WINNERS
In the Category of Early Modern and Modern Jewish History:
How Jewish is Jewish History
MOSHE ROSMAN, Bar-Ilan University
(Littman Library of Jewish Civilization)
The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period
FRANCESCA TRIVELLATO, Yale University
(Yale University Press)
In the Category of Social Science, Anthropology, and Folklore:
Tours that Bind: Diaspora, Pilgrimage, and Israeli Birthright Tourism
SHAUL KELNER, Vanderbilt University
(NYU Press)
HONORABLE MENTIONS
In the Category of Social Science, Anthropology, and Folklore:
Gender and American Jews: Patterns in Work, Education, & Famliy in Contemporary Life
HARRIET HARTMAN & MOSHE HARTMAN
(Brandeis University Press)
Mediterranean Israeli Music and the Politics of the Aesthetic
AMY HOROWITZ
(Wayne State University Press)
WINNERS
In the category of Jewish Literature and Linguistics
Songs in Dark Times: Yiddish Poetry of Struggle from Scottsboro to Palestine
Harvard University Press
AMELIA M. GLASER, University of California, San Diego
In the category of Medieval and Early Modern Jewish History and Culture
The Promise and Peril of Credit:
What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells Us about the Making of European Commercial Society
Princeton University Press
FRANCESCA TRIVELLATO, Institute for Advanced Study
In the category of Modern Jewish History and Culture: Africa, Americas, Asia, and Oceania
Forging Ties, Forging Passports: Migration and the Modern Sephardi Diaspora
Stanford University Press
DEVI MAYS, University of Michigan
In the category of Philosophy and Jewish Thought
Levinas’s Politics: Justice, Mercy, Universality
University of Pennsylvania Press
ANNABEL HERZOG, University of Haifa
FINALISTS
In the category of Jewish Literature and Linguistics
Salvage Poetics: Post-Holocaust American Jewish Folk Ethnographies
Wayne State University Press
SHEILA E. JELEN, University of Kentucky
In the category of Medieval and Early Modern Jewish History and Culture
Rashi’s Commentary on the Torah: Canonization and Resistance in the Reception of a Jewish Classic
Oxford University Press
ERIC LAWEE, Bar-Ilan University
In the category of Modern Jewish History and Culture: Africa, Americas, Asia, and Oceania
The Art of the Jewish Family: A History of Women in Early New York in Five Objects
Bard Graduate Center
LAURA LEIBMAN, Reed College
In the category of Philosophy and Jewish Thought
The Invention of Jewish Theocracy: The Struggle for Legal Authority in Modern Israel
Oxford University Press
ALEXANDER KAYE, Brandeis University
WINNERS
In the Category of Jews and the Arts:
Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World: Toward a New Jewish Archaeology
STEVEN FINE, Yeshiva University
(Cambridge University Press)
In the Category of Biblical Studies, Rabbinics, and Archaeology:
The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel
BENJAMIN D. SOMMER, Jewish Theological Seminary
(Cambridge University Press)
NOTABLE MENTIONS
In the Category of Biblical Studies, Rabbinics, and Archaeology
RICHARD KALMIN, Jewish Theological Seminary
Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine
(Oxford University Press)
In the Category of Jews and the Arts
Maqam and Liturgy: Ritual, Music, and Aesthetics of Syrian Jews in Brooklyn
MARK KLIGMAN, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
(Wayne State University Press)
From the Ghetto to the Melting Pot: Israel Zangwill’s Jewish Plays
EDNA NAHSHON, Jewish Theological Seminary
(Wayne State University Press)
WINNERS
In the category of Biblical Studies, Rabbinics, and Jewish History and Culture in Antiquity
Time in the Babylonian Talmud: Natural and Imagined
Times in Jewish Law and Narrative
Cambridge University Press
LYNN KAYE, Brandeis University
In the category of Jews and the Arts: Music, Performance, and Visual
Writing on the Wall: Graffiti and the Forgotten
Jews of Antiquity
Princeton University Press
KAREN B. STERN, Brooklyn College
In the category of Modern Jewish History and Culture: Europe and Israel
Prince of the Press: How One Collector Built History’s
Most Enduring and Remarkable Jewish Library
Yale University Press
JOSHUA TEPLITSKY, Stony Brook University
In the category of Social Science, Anthropology, and Folklore
The Jews’ Indian: Colonialism, Pluralism,
and Belonging in America
Rutgers University Press
DAVID S. KOFFMAN, York University
FINALISTS
