Table of ContentsGreetings from the Director, JSP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Greetings from the Director, Katz Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Jewish Studies Program News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Faculty News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies . . . . . . 8

2007–2008 Special Events and Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Penn’s Judaica Library News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

About Our Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Recent Gifts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Penn, through its Jewish Studies Program and theHerbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies,offers one of the most comprehensive programs in JewishStudies in America. The Jewish Studies Program (JSP) isan interdisciplinary academic group with twenty-onefaculty members from ten departments that coordinatesall courses relating to Jewish Studies in the university, aswell as undergraduate majors and minors and graduateprograms in different departments. JSP also sponsorsmany events, including two endowed lectureships andthe Kutchin Faculty Seminars. The Herbert D. KatzCenter for Advanced Judaic Studies (Katz Center) is apost-doctoral research institute that annually bringseighteen to twenty-five distinguished scholars to Penn asfellows to pursue scholarly research on selected themes.These fellows are selected from the finest and mostprominent Judaic scholars in the world. Every yearseveral Katz Center fellows teach courses at Penn, andboth graduate students and University faculty participatein the Katz Center’s weekly seminars. The Katz Center isalso home to one of America’s greatest research librariesin Judaica and Hebraica and includes a Genizahcollection, many manuscripts, and early printings.Together the Jewish Studies Program and the Herbert D.Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies make Penn oneof the most rich and exciting communities for Jewishscholarship and intellectual life in the world.

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PENNT H E J E W I S H S T U D I E S N E W S L E T T E R Fa l l 2 0 0 8

Jewish Studies at theUniversity of Pennsylvania

Jewish textile, ca. 1900, featuring Hebrew letters arranged in theform of an eye-chart to advertise the business of its Hebrew printer,whose office was on South St. in Philadelphia. Purchased with agenerous gift from Annette Freund at the Kestenbaum andCompany Auction House, June 26, 2008.

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Jewish Studies ProgramGREETINGS FROM THE DIRECTOR,JEWISH STUDIES PROGRAM

This has been a wonderful year of activity in theJewish Studies Program. While we bade farewellto Barry Eichler, the founding director of theJewish Studies Program, as he retired after fortyyears of service to Penn, we welcomed two newmembers to our expanding circle of faculty. TheJewish Studies Program continues to growstronger and more diverse with the additions ofJessica Goldberg, a medievalist in the Historydepartment, and Annette Reed, a scholar ofancient Judaism and Christianity, in theReligious Studies department.

As always, our program sponsored a host ofevents and lectures, including a particularlysuccessful and provocative conference,“Becoming Modern: The German-JewishExperience,” that you will read more about inthis newsletter. We look forward to an equallystimulating conference this coming spring on“Tablet and Torah: Mesopotamia and theBiblical World.” We take pride in bringinginternationally renowned scholars to Penn’scampus every year. At the same time, weremain equally dedicated to nurturing apassion for research among our students. At theconclusion of last academic year, one of ourmost exciting events brought togetherundergraduates in Jewish Studies to presenttheir original research to an audience of fellowstudents and faculty.

On a personal note, I had the privilege to travelthe country last year, speaking about mycompanion book to the PBS series “The JewishAmericans.” As I engaged with audiences aboutissues in American Jewish history, it oftenoccurred to me that our mission at Penn is toinspire our students with the excitement for

Jewish scholarship that will ensure that theycontinue their intellectual pursuits long aftergraduation. I fully expect to find our JewishStudies alumni not only in the audience ofpublic lectures, but also serving as organizersand activists in furthering Jewish learning longafter they receive their diplomas.

Finally, the Jewish Studies Program joins incelebrating the dedication of the newly namedHerbert D. Katz Center for Advanced JudaicStudies. The late Herbert Katz and his familyhave been dedicated supporters of JewishStudies at Penn and we honor their generouscontribution to our intellectual community.

The Jewish Studies Program draws its strengthfrom the synergy of our efforts—from thescholars who come to Katz Center forAdvanced Judaic Studies each year, to theindividualized research opportunities we offerour students, from the energy of our facultyand their enthusiasm for teaching, to thelectures, discussions and conferences that takeplace outside the classroom walls.

The vitality of the Jewish Studies Programdepends on the generosity of our dedicatedsupporters. I hope that you will join ourcommunity and I welcome you to contact meand to become a part of our program in thecoming year.

Beth WengerAssociate Professor of HistoryDirector, Jewish Studies Program

GREETINGS FROM THE DIRECTOR,HERBERT D. KATZ CENTER FOR ADVANCED JUDAIC STUDIES

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Herbert D. Katz Centerfor Advanced Judaic Studies

The Jewish Studies Program at Penn produces the Jewish Studies @ Penn newsletter annually.Editor: Christine WalshAssistant Editor: Beth WengerWe are grateful to Michelle and Peter, C’81/WG’85, Roth for their ongoing sponsorship of this newsletter,and for the Newton Family Fund's support this year.

This is a very special year for the Center as itreceives a new name: The Herbert D. Katz Centerfor Advanced Judaic Studies. Herbert D. Katz, thechair of our Board of Overseers from 1996-2003,who died only last year, played a critical role inbuilding the Center, in working tirelessly on itsbehalf, and in believing that this institution couldmake such a great contribution to Penn and to thelarger scholarly world. The Center’s great success isa tribute to his remarkable energy and dedication.It is most appropriate that it carry his good nameand become part of his enormous legacy at Penn.We are most grateful to Ellie Katz and her childrenfor giving us the single largest endowment giftsince the Center’s creation in 1993.

We convened this past year an amazing group ofscholars who probed in highly original ways theinteractions of Jews, Christians, and Pagans in thelate Roman Empire. Stimulated in part by alearned member of our Board of Overseers, MartinGruss, who personally asked for the topic, fourscholars, including our own Natalie Dohrmann,drafted a highly exciting proposal that attractedsome of the best scholars in the world. The weeklydiscussions and the conference were consistentlyon a high level and the traditional barriers betweenclassicists and religious studies scholars appeared tocollapse, especially at the conference. CampbellGray of our Classics department and Annette Reedof our Religious Studies department addedenormously to our rigorous discussions andcontinued the long-standing involvement of Pennfaculty in our fellowship program.

I am delighted to announce that after a carefulsearch, Dr. Yechiel Schur was chosen to becomeour new director of public programs. Yechiel is ahighly talented and enthusiastic educator who iswell suited for this position and will work wellwith fellows, board members, and the entire Penn

community. He was trained at the HebrewUniversity, the Jewish Theological Seminary ofAmerica, and at New York University where hecompleted his doctorate in medieval Jewish historythis past summer. He has also taught Hebrewlanguage and literature at Yale for the past severalyears. Yechiel will oversee our public programs inthe greater Philadelphia area and beyond and workto enhance the image of the Center nationwide.He will also teach several new courses at Penn.

As I write, we are about to welcome twenty-twonew fellows who will be joining us from all overthe world to deliberate on the exciting topic: Jews,commerce, and culture. They come from Israel andthe United States, Canada, Poland, Germany,France, England, and Australia. We are planning aseries of public lectures with Wharton on campusand another series at the Center for Jewish Historyin New York City.

Fifteen years is certainly a milestone, especiallysince it marks the culmination of our campaign toendow the Katz Center and insure its creativefuture. It is also a milestone since we are now wellrecognized in the world-wide community ofprofessors of Jewish studies and we have built anincredible network of over 350 scholars who haveserved as fellows at the Center. We are optimisticthat the next fifteen years will offer us newopportunities for growth and creativity as wecontinue to enhance Jewish studies and thehumanities at Penn and beyond.

David RudermanJoseph Meyerhoff Professor of Modern Jewish HistoryElla Darivoff Director of the Herbert D. Katz Centerfor Advanced Judaic Studies

GR A D UAT E

S T U D E N T AC T I V I T I E S

Graduate Student Colloquium

The Jewish Studies Graduate StudentColloquium expanded its activities this yearwith an exciting array of events. In additionto the colloquium’s goal of creatingcommunity among graduate students withinJewish Studies, this year’s coordinatorsCornelia Aust (History), Rebecca Cutler(History) and Jennifer Glaser (ComparativeLiterature) initiated a new forum for student-faculty dialogue. In what will hopefully be anannual event, the Jewish Studies GraduateStudent Colloquium invited a facultymember to speak about working, teaching,and doing research in the field of JewishStudies. This year, Professor DavidRuderman launched the program with alively discussion of his own career, thoughtson Jewish studies, and advice for graduatestudents. The Colloquium also had a fullschedule of student presentations. Given inan informal atmosphere, each colloquiumsession allows graduate students to share theircurrent research with peers both inside andoutside their field of inquiry. This year’sprogram included:

David Ruderman, the Joseph MeyerhoffProfessor of Modern Jewish History andthe Ella Darivoff Director of the HerbertD. Katz Center for Advanced JudaicStudies at the University of Pennsylvaniapresented “Reflections on the State ofJewish Studies: Talking about GraduateEducation and Beyond.”

Yaacob Dweck, History department, “LeonModena’s Critique of the Zohar”

Ludmila Zamah, Religious Studiesdepartment, “Tafsir Meets Midrash: HowScholarship on Biblical Exegesis Can InformQur’anic Studies”

John Fishman, Department of Near EasternLanguages and Civilizations, Respondent

Elliot Ratzman, Department of Religion,Princeton University, “Secular Saintliness:Radical Altruism, Jewish Ethics, and Post-Holocaust Thought”

Jennifer Glaser, Comparative Literature,Respondent

Cornelia Aust, History department,“Eighteenth-Century Central EuropeanJewish Commercial Networks and the State”

David Shyovitz, History department, “The‘Celestial Hierarchy’ of the HasideiAshkenaz? The Jews of Medieval Germanyand the Christian Mystical Tradition”

Geoffrey Shamos, History of Artdepartment, Respondent

Participation in the series was high and plansfor the future of the Colloquium include notonly more informal interdisciplinary meetingsmeant to give graduate students a chance topresent their work, but also lectures andreadings presented by outside scholars and agraduate student-organized conference.

For more information about the colloquium,please contact Rebecca Cutler atrecutler@sas.upenn.edu or Conny Aust ataustc@sas.upenn.edu.

Judah Goldin Graduate Student Seminar

Initiated in January 2000, by Professor JeffreyTigay, and named after late professor ofPostbiblical Hebrew literature and long-timefaculty member Judah Goldin, the GoldinSeminar is a graduate student seminar inBiblical studies and related fields.Coordinated by the graduate students, theSeminar was chaired last year by SpencerAllen (Department of Near EasternLanguages and Civilizations).

The following papers were delivered at theSeminar last year:

Aliza Schachter, Near Eastern Languagesand Civilizations, “Princess as Political Pawn”

Yehuda Goldin, Near Eastern Languages andCivilizations, “Deciphering the ‘Shema’: ANew Approach to Deuteronomy 6:4”

Yehuda Kraut, Near Eastern Languages andCivilizations, “Reconsidering the Shema”

Karen Sonik, Art and Archaeology of theMediterranean World, “Parables of Kingship:A Literary Text in Ritual Context”

Spencer Allen, Near Eastern Languages andCivilizations, “The Ishtars of Hammurabi’sPrologue”

David Gilad, visiting scholar, “Ezra theScribe-Priest in Ancient and ModernTheological Discourse”

V. K. Inman, Near Eastern Languages andCivilizations, “The Origins of the AfroasiaticLanguages”

J E W I S H S T U D I E S

I N T E R N S H I P S

The Jewish Studies Program continues tosponsor its Jewish Studies Internship program.This program, supported by a gift from Emilio,C’71, and Reina, C’72/71, Bassini, is designedto encourage students to explore aspects ofJewish Studies outside the classroom. Under thedirection of the Undergraduate Director,Kathryn Hellerstein, and graduate studentcoordinator, Kerry Wallach, a number ofstudents initiated, organized, and produced thefollowing events during the past academic year:

Yael Landman and Jonathan Mosesorganized a program with Professor DavidFreidenreich (Columbia University), expertin religion, food and law. He spoke on thesocio-cultural implications of Jewish dietaryrestrictions in a talk entitled “Food andJewish Identity: Is Keeping Kosher aboutKeeping Separate?”

Adam Teitcher and David Start organized aprogram with Profressor Jeffrey Tigay(University of Pennsylvania) who engagedstudents in a discussion of the Book ofExodus, the Passover Seder, and the origins ofits customs, entitled “A Night of Questions:

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Spencer Allen addressing faculty and students at a Goldin Seminar

Jewish Studies Program News

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The Where’s What’s When’s and Why’s of thePassover Seder.”

Benjamin Bernstein and Seong-Jin Moonorganized a program with Professor Beth Wenger(University of Pennsylvania) entitled “AmericanJewish Performers of the Stage and Screen.”Professor Wenger discussed her new book TheJewish Americans, focusing on the subject of theAmerican Jewish Performer, and showed clips fromthe PBS miniseries that complemented the book.

Benjamin Bernstein, Lisi Drezde and RyanJavier Ortega organized a program withProfessors Kevin Platt (University ofPennsylvania) and Benjamin Nathans (Universityof Pennsylvania) on the history of Soviet Jewrywith special emphasis on state sponsored violenceand national identity, entitled “Soviet Jewry andState Sponsored Violence: A Discussion.”

Aaron Blacksberg and Elisheva Goldbergorganized a talk by Professors Liliane Weissberg(University of Pennsylvania) and Philipp Gassert(University of Pennsylvania) on their experiencesgrowing up Jewish and non-Jewish inGermany/Austria after World War II entitled,“Living in the Shadow of the Holocaust.”

In the 2008-2009 academic year, graduatestudent Gabriella Skwara begins her role asgraduate student coordinator.

In addition to sponsoring the Jewish StudiesInternships, the Bassini Fund also supports theBassini Dinners—our continuing and verysuccessful program for student-faculty dinners (orlunches) in Jewish Studies. Each semester, wesupplement the President’s Fund and providesupport for every faculty member to share mealswith students. This program has provenenormously valuable in fostering faculty-studentinteraction outside the classroom.

