The Center for Jewish Civilization is pleased to invite you to “Re-Generation. Jewish Life in Poland”! RSVP today!

About the Event 

Press photographer Chuck Fishman achieved great renown for his work, having won the World Press Photo Foundation medal four times, and having been featured on the covers of magazines such as Life, Newsweek, Time, and Fortune. The Jewish Historical Institute’s exhibit “Re-Generation. Jewish Life in Poland,” explores the history of Jewish communities in post-war Poland throughout a 43-year period.

The images selected for the “Re-Generation. Jewish life In Poland” exhibition cover different periods and are divided into two parts. The earlier ones taken in the 1970s and 1980s depict the few remaining members of the “struggling” remnant Jewish communities of Kraków, Wrocław, Warsaw, Lublin, Łódź, Przemyśl. In contrast, the photographs taken since 2000 (the most recent ones at the 75th commemoration of the Ghetto Uprising in 2018) present the renewed Jewish congregations and organizations where jubilant young people demonstrate enthusiasm and astuteness as they engage in the renewal of Jewish religious and cultural life in the country. This discussion will explore Fishman’s multi-faceted documentation of Jewish life.

About the Speakers

This panel discussion will featuring many renowned speakers, including:

Dr. Edyta Gawron (Jewish Studies Institute, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland)

Jakub Nowakowski (Director, Galicia Jewish Museum, Krakow, Poland)

Shana Penn (Executive Director, Taube Philanthropies, San Francisco, CA)

Dr. Anna Sommer Schneider (Center for Jewish Civilization, Georgetown University, Washington DC)

With opening remarks by Chuck Fishman, Author of the Exhibition.

—

Any person with an accommodation request is welcome to email us at cjcinfo@georgetown.edu. We will try to meet these accommodation requests to the best of our ability.

The Center for Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University is pleased to invite you to its upcoming conference, Welcoming the Stranger. The event will take pace in the Arrupe Multipurpose Room on Georgetown University’s Main Campus. RSVP on the CJC eventbrite today!

About the event:

The Center for Jewish Civilization and its cosponsors (Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Georgetown Jewish Life, The Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Alfanar, and The Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art, Inc. ) are pleased to announce its upcoming conference, Welcoming the Stranger: Abrahamic Hospitality and Its Contemporary Implications. This forum will examine the positive and negative receptions of strangers in the three Abrahamic traditions through Biblical and historical anecdotes. Our examination will be deepened by a reevaluation of welcoming strangers around the world over the past 85 years. From forced isolation leading to genocide, to the refusal of asylum, we seek to understand the repercussions of welcoming and rejecting strangers in our modern, interconnected world. RSVP today!

Conference Agenda and Speakers:

10:00 am Welcome Remarks

10:05 am Introductions

Dr. Ori Z. Soltes, Professor of the Teaching of Jewish Civilization, Center for Jewish Civilization, Georgetown University

10:15 am – 11:45 am First Panel

“Welcoming the Stranger in Judaism”

Rabbi Rachel Gartner, Director for Jewish Life, Campus Ministry, Georgetown University

“Welcoming the Stranger in Christianity”

Reverend Craig Mousin, Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, DePaul University

“Welcoming the Stranger in Islam”

Dr. Zeki Saritoprak, Nursi Chair in Islamic Studies, John Carroll University

11:45 am – 12:45 pm

Lunch Served

1:00 pm – 2:30 pm – Second Panel

Rachel Stern, Founding Director and CEO, Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art, Inc.

Dr. Lindsay Balfour, Assistant Professor, Communication Studies, Concordia College

2:30 pm – 3:30 pm

Q&A with all of the Speakers

3:30 pm – 4:15 pm Endnote Conversation

Carol Prendergast, Senior Policy Advisor on Refugees, Victims of Torture and other Marginalized Communities & Venture Philanthropy Advisor, Alfanar

4:15 pm – 4:30 pm

Closing Remarks

—

Any person with an accommodation request is welcome to email us at cjcinfo@georgetown.edu. We will try to meet these accommodation requests to the best of our ability. 

About the Event 

The third annual Andrew H. Siegal Memorial Lecture took place on Thursday, October 17. The Center for Jewish Civilization’s Professor Danielle Pletka spoke about “The Bystander Effect: When Bad Things Happen in the World and No One Cares.” CJC Director and Rabbi Harold White Professor of Jewish Civilization Jacques Berlinerblau provided introductory remarks and thanked the Andrew Siegal Foundation for its ongoing support of the CJC. Professor Pletka then began her urgent call to action against global injustices, and decried the ongoing lack of response to current issues, such as the ethnic cleansing campaign against Rohingya Muslims and the internment of Muslim Uighurs in China. Pletka ended her compelling lecture by asserting her belief that “the world will be a better place when we [the United States] lead.

