Cultural Center

Issues in Judaism

We are pleased to welcome the community, including family members, local schoolchildren, alumni and friends, to athletic and cultural events on campus. All events are free and open to the public. Please register in advance at events.hofstra.edu. For more information, please call the Hofstra Cultural Center at 516-463-5669.

Past Events

Hofstra Cultural Center
in collaboration with the
Departments of Religion, History, and the Jewish Studies Program
presents

ISSUES IN JUDAISM LECTURE SERIES

Monday, March 11
ISSUES IN JUDAISM LECTURE SERIES
BECOMING SEPHARDIC?
Migration and Identity Politics in Transnational Perspective

Dr. Nadia Malinovich, professor of American Studies at the Université de Picardie-Jules Verne and a researcher with the Groupe Sociétés Religions Laïcités (CNRS-EPHE) explores the evolving contours of "Sephardic" as a category of self-identification for Jews who grew up in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and subsequently emigrated to Europe and North America. Scholars and community voices alike have problematized Sephardic as a catchall to describe Jews from the Muslim majority world, as it does not necessarily correspond to how individuals from this geographical sphere identified prior to out-migration.

Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater
Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

Presented by the Hofstra Cultural Center and the Department of History.
In collaboration with Hofstra University Department of Religion and Jewish Studies and Women Studies Program.

Watch Video

Nadia Malinovich

Hofstra Cultural Center in collaboration with the Departments of Religion, History, and the Jewish Studies Program presents

ISSUES IN JUDAISM LECTURE SERIES

Tuesday, September 19, 2023
11:20 a.m.-12:45 p.m.
Nefesh
A New Dance Work by Hadar Ahuvia

Nefesh is a performance project by Hadar Ahuvia (she/her), a cross-disciplinary artist, ritual leader and Jewish educator. Ahuvia’s work centers the body in explorations of Jewish political and cultural lineages and weaves together contemporary dance, traditional Eastern European Ashekanzi vernacular and cantorial singing, and emergent feminist approaches to Jewish mysticism. This work reaches back to her orthodox, Yiddish-speaking great-grandparents, reclaiming cultures almost destroyed by anti-semitism and Zionism. Ahuvia was named by Dance Magazine, “25 to Watch in 2019.”

The Fortunoff Theater
Monroe Lecture Center, California Avenue, South Campus

Funding for this program has been provided, in part by the Dorothy and Elmer Kirsch Endowment for the Hofstra Cultural Center in collaboration with the Department of Drama.

View Event Photos
 

Hofstra Cultural Center in collaboration with the Departments of Religion, History, and the Jewish Studies Program presents

ISSUES IN JUDAISM LECTURE SERIES

For more information, please call the Hofstra Cultural Center at 516-463-5669.

Tuesday, February 14, 2:40-4:05 p.m.
Anti-Fascist Cracks: Jewishness, Arabness and Getting Away from the Imperial Politics of Race

Clive Gabay, Faculty member, School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary, University of London

Clive Gabay's father, Salvo, was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1937. Gabay navigates the complex relationships between Jewishness, Arabness, and race that Salvo had to wrestle with on his geopolitically induced migration and subsequent racialization as a brown man in the UK. He will work with the darkness as a productive way of thinking about Jewishness beyond our ethnocentric and fascist present. In the process of doing so, we will encounter the traders, diplomats, food writers, and kabbalists who populate Clive's family ancestry. Each of them projects different forms of more and less liberatory of Jewishness down there in, and with the dark.

Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater
Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

Presented by the Hofstra Cultural Center in collaboration with Department of Religion and Jewish Studies, Departments of History, Global Studies and Geography, and Political Science and European Studies at Hofstra University.

 

Thursday, March 2, 2:40-4:05 p.m.
The Coloniality of Modern Taste

Join us for a discussion on Dr. Zilkia Janer’s new book, The Coloniality of Modern Taste, which provides an understanding of gastronomy that moves away from the usual celebratory approach. Through a discussion of 19th-century gastronomic publications, this text illustrates how the gastronomic notion of taste was shaped by a number of specifically modern constraints.

Participants:
Zilkia Janer, Professor of Global Studies and Geography
Hofstra University 

Krishnendu Ray, Professor and Director of Food Studies
New York University 

Manuela Boatcă, Professor of Sociology and
Head of School of the Global Studies Program
University of Freiburg, Germany

Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater
Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

Presented by the Hofstra Cultural Center, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, and the Department of Global Studies and Geography in collaboration with the Departments of Religion and Jewish Studies, Political Science, History, Anthropology and European Studies, Food Studies and Women's Studies Programs.

View Event Photos
 

Hofstra Cultural Center in collaboration with the Departments of Religion, History, and the Jewish Studies Program presents

ISSUES IN JUDAISM LECTURE SERIES

For more information, please call the Hofstra Cultural Center at 516-463-5669.