TH E NAT I O N A L MU S E U M O F

AM E R I C A N J E W I S H H I S TO RY

The relationship between the National Museumof American Jewish History and the University ofPennsylvania’s Jewish Studies Program took moresteps forward this past year. Josh Perelman,Deputy Director for Programming and MuseumHistorian at the NMAJH, continues to ensurethat Penn students have the opportunity to enrichtheir classroom work. This year, an exceptionalgroup of interns participated in the daily life ofthe Museum and helped grow their skills and theMuseum’s mission through their work there. Allinterns at the Museum work in conjunction withthe curatorial and registrarial staff to gain hands-on experience with the Museum’s collection. Thisincludes researching new accessions andprocessing objects.

Fall interns, Jessica Staller, investigated 1930s eraanti-Nazi rallies, and Melanie Forman, helpedresearch Jewish agricultural colonies in the UnitedStates. Both topics will be explored in the coreexhibition being planned for the new NMAJHcurrently being constructed on IndependenceMall in Philadelphia.

In addition to their work on the core exhibition,Jessica and Melanie also assisted the curatorialstaff in developing the Museum’s currentchanging exhibition, Shaping Space, MakingMeaning. This interactive exhibition offers visitorsthe opportunity to learn how a museum creates amajor exhibition and share their opinions withthe Museum and other visitors. Feedback is readand processed by the NMAJH’s exhibition designteam now creating the 25,000-square-foot coreexhibition for its new building, scheduled to openin the fall of 2010.

Penn interns made major contributions to theMuseum’s ability to engage audiences on theinternet. A spring intern, Hannah Lau, created aMuseum blog Shaping Space, Making Meaninghttp://www.nmajh.org/weblog/shapingspace/ basedon the current exhibition. The blog representsanother way for interested parties to learn aboutthe Museum’s exhibition and discuss its contents.The blog follows the comments, thoughts, andsuggestions of visitors who have visited theexhibition. Hannah also participated in a paneldiscussion held at the museum Museum held inconjunction with American Jewish HeritageMonth entitled Jewish Peoplehood in the 21stCentury and Beyond, in which she discussed hermulti-ethnic Jewish identity. Alex Levy created theMuseum’s Flickr site, which documents theconstruction of the Museum’s new building on

Independence Mall. The site can be reached fromthe Museum’s homepage, www.nnmajh.org.

The University of Pennsylvania Jewish StudiesProgram and the National Museum of AmericanJewish History (NMAJH) have been collaboratingfor five years on a Postdoctoral Fellowship. JoshPerelman, the current fellow, teaches AmericanJewish History at the University and serves theNMAJH as its Deputy Director for Programmingand Museum Historian. The relationship hasstrengthened ties between the two institutionsand will continue to expand as the Museumcontinues its growth. Scheduled to open in 2010,the new Museum will be the largest institution ofits kind devoted specifically to exhibiting andeducating about American Jewish history. Usinghistorical objects, cutting-edge technology, hands-on interactives, and narrative storytelling, theMuseum’s core exhibition will highlight how andwhen Jews immigrated to America, the choicesthey faced, the challenges they confronted, andthe ways in which they shaped, and were shapedby, their American home. This new institution,and the current partnership with the University ofPennsylvania, will make Philadelphia a premierelocation for research and education in the field ofAmerican Jewish history.

S T U D E N T R E S E A RC H

Undergraduate student research continues to beone of JSP’s priorities. Last year a number ofstudents in Jewish Studies wrote senior thesisprojects on Jewish topics. Thanks to the generoussupport of Phillip, C’34, and Robert, C’63,Goldfein and Raymond and Ruth Brenner,PAR’99/01/05, JSP annually awards some

Professor Jeffrey Tigay addressing a full house of students at one of the Bassini Intern Programs

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$10,000 to support student research projects.Among the theses and projects supported lastyear was David Falek’s senior honors thesisentitled “The Revival of Mishna Study in theEarly Modern Period,” which was awardedthe Samuel and Esther Goldin EndowmentAward for outstanding research in JewishStudies. Other thesis titles were: “‘Agunot’ byS.Y. Agnon: Piecing Together the Puzzle,” byFelice “Lisi” Dredze; “Rabbi Yair ChaimBachrach: The Life and Thought of a 17thCentury Jewish Skeptic,” by Joe Scherban;and “‘Confrontation’ in Context: JosephSoloveitchik’s Essay about InterreligiousDialogue against the Backdrop of the VaticanII Conference,” by Jonathan Weiner.

GRU S S V I S I T I N G

PRO F E S S O R I N

TA L M U D I C L AW

In 1987, Mr. Joseph S. Gruss, through abequest from his wife Caroline’s estate,established the Caroline Zelasnik Gruss andJoseph S. Gruss Chair in Talmudic CivilLaw at the University of Pennsylvania LawSchool. Since then, nearly every year, theGruss Chair has brought a distinguishedscholar specializing in some area of Jewishlaw to the Penn Law School. Past chairholders include Professors HayyimSoloveitchik, Aaron Kirschenbaum, andMoshe Halbertal, and Israel Supreme CourtJustices Menahem Elon and Yitzhak Englard.

This past fall, Suzanne Last Stone, LawSchool professor at Cardozo School of Law,Yeshiva University, served as the GrussProfessor. Stone taught a course in the LawSchool and delivered the Gruss Lectures. Thelectures focused on the subject of “BetweenRevenge and Reconciliation: Rabbinic Viewson Historical Justice” The lectures werewidely attended.

HE B R E W

The Modern Hebrew Language Programoffers four semesters of work in Hebrew,stressing oral communication, reading withcomprehension, and written expression, plusa third year of courses designed to serve as abridge to reading modern Hebrew literatureand expository texts. Program faculty, underthe supervision of coordinator Ronit Engelhave been pioneers in developing web-basedinstructional materials. This year ProfessorEngel received a grant from the PennLanguage Center to expand the scope ofthese materials and to make them availableusing the latest delivery systems, includingBlackboard. The program also offers studentsthe opportunity to meet with major Israeli

writers whose works they have studied inclass and to discuss their work with them inHebrew. This fall, writers Hamutal Bar-Yosef and Yehudit Katzir will be coming tocampus to speak to Hebrew students.

Y I D D I S H

In 2007-2008, the Department of GermanicLanguages and Literatures and the JewishStudies Program offered four courses inYiddish language and one in Jewish literatureand culture in translation. Continuing thepractice of previous years, KathrynHellerstein, Associate Professor of GermanicLanguages, undertook to enrich theclassroom experience by introducing studentsto Yiddish and Jewish culture throughresources in Philadelphia. AlexanderBotwinik led all the Yiddish students in aspringtime Yiddish zingeray (sing-along). Inaddition, students attended presentations onYiddish songs and culture, by Bob Freedmanin Penn’s Robert and Molly Freedman JewishMusic Archive. In the spring, the studentsdid class research projects, on Yiddishwebsites and on early 20th century Yiddishbooks in the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library.

With the SAS Language Teaching InnovationGrants awarded to Hellerstein, Germandepartment doctoral student Gabriella Skwaradeveloped and digitized pedagogical materialsand completed the Blackboard sites for first-year Yiddish. For her exemplaryaccomplishment on this project and for hersuperb work in an independent study onYiddish poetry, Gabriella Skwara was awardedthe 2008 Workmen’s Circle/ Arbeter RingPrize for Excellence in Yiddish Studies at Penn.

The Jewish Studies Program is grateful for agrant from the Forward Foundation that helpedfund the teaching of Intermediate Yiddish in2006-2007. We welcome contributions to theYiddish program that will provide continuedsupport to Yiddish instruction.

AR R I VA L S A N D

DE PA RT U R E S

Jessica Goldberg, AssistantProfessor of Medieval History,joined the Jewish StudiesProgram in fall of 2007. Shecame to Penn a year earlierafter a post-doctoralfellowship in the StanfordHumanities Fellows Program.

Goldberg studies the medieval history of theMediterranean basin, Christian Europe, andthe Islamic world. After earning an A.B. inSocial Studies from Harvard University,

Professor Goldberg spent several yearsteaching high school math, then completed aPh.D. in the History Department atColumbia University.

Annette Reed, AssistantProfessor in Religious Studies,also joined the Jewish StudiesProgram in fall of 2007. Shecame to Penn from McMasterUniversity, after graduatestudies at Harvard DivinitySchool and PrincetonUniversity. Reed’s research

spans Second Temple Judaism, earlyChristianity, and Jewish/Christian relationsin Late Antiquity.

We welcome their addition to the Jewish StudiesProgram! More biographical information islocated on the Jewish Studies webpage athttp://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jwst/faculty.htm

FAC U LT Y AWA R D S

A N D HO N O R S

Dan Ben-Amos’s book Folktales of the Jews,vol. 1: Tales from the Sephardic Dispersion(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society,2006) was included in the list of“Outstanding Academic Title” (2007),compiled by Choice: Current Reviews forAcademic Libraries.

Ronit Engel received a Dean’s TeachingRelief grant for Spring 2008 that enabled herto prepare new pedagogoical material forteaching Hebrew language.

David Ruderman won the 2008 CharlesLudwig Distinguished Teaching Prize fromthe College Alumni Society.

Beth Wenger won the 2008 Richard S.Dunn Award for Distinguished Teachingfrom the History Department. Her book,The Jewish Americans: Three Centuries ofJewish Voices in America (Doubleday, 2007)was named a National Jewish Book Awardfinalist. Also, Wenger was appointed aDistinguished Lecturer by the Organizationof American Historians (OAH) in 2008.

JessicaGoldberg

AnnetteReed

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About Our FacultyDan Ben-Amos, Professor of Near EasternLanguages and Civilizations and Folklore,delivered a paper on “The Search for Authenticityand the Discover of Virtuality” together withBatsheva Ben-Amos in the Fifth WroclawInternational Conference on Jewish Studies thatwas devoted to Modern Jewish Culture:Diversities and Unities, at the Polish University ofWroclaw in June. He later presented a paper on “AJewish Surname between Family Tradition and aScholarly Analysis” in the 23rd InternationalCongress of Onomastic Sciences at YorkUniversity in Toronto this August. An entry on“Stabilität” appeared in the Enzyklopädie desMärchens: Handwörterbuch zur historischen undvergleichenden Erzählforschung 12 (2007),1131-1136, and two entries, on “Elijah the Prophet”and on “Angels” with Menachem Kallus, appearedin The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in EasternEurope, Gershon David Hundert, Editor (YaleUniversity Press). Another essay, “Kvurat ha-Rokeah” [The burial of the pharmacist], waspublished in Hebrew in The Power of a Tale: TheJubilee Book of IFA (University of Haifa).

Alexander (Sender) Botwinik is a Yiddish lecturerin the Department of Germanic Languages andLiteratures. In addition to teaching Yiddish,Botwinik teaches music and choir at Har ZionTemple in Penn Valley, PA, and music at theKaiserman JCC. He served as the music directorfor a documentary film about the artist andHolocaust survivor, Toby Knobel Fluek. The film,entitled Toby’s Sunshine, had its premier showing inJune, followed by a concert featuring the songsfrom the film performed alongside a slide showmontage of the artist’s work. Botwinik recentlyperformed in three Yiddish concerts at HaverfordCollege with singers Cantor Naomi Hirsch, ShermLabovitz and Richard Lenatsky. In addition, he hasjust completed preparing a book of his father’smusic, after many years of work on this lengthy(370-page) project. Publication of this book, FromHolocaust to Life, is expected in the near future.

Daisy Braverman, lecturer of Judeo-Spanish,edited a Ladino textbook and recorded theaccompanying CDs. Beginner’s Ladino waspublished by Hippocrene Books in 2008, and isthe only Ladino language-instruction manual onthe market today.

Michael Carasik, Adjunct Assistant Professor ofBiblical Hebrew, continues to teach BiblicalHebrew at the Reconstructionist RabbinicalCollege as well. This past year he also taught aclass in the Wisdom Literature of the Bible atGratz College. He will shortly publish theLeviticus volume of The Commentators’ Bible, hisEnglish translation of the traditional commentariesof the “Miqra’ot Gedolot,” and has begun work onthe Numbers volume. He continues to publishbook reviews and is still patiently waiting for hislegendary article on “Syntactic Double Translation

in the Targumim” (”forthcoming” since 2004) toappear in print. This past summer, he gave a talkon “Literature and History in 1 Samuel 1” to theNational Association of Professors of Hebrew inMontreal and led a weekly class on the books of 1and 2 Samuel for the Gershman Y Congregationin Center City.

Natalie Dohrmann is Adjunct Assistant Professorin Religious Studies. She is also the ExecutiveEditor of the Jewish Quarterly Review, and directorof Publications at the Herbert D. Katz Center forAdvanced Judaic Studies. This May, Penn Presspublished Jewish Interpretation and CulturalExchange: Comparative Exegesis in Context whichshe coedited with David Stern. There she has anarticle titled “Law as Cultural Narrative: ReadingSlavery in Tannaitic Sources. She is currentlycoediting a volume with Annette Yoshiko Reedwhich builds from the May 2008 conferenceJewish and Other Imperial Cultures in LateAntiquity at the Katz Center.

Ronit Engel used her Teaching Relief Award fromPenn’s School of Arts and Sciences during theSpring semester to prepare her innovative readeron the contemporary Israeli newspaper andperiodical press. The book will provide studentswith a much needed bridge from the structuredlanguage classroom to the world of uneditedexpository texts, helping them learn to cope withHebrew academic literature. Ability to read suchtexts freely is vital to success in graduate programsin Judaic studies. Engel also continued her workon developing new pedagogical strategies that willenable English-speaking students to master thefeatures of modern Israeli Hebrew that are mostforeign to them. In addition, with the help of agrant from the Penn Language Center, Engel willbe updating and adding to the web-basedinstructional materials in whose preparation shehas been a pioneer.

