Dr. Yael Aronoff has released her new book Continuity and Change in Political Culture: Israel and Beyond on November 15, 2020 Co-edited by Serling Institute for Jewish Studies and Modern Israel Director Yael Aronoff and Ilan Peleg and Saliba Sarsar in honor of Myron J. Aronoff.
Dr. Aronoff was invited to serve on the University Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Steering Committee starting January 2020.Dr. Aronoff will present three different papers at three conferences. She will present “(Un)Intended Consequences: The Policies of Israeli Prime Ministers Towards Hamas and Their Influence on the Peace Process with the Palestinian Authority,” at the International Studies Association Conference, Honolulu, March 25-28, 2020. She will present, “Peering Over the Protective Edge: The Dilemmas of Israel’s Asymmetric Wars,” at the Midwest Political Science Association Conference, Chicago, April 16-19, 2020. Dr. Aronoff will present “Pathways to Peace: The Legitimation of a Two-State Solution,” for the Association of Israel Studies Annual Conference, Tulane University, June 28 – July 1, 2020. She will also be giving a lecture at the University of New Mexico, sponsored by the Association of Jewish Studies Distinguished Lectureship Program, on March 3, 2020.
In November, Kirsten Fermaglich presented her award-winning book, A Rosenberg by Any Other Name: A History of Jewish Name Changing in America, at the Jewish Book Festivals of Detroit, Ann Arbor, and St. Louis, and at the Jewish Genealogical Society of Cleveland, Ohio. In December, she will speak in Memphis Tennessee, Springfield and East Falmouth, Massachusetts. In September, she attended the faculty workshop, Situating American Jewish Studies (generously co-sponsored by the Serling Institute), in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Yore Kedem received a Designation B Appointment, which offers long-term continuous appointment at MSU for non-tenure stream faculty. He led the Serling Institute Summer Program at Hebrew University for the third time in July. Over the 2019-2020 school year, he will be teaching and leading a new Honors Research Seminar Abroad: “Immigration and Cultural Diversity in Israel,” for the Honors College at MSU and the Serling Institute. He is using an innovative format for these seminars, which includes instruction on campus in the Fall and Spring and traveling to Israel over winter break.
Michael Koppisch published an essay last Spring: “’Au début, nous voulions chanter’: Turning to Molière in Auschwitz,” in Molière Re-Envisioned: Twenty-First Century Retakes (Renouveau et renouvellement moliéresques: Reprises contemporaines.) Ed. M. J. Muratore. Paris: Hermann, 2018. Pp. 567-86.
Benjamin Lorch was approved this semester for a UNTF Designation B appointment, which offers long-term continuous appointment at MSU for non-tenure stream faculty. He is acting as Associate Director of the Serling Institute, assisting with student advising and focus groups and the newsletters, and he will lead the Israel study abroad program in Summer 2020 where he will teach a course on “The Jewish Political Tradition: from King David to David Ben-Gurion.”Benjamin Lorch was approved this semester for a UNTF Designation B appointment, which offers long-term continuous appointment at MSU for non-tenure stream faculty. He is acting as Associate Director of the Serling Institute, assisting with student advising and focus groups and the newsletters, and he will lead the Israel study abroad program in Summer 2020 where he will teach a course on “The Jewish Political Tradition: from King David to David Ben-Gurion.”
Ayalla Ruvio, is leading an exciting new program: “Students Explore Israel – The Startup Nation!”The Serling Institute is sponsoring the first Study Abroad program to Israel that will center on entrepreneurship and innovation. During the Spring break of 2020 20 students will travel to Israel to explore how one of the smallest countries in the world has become a global center of innovation. The students will travel across the country and meet with entrepreneurs and innovative companies such as Google and General Electric. They’ll learn firsthand how Israel invented everything from Intel’s chips to drip irrigation. This interdisciplinary program has attracted students from a wide range of majors, including engineering, business, communication, natural sciences, and agriculture. Prof. Ruvio is a dual citizen, her PhD was on entrepreneurship, and she has a strong publication record in the area of new ventures and innovation. Her background and relationships will open many doors, so students will get a behind-the-scenes look at what makes the Startup Nation tick.
Amy Simon’s article “Imperfect Humans and Perfect Beasts: Changing Perceptions of German and Jewish Persecutors in Holocaust Ghetto Diaries”is forthcoming in Journal of Jewish Identities, January 2020.Dr. Simon will give a talk in California State, Fresno, on March 19, 2019: “Holocaust Diaries: Voices from the Abyss.”
Ken Waltzer will have two articles on antisemitism published in 2020. “Contending with Antisemitism in its Many Forms on American Campuses”will appear in Contending with Antisemitism in a Changing Political Climate, ed., Alvin Rosenfeld, Indiana University Press.
“The University of California Principles Against Intolerance: Efforts to Integrate Them into Campus Policy and Practice”will appear in another collection titled Poisoning the Well: Antisemitism in Contemporary American Culture, eds., Andrew Pessin and Corinne E. Blackmer, Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) Press.