Wednesday, November 9, 4:20-6 p.m.
The Injured Body: Palestine, Mizrahi Jews, and the
Imperial Politics of Color

Shirly Bahar and Mara Ahmed discuss their recent scholarly and creative work related to oppression and the body. The conversation spotlights documentary language that makes embodied oppression visible in comparative and global perspectives (in the context of settler colonialism and imperialism), touching on the pain of Palestinians, Mizrahi Jews, and people of color, especially women, in the United States. The evening will also feature a reading and film excerpts.

Dr. Shirly Bahar teaches at the Columbia University's School of the Arts. Her work explores the relationships between representation, politics, and the body. She has been an active curator of art shows, public programs, and community events in NYC and across the United States. For more information on Shirly’s first book, Documentary Cinema in Israel-Palestine: Performance, the Body, the Home (2021), visit http://tiny.cc/cinema-in-israelpalestine.

Mara Ahmed is an interdisciplinary artist and activist filmmaker based on Long Island. Her films has been broadcast on PBS and screened at international film festivals. Her forthcoming film is titled The Injured Body. Visit Mara Ahmed’s website at https://NeelumFilms.com.

Presented in collaboration with the Departments of History; Global Studies and Geography; and Comparative Literature, Languages, and Linguistics; and the Women's Studies and European Studies Programs.

Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater
Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

 

A Conversation on the “Jewish Marshall Plan”
Wednesday, May 4, 1-2:25 p.m.
Virtual Event

While the role the United States played in France's liberation from Nazi Germany is widely celebrated, it is less well known that American Jewish individuals and organizations mobilized to reconstruct Jewish life in France after the Holocaust. In A Jewish Marshall Plan: the American Jewish Presence in Post-Holocaust France (Indiana University Press, 2022), author Laura Hobson Faure explores how American Jews committed themselves and hundreds of millions of dollars to bring much needed aid to their French coreligionists.

Dr. Hobson Faure sheds light on American Jewish chaplains, members of the Armed Forces, and those involved with Jewish philanthropic organizations who sought out Jewish survivors and became deeply entangled with the communities they helped to rebuild. While well intentioned, their actions did not always meet the needs and desires of the French Jews.

Laura Hobson Faure, Professor of Modern Jewish History
Panthéon-Sorbonne University-Paris and member of the
Center for Social History (UMR 8058)

Presented by the Hofstra Cultural Center in collaboration with the Department of History.

Event is FREE and open to the public. Advance registration is required. Registrants will be sent an email with zoom link prior to join event.

A Jewish Marshall Plan Bookcover

Wednesday, November 17, 11:30 a.m.- 12:30 p.m. (ET)
Book Launch and Discussion:
Edmond Fleg and Jewish Minority Culture in Twentieth-Century France

Sally Debra Charnow PhD,  professor of history/chair, Hofstra University, will be joined by Jeff Horn PhD, professor of history, Manhattan College, for a virtual conversation of her recently published volume, Edmond Fleg and Jewish Minority Culture in Twentieth-Century France (Routledge 2021), the first critical biography of the leading French writer Edmond Fleg (1874–1963).  

Charnow’s biography explores Fleg’s role in forging a modern French Jewish identity before and after the Second World War. Through his writings – plays, novels, poems, and essays based on Jewish and Christian texts – Fleg fashioned a minority Jewish identity within the context of French Third Republic universalism. At the heart of his work, we find a radical ecumenism, a rejection of exclusive and homogenous nationalism, and a deep understanding of the necessity of supporting vibrant minority subcultures within the context of a liberal democratic republic. This account is both individual and social, pointing to the ways in which Fleg acted within the possibilities and constraints of his milieu and used his writing to engage with and shape the discursive fabric of twentieth-century French culture. Event attendees will be able to purchase the book using a special online discount code.

Funding for this lecture has been provided, in part, by the Dorothy and Elmer Kirsch Endowment Fund for the Hofstra Cultural Center.

This is a virtual event. Advanced registration is required. Registrants will receive an email with the link to join the event.

For more information on the Issues in Judaism Lecture Series, call the Hofstra Cultural Center at 516-463-5669.

 

Read the Hofstra Chronicle News Story

Tuesday, April 6, 2:40-4 p.m.
"Albert Memmi: The Most Important Jewish Thinker of the 20th Century (you may not know about)"

Dr. Jonathan Judaken has published more than 60 academic articles on the history of existentialism, anti-Semitism, racism, and post-Holocaust French-Jewish thought. He has written, edited, or co-edited six books. He is completing a monograph titled, Critical Theories of Anti-Semitism: Confronting Modernity and Modern Judeophobia.

Funding for these lectures has been provided, in part, by the Dorothy and Elmer Kirsch Endowment Fund for the Hofstra Cultural Center.

This is a virtual event. Advanced registration is required. Registrants will receive an email with the link to join the event.

For more information on the Issues in Judaism Lecture Series, call the Hofstra Cultural Center at 516-463-5669.