Talya Fishman, Associate Professor of ReligiousStudies, delivered a paper in the fall at the annualconference of the American Academy of Religionin San Diego on “The Computational PrayerPractice of the Rhineland Pietists,” and in thespring participated in the Seventh InternationalConference on Orality and Textuality at RiceUniversity in Houston, speaking on “DisparateMotivations for Guarding Oral Transmission:Within and Between Cultures.” In July, Fishmanlectured on “Medieval Jewish Culture in Art andthe Arts of Medieval Jewish Culture” to teachersparticipating in a weeklong workshop at thePhiladelphia Museum of Art. Her article entitled“Claims About Mishna in the Epistle of SherirtaGaon” will appear in Jewish, Christian andMuslim Life Under Caliphs and Sultans, DavidFreidenreich and Miriam Goldestein, eds.,(University of Pennsylvanian Press, forthcoming).Fishman will be serving as Acting Chair of theReligious Studies department this academic year.

Nili R. Gold, Associate Professor of ModernHebrew Literature and Israel Studies, is teachingtwo courses this fall. The first examines the imageof childhood in Israeli literature and film intranslation, and the second approaches works inthe original Hebrew. That course focuses on therelationship between Hebrew literature, songs andmusic and their joined role in forging nationalidentity. Gold’s English book Yehuda Amichai: TheMaking of Israel’s National Poet appeared this fall(Brandeis University/The University Press of NewEngland.) It is the winner of the American-IsraeliCooperative Enterprise (AICE) publication grantfor 2008. Gold will travel to Israel in December,where her book and the archival findings includedin it will be the topic of discussion at Ben GurionUniversity. Last winter-break Gold delivered aninvited lecture at Tulane University and in thespring, she presented a paper on “The Making ofa National Poet” at the annual meeting of theAssociation for Israel Studies (AIS) honoringIsrael’s 60th birthday in NYC. This November,she will present a paper at the internationalconference on “German and German Culture inHebrew Literature” at the University ofHeidelberg Germany. Gold’s forthcomingpublications include a chapter in a Hebrew bookin memory of the poet Dahlia Ravikovitch and anarticle in English on “The Image of Haifa in theNovel Trumpet in the Wadi.”

Jessica L. Goldberg, Assistant Professor ofMedieval History, completed her first year as afull-time faculty member in the Historydepartment, after arriving at the University withtime shared between duties as an AssistantProfessor and Fellow at the Herbert D. KatzCenter for Advanced Judaic Studies in 2006-2007.Her main areas of research are MedievalMediterranean Economic and Legal History, andshe is currently researching the geographies andpractices of trade around the Mediterranean in theeleventh and twelfth centuries. Her article “Gossipand Back-biting: the Work of Geniza Merchants,”appeared in the collected volume, History in theComic Mode (Columbia, 2007), Fulton andHolsinger, eds. She also completed an article onthe working of business relationships amongGeniza merchants, entitled “Business, Businesmenand Work in the Eleventh Century: the case of the‘Maghribi’ traders,” currently under review. Boththese pieces are related to her book manuscript inpreparation, “A Bale on the Beach: the structureand geography of Medieval Trade.” Goldberg alsolectured several times in the Philadelphia area inthe past year, presenting the papers “Trade andIdentity,” “Principals and Agents Reconsidered,”“Peering Backwards: The Cairo Geniza and theMediterranean,” and “Religious and EconomicIdentity in the Islamic Marketplace.” This fall, she

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CA J S C E L E B R AT E S

N E W NA M E

Eleanor Meyerhoff Katz and her childrenhave made a gift to endow and name theHerbert D. Katz Center for AdvancedJudaic Studies. It is the single largestendowment gift to the Center since itscreation in 1993. CAJS celebrated its newname in a ceremony held on September 9,2008. The event was well attended andincluded the Katz family and friends,university officials, Penn faculty and students,the Katz Center Board of Overseers, andcurrent fellows. During the ceremony at theKatz Center’s library several speakersbeautifully captured Herb’s personality andhis love of both the Center and theUniversity of Pennsylvania. PresidentGutmann said that tzedakah was for Herb afundamental way of life. Dean Bushnellspoke about Herb’s deep appreciation for thepower of ideas. David Ruderman adapted anancient rabbinic text to characterize Herb’sgood heart as the finest of all qualities. It ishard to imagine a more appropriate way ofremembering this great man.

2007 – 2 0 08AT T H E KAT Z C E N T E R

Jewish and Other Imperial Culturesin Late Antiquity: Literary, Social,and Material Histories

This past year was the Katz Center’s firstsustained focus on Judaism in Antiquity, andwe aimed to do so in a decidedlyinterdisciplinary mode. Instead ofconcentrating on the rabbis and their world,we focused on the imperial context in whichJudaism was but one small piece. How doesthis perspective change the sort of evidence andquestions we bring to this era of seminaltransformation in Jewish culture, law, society,art, and practice? The idea was to foster vibrantreciprocity. Scholars of early Judaism need tobe regularly challenged by the data andcomplexity of Roman history, even andespecially as Rome became a Christian empire.The group also pushed scholars of the Romanperiod to better take the measure of the vast,but often inaccessible, evidence of one of itsown (uniquely vocal) provincial populations—the Jews. The conversation was and continuesto be extraordinary, and was echoed in thediversity and range of the fellows and otherscholars convened for the year and culminatingwith the Gruss Colloquium. A volume thatwill showcase some of the most excitingresearch by the fellows is currently being editedby Natalie B. Dohrmann (University ofPennsylvania) and Annette Yoshiko Reed(University of Pennsylvania). The Grusscolloquium is made possible through thegenerous support of Martin D. Gruss, W’64.

2008 ME Y E R H O F F

L E C T U R E I N

J E W I S H H I S TO RY

The 2008 Meyerhoff Lecture was delivered byPaula Fredriksen (Boston University) andOded Irshai (Hebrew University). They gave

a multimedia presentation of the religious,intellectual, and physical itinerary of the relicsof St. Stephen across the Mediterranean in theearly fifth century CE. The story of St.Stephen’s bones begins with a vision nearJerusalem and ends with sea voyagesthroughout the late Roman world. The proto-martyr of the early church, Stephen, throughhis recovered relics, instigated bouts of internalbrawling between local bishops and spasms ofexternal political struggles between Jewishdignitaries and the ascendant church.Journeying further west, fragments ofStephen’s body set off waves of anti-Jewishhostility. The lecture explored some of theconsequences of this hostility, from the forcedconversion of Minorca’s Jews to Augustine’sinsistence on Jewish freedom of practice inCity of God. The annual Meyerhoff Lecturewas established by the Joseph MeyerhoffMemorial Trusts in 1997 to honor theappointment of Herbert D. Katz, W’51, asthe chair of the Board of Overseers of theCenter and to honor the generosity and serviceof Herbert D. Katz and Eleanor MeyerhoffKatz to Penn’s programs and the Center.

2007 – 2 0 08PU B L I C P RO G R A M S

Last year’s fellowship topic produced greatinterest in the wider Jewish community andbeyond. Our local lecture series,“Beginnings: Jews, Christians, and theRoman Empire,” attracted audiences tolectures in synagogues on diverse topics suchas the trauma of exile, rabbis and witches,and art and Jewish identity. We also initiateda three-part lecture series co-sponsored bythe Main Line Reform Temple, the BrynMawr Presbyterian Church, and theEpiscopal Church of the Redeemer. AnnetteYoshiko Reed (University of Pennsylvania)discussed Jesus’s Jewishness and the splitbetween Judaism and Christianity andWilliam Adler (North Carolina StateUniversity) lectured on Scripture andauthority in early Judaism and Christianity.Under the auspices of the Primo Levi Centerin New York City, the Katz Center fellowsdelivered three widely attended lectures. TheKatz Center also continued with one-dayseminars for Jewish professionals. Lee I.Levine (Hebrew University) discussed theancient synagogue in the fall while YaakovElman (Yeshiva University) spoke ontheodicy in Late Antiquity in the spring. Theseminars for rabbis were very successful. TheKatz Center looks forward to creatingadditional educational programs for rabbisand educators.

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The Herbert D. Katz Centerfor Advanced Judaic Studies

(l to r) Penn President Amy Guttman and ProfessorDavid Ruderman with Mrs. Eleanor MeyerhoffKatz at the naming cermony.

Professr David Ruderman (standing left) with the extended Katz family at the naming cermony.

2 008 – 2 0 0 9 F E L LOW S H I P P RO G R A M : J E W S , CO M M E RC E , A N D CU LT U R E

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2 0 0 8 PU B L I C AT I O N S

The “Jewish Cultures and Contexts Series” from theUniversity of Pennsylvania Press continues to publishcutting-edge research from across the fields of Jewishstudies, as well as to translate innovative work written inHebrew for English readers.

Look for these new titles:

Jewish Biblical Interpretation and Cultural Exchange:Comparative Exegesis in Context (May 2008),Natalie B. Dohrmann and David Stern, eds.

The Revolution of 1905 and Russia’s Jews (February2008), Stefani Hoffman and Ezra Mendelsohn, eds.

Old Worlds, New Mirrors: On Jewish Mysticism andTwentieth-Century Thought (December 2008),Moshe Idel

The Jew in the Art of the Italian Renaissance (May 2008)Dana E. Katz

The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times (2007,paperback 2008), Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett andJonathan Karp, eds.

The Insight of Unbelievers: Nicholas of Lyra and ChristianReading of Jewish Text in the Later Middle Ages (2007,paperback 2008), Deeana Copeland Klepper

In addition to its collections of scholarship and reviews,The Jewish Quarterly Review (JQR) has several special issuesand projects in the works. Among them:

• A forum on Arab Jews.

• An issue dedicated to review essays on scholarship inall areas of late antique Judaism.

• A “travel” issue, which will explore a wide range ofdata, from early Christian pilgrimage guides to theHoly Land, to shtetl-themed restaurants in twenty-firstcentury Poland and Germany.

• Correspondence from the archive of the late artist,R. B. Kitaj, whose painting and writing offer aprovocative insight into the “Jewish Question,” as wellas into the possibility of a “Jewish Art.” Kitaj, whopreviously published in JQR, died in October 2007, andleft behind a large trove of fascinating correspondenceand musings on Jewish thought, theology, and history.

We are also thinking of exciting ways to mark JQR’s100th volume (!), which will come out in 2010—notthat far away.

As always, look for all of JQR online at “Project Muse”and JSTOR.

Cornelia AustJewish Merchants in Centraland East Central EuropeUniversity of PennsylvaniaLouis Apfelbaum and Hortense BraunsteinApfelbaum Fellowship

Bernard Cooperman (F)Commercial Organizationand Communal FormationUniversity of MarylandPrimo Levi Fellowship

Veerle Vanden Daelen (S)Jews, Orthodoxy, and Diamondsin AntwerpUniversity of Antwerp

Jonathan Dekel-ChenJewish Transnational Philanthropyand PoliticsHebrew UniversityDalck and Rose Feith Family FellowshipNancy S. and Laurence E. Glick TeachingFellowship

Glenn Dynner (S)Jewish Economic Life in the CongressKingdom of PolandSarah Lawrence CollegeIvan and Nina Ross Family Fellowship

Judah Galinsky (F)Christian-Jewish Relationsand the Medieval Gift EconomyBar Ilan UniversityRuth Meltzer Fellowship

Nahum Karlinsky (S)Jewish Philanthropy and CreditCooperatives in Eastern Europebefore World War IIBen-Gurion UniversitySamuel T. Lachs Fellowship

Jonathan KarpEconomic Discourse on Jews inLuther’s EuropeBinghamton University/SUNYMartin Gruss FellowshipErika A. Strauss Teaching Fellowship

Rebecca Kobrin (F)East European Jews, Money, andSpeculation in Gilded-Age AmericaColumbia UniversityAlbert J. Wood Fellowship

Paul Lerner (F)Jews, Department Stores, and GermanResponses to Mass Consumerism,1880–1940University of Southern CaliforniaCharles W. and Sally Rothfeld Fellowship

Adam MendelsohnEconomics of the English-SpeakingDiaspora, 1820–1870Brandeis UniversityLouis and Bessie Stein Fellowship

Evelyne Oliel-Grausz (S)Trade, Family, and CommunicationNetworksUniversity of Paris I, SorbonnePrimo Levi Fellowship

Derek Penslar (F)Jews and the Military, 1648–1948University of TorontoWeiner Family Fellowship

Gideon Reuveni (s)Consumer Culture and the Makingof Jewish Identity in EuropeUniversity of MelbourneCharles W. and Sally Rothfeld Fellowship

Jessica Roitman (S)Dysfunction and Disintegration inSephardi Networks, 1595–1640Leiden UniversitySelma Ruben Fellowship

Joseph Shatzmiller (F)Jewish Pawnbroking, Christian Art,and Medieval SocietyDuke UniversityRebell Family Fellowship

David Sorkin (F)Emancipation and CapitalismUniversity of WisconsinGolub Family Fellowship

Adam Sutcliffe (S)Judaism, Radicalism, and the CommerceQuestion, 1815–1843King’s College LondonPrimo Levi Fellowship

Adam TellerReconstruction of Polish JewishSociety, 1660sUniversity of HaifaRuth Meltzer FellowshipRose and Henry Zifkin Teaching Fellowship

Michael Toch (S)Economic History of the Jewsof Medieval EuropeHebrew UniversityEllie and Herbert D. Katz DistinguishedFellowship

Nathan Wachtel (F)Marrano Networks and Mercantilism,16th and 17th CenturiesCollege de FranceEllie and Herbert D. Katz DistinguishedFellowship

Carsten WilkeClandestine Judaism and BoundaryCrossing, 1598–1659Heinrich Heine University,Institute of German Jewish HistoryMaurice Amado Foundation Fellowship

Marcin Wodzinski (S)Socio-Economic Profile of HasidismReconsideredUniversity of Wroclaw, PolandElla Darivoff Fellowship

Adjunct FellowsElliott Horowitz, Bar-Ilan University

Phil Lieberman,George Washington University

Jerzy Mazur, Towson University

Tom Safley, University of Pennsylvania

Francesca Trivellato, Yale University

Short-Term Fellows

Israel Bartal, Hebrew University

Andrew Godley, University of Reading/UK

This fellowship year challenges scholars to reconsider the economic dimensions of theJewish past and to integrate that knowledge within the emerging narratives of Jewishexperience. Although the field has moved far beyond the need for apologetics, there isan abiding reluctance to engage the Jews’ historic economic functions, which have longnourished anti-Semitic fantasies. Yet these functions formed the basis of Jewish globalcivilization: mercantile, transnational, and reliant upon money as a source of power.The fellows will explore such topics as Jewish livelihoods, social structures, tradenetworks, and fiscal mechanisms, thus investigating anew the relationship between thematerial and cultural components of Jewish civilization. By bringing together scholarsfrom across the humanities and social sciences, The Katz Center seeks to devise a freshresearch agenda for exposing the shifting linkages between commerce and culture inJewish life from medieval to modern times.

