book launch
CANCELLED: Jewish Lives: Houdini
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Presented by:
book launch
conversation
Dis-Integration? Perspectives on a German Debate with Max Czollek & Rebecca Guber
Author Max Czollek’s essay collection Desintegriert Euch transformed the debate about the integration of minorities in Germany when it appeared in 2018. His perspective on the roles of contemporary Jews in German society and its “theater of memory” struck a nerve not just among Jews, but other minority groups as well. “The threat from the right has created a new kind of solidarity,” he recently told the New York Times, speaking about his efforts to forge alliances among various minority groups in Germany. Czollek will help translate this debate for an American audience in conversation with Rebecca Guber, founder and director of Asylum Arts, a global network of Jewish Artists.
Ticket Info: $10 general; $5 LBI/CJH/Partner members, seniors, students at czollek.bpt.me or 800-838-3006
Presented by:
conversation
book launch
Live on Zoom - Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth
Please note: This is a Live Streamed Event via Zoom
In these uncertain times, with widespread myths pervading the media, government policy, and our homes, there is a deeper urge to not only discover what is true, but to be able to recognize falsehoods. This year our Passover will be different from all other Passovers – with more questions to share at real and virtual Seder tables.
That's why we're pleased to announce that the discussion between Magda Teter (Fordham University) and Sara Lipton (SUNY Stony Brook) about Dr. Teter’s new book, Blood Libel: On the Trail of Antisemitic Myth, will happen online via Zoom, right before Passover on April 7 at 4 pm EST.
The book explores the medieval myth that Jews murder Christian children to use their blood— and its surprising persistence over centuries, cultures, and continents. The invention and development of printed media contributed to widespread dissemination of the myth, turning it into a “persistent template of hate”: from mid-12th-century monastic manuscripts to the Facebook group “Jewish Ritual Murder,” shut down in 2014, and beyond.
Ticket Info: Free; reservations required at teter.bpt.me or 800-838-3006 to receive a link to the Zoom event
About the Speakers:
Magda Teter is Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies and Professor of History at Fordham University. Her work focuses on early modern religious and cultural history, with emphasis on Jewish-Christian relations, the politics of religion, and transmission of culture among Jews and Christians across Europe in the early modern period. She published numerous articles and books in English, Polish, Italian, and Hebrew. Magda Teter was recently appointed the 2020-2021 National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Fellow at the Center for Jewish History, and she will be working on her current research project, The Dissemination and Uses of the Jewish Past: The Role of The Present in The Production and Politics of History.
Sara Lipton is Professor of History at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Her work focuses on religious identity and experience, Jewish-Christian relations, and art and culture in the high and later Middle Ages (11th–15th centuries). Her book, Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Semitic Iconography (Metropolitan Books, 2014) examines how changes in Christian devotion and politics affected the visual representation of the Jew. It explains the emergence of the iconographically identifiable Jew around the year 1080 and brings theoretical coherence to the dizzying proliferation of images of Jews in subsequent centuries. Sara Lipton’s current project, The Vulgate of Experience: Art and Preaching in the High Middle Ages (1180–1300), explores why and to what effect Christendom invested so much in worshiping the ineffable Word through the material thing.
Presented by:
book launch
lecture
Jewish and Christian Passover Haggadot as Sites of Interfaith Engagement
Jessica Cooperman, the CJH-Fordham Fellow in Jewish-Christian Studies, will discuss her research project, examining some of the ways American Jews and Christians have reimagined their engagement with the Passover Seder, both together and separately, and the ways that the Seder has been redefined and reinterpreted as a Christian ritual.
Rarely do we have an opportunity to study recent American history through the lens of religious-political encounters – this is a wonderful chance to learn about a topic that provides insight into the history of the mid to late 20th century. And it’s right on time for Passover and Easter!
Ticket Info: Free; reservations required at cooperman.bpt.me or 800-838-3006
Presented by:
lecture
lecture
Scandals, Shandehs, and Lies: The Stories Families Don't Tell
Speaker: Renee Steinig
In the course of decades of genealogical research, Renee Steinig has uncovered many a "skeleton in the closet" – cases of illegitimate birth, infidelity, abandonment, and even murder, all hushed up for decades. A suburban businessman who led two lives; a Romanian immigrant hanged -- or so his family thought -- for "stealing horses;" a Jewish GI's love affair in Belgium during World War II; a young woman who married, had a baby, then vanished.... Renee will talk to us about these family secrets and others, the research tools that uncovered them, and the reunions and reconciliations that followed many of her discoveries.
Renee Steinig began doing genealogical research in the 1970s. Many family trees and some 18 years later, she began to accept client work. She is member of the Association of Professional Genealogists, a past president and longtime trustee of the JGS of Long Island, and a director of Gesher Galicia.
Ticket Info: $5 at the door; free for JGS members
Presented by:
lecture
book launch
Stan Lee: A Life in Comics
He created Spider-Man, Iron Man, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four. The son of Jewish immigrants, he changed his name and transformed American pop culture. But Stan Lee’s Jewish roots ran deep. Join author Liel Liebovitz for the launch of his new book, Stan Lee: A Life in Comics and a discussion about the surprising connections between Lee’s celebrated comic book heroes and the ancient tales of the Bible, the Talmud, and Jewish mysticism. Was Spider-Man just a reincarnation of Cain? Is the Incredible Hulk simply Adam by another name? Liel speaks with Unorthodox Podcast co-host Stephanie Butnick about the deeply Jewish and surprisingly spiritual roots of Stan Lee and Marvel Comics.
Purchase the book with your ticket in advance and save $10 off list price. Pick up your book at the front desk when you arrive on the evening of the event.
Jewish Lives is Yale’s prize winning series of interpretative biography designed to explore the many facets of Jewish identity.
