CJS Newsletter (2010-11) by David Wu

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Newsletter volume 18 Flash version: cjs.ucla.edu

Center for Jewish Studies

Lecture Series: Jews and Food delights from mimi sheraton, poopa dweck and jonathan gold

Civic Engagement

New Gift: Kahn Directorship 11

From the Director

2010-11 Promises New Beginnings

The coming year promises to be one of exciting new beginnings for the Center for Jewish Studies. We are particularly excited by a new series, “Jews and Food,” that will bring to campus fascinating and important commentators on the long engagement between Jews and culinary traditions. I am also very pleased to announce that we have received a visionary gift that will allow the Center to continue on its path to becoming the leading center of its kind in North America: the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Endowed Directorship. Drawn from the estate of Sady and Ludwig Kahn, this gift will provide a new fellowship in Jewish studies, as well as an annual lecture in European Jewish studies, with a particular focus on Germany; the inaugural Kahn Lecture will be given on November 8, 2010 by the distinguished Israeli historian, Shulamit Volkov. The Kahns were themselves products of the extraordinarily rich and complex German-Jewish legacy of which Professor Volkov has written so intelligently. They maintained a connection to German-Jewish culture throughout their lives in Los Angeles. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Jim Keir, trustee of the Kahn estate, for his understanding and generosity of spirit. The Kahn gift will provide the Center director with the key resources to chart important new pathways into the future. And this is especially important as we enter a period of transition. After spending a wonderful year on sabbatical in 2009-10 at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania, I returned to UCLA to assume a new position: Chair of the internationally renowned UCLA History Department. The decade I have spent directing the Center has been a source of great joy and I am especially proud to have watched it move from infancy to young adulthood. I am thankful to my friend and colleague, Carol Bakhos, who stepped in to serve so ably as Director last year while I was on sabbatical. Carol herself now heads out to New York in the fall for a well-deserved leave to work on a book project. We are very excited that Professor Todd Presner of the Germanic Languages Department has agreed to assume the reins of leadership. Todd and I will serve together as co-directors until the end of the winter quarter, at which point he will become CJS Director. As I prepare to take leave, I would like to express my deep gratitude to the extraordinary CJS staff: assistant director Vivian Holenbeck, community outreach coordinator Dr. Mary Pinkerson, and our new financial coordinator, Briana Desmond. They are the very foundation of the Center’s work. For my part, I plan to remain actively involved in CJS, working particularly to develop the field of applied Jewish studies. Above all, I look forward to seeing the Center flourish and grow under Todd Presner’s leadership.

at the

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Center for Jewish Studies

— David N. Myers Professor of History and Co-Director

Box 951485 Los Angeles, CA 90095-1485

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

editor

Mary Enid Pinkerson design

Nechama Marcus

Prof. Todd Presner to Lead CJS Dean Tim Stowell of the Division of Humanities is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Todd Presner of the Department of Germanic Languages as Director of the Center for Jewish Studies effective Spring quarter 2011. In the interim, Prof. Presner will serve with Prof. David N. Myers as co-director. A dynamic and creative scholar of German-Jewish culture, Prof. Presner has developed a national reputation for his skill in bringing together new media and the humanities. He is the author of two books: the first, Mobile Modernity: Germans, Jews, Trains, maps German-Jewish intellectual history onto the development of the railway system; the second, Muscular Judaism: The Jewish Body and the Politics of Regeneration, analyzes the aesthetic dimensions of the strong Jewish body. “I am truly honored to assume the directorship of the Center, especially at a time of tremendous growth and opportunity for Jewish Studies at UCLA,” Presner said. “I am excited to build on the foundational work that David Myers has initiated and hope to continue to engage the faculty, students, and community in creative, visionary ways.”

Netta Avineri

Bearing Witness

Service Learning Brings Holocaust Class to Life Through a partnership with Jewish Family Service Café Europa, students in the honors section of Prof. Todd Presner’s German 59 “Holocaust in Film and Literature” participated in UCLA Holocaust Survivor Esther Meisler is surrounded by German 59 honors students Hillel’s Bearing Witness Esther Pourdavoud, Alexandra Nguyen, Jennifer To and Jakub Canda. Program (www.webearwitness.org). The diverse group of students had the unique opportunity to meet and interview Holocaust survivors four times. The 28 students then developed group research projects which they presented to other students and the survivors at a special colloquium. In addition, Mrs. Dana Schwartz, a member of the ‘1939’ Club, spoke to the full course (250 students) about her experiences during the Holocaust. Jakub Canda, one of the honors students, spoke at JFS’s Yom HaShoah event. Netta Avineri, a graduate student in Linguistics and a member of the CJS Student Leadership Council, and Mary Pinkerson, Community Affairs Coordinator, developed the partnership as part of the Center’s Civic Engagement Program. Begun in 2008 at the suggestion of a student council member, the program provides opportunities for students to enrich their classroom studies by engaging in service learning with community organizations. Students who wish to get credit for their activities can arrange to do independent study through the UCLA Center for Community Partnerships. In the spring quarter, students in Prof. Sarah Stein’s History 191L/201R seminar, “History of the Sephardi Diaspora: Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Jewries through Memoir and History” had the opportunity to help create the section on Sephardic history and contemporary life for the Autry National Center’s 2012 exhibit on the Jewish History of Los Angeles. Netta will make a presentation on the creation and development of the Center’s Civic Engagement Program at the Tenth International Research Conference on ServiceLearning and Community Engagement in Indianapolis, Oct. 28-30.