 
 

The Zucker School of Medicine Osler Society
presents

Holocaust Remembrance Day Lecture

Wednesday, April 7, 6-7 p.m.
Holocaust and Medicine Legacy for Medical Education and Practice: A Holocaust Survivor’s Daughter Teaches German Medical Students at Auschwitz

Confronting, reflecting upon, and learning about egregious ethical violations of physicians and the medical establishment in Germany and Austria during the Third Reich have been described as a moral imperative within medical education. As a medical educator and daughter of a Holocaust survivor, ;Hedy S. Wald, PhD, clinical professor of family medicine at the Alpert Medical School, Brown University, shares her recent experience of teaching medical students at the Witten/Herdecke Faculty of Health in Germany about medical ethics and morally resilient professional identity formation by reflecting on the role of medicine during the Holocaust.

 
 

In Her Own Words: A Holocaust Survivor's Account
Monday, October 5, 12:50-2:10 p.m.

Join us for a personal interview with Anna Holtzman, a 93-year-old survivor of the Lodz ghetto, Auschwitz, and Bergen Belsen concentration camps. At the age of 12, Anna, a Polish Jew, would find her life changed forever as she was thrust into the throes of the Nazi invasion of Poland. She will share her story of survival, loss and liberation living in a refugee camp in Bergen Belsen after WWII.

Sponsored by the European Studies Program.

This is a Virtual Event. Advance registration is required.

Thursday, November 19, 6:30 p.m.
The Unsinkable Molly Picon:
From Burlesque to Beloved Bubbeleh with Cantor Lynn Torgove

Yiddish musical and film star, the darling of Second Avenue Yiddish theater, Molly Picon survived and thrived throughout nine decades of performing for Jewish and non-Jewish audiences. Born in 1898 on the Lower East Side of New York City, Molly Picon became the quintessential bellwether of both American Yiddish assimilation and creativity. She started her career in vaudeville and silent films, went on to become a blazing star in the Yiddish theater, then on to radio, TV and Hollywood, where she played the role of Yente in the 1971 film production of Fiddler on the Roof. Molly Picon transformed herself from the adorable, mischievous young boy she played in numerous theater and film productions in her youth, to everybody’s bubbe in her final years. Through it all, she remained a role model and rule breaker…unsinkable. Cantor Lynn Torgove has created a musical retrospective of Molly Picon’s life through music, film and narrative. Join her in discovering the many facets of this remarkable performer.

Presenter: Cantor Lynn Torgove, Hebrew College

Moderator: Cindy Rosenthal, Professor of Drama, Hofstra University

Co-sponsored by the Hofstra Cultural Center and the Department of Religion.

This is a Virtual Event. Advance registration is required.

 

Maxim D. Shrayer - POSTPONED

Maxim D. Shrayer is a bilingual author, scholar, and translator. He is a professor of Russian, English, and Jewish studies at Boston College, where he co-founded the Jewish Studies Program, and director of the Project on Russian and Eurasian Jews at Harvard University’s Davis Center. Shrayer was born and grew up in Moscow. In 1987, he and his parents – writer and doctor David Shrayer-Petrov and translator Emilia Shrayer – left the USSR and immigrated to the United States. Shrayer has written more than 15 books of fiction, nonfiction, criticism, and biography in English and Russian, among them the internationally acclaimed memoir Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story, the collection Yom Kippur in Amsterdam, the anthology Voices of Jewish-Russian Literature, and – most recently – A Russian Immigrant: Three Novellas.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Religion and the Program in Jewish Studies.

Funding for these programs has been provided, in part, by the Dorothy and Elmer Kirsch Endowment for the Hofstra Cultural Center.

In collaboration with the Hofstra Hillel: The Center for Jewish Life on Camp.

ANNUAL CRITICAL SPIRITUALITIES AND GLOBAL JUDAISMS LECTURE
What Does it Mean to be a Jew in Post-Ethnic America?:
Magid PhotoJudaism as a Global Religion - CANCELLED
Thursday, February 27, 6:30 p.m.

American Jewish leader Nahum Goldman once said, "When things are good for the Jew, they are bad for Judaism." What he meant was that when the Jews are able to assimilate into the society in which they live, the Jew prospers and Judaism suffers. In this lecture Dr. Shaul Magid of Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, will suggest that while this was largely true, in today’s post-ethnic United States, where Jews are both an integral part of American society and have also survived as a distinct group, Judaism might be re-framed as something more than simply that which binds Jews together. Can Judaism, the religion of the Jews, become a "global religion"?

Speaker:
Dr. Shaul Magid, Distinguished Fellow in Jewish Studies
Dartmouth College

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

Religion Goes to the Movies

Thursday, October 17, 6:30 p.m.
Hofstra Hillel presents
One Night Only
Film Screening and Discussion: Ushpizin

The film starring Shuli Rand, Michal Bat-Sheva Rand, and Shaul Mizrahi tests an Orthodox Jewish couple’s faith after they prayed for a child during the religious holiday of Sukkot.

Student Center Theater, Mack Student Center, North Campus

For more information, please call Hofstra Hillel at 516-463-6922.

Lecture and Discussion: Yentl and Popular Culture

Tuesday, November 19, 7 p.m.