In the category of Biblical Studies, Rabbinics, and Jewish History and Culture in Antiquity
Job: A New Translation
Yale University Press
EDWARD L. GREENSTEIN, Bar-Ilan University
In the category of Jews and the Arts: Music, Performance, and Visual
Possessed Voices: Aural Remains from Modernist
Hebrew Theater
SUNY Press
RUTHIE ABELIOVICH, University of Haifa
In the category of Modern Jewish History and Culture: Europe and Israel
The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater
Indiana University Press
ALYSSA QUINT, YIVO
In the category of Social Science, Anthropology, and Folklore
Fighting for Dignity: Migrant Lives at Israel’s Margins
University of Pennsylvania Press
SARAH S. WILLEN, University of Connecticut
Fractured Tablets: Forgetfulness and Fallibility in Late Ancient Rabbinic Culture
Mira Balberg
University of California Press
Memory Spaces: Visualizing Identity in Jewish Women’s Graphic Narratives
Victoria Aarons
Wayne State University Press
The Baron: Maurice de Hirsch and the Jewish Nineteenth Century
Matthias Lehmann
Stanford University Press
The State of Desire: Religion and Reproductive Politics in the Promised Land
Lea Taragin-Zeller
New York University Press
Wealth, Poverty, and Charity in Jewish Antiquity
Gregg Gardner
University of California Press
Yiddish Lives On: Strategies of Language Transmission
Rebecca Margolis
McGill-Queen’s University Press
The Rain of Ash: Roma, Jews, and the Holocaust
Ari Joskowicz
Princeton University Press
Meat Matters: Ethnographic Refractions of the Beta Israel
Hagar Salamon
Indiana University Press
In the category of Biblical Studies, Rabbinics, and Jewish History and Culture in Antiquity
Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism
Princeton University Press
Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Fordham University
In the category of Jews and the Arts: Music, Performance, and Visual
A City in Fragments: Urban Text in Modern Jerusalem
Stanford University Press
Yair Wallach, SOAS University of London
In the category of Modern Jewish History and Culture: Europe and Israel
Yiddish in Israel: A History
Indiana University Press
Rachel Rojanski, Brown University
In the category of Social Science, Anthropology, and Folklore
Genetic Afterlives: Black Jewish Indigeneity in South Africa
Duke University Press
Noah Tamarkin, Cornell University
In the category of Biblical Studies, Rabbinics, and Jewish History and Culture in Antiquity
The Talmud's Red Fence: Menstrual Impurity and Difference in Babylonian Judaism and Its Sasanian Context
Oxford University Press
Shai Secunda, Bard College
In the category of Jews and the Arts: Music, Performance, and Visual
Transcending Dystopia: Music, Mobility, and the Jewish Community in Germany, 1945–1989
Oxford University Press
Tina Frühauf, Columbia University
In the category of Modern Jewish History and Culture: Europe and Israel
A Citizen of Yiddishland: Dovid Sfard and the Jewish Communist Milieu in Poland
Peter Lang
Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov, Polish Academy of Sciences
In the category of Social Science, Anthropology, and Folklore
Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age
Princeton University Press
Ayala Fader, Fordham University
WINNERS
In the category of Jewish Literature and Linguistics
Strangers in the Archive: Literary Evidence and London’s East End
HEIDI KAUFMAN
(University of Virginia Press)
In the category of Medieval and Early Modern Jewish History and Culture
Poisoned Wells: Accusations, Persecution, and Minorities in Medieval Europe, 1321 – 1422
TZAFRIR BARZILAY
(University of Pennsylvania Press)
In the category of Modern Jewish History and Culture: Africa, Americas, Asia, and Oceania
A Fortress in Brooklyn: Race, Real Estate, and the Making of Hasidic Williamsburg
NATHANIEL DEUTSCH and MICHAEL CASPER
(Yale University Press)
In the category of Philosophy and Jewish Thought
The Kabbalistic Tree
J. H. CHAJES
(The Pennsylvania State University Press)
FINALISTS
In the category of Jewish Literature and Linguistics
The Object of Jewish Literature: A Material History
BARBARA E. MANN
(Yale University Press)
In the category of Medieval and Early Modern Jewish History and Culture
Catholic Spectacle and Rome’s Jews: Early Modern Conversion and Resistance
EMILY MICHELSON
(Princeton University Press)
