranean Jewish Studies this past year are just a few examples of the Center’s instrumental work. Championing innovative scholarship, the Center affords UCLA’s student population and the community an opportunity to experience the dynamic intersection of theory and action. Thanks to its tireless Director David N. Myers and an advisory board of dedicated community leaders and activists, the Center stands poised to make a substantial contribution to Jewish studies, and to move the field out westward. I invite you to come see for yourselves by attending a lecture, symposium, or one of the numerous cultural events sponsored by the Center.

— David N. Myers

at the

A note from the CJS Board Chair

Box 951485 Los Angeles, CA 90095-1485

www.cjs.ucla.edu cjs@humnet.ucla.edu

editor

Mary Enid Pinkerson design

Scarlett Freund

David N. Myers and Kerri Steinberg celebrate the Kitaj exhibition opening

Sarah Abrevaya Stein

Named Maurice Amado Chair of Sephardic Studies

Fifty years ago this month, Professor Samuel Armistead invited a Turkish Jew to UCLA’s campus to sing. With Professors Joseph Silverman and Israel J.Katz, Armistead was initiating a still-ongoing project that would document and thoughtfully explore Sephardic oral culture. The man singing that day was one of the few men to be invited, and he sang beautiful old Sephardic melodies, including one celebrating the birth of a child and a bittersweet ode to a young woman in love with a man other than her husband. Sephardic Studies has grown considerably since Dr. Armistead’s pioneering work began — and for that matter, since Mair José Benardete, a native of Dardanelles, Turkey, professor at Brooklyn College and co-founder of Columbia University’s Hispanic Institute, began collecting Sephardic ballads in New York in the 1920s, thereby launching the field of Sephardic Studies in the United States. Scholars of Sephardic musicology and ethnography are now joined by scholars of Sephardic history, literature, religion, and linguistics. Others approach the study of the Sephardim through an exploration of the neighborhoods, regions, states, or empires in which they lived. The field is interdisciplinary and international, and it is entering an exciting new phase: generating new scholarship, courses, academic conferences, and public events. As I assume the Maurice Amado Chair, I hope to continue to build a program in Sephardic Studies upon the rich history established by my colleagues at UCLA, the Center for Jewish Studies, and the Maurice Amado Foundation, which has been truly visionary in its decades-long commitment to Sephardic Studies at UCLA and beyond. I am thrilled to report that the Foundation has furthered its already substantial commitment to building a Maurice Amado Program in Sephardic Studies by offering three years of support for graduate students, for workshops, lectures, and conferences, for faculty eager to develop

or deepen their own scholarly explorations in the field, and for UCLA library acquisitions—all crucial components of the goal of making UCLA a vibrant, international center for the study of Sephardic culture. I join the UCLA community after spending nine wonderful years as a professor of history and Jewish Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. As a scholar and teacher, I seek to situate Sephardic culture in the larger context of modern Jewish history while remaining attentive to the regional, national, and imperial matrices in which they are enmeshed. To this end, my research has spanned Southeastern and Eastern Europe, Western Europe and the United States, North and South Africa and (by extension), the Sephardi, Mizrahi, and Ashkenazi diasporas. My arrival at UCLA represents a very personal return for me. The man invited by Sam Armistead to sing in Ladino 50 years ago was my great-grandfather Solomon Abrevaya. Solomon was a native of Çanakkale, Turkey and, with his wife Luna and their four children, an immigrant to Los Angeles via New York and Istanbul. In joining UCLA’s faculty, I and my children will become fourth- and fifth-generation Angelenos. The history that precedes us is humbling: a reminder that many have contributed to the building of Sephardic Studies and Jewish Studies on campus and beyond.

A feather in her cap: Sarah Stein’s new book is Plumes: Ostrich Feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global Commerce. It explores the involvement of Mediterranean and North African Jews in the global trade of a single, highly valued luxury good — the ostrich feather — whose exchange linked the economies of the Sahel, Sahara, and Central and North Africa with one another and the fashion worlds of Europe and the United States.

Photo is a tricorne hat, black plush trimmed with ostrich feathers, paste brooch, and gold galloon. Maker: Babin, French, early 19th century. Size: 21 7/8 in. (55.5 cm. W: 33.0 cm) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The Elizabeth Day McCormick Collection, 43.1844. Photograph © 2008, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

— Sarah Abrevaya Stein Maurice Amado Chair 3

Council involves students in CJS

■ The CJS was fortunate to have more UCLA undergraduate students involved in its activities than any time previously. The fact that several professors offered extra credit to students who attended CJS programs related to their courses was one factor. The Student Leadership Council, initiated by CJS Community Affairs Coordinator Mary Enid Pinkerson was another.

Hana Meckler, a senior majoring in Jewish studies, organized a luncheon with alumnae Tzivia Schwartz-Getzug and Lisa Ansell. She commented afterwards, “I know that often with a degree in humanities, students find themselves at a loss in regards to their future careers. These two alumnae showed us

■ Interested undergraduate students applied to join the Council during Fall quarter 2007 and developed formal proposals for programs in Winter quarter 2008. Founding council members included Hana Meckler, Ross Melnick, Jasmin Niku, and Ariel Sholklapper. All but Melnick were undergraduates. ■ The process produced a series of Lunch & Learn programs arranged by students for their peers during the Spring quarter. The events offered an opportunity for students interested in Jewish studies to interact with popular professors, Jewish studies alumnae, and a visiting Palestinian scholar in an informal setting. ■ “The council members promoted the events to their friends and acquaintances using the Facebook networking site,” according to Pinkerson. “For example, Hana Meckler sent out an invitation on Monday and twenty-five students responded by Tuesday. On Wednesday everyone showed up for lunch with the professor. ”

that one can do many exciting things with a degree in Jewish studies, both in the Jewish and non-Jewish world, including traveling to Morocco on the Fulbright Program, directing Jewish World Watch, and working as the community liaison for DreamWorks Pictures’ The Prince of Egypt. I personally left the lunch inspired by all that these two women had accomplished since their graduation from UCLA.”

■ Tzivia Schwartz-Getzug, an attorney and executive director of Jewish World Watch, and Lisa Ansell, associate director of USC’s Casden Institute on American Jewish Life, provided insights into the career opportunities possible for Jewish studies majors. Visiting Palestinian scholar Himmat Zoubi challenged students with her perspective on the condition of Palestinians past and present. ■ Student participants were enthusiastic about the council’s first year. Aaron Kahan and Jacqueline Rafii joined the Council after attending the first lunch program. Rafii commented, “I loved that the Student Council brought together a number of motivated Jewish students into a close setting. The events helped enrich the experience of students taking Jewish Studies classes. I feel the council is essential for these purposes.” ■ Student generated ideas for the coming year include an event with the School of Theater, Film and Television, and a Service Learning project which will bring students of Yiddish language and Holocaust literature into contact with Holocaust survivors who are members of the LA Yiddish Culture Club.

