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  A Cross and a Star: Memoirs of a Jewish Girl in Chile

  Marjorie Agosin

  November 17, 2013

  A Cross and a Star: Memoirs of a Jewish Girl in Chile by Marjorie Agosin

  Facilitated by Dr. Alicia Partnoy, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures

  In this unique memoir, renowned poet, fiction writer, critic, and activist Marjorie Agosin writes in the voice of her mother, Frida, the daughter of European Jewish immigrants, living in Chile in the years before, during, and after World War II. Dr. Partnoy will share her personal experiences of the author.

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  Rav Hisda's Daughter, Book I: Apprentice: A Novel of Love, the Talmud, and Sorcery

  Maggie Anton

  June 23 2013: Sunday 2-3:30pm

  Rav Hisda's Daughter, Book 1: Apprentice: A Novel of Love, the Talmud, and Sorcery by Maggie Anton

  "This is more than a touching story of love and loss, a journey of an independent-minded woman or a tale of magic and witchcraft. Anton’s imagination takes you into the lives of our Talmudic Sages-- as young students and venerated teachers, shy fiancés and strong husbands, devoted sons and caring fathers. She also fills in the blank spaces for us – the rich and important lives of women and girls of those times. Researching her material well, Anton recreates Talmudic times, both the day to day ordinary existence and life fraught with danger and destruction, yet surviving to bring us Jewish law and wisdom unto this very day." --- Blu Greenberg, founding president of JOFA, the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance; author of On Women and Judaism: A View from Tradition.

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  Shanghai Diary: A Young Girl's Journey from Hitler's Hate to War-Torn China

  Ursula Bacon

  April 21, 2013: Sunday 2-3:30pm

  Shanghai Diary, by Ursula Bacon

  By the late 1930s, Europe sat on the brink of a world war. As the holocaust approached, many Jewish families in Germany fled to one of the only open port available to them: Shanghai. Once called "the armpit of the world," Shanghai ultimately served as the last resort for tens of thousands of Jews desperate to escape Hitler's "Final Solution." Against this backdrop, 11-year-old Ursula Bacon and her family made the difficult 8,000-mile voyage to Shanghai, with its promise of safety. But instead of a storybook China, they found overcrowded streets teeming with peddlers, beggars, opium dens, and prostitutes. Amid these abysmal conditions, Ursula learned of her own resourcefulness and found within herself the fierce determination to survive.

  Elizabeth Drummond, Asst. Professor, Department of History, facilitator

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  The Crisis of Zionism

  Peter Beinart

  December 15, 2013

  The Crisis of Zionism by Peter Beinart

  Facilitated by Dr. Jeff Siker, Professor of New Testament & Christian Origins

  A dramatic shift is taking place in Israel and America. In Israel, the deepening occupation of the West Bank is putting Israeli democracy at risk. In the United States, the refusal of major Jewish organizations to defend democracy in the Jewish state is alienating many young liberal Jews from Zionism itself. In the next generation, the liberal Zionist dream--the dream of a state that safeguards the Jewish people and cherishes democratic ideals--may die.

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  Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness

  Joseph Dorman

  September 29, 2013 -FILM SCREENING -11:00am-12:45pm

  Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness, directed by Joseph Dorman

  A portrait of writer Sholem Aleichem, whose stories about Tevye the milkman became the basis of the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof. Aleichem (1859-1916) was a rebellious wordsmith who created a new genre of literature and used his remarkable humor to encapsulate the realities of the Eastern European Jewish world in the late nineteenth century. Using a rich collection of archival footage, the film recreates a time in czarist Russia when Jews were second-class citizens and frequent scapegoats in times of social and political unrest. (2011, 93 MINS.)

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  What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Stories

  Nathan Englander

  October 20, 2013

  What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Stories by Nathan Englander

  Facilitated by Dr. Audrey Thacker, Department of English, California State University, Northridge

  Eight stories from the celebrated novelist and short-story writer Nathan Englander display a gifted young author grappling with the great questions of modern life, with a command of language and the imagination that place Englander at the very forefront of contemporary American fiction… ".. . If Mr. Englander is in fact the future of Jewish-American prose, then that future looks to be a far more moral and compassionate one than the writing of the recent past. . . . the humor and the brilliance, and the investigation of cultural identity, are all still there.” —The New York Observer

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  The Sabbath

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  March 17, 2013: Sunday 2-3:30pm

  The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Elegant, passionate, and filled with the love of God's creation, Abraham Joshua Heschel's The Sabbath has been hailed as a classic of Jewish spirituality ever since its original publication-and has been read by thousands of people seeking meaning in modern life. In this brief yet profound meditation on the meaning of the Seventh Day, Heschel introduced the idea of an "architecture of holiness" that appears not in space but in time Judaism, he argues, is a religion of time: it finds meaning not in space and the material things that fill it but in time and the eternity that imbues it, so that "the Sabbaths are our great cathedrals." A scholarly meditation of the nature and celebration of the Sabbath.

  Linda Yellin, Asst. Professor, Department of Sociology, facilitator

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  Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews

  Eva Hoffman

  February 10, 2013: Sunday 2-3:30pm

  Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews, by Eva Hoffman

  Eva Hoffman's Shtetl examines the history of Jewish small towns, bringing to life the vibrancy and complexity of Jewish Polish life over the course of centuries from the 16th century to the Holocaust. Using the town of Braƒsk case study, Hoffman examines the institutions, culture, beliefs, social structures and tensions that characterized Jewish life in Poland as well as Polish Jews relations with their Christian neighbors. While framed through the lens of the tragedy of the Holocaust, Hoffman's history of Polish Jews and Jewish-Christian relations at the same time tries to recapture the complexity that characterized this history.

  Elizabeth Drummond, Asst. Professor, Department of History, facilitator