2008–2009 Public ProgramsEconomic factors are essential for understanding the character of Jewish existence.This year’s topic is relevant for anyone who is interested in learning about some ofthe richest and most basic phenomena of Jewish life, such as how Jews have earnedtheir livelihoods, developed new trades, and created businesses and industries. In Fall2008, the Katz Center fellows will deliver a three-part lecture series under theauspices of the Wharton School. The 2009 Penn Lectures in Judaic Studies will runfrom February to April in the greater Philadelphia area. In addition to the programsin Philadelphia, the Katz Center will facilitate public lectures at synagogues aroundthe country. If you would like more information about our public programs, pleasecontact Yechiel Schur at yschur@sas.upenn.edu or consult our website at:http://www.cajs.upenn.edu/ and click on Public Programs.

2008–2009 Fellows:

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2007-2008 Special Events and ProgramsME Y E R H O F F L E C T U R E

I N J E W I S H H I S TO RY

The Twelth Annual Joseph and RebeccaMeyerhoff Lecture in Jewish History was alecture entitled “Saint Stephen’s Bones: AChapter in the History of Jewish-ChristianRelations in Late Antiquity” with PaulaFredriksen (Boston University) and OdedIrshai (Hebrew University) on March 19,2008. The event was co-sponsored by theCenter for Advanced Judaic Studies, ReligiousStudies department, Jewish Studies Program,and History department.

The Meyerhoff Lecture was established in1997 through the generosity of a gift from theJoseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Foundationto honor the appointment of Herb Katz,W’51, as chair of the Board of CAJS. Herband Ellie Katz have been among the mostdevoted supporters of Jewish Studies at Penn.Their gifts include the Joseph MeyerhoffChair in Modern Jewish History, the KatzFamily Term Chair in American JewishHistory, and the Herbert D. KatzDistinguished Fellowship at the Center.

S ILVERS V I S I T ING SCHOLAR

IN JEWI SH STUDIE S

The Twelth Annual Silvers Visiting ScholarProgram was a talk by author JonathanRosen, on his then forthcoming book aboutbirdwatching, The Life of the Skies, focusingon Judaism and the role of the natural worldin religious life. The lecture on February 7,2008, was co-sponsored with the Universityof Pennsylvania Kelly Writers House.

The Silvers Visiting Scholar program,endowed by Patricia, CW’72, and DavidSilvers, C’71, was established to bringdistinguished scholars to campus to interactwith students and other members of theuniversity community.

J O S E P H A L E X A N D E R

CO L LO QU I U M

The Twenty-Third Annual Joseph AlexanderColloquium was a talk entitled “ Post-

Mortem: The Reconstruction of Jewish Lifein Postwar Germany” by Michael Brenner,Professor of Jewish History and Culture at theUniversity of Munich on October 30, 2007.The lecture was co-sponsored with theHistory department and the Department ofGermanic Languages and Literatures.

The Joseph Alexander Colloquium, Penn’soldest endowed lectureship in Jewish Studies,is supported through the generosity of theJoseph Alexander Foundation and theMackler Family.

KU TC H I N S E M I N A R S

I N J E W I S H S T U D I E S

The Kutchin seminars are supported by thegenerosity of Mel Kutchin, C’50, and thelate Mitzi Kutchin.

“In Quest of a Narrative – An Ethnography inan Israeli Kibbutz,” with Haya Bar-Itzhak,(University of Haifa), co-sponsored by theGraduate Program in Folklore and Folklife andthe Middle East Center, on October 1, 2007.

“The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetryfrom Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492,” with Peter Cole, poet and Hebrewand Arabic translator, co-sponsored by theCreative Writing Program and Kelly WritersHouse, on October 8, 2007.

“Placing the Voice: the Personal & Political,Israel 2007,” with Rachel Tzvia Back, Israelipoet, co-sponsored by the Creative WritingProgram and Kelly Writers House, onOctober 10, 2007.

“Jews, Judaism, and Judaica in the Museum,”with Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek, Chiefcurator, Juedisches Museum, Vienna; Curator,Spertus Museum, Chicago, co-sponsored bythe Department of Germanic Languages andLiteratures and the Department of ArtHistory, on October 18, 2007.

“City of Oranges: An Intimate History ofArabs and Jews in Jaffa,” with Adam LeBor,author and journalist, co-sponsored by theMiddle East Center, on November 6, 2007.

“Jewish Culture in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna:From Text to Performance,” with KlausHodl, (Centre of Jewish Studies), Karl-Franzens-Universitat Graz, co-sponsored bythe Department of Germanic Languages andLiteratures, on November 7, 2007.

“Authentic Folklorism: Israeli Folk Dancingin Israel and in America,” with DinaRoginsky, (University of Toronto), co-sponsored by the Graduate Program inFolklore & Folklife, and the Middle EastCenter, on Novemmber 12, 2007.

“Acts of Assimilation: The Invention of JewishAmerican Literary History,” with Michael P.Kramer, Director, Shaindy Rudoff GraduateProgram in Creative Writing, Bar IlanUniversity, co-sponsored by the Englishdepartment, on November 19, 2007.

“Autumn Song: Portrait of the Artist as anOlder Woman.” with Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman, acclaimed Yiddish poet, singerand song writer, co-sponsored by Hiddur: TheCenter for Aging and Judaism of theReconstructionist Rabbinical College withother organizations in the community, onDecember 13, 2007.

“Spinoza in the Library of an Early ModernDutch Sephardic Rabbi,” with Yosef Kaplan,(Hebrew University), co-sponsored by theDepartment of History, on February 20, 2008.

“Challenges in the Middle East: Democracy,Media, and Human Rights,” with journalistKhaled Abu Toameh, co-sponsored by PennHillel’s Israel Coalition, on February 24, 2008.

“Cantillation and Meaning in the Bible: AThree-Part Series,” with Miles B. Cohen

2007 Alexander Colloquium speaker, ProfessorMichael Brenner with Director, Professor BethWenger

(l to r) Professors David Ruderman and BethWenger, with Author Jonathan Rosen, 2008 SilversVisiting Scholar

Israeli poet, Rachel Tzvia Back, talking to ProfessorNili Gold’s Hebrew class

Professor Michael Kramer before his talk

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(Jewish Theological Seminary), co-sponsored bythe Department of Near Eastern Languages andCivilizations, on February 27, 2008.

“An Afternoon of Selected Yiddish Short Stories,”with Isaiah Sheffer, Founder and Artistic Directorof Symphony Space, co-sponsored by the JewishFederation of Greater Philadelphia in partnershipwith Jewish Outreach Partnership, and and co-sponsored by the Jewish Studies Kutchin FacultySeminar Series, WHYY and the National YiddishBook Center, on March 16, 2008.

“The Rabbis Reconsidered: A RoundtableDiscussion,” with Beth Berkowitz (JewishTheological Seminary), Yaakov Elman (YeshivaUniversity), Seth Schwartz (Jewish TheologicalSeminary) and moderator, Natalie Dohrmann(University of Pennsylvania), co-sponsored by theCenter for Ancient Studies and the ReligiousStudies department, on April 2, 2008.

“Film Screening: Swimming in Auschwitz,” withfilmmaker Jon Kean, C’89, co-sponsored by theWomen’s Studies Program and the Alice PaulCenter, and the Hillel Holocaust EducationCommittee, on April 9, 2007.

MA RT I N F I S H E R

ME M O R I A L L E C T U R E

I N J E W I S H S T U D I E S

Professor Beth S. Wenger gave the first annualUniversity of Pennsylvania Martin Fisher MemorialLecture in Jewish Studies sponsored by Ruthie andRay Brenner on December 2, at the Ramaz Schoolin New York. The lecture series is named in memoryof Ruthie Brenner’s late father, Martin Fisher, andfeatures a different member of the Jewish Studies

faculty as speaker each year. Wenger spoke about hernew book, The Jewish Americans: Three Centuries ofJewish Voices in America to an audience ofapproximately two hundred people.

J E W I S H S T U D I E S

CO N F E R E N C E S

Defining Modernity: Spring 2008

This year’s Jewish Studies-sponsored conference wasentitled “Becoming Modern: The German-JewishExperience” and was organized together with theDepartment of Germanic Languages and Literatures,and took place on March 30. It was both a stand-alone scholarly conference and a highpoint of aseminar for graduate students and ambitious

undergraduates with the same title, offered byLiliane Weissberg. The course reflected on the workof critics and philosophers like Walter Benjamin,Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Siegfried Kracauer,and Georg Simmel. The conference, organized byWeissberg and two doctoral candidates in German-Jewish Studies, Gabriella Skwara and KerryWallach, brought together scholars across disciplinesto discuss the relationship between German Jews andmodernity, and engage in a conversation with eachother. The speakers included Peter Fenves(Northwestern University), Susannah Gottlieb(Northwestern University), Susannah Heschel(Dartmouth College), Todd Presner (UCLA), LisaSaltzman (Bryn Mawr College), Scott Spector(University of Michigan), David Suchoff (BowdoinCollege), and Rachel Tobias (Johns HopkinsUniversity). It was open to Penn faculty and studentsas well as friends of the Jewish Studies Program hereat Penn, and drew a large group of attendees.

The conference took place in the Rosenwald Galleryof Van Pelt Library, and its adjoining Henry CharlesLea room was also the locale for a special exhibitionderived from the private collection of Erna Weill’sart, papers, photographs, and home movies,organized by library curator Dr. Violet Lutz, agraduate in German-Jewish studies, and KerryWallach. Weill was a sculptor and friend of MartinBuber who had emigrated from Germany to theUnited States. The day-long symposium ended witha reception and a concert of Berlin cabaret music byJewish composers, performed by Curtis graduateAndrew Hauze (piano) and soprano Tammy Coil.

l to r: Professor Antonio Feros and Professor DavidRuderman with Professor Yosef Kaplan.

l to r: Professors Yaakov Elman, Natalie Dohrmann, SethSchwartz and Beth Berkowitz at their roundtable discussion

UP C O M I N G I N 2 0 0 9A Conference on “Tablet and Torah:Mesopotamia and the Biblical World”

Monday, March 30, 2009University MuseumThis conference will shed new light on thecultures of Mesopotamia and the Biblical World,and in particular will emphasize work on thehistorical and cultural interconnections betweenthese two important areas in the ancient world.The conference also honors the work of retiredProfessor Barry Eichler who specialized in theconnections between these two areas.

BA R RY E I C H L E R

R E C E P T I O N

On the evening on January 29, The Departmentof Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations andthe Jewish Studies Program, along with theDepartments of Religious Studies, South AsianStudies, the Center for Ancient Studies, and theUniversity Museum of Archaeology andAnthropology, celebrated Professor Barry Eichleron the occasion of his retirement in December2007, after forty years of distinguished service,including thirteen years as director of JewishStudies. The event, held in the Lower EgyptianGallery of the Penn Museum, was attended bycurrent and past students, faculty and staff.Professors Erle Leichty, Roger Allen, BethWenger, Jeffrey Tigay and graduate student,Matthew Rutz, sang his praises and presentedhim with a page from the facsimile edition of theKennicott Bible, a lavishly illuminated manuscriptcompleted in Spain in 1476 which contains thetext of the Hebrew Bible and David Kimchi’sinfluential grammatical treatise Sefer Mikhlol. Thepage presented to Barry is one of the pages fromKimchi’s grammar. It was chosen because ofBarry’s commitment to the study of ancient textsbased on a firm foundation of grammar andcomparative philology, his devotion to theHebrew language in all of its periods, and theextensive range of his scholarship from the ancientNear East through medieval Europe and beyond,as well as his love for the aesthetic and his ownbeautiful calligraphic skills. We owe a great debtto Barry—for his role in founding the JewishStudies Program, for his years of dedicated service,and for his collegiality. We will miss him and wishhim well as he moves on to future pursuits.

Professor Roger Allen looks on as Professor JeffTigay presents Professor Barry Eichler with a gifton his retirement.

Exhibition from the private collection of Erna Weill(sculpture and documents)

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Judaica at Penn’s LibrariesJ U D A I C A AT

PE N N ’ S L I B R A R I E S

The Judaica collections at Penn – located atthe Van Pelt Library, at the Library at theHerbert D. Katz Center for Advanced JudaicStudies, at the Fisher Fine Arts Library and atthe University Museum – continue to grow asan integrated unit within the University librarysystem under the management of ArthurKiron, Schottenstein-Jesselson Curator ofJudaica Collections. The staff of the Libraryat the Katz Center – Judith Leifer, whooversees the Inter-Library Loan program forthe Fellows and Josef Gulka, who supervisescirculation – performed exceptionally well.Overall, the CAJS library responded to over1,500 public service contacts, shelved nearly6,000 volumes, administered the circulation ofover 540 rare items, handled over 600 Inter-Library Loan (ILL) transactions and had aremarkable average turn-around time of twodays for filled requests.

NE W KAT Z CA J S / L I B R A RY

WE B EX H I B I T !