Carol Bakhos named CJS Associate Director

As a Master student in theology at the Harvard School of Divinity, Carol Bakhos had an unexpected romance. She fell in love with rabbinic texts. That first encounter led to a change in her academic plans. After completing an M.T.S. in Scripture and Interpretation, in order to immerse herself more fully in rabbinic literature, Bakhos entered the graduate program at Jewish Theological Seminary, where she earned a Ph.D. in Talmud and Rabbinics. Now Associate Professor of Late Antique Judaism, Bakhos was recently appointed Associate Director of the Center for Jewish Studies. In making the announcement, David N. Myers, CJS Director said, “I am thrilled that Carol Bakhos has agreed to serve as Associate Director of the CJS. Carol is among our most beloved and popular teachers, an innovative scholar of rabbinic literature, and a dynamic personality. I know that students, colleagues, and supporters of the Center will enjoy meeting and working with her.”

Commenting on her new role, Bakhos noted that the Center has garnered international recognition for the excellence of its innovative and wideranging programs in large measure thanks to the outstanding leadership of Professor Myers. “I look forward to contributing to the Center’s vision, which is committed to serving the faculty, students, and public at large. I’m particularly excited about enhancing the networks of scholarly resources among various disciplines, programs and Centers at UCLA, such as the Center for Near Eastern Studies, the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the Center for the Study of Religion and the Israel Studies program,” Bakhos said.

Jeff Janeczko wins Skirball Fellowship The Center for Jewish Studies is pleased to announce that Jeff Janeczko has been awarded the inaugural Skirball Graduate Fellowship in Modern Jewish Culture for

2008-09. A trained pianist, Janeczko is completing a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology. His dissertation topic is “‘Beyond Klezmer: Redefining Jewish Music for the 21st Century.” Janeczko will explore the range of contemporary Jewish American musical expression in a continuing education course at the Skirball Cultural Center this year. These performers range from John Zorn and the Radical Jewish Culture series, to artists from JDub records (i.e. The Leevees, Balkan Beat Box, and Golem), as well as artists working in hip-hop (Y-Love, SoCalled, Kosha Dillz, Hip-Hop Hoodios), and others like the Moshav Band, Jeremiah Lockwood, and of course, Matisyahu. The Skirball Fellowship is a partnership between the CJS and the Skirball Cultural Center that aims to foster cutting-edge research in the area of modern Jewish culture, while also exposing this research to a broader public. The CJS expresses its deep thanks to the Skirball Foundation for its generous support of this Fellowship.

Author Dara Horn opens UCLA /Mellon program on the Holocaust Dara Horn, author of the widely acclaimed novels In the Image and The World to Come, delivered a lecture at Hillel at UCLA on April 16 entitled “Fields Notes on the Revival of the Dead," which took up the influences of Yiddish literature and the Holocaust on her writing. Her seminar the following day on “The Eicha Problem” drew a large crowd of faculty and students to the Faculty Center.

The talks marked the opening of the UCLA/Mellon Program on the Holocaust in American and World Culture, made possible by a three-year Distinguished Achievement Award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to Professor Eric J. Sundquist. Mellon support will make possible three major conferences and symposia in the coming year, provide fellowship support to twelve graduate students (see sidebar) and allow visiting faculty to augment teaching in Holocaust studies and Yiddish literature and culture. In Winter quarter 2009 Jeremy Dauber, a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, will offer graduate and undergraduate courses on Yiddish literature. Dauber is the author of Antonio’s Devils: Writers of the Jewish Enlightenment and the Birth of Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature and an editor of Prooftexts, a leading journal in the field of Jewish literature. Joining UCLA as a year-long postdoctoral fellow is Monica Osborne, who completed her Ph.D. at Purdue University with a dissertation entitled “The Midrashic Impulse: Reading Fiction, Film, and Painting in the Face of the Shoah.” Osborne’s publications include articles on Cynthia Ozick and the poetry of Alicia Ostriker and Marge Piercy, and she is a regular contributor to “The Daily Shvitz” column on www.Jewcy.com. She will teach courses on Jewish American fiction and the literature of the Holocaust. On Dec. 7, “The Jewish Question in French Philosophy after the Holocaust,” organized by Professors David N. Myers, Eleanor Kaufman, and Kenneth Reinhard, will gather philosophers, literary critics, and historians to analyze the figure of the Jew in the postwar thought of Sartre, Derrida, Lyotard, and others. Led by Professor Susan Slyomovics of the Departments of Anthropology and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, “Filming the Eichmann Trial,” on Feb. 22–23, will bring together an international group of filmmakers and scholars to discuss the landmark project of filming and broadcasting Israel’s 1961 trial of the infamous Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.

In Spring quarter, on May 17, Miriam Koral, lecturer in Yiddish and director of the California Institute for Yiddish Culture and Language, and Visiting Professor Jeremy Dauber will present a conference on American Yiddish periodicals, including the Los Angeles literary journal Kheshbon. For his part, Professor Sundquist has developed a new course on the Holocaust in American Literature and directed two undergraduate summer research projects on topics related to the Holocaust. In addition to beginning work on a book-length study, he has also begun compiling a documentary reader on the role of the Holocaust in American culture from the rise of Nazism through the present day.

Above: UCLA Hillel Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller (left) shares an idea with author Dara Horn at the UCLA/Mellon Program event. Listening to the exchange are Hannah Nahm, William Graff, Prof. Eric Sundquist, and Mary Pinkerson.

Photo: David Wu

UCLA / Mellon Program Graduate Fellows ■ ANDREA BINI

■ RACHEL DEBLINGER

■ SHAD NAVED

SUMMER MELLON RESEARCH FELLOW

MELLON RESEARCH FELLOW

SUMMER MELLON RESEARCH FELLOW

The Discourse of the Holocaust in the context of the new Berlin and the work of Gunther Demning

Dr. David P. Boder in 1946: Creation of a Holocaust Testimony Project

The Holocaust in South-Asian Writing: Perspectives from a Post colony

■ DORIS CHON

■ DAVID GORSHEIN

■ REBECCA PAPPAS

SUMMER MELLON RESEARCH FELLOW

MELLON RESEARCH FELLOW

Narrating Shadows: W.G. Sebald’s Photographic Historiography

Israel, History and the “Queer Utopia”

“Monster”: an evening-length modern dance piece

■ SARA SIMCHA COHEN

■ MARK LEWIS

■ MARK SMITH

SUMMER MELLON RESEARCH FELLOW

Rachel Calof’s Story: Privacy versus Privation in the Archive

The 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention: The Gutting of Preventive Measures

Yiddish Historiography, the Holocaust, and the Myth of Silence

■ KIERRA CRAGO-SCHNEIDER

■ JARED MCBRIDE

■ DAVID YOUSSEF

MELLON DISSERTATION FELLOW

SUMMER MELLON RESEARCH FELLOW

MELLON DISSERTATION FELLOW

The Historic Triangle Revisited: Jews, Germans, and Americans and their relationship to crime in postwar Germany

Popular Anti-Jewish Violence during the summer of 1941 in Ukraine: Olevs’k and Beyond

The Specter of Disease in the Metropolis: Racial Dimensions of the “Nature” versus “Culture” Debate in early 20th-century Berlin

R.B. Kitaj exhibit inaugurates Portrait of a Jewish Artist: R.B. Kitaj in Text and Image, an exhibition drawn from the personal archive of papers that world-renowned artist R.B. Kitaj donated to Ucla shortly before his death in october 2007 was on view during Winter quarter of 2008 in Ucla's charles e. Young Research library Department of special collections in conjunction with the show R.B. Kitaj: Passion and Memory — Jewish Works from His Personal Collection, at the skirball cultural center.

