Last Year's Events

Jewish Studies drew impressive crowds and attention to several significant programs in the 2008-09 academic year.  Below are highlights, which continued our effort at exploring the public dimensions of Jewish life and culture.  Speakers' affiliations shown below were in effect at the time of their Kean University visit.

11th Annual Jewish Studies Lecture/Artists Series

"Negotiating Adversity"

 

An original score performed live by the seven-piece BQE orchestra brought to vivid life "The Golem," a silent, 1920 German film depicting an ancient Hebrew legend and classic example of German expressionism. 

 

Mark M. Anderson (Columbia University) joined Tom Nazziola in a panel discussion after the film screening (March 11)

 

 

 

Annie Bergen, the popular classical music host on New York City's radio station WQXR-FM, narrated a 25th anniversary music/talk performance of chamber music by Israeli composer Paul-Ben Haim. 

 

Pullitzer Prize winnter Shulamit Ran provided additional insight into her mentor's journey in Weimar Germany to Palestine, where he acquired a reputation for fusing European and Mediterranean musical tradition (March 26).

 

 

Acclaimed critics Joshua Ramo Cooper (author, The Age of the Unthinkable), Noah Feldman (Harvard University), and Carol Gluck (Columbia University) key-noted the two-day conference "Historical Perspectives & Public Policy: How Old Rules Fare in a New World Order."  

The conference, cosponsored by the History Department, presented 10 papers, as well as two panels comprising eight Kean University faculty, that illuminated the influence of historical lessons on great political decisions (April 2-3).

 

 

Other Jewish Studies-Cosponsored Events
(2008-09)

 

Suzanne Vromen (Bard College) discusser her 2008 book in a lecture, "Shedding Light on Dark Times: Belgian Nuns and Their Daring Rescue of Young Jews from the Nazis" (March 23).

Zvi Bielski, son of one of the Bielski brothers who fought the Nazis in the forest of Belarus in World War II and saved the lives of mor than 1200 jews, spoke after a screening of Defiance about the making of the film (April 23).