Eli Bromberg will deliver a lecture on Barbra Streisand’s Oscar-nominated film Yentl (1983) and its significance within popular culture. Bromberg will present a survey of Yentl scholarship, discuss the text’s relationship to the 1963 Isaac Bashevis Singer Yiddish short story upon which it is based (“Yentl der yeshive-bokher”), and explore how this iconic American film depicts gender and sexuality in a religious Jewish context.

Speaker: Eli W. Bromberg
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Department of Religion
Hofstra University

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

SPECIAL EVENT:

In commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland (9-1-1939)

Film Screening: In Darkness

Monday, September 23, 6 p.m.

From acclaimed director Agnieszka Holland, In Darkness is based on a true story. Leopold Socha, a sewer worker and petty thief in Lvov, a Nazi-occupied city in Poland, one day encounters a group of Jews trying to escape the liquidation of the ghetto. He hides them for money in the labyrinth of the town’s sewers. What starts out as a straightforward and cynical business arrangement turns into something very unexpected, the unlikely alliance between Socha and the Jews as the enterprise seeps deeper into Socha’s conscience. The film is also an extraordinary story of survival as these men, women, and children all try to outwit certain death during 14 months of ever-increasing and intense danger.

Commentator: Dr. Ellen G. Friedman, Professor of English and Holocaust and Genocide Studies
The College of New Jersey
Author, The Seven, A Family Holocaust Story

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

Funding for these programs has been provided, in part, by the Dorothy and Elmer Kirsch
Endowment for the Hofstra Cultural Center.

Co-sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program in the Department of Religion.

Yonia Fain: Witness to History

Wednesday, May 1, 4:30-6 p.m.

Join us for a poetry reading and special tribute to Holocaust survivor Yonia Fain, internationally acclaimed artist, poet, author, and Hofstra University associate professor emeritus, who passed away at the age of 100 in December 2013. Through imagery, both visual and written, Fain’s lifelong mission was to express powerful messages of survival and hope. Discussion to follow. Commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day.

Emily Lowe Gallery, behind Emily Lowe Hall, South Campus

Presented in collaboration with the Hofstra Cultural Center.

For more information and to register, please call the Hofstra University Museum of Art at 516-463-5672.

The Holocaust: Witnesses and Survivors
Writing About Other People’s Memories: Passing on Holocaust Testimonies

Monday, October 8, 12:50 p.m.

This lecture discusses postmemory, the transmission of memory and trauma from generation to generation. The children and grandchildren of survivors have a living connection to the memories that were passed on to them. Survivors’ memories become their memories, and to some degree they are held captive to the past. They are caught between absence and presence, between their elders’ pasts and the lives they are living. As the second, third, and fourth generations begin to dominate current publishing about the Holocaust memories transmitted to them, these issues are increasingly important and have individual, community, and cultural implications.

Speaker: Dr. Ellen G. Friedman, Professor of English and Holocaust and Genocide Studies
The College of New Jersey; Author, The Seven, A Family Holocaust Story

Lowenfeld Exhibition Hall, Axinn Library, 10th Floor

A Testimony of Survival and Appreciation

Monday, November 12, 7 p.m.

Author Renée Kann Silver describes her experience in Europe as a Jewish child during World War II in And Yet, I Still Loved France: Memoir of a European Childhood. The lecture will begin with a brief setting both geographically and historically surrounding her early childhood and leading up to the experience of war in France. She will discuss experiencing the brutal anti-Semitism of the French Vichy government, miraculously finding safety in the village of Le Chambon sur Lignon and her flight to Switzerland, and why she still loves France.

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

Funding for these lectures has been provided in part by the Dorothy and Elmer Kirsch Endowment Fund for the

Hofstra Cultural Center. In collaboration with Hofstra Hillel: The Center for Jewish Life on Campus.

Monday, March 12, 4:30 p.m.

Issues in Judaism Lecture Series Spring 2018
presents
JEWS ON LONG ISLAND AND IN THE UNITED STATES
Perspectives on the American Experiment: "Melting Pot" or "Mosaic"

Part 1: 1654-1917
More Progress Than Prejudice for Jews

The late Leo Hershkowitz resourcefully examined factors that enhanced the position of Jews in America, as well as those who fostered dimensions of xenophobia.

Thursday, April 5, 4:30 p.m.

Part II: 1918-2018: The Rise of Vicious Anti-Semitism; The German-American Bund and the KKK on Long Island and in the Eastern United States

Prejudices persisted even as the Jews, whose diversity is still seldom recognized, advanced as America's super-achieving "minority." Speaker for both lectures: Michael D'Innocenzo, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Hofstra University.
Professor D'Innocenzo is a founding member of Hofstra's Center for Civic Engagement and co-editor, American Immigration and Ethnicity: Melting Pot or Salad Bowl? His current projects include an NEH grant with East Meadow Library, "Becoming American" and the National Issues Forums, Kettering Foundation's new deliberation project, "Coming to America: Who Should We Welcome, What Should We Do?" Location for both lectures: Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library
Funding for these lectures has been provided in part, by the Dorothy and Elmer Kirsch Endowment Fund for the Hofstra Cultural Center.