About the Speaker 

Danielle Pletka is the Andrew H. Siegal Professor at the Center for Jewish Civilization in the Walsh School of Foreign Service. She is also the Senior Vice President for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Before joining AEI, Ms. Pletka was a longtime senior professional staff member for the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where she specialized in the Near East and South Asia.

Ms. Pletka has authored, coauthored, and coedited a variety of studies and book chapters, including the report “Tehran Stands Atop the Syria-Iran Alliance” (Atlantic Council, 2017), and the chapter “America in Decline” in Debating the Obama Presidency (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).

About the Event 

After a successful inaugural Brown Bag lunch with Professor Moran Stern in which students discussed the 2019 Israeli elections, the Center for Jewish Civilization held its next installment of the popular series. On October 16, Professor Andrej Umansky discussed anti-Semitism in North America and Europe with CJC students in an emergency Brown Bag lunch inspired by the tragic Halle synagogue shooting, which took place on the 9th of October. Umansky paid special attention to the complex politics of Germany, educating students about political and economic disparities between the country’s east and west regions. Specifically, Professor Umansky stressed that relatively high unemployment rates in eastern Germany are a determinant of the resurgence of far-right and anti-Semitic sentiments in the region. Furthermore, Umansky noted a lack of policy responses to the problem of anti-Semitism in Germany. Similar themes were explored in CJC’s Professor Danielle Pletka’s October 17 Andrew H. Siegal Memorial Lecture, “The Bystander Effect: When Bad Things Happen in the World and No One Cares.” 

There is more to come from the CJC’s Brown Bag Lunch Series–– stay tuned, students! 

About the Professor 

Andrej Umansky is the Center for Jewish Civilization’s Braman Post-Doctoral Fellow. Additionally, Professor Umansky also serves on the Board of Directors of Yahad in Unum. As a member of the leadership team at Yahad, Mr. Umansky works to advance the mission of the organization through forensic investigation, academia, and community engagement.

On October 10, the Center for Jewish Civilization held “The Use and Abuse of the Holocaust in Political Discourse Today” with Ambassador David Saperstein. The CJC’s Associate Director, Dr. Anna Sommer, provided introductory remarks, after which Ambassador Saperstein began his instructive lecture about modern invocations of the Holocaust in politics and discourse. At the core of the event was the fraught question of whether or not events should be compared to the Holocaust. Saperstein revisited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s June 24 press release, which rejected “efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary.” Ambassador Saperstein assessed existing surveys, ads, and speeches, and created an interactive environment in which members of the audience could discuss their opinions about the problematic. 

Ambassador Saperstein offered his nuanced view of the subject, noting that while comparing every historical event to the Holocaust would “diminish” its significance and distinct nature, viewing the Holocaust as something too unique to be referenced in political discourse inhibits the world from learning from it. Ultimately, Sapestein asserted that “one of the most valuable lessons” to be learned from the Holocaust is that any genocide or ethnic cleansing must be stopped as soon as “the first identifiable actions…first appear.”

About the Speaker

Ambassador Saperstein was the U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom from January 2015 to January 2017. He is currently an adjunct professor with the Walsh School of Foreign Service’s Center for Jewish Civilization and previously was a senior research fellow of the Religious Freedom Research Project at the Berkley Center. An ordained rabbi, he served for several decades as the director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism representing the public policy positions of the Reform Jewish Movement, the largest segment of American Jewry, to the government and leading the movement’s efforts to strengthen social justice programming in synagogues across North America.

About the Speaker

About the Event

On Tuesday, September 24, the Center for Jewish Civilization hosted its first brown bag lunch of the semester in McGhee Library. The event, which was open to only the first ten CJC students who RSVP’d, was centered on modern Israeli politics and the 2019 Israeli elections. The CJC’s Professor Moran Stern offered a backgrounder on Israel’s unicameral parliamentary system, as well as its September 17 elections, which was characterized by a 69.7 percent voter turnout. In one of the many standout moments of the lunch, Stern noted that “the main factor that dominates and shapes Israeli politics, probably since 2017, is the legal situation of Prime Minister Netanyahu.” This brown bag lunch is one of many that will examine pressing issues in both United States and Middle East politics. 

Missed the CJC’s Brown Bag?

Professor Stern co-wrote an informative op-ed in The Jewish Week about Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israel’s election. Read it here!

There is more to come from our Brown Bag series –– stay tuned, students!