To mark the conclusion of the 2008 CAJSseminar year, the Penn Libraries partneredwith the CAJS Fellows to produce a beautifulvirtual exhibit “Jewish and Other ImperialCultures in Late Antiquity.” To view thiscurrent exhibit, go to: http://www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/cajs/fellows08/

NE W PE N N

J U D A I C A HO M E PAG E !

The entirety of Penn Judaica is now accessiblevia a new web presence located within theLibrary’s Area Studies group. Check-it out at:http://www.library.upenn.edu/collections/judaica/

PE N N J U D A I C A FAQ !

The Penn Judaica Frequently AskedQuestions (FAQ) interface continues to offeron-line tips and guides to the public aboutJudaica-related matters. If you have aquestion, try finding an answer at:http://faq.library.upenn.edu/ Look underResearch Assistance and then Judaic Studies.

PU B L I C P RO G R A M S :

On March 12, 2008, CAJS board memberJulie Beren Platt, C’79, and Marc E. Platt,C’79, hosted at their home in Los Angeles, inconjunction with the Southern CaliforniaRegional Advisory Board of the Penn AlumniAssociation (SCRAB), a Penn alumni eventabout Penn’s rare Judaica collections.

On May 11 and 12, 2008, the Library joinedwith the Jewish Studies Program and theCenter for Advanced Judaic Studies to host theseventh annual Manfred R. LehmannMemorial Master Workshop on the historyof the Jewish book. This year’s topic was theMedieval and Early Modern Colophons.Professor Menahem Schmelzer, emeritusprofessor and former Librarian of the JewishTheological Seminary of America Library, ledthe sessions. Once again, the Lehmannworkshop, held at the CAJS, attracted a fullhouse. We extend our thanks to the Manfredand Anne Lehmann Foundation for theirgenerous support, and also recognize and thankAlbert Friedberg, the Lucius N. LittauerFoundation, the University of PennsylvaniaResearch Foundation, and Andrew H. Cohn,Esq., C’66, for additional funding.

CO L L E C T I O N S

DE V E LO P M E N T

Penn’s Judaica collections received over$800,000 in pledges, grants, and gifts in kindduring the last year.

Penn’s Jewish Studies Program continues tocontribute money towards special purchases,including a recent gift received from Ruth andRaymond Brenner and the Brenner FamilyFund for Jewish Studies in honor of GregoryBrenner, W’ 99; Adam Brenner, W’01; JasonBrenner, W’05, to purchase a copy of thescarce and beautiful first edition of Ya’akobBenor-Kalter’s Jerusalem: Twelve Views of theOld City (Pro-Jerusalem Society, 1924). AnnetteFreund provided a generous gift which madepossible the purchase at auction of a copy ofthe first edition of a Philadelphia Jewish textilefeaturing Hebrew letters arranged in the formof an eye-chart to advertise the business of itsHebrew printer. Thanks also to DanielKestenbaum and the Kestenbaum &Company auction house for all the times thehammer dropped on Penn’s bid!

David G. Cook, M.D., a senior associate,once again contributed a gift in honor ofProfessor Jeffrey H. Tigay.

GR A N T PRO J E C T S

The American Genizah Project (AGP), basedat the Penn Libraries and funded with agenerous gift from Erik Gershwind, W’93,and Jackie Gershwind and Stacey Bennett,C’95, and Michael Bennett, continues to leada consortium of public institutions and privatecollectors who are working together to locate,catalog, transcribe, and digitize some of themost important, founding documents ofAmerican Jewish history. Two interns, RebeccaGoldstein and Heather Newlin, worked

diligently to transcribe original hand-writtenletters and scan newly received material fromour consortial partners. During the summer of2008 the AGP was fortunate to have the helpof a Penn Center for UndergraduateResearch Fellowship (CURF) intern, AndrewKincaid, who transcribed manuscript letters.We also are contributing to a similar projectunderway at the American Jewish Archives(AJA) to digitize their Isaac Mayer Wise papersand are grateful to Dr. Gary Zola, KevinProffitt, and other members of the AJA stafffor all their efforts.

Thanks to Professor Heather Sharkey,Department of Near Eastern Languages andCultures (NELC), the School of Arts andSciences Learning and Technology Committeeawarded the Penn Libraries an InstructionalTechnology Grant to fund the digitization of ourJudeo-Arabic manuscript codices.

We are especially happy to acknowledge andthank the following individuals for their giftsand donations:

Jean S. Adelman; American Jewish Archives;Aviva Astrinsky; Beki L. Bahar; Adina Bar-El; Nira Bartal; Miriam and Ben-ZionBarlev; Carlos Benaim; Hakan Bengtsson;Stacey and Michael Bennett, Terri Binderand Joseph Koschitzki; Howard A. Blum;Ann Bonn and Helen Weindling; Ruth andRaymond Brenner and the Brenner FamilyFund for Jewish Studies in honor of GregoryBrenner, W’99; Adam Brenner, W’01; JasonBrenner, W’05; Petr Charvat; RogerChartier; Alma Orlowitz Cohen, FA’44; BorisCohen, Dov ha-Cohen; Martin Cohen;Andrew H. Cohn, Esq., C’66; Gloria Cohn;Julie L. Coleman; David G. Cook; FloraCampos Cornfield; Alon Dahan;Muhammad A. Dandamayev; Avi Decter;Yvonne Edels; Alfred H. Eidlisz; Michael E.Eigen, C’57; Mohamed El-Hawary; Jeremy-Stuart de Fishberg; Sara Feinstein; SandraFifer; Pamela Foa; Megan Foley; Elan Frank;John L. Frank; Robert and Molly Freedman;Annette Freund; Jack and Naomi Friedman;Michal Galas; Gilad J. Gevaryahu; Erik andJackie Gershwind, Howard M. Girsh; JoannS. Girsh; Andrew Gluck; Allen and AdeleGottfried; Michael Graves; Helaine ShoagGreenberg; Adele and Bertram Greenspan;Guido Guastalla; Silvia Guastalla; GailMorrison-Hall; Marjorie Hassen; LeonardHayflick; Marvin Heller; Richard Henriquez;Alice Herman; Bruna Herzfeld; EricHoffman, GR’78 L’84; Irving Horn; John R.Hose; Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc.;Seth Jerchower; Jewish Publication Society ofAmerica; Library of the Jewish TheologicalSeminary of America; Maxine Kalina;Michael Kaplan; Deborah Karp; Jon Kean;

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Melvin Kates; Jeffrey Keil W’65, Murad El-Kodsi; Yaacov Kotlicki; Norman Kransdorf;Judith Korman Langsfeld CW’67; Eric M.Lankin, W’78; Eric Laupot; Judith Leifer;Marvin Lessen; Walter A. Levy, G’73; Lenora M.and John E. Link; Long Island Association ofJewish Libraries; Jack Lunzer; Jane MoskowitzMack; Barbara Magalnick; Mona Magnis; PaulDavid Mandel; Eugene Mark; Yaakov Mashiah;Gilbert Mathews, W’70; Barbara Matt; SellyMizrahi; Eleanor Chana Mlotek; Mordecai Lee;Tamara Morgenstern; Musee d’art et d’histoiredu Judaisme; Ezekiel N. and Margaret Musleah;National Museum of American Jewish History;Iris Newman; Jeffrey I. Pasek, L’76; PennProgram for Research on Religion and UrbanCivil Society (PRRUCS); Edward M. Peters;Seymour Piwoz; Jerry and Ellen Prince, G’74;Hilda Pring; Rose Rechnic; Frieda Reider; RuthRin; Evelyn Ringold; Barry S. Robbins; LenaRoos; Faye S. Rosenthal, CW’71; Jack Roth;David Ruderman; Victor D. Sanua; Lois Satalof;Avi Schmidman; Peter Schulman; Robert Seltzer;Shalom Club at Lake Ridge, Toms River, NewJersey; Moshe A. Shaltiel-Gracian; Morris

Shelanski; Harvey Sheldon; Adele Silver;Francine and Marvin Silverstein; Flor Siperstein;Robert St. George; Eric L. Stern; Harry Stern;Ione Apfelbaum Strauss in honor of Erika A.Strauss; Paul A. Tanker; Yirmiyahu Ahron Taub;Selig A. Tauenblatt; Mr. and Mrs. D. StephenToback; Fortunee Franchetti Treves; Iosif I.Vaisman; Wout Jac. Van Bekkum; MarvinVerman; Saul Viener; Naomi Vogelman-Goldfeld;Temira Volcanyi; Bert Vorcheimer; ChristineWalsh; Kevin Walsh; Lewis Wechsler; Bella HassWeinberg, Meier Weisblum; Yitschok Weisblum;George H. Weiss; Ruth Westheimer; Norma R.Weiser; Falk Wiesemann; Anita J. Willens; StevenM. Wind, C’00; Lynne Winters; Gerald Wolpe;Albert J. Wood; Ele Wood; Leonard Wood; DanWyman; YIVO Institute for Jewish Research;Gilbert Young; Roza Zaks; Joseph Zernik.

The following CAJS Fellows and guests havedonated copies of their scholarship to the CAJSLibrary collection: Michela Andreatta; Doron Bar;Adina Bar-El; Hamutal Bar-Yosef; Israel Bartal;Elisheva Baumgarten; Malachi Beit-Arie; DanBen-Amos; Yaron Ben-Naeh; Shlomo Berger;

Adele Berlin; Francesca Bregoli; Miroslawa Bulat;Stephen Burnett; Alan D. Crown; YaacovDeutsch; Aron Dotan; Harold Allen Drake;Jacob Elbaum; David Engel; Shamma Friedman;Seymour Gitin; Sylvie Anne Goldberg; PaulGrendler; Alessandro Guetta; Joseph Hacker;Orna Has; Galit Hasan-Rokem; Elliott Horowitz;Adiel Kadari; Tamar Kadari; Marion Kant;Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett; Samuel Z.Klauzner; Michael Kramer; Sara Japhet; RuthKartun-Blum; Robert Kraft; Daniel Lasker;Fabrizio Lelli; Lee I. Levine; Gideon Libson;Berahyahu Lifshitz; Ora Limor; Yehiel Limor;Aharon Maman; Rachel Manekin; Roger G.Ousterhout; Richard Popkin; Riv-Ellen Prell;Stefan Reif; Alan Rosen; Shalom Sabar; DalitRom-Shiloni; Alan Rosen; Moshe Rosman; TovahRosen; Gerson Shaked; Jeffrey Shoulson; DanielSheerin; Marcos Silber; Mark S. Smith; HaymSoloveitchik; David Stern; Sarah Stroumsa; AdamTeller; Smadar Tirosh-Heyd; Chava Turniansky;Israel Yuval; Mordechai Zalkin; Ziony Zevit.

About Our StudentsUN D E RG R A D UAT E S T U D E N T R E S E A RC H

Undergraduate student research continues to be one of JSP’s priorities. Lastyear a number of students in Jewish Studies wrote senior thesis projects onJewish topics. Thanks to the generous support of Phillip, C’34, and Robert,C’63, Goldfein and Raymond and Ruth Brenner, PAR’99/01/05, JSPannually awards some $10,000 to support student research projects. Amongthe theses and projects supported last year was David Falek’s senior honorsthesis entitled “The Revival of Mishna Study in the Early Modern Period,”which was awarded the Samuel and Esther Goldin Endowment Award foroutstanding research in Jewish Studies. Other thesis titles were: “‘Agunot’ byS.Y. Agnon: Piecing Together the Puzzle,” by Felice “Lisi” Dredze; “TheRevival of Mishna Study in the Early Modern Period,” by David Faleck;“Rabbi Yair Chaim Bachrach: The Life and Thought of a 17th CenturyJewish Skeptic,” by Joe Scherban; and “‘Confrontation’ in Context: JosephSoloveitchik’s Essay about Interreligious Dialogue against the Backdrop of theVatican II Conference,” by Jonathan Weiner.

GR A D UAT I O N

Seven students graduated in with majors or minors in the different JewishStudies departmental tracks.

Four seniors completed the Jewish Studies Program’s Interdisciplinary Major:Felice Dredze (Dec 2007), David Faleck (Dec 2007) Joseph M. Scherban(May 2008) and Jonathan Z. Weiner (May 2008).

One student completed the Jewish History major in the Department ofHistory: Josh Diskin (May 2008).

Two seniors competed the Jewish Studies Program’s Interdisciplinary Minor:Matthew J. Rosenbaum (Dec 2007) and Alana M. Weiner (May 2008).

Professor Beth Wenger discusses Jewish studies with a student during AdvanceRegistration

(continued on page 14)

About Our Students (continued from page 13)

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PR I Z E S AN D HO N O R S

The Philip E. Goldfein Scholarship Award in Jewish Studies, whichis supported by a generous gift from Robert, C’63, and Phillip, C’34,Goldfein, is awarded to both undergraduates and graduate students tosupport research projects and unusual academic experiences. This pastyear’s awards went to undergraduates: Hannah Lau and Daniel Ross.

The Moshe Greenberg Prize for Excellence in Hebrew, awarded to agraduating senior who began the study of Hebrew at Penn and whoshows exceptional proficiency in the language, was awarded toBenjamin M. Mundel.

The Workmen’s Circle/Arbeiter Ring Prize in Yiddish Studies issupported by a gift from the Philadelphia Branch of the Workmen’s Circleand the United Worker’s Educational Organization to reward excellencein Yiddish Studies. This year’s prize was awarded to Gabriela Skwara.

The Raymond and Ruth Brenner Grants in Jewish Studies,designated for special opportunities in Judaic Studies, were awarded tograduate students: Cornelia Aust, Rebecca Cutler, Dana Hercbergs,Matthew Richman, and David Shyovitz. This award was establishedthrough the generosity of Raymond and Ruth Brenner and their family(parents of Jason, W’05, Adam, W’01, and Gregory, W’99, Brenner).