Wednesday, April 18, 4:30 p.m.

Film Screening and Discussion: 1945

The film, set in 1945, tells the complex story of an Orthodox man and his adult son who return to a small village in Hungary. The village residents are both remorseful and suspicious, as they expect the worst. All must come to terms with the war atrocities they may have witnessed or perpetrated, as well as their own personal gain vs. the rights of the Jewish victims whose property they now possess.

Directed by Ferenc Török. Based on the short story Homecoming by Gábor T. Szántó. Country of origin: Hungary. In Hungarian with English subtitles.
B/W cinematography, 91 min. (2017)

"This beautifully shot black-and-white film, set in one day, brings to life a community ravaged by war, hate, and guilt. A must-see film."
— Lincoln Spector, BayFlicks.net

"An honest film that commits itself to portraying Hungary in this intermediate post-war period showing that fearing that which is foreign (back then Jews, today migrants) never pays off."
— Roberto Oggiano, Cineuropa

Speaker: Professor Annette Insdorf will introduce the film and lead a discussion following the screening.
Annette Insdorf is professor of film at Columbia University's School of the Arts, and moderator of the popular Reel Pieces series at Manhattan's 92nd Street Y, where she has interviewed over 200 film celebrities. She is the author of Intimations: The Cinema of Wojciech Has; Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski; François Truffaut, a study of the French director's work; Philip Kaufman; and the landmark study Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust (with a foreword by Elie Wiesel). Insdorf is hosting two series on FilmStruck, Indelible Shadows and Cinematic Overtures. The latter is based on her book Cinematic Overtures: How to Read Opening Scenes.
Book signing to follow: Cinematic Overtures: How to Read Opening Scenes

Student Center Theater, Mack Student Center, North Campus

Thursday, April 26, 4:30 p.m.

Memorials and Forgetting: Holocaust Sites in Post-Communist Europe

Speaker: Professor Cynthia Paces

Cynthia Paces is department chair and professor of history at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ). She teaches courses on modern Europe and leads TCNJ's Holocaust and Genocide Study Tour. She is the author of Prague Panoramas: National Memory and Sacred Space in the 20th Century and is currently researching commemorations of the 1942 Lidice Massacre.
Book signing to follow: Prague Panoramas: National Memory and Sacred Space in the 20th Century

Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

Co-sponsored by the Hofstra Cultural Center and the Office of the Dean, Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Monday, October 30, 7 p.m.

Historian David Fishman recounts one of the most amazing chapters of spiritual resistance in the Holocaust. A group of ghetto inmates risked their lives day in and day out for more than a year, to rescue thousands of rare Jewish books, manuscripts and documents from looting and destruction by the Germans. After World War II, the survivors dug up the cultural treasures hidden in bunkers and other places and smuggled many of them to America and Israel. Fishman has documented this remarkable event based on Jewish, German and Soviet sources in his new book, The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets, and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis.

Speaker:

  • Dr. David E. Fishman
    Professor of Jewish History
    Director, Project Judaica
    The Jewish Theological Seminary of America
    Author: Russia’s First Modern Jews: The Jews of Shklov and The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture

Wednesday, November 8, 7 p.m. How to Research and Document Your Family History:

A Tale of Two Families

The vast majority of our Jewish ancestors came to the United States during one of two great migrations: German Jews during the period 1820-1880 and a larger migration of Eastern European Jews between 1880 and the early 1920s. Starting with information that you know about yourself and your immediate family, our goal is to discover our ancestors’ history both from the time our family came to the United States and back in the “old country.” Nolan Altman will discuss resources available to assist in trying to find information on family members who did not come to America or information that may have been lost during the Holocaust. Topics to be discussed include naming practices, vital records, passenger manifest records, Holocaust resources, and genealogy and your computer.

Speaker:

  • Nolan Altman
    Past President, Jewish Genealogical Society of Long Island (JGSLI)
    Vice President, JewishGen’s Holocaust Database
    Adjunct Professor, Queensborough Community College, CUNY

Location for all lectures: Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

Funding for these lectures has been provided in, part,  by the Dorothy and Elmer Kirsch Endowment Fund for the Hofstra Cultural Center.

Wednesday, March 29, 7 p.m.
According to the Customs of Moses and Shinto

The mystery of the Lost Tribes of Israel, exiled by the Assyrians in the 8th century B.C., and their whereabouts, dates back centuries, and still remains a mystery today. A significant group of people in Japan claim to be the descendants of the Israelites. Certain rituals are performed in Shinto shrines that resemble Jewish traditions, and there are other similar customs, ideological principles and structures. Research by Israeli rabbis and discoveries by Japanese scientists indicate that this theory might be true. We will follow the eastward route in which the exiled tribes were taken in the 8th century B.C. and again in 586 B.C., heightening the probability of them ending up in Japan. The lecture will be accompanied by ancient drawings, scripts, sketches and photos.