Alumni Profile:

Emily Kane, ’04: Making Civic Engagement into a Career As a Jewish studies major and public policy minor, Emily Kane (BA ’04) initially planned on a career as a Jewish studies professor. She was involved in a variety of campus activities including UCLA Hillel and the Progressive Jewish Student Alliance and taught Hebrew high school at University Synagogue. She traveled to Honduras and Mexico on American Jewish World Service trips, and joined the 2003 Immigrant Worker Freedom Rides as a JERICO (Jews for Equal Rights in Immigrant Communities) rider. Eventually Emily said she realized that “I didn’t want to teach it, I wanted to do it.” After graduation, Emily worked in Washington, DC for two years as a Legislative Assistant for the Religious Action Center (RAC), the lobbying and policy education arm of Reform Judaism. She credits Rabbi David Saperstein, head of the RAC, along with Prof. David N. Myers with whom she studied at UCLA and Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller of UCLA Hillel for setting examples of inspired Jewish leadership. She considered becoming a rabbi before opting to earn a JD from James E. Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona. While in law school, Emily founded the campus’ Law Students for Reproductive Justice Chapter, spearheaded and ran the Southern Arizona Election Protection project in 2008, and was the recipient of the Dannie Lee Chandler Memorial Award, given to a graduating student dedicated to furthering the 1st Amendment. She is now proud to serve as Legislative Deputy and Community Liaison for Los Angeles City Councilmember Paul Koretz in the City’s 5th District. She continues to teach Hebrew high at Temple Isaiah, as well, each week taking a social action issue to open a discussion of the intersection of social policy and Jewish values. 3

"Jews and Food" Series The series will explore Jewish sensibilities about food as well as the rich varieties of Jewish culture expressed through the medium of food. The Center will bring to campus distinguished and diverse experts in Jewish and other cuisines--and in the pleasures of eating--to discuss Jews’ complex relationships to cooking, eating, and food. 4 pm · Thursday, October 21, 2010 · FACULTY CENTER

Counter Intelligence: Searching out the Real Los Angeles Jonathan Gold (Food Critic, LA Weekly) 5 pm · Thursday, February 10, 2011 · FACULTY CENTER

Not by Bialys Alone: Iconic Foods of Ashkenazic Jews Mimi Sheraton (Food Critic and Author) 4 pm · Thursday, April 14, 2011 · 314 Royce hall

Aromas of Aleppo: The Legendary Cuisine of Syrian Jews Poopa Dweck (Author)

Poopa Dweck: Preserving Sephardic Traditions Poopa Dweck is the preeminent authority on the food and customs of the Jews of Aleppo, one of the largest and most flourishing communities of Sephardic Jews. She is best known as the author of the stunning cookbook Aromas of Aleppo: The Legendary Cuisine of the Syrian Jews, featured in the New York Times Magazine and winner of the National Jewish Book Award in 2007. The lavishly illustrated cookbook, written with Michael J. Cohen, documents the history and customs of the Aleppian Jewish community making it a rich guidebook to Allepo’s unique heritage for the non-Syrian, both in and outside of the kitchen. Aromas has led Poopa to lectures, book tours and cooking demonstrations in venues all over the world. Syrian ambassador Imad Moustapha requested a meeting with Poopa, and a signed book for President Bashar Assad. He praised the authentic recipes and noted that the shared cuisine and traditions of Syrian Arabs

and Jews make a good starting point for positive dialogue. A Hebrewlanguage edition is due in Israel this fall. Poopa and her husband Sammy raised their family of five children in Deal, N.J. In 1975, she co-founded the Sephardic Women’s Organization of the Jersey Shore. She is passionate about preserving Syrian culinary traditions, serving as Executive Editor of Deal Delights and Deal Delights II. These Syrian community cookbooks are now standard in Sephardic kitchens worldwide and have raised thousands of dollars for charity. In 2003, when Poopa’s son, Jesse, passed away at only 18, the Dwecks founded the Jesse Dweck City Learning Center, offering Torah classes for Syrian-Jewish men and women in Manhattan and New Jersey. Poopa appreciates the spiritual richness of Jewish observance and the role of the Jewish woman within it. The Arabic concept of suffeh, she explains, refers to a woman’s intelligence and intuition, allowing her to create a welcoming, well-ordered family life that allows the Divine Presence to dwell within.