The Merle Saunders Schaff Memorial Award is awarded annually bythe Department of Religious Studies for the best essay demonstratingcreative thinking on any subject related to the archaeology of AncientIsrael or to Judaic religious thought through the Middle Ages. Lastyear’s recipients went to three students: Hart Levine, for “ShmuelHaNagid and the New Spanish Authority;” Yael Landman for“‘HaYirhav HaZeman’: A Critique of Talmud Study Among EleventhCentury Sephardic Jews;” and David Shyovitz for “The CelestialHierarchy of the Hasidei Ashkenaz: The Jews of Medieval Germanyand the Pseudo-Dionysian Tradition.”

In addition, JSP has established the Judah Goldin Memorial Prize forExcellence in Advanced Hebrew Studies (replaces the The B’nai ZionAward). This year’s award was given to Julia A. Paris.

Thanks to a $10,000 endowment gift last winter by Dr. RosalineGoldin and Ms. Julia Goldin of Bala Cynwyd, JSP was able to createthe Samuel and Esther Goldin Endowment Award Fund to benefitan outstanding student majoring or minoring in Jewish studies at theUniversity of Pennsylvania. This year’s award went to David Faleck, asenior major in Jewish Studies.

The Jewish Studies Program mourns the loss of Dr. RosalineGoldin. She and her sister Julia have generously supported theSamuel and Esther Goldin Endowment Fund. We join theGoldin family in mourning their loss and greatly appreciatetheir generous support of Jewish Studies at Penn.

GR A D UAT E S T U D I E S

I N J E W I S H S T U D I E S AT PE N N

Thirty years ago, Jewish Studies at Penn was mainly geared towardstraining graduate students for doctorates, with a heavy focus upon theAncient Near East, the Bible, and early Post-Biblical literature andRabbinics. Since then, Jewish Studies—along with the university ingeneral—has changed radically, with a massive shift towardsundergraduate education. In the meantime, Penn’s Jewish Studiesfaculty and programs have become as strong in the modern period as

in the ancient and medieval, and our courses and students havechanged in corresponding ways as well.

Our graduate programs, though small and highly selective, nonethelessremain among the strongest in America in our various fields ofspecialization: Bible and the Ancient Near East, Rabbinics and BiblicalInterpretation, Jewish Intellectual History from the Medieval throughModern periods, Early Modern and Modern Jewish History, ModernJewish Literature, and American Jewish History. The Jewish StudiesProgram itself does not run graduate programs—these continue to belocated in graduate groups run through departments, such as History,Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and Religious Studies—butJSP sponsors a student-run graduate student seminar. It also awardsresearch stipends to every entering graduate student as well as special-needs and research grants to support graduate education and scholarship.

TH E FA L K F E L LOW S H I P

The JSP administers the Margaret Schoenfeld Falk Fellowship, theonly graduate fellowship “owned” and controlled by Jewish Studies.Because the cost of graduate school has risen sharply, fellowshipsupport has become virtually indispensable, both for supportinggraduate students once they enter the program, and for recruiting thevery best candidates and persuading them to come to Penn. The FalkFellowship was endowed by Edward Falk, W’66, in memory of hismother, Margaret Schoenfeld Falk, to support a graduate student whoworks specifically in the area of Jewish Studies. Current Falk Fellowsare second-year Konstanze Kunst (History), fifth-year student KerryWallach (Germanic Languages), and fourth-year David Shyovitz(History). Kunst is working in the field of medieval and early modernJewish history, Wallach is studying modern German-Jewish andHebrew literatures, and Shyovitz early modern Jewish history.

Through the years, Ed Falk has been one of Jewish Studies’ mostfaithful and generous supporters. Ed began to make annual gifts in1991, and from the beginning, he focused upon Jewish Studies,primarily because he wished to endow a fellowship in memory of hismother, who had been a deeply observant and committed Jew. Fromthe beginning, Ed also concentrated upon graduate students because oftheir seriousness and commitment. This was the genesis of the FalkFellowship, which, over the years, turned from one to two fellowships.

The Falk Fellowship is one of the most valuable elements of the JewishStudies Program at Penn. Because of Ed’s foresight in establishing thefellowships, Penn is able to ensure the future of Jewish Studies inAmerica, and educate and produce the scholars and teachers of tomorrow.As the following portraits of our graduate students will tell you, the Falkfellowship has been a major boon for Jewish Studies at Penn. We owe anenormous debt of gratitude to Ed Falk for his generosity!

GR A D UAT E S T U D E N T NE W S

Spencer Allen taught a freshman seminar, “The Bible in PopularMusic,” as a Critical Writing Fellow this past year, which he used as theperfect opportunity to introduce Bruce Springsteen, Bob Marley, andHank Williams songs to the Penn student body. Allen also presentedtwo dissertation-based papers on the relationships between deities inthe Mesopotamian pantheon: “The Ishtars of Hammurabi’s Prologue:The Issue of Divine Multiplicity” at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Societyof Biblical Literature in New Brunswick, NJ, and “Assur and Enlil inNeo-Assyrian Documents” at the 54th Rencontre AssyriologiqueInternationale in Würzburg, Germany. For the 2008-09 school year, hehas been invited to the King Fahd Middle Eastern and Islamic StudiesCenter at the University of Arkansas as a visiting scholar, where he will

teach Historical Geography of Jerusalem, Goddesses and Women ofMesopotamia, as well as introductory Bible courses.

Cornelia Aust completed her fourth year as a Benjamin Franklin fellow inthe History department. She specializes in Jewish History in Central and EastCentral Europe and is working on her dissertation “Between Warsaw andAmsterdam: Networks of Jewish Merchants in Central Europe (1740s-1820s).” She spent the academic year of 2006-07 doing research in variousEuropean archives (e.g. in Warsaw, Gdansk, Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden,Amsterdam and Frankfurt/Oder). Her research was supported by anInternational Dissertation Research Fellowship by the Social Science ResearchCouncil and a Doctoral Scholarship from the Memorial Foundation. Lastyear, she began writing and conducted some final research during thesummer. This year, she is a Louise Apfelbaum and Hortense BraunsteinApfelbaum Fellow at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies.

Andrew Berns is a fifth-year Benjamin Franklin fellow in the Historydepartment, and recently completed his first year of dissertation research.This summer he participated in the Shalom Spiegel Institute seminar onMedieval Hebrew Poetry and taught a history course through Penn’s Pre-Freshman Program. In August he presented a paper on Amatus Lusitanus’medical writings at the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies conference inPhoenix. This past year he also lectured at area synagogues on topics such asJews and Greek civilization, Renaissance Jewish physicians, and synagoguemusic in the early modern and modern periods.

Rebecca Cutler, a Benjamin Franklin Fellow in the History department, iscontinuing her studies of modern Jewish history. She is currently working onher dissertation, that examines the place of medicine within American Jewishtransnational politics. Cutler is presently conducting archival researchthroughout the United States and in Israel. This year she will also be aMilstein Fellow at the YIVO Institute in New York.

Yaacob Dweck defended his dissertation on Leon Modena’s Critique ofKabbalah this past May. In September he joined the Society of Fellows in theLiberal Arts at Princeton University for a three-year post-doctoral fellowship.At Princeton, he hopes to turn his dissertation into a monograph and preparea new Hebrew edition with an English translation of Leon Modena’s polemicagainst Kabbalah, “Ari Nohem.” This past April his translation of the 1949novella Khirbet Khizeh by S. Yizhar, translated in collaboration with Nicholasde Lange, was published by Ibis Editions.

Benjamin Fisher, a Benjamin Franklin Fellow in the History department,completed his fourth year of graduate studies in Early Modern Jewish andEuropean history and passed his comprehensive exams. He is currentlyconducting dissertation research on the place of the Bible in the culturalworld of the Sephardic Jewish community of Amsterdam during theseventeenth century.

Jennifer Glaser graduated with her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature andLiterary Theory in August 2008. In the Fall, she moved to Cincinnati to takea position as Assistant Professor of Contemporary American Literature in theEnglish department at the University of Cincinnati. Glaser taught ModernJewish American Literature in the English department last Fall. An essay onBen Katchor appeared in the MELUS journal in September. A chapter fromher dissertation, “Exceptional Differences: Race and the Postwar JewishAmerican Literary Imagination,” appeared in the journal PMLA in October,and she also has an article on Tony Kushner and Jewish identity coming outduring the year. She presented a paper on Diaspora in Jewish Americanliterature at the AJS conference in Toronto and a paper on queer Jewishnessat the National Women’s Studies conference in Cincinnati in June.

Julie Lieber completed her dissertation: “Imagining and Living Gender:Rabbis and Jewish Women in fin de siecle Vienna” and graduated this pastMay. This fall she took a lectureship at the University of Denver in EuropeanHistory and is teaching an array of courses in European history, Jewish

history and Women’s history. She and her husband Eric became the proudparents of twins, Natan Leib and Tovit Nitzan, born on June 13th.

Tammy Jacobowitz is working to complete her dissertation on LeviticusRabbah, which explores the rabbinic discourse of the body, illness, and gender.For 2008-2009, she has been awarded a Memorial Foundation dissertationgrant to support her work. She teaches Rabbinics for Me’ah and lectures incommunities in the NY and NJ area. This year, she will also be teaching anewly designed course for Me’ah, “The Body, Gender, and Sexuality in theBible and Rabbinic Literature” as well as a series entitled, “Between the Bodyand Soul” for Habonim congregation in New York City. Tammy has recentlycompleted the co-writing of a Bible curriculum for day school students,commissioned by JOFA (Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance).

Current Falk Fellow Konstanze Kunst completed her first of coursework inthe History department, specializing in medieval and early modern Jewishhistory. She spent the summer in Munich, Germany, in order to doresearch in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and to attend the seminar heldby David. B. Ruderman, who was visiting professor at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.

Linda Meiberg spent the 2007-2008 academic year as the Samuel H. KressTraveling Fellow at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens(ASCSA) and at the Albright Institute for Archaeological Research (AIAR) inJerusalem conducting research for her dissertation on “Figural Motifs onPhilistine Pottery and Their Connections with the Aegean World” which sheexpects to complete this year. For the 2008-2009 academic year, Linda wasawarded funding through the Institute for Aegean Prehistory (INSTAP) asthe Corpus of Aegean Frescoes fellow and a grant by the 1984 Foundation.She also anticipates the publication of her first two articles: “Philistine Lion-Headed Cups: Aegean or Anatolian?” and “Casting a Wide Net: Notes on theInspiration for the Fish Motif on Philistine Pottery.” Her participation in theexcavations at Tell es-Safi in Israel with the team from Bar Ilan Universitycontinued into its fourth season.

Alexandra Rothstein, a former Javits and William Penn fellow, is continuingher studies in Rabbinic literature and its relationship to Islamic literature. Inthe spring, she and Shawn Aster jointly taught a course at Rutgers Universitytitled, “Variety in Ancient Jewish Life.” The course tried to integratearcheological and epigraphical as well as literary material, in an attempt toshow the broad spectrum of Jewish identity in Late Antiquity.

Ellie Schainker, a Benjamin Franklin fellow, is currently writing herdissertation entitled, “Imperial Hybrids: Russian-Jewish Converts in theNineteenth Century.” This past year, Schainker conducted dissertationresearch in Kiev, Ukraine, and at the YIVO Institute as a Center for JewishHistory and YIVO fellow. She also received a fellowship from the MemorialFoundation for Jewish Culture. This past spring, Schainker taught a surveycourse on early modern and modern Jewish history at Rutgers University.This summer, she and her husband, Hillel, welcomed their second child intothe family, Noam Mordecai.

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Graduate students, Spencer Allenand Karen Sonik celebrate withProfessor Barry Eichler on hisretirement.

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About Our StudentsGabriella Skwara, a Benjamin Franklin fellow, completed her thirdyear in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures,focusing on German-Jewish literature. Last year she taughtIntermediate German, served as a teaching assistant for “The Devil’sPact in Literature, Film, and Music,” and continued to work withKathryn Hellerstein to digitize pedagogical materials for first yearYiddish. She was the 2008 recipient of the Workman’s Circle/ArbeiterRing Prize in Yiddish Studies.

Yehuda Seif, a William Penn fellow, completed his fifth year in theReligious Studies department, specializing in medieval AshkenazicJewry. He is currently working on his dissertation on the topic of“Charity and Poor Law in Medieval Ashkenaz.” This year, he will be afellow at The Center for Jewish Law and Contemporary Civilization atYeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

David Shyovitz, a Falk Fellow and Wexner Graduate fellow, is afourth-year doctoral candidate in the History department, focusing onmedieval Jewish cultural and intellectual history. This past summer, hetaught a course at the Drisha Institute for Jewish Education in NewYork, lectured at several synagogues, and participated in workshops atthe Jewish Theological Seminary and at Hebrew University. This year,he will be working on his dissertation and serving as a Fellow at theCenter for Jewish Law and Contemporary Civilization at the CardozoSchool of Law.

Kerry Wallach, a former Max Kade and Falk fellow, completed hercomprehensive exams in the German Department last spring. Herarticle, “Literary Shorthand: Mascha Kaléko and the World ofJournalism,” appeared in the Festschrift commemorating Kaléko’s100th birthday in the fall. She helped coordinate the interdisciplinarysymposium “Becoming Modern: The German-Jewish Experience,”which took place on March 30. Together with Violet Lutz, she co-curated an exhibition for the symposium consisting of sculptures anddocuments from the private collection of Erna Weill. A fellow of theLeo Baeck Fellowship Programme for 2008-2009, Kerry is spendingher fifth year in Berlin conducting research for her dissertation on theJewish press in the Weimar Republic.

Susan Zeelander, is working on her dissertation, “Endings in BiblicalNarrative” in the Department of Near Eastern Languages andCivilizations. In December, she will present a paper at the annualconference of the Association for Jewish Studies, titled, “Ritualizationsin Narrative Endings in Genesis.” Susan initiated a permanent, web-based record of the Judah Goldin Seminars that have played such avaluable role in the scholarly life of the department at Penn. The JudahGoldin Seminars allow members of the academic community across awide range of fields to learn from one another and from our guests.The seminars have done much to foster scholarly growth andintellectual collegiality among scholars at every stage of their careers,students and faculty alike.

