Jewish heritage lectures to explore scope of the field

Topics ranging from Israeli women novelists to Nazi concentration camp songs, 17th-century commerce, literature of World War I and Jewish women’s memoirs will be on the table at this fall’s Jewish Heritage Lecture series.

“I think these lectures will give people who come to them some insight into what an exciting field Jewish studies is these days,” says Steven Nadler, professor of philosophy and director of the Mosse-Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies, which organizes the series.

“These are unique offerings,” he says. “The lectures bring to campus some of the best scholars and teachers in the discipline. I think members of both the university and general community will come away with a greater understanding of historical and contemporary issues within Jewish intellectual life and culture.”

The series opens Tuesday, Sept. 21, with “Take Thy Daughter: Israeli Women Novelists Challenging the Fathers’ Tongue” by Yael S. Feldman, Abraham I. Katsh Professor of Hebrew Culture and Education at New York University. She will focus on women writers in the 1980s, arguing that they have subverted classical texts to encourage a new reading of Israeli and Hebrew history. Her talk begins at 7 p.m. in the Memorial Union; check Today in the Union for the room.

Other lectures are:

• “‘The Passion of the Christ’ — Back to the Future? Mel Gibson’s Film, Vatican II and Interfaith Dialogue” by Alan L. Berger, Raddock Eminent Scholar Chair for Holocaust Studies at Florida Atlantic University. Berger will consider whether the film is anti-Semitic, its relationship to the passion play tradition, the current state of Jewish-Catholic exchange and other questions. This year’s Tobias Lecture, the talk will take place on Monday, Oct. 4, at 7 p.m. in the Red Gym’s On Wisconsin Room.
• “Aleksander Kulisiewicz’s ‘Camp Songs,'” by composer Paul Schoenfield and Holocaust Museum musicologist Bret Werb. The Nazis incarcerated Kulisiewicz in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin in 1939. During his six years there, he composed 54 songs, most of them darkly humorous ballads performed secretly. The lecture will be Tuesday, Oct. 5, at 6:30 p.m. in Mills Concert Hall, Mosse Humanities Building. Afterward, the School of Music will present a chamber music concert of Schoenfield’s “Camp Songs” and Oliver Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time.” For concert ticket information, contact the School of Music at 263-1900 or visit www.wisc.edu/music.
• “Cosmopolitanism, Commerce and Sephardic Identity in Early Modern Amsterdam and London” by Adam Sutcliff, associate professor of European Jewish history, University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign. Sutcliff says the unprecedented acceptance that Sephardic Jews found in these two cities during the 17th and 18th centuries ironically threatened the Jews’ cultural identity and cohesion. This lecture will be on Thursday, Oct. 21, at 7 p.m. in the Memorial Union.
• “Into the Darkness: Hebrew Women Writers Describe Their Experience in the First World War” by Glenda Abramson, Cowley Lecturer in Post-Biblical Hebrew, University of Oxford. Compared with Jewish writing from World War II, comparatively little is known about the Jewish experience on and off the front in World War I. Abramson will explore the work of three Hebrew writers. She will speak Monday, Nov. 1, at 7 p.m. in the Memorial Union.
• “Jewish Women’s Memoir: What Do Jewish Women Write When They Write a Memoir?” by Helen Epstein, Harvard and Brandeis universities. From the first known writing by a Jewish woman, Gluckl of Hameln in 1690, to the autobiographies of Sarah Bernhardt, Emma Goldstein, Golda Meier, Edna Ferber, Claire Bloom and many more, this year’s Paul J. Schrage Lecture explores what the writers include and what they leave out. Epstein, author of two memoirs and now at work on a third, will present on Monday, Nov. 8, at 7 p.m. at the Memorial Union.

All lectures are free. For information, contact Anita Lightfoot, Center for Jewish Studies, 265-4763, allightf@wisc.edu.