Mimi Sheraton: An Appetite for Life

Jonathan Gold: An Erudite Eater

Legendary food writer Mimi Sheraton is a lifelong New Yorker, who has written for nearly every publication that deals with food and is produced in her hometown. She was the restaurant critic for the New York Times from 1976 until 1984, and for five years before joining the Times, contributed to the original New York Magazine, under Editor Clay Felker. It was then that she wrote her first big story, “I Taste Everything in Bloomingdale’s Food Department,” reporting on 1,196 products.

LA Weekly Food critic Jonathan Gold has eaten it all. He eats in 300-500 restaurants a year and in 2007 he became the first food critic to win the Pulitzer Prize. His book Counter Intelligence collects over 200 of Gold’s best restaurant discoveries—from inexpensive lunch counters you won’t find on your own to the perfect undiscovered dish at a beaten-path establishment. Gold often chooses small, ethnic carts, stands and dives for his reviews, what The New Yorker writer Dana Goodyear calls “the places that serve innards, insects, and extremities, crickets, boiled silkworm cocoons, and fried grasshoppers.”

While traveling around the world for a guidebook to 60 cities called City Portraits and buying samples of folk art for the Georg Jensen store in New York, Mimi took courses with various cooks and chefs in countries as varied as Denmark, Cambodia, Lebanon and Turkey. She also studied cooking at The China Institute in New York and Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. Sheraton has written 16 books. In a bittersweet mix of humor and pathos, The Bialy Easters tells of the once vibrant culture of the Polish Jews of Bialystock and the bread that was their sustenance. The Whole World Loves Chicken Soup won both the IACP and James Beard awards. Her latest book is a memoir called Eating My Words: an Appetite for Life , which now is in paperback. Her 1965 book, The German Cookbook, is still in print. Mimi’s photographs of food markets, taken on her travels around the world, were exhibited in 2002 at New York’s Leica Gallery. She has lectured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, on food in still life paintings. She and her husband Richard Falcone live in the same brownstone in Greenwich Village where they have lived for decades. They have one son—a lawyer married to a lawyer— and one granddaughter.

Rob Eshman, editor of the LA Jewish Journal, observes that for those who keep kosher, Gold’s “Rabelesian approach to the world’s larder has to be chilling. After all, it hasn’t been that many generations since Gold’s ancestors abhorred what he seems to crave.” Yet Eshman finds a reason to forgive Gold his appetite that has to do with the other lines he crosses. We may not venture far from our own neighborhoods, but “his reviews draw us Angelenos near in a way that a thousand flowery mayoral speeches on tolerance and diversity cannot.” Gold started out at the LA Weekly in 1982 as a proofreader while he was studying art and music at UCLA, and by the mid-’80s became one of the paper’s most popular writers. As music editor, he wrote groundbreaking pieces about new-music composers, thrash metal and the L.A. rap scene just as it was going national: Boulez, Metallica and N.W.A. But restaurant criticism is where he really captured people’s imagination. He started his Counter Intelligence column in 1986 as a way of exploring Los Angeles’ ethnic neighborhoods, places that often go underreported in other papers. He is married to Laurie Ochoa who used to be editor-in-chief at LA Weekly (they met at the Weekly in 1984). They have two children who often beg to eat at home.

Fellows Bring New Perspectives

Enrollment in UCLA’s 53 Jewish studies courses expands 74% Some 2,558 students took Jewish studies courses last year compared to 1,894 students in 2008-09. The two largest classes were Prof. Todd Presner’s German 59, “Holocaust in Film and Literature,” and Prof. Saul Friedländer’s History 183A, “Third Reich and the Jews.” Through private support the Center has added diverse and pioneering courses including a second year of Yiddish, courses in Modern Jewish Culture as well as courses on the Sephardic Diaspora, Italian Jewish history and Iranian Jewish history. The schedule of courses is available at www.cjs.ucla.edu. The Center sponsors more than 50 public lectures, symposia and conferences annually. The full calendar is available on the Center’s website, www.cjs.ucla.edu. To request weekly updates, email cjs@humnet.ucla.edu.