Lynn Wolff gave an invited presentation on “Continuity in spite of the Catastrophe: H.G. Adler’s Relationship to and Reflections on the German Language,” at the international workshop Sprachhandeln – Jüdische Reflexionen über Sprache in der Kriegs- und Nachkriegszeit [Jewish Reflections on Language during World War Two and in the Postwar Period]. This workshop was part of a Franco-German Research project on “Early Forms of Writing of the Shoah. Knowledge and Textual Practices of Jewish Survivors in Europe (1942-1965).” The workshop took place on October 21-22, 2019 at the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture Simon Dubnow Institute, in Leipzig, Germany. The program can be found here: http://www.dubnow.de/fileadmin/user_upload/PDF/Flyer_Sprachhandeln_final_web.pdf
Yael Aronoff, publications include: Continuity and Change in Political Culture, Israel and Beyond co-edited with Ilan Peleg and Saliba Sarsar (Lexington Books, November 18, 2020); The Political Psychology of Israeli Prime Minister: When Hard – Liners Opt for Peace, (Cambridge University Press, 2014); “The Zionist Center-Left Opposition to the Netanyahu Governments,” in Israel Under Netanyahu: Domestic Politics and Foreign Affairs, ed. Robert Freedman, Routledge, 2019; “Israeli Prime Ministers: Transforming the Victimhood Discourse,” in The Victimhood Discourse in Contemporary Israel, Ed. Ilan Peleg. Roman & Littlefield, 2019; “Predicting Peace: The Contingent Nature of Leadership and Domestic Politics in Israel,” Democracy and Conflict Resolution: The Dilemmas of Israel’s Peacemaking eds. Hendrik Spruyt, Miriam F. Elman, and Oded Haklai. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2014.
Marc Bernstein, Marc is the author of Stories of Joseph: Narrative Migrations Between Judaism and Islam (2006), which focuses on a Judeo-Arabic account of the biblical Joseph and explores the interdependence of Muslim and Jewish traditions around shared sacred figures.
Kirsten Fermaglich, publications include: ; A Rosenberg by Any Other Name: A History of Jewish Name Changing in America (2018); American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares: Early Holocaust Consciousness and Liberal America, 1957-1965 (2006); Co-editor of The Feminine Mystique(2013).
Steven Gold, publications include: Wandering Jews: Global Jewish Migration (Purdue University Press, 2020); The Israeli Diaspora (Routledge/University of Washington Press 2002) ; Ethnic Economies (Emerald Publishing, 2000), co-authored with Ivan Light.
Matthew Pauly, Pauly is currently engaged on a book project entitled, “City of Children: Juvenile Poverty, Crime, and Salvation in Odessa, 1881–1940.” He is the author of Breaking the Tongue: Language, Education, and Power in Soviet Ukraine (University of Toronto Press: Toronto, 2014).
Ronen Steinberg, publications include: The Afterlives of the Terror: Facing the Legacies of Mass Violence in Postrevolutionary France (Cornell University Press ,2019).
Alon Tal publications include: Gulati, Ashok, Huang, Jikun, Tal, Alon, From Food Scarcity to Surplus – Innovations in Indian, Chinese and Israeli Agriculture, ( Springer Press, 2021); Michael, K. Tal, A. Khenin, D., Lindenstrauss, G., Bukchin, S., Editors, , Climate Change, Environment and National Security, A New Front (Tel Aviv, INSS Press 2021).
Awards: Arava Award, for Contribution to Regional Cooperation and the Environment (2019); Im Tirtsu Prize by Young Judaea for Outstanding International Leadership (2017); Haiken Prize, Best Original Israeli Book on Geostrategic Topics (The Land is Full) (2017)
Kenneth Waltzer, publications include: The Rescue of Children and Youth at Buchenwald. With K. Geissler, he developed The American Identity Explorer: Immigration and Migration CD-ROM (1998, 2001).
Laura Yares’ book, Jewish Sunday schools: Teaching Religion in Nineteenth Century America, will be published by NYU Press on August 1, 2023. It chronicles the development of the Sunday school as a mechanism for Jewish education in America, and analyzes its distinctively religious curricula. The first Jewish Sunday school in America was founded by a pioneering group of women in 1838. It soon grew to an entire system, led by women, that educated vast numbers of Jewish youth across the country. Debates soon swirled, however, around the so-called sorry state of “feminized” American Jewish supplemental learning in Sunday schools, and the schools were taken over by men within one generation of their creation. It is commonly assumed that the critiques were accurate and that the early Jewish Sunday school was feminized, saccharine, and overly dependent on Christian paradigms. Tracing the development of these schools from their inception through the first decade of the twentieth century, this book shows this was not the reality. Jewish Sunday Schools argues that the work of the women who shepherded Jewish education in the early Jewish Sunday school had ramifications far outside the classroom. Indeed, we cannot understand the nineteenth-century American Jewish experience, and how American Judaism sought to sustain itself in an overwhelmingly Protestant context, without looking closely at the development of Jewish Sunday school education.