Ticket Info: Without book: $15 general; $12 seniors; $10 CJH/Partner members, students. With book: $31 general; $28 seniors; $26 CJH/Partner members, students at jewishlives2.bpt.me or 800-838-3006; $18 at the door (books will be available for purchase at list price of $26 on the night of the program)
About the Speakers:
Credit: Chia MessinaBorn in Israel to a rabbinic family, Liel Leibovitz pored over Marvel comic books with the same fiery intensity his ancestors had devoted to studying the Talmud. A senior writer for Tablet Magazine and the co-host of its popular podcast, Unorthodox, Liel received his PhD from Columbia University and is the author or co-author of several works of non-fiction including, most recently, A Broken Hallelujah: Rock and Roll, Redemption, and the Life of Leonard Cohen. He lives in New York with his family.
Stephanie Butnick is the deputy editor of Tablet and has written for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. She has a Bachelor’s degree in religion from Duke and a Master’s in religious studies from NYU. She lives in New York with her husband and their cat, Cat Stevens.
Presented by:
book launch
book talk
People of the Book Club – The Flight Portfolio
Go behind the stories and peer inside the archives at our bi-monthly book discussion, led by Lauren Gilbert, Senior Manager for Public Services at the Center for Jewish History. This session will feature a discussion of The Flight Portfolio by Julie Orringer, a work of historical fiction about American journalist Varian Fry’s attempts to rescue artists and intellectuals during the Nazi occupation of France, followed by a show and tell of documents and artworks from the Center’s collections that are connected to the historical figures in the book.
Participants will need to obtain their own copy to read before the discussion.
Light refreshments will be served.
Ticket Info: Free, registration required at bookclub2.bpt.me or 800-838-3006
Presented by:
book talk
conversation
Erna Rosenstein: Once Upon a Time
Curator Alison Gingeras leads a discussion with Adam Sandauer about the life and career of Surrealist postwar Polish artist Erna Rosenstein. This conversation happens on the occasion of ‘Once Upon a Time,’ Rosenstein’s first monographic exhibition outside of Poland, on view at Hauser and Wirth Gallery (April 23 – July 31). A Surrealist and member of the pre-war Communist underground, Rosenstein's practice encompasses visual languages that act as a direct expression of protest against the post-war Polish state. Featuring autobiographical artworks and fairytale texts written and illustrated by Rosenstein, the exhibition works to share the established artist's story in a grander, global context.
Ticket Info: $10 general; $7 seniors; $5 CJH/Partner members; students free at erna.bpt.me or 800-838-3006
About the Speakers:
Alison M. Gingeras is a curator and writer based in New York and Warsaw. Gingeras has served as curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the National Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou Paris, and Palazzo Grassi, Venice. Currently she serves as an adjunct curator at Dallas Contemporary and a guest curator at Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami in addition to working independently.
Known for her scholarly yet anarchic approach to art history, Gingeras organized several groundbreaking exhibitions, such as “Dear Painter, Paint Me: Painting the Figure Since Late Picabia” at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2002) and co-curated “Pop Life” at the Tate Modern (2009). Most recently, she curated “My Life as a Man: John Currin” at Dallas Contemporary and “New Images of Man” at Blum & Poe in Los Angeles (Feb.-March 2020). Her writing regularly appears in such periodicals as Artforum, Playboy, Tate Etc., Spike, as well as in scores of books and exhibition catalogues. The cult imprint Heinzfeller Nileisist recently published Totally My Ass and Other Esssays—an anthology of Gingeras’ writing.
Adam Sandauer: Born in Poland in 1950, he is the only son of Erna Rosenstein (1913 - 2004) - surrealist artist and poet, and Artur Sandauer (1913 - 1989) - literary critic, writer, translator, and professor at the University of Warsaw. He represents both his parents' estates. Sandauer has been politically active starting at a young age. In 1969 he was accused of distributing leaflets in protest of the arrest of university students during the antisemitic campaign of March 1968 and the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. As a result, he was suspended from the University of Warsaw and put on trial. The penalty trial against Sandauer lasted for a few years and eventually ended in amnesty. He was able to return to college and in 1980 received a PhD in Physics from the Institute of Physics at the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is the founder and honorary president of the Primum Non Nocere Patients Association, dedicated to bringing aid to victims of medical malpractice. Since 1998 he has been actively lobbying for pensioners' rights in Poland. In 2016 he was awarded the Order of Polonia Restituta (Order of the Rebirth of Poland).
Presented by:
conversation
conversation
Kabbalah and the Founding of America: Christian Uses of Jewish Thought in the Nascent Republic
Brian Ogren, the National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Scholar at the Center, will discuss his research project with Michael Hoberman.
Ticket Info: Free; reservations required at ogren.bpt.me or 800-838-3006
Presented by:
conversation
lecture
Designing Home: Jews and Midcentury Modernism
How did Jewish designers, architects, patrons, and merchants contribute to the history of modern architecture and design? What do their stories tell us about Jewish assimilation into American society? And in the aftermath of World War II, how did creative communities like the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, and Pond Farm in Guerneville, California welcome Jewish emigre architects and designers? Join the Art Deco Society of New York and author and curator Donald Albrecht for an illustrated talk about Jewish contributions to America’s 20th-century domestic landscape.
Ticket Info: $15 general; $10 CJH/Partner members at artdeco.org/cjh-jews-and-modernism; use password CJHDeco20 (case sensitive) to purchase tickets; $18 at the door
About the Speaker:
Donald Albrecht is an independent curator who has organized exhibitions for the Getty Center, Library of Congress, Museum of the City of New York, and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, among others. He served as curator of the exhibition Designing Home: Jews and Midcentury Modernism at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco in 2014.
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lecture