Speaker: Michael Tuchfeld
Political analyst and columnist, Makor Rishon Magazine
Host of Radio Galey Israel
Host of Israel Radio, IBA and Channel 2 News, The Knesset Channel in Jerusalem, Israel
and former parlimentary correspondent

Shinto rabbi

 

 

 

 

Wednesday, April 26, 7 p.m.
Exploring Cuba: Its Once and Future Jews

Three visits by Andrée Brooks to Cuba in recent years, plus additional research that has been built upon her scholarly research concerning the Conversos of Central and South America, find a community in flux. (Conversos were Jews who had been forcibly converted to Catholicism late in 15th century Spain, but often kept their Jewish heritage alive in secret.) Later migrations brought Jews from the Ottoman Empire and Eastern Europe. In recent months, the relaxation of restrictions, both by the Americans and the Cubans themselves, has resulted in more and more of Cuba's Jews, and descendants of Jews, coming forward to reclaim their Jewish heritage and receive delegations from Jewish groups from the United States. This lecture explores the challenges and opportunities these changes are now raising, including some historical background that focuses on the earliest Converso/Jewish arrivals from Spain — and how and why they went there.

Speaker: Andrée Aelion Brooks
Associate Fellow, Yale University
Former contributing columnist, The New York Times
Author, The Woman Who Defied Kings: The Life and Times of Doña Gracia Nasi (A Jewish Leader During the Renaissance)
Journalst and lecturer, Westport, CT

Location for all lectures: Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

Funding for these lectures has been provided by the Dorothy and Elmer Kirsch Endowment Fund for the Hofstra Cultural Center.

Tickets:
$8 general public
$7 senior citizen (over 65 with ID) or matriculated non-Hofstra student

Two free tickets with current faculty/staff/student HofstraCard (must present HofstraCard at Box Office)

For tickets for these events, please contact the John Cranford Adams Playhouse Box Office at 516-463-6644, Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-3:45 p.m.

For more information, please contact the Hofstra Cultural Center at 516-463-5669.

Patronato synagogue in Cuba

GLOBAL JUDAISM LECTURE

Networks of Jewish Diaspora: Sephardic Worlds

Join us for this lecture delivered by two experts in the field who explore the networks of Sephardim of Arab-Jews through the Atlantic and Mediterranean. The speakers unveil hidden stories of intercultural encounters, struggles for identity, and religious creativity.

Speakers:
Ronnie Perelis, Rabbi Alcalay Chair in Sephardic Studies, Yeshiva University
Francesca Bregoli, Acting Director, Center for Jewish Studies, The Graduate Center, CUNY

Presented by the Hofstra Cultural Center and Jewish Studies Program in collaboration with the Hofstra Department of Religion and Hofstra Hillel: The Center for Jewish Life on Campus.

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

New Perspectives on the Holocaust:
Roman Gold, The Vatican and Soviet Women

Monday, March 21, 7 p.m.
Oro Macht Frei (Gold Will Set You Free)

This film tells the story of a Roman Jewish community that, two and a half weeks into the German occupation of Rome, was ordered by SS Colonel Herbert Kappler to produce 50 kilos of gold within 36 hours, or he would deport 200 Jewish heads of family. Over a feverish day and a half, this already poor, working class community managed to come up with the 50 kilos of gold in order to save one another. Oro Macht Frei reveals the sad delusion of a community that – believing they had paid their ransom and would be left alone – did not go into hiding.

Speaker: Catherine Campbell, Writer and Producer

Monday, April 18, 7 p.m.
The Vatican and the Holocaust

A spate of new books and scholarship has re-opened the debate on the role of Pope Pius XII and the Vatican as the Holocaust unfolded in Italy. This lecture examines the historical context of anti-Semitism in Italy, the rise of fascism, internment camps, the anti-fascist Jewish Resistance and the Holocaust in the shadow of the Vatican.

Speaker: Stanislao G. Pugliese, PhD, Professor of History, Hofstra University

Tuesday, May 3, 7 p.m.
Through the Eyes of Soviet Women:
The Holocaust in the Soviet Union

Speaker: Elissa Bemporad, Jerry and William Ungar Chair in East European Jewish History and the Holocaust Associate Professor of History at Queens College of the City University of New York/CUNY; NEH Senior Fellow at the Center for Jewish History; Author, Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk.

Funding for these lectures has been provided by the Dorothy and Elmer Kirsch Endowment Fund for the Hofstra Cultural Center.

Location for all lectures: Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

Tickets:
$8 general public
$7 senior citizen (over 65 with ID) or matriculated non-Hofstra student
Two free tickets with current faculty/staff/student HofstraCard (must present HofstraCard at Box Office)

For tickets for these events, please contact the John Cranford Adams Playhouse Box Office at 516-463-6644, Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-3:45 p.m.

For more information, please contact the Hofstra Cultural Center at 516-463-5669.

