(Visit
our Program Archive to see past events)
TJF Programs
and Events - January through March 2012
Jewish Political Life: A Historical Perspective
A
Three-lecture Series
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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