Photo: Jorge Lewinski © The Lewinski Archive at Chatsworth

The year I was born, 1932, was the year when the catastrophe began in Germany which would kill countless millions including the murder of one-third of the world’s Jews. It was as if my life would be mortally transfixed by the way in which my life had started . . . . But something else happened in 1932. Monet had died six years before I was born and Mary Cassatt four years before. That made me a Post-Impressionist. And for the rest of my life I would be thrilled and devoted to that Modernist persuasion – Cezanne above all, Degas, Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, Mondrian, Munch – you know, the Post-Impressionists, yes, even Duchamp. The Jewish Question and Modernism have been the two dramas which largely determine my life-in-art....I am figuring out a sort of Jewish Art for myself in which my pictures are inspired by the first period, roughly from the late 19th century to now, during which a Jewish cultural floodtide has taken place which seems to me to deserve a painting art of its own and my own. – R.B. Kitaj, from notes written for a talk he gave to UCLA art students in June 1999

Papers of other noted Jewish intellectuals such as composer Eric Zeisl (top) are also part of the UCLA Young Research Library Department of Special Collections. Los Angeles Attorney e. Randol Schoenberg is the grandson of both Zeisl and the great composer Arnold Schoenberg (bottom), who taught at UCLA. Schoenberg will curate a cultural salon, An Inside Look At European Émigré Collections: The Eric Zeisl and Arnold Schoenberg Archives, on Wednesday, January 14 at 4 p.m. at the Department of Special Collections. The exhibition was organized by David N. Myers, with the assistance of UCLA graduate student Rebecca Blustein (not pictured) and the Research Library Department of Special Collections. Here visual arts collection specialist Octavio Olvera, department head Victoria Steele, manuscripts librarian genie guerard, and literary manuscripts specialist Lilace Hatayama enjoy the opening with Professor Myers. Student assistant Norma Williamson also participated. 8

Archive of Jewish Culture This exhibit

represents partial fulfillment of a dream that R.B. Kitaj had – to create not only a reliable repository for his voluminous papers, but also a wide-ranging archive of Jewish culture. Such an archive would be home to the manifold forms of Jewish genius that Kitaj studied and loved so obsessively. These forms of genius, he believed, were a central factor in the making of the modern Western mind. They were also fodder for the ubiquitous anti-Semite, ever in search of the Jew’s perfidy. Kitaj knew well where the crossroad of Jewish genius and anti-Semitic hostility lay. He happened onto it himself on more than a few occasions. It was there that he encountered his old friend, the Jewish Question, which consumed and inspired him over much of his adult life. Even before he knew this friend’s name, Kitaj loved to pore over sacred texts (Kafka, Freud, Benjamin, paintings), supplying learned commentaries in the way of the rabbinic sages. Later, when he came to know the Jewish Question by name, he embraced his mission with the zeal of a brilliant neophyte, unabashedly calling his project JEWISH ART. Iconoclasm, innovation, and interpretation – along with reverence for past masters – were its hallmarks. It was our great fortune to have Kitaj in our midst after he left London and the “Tate War.” Newly settled into his reclusive life in Westwood, he agreed to come to UCLA to talk about his “Jewish art” in June 1999. His enigmatic lecture that evening sparked an eight-year conversation that transformed my intellectual existence in Los Angeles. It revealed a person of massive (autodidactic) erudition, extreme bibliomania, and boundless compassion. It also spawned the idea of an archive that would attract, house, and foster Jewish cultural genius. Sadly, Kitaj is no longer here to share that dream. But the inspired gift of his papers, which we celebrate in this exhibit today, marks the beginning of that dream’s realization.

This sketch mapping Kitaj’s life is one of several from the collection that Kitaj made over breakfast on napkins at a West LA café. The exhibition revealed Kitaj’s life journey, especially his transformation from innovative young artist to self-described Jewish artist. It exposed his vexed relationship with the London art critics, as well as his more tranquil and reclusive phase in Los Angeles, where he lived from 1997 after the death of his wife, artist Sandra Fisher, a recurrent subject in his thinking, writing, and painting.

Credit: R.B. Kitaj sketch on napkin. Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections, R.B. Kitaj Papers

— David N. Myers, From the keepsake distributed at the exhibition opening January 7, 2007

The R.B. Kitaj Papers at UCLA span the years 1950 to 2007, with the bulk of the material from the period between 1975 and 2004. Of interest are the artist's autobiographical writings, and his voluminous correspondence with leading artists, writers, and intellectuals, including Isaiah Berlin, David Hockney, Paul McCartney, and Philip Roth, as well as many letters to and from galleries, museums, universities, and publishers. 9

Center for Jewish Studies 4pm • Monday, October 6, 2008 • 306 ROYCE HALL

Jewish Studies Open House

For Jewish Studies Majors, Minors, Faculty, and Alumni Sunday, October 12, 2008 • 314 ROYCE HALL

The UC-Utrecht Symposium on Jewish Politics & Political Behavior an international symposium

Cosponsored by the University of California Humanities Research Institute and Utrecht University By Invitation

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Sephardic Life in the Balkans Exhibition Opening

The Sephardic Experience in the Balkans: Between Past and Present

In conjunction with the opening reception at UCLA Hillel for the exhibit

Images of a World Destroyed: Pictures and Stories of Balkan Sephardic Life from the Centropa Interviews Cosponsored by the Maurice Amado Foundation, Casa Sefarad Israel, Foreign & Cultural Cooperation, Embassy of Spain Washington, Gobierno de Espana-Ministerio de Cultura, JDC, The Dortort Center for Creativity in the Arts at UCLA Hillel, Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel, and the UCLA Department of Spanish & Portuguese Studies

12pm • Monday, October 27, 2008 • 306 ROYCE HALL

Jews, Masons and Cabalists: The Renaissance as Ideology and the Italian Risorgimento Brian Copenhaver UCLA

Viterbi Seminar in Mediterranean Jewish Studies Cosponsored by the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the UCLA Department of Italian, and the UCLA Department of History