UCLA graduate students Liora Halperin (History) and Jason Mokhtarian (Near Eastern Languages and Cultures) garnered two of the four prestigious Dissertation Fellowships for 2010 from the Foundation for Jewish Culture’s Maurice and Marilyn Cohen Fund. The Foundation for Jewish Culture was founded in 1960 as a response to the decimation of Jewish institutions in Europe following the Holocaust. Initially, its role was to support American institutions suddenly left responsible for the preservation of Jewish cultural memory. Over the last decade the Foundation has shifted its focus to support for creators of Jewish culture in the areas of music, literature, film, and theater. ■ Babel in Zion: The Politics of Language Diversity in Interwar Jewish Palestine Liora R. Halperin My project attempts to understand the place and symbolism of languages other than Hebrew in a society committed to the Hebrew language as part of a larger Zionist program. Forging a national society from a diverse immigrant population, under British rule, and in an Arabic speaking region meant that the pre-state Zionist community in Palestine (the Yishuv) was in constant contact with several languages— among them Yiddish, German, English, and Arabic. Intercultural and inter-lingual contact in the spheres of commerce, leisure, education, administration, and political conflict repeatedly called into question the monolingual tenets of the Zionist movement. My research derives from a longstanding interest in language as a focus of reflection, concern, and advocacy in the modern period. In this project, I study the cultural trends and debates within this one particular society through the medium of cultural history, a mode of history writing that attempts to identify shared concerns or communal trends by working with a wide range of both official and popular sources. In addition to the Hebrew documents that make up the majority of my sources, I also work with materials in English, Arabic, German, and Yiddish. By combining a study of higher-level discussions with evidence of real-life language practices, I am working to understand the dynamic tension between the pressures and realities of daily life and an official and at times highly symbolic rhetoric of national independence through Hebrew.

■ Rabbinic Portrayals of Persia: A Study of Babylonian Rabbinic Culture in its Sasanian Context Jason Mokhtarian My dissertation is, in general, a study of how ancient Persian civilization impacted the Babylonian Talmud. The BT, or “Bavli” as it is sometimes called, is a vast compendium of late antique Jewish laws and narratives that the Jewish sages living in ancient Persia passed down orally for approximately five centuries (ca. 200-700 CE) before finally writing down. While in the past several decades scholars have begun the task of analyzing this complex corpus using academic methodologies, my dissertation represents one of the few comprehensive attempts to study the Bavli within its larger historical context of ancient Persian culture. By comparing Talmudic and Persian sources, as well as drawing from the fields of Ancient Iranian and Zoroastrian studies, the third chapter of my dissertation analyzes the literary and historical features of the several dozen rabbinic narratives about the Zoroastrian priests (i.e., the Magians and so-called Chabarim). These tales include a Magian’s fable about the main Zoroastrian deity Ohrmazd (Sanhedrin 39a), the association of the Egyptian Pharaoh with the Magians as a result of his magical powers (Mo‘ed Katan 18a), and numerous texts that express the Babylonian rabbis’ anxiety over Zoroastrian fire-worship and anti-burial laws (e.g., Shabbat 45a and Yevamot 63b). My research asks what ideological and rhetorical purposes do these Babylonian rabbinic narratives about the Zoroastrian priestly ruling classes achieve for the sages living in Sasanian Persia? To help me answer this consequential question, I spent the past summer examining the unparalleled manuscript and secondary resources found at the Jewish National & University Library located at the Hebrew University, as well as other Israeli libraries.

Amado Program Develops Sephardic Studies For the second academic year, the Maurice Amado Program in Sephardic Studies at UCLA, housed in the Center for Jewish Studies and in tandem with the Maurice Amado Chair, has offered students the rare opportunity to focus intensively on the study of Sephardic history and culture. In the fall of 2009, Anat Mooreville, who received her undergraduate degree from Brown University joined UCLA as the first graduate student in Sephardic Studies to enroll in the History Department. The second doctoral Above: Anat Mooreville. student in Sephardic History, Alma Heckman, will begin Below: Alma Heckman. her studies at UCLA this fall. Ms. Heckman received her undergraduate training at Wellesley College, where she worked with the distinguished historian of Sephardic culture Frances Malino: she subsequently received a Fulbright Fellowship to spend the past year in Morocco exploring the history of Moroccan Jewry. The Amado Program also serves as a highly visible center for Sephardic Studies nationally and internationally, in part by its extension of fellowships to scholars who wish to develop or transform a course or to conduct research on a scholarly project with significant Sephardic content. Amado Faculty Incentive Grants 2010-11 • Lia Brozgal (UCLA) • Linda Rupert (U. of North Carolina) • Michelle Hamilton (U. of Minnesota) • Adriana Brodsky (St. Mary’s College of Maryland) • Rebecca Winer (Villanova) • Marc Bernstein (Michigan State) Professor Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Maurice Amado Chair of Sephardic Studies and coordinator of the program, thanked the Maurice Amado Foundation for its continued support and commented, “My intention is to make UCLA a world center for the study of Sephardic culture as an integral part of the curriculum in Jewish and Mediterranean Studies, and a main international center for research into the Sephardic experience.”

