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Welcome to The Jewish Forum, an independent non-profit
educational organization for adults, based in
metropolitan Detroit, Michigan.
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The Jewish Forum presents a three-lecture series…
Jewish Political Life: A Historical Perspective
Scholars
from the United States and Israel present a fascinating three-lecture
series that offer revealing and often unexpected views of Jews and
politics from World War II to the present.
1.
“Israel As a Jewish and Democratic State” -
Prof. Sammy Smooha
Wednesday,
January 18th, 2012, 7:30 pm
Israel is a
Jewish and democratic state, but this dual character is the key issue that
divides the secular and religious, the left and right, and Arab and Jewish
citizens. What are the concrete manifestations of the Jewish nature of the
state, what is the value of Zionism to Israel’s
Jewishness, and are democracy and Judaism compatible in ideology
and practice?
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Dr. Sammy
Smooha
is
professor of sociology and former Dean of the Faculty of Social
Sciences at the University of Haifa, as well as former president of
the Israeli Sociological Society. This year he is a Fellow at the
Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of
Michigan. The Israel Prize laureate for Sociology in 2008,
Smooha specializes in ethnic relations in
the world and Israel. He has published widely on the internal
divisions and conflicts in Israeli society, especially on the
relations between Arab and Jewish citizens. Among the books he has
authored are Israel: Pluralism and
Conflict and Arabs and Jews in Israel, and, as co-editor, The
Fate of Ethnic Democracy in Post-Communist Europe. |
2.
“The Freedoms for Which We Fight: Judaism and Democracy on the Home Front
During World War II” -
Dr. Mia Sara Bruch
Wednesday,
February 15th, 2012, 7:30 pm
What did World
War II mean for American Jews on the home front? Mia Sara Bruch reveals
the role of religion generally and Judaism specifically in the nation's
response to fascism, showing how they influenced the articulation and
defense of American democratic values and created a faith-based
mobilization against fascism.
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Dr. Mia Sara Bruch
received her Ph.D. in history from Stanford
University. She has received awards and fellowships from the
National Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Center for Jewish
History, and the Andrew W. Mellon foundation, and is also the
recipient of Stanford University's Centennial Award for teaching and
the Lieberman Prize, the university's highest honor for graduate
students. She is currently a fellow at the University of Michigan’s
Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic studies, where she is working
on a book project entitled The Faith of Democracy: World War II,
the Cold War, and American Religious Pluralism. In addition to
her work on religious pluralism and American Jewry, she has also
written on African-American intellectual history, photography and
culture in the 1950s, and contemporary American Islam. She has also
written outside the academy, on the Iranian women's movement, the
Turkish-Kurdish conflict, and democracy promotion for such
organizations as the Aspen Institute, the Atlantic Council, and the
TED Conference. She has co-authored books with Scott Thomas (the
design director of the Obama presidential campaign) and novelist
Jonathan Safran
Foer. |
3.
“Politics and Perspectives on the Holocaust in Wartime Soviet Union” -
Prof. Zvi Gitelman
Wednesday, March
14th, 2012, 7:30 pm
The Soviet Union
was the only Nazi-occupied country where Jews could resist as part of the
regular military, as well as in partisan formations. About half a million
Soviet Jews fought in the Red Army, and about 150,000 were killed in
combat. Their perspectives on the war and the Holocaust differ radically
from those of Jews elsewhere, though the Soviet government’s treatment of
the Shoah, like that of other allied governments, was driven by political
and social considerations. This talk explores how and why Soviet
government perspectives, and those of the Jews, differ from their
counterparts in the West, and examines how
those differences matter today.
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Dr. Zvi
Gitelman
is
Professor of Political Science and Preston R.
Tisch Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of
Michigan, where he has served as Director of the Center for Russian
and East European Studies and of the Frankel Center for Judaic
Studies. He has been a visiting professor at Tel Aviv and Hebrew
Universities, Central European University in Budapest, and the Russian
State University for the Humanities, and a Research Fellow at Harvard,
Princeton and Oxford. Gitelman received
his Master’s and Doctoral degrees at Columbia University. He is the
author or editor of fourteen books and over 100 articles in scholarly
journals. His acclaimed A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of
Russia and the Soviet Union since 1881 was published in 2001. His
most recent edited volume is Ethnicity or Religion? The Evolution
of Jewish Identities. In 2012 Cambridge University Press will
publish Jewish Identities in Post-Communist Russia and Ukraine: an
Uncertain Ethnicity. Among various professional and communal
boards, Gitelman serves on the Council of
the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. |
Venue: Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit
6600 W. Maple Rd., West Bloomfield, Michigan
Fees:
$25 for the full series or $10 per session.
$5 per session for students and Jewish communal professionals.
Advance registration requested by Monday, January 16. Registration via
check or major credit card.
Three ways to register:
call
248.354.6415, or
e-mail
lectures@thejewishforum.org, or
on-line at
jewishdetroit.org/jewsandpolitics.
*This series is co-sponsored by:
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