6pm • Monday, November 3, 2008 • 314 ROYCE HALL

How an Erotic Dream Led Me to an Understanding of the Sacred Tongue Ilan Stavans

AMHERST COLLEGE

The Naftulin Family Lecture on Studies in Jewish Identity 7:30pm • Wednesday, November 5, 2008 • UCLA FACULTY CENTER

Reading from Bearing the Body Ehud Havazelet UNIVERSITY OF OREGON Sponsored by the UCLA/Mellon Program on the Holocaust in American & World Culture

To RSVP please call (310) 267-5327 or email cjsrsvp@humnet.ucla.edu 10

2008-2009 Calendar 7pm • Thursday, November 6, 2008 • UCLA HILLEL

Cool Jews: Books, Films and Festivals Lisa Klug JOURNALIST Dan Katzir ISRAELI FILMMAKER Rabbi Yonah Bookstein CO-FOUNDER OF JEWLICIOUS FESTIVALS Cosponsored by Hillel at UCLA Alumni Association, Dortort Center for Creativity in the Arts at UCLA Hillel, and Long Beach Hillel

4pm • Wednesday, November 12, 2008 • FACULTY CENTER

Commemorative Event Marking the 70th Anniversary of Kristallnacht and the 65th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising From Hitler’s Failed Coup to the Destruction of Synagogues: November 9th in Historical Perspective Michael Brenner

UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH

What Made the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Different? Samuel Kassow

TRINITY COLLEGE

The “1939” Club Series in Holocaust Studies Cosponsored by the UCLA/Mellon Program on the Holocaust in American & World Culture, the UCLA Center for European and Eurasian Studies, the Consulate General of Poland, the UCLA Department of History, and the UCLA Department of Germanic Languages

November 16–18, 2008

Integrating Sephardi and Mizrachi Studies: Research and Practice A Conference organized by Hebrew Union College In conjunction with the Maurice Amado Foundation, the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies, and the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life (USC) FOR MORE INFORMATION, INCLUDING REGISTRATION COSTS AND SCHEDULE, PLEASE VISIT www.huc.edu/sephardic/conference OR EMAIL sephardicconference@huc.edu

12pm • Thursday, November 20, 2008 • UCLA HILLEL

Iranian Jewish Women: Domesticating Zoroastrian and Shi’i Religion in Ritual Life Saba Soomekh LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY CJS Faculty/Student Seminar Cosponsored by the UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures and Hillel at UCLA

Sunday, December 7, 2008 • 314 ROYCE HALL

The Jewish Question in French Philosophy after the Holocaust A Symposium sponsored by the UCLA/Mellon Program on the Holocaust in American & World Culture and the “1939” Club Cosponsored by the UCLA Department of French and Francophone Studies and the UCLA Center for European and Eurasian Studies

Center for Jewish Studies 9:30am • Sunday, December 14, 2008 • SINAI TEMPLE

Just Say Nu: Yiddish for Every Occasion, When English Just Won’t Do Michael Wex

AUTHOR

A Celebration of Jewish Book Month at Sinai Temple Sponsored by Sinai Temple Blumenthal Library and cosponsored by the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies FOR MORE INFORMATION, INCLUDING REGISTRATION AND SCHEDULE, PLEASE VISIT

www.sin000aitemple.org/temple/jewish_book_month.php

4pm • Monday, January 12, 2009 • SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, YOUNG RESEARCH LIBRARY

An Inside Look at European Émigré Collections: The Eric Zeisl and Arnold Schoenberg Archives Randol Schoenberg

ATTORNEY

Jewish Culture Salon Cosponsored by the UCLA Young Research Library Department of Special Collections and the “1939” Club / Space is limited

12pm • Thursday, January 15, 2009 • 10383 BUNCHE HALL

Book Discussion Beyond Anne Frank: Hidden Children and Postwar Families in Holland Diane Wolf

UC DAVIS

Sponsored by the UCLA Center for European and Eurasian Studies

12pm • Wednesday, January 21, 2009 • 306 ROYCE HALL

Rabbinics Scholarship Today Gail Labovitz AMERICAN JEWISH UNIVERSITY Dvora Weisberg HEBREW UNION COLLEGE CJS Faculty/Student Seminar Cosponsored by the UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures

12pm • Wednesday, January 28, 2009 • 6275 BUNCHE HALL

On Human Bondage, or Reason in Spinoza and Beyond Nancy Levene INDIANA UNIVERSITY CJS Faculty/Student Seminar Cosponsored by the UCLA Center for the Study of Religion

12pm • Thursday, January 29, 2009 • 6275 BUNCHE HALL

Reclaiming Jesus or Defending Judaism? Coming to Terms (once again) with a Jewish Jesus in Post-Polemical and Post-Ecumenical America Shaul Magid INDIANA UNIVERSITY CJS Faculty/Student Seminar Cosponsored by the UCLA Center for the Study of Religion

2008-2009 Calendar Sunday, February 1, 2009

Exploring the Holocaust through Children’s Literature A Conference sponsored by Sinai Temple

Cosponsored by the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies, the UCLA/Mellon Program on the Holocaust in American & World Culture, and Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance FOR MORE INFORMATION, INCLUDING REGISTRATION AND SCHEDULE, PLEASE EMAIL

bgeolman@sinaitemple.org

February 8-9, 2009 • 314 ROYCE HALL

Jewish Urban History in the Americas: A Comparative Look at Jewish Buenos Aires & Jewish Los Angeles an international junior scholars symposium

Sponsored by the Joy & Jerry Monkarsh Fund, the Natalie Limonick Fund in Jewish Civilization, and the Maurice Amado Foundation Cosponsored by Tel Aviv University, Instituto de Desarrollo Económico y Social (IDES) in Buenos Aires, the UCLA Latin American Institute, the UCLA Department of Spanish & Portuguese Studies, and the UCLA Department of History Space is limited

February 22-23, 2009

Filming the Eichmann Trial

an international conference

Sponsored by the UCLA/Mellon Program on the Holocaust in American & World Culture and the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT

http://international.ucla.edu/cnes

12pm • Tuesday, February 24, 2009 • 6275 BUNCHE HALL

The Advent of the Witness Annette Wieviorka

CNRS, FRANCE

The “1939” Club Distinguished Seminar in Holocaust Studies Sponsored by the “1939” Club and the UCLA/Mellon Program on the Holocaust in American & World Culture Cosponsored by the UCLA Department of Germanic Languages

4pm • Tuesday, March 3, 2009 • SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, YOUNG RESEARCH LIBRARY

Saving Western Jewish History: The Successful Collaboration between ‘Town and Gown’ David Epstein & Gladys Sturman

WESTERN STATES JEWISH HISTORY ASSOCIATION

Jewish Culture Salon Cosponsored by the UCLA Young Research Library Department of Special Collections Space is limited

From top: 1. Just Say Nu book cover 2. David Epstein, Gladys Sturman, David N. Myers 3. The Klezmatics 13