 Graduate Students Win Awards Yehuda Sharim, a fourth year Ph.D. candidate in the department of World Arts and Cultures, has been awarded the Jack H. Skirball Fellowship in Modern Jewish Culture for 201011. Sharim’s work concentrates on the history of the concept of Mizrahim. In his dissertation, he examines the intertwining and conflicting racial threads involved in the formation of the category of Mizrahim—literally, Oriental Jews, or Jews of Arab descent—by the Jewish community of Palestine from the late 1910s. As part of the Fellowship, Yehuda will teach a course at the Skirball, “Reading the Hamsa,” delving into the ancient Middle Eastern amulet that symbolizes the Hand of God and is said to bring its owner happiness, luck, health, and good fortune. Using examples from museums and private collections, the course will trace how this talisman changed from an emblem of Middle Eastern culture into a widely-recognized symbol of Mizrahi/Sephardi culture. Lisa Mendelman (English), Jason Mokhtarian (NELC), David Schick (History), and George Pierce (NELC) will be the first graduate students to receive support from the Chaskel and Sara Roter Research Fund. The fund was established in 2007 by Professor Emerita Ellen Dirksen in honor of her parents. Elad Wexler (History) will be the first recipient of the Bluma Appel Research Fellowship established last year from the estate gift of a well-known Toronto philanthropist. “1939” Club Fellowships for 2010-11 were awarded to Kierra Crago-Schneider (History) and Rachel Deblinger (History).

New publications

A Pious Man Faces Sinners: The Book Ezer Pioneers Digital Hebrew Tool

POEMS OF THE NIGHT: Jorge Luis Borges

An early adopter of new technology, Dr. Nancy Ezer recently used a grant from the UCLA Committee on Instructional Improvement Programs to pilot-test a full year of intensive practice in Hebrew grammar with a web-based E-workbook. The project was highlighted in the December 2009 UCLA Report for WASC (Western Association of Schools and Colleges), the body that oversees accreditation for all California colleges and universities.

Penguin Classic. 2010

Suzanne Jill Levine: Editor Efrain Kristal: Editor and Author of the Introduction and Notes

Revered for his magnificent works of fiction, Jorge Luis Borges thought of himself primarily as a poet. Poems of the Night is a moving collection of the great literary visionary’s poetic meditations on nighttime, darkness, and the crepuscular world of visions and dreams, themes that speak implicitly to the blindness that overtook Borges late in life—and yet the poems here are drawn from the full span of Borges’s career. The volume brings to light many poems that have never appeared in English, presenting them alongside their Spanish originals. Among the more than 50 poems are “History of the Night,” “In Praise of Darkness,” and “The Golem”—Borges’ homage to Gustav Meyrink and Gershom Scholem—all in luminous translations by an array of distinguished translators including W.S. Merwin, Christopher Maurer, Alan Trueblood, and Alastair Reid.

The new interactive tool, the first of its kind at UCLA, was designed by Dr. Ezer, a Distinguished Teaching Award recipient, under the guidance of the Center for Digital Humanities at UCLA. For the past three years, UC San Diego’s Hebrew program has collaborated with UCLA in order to use the Hebrew E-Workbook. The E-Workbook, which systematically drills the five active Hebrew verb paradigms, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and syntax, complements Hebrew instruction using authentic sources. Students are encouraged to make unlimited attempts at each assignment and completely grasp each new skill in order to get a perfect score. The E-Workbook also integrates instruction on pronunciation. Students are required to transliterate their answers into English, and when they provide the correct answer, they get the Hebrew word vocalized as feedback.

AFFILIATED JEWISH STUDIES FACULTY CAROL BAKHOS

LEV HAKAK

KENNETH REINHARD

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

Professor of Hebrew Literature. FIELD: Modern

Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and English. FIELD: Hermeneutics, Religion, and Modern

Hebrew Literature.

Jewish Literature.

ARNOLD J. BAND Professor Emeritus of Hebrew and Comparative Literature. FIELD: Modern Hebrew and Jewish Literature.

RA’ANAN BOUSTAN Assistant Professor of History and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. FIELD: Jewish history and ancient Mediterranean religions.

LIA BROZGAL Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies.

AARON BURKE Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology. FIELD: Archaeology of Ancient Israel and Early Judaism.

NANCY EZER Lecturer in Hebrew. FIELD: Modern Hebrew Literature

SAUL FRIEDLÄNDER “1939” Club Professor of Holocaust Studies. FIELD: History of the Holocaust.

