Robert Alter, Professor of the Graduate School and Emeritus Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley will read from The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai and Chana Kronfeld, Professor of Hebrew, Yiddish and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley will read from The Full Severity of Compassion: The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai.
Chosen People? Jewish Identity
Todd Gitlin is Professor of Journalism and Sociology and Chair of the Ph.D. program at Columbia University. Gitlin, a UC Berkeley sociology alum and former Professor of Sociology, has been a political activist since 1960 and is the author of fifteen books. Gitlin will address the question of the ethical foundation of Jewish peoplehood, the significance of the concept of “chosenness,” and contemporary quandaries of American Jewish identity.
Freud, Politics, and Anti-Semitism
Gilad Sharvit is the Helen Diller Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish Studies at UC Berkeley. Taking as its entry point Freud’s reorientation of anti-Semitism as aggressive action, Sharvit argues that Freud’s fear of the violent mob can be located in three interconnected dimensions of his work, all deeply informed by Hobbesian imagination. Sharvit claims that as an effect of suffering from anti-Semitism, Freud was not only quick to accept a Hobbesian perspective, but that he also reconstructed it to a degree that radically changed its meaning.
Summoned: Identity and Religion in a Haredi Neighborhood
Iddo Tavory is an Assistant Professor of sociology at NYU. In Summoned, Tavory takes readers to the heart of the exhilarating – at times exhausting – life of the Beverly-La Brea Jewish Orthodox community. Just blocks from West Hollywood’s nightlife, the Orthodox community thrives next to the impure sights, sounds, and smells they encounter every day. But to sustain this life, as Tavory shows, is not simply a moral decision they make.
Women of the Bible: After Abel and Other Stories
Dr. Michal Lemberger will read from and discuss her new book, After Abel and Other Stories. Vividly reimagined with startling contemporary clarity, this debut collection of short stories gives voice to silent, often-marginalized biblical women: their ambitions, their love for their children, their values, their tremendous struggles, and their challenges. Lemberger’s stories honor the integrity of the primary texts while simultaneously opening spaces within narratives whose meanings have come to seem set in stone in order to reveal the complex worlds portrayed by the Hebrew Bible.