Center for Jewish Studies 8pm • Thursday, March 5, 2009 • ROYCE HALL

The Klezmatics UCLA Live! Performance TO PURCHASE TICKETS AND FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT

www.uclalive.org/event.asp?event_id=580

1pm • Sunday, April 19, 2009 • FACULTY CENTER

Theater and Music in Jewish Renaissance Italy Convened by

Professor Fabrizio Lelli

The Viterbi Symposium in Italian Jewish Studies Cosponsored by the UCLA Department of Italian

7:30pm • Monday, April 27, 2009 • FACULTY CENTER

Fitting Memorials: American Jews & the Holocaust, 1945-1962 Hasia Diner

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

Arnold Band Distinguished Lecture in Jewish Studies Sponsored by Sheila and Milton Hyman Cosponsored by the “1939” Club and the UCLA/Mellon Program on the Holocaust in American & World Culture

8pm • Thursday, April 30, 2009 • KAUFMAN HALL

Monster A Contemporary Dance Performance Featuring Pappas and Dancers Presented by the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures with support from the UCLA/Mellon Program on the Holocaust in American & World Culture, and a commission from Saint Joseph Ballet (Santa Ana, CA)

1pm • Sunday, May 3, 2009 • 314 ROYCE HALL

Maurice Amado Chair Inauguration Looking to the Future: Sephardic Studies at UCLA Marking the Inauguration of Professor Sarah Abrevaya Stein as the Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies

Sponsored by the UCLA Division of Humanities and the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies Cosponsored by the UCLA Department of History From top: 1. Arnold Band, Milton Hyman 2. Pappas and Dancers 3. Ilan Stavans

While most events are free and open to the public, advance registration is required for all events. To RSVP please call (310) 267-5327 or email cjsrsvp@humnet.ucla.edu For an up-to-date schedule, visit www.cjs.ucla.edu as changes may occur. Email cjs@humnet.ucla.edu to receive regular updates. 14

2008-2009 Calendar 12pm • Tuesday, May 5, 2009 • 306 ROYCE HALL

The Sacralization of Nationalism in Zionist Thought and Practice Adam Rubin

HEBREW UNION COLLEGE

CJS Faculty/Student Seminar Cosponsored by the UCLA Department of History

12pm • Wednesday, May 13 2009 • 6275 BUNCHE HALL

Post-Postmodern ‘Homefulness’: Architectures in Time and Space Beyond the ‘End’ of Culture Shelley Salamensky

UCLA

CJS Faculty/Student Seminar Sunday, May 17, 2009 • 314 ROYCE HALL

Transforming a Culture between Soft Covers: Yiddish Journals in the New World A Symposium in Yiddish Studies Sponsored by the UCLA/Mellon Program on the Holocaust in American & World Culture

2pm • Wednesday, May 20, 2009 • 9383 BUNCHE HALL

Jews and the Early Modern Economy Francesca Trivellato

YALE UNIVERSITY

The Economic History Speaker Series, Economics Department Sponsored by the UCLA Department of Economics Cosponsored by the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies and the UCLA Department of History

12pm • Wednesday, May 27, 2009 • 306 ROYCE HALL

In Spite of Partition: Jews, Arabs, and the Limits of Separatist Imagination Gil Hochberg

UCLA

CJS Faculty/Student Seminar

From top: 1. In Spite of Partition book cover 2. Brian Copenhaver 3. Kheshbon journal covers

Parking is available for $9. For maps and additional parking information visit www.transportation.ucla.edu Please note that the parking kiosk at the corner of Hilgard and Westholme closes at 7:30 p.m.

New books A PIOUS MAN FACES SINNERS: The Book of Moral Reproof By Ezra Habavli

BETWEEN JEW AND ARAB: The Lost Voice of Simon Rawidowicz

Lev Hakak

Brandeis University Press University Press of New England, 2008

David N. Myers

Hakkibutz Hameuchad, 2008

Ezra Habavli published his poetry book Moral Reproof in 1735. Lev Hakak’s book in Hebrew recovers the immense literary accomplishments of this forgotten Jewish poet of Baghdad. The didactic work includes 17 long poems that lead to the correct way of life – a life of honesty, charity, compassion, humility, love of a fellow human being, and pursuit of peace; a life without envy, slander and arrogance. It is written in “a poetic, very rich and creative Hebrew style,” says Hakak. “It should be explored, brought to the attention of readers and scholars, and be part of the canon of Hebrew literature.” This is the third book of Hakak since 2003 to explore the Hebrew literature written by Jews in Near Eastern countries that should be incorporated into the history of Hebrew literature. The volume corrects numerous printing errors in the original and includes an extensive introduction about the book and its historical and literary context.

In this book David N. Myers brings new attention to Simon Rawidowicz (1896–1957), the wide-ranging Jewish thinker and scholar who taught at Brandeis University in the 1950s. At the heart of the book is a chapter that Rawidowicz wrote as a coda to his Hebrew tome Babylon and Jerusalem (1957) but never published. In it, Rawidowicz shifted his decades-long preoccupation with the “Jewish Question” to what he called the “Arab Question.” Asserting that the “Arab Question” had become a most urgent political and moral matter for Jews after 1948, Rawidowicz called for an end to discrimination against Arabs residing in Israel—and more provocatively, for the repatriation of Arab refugees from 1948. The volume also includes a full English translation of “Between Jew and Arab,” a timeline of significant events, and an appendix of official legal documents from Israel and the international community pertaining to the conflict.

aFFiliateD JewiSH StuDieS FaCulty ■ CAROL BAKHOS

■ SAUL FRIEDLÄNDER

■ EFRAIN KRISTAL

Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Late Antique Judaism. FIELD: Midrash and rabbinic Judaism

“1939” Club Professor of Holocaust Studies.

Professor of Comparative Literature.

■ ARNOLD J. BAND

■ LEV HAKAK

Professor Emeritus of Hebrew and Comparative Literature. FIELD: Modern Hebrew and Jewish literature

Professor of Hebrew Literature.

■ LEAH PLATT BOUSTAN

■ DAVID HIRSCH

Assistant Professor of Economics.

FIELD: Jewish migration, residential segregation

Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies Bibliographer, Charles Young Research Library

■ RA’ANAN BOUSTAN

■ GIL HOCHBERG

Assistant Professor of History and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. FIELD: Jewish history

Associate Professor of Comparative Literature.

■ AARON BURKE

■ ELEANOR KAUFMAN

Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology.

Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and French and Francophone Studies. FIELD: 20th-century

FIELD: Archaeology of ancient Israel, early Judaism

FIELD: History of the Holocaust

FIELD: Modern Hebrew literature

FIELD: Israeli, Palestinian, and N. African literatures

Professor of History.