GIL HOCHBERG Associate Professor of Comparative Literature. FIELD: Israeli, Palestinian, and North African Literatures.

ELEANOR KAUFMAN Professor of Comparative Literature and French. FIELD: 20th Century French Philosophy and Jewish Diaspora.

YONA SABAR Professor of Hebrew and Aramaic. FIELD: Aramaic, Hebrew, Jewish Languages, and Jewish and Near Eastern Folklore.

SHELLEY SALAMENSKY

MIRIAM KORAL

Assistant Professor of Theater. FIELD: 19th through 21st Century British, European, and Jewish Literature, Drama, Performance, and Culture.

Lecturer in Yiddish.

ARIEH SAPOSNIK

DAVID N. MYERS Professor of History. FIELD: Jewish History and

Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Chair in Israel Studies and Associate Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures.

Thought.

TODD S. PRESNER Professor of Germanic Languages. FIELD: Modern German-Jewish Literature and Intellectual History, Art History, and Visual Culture.

WILLIAM SCHNIEDEWIND Kershaw Chair of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies and Professor of Biblical Studies and Northwest Semitic Languages.

Awards Sarah Abrevaya Stein Wins Sami Rohr Prize Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies, received the prestigious 2010 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature at an award ceremony in Jerusalem. Prof. Stein shared the honor with Kenneth B. Moss of Johns Hopkins University. Stein won the award for her book Plumes: Ostrich Feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global Commerce (Yale University Press) and Moss for his book Jewish Renaissance in the Russian Revolution (Harvard University Press). In an unprecedented move, the Rohr Prize judges decided that the runner-up category would be eliminated this year and Professors Stein and Moss would share the top honor, dividing the combined prizes, with each author taking home $62,500. Established in 2006 and hailed as a transformative award for emerging writers, the annual Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature recognizes writers who have demonstrated a fresh vision and evidence of future potential. The books must show exceptional literary merit and stimulate an interest in themes of Jewish concern. The award announcement caps a competitive year-long review by a select panel of judges of twenty five non-fiction books published during 2008 and 2009. The Sami Rohr Prize is administered under the auspices of the Jewish Book Council. Fiction and non-fiction books are considered in alternate years. In addition, Prof. Stein and co-editor Julia Phillips Cohen, were recently awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Scholarly Editions and Translations Grant for their co-edited book, The Sephardic Studies Reader. Sarah A. Stein with her husband Fred Zimmerman, Professor and Dept. Chair, Health Services, and their sons Julius and Ira.

S.I. Salamensky Selected as ACLS Fellow JEREMY SMOAK Lecturer in Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East

SARAH ABREVAYA STEIN Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies and Professor of History.

STEVEN SPIEGEL Professor of Political Science. FIELD: American Foreign Policy in the Middle East.

JONATHAN M. ZASLOFF Professor of Law. FIELD: Law, Legal Theory, Ethical Treatises of Jewish Tradition, Moral Philosophy, and Jewish History.

VISITING FACULTY 2010-2011 STEPHANIE CHASIN—Lecturer in Jewish History MONICA OSBORNE—Lecturer in Holocaust Studies NAHID PIRNAZAR—Lecturer in Iranian Studies Karen Wilson—Lecturer in Jewish History

cJs fellow 2010-2011

S.I. (Shelley) Salamensky, Assistant Professor, Theatre and Performance Studies has been selected as a Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), for 2010-11. The award will support her current project, “Jewface” Minstrelsy and “Jewfaçade” Display: Performing Cultural Memory in Contemporary Europe and Eurasia. Prof. Salamensky’s project investigates re-enactments of ‘Jewish culture’—primarily by non-Jews, for non-Jews—in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as in Birobidzhan, a colony established by Josef Stalin in far-eastern Russia, near China, and still extant today. Its objectives are to further understanding of cultural memory of the Jewish past; to demonstrate the complex ways in which this memory is represented and transmitted; and to provide vital insight into constructs of ‘home’ and ‘homeland’ for both Jews and other peoples. ACLS, a private, nonprofit federation of 70 national scholarly organizations, is the preeminent representative of American scholarship in the humanities and related social sciences. The ACLS Fellowships support individual scholars working in the humanities and related social sciences. This is a major peerreviewed fellowship; only fifty-seven recipients are chosen out of over 1100 applicants nationally.