This week, the Center for Jewish Civilization’s Professor Jessica Roda presided over her proseseminar’s trip to the Polish Embassy. The class, entitled “Music, Politics, and International Relations,” discussed music diplomacy in Poland and the revival of Yiddish Polish Tango with Olga Avigail Mieleszczuk and her musicians. Mieleszczuk, a singer and researcher of Eastern European musical folklore, has previously stated that “Most of the artists, who invented a world-class, high-quality tango music in Poland, perished in the Holocaust. I have a mission to keep their legacy alive.” Professor Roda’s proseminar is one of many CJC courses which probe the exciting intersection between culture, politics, and international relations, and offers a window into the CJC’s rich interdisciplinary character. 

About CJC Professor Jessica Roda 

Jessica Roda is the Assistant Director of the Center for Jewish Civilization. She joined the CJC in the fall of 2018 as an Assistant Professor of Jewish Civilization. She is an anthropologist and ethnomusicologist trained in European and North American schools and has published several peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and a monograph (Se réinventer au present. Les Judéo-espagnols de France, 2018, Presses Universitaires de Rennes) on the political implications of Sephardic and Arab-Jewish music in France, Spain, and Morocco. Dr. Roda is currently working on a second manuscript based on her ethnography of Hasidic life in Montreal and New York City (Performing Hasidicness. Ultra-Orthodox Jews on Stage and on Screen in North America). 

About the Proseminar

The 21st century Internet has democratized the circulation of ideas within and beyond the nation-state. In this context, music serves as a means of both alternative ideas and a reinforcement of the established order. International organizations, government actors, NGOs, artists, and a range of activists (from religious to social) have invested in music for their own political, social, and economic ends. This proseminar will focus on music as a way to reflect on politics and international affairs in the 21^st century via issues such as globalization, cultural diplomacy, conflict resolution, community building, social movements, national hegemony and protectionism.

The Center for Jewish Civilization invites you to a lecture by Ambassador David Saperstein. RSVP today on our eventbrite!

About the Event 

References to the Holocaust, Hitler and Nazis are often used by politicians, religious leaders and others, in America and across the globe, in justifying their political positions. We see it in discussions on issues ranging from the challenges facing oppressed religious and ethnic groups like the Rohingya, Tibetan Buddhists, and Uighur Muslims in China; abortion; ISIL; Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons; animal rights; the treatment of detained migrants; the nuclear arms race; stem cell research; and most recently, on Israel’s policies. By reviewing and evaluating real examples of ads, speeches, and campaigns, we will try to determine if the Holocaust is so unique it should not be used in political analogies at all. And if it should, what standards should determine when its use is appropriate and when inappropriate?

About the Speaker

Ambassador Saperstein was the U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom from January 2015 to January 2017. He is currently an adjunct professor with the Walsh School of Foreign Service’s Center for Jewish Civilization and previously was a senior research fellow of the Religious Freedom Research Project at the Berkley Center. An ordained rabbi, he served for several decades as the director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism representing the public policy positions of the Reform Jewish Movement, the largest segment of American Jewry, to the government and leading the movement’s efforts to strengthen social justice programming in synagogues across North America. 

— 

Lunch will be served prior to the event. RSVP is encouraged.

Any person with an accommodation request is welcome to email us at cjcinfo@georgetown.edu. We will try to meet these accommodation requests to the best of our ability.

On Tuesday, September 17th, the Center for Jewish Civilization hosted a conversation with Ambassador Dennis Ross about his new book, Be Strong and of Good Courage: How Israel’s Most Important Leaders Shaped Its Destiny. Rabbi Harold White Professor of Jewish Civilization and Center Director Jacques Berlinerblau provided opening remarks, noting Ambassador Ross’s “command of both American and Middle Eastern foreign policy, as well as the exigencies of literary non-fiction.”

After his engaging discussion about the legacies of David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, and Ariel Sharon, Ambassador Ross fielded questions from the audience about Israel’s political future. He explained his choice of Israeli political figures which frame his new work and stressed the dual importance of action and inaction as viable policy measures. After the event, he signed copies of his new book, which he co-wrote with David Makovsky. 

About Ambassador Dennis Ross

Ambassador Ross is the Counselor and Ziegler Distinguished Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Ambassador Ross played a leading role in shaping U.S. involvement in the Middle East peace process within the H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations. He was instrumental in assisting Israelis and Palestinians to reach the 1995 Interim Agreement, successfully brokering the 1997 Hebron Accord, and facilitating the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty.

Ambassador Ross has worked closely with Secretaries of State James Baker, Warren Christopher, and Madeleine Albright. He was awarded the Presidential Medal for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service by President Clinton. 

Missed our event?

Have no fear! Ambassador Ross will discuss Be Strong and of Good Courage at Johns Hopkins University on Thursday, September 26th. RSVP for his book talk here.