FIELD: Jewish history and thought

■ TODD S. PRESNER Assistant Professor of German. FIELD: Modern German-Jewish literature and intellectual history, art history, visual culture

■ KENNETH REINHARD Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and English. FIELD: Hermeneutics, religion, and modern Jewish literature

■ TEOFILO F. RUIZ

■ MIRIAM KORAL

Professor of History. FIELD: Medieval and Early Modern Spain, social and cultural History

Lecturer in Yiddish.

■ DAVID N. MYERS

French philosophy and Jewish diaspora

■ NANCY EZER Lecturer in Hebrew. FIELD: Modern Hebrew literature

FIELD: South and Central American literature, comparative literature, philosophy

KING’S DREAM

PLUMES: Ostrich Feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global Commerce

Eric J. Sundquist Yale University Press, 2008

Sarah Abrevaya Stein Yale University Press, 2008

In this new book, Sarah Abrevaya Stein draws on rich archival materials to bring to light the prominent and varied roles of Jews in the feather trade. She discovers that Jews fostered and nurtured the trade across the global commodity chain and throughout the far-flung territories where ostriches were reared and plucked, and their feathers were sorted, exported, imported, auctioned, wholesaled, and finally manufactured for sale. From Yiddish-speaking Russian-Lithuanian feather handlers in South Africa to London manufacturers and wholesalers, from rival Sephardic families whose feathers were imported from the Sahara and traded across the Mediterranean, from New York’s Lower East Side to entrepreneurial farms in the American West, Stein explores a singular story of global commerce, colonial economic practices, and the rise and fall of a glamorous luxury item.

I have a dream — no words are more widely recognized, or more often repeated, than those called out from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial by Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1963. King’s speech, elegantly structured and commanding in tone, has become shorthand not only for his own life but for the entire civil rights movement. In this new exploration of the “I have a dream” speech, Eric J. Sundquist places it in the history of American debates about racial justice—debates as old as the nation itself—and demonstrates how the speech, an exultant blend of grand poetry and powerful elocution, perfectly expressed the story of African American freedom. At a time when the meaning of the speech has been obscured by its appropriation for every conceivable cause, Sundquist clarifies the transformative power of King’s “Second Emancipation Proclamation” and its continuing relevance for contemporary arguments about equality.

VisiTiNG FacUlTY 2008-2009

■ YONA SABAR

■ STEVEN SPIEGEL

Professor of Hebrew and Aramaic. FIELD: Aramaic, Hebrew, Jewish languages, Jewish and Near Eastern folklore

policy in the Middle East

• JEREMY DAUBER Senior Scholar, UCLA/Mellon Program on the Holocaust in American and World Culture

■ ERIC SUNDQUIST

• FABRIZIO LELLI Viterbi Visiting Professor of Mediterranean Jewish Studies • UNIVERSITY OF LECCE, ITALY

Professor of Political Science. FIELD: American foreign

■ WILLIAM SCHNIEDEWIND

UCLA Foundation Professor of Literature. FIELD:

Professor of Biblical Studies and Northwest Semitic Languages. FIELD: Bible, Northwest semitics, Second

Racial and ethnic minorities in American literature: African-American, Jewish and Post-Holocaust America

• MONICA OSBOURNE Post-Doctoral Scholar, UCLA/Mellon Program on the Holocaust in American and World Culture

■ ROGER WALDINGER

• MICHA PERRY CJS Visiting Scholar, teaching courses on the Jewish Middle Ages

Temple Judaism

■ SHELLEY SALAMENSKY Assistant Professor of Theater. FIELD: 19th- through 21st-century British, European, and Jewish literature, drama, performance, and culture

■ JEREMY SMOAK Lecturer in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures.

■ SARAH ABREVAYA STEIN Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies. FIELD: Sephardic Studies

Professor of Sociology. FIELD: International migration, race and ethnicity, urban sociology

• SANDRA VALABREGUE PERRY CJS Visiting Scholar, teaching Introduction to Jewish Mysticism

■ JONATHAN M. ZASLOFF

• NAHID PIRNAZAR Adjunct Lecturer in Iranian Studies, teaching the History of the Jews of Persia

Professor of Law. FIELD: Law, legal theory, ethical treatises of Jewish tradition, moral philosophy, Jewish history.

cJs FelloWs 2008-2009 • JACOB BARNAI Professor, Dept. of History and Dept. of Land of Israel Studies • UNIVERSITY OF HAIFA, ISRAEL • SABA SOOMEKH Visiting Professor in Theological Studies • LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY

Comedy writer Michael Ross donates $4 million for Yiddish and Jewish studies

Gift provides support for research, teaching, and lectures A visionary gift of $4 million from television writer/producer Michael Ross will provide for the Michael and Irene Ross Chair in Yiddish language and culture (pending formal approval by the UCLA Academic Senate), Yiddish language instruction, and general support forJewish studies at UCLA.

DID YOU KNOW? You can make a gift of cash, appreciated securities or even real estate to ucla center for jewish studies

and receive a lifetime income

• If you are 65 years old, you can establish a charitable gift annuity that has a payout rate of 5.7% for your lifetime. The older you are, the higher the payout rate.

• You can bypass realizing capital gain on gifts of appreciated assets.

• You are entitled to an immediate federal income tax charitable deduction.

Current Gift Annuity Payment Rates Selected Rates for One Person Age

Rate

5.7%

6.1

6.7

7.6

Current rates for other ages available upon request.

For more information, please call UCLA Office of Gift Planning 1-800-737-8252 or visit our website: www.giftplanning.ucla.edu 18

As the linguistic key to a thousand years of Jewish culture in Central and Eastern Europe, Yiddish is a pillar of any serous program in Jewish studies, according to David N. Myers, director of the Center for Jewish Studies. “Renowned for its wide range of expression, from the comic to the tragic, Yiddish was the language of great rabbis, authors, entertainers, scientists, and political activists. The fact that the overwhelming majority of the world’s Yiddish-speaking population was murdered in the Holocaust makes the study of Yiddish an especially urgent and necessary task,” he said. Yiddish has been taught at UCLA for more than 30 years and has long been supported by Michael Ross. Last year, an official second year was added through a gift from the Simha and Sara Lainer Foundation. “The Ross endowment will allow us to attract an outstanding scholar of Yiddish culture to UCLA, and provides a measure of stability that will allow us to move forward toward our goal of becoming a center of international distinction in Jewish and Yiddish studies,” Professor Myers said. The gift also provides support for a Yiddish language lecturer, as well as for graduate and faculty research, scholarly conferences and symposia, and popular lectures in the field of Yiddish and related studies.

Born Isidore Rovinsky, Michael Ross grew up in a Yiddish speaking home and graduated from City College of New York in 1939. In the early days of television he served as a stager/director for The Garry Moore Show and worked with the legendary Sid Ceasar. In the early 1970s, Mr. Ross was a writer and executive producer for Norman Lear’s breakout sitcom, All in the Family, about intergenerational conflict in a blue-collar Queens family that explored prejudice and social mores of that era. For five years, All in the Family, was the top rated American sitcom and remains one of the most influential series ever to air. Mr. Ross went on to write for and executive produce The Jeffersons, and Three’s Company, two of the highest rated sitcoms of their era.