L I F E A F T E R GR A D UAT E S C H O O L

Every year in this newsletter we include short updates from all ourcurrent grad students. But our grad students do eventually finish ourprograms. Over the past five years, some eight of our graduatestudents have completed their doctorates, and left the comfortablehalls of Penn for the “real world.” Here’s an update on what some ofthem have been doing.

Shawn Zelig Aster is Assistant Professor of Bible at Yeshiva College inNew York, and co-taught a class on Ancient Jewish Life at RutgersUniversity with his wife, Ariel Rothstein. He recently delivered a apaper on “Centralization of Worship in the First Temple and Israelite

Religious Belief ” at the inaugural conference of the Yeshiva UniversityCenter for Israel Studies. His dissertation on divine radiance in theHebrew Bible and Mesopotamian literature has been accepted forpublication in the Alter Orient und Altes Testament (AOAT) series.He recently recorded a series of lectures on the book of Isaiah, whichcan be found online at http://www.ou.org/nakhyomi.

Francesca Bregoli, a former Benjamin Franklin fellow in History, hassuccesfully defended her dissertation “Mediterranean Enlightenment:Jewish Acculturation in Livorno, 1737-1790” in September 2007. Sheis currently a Junior Research Fellow at the Oriental Institute and theCentre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies of the University of Oxford,UK, where she teaches classes on early modern Jewish history and isrevising her manuscript for publication. Last year, Francesca publishedan article on Italian Jewry and modernity and presented papers at theAJS meeting, Brasenose College and All Souls College. This fall,Francesca is Assistant Professor in the Department of History atQueens College/CUNY.\

Shalom Holtz is assistant professor of Bible at Yeshiva University. Hisbook, Neo-Babylonian Court Procedure, will appear as part of theCuneiform Monographs series by Brill publishers.

Debra Kaplan is Assistant Professor of Jewish History at YeshivaUniversity, where she also holds the Dr. Pinkhos Churgin MemorialChair. She has been awarded a Yad ha-Nadiv/Beracha FoundationFellowship for 2008-2009, and will be conducting research in Jerusalem.

Rebecca Kobrin, Assistant Professor of American Jewish historyin Columbia University’s History department is a fellow this year inthe “Jews and Commerce” group at the Katz Center for AdvancedJudaic Studies working on a project entitled “Ungilding America:Immigrant Jewish Bankers, Speculation, and the Reshaping ofAmerican Capitalism, 1900-1930.” Her first book, Jewish Bialystok andits Diaspora: Between Exile and Empire is forthcoming from IndianaUniversity Press. Her recent publications also include “The 1905Revolution Abroad: Mass Migration, Jewish Liberalism and AmericanJewry, 1903-1914,” in The 1905 Revolution: A Turning Point in JewishHistory?, Ezra Mendelsohn and Stephanie Hoffman, eds. (University ofPennsylvania Press, 2008).

Kevin McGeough has accepted a tenured appointment at theUniversity of Lethbridge as Assistant Professor of archaelogy in theGeography Department. His new book Exchange Relationships atUgarit was published by Peeters Press in 2007, and his next bookUgaritic Economic Texts is expected to be published by Peeters shortly.In 2009, Kevin will take over as series editor for the American Schoolsof Oriental Research Archaelogical Report Series. McGeough has alsobeen acting as editor for the ABC-Clio World History Encyclopedia (forthe volumes covering the periods 4000-1000 BCE and 1000 BCE -300CE), which is expected to be published in 2009. His firstbook, The Romans: New Perspectives will be published in paperback byOxford Press in the spring of 2009. In May of 2008, Kevin marriedElizabeth Galway, also an Assistant Professor at the University ofLethbridge.

Susan Marks, Religious Studies 2003 Ph.D., is the KlingensteinAssistant Professor of Judaic Studies at New College of Florida, theHonors College of the state of Florida. Her article, “Follow thatCrown: Rhetoric, Rabbis, and Women Patrons” will appear in the Fall2008 issue of The Journal for Feminist Studies in Religion. She wasselected to participate in the 2007-08 Wabash Center Teaching andLearning Workshop for Pre-Tenure Faculty at Colleges andUniversities. In addition, she received a Summer Workshop Fellowshipfrom Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology ofReligion, funded by Lilly Endowment, Inc. in 2008.

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Adam Shear (PhD, History, 2003) is Assistant Professor and Director ofUndergraduate Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at theUniversity of Pittsburgh. His book Judah Halevi’s Kuzari and the Shaping ofJewish Identity, 1167-1900 is being published this fall by CambridgeUniversity Press and was awarded a Cahnman Foundation Subvention Grantlast year from the Association for Jewish Studies.

Andrea Weiss is Assistant Professor of Bible at the Hebrew Union College-Institute of Religion in New York, where she teaches rabbinic, cantorial, andeducation students. She was the Associate Editor of The Torah: A Women’sCommentary (URJ Press, 2008), She also published “Figurative Language in

Biblical Prose Narrative: Metaphor in the Book of Samuel” (Brill, 2006),along with several recent articles on biblical poetry. She is currently workingon a commentary on Psalms with Adele Berlin.

Michael James Williams is Professor of Old Testament at Calvin TheologicalSeminary, where he teaches ancient Near Eastern and biblical languages andtexts. He also serves on the Committee on Bible Translation for theInternational Bible Society.

will present a paper to the Workshop on SocialNorms at the Institute for Advanced Studies inPrinceton, NJ. She is also offering courses onmedieval lives, medieval and modern concepts ofHoly War, and surveys of medieval European andMediterranean history.

Kathryn Hellerstein, Associate Professor ofGermanic Languages, continues to serve asUndergraduate Director of the Jewish StudiesProgram. In Spring 2007, she was awarded acontinuation of the Penn SAS Language TeachingInnovation Grant, with which she and Germandepartment graduate student Gabriella Skwaradeveloped on-line pedagogical materials forteaching Yiddish. Hellerstein’s recent articlesappeared in Multiple Voices of Modern YiddishLiterature, Culture Front: Representing Jews inEastern Europe (eds. Ben Nathans and GabriellaSafran, Penn Press, 2008), Arguing With the Storm:Stories by Yiddish Women Writers, and Zutot(Amsterdam). In addition, she published entries inthe 2007 edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica andthe 2008 YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in EasternEurope, as well as an article, “Moyshe-LeybHalpern’s Art,” in the Forward (April 4, 2008).Her translations of Yiddish poetry appeared in TheTorah: A Women’s Commentary and Jewish Lodz:The Missing District. Hellerstein’s poems appearedor are forthcoming in Kerem, Four Centuries ofJewish Women’s Spirituality, and in Zeek. Shepresented the Plenary Lecture at the InternationalAssociation of Yiddish Clubs, 11th Convention,in Cleveland (August 2007), chaired a panel on“Modern Yiddish Poetry” and gave a paper on“Teaching Yiddish in Light of the MLA Surveyand Recommendations” at the Association forJewish Studies Convention in Toronto inDecember, 2007. She also gave several papers,including one on “Gender and Nation in YiddishPoems of 1945: Molodowsky and Tussman,” at aconference, “Reflections on Czernowitz 100 Years

Later,” at Vanderbilt University, and on “Women'sProse in Yiddish” at the CUNY Graduate CenterJewish Studies Colloquium. She continues to serveas Coordinator of the Yiddish Literature Sectionfor the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Associationfor Jewish Studies, as poetry editor of Kerem, andon the Editorial Advisory Boards for Nashim: AJournal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issuesand Yiddish, as well as on the Jewish PublicationSociety’s National Council.

Arthur Kiron was appointed the Schottenstein-Jesselson Curator of Judaica Collections inOctober 2007. He also is an adjunct assistantprofessor in Penn’s History department. Kironpublished a review essay “Studying the JewishBook: A Review Essay” of The Book in the JewishWorld 1700-1900 by Zeev Gries (Littman, 2007)in Judaica Librarianship vol. 14 (2008). He gavenumerous public lectures, including “TheAmerican Genizah Project: Documenting anAnglophone Jewish Republic of Letters,” at aconference in memory of Leah Levitz Fishbaneheld at the Jewish Theological Seminary ofAmerica in New York in March. In conjunctionwith the Southern California Regional AdvisoryBoard of the Penn Alumni Association (SCRAB),he spoke at an alumni event hosted by CAJSboard member Julie Beren Platt, C’79, and MarcE. Platt, C’79, at their home in Los Angeles aboutPenn’s rare Judaica collections. He partnered withHeather Sharkey (NELC) on a successfulinstructional technology grant proposal, “Judeo-Arabic Culture and Its Place in Islamic Societies.”Kiron continues to direct the American GenizahProject, co-directs with David Stern (NELC) theManfred R. Lehmann Memorial MasterWorkshop on the Jewish Book, served on fivelibrary committees, and continues to serve on anumber of academic advisory boards and as atrustee of communal organizations such as the

Philadelphia Jewish Archives Center and theAmerican Veterans of Israel (Machal).

Ian S. Lustick, Bess W. Heyman Professor in thePolitical Science department, published an article thissummer in Middle East Policy entitled “Abandoningthe Iron Wall: Israel and the Middle Eastern Muck.”His essay “Between Samson and Jeremiah” wasfeatured in the Middle East Institute’s publication in2008: Israel: Growing Pains at 60. Lustick’s mostrecent books are Trapped in theWar on Terror andExile and Return: Predicaments of Palestinians andJews, edited with Ann M. Lesch.

Benjamin Nathans, the Ronald S. LauderEndowed Term Associate Professor of History,spent most of 2007-08 on leave. A MellonFoundation New Directions Fellowship allowedhim to take courses in legal philosophy and rightstheory at New York University Law School.Nathans published Culture Front: RepresentingJews in Eastern Europe (Penn Press, 2008)together with co-editor Gabriella Safran ofStanford University. A Russian translation of hisbook Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter withLate Imperial Russia appeared in summer 2007.Nathans published an article on the Soviet civilrights activist Alexander Volpin and presentedfurther work on Soviet legal consciousness at aconference on human rights in the 20th centuryheld in Berlin in June 2008. His essay about themuch-admired historian Jonathan Frankelappeared in The Revolution of 1905 and Russia’sJews: A Turning Point?, published shortly beforeFrankel’s death in May. Nathans also gave invitedlectures at Georgetown University, MiamiUniversity of Ohio, and the University ofPotsdam (Germany), and served as historicalconsultant to Ralph Appelbaum Associates (New

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York), an interpretive museum design firmcurrently creating a museum of Russian-Jewish history in Moscow.

Joshua Perelman, post-doctoral fellow at theUniversity of Pennsylvania and DeputyDirector for Programming and Museumhistorian at the National Museum ofAmerican Jewish History, teaches AmericanJewish History.

Annette Yoshiko Reed joined the Penn facultylast year, as Assistant Professor in theDepartment of Religious Studies. During2007-2008, she was the Dalck and Rose FeithFamily Fellow at the Herbert D. Katz Centerfor Advanced Judaic Studies. While at the KatzCenter, she worked on her book-project on“Jewish-Christianity” and the Pseudo-Clementines—portions of which she presentedat the Katz Center’s Ruth Melzer Seminar,Penn Religious Studies Colloquium,Philadelphia Seminar for Christian Origins,and the Herbert D. Katz Center for AncientStudies workshop, “The Dark AgesEnlightened.” She also presented conferencepapers at the annual meetings of the Society ofBiblical Literature, American Academy ofReligion, and Canadian Society for BiblicalStudies, and she delivered lectures at theOriental Club of Philadelphia, Elon University,and Princeton Theological Seminary. Inaddition, she gave public talks related to thehistory of Jewish–Christian relations at areasynagogue and churches. Her articles appearedlast year in Studies in Religion/SciencesReligieuses, Midrash and Context, Henoch, andin Heresy and Self-Definition in Late Antiquity.A paperback reprint of her volume, TheWaysthat Never Parted: Jews and Christians in LateAntiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Reed co-chaired the 45th Philadelphia Seminar onChristian Origins, “Tracing the Patterns,(Un/Re-)Weaving the Threads,” with BobKraft, and she served as Program Unit Chair ofthe Hellenistic Judaism Section of the Societyof Biblical Literature with Zuleika Rodgers.She also joined Peter Schäfer, Seth Schwartz,and Azzan Yadin on the editorial board ofMohr Siebeck’s book series Texts and Studies inAncient Judaism. Forthcoming works include atheme-issue of the journal Henoch, edited withRa‘anan S. Boustan, on the topic of “Bloodand the Boundaries of Jewish and ChristianIdentities in Late Antiquity”—a project thatreflects their collaborative work andconversations during their year as fellowstogether at the Center. Reed will also beworking with Natalie Dohrmann on thevolume arising from the Katz Center’s researchproject on “Jewish and Other ImperialCultures in Late Antiquity.” In addition, shewill be continuing to work on her book onJewish-Christianity.

David B. Ruderman published two newbooks this past year. The first is a monographentitled Connecting the Covenants: Judaism andthe Search for Christian Identity in EighteenthCentury England, (University of PennsylvaniaPress); and the second, co-edited with ShmuelFeiner, entitled Early Modern Culture and theHaskalah: Reconsidering the Borderlines ofModern Jewish History. The latter waspublished in the Simon Dubnov InstituteYearbook, 6 (2007), based on a conference inLeipzig, Germany, which he organized. Healso published several new essays including“Le ghetto et les débuts de l’Europe nouvelle:vers une nouvelle interpretation,” in LesCahiers du Judaïsme 22 (2007), “Michael A.Meyer’s Periodization of Modern JewishHistory: Revisiting a Seminal Essay,”Mediating Modernity: Challenges and Trends inthe Jewish Encounter with the Modern World:Essays in Honor of Michael A. Meyer, eds.Michael Brenner and Lauren Strauss (Detroit,2008), and “The Study of the Mishnah andthe Quest for Christian Identity in EarlyEighteenth-Century England: Completing aNarrative Initiated by Richard Popkin.” inThe Legacies of Richard H. Popkin, JeremyPopkin, ed.(Dordrecht, 2008). He was theSackler Visiting Fellow of the Humanities atTel Aviv University in January, and the AllianzGuest Professor of Jewish History at Ludwig-Maximillian Universität München in thesummer. He gave the Pratt Oration at theUniversities of Melbourne and Sidney,Australia, in August, and the Catherine LewisLecture for the Oxford Center for Hebrewand Jewish Studies at the Inner Temple Hall,London, in June. He also lectured at MonashUniversity, Melbourne, Australia, the BoschInstitute of the History of Medicine inStuttgart, Germany, the University ofHamburg, and the University of Antwerp. Heorganized a three day conference on theJewish Book in a Christian World sponsoredby the Plantin-Moretus Museum, theUniversity of Antwerp, and the City ofAntwerp in June. Ruderman received the2008 Charles Ludwig Distinguished TeachingAward of the College of Arts and Sciences,University of Pennsylvania. He begins hisfifteenth year as Ella Darivoff director of thenewly named Herbert D. Katz Center forAdvanced Judaic Studies.