In the category of Modern Jewish History and Culture: Africa, Americas, Asia, and Oceania
Baghdadi Jewish Networks in the Age of Nationalism
S. R. GOLDSTEIN-SABBAH
(Brill)
In the category of Philosophy and Jewish Thought
Jewish Politics in Spinoza’s Amsterdam
ANNE O. ALBERT
(The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization)
WINNERS
In the Category of Gender Studies:
Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe
ELISHEVA BAUMGARTEN
(Princeton University Press)
In the Category of Philosophy and Jewish Thought:
Jewish Messianism and the History of Philosophy
MARTIN KAVKA
(Cambridge University Press)
NOTABLE SELECTION
In the Category of Philosophy and Jewish Thought:
Converts, Heretics, and Lepers: Maimonides and the Outsider
JAMES A. DIAMOND
(University of Notre Dame Press)
WINNERS
In the category of Jewish Literature and Linguistics
A Rich Brew: How Cafes Created Modern Jewish Culture
SHACHAR PINSKER, University of Michigan
New York University Press
In the category of Medieval and Early Modern Jewish History and Culture
Coming of Age in Medieval Egypt: Female Adolescence, Jewish Law, and Ordinary Culture
EVE KRAKOWSKI, Princeton University
Princeton University Press
In the category of Modern Jewish History and Culture: Africa, Americas, Asia, and Oceania
Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century
JAMES LOEFFLER, University of Virginia
Yale University Press
In the category of Philosophy and Jewish Thought
Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
SAMUEL BRODY, The University of Kansas
Indiana University Press
FINALISTS
In the category of Jewish Literature and Linguistics
Strange Cocktail: Translation and the Making of Modern Hebrew Poetry
ADRIANA X. JACOBS, University of Oxford
University of Michigan Press
In the category of Medieval and Early Modern Jewish History and Culture
Dominion Built of Praise: Panegyric and Legitimacy among Jews in the Medieval Mediterranean
JONATHAN DECTER, Brandeis University
University of Pennsylvania Press
In the category of Modern Jewish History and Culture: Africa, Americas, Asia, and Oceania
American Jewry and the Reinvention of the East European Jewish Past
MARKUS KRAH, University of Potsdam
DeGruyter
In the category of Philosophy and Jewish Thought
Philo of Alexandria: An Intellectual Biography
MAREN NIEHOFF, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Yale University Press
WINNERS
In the category of Biblical Studies, Rabbinics, and Jewish History and Culture in Antiquity
Blood for Thought: The Reinvention of Sacrifice in Early Rabbinic Literature
MIRA BALBERG, University of California, San Diego
University of California Press
In the category of Jews and the Arts: Music, Performance, and Visual
The Jewish Bible: A Material History
DAVID STERN, Harvard University
University of Washington Press
In the category of Modern Jewish History and Culture: Europe and Israel
Jabotinsky’s Children: Polish Jews and the Rise of Right-Wing Zionism
DANIEL KUPFERT HELLER, Monash University
Princeton University Press
In the category of Social Science, Anthropology, and Folklore
When the State Winks: The Performance of Jewish Conversion in Israel
MICHAL KRAVEL-TOVI, Tel Aviv University
Columbia University Press
FINALISTS
In the category of Biblical Studies, Rabbinics, and Jewish History and Culture in Antiquity
The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity
EVA MROCZEK, University of California, Davis
Oxford University Press
In the category of Jews and the Arts: Music, Performance, and Visual
Honest Bodies: Revolutionary Modernism in the Dances of Anna Sokolow
HANNAH KOSSTRIN, The Ohio State University
Oxford University Press
In the category of Modern Jewish History and Culture: Europe and Israel
A Home for All Jews: Citizenship, Rights, and National Identity in the New Israeli State
ORIT ROZIN, Tel Aviv University
Brandeis University Press
In the category of Social Science, Anthropology, and Folklore
Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought
CHAD ALAN GOLDBERG, University of Wisconsin-Madison
The University of Chicago Press
WINNERS
In the category of Jewish Literature and Linguistics
Golem: Modern Wars and Their Monsters
MAYA BARZILAI, University of Michigan
New York University Press
In the category of Medieval and Early Modern Jewish History and Culture
Contested Treasure: Jews and Authority in the Crown of Aragon
THOMAS W. BARTON, University of San Diego