Hofstra Hilleland the
Hofstra Cultural Center
present

Monday, April 4
FROM THE ASHES: THE REBIRTH OF POLISH JEWRY
CONFERENCE

For centuries Poland represented a vibrant center of Jewish life. This world was destroyed by the Holocaust. Today, Polish Jewry is experiencing an unexpected revival thanks to the work of dedicated members of young pluralistic Jewish communities, as well as non-Jewish allies and the support of the Polish government. There is a major shift occurring in how we understand the history of Polish Jewry. Instead of focusing solely on the destruction, today’s students will understand the full history of this important community. Symposium participants have the opportunity to hear from individuals, educators and scholars working in Poland to overcome all the odds and re-establish Jewish life. The discussions and lectures will be designed to engage participants on different educational levels.

Polish Jewry Conference Schedule

Tuesday, April 12, 8 p.m.
Hofstra Hillel Community Education Series

Thursday, April 21, 7 p.m.
Hofstra Hillel Chai Notes
Spring Concert

For more information, and to register, please contact Hofstra Hillel at 516-463-6922 or visit Polish Conference Registration.

THREE DOCUMENTARIES
ON
HISTORY, CRAFTSMANSHIP AND CONTEMPORARY ITALY

Tuesday, February 23, 7 p.m.
The Peasant and the Priest

The story of two elderly men whose ways of life have survived from medieval Italy. Sergio, a sharecropper, uses ancient farming methods that have become overshadowed by corporate agriculture, and Father Oreste Benzi, a Roman Catholic priest, fights the tide of sexual slavery. Both represent ways of life that are rapidly fading as the modern world closes in. The point of departure for exploring their parallel lives is the 14th-century fresco, The Allegory of Good and Bad Government, by Ambrogio Lorenzetti.

Speaker: Esther Podemski, Producer and Director

Tuesday, March 1, 7 p.m.
My Italian Secret: The Forgotten Heroes

Directed by Oren Jacoby and narrated by Isabella Rossellini

With Robert Loggia as the voice of Gino Bartali

The story of how World War II bicycling idol Gino Bartali, physician Giovanni Borromeo and other Italians worked with Jewish leaders and high-ranking officials of the Catholic Church, risking their lives by defying the Nazis to save thousands of Italy’s Jews.

Speaker: Stanislao G. Pugliese, Professor of History, Queensboro UNICO Distinguished Professor of Italian and Italian American Studies, Hofstra University

Tuesday, March 15, 7 p.m.
Men of the Cloth: Three Master Tailors A Vanishing Craft

Directed by Vicki Vasilopoulos

This film offers an inspiring portrait of three Italian master tailors who confront the decline of the apprentice system as they navigate their challenging roles in the twilight of their careers. The film unravels the mystery of their artistry and reveals how their passionate devotion to their Old World craft is akin to a religion.

Speaker: Vicki Vasilopoulos, Director

Location for all lectures: Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library

The Italian American Experience Lecture Series is presented by the Hofstra Cultural Center and supported, in part, by the Association of Italian American Educators.

Sunday, October 25, 11:30 a.m.
Lecture and Brunch with Author Alisa Solomon

Alisa Solomon, author of Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof, traces how and why the story of Tevye the milkman — the creation of the great Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem — was reborn as a blockbuster musical and a cultural touchstone. She discusses how the songs have been incorporated into sacred ceremonies and hip-hop hits and how the story has inspired religious conversion and secular satire. It has been lauded as one of the most finely wrought works for the Broadway stage and treated as an authentic historical document. Since its blockbuster debut in 1964, Fiddler on the Roof has been seized for an astonishing range of cultural purposes. 

Lowenfeld Conference and Exhibition Hall, 10th Floor Axinn Library, South Campus
Ticket Prices:

$22 General Public
$20 Senior Citizen (Over 65)
$12 Faculty/staff/student with current HofstraCard

Advance reservations required.
For more information and to purchase tickets, please contact the Hofstra Cultural Center at 516-463-5669. Tickets for performances of Fiddler on the Roof are sold separately.

Sunday, October 25, 2 p.m.
Performance: Fiddler on the Roof
book by Joseph Stein
music by Jerry Bock and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick
directed by Cindy Rosenthal

John Cranford Adams Playhouse
Admission: Fee
For tickets, please call the John Cranford Adams Playhouse
Box Office at 516-463-6644, Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-3:45 p.m.

Tuesday, December 1, 4:30 p.m.
From Cabaret to the Camps:
One Woman's Journey into the Music of the Holocaust
Speaker: Lynn Torgove

Singer, director and cantor Lynn Torgove opens doors to a deeper understanding of the world of Holocaust music in her presentation, which draws on women's experiences at the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. Torgove presents her research on seven women musicians in the camp and performs selections from an original cabaret program she conceived and directed in 2010-11, which was based on these women's lives.

Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library
Ticket Prices:

$8 General Public
$7 Senior Citizen (over 65)
Two free tickets with current faculty/staff/student with current HofstraCard

Funding for both lectures has been provided by the Dorothy and Elmer Kirsch Endowment Fund for the Hofstra Cultural Center

Issues in Judaism Lecture Series
The Unknown Jewish Experience in the Far East

Speaker: Rabbi Marvin Tokayer is a renowned scholar and lecturer on the remote Jewish communities of the world. He served for many years as the only English-speaking, university trained Rabbi in the Far East, officiating at Jewish communities from India to Japan.