Andrew Viterbi endows Chair in Mediterranean Jewish studies

Cell phone pioneer encourages Jewish Studies innovation Growing up in Boston, where Italian immigrants tended to be Catholic, Andrew Viterbi raised eyebrows every time he responded to questions about his cultural heritage. “All the way through high school and college, I would be asked, ‘How can you be an Italian and a Jew?’” the father of cell phone technology recalls with a laugh. “Scholars have always known about Italy’s Jews, but to the general public, it’s a contradiction in terms.” In fact, the co-founder of Qualcomm and former UCLA engineering professor can trace his Italian Jewish roots on his father’s side back to 1588. To further understanding of this oftenoverlooked group, Viterbi, his wife, Erna, and their three children have established a $1.4 million endowment to create the first university program in Mediterranean Jewish studies. Beginning next fall, the Viterbi Family Program in Mediterranean Jewish Studies will bring a distinguished scholar to campus for one quarter of instruction. The endowment will also fund quarterly seminars on Jewish communities in Italy, France, Spain, the Balkans, North Africa, Egypt or Israel. The new program is the outgrowth of a pilot program in Italian Jewish studies started three years ago at the Center for Jewish Studies with support from the Viterbi Family Foundation. The program builds on a trend in historical studies to look beyond traditional political boundaries in order to understand transnational commercial and intellectual connections between different groups of people.

The Viterbi’s family emigrated to Boston after a series of racial laws in Mussolini’s Italy in 1938 made it impossible for the elder Viterbi to continue working as an opthalomogist in the Lombardy town of Bergamo, northeast of Milan. “For the subsequent two decades, which were my formative years, I strove to erase my Italian past and take on the new identity of an American Jew,” Viterbi recalled. “I recognized only my parents’ bitter experience of the recent past and not their sweet memories of an earlier Italy of culture, beauty, and tolerance.” Viterbi said his feelings softened considerably after meeting and marrying Erna Finci. Finci was living in Sarajevo when the Germans invaded in 1941. Along with her family, she fled to a part of what today is Croatia that was under the control of the Italian military. When the Fincis were eventually interned as Jews, they were not sent to a concentration camp but to a small Italian village. “Ultimately, the family was able to escape to Switzerland, and it was a harrowing experience. But all along the way, there were Italians who helped them and protected them from the Germans. Hearing her experiences really changed my mind about Italians in World War II.”

Viterbi wins science awards Andrew Viterbi has been selected for the National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest honor in science and technology. He is also one of four 2008 Millennium Technology Laureates, or finalists for the world’s largest technology award. The bi-annual Millennium Prize celebrates innovations that have a favorable impact on quality of life and wellbeing or on sustainable development. Viterbi was recognized for his pathbreaking algorithm, developed in 1967 while he was on the UCLA faculty. Today it is used in billions of cell phones, as well as in magnetic recording devices, most satellite television receivers, a variety of cable systems, voice recognition programs and even DNA sequence analysis.

Awards & Rememberances Friedländer wins Pulitzer prize for nonfiction

Photo: Reed Hutchinson

Professor Saul Friedländer, the “1939” Club Chair in Holocaust Studies at UCLA, won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction for The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945, the second volume of his seminal history of Jews and the Holocaust. Friedländer spoke with UCLA media relations the day he heard the news. "I’m thrilled. It's a great honor," Friedländer said. “It’s an important prize because it's an American prize that has a great meaning in this country." Friedländer is considered one of the world's premier historians in the field and his books the definitive work on Jews during the rise and terror of the Third Reich. Last year, he received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the Frankfurt Book Fair's top award. Friedländer grew up in a French monastery in the 1940s, not knowing that his Jewish parents had perished in the Holocaust. When he was 13, a Jesuit priest told him what happened to the Jews of Europe. "That changed my whole life," Friedländer said in a 2001 interview. "In a way, my Jewish identity was restored."

Presner wins MacArthur innovation award

 NATALIE LIMONICK (1920-2007)

Natalie Limonick, former associate director of the UCLA Opera Workshop, died Dec. 1, 2007 at her home in Los Angeles. She was 87. Throughout her career, Limonick enriched the musical careers of many and made it her mission to take live opera into public grade schools. A UCLA graduate, Limonick became an assistant to Jan Popper, director of the UCLA Opera workshop in the early 1950’s and eventually headed the workshop herself. In 1974, Limonick became the general director of the opera program at USC. She later retired to teach voice and piano privately. Limonick also had a passion for world affairs and politics. In 2002 she endowed the Center for Jewish Studies with the annual Natalie Limonick Symposium on Jewish Civilization, which addresses historical and cultural topics. Limonick is survived by her daughter, Pam Berger, granddaughters Dr. Deborah Berger and Lauren Ben-Avi, and two great-grandsons.

The cost of gas is no barrier to internet travel. Through Hypermedia Berlin (www. berlin.ucla.edu/hypermedia) students can use the Web to visit the city, explore its streets and travel back through 800 years of its history. The website grew out of Professor Todd Presner’s desire to illustrate the dramatic and often tragic history of Berlin and is one of 17 projects to win a new digital innovation prize funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (www.macfound.org/site). Presner will use the $238,000 purse from the MacArthur Foundation’s inaugural Digital Media and Learning Competition to expand his project to other dynamic cities. With six collaborators from UCLA and other institutions, he plans to illuminate the history of Los Angeles, Lima, and Rome. As a group, the collection of Web sites will be known as HyperCities (www.hypercities.com) and will eventually include three-dimensional computer models. “The purpose of HyperCities is to create a digital archaeology of a city space. It allows people to find out what used to be there, to navigate the great cities of the world over time,” Presner said. “We have a fantastic team of universities and community partners to realize this collaborative vision.” The collaborative team includes UCLA History Professor Jan Reiff and Architecture Professor Diane Favro, along with USC Professor Phil Ethington.

Myers receives AAJR honor CJS Director David N. Myers, has been elected a fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research, joining UCLA Professors Arnold Band and Herbert Davidson in this honor. The Academy represents the oldest organization of Judaic scholars in North America. Fellows are nominated and elected by their peers and thus constitute the most distinguished and most senior scholars teaching Judaic studies at American universities. As the senior organization for Jewish scholarship, it is committed to enhancing Judaic studies throughout North American universities by creating a dynamic fellowship for its members and by providing programs and opportunities for more junior scholars and students entering the field.