In the Spring, Jonathan Steinberg, Walter H.Annenberg Professor of History, and MarionKant offered their “Secular Judaism and SecularJews: Lives and Choices” for the second time asan undergraduate seminar. Fourteen studentsenrolled and made a very intense and livelygroup, which included one Greek Orthodox andone Roman Catholic student. They have beeninvited by the Gershman Y to do an abbreviated

version of the course in the Fall as part of the Y’scontinuing education program. JonathanSteinberg’s “Switzerland and the Jews” appearedin the 2008 volume of the Leo Baeck Yearbook.

David Stern, Ruth Meltzer Professor ofClassical Hebrew Literature, was on academicleave during the Fall and Spring semesters,and during the latter, an adjunct fellow atPenn’s Herbert D. Katz Center for AdvancedJudaic Studies. Stern spent the year workingon two books, “The Jewish Library: FourJewish Classics Books and the JewishHistorical Experience” and “The TegernseeHaggadah,” a facsimile edition of a 15thcentury German Passover Haggadah with alengthy prologue in Latin by a Christianmonk describing the Haggadah. In 2008, hepublished a co-edited volume with NatalieDohrmann, Jewish Biblical Interpretation andCultural Exchange: Comparative Exegesis inContext (Penn Press), for which hecontributed a lengthy introduction as well asan article on ancient Jewish and Christianinterpretation of the Song of Songs. He alsowrote the “Forward” to Joseph Tabory’s TheJPS Commentary on the Haggadah. Sterndelivered a plenary lecture, “The JewishConcept of Humanity,” at an internationalconference on “Ideas of Humanity in an Ageof Globalization” at the City University ofHong Kong, and a plenary address on thehistory of the Talmudic page and its study at aconference on rabbinics and education atBrandeis University. He also lectured on art inthe medieval Jewish prayerbook at Tel AvivUniversity, the history of the Jewish book atWilliams College and Vanderbilt University,and the narrative in the Babylonian Talmud atthe Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies.He served on panels on disciplinarity in thestudy of religion at Columbia University, thefuture of Rabbinics at the annual conferenceof the Association for Jewish Studies; and on aforgotten masterpiece, Judah Goldin’s TheSong at the Sea,” at the fellows retreat of theAmerican Academy for Jewish Research. Hegave two days of seminars on the changingface of Rabbinics at Vassar College as theFishman Visiting Faculty Fellow, and on theTegernsee Haggadah at the Humboldt-University in Berlin, as well as a lecture on thesame topic at the University of Munich. Sterncontinued to co-direct the Manfred LehmannMaster Workshop on the History of theJewish book, and also remained very active asan advisor to the new master’s program inJewish education at Penn’s Graduate School ofEducation, a program which began with itsfirst cohort during July.

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About Our Faculty (continued from page 17)

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Jeffrey Tigay, A.M. Ellis Professor of Hebrew andSemitic Languages and Literatures, is currentlycompleting a revised Hebrew version of his 1996commentary on Deuteronomy, which will bepublished in the Israeli commentary series Mikrale-Yisrael. He co-edited a Festschrift, BirkatShalom: Studies in the Bible, Ancient Near EasternLiterature and Post-biblical Judaism presented toShalom M. Paul on the Occasion of his SeventiethBirthday, which will be published this fall. Hisarticle “The Priestly Reminder Stones and AncientNear Eastern Votive Practices” was published inShai le-Sara Japhet, a Festschrift in honor of theIsraeli scholar Sara Japhet, and his article “‘TheVoice of the Lord Causes Hinds to Calve’ (Psalm29:9)” will be published in Birkat Shalom. Hisappreciation of the scholarly achievements of thelate Tikva Frymer-Kensky was published inHebrew in Shnaton: An Annual for Biblical andAncient Near Eastern Studies. Tigay is working ontwo multi-year publication projects: a full-lengthHebrew commentary on Exodus, for the MikraLe-Yisrael series, and the first volume (on theBiblical period) of The Posen Library of JewishCulture and Civilization: Anthology of PrimarySources, Documents, Texts, and Artifacts, a ten-volume series being published by Yale UniversityPress. He presented a paper on women in Biblicallaw at a conference in memory of Tikva Frymer-Kensky at JTS, and a paper on “The Book ofExodus and the Origins of the Passover Seder” forDrexel University’s Judaic Studies Program. Hepresented several public lectures this year. Amongthem were: “Archaeology and the Religion ofAncient Israel,” at Camden County CommunityCollege’s Center for Civic Responsibility; “Judea& the Diaspora: The Beginnings of the BipolarJewish World after the Babylonian Exile,” at theJewish Community Center of Cherry Hill, NJ;and “Biblical Criticism and its Effects onReligion,” presented to Penn Hillel alumni at thePenn Club in New York. On campus he gave talkson “The Book of Exodus, the Passover Seder, andthe origins of its customs,” as part of the JewishStudies Program’s Bassini Internship Program, and“What do the Ten Commandments Really Mean?A Close Reading,” at Sigma Alpha Mu Fraternity.

Liliane Weissberg is the Christopher H. BrowneDistinguished Professor in Arts and Science. Inthe past academic year, Weissberg has taught anew graduate course on “Becoming Modern: TheGerman-Jewish Experience.” In conjunction withthis seminar, Weissberg, and graduate studentsGabriella Skwara and Kerry Wallach, organized aone-day symposium in March that broughttogether scholars from across the U.S., as well asan art exhibition (curated by graduate VioletLutz), and a concert. During the academic year,Weissberg co-organized University-wide eventswith the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia ina series entitled “Freud, Franklin, and Beyond.”This past summer, Weissberg taught as the KurtDavid Brühl-Professor at the Universität Graz,and she became a board member of thatuniversity’s Centrum für Jüdische Geschichte undKultur. During the academic year, she gavelectures at the University of Galway, theUniversity of Limerick, the University of Dublin,the National University of Ireland at Maynooth,the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München;the Felix Posen-Lecture at Miami University ofOhio, the Distinguished Lecture in ForeignLanguages at the University of Delaware, and thekeynote lecture at the conference on “JüdischeLiteratur als europäische Literatur” in Słubice,Poland. She presented talks at the annualconferences of the German Studies Association,the Modern Language Association, the AmericanJewish Studies Association, and at the conferences“Meanings of Modernity in Central Europe” inNew York, and “Modernism: The Time of theUnconscious” in Philadelphia. She also led a two-day workshop on German-Jewish history at theJewish Community Center in Cherry Hill, NJ.This past year, Weissberg wrote and publishedarticles on paper money as propaganda, Freudiangenealogies, Hannah Arendt and Charlie Chaplin,Freud and the textile industry, Germanistik at theBerlin University, Heinrich Heine, and JewishStudies in Germany. In the Spring, Weissberg wasan external review member for the evaluation ofthe German Departments at the University ofVirginia and University College Cork, Ireland.

Beth S. Wenger, Associate Professor of History andDirector of the Jewish Studies Program, won the2008 Richard S. Dunn Award for DistinguishedTeaching in the history department at Penn. Shewas also appointed a Distinguished Lecturer by theOrganization of American Historians. Wenger’smost recent book, The Jewish Americans: ThreeCenturies of Jewish Voices in America, published byDoubleday Press, was named a National JewishBook Award finalist. The book is a companionvolume to PBS documentary titled The JewishAmericans broadcast in January 2008. Wenger iscurrently completing her next book, “HistoryLessons: The Invention of American JewishHeritage,” which will be published by PrincetonUniversity Press. Wenger’s article “Mapping theCity” appeared in the journal Contemporary Jewry(Vol. 28, 2008). She also recently published“Performing Citizenship: Jewish Celebrations of theNation” in the Columbia History of Judaism inAmerica (Columbia University Press, 2007) and“War Stories: Jewish Patriotism on Parade” in theanthology Imagining the American JewishCommunity (University of New England Press,2007). In 2008, Wenger delivered the David W.Belin Lecture in American Jewish Affairs at theUniversity of Michigan. That lecture, “In Search ofAmerican Jewish Heritage,” will be published laterthis year. Wenger also delivered several otherlectures and participated in various panels duringthe past year, including at the Association of JewishStudies conference, the Scholars Conference inAmerican Jewish History, as well as many othervenues. Wenger serves on the Academic Boards ofthe Association for Jewish Studies and the Centerfor Jewish History in New York. She is also amember of the Executive Committee of theAmerican Jewish Historical Society’s AcademicCouncil. She continues to serve as an historicalconsultant for the National Museum of AmericanJewish History in Philadelphia.

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Recent Gifts

UN I V E R S I T Y O F PE N N S Y LVA N I A

J E W I S H S T U D I E S P RO G R A M

711 Williams HallPhiladelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone: 215-898-6654 • Fax: 215-573-6026Web: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jwst/email: jsp-info@ccat.sas.upenn.edu

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PAIDPermit No. 2563Philadelphia, PA

RE C E N T G I F T S

Jewish Studies Program DonorsJuly 1, 2007-June 30, 2008

Rose E. Bernard Ackermann and VictorAckermann, parents, in honor of DinaAckermann

Emilio Bassini, C’71, WG’73, and Reina MarinBassini, CW’72, GEd’72, parents

Gregory F. Brenner, W’99

Michael A. Carasik, in memory of Irving J. Olshin

Charlotte Yiddish Institute

Stanley S. Cohen

Michael D. Ellis, C’66, and the Abraham M.and Rose Ellis Foundation

Edward J. Falk, W’66

Annette Freund

Mr. and Mrs. Albert D. Friedberg and theFriedberg Mercantile Group

Julia Goldin, G’46

Robert J. Goldfein, C’63, and the GoldfeinFamily Foundation

Rabbi Nason S. Goldstein, C’64

Harry Kosansky, CGS’07

Manfred and Anne Lehmann Foundation

David H. Marion, W’60, L’63

Estate of Ruth Meltzer

The Newton Family Fund, in memory ofCary Tye

Norman Turkish

Audrey Stein Merves, CW’56, and StanleyMerves, parents, and the Louis and Bessie SteinFoundation #2

Peter E. Roth, C’81, WG’85, and Michelle Rothand the Michelle and Peter Roth CharitableFoundation

Center for Advanced Judaic Studies DonorsJuly 1, 2007-June 30, 2008

Dean Stewart Adler, W’79, L83, and Susanna E.Lachs, CW’74, ASC’76

David Altshuler

Sidney August

Jack Alvin Belz, parent

Belz Foundation

Jonas Brachfeld, M’52, RES’56, and RosalindBrachfeld

Josephine Cohen, a graduate of the University ofPennsylvania

Betsy Marks Darivoff, C’79, and Philip M.Darivoff, W’79, WG’85, parents, and theDarivoff Family Foundation

Avrom I. Doft, W’60

Edwin M. Epstein, C’58, and Sandra P. Epstein,Ed’60

Cynthia Rabin Golub, W’76

Jan B. and Andrew J. Groveman, parents

Martin D. Gruss, W’64

The Jesselson Family

Arthur H. Joseph, W’47

Rabbi Louis Kaplan, ED’49, GEd’50, parent

Eleanor Meyerhoff Katz, the late Herbert D.Katz, W’51, parents, and the Eleanor M. &Herbert D. Katz Foundation

Thomas O. Katz, W’79, and Elissa E. Katz,C’79, parents

Ruth L. Kaufman, parent

Stuart M. Kilstein, C’78

Bradford R. Klatt and Robin Friedman Klatt,parents

Joshua Levinson

Philip B. Lindy, W’52, and Annabel F. Lindy

Lloyd F. Lampell, in memory of Rebbe MenachemMendel Schneers

Evan R. Luskin, C’67, in memory of Stephen J.Greenstein

Lorraine M. and Matthew P. McTish

Joseph and Harvey Meyerhoff Family CharitableFoundation

Harvey and Lyn P. Meyerhoff Fund

Audrey Stein Merves, CW’56, and StanleyMerves, parents, and the Louis and Bessie SteinFoundation #2

Albert M. Perlstein, W’57, GGs’96, and ArleneG. Perlstein, CW’59

Brad A. Prutkin, C’95, in memory of LawrencePrutkin

Richard S. Rome, C’67

Ivan Ross, W’83, and Nina Ross

The Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Family

Alan Shuch, WG’75, and the Shuch FamilyFoundation

Ione Apfelbaum Strauss, CW’54, parent

Estate of Louis Vederman

Andrew and Erna Finci Viterbi

Michael D. and Sharon Weiner, parents

Nelson M. Wolf, C’64, and Rochelle HirsheyWolf, G’81We gratefully acknowledge the overwhelming number ofindividuals who contributed gifts in memory of the lateHerbert D. Katz. While space prohibits listing the namesof all these individual, the enormous outpouring ofgenerosity testifies to Herb’s far-reaching impact withinthe Penn community. For a complete list of donors, pleasesee: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jwst/Katzdonors.htmIf you, too, would like to support Jewish Studies atPenn, please contact the School of Arts and SciencesOffice of External Affairs at (215) 898-5262.