LUNCH & LEARN SESSION DETAILS:

OCTOBER 25 - RACHEL RICHMAN
Women of the Cairo Geniza

Who were the Jewish women of medieval Cairo and what can we learn about their lives from the materials preserved in their community geniza? Princeton Ph.D. candidate, Rachel Richman, will introduce this chapter in Jewish history and share findings from her dissertation research on the lives and economic place of women in society. 

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NOVEMBER 1 - DORIS BERGEN
'A Priest in a Nazi Collar': German Military Chaplains and the Holocaust

About 1000 Christian pastors and priests served the German military during World War II as chaplains. These men accompanied German forces wherever they went, from Poland to France, Ukraine, Lithuania, Greece, North Africa, and points between and beyond. What roles did they play in the murder of Jews and in other atrocities?

Why have the chaplains been almost completely forgotten in histories of the war and the Holocaust?

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NOVEMBER 8 - WILLIAM GROSS
Mysterious Images: Visual Kabbalah

If and when people consider the idea of Kabbalah, they generally think about a complicated system of concepts and impenetrable ideas. But, to the surprise of most, there is an amazing display of visual elements in both theoretical Kabbalah and practical Kabbalah, the world of Jewish amulets. William Gross' passion for the collecting of Jewish ritual objects in Israel since 1964 led to him serving as an official appraiser for more than 15,000 objects in both public Museum and private collections. He has lectured widely on his view of Judaic objects not just as aesthetic creations but as documents illuminating Jewish history.

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NOVEMBER 15 - JASON GUBERMAN-PFEFFER
Passport to Jewish History: An Interactive Tour of the Diarna Geo-Museum

In the past decade, Diarna researchers have digitally documented hundreds of sites across the Middle East and North Africa. For this presentation - no passport or airfare required - we will explore the sites and stories of some of Diarna's most interesting discoveries, including shrines, synagogues, schools, and other structures.

Diarna: The Geo-Museum of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Life is working to digitally preserve the physical remnants of Jewish history throughout the region. They are racing against time to capture site data and record place-based oral histories before the memories of these communities are lost. Diarna uses digital mapping technology, traditional scholarship, field research, as well multimedia documentation to capture the history lest it be forgotten or erased.

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NOVEMBER 22 - MONICA BOHM-DUCHEN
Insiders/Outsiders: Jewish Artists in Britain from the Nineteenth Century to the Present Day

This illustrated lecture by London-based art historian Monica Bohm-Duchen will examine the significant contribution made to British visual culture by artists of Jewish origin, against a background of increasing emancipation and assimilation from the nineteenth century onwards. The main focus will be on the early twentieth century generation of artists (among them Jacob Epstein, David Bomberg and Mark Gertler) who came from Yiddish-speaking Russian and Eastern European immigrant families and on those (such as Josef Herman, Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach) who found refuge in Britain from Nazism in the 1930s. The lecture will conclude with a discussion of UK-based artists active today whose work grapples with the still complex issue of Jewish identity in the contemporary world.

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NOVEMBER 29 - JOHN M. TAYLOR
Mystery and Myth of the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone

Nestled in a steep gully, about 16 miles west of Los Lunas, New Mexico, literally in the middle of nowhere, is an “artifact” that has been the subject of much discussion since its “discovery” in the 1930s.  The Los Lunas Mystery Stone, also known as the Decalogue Stone, is a 60-ton boulder inscribed with an abbreviated version of the Ten Commandments in Paleo-Hebraic, a language used primarily by the Samaritans during and after the Babylonian captivity.  This presentation will discuss the Mystery Stone and its archeological context and offer some possibilities for its origin.

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