Jewish University 2023

Timing: 9:15am-10:25am

Title: Uncovering the Vatican’s Secrets

Speaker: David Kertzer, Brown University

Description: Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Brown University Professor Daniel Kertzer has spent years plumbing the Vatican archives to uncover the story of Pope Pius XII’s role in World War II and the Holocaust. His latest book is "The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pope Pius XII, Mussolini and Hitler.” In a New York Times profile, Kertzer is described as "arguably the most effective excavator of the Vatican's hidden sins, especially those leading up to World War II." In conversation with Howard Schneider. 

Timing: 10:25am-11:40am

Breakout Session Options

Title: Judaism in the Age of Truthiness

Speaker: Rabbi Dr. Wendy Zierler, Hebrew Union College

Description: Our nation's founding document, the Declaration of Independence, confidently declares, “These truths we hold to be self-evident…” And yet America is mired in a truth crisis. Technologies have made the swift proliferation of untruths commonplace; political sensibilities have become so partisan as to tolerate public personalities who brazenly lie. Many Americans, Jews among them, are understandably concerned for the future of truth as we once knew it. This session addresses this crucial problem from a Jewish point of view, assembling a variety of Jewish perspectives on truth-- biblical, Talmudic, liturgical, scientific, philosophical, satirical, pluralistic, and poetic. The results are provocative and surprising but also a moral tonic for these truth-decayed times. 

Title: The War That Was Personal: American Jewish GIs and the Defeat of Nazi Germany

Speaker: Rabbi Joseph Topek

Description: American Jews have served in the military during war and peace since the American Revolution, but the rise of Nazism in Europe made World War II a more personal conflict. With many soldiers being the children of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, or immigrants themselves, they saw the defeat of Nazi Germany as a moral imperative and fight for Jewish survival.  This talk will explore through letters, memoirs, and oral histories how Jewish soldiers experienced the war, their encounters with anti-Semitism, the possibility of capture by the Germans, and the role that some played in military intelligence and the liberation of concentration camps.

Title: Jews and Christians Read the Bible

Speaker: Professor Dr. Robert Harris, Jewish Theological Seminary

Description: Jews and Christians generally lived in close proximity in the 12th century: there were no ghettos yet established, and they dressed alike and spoke the same languages in day-to-day life. But stark differences marked their interrelationships, as well. This session examines the commonalities as well as the differences between Jews and Christians in their study of the Bible, the relationships and mutual influences that rabbis and churchmen had on one another, and, in particular, the arguments through which they typically interacted. 

Timing: 11:45am-12:50pm

Breakout Session Options

Title: The Yom Kippur War 50 Years Later: The Story of Yuval Neria 

Speaker: Professor Yuval Neria, Columbia University

Description: At 22, Yuval Neria found himself at the center of the 1973 Yom Kippur War as a tank commander in the Sinai, where he earned the Medal of Valor, Israel’s highest decoration for combat bravery. In several battles, his tank was hit but he kept fighting, taking command of up to 10 different tanks before being injured and evacuated. Fifty years later, shaped by his wartime experiences, Dr. Neria is a Professor of Medical Psychology and Director of Trauma and the PTSD program at Columbia University’s New York Psychiatric Institute. He has conducted numerous studies among Israeli veterans and prisoners of war, New York City residents exposed to the 911 attacks, and young adults exposed to missile and rocket attacks in southern Israel. Dr. Neria talks about his life and the results of his research. 

Title: The Jews of Long Island: 1705-1918 

Speaker: Brad Kolodny

Description: In his new book, The Jews of Long Island, 1705-1918, Brad Kolodny tells the story of how Jewish communities were first established east of New York City, from Great Neck to Greenport, from Cedarhurst to Sag Harbor, including peddlers, farmers, factory workers as well as successful merchants and wealthy industrialists like the Guggenheims. Kolodny spent six years researching how, when, and why Jewish families first settled on the Island. Archival material, including census records, newspaper accounts, never-before-published photos, and personal family histories illuminate Jewish life of those who laid the foundation for what would become the fourth largest Jewish community in the United States.

Title: Judaism in the Age of Truthiness

Speaker: Rabbi Dr. Wendy Zierler, Hebrew Union College

Description: Our nation's founding document, the Declaration of Independence, confidently declares, “These truths we hold to be self-evident…” And yet America is mired in a truth crisis. Technologies have made the swift proliferation of untruths commonplace; political sensibilities have become so partisan as to tolerate public personalities who brazenly lie. Many Americans, Jews among them, are understandably concerned for the future of truth as we once knew it. This session addresses this crucial problem from a Jewish point of view, assembling a variety of Jewish perspectives on truth-- biblical, Talmudic, liturgical, scientific, philosophical, satirical, pluralistic, and poetic. The results are provocative and surprising but also a moral tonic for these truth-decayed times. 

Timing: 1:50-3pm

Title: Shanda: A Memior of Shame and Secrecy

Speaker: Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Description: In a new memoir, one of America’s leading Jewish feminists examines shame — or shanda, in Yiddish — as a Jewish inheritance, “not because other people or groups don’t feel it,” she writes, “but because it’s coded into the DNA of my family and ABC’s of my faith.”  In excavating her own family history, Pogrebin recounts a tabulation of well-kept family secrets, high-stakes melodramas, and surreptitious relations, in which runaway brides, false marriages, lost children, and other moral crises abound. But there is more here than mishigas, according to a book review. Pogrebin “seeks to understand the role of shame and secrecy in a family of devout Jewish immigrants whose social status — in America and even among one another — required the calculated concealment of uncomfortable truths.” In conversation with Barbara Selvin, SBU Professor Emeritus of Journalism

Timing: 3:05pm - 3:55pm

Title: Israel’s Judicial Crisis: The arguments pro and con? Can a compromise be reached? Can Israel survive as a democracy?

Speaker: David Markovsky

Description: Will the dispute over changes to the Israeli Supreme Court destroy the democratic underpinnings of Israel? Why has the court reform created such a massive domestic reaction? Is there a case for some changes to how the court operates? Is a compromise possible? Is President Biden’s strong condemnation of the reform justified? What role, if any, should the diaspora Jewish community play in the dispute? What happened over the Passover break and what is the likely long-term outcome? A leading expert provides perspective and analysis.

Timing: 4:00pm - 4:50pm

Title: New York Ramble: Jews and Bluegrass Music

Speaker: Taylor and Alison Ackley

Description: Bluegrass music has long been associated with the rural American South. But the 1960s folk revival spawned a new generation of bluegrass lovers, including many from Jewish communities. Three Jewish musicians emerged as highly influential figures, Ralph Rinzler, David Grisman and noted klezmer clarinetist Andy Statman. In this lecture/performance acclaimed folk musician and composer Taylor Ackley and his wife Alison will demonstrate how Jewish involvement created a new hybrid Jewish American musical tradition.