JENNIFER HEILBRONNER MUNOZ

Riches-to-Rags-to-Riches:

The Story of Ludwig and Sady Kahn

$2 million gift provides support for directorship, graduate fellows and lectures Margaret MacDonald

It’s 1937. A young couple is standing on the deck of a ship sailing into New York Harbor, having abandoned their comfortable lives in Germany to escape Hitler’s Nazi Party. Sady and Ludwig Kahn are weeping with relief as the Statue of Liberty comes into view, and wondering what their future holds. The Kahns’ experience of arriving at Ellis Island, with little money and few possessions, mirrors that of many other German-Jewish refugees from that period. What makes their story extraordinary is that they went on to live the riches-to-rags-to-riches tale of the American dream. In honor of their memory, the Sady Kahn Trust recently endowed the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Directorship of the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies with a generous gift of $2 million. Sady Kahn came from a well-to-do German Jewish family from Nuremberg. Her initial experience in this country was quite a shock. Long-time family friend Susan Lorenzana recounted how, having made their way by train

from New York to Los Angeles, the couple first lived with relatives in cramped conditions. Ludwig found a job in the garment district that paid $13 a week. Meanwhile back in Germany, Sady’s childhood home in a wealthy Nuremberg neighborhood was commandeered by Nazis, and her parents narrowly avoided capture. Lorenzana explained, “When Sady learned her parents had escaped to Paris on one of the last trains out of Germany, it was one of the happiest days of her life.” Sady’s parents soon immigrated to the U.S. and lived out their lives with Sady and Ludwig. Ludwig eventually saved $100, just enough to start a millinery business in the days when women’s pillbox hats were de rigueur fashion

Honor Roll 2009–2010

 amudim 

Sadelle Brussell Birnbaum

Dr. Ellen R. Dirksen

The UCLA Center for Jewish Studies is grateful for the crucial support of our friends whose generosity has enabled the Center to develop into an exceptionally productive scholarly resource and one of the busiest and most distinguished centers for Jewish studies in the nation. We would like to acknowledge the following people and organizations for their commitment to the Center for the academic year 2009-2010.

Phyllis & Philip Colman

Donald & Elaine Wolf Family Fund

Elena & Michael Deutsch

Rose & Al A. Finci

Bernard Friedman

Elaine L. Lindheim

Herbert Glaser

Lucile Ellis Simon Foundation

Drs. Gertrude & Samuel Goetz

Maurice Amado Foundation

Roslyn & Abner D. Goldstine

Michael Ross Trust

Hitter Family Foundation

Posen Foundation/Center for

Beatrice & Leonard Mandel

Cultural Judaism

Hannah & Marshall Kramer

E. Randol Schoenberg

David N. Myers

Sheila & Milton Hyman Foundation

Jamie & Mark Myers

Sidney Stern Memorial Trust

Myra & Bruce Newman

Stephen O. Lesser Fund

Linda & Shearn Platt

The Simha & Sara Lainer Family Foundation

Ralph & Shirley Shapiro Fund

Chic Wolk

Sallie & Dr. Laurence Seigler Family Trust

 bonim 

Harry Sigman

Arthur & Edith Stern Family Foundation

Daniel B. Spitzer

Sanford & Phyllis Beim

The Markowitz Family Trust

 accessories. According to Jim Keir, family friend and attorney-trustee of the Sady Kahn Trust, each morning Sady would take the bus downtown to Bullocks Wilshire to pick up unadorned hats, bring them home to laboriously sew sequins, pearls and feathers into the netting, and then return the hats to the store the following day. The couple struggled at first, but together they persevered to build their business into a successful enterprise, investing wisely along the way. Sady and Ludwig spent many comfortable, happy years in their Beverly Hills duplex, but perhaps in a nod to their early struggles, the kitchen was reminiscent of the 1930s, lacking even a dishwasher at the time of Sady’s death in 2009. Yet Sady took great pride in her cooking, and threw many elaborate parties for family and friends. Ludwig showered her with gifts, and in many photographs, the camera has caught him gazing adoringly at his wife. After Ludwig’s death in 1999, friends recalled a bereft Sady saying, “There was only one man in my life— and he was the love of my life.”

Jim Keir met soon after with Sady to set up The Sady Kahn Trust and designate beneficiary charities, as the Kahns had no children. When UCLA was mentioned as a possibility, Keir says she immediately liked the idea that academic programs and students at UCLA would benefit from the Trust. Jim Keir has started to distribute the Trust assets, noting, “The Center for Jewish Studies seemed like a perfect fit with Sady’s values and interests.” The Sady and Ludwig Kahn Endowed Directorship will provide vital discretionary funds for the Director’s research and for Center operations. It will also benefit graduate students in the form of a Kahn Fellow award, and support an annual Kahn Lecture in the field of European Jewish history, literature or thought. Sady and Ludwig Kahn lived their love story within the frame of the American dream, steadily turning their hardships into triumphs. Now they have left an enduring legacy at UCLA that will help secure the future excellence of one of the nation’s finest, most active centers for Jewish studies.