 Honor Roll 2007–2008  The UCLA Center for Jewish Studies thanks the following individuals, foundations, and trusts for their generous support The “1939” Club Emanuel Abrams Susan Adelman Edgar Aftergood Maurice Amado Foundation Eve Asner Gail Aspinwall Miryam Bachrach Eva Ballo Leah Stoller Barshap Susan & Stephen Bauman Sanford & Phyllis Beim Family Fdn. Martin Bernstein Sadelle Birnbaum Doris Blum Anne Bodenheimer The Brackthorn Foundation Barbara T.H. Brandon Ruby & Gerald Bubis The Center for Cultural Judaism Fay Klein & Manny Chait Daniel Chapman Rita & Willard Chotiner Lya Cordova-Latta E. & Michael Deutsch Gift Fund Myra Diamond Ellen Dirksen Chana & Arnold Epstein Barbara & Jerold Federman Clara & Nathaniel Feldman Rose & Al Finci Bernard Friedman Allen Gerber Marlene & Victor Gerson Rochelle & Eli Ginsburgg Manuel & Harriet Glaser Family Tr. Herbert & S. Glaser Fund Andrew & Doris Glick Samuel & Gertrude Goetz Fund Frances & Jerrold Goldstein Abner & Roslyn Goldstine Trust David Gorlick Hanna Grinberg Irwin Grossman Lee Ann & Harvey Grossman Abraham Havivi Linda & Gershon Hepner Andrew Hyman Sheila & Milton Hyman Foundation Sheldon Jaffe

Roneet Kahan Penny & Ed Kanner Helen & Isaac Kaplan Bruno & Margot Katz Family Trust Shirley Kotler Marshall F. Kramer Simha & Sara Lainer Family Fdn. Stephen Lesser Fund Ursula & Myron Levi Family Fund Nadine & Israel Levy Peachy & Mark Levy Family Trust Marsha Lewin Elaine Lindheim Teri Cohan & Baruch Link Lotwin Family Trust Lucille Ellis Simon Foundation Dov Malkin Beatrice & Leonard Mandel The Markowitz Family Trust Suzanne & Walter Marks Ruth & Daniel Merritt Albert Mizrahi Inez Mogul Joy & Jerry Monkarsh Esther Kleitman & Steven Nomi Stolzenberg & David N. Myers Sondra & Morey Myers Irene & Donald Naftulin Victor Nahmias J.A. & Freda Nessim Trust Myra & Bruce Newman Mary & William Pinkerson Paul Polakoff The Polinger Family Foundation Jerome Rabow SAndra Radoff-Bernstein Stewart & Lynda Resnick Family Fnd. Dorothy Richards Rivo Family Trust Adrienne & Robert Ross Lillian Hammer Ross & Aaron Freeman Michael Ross Lois & Moshe Rothblum Peter Rothholz Dorothy & Avram Salkin Renee & Albert Sattin Muriel Schoichet Leah & Norm Schweitzer Eileen Sever Shirley & Ralph Shapiro

Abby Sher Donald Simon Kenneth Simon The Skirball Foundation Smotrich Family Foundation Daniel Spitzer Louise Spitzer Andrew Steinberg Kerri & Howard J. Steinberg Edith & Arthur Stern Fund Sidney Stern Memorial Trust Stanley Stone June Stoner Mildred & Jerry Sudarsky Marjorie Taylor Lillian & Charles Trilling Rachel & Thomas Tugend Edward Victor Viterbi Family Fund Michael Waterman Janet & Henry Waxman Lucia Weinberg Sylvia & Charles Weiner David J. Weiner Foundation Lillian Apodaca Weiner Victoria S. Weisenberg Mary R. Weissmann Western States Jewish Hist. Assn. Harold Williams Ronald R. Williamson Shirley Williamson Jane Winer Carmel & Rudolf Winkler Chic Wolk Molly Zachariash

 In memory of Natalie Limonick  Natsuko & Yoshio Akiyama Louis Bailin Congregation Beth Israel, San Diego Dixie Blackstone Eger Gerald Faris Trust Maxine & Maurice Feldman Nancy Feldman Adelaide Gest Cantor Jonathan Grant Shirley & Orrin Howard Joanne Jubelier Living Trust Rosalie Katz Family Foundation Patricia & Herbert Zibulsky 21

IMAGES OF A WORLD DESTROYED an exhibition of pictures and stories of sephardic life in the Balkans from the centropa interviews

The Sephardic Experience in the Balkans: Between Past & Present A Symposium and Exhibition CO-SPONSORED BY THE UCLA CENTER FOR JEWISH STUDIES, DORTORT CENTER FOR CREATIVITY IN THE ARTS AT UCLA HILLEL, THE MAURICE AMADO FOUNDATION, PROGRAM FOR CULTURAL COOPERATION/SPAIN’S MINISTRY OF CULTURE

& UNITED STATES UNIVERSITIES,

CASA SEFARAD-ISRAEL, SEPHARDIC TEMPLE TIFERETH ISRAEL

SUNDAY OCTOBER 26

314 Royce Hall, UCLA 2-4 pm

UCLA Hillel 5 pm

Symposium

Reception & Exhibit Opening

Introduction David N. Myers UCLA

Panelists

Speakers

Edward Serotta

CENTROPA

Oral Histories, Advanced Technologies & Vernacular Photography

Sarah Abrevaya Stein

Sven Alkalaj FOREIGN MINISTER, BOSNIA Edward Serotta CENTROPA

UCLA

Remembering Sephardic Pasts

Mark Cohen

AUTHOR

United States premiere takes place at UCLA Hillel Oct. 26 and remains on display through Dec. 23. Centropa Director Edward Serrotta (left) shows the project to Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos at the opening of the exhibition in Cordoba, Spain.

Remarks: Rabbi Daniel Bouskila SEPHARDIC TEMPLE TIFERETH ISRAEL

How the West Won: The Arrival of Alliance Schools in Monastir, Macedonia

at the

Celebrate Cool Jews — Meet award-winning author Lisa Klug

7 pm Nov. 6 hillel at Ucla, 574 hilgard avenue Lisa Klug will read from her new book Cool Jew: The Ultimate Guide for Every Member of the Tribe and participate in a panel discussion with Israeli ﬁlmmaker Dan Katzir and Jewlicious Festivals co-founder Rabbi Yonah Bookstein. The evening includes a gala dessert reception, martini bar (ID required) and book signing.

‫במרכז‬

center

Center for Jewish Studies

Box 951485 los angeles, ca 90095-1485 www.cjs.ucla.edu Prof. David N. Myers Director

Prof. Carol Bakhos Associate Director

Gina White Manager Co-sponsored by CJS, Hillel at UCLA Alumni Association, Dortort Center for Creativity in the Arts at UCLA Hillel and Long Beach Hillel.

Mary Enid Pinkerson Ph.D. Community Affairs Coordinator

Vivian Holenbeck

Assistant Director of Operations

Events are free; however, advance registration is required.

David Wu

Email: cjsrsvp@humnet.ucla.edu or call 310-267-5327. 22 Parking is available for $9. Enter the campus via Westholme Avenue from Hilgard Avenue.

Ghia Garcia

Program Coordinator Administrative Assistant