He is the author of over 20 books, in Japanese, on Judaica and Japan including the well received The Fugu Plan, the untold story of the Japanese and the Jews during World War II, which became an award – winning PBS documentary on Sugihara (Japan's unsung Schindler), describing the heroic escape of European Jews to Japan and China during the Holocaust.

His most recent book, Pepper, Silk & Ivory, containing amazing stories about Jews and the Far East, was published recently and will be a featured PBS documentary.

From the Occupation of Japan to the Raj in India:
Jewish Influences in the Orient

Date: Thursday, October 23

The Far Edge of the Diaspora: Burma, Mongolia, Singapore and Manchuria

Date: Thursday, October 30
Location for both Lectures:
Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater
Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

Tickets:
$8 general public
$7 senior citizen (over 65 with ID) or PIER member
$5 Matriculated non-Hofstra student
Student under 18 receives one free ticket.
Two free tickets with current faculty/staff/student HofstraCard (must present HofstraCard at Box Office)
On Sale beginning September 24.

Supported in part by the Dorothy and Elmer Kirsch Endowment for the Hofstra Cultural Center.

For tickets for these events, please contact the John Cranford Adams Playhouse Box
Office at 516-463-6644, Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-3:45 p.m.

 

The Jewish Diaspora in the Far East--POSTPONED

Please note: The Jewish Diaspora in the Far East on April 3 and April 7, which were scheduled to take place in the Cultural Center Theater have been postponed til the fall semester due to scheduling conflicts.

Renowned lecturer on the remote Jewish communities of the world, Rabbi Marvin Tokayer, will discuss the The Jewish Diaspora in the Far East. He is author of The Fugu Plan and 40 other books. Historical consultant for the award-winning PBS documentary, Sugihara: Conspiracy of Kindness (about Japan’s “unsung Schindler”).

Issues in Judaism Lecture Series is presented by the Hofstra Cultural Center and Hofstra Hillel: The Center for Jewish Life on Campus.

Dates: Thursday, April 3, 2014 and Monday, April 7, 2014

Middle East Update With Michael Tuchfeld--CANCELLED

Please note: this event, Middle East Update with Michael Tuchfeld has been canceled due to scheduling conflicts.
Political Analyst and Columnist, Michael Tuchfeld, will share his insights on the Middle East. He is a columnist for Makor Rishon magazine, and host for Radio Galey Israel. He is former Parliamentary Correspondent and News Editor at TV2, The Knesset Channel and IBA (Israel Broadcasting Authority).

Issues in Judaism Lecture Series is presented by the Hofstra Cultural Center and Hofstra Hillel:
The Center for Jewish Life on Campus.

Dates: Tuesday, April 29, 2014

For more information, please contact the Hofstra Cultural Center at 516-463-5669 or visit hofstra.edu/culture.

Fall 2013

From Ancient Babylon to America:
The History and Culture of Iranian Jews
Speaker:    Houman Sarshar
Member, University Seminar Series, Columbia University
Director of Publications, Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History
Editor, The History of Contemporary Iranian Jews, Vols. 2-4, 1997-2000;
Esther’s Children: A Portrait of Iranian Jews, 2002;
Jewish Communities of Iran: Entries on Judeo-Persian Communities
Published by the Encyclopædia Iranica, 2011
Thursday, October 17, 7 p.m.
The Jews of Iran Throughout the Ages
Thursday, November 14, 7 p.m.
The Role of Iranian Jews in the Preservation, Proliferation, and
Development of Persian Music

Location for both Lectures:
Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater
Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus
Supported in part by the Dorothy and Elmer Kirsch Endowment for the Hofstra Cultural Center.

Tickets: On sale beginning September 17.
$8 (for each lecture)
$7 senior citizen (over 65)
Two free tickets (for each lecture) with current
faculty/staff/student HofstraCard (must present HofstraCard at Box Office)

Sunday, October 27, 7 p.m.
Klezmer Concert:
Yale Strom and Hot Pstromi: Hot and Spicy (Hays un Scharf)!
Yale Strom, violin; Elizabeth Schwartz, vocals; David Licht, percussion;
Sprocket, bass; Lou Fanucchi and Peter Stan, accordion; Norbert Stachel, reeds
Location:
The Helene Fortunoff Theater
Monroe Lecture Center
California Avenue, South Campus
Tickets: On Sale beginning September 24.
$10 general public
$8 senior citizen (over 65 with ID)
Student under 18 receives one free ticket.
Two free tickets with current faculty/staff/student HofstraCard (must present HofstraCard at Box Office)
Tickets are on sale For tickets for these events, please contact the John Cranford Adams Playhouse Box
Office at 516-463-6644, Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-3:45 p.m.

For more information on the Issues in Judaism Lecture Series, call the Hofstra Cultural Center at 516-463-5669 or visit hofstra.edu/culture.