Center for Jewish Studies Advisory Board *Executive Committee Member Rabbi Daniel Bouskila Al Finci, Chair* Milton Hyman Luis Lainer Stephen O. Lesser Elaine Lindheim* Jerry Monkarsh E. Randol Schoenberg Kerri Steinberg* Andrew Viterbi* Harold Williams Chic Wolk Elaine Wolf Rabbi David Wolpe Zev Yaroslavsky

David J. Weiner  chaverim 

Dr. Gregory L. Charlop

Peachy & Mark Levy Family Trust

Marlene Rotblatt

Sharleen & Dr. Martin L. Cohen

Marsha D. Lewin & Forrest

Mico I. Rousso

Nancy & Dr. Emanuel Abrams

Diana S. Dreiman

Sara & James Adler

Adrienne Adan & Selvyn Enzer

Dr. Robert Mandel

Edith & Martin S. Schwartz

Dr. Lilla & Edgar Aftergood

Shirley Friedman-Chase

Daneil J. Merritt

Leah & Norman Schweitzer

Walter Arlen

Carol & James T. Gaspar

Patti & Dr. Albert Mizrahi

Eileen Sever

Eve Asner

Lesley & Dr. Kenneth H. Geiger

Esther Kleitman & Dr. Steven

Michelle & Yosef Shwartz

Miryam Bachrach

Beverly & David A. Gorlick

Eva M. Ballo

Hanna Grinberg

Howard K. Myers

Louise Spitzer

Anna Banks-Fox

Dr. Abraham Havivi

Irene & Donald Naftulin

Dr. Rose & Andrew Steinberg

Barbara T.H. Brandon Trust

Linda & Dr. Gershon Hepner

Bette Nagin

Frances Stengel

Leah S. Barshap

Sharon D. Jacobson

Michal & Victor Nahmias

The Morris Foundation

Dr. Susann & Stephen Bauman

Nancy & Sheldon M. Jaffe

Naomi Nedelman

Rachel & Thomas Tugend

Rabbi Bernhard Beliak

Margot Katz

Shirley & Sidney S. Nurkin

Sylvia & Dr. Charles Weiner

Evelyn & Martin Bernstein

Myron Kayton

Silvia & Lester Paley

Lillian Apodaca Weiner

Marlene & Dr. Stuart Bernstein

Dr. Snira L. Klein

Mary & William Pinkerson

Mary Weissmann

Anne M. Bodenheimer

Shirley Kotler

Roslyn & Dr. Jerome Rabow

Shirley S. Williamson

Susan & Dr. David S. Boyer

Sandra & Paul Krentzman

Sandra Radoff-Bernstein

Frances A. Yuster

Dr. Boris Catz

Nadine & Israel Levy

Harriet Rice

Marilouise & Dr. Albert Zager

Latiner

Moszkowski

Carol & The Hon. Marvin D. Rowen

Barbara P. & Roy Sommer

Stay Centered—Fall 2010 Complete calendar at www.cjs.ucla.edu

4 pm • Thursday, October 21, 2010 • UCLA FACULTY CENTER

Counter Intelligence: Searching out the Real Los Angeles Jonathan Gold (Food Critic, LA Weekly) Series on “Jews and Food” 4 pm • Thursday, November 4, 2010 • UCLA FACULTY CENTER

A Moment in Time: Understanding the Holocaust in the Context of Jewish History David Engel (NYU) The Arnold Band Distinguished Lecture in Jewish Studies and The “1939” Club Lecture in Holocaust Studies 4 pm • Monday, November 8, 2010 • 314 ROYCE HALL

Walther Rathenau: The Dangers of Race Theory Shulamit Volkov (Tel Aviv) The Inaugural Sady and Ludwig Kahn Lecture in German Jewish Studies 4 pm • Wednesday, November 10, 2010 • UCLA FACULTY CENTER

Elias Bickerman as a Historian of the Jews, A Twentieth Century Tale Albert Baumgarten (Bar-Ilan University) 7:30 pm • Wednesday, November 17, 2010 • UCLA FACULTY CENTER

Kabbalah in Italy: Past and Present Fabrizio Lelli (University of Salento) and Moshe Idel (Hebrew University)

At the Center

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Center for Jewish Studies

Box 951485 Los Angeles, CA 90095-1485

Phone: 310.825.5387 RSVP line: 310.267.5427 cjs@humnet.ucla.edu Business hours: M-TH 9am-12 pm, 1-5pm

Prof. David N. Myers Prof. Todd S. Presner Co-Directors Vivian Holenbeck Assistant Director Mary Enid Pinkerson, PhD Community Affairs Coordinator Briana Desmond Financial & Administrative Coordinator