Pennsylvania State University Press
In the category of Modern Jewish History and Culture: Africa, Americas, Asia, and Oceania
Young Lions: How Jewish Authors Reinvented the American War Novel
LEAH GARRETT, Monash University
Northwestern University Press
In the category of Philosophy and Jewish Thought
A Political Theory for the Jewish People
CHAIM GANS, Tel Aviv University
Oxford University Press
FINALISTS
In the category of Jewish Literature and Linguistics
The Marriage Plot: Or, How Jews Fell in Love with Love, and with Literature
NAOMI SEIDMAN, Graduate Theological Union
Stanford University Press
In the category of Medieval and Early Modern Jewish History and Culture
Anti-Jewish Riots in the Crown of Aragon and the Royal Response, 1391-1392
BENJAMIN R. GAMPEL, Jewish Theological Seminary
Cambridge University Press
In the category of Modern Jewish History and Culture: Africa, Americas, Asia, and Oceania
Across Legal Lines: Jews and Muslims in Modern Morocco
JESSICA M. MARGLIN, University of Southern California
Yale University Press
In the category of Philosophy and Jewish Thought
The Christian Schism in Jewish History and Jewish Memory
JOSHUA EZRA BURNS, Marquette University
Cambridge University Press
WINNERS
In the Category of Biblical Studies, Rabbinics, and Jewish History & Culture in Antiquity:
What's Divine about Divine Law? Early Perspectives
CHRISTINE HAYES, Yale University
(Princeton University Press)
In the Category of Jews and the Arts (Visual, Performance, Music):
Jewish Contiguities and the Soundtrack of Israeli History
ASSAF SHELLEG, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
(Oxford University Press)
In the Category of Modern Jewish History and Culture: Europe and Israel:
Protocols of Justice: The Pinkas of the Metz Rabbinic Court, 1771–1789
JAY R. BERKOVITZ, University of Massachusetts Amherst
(Brill)
In the Category of Social Science, Anthropology, and Folklore:
Rhinestones, Religion, and the Republic: Fashioning Jewishness in France
KIMBERLY A. ARKIN, Boston University
(Stanford University Press)
FINALISTS
In the Category of Biblical Studies, Rabbinics, and Jewish History & Culture in Antiquity:
Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud
MOULIE VIDAS, Princeton University
(Princeton University Press)
In the Category of Jews and the Arts (Visual, Performance, Music):
Roman Vishniac Rediscovered
MAYA BENTON, International Center of Photography
(DelMonico Books/Prestel/International Center of Photography)
In the Category of Modern Jewish History and Culture: Europe and Israel:
Beyond Violence: Jewish Survivors in Poland and Slovakia, 1944–1948
ANNA CICHOPEK-GAJRAJ, Arizona State University
(Cambridge University Press)
In the Category of Social Science, Anthropology, and Folklore:
Jaffa Shared and Shattered: Contrived Coexistence in Israel/Palestine
DANIEL MONTERESCU, Central European University
(Indiana University Press)
HONORABLE MENTIONS
In the Category of Jews and the Arts (Visual, Performance, Music):
Social Concern and Left Politics in Jewish American Art
MATTHEW BAIGELL,Rutgers University
(Syracuse University Press)
Graphic Details: Jewish Women's Confessional Comics in Essays and Interviews
SARAH LIGHTMAN, University of Glasgow
(McFarland)
In the Category of Social Science, Anthropology, and Folklore:
Thin Description: Ethnography and the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem
JOHN L. JACKSON, JR., University of Pennsylvania
(Harvard University Press)
WINNERS
In the Category of Cultural Studies and Media Studies:
Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Jewish Iconography
SARA LIPTON, State University of New York, Stony Brook
(Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company)
In the Category of Modern Jewish History—Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania:
Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era
JULIA PHILLIPS COHEN, Vanderbilt University
(Oxford University Press)
In the Category of Philosophy and Jewish Thought:
Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848
SVEN-ERIK ROSE, University of California, Davis
(Brandeis University Press)
FINALISTS
In the Category of Cultural Studies and Media Studies:
Roman Vishniac Rediscovered
MAYA BENTON, International Center of Photography
(DelMonico Books/Prestel/International Center of Photography)
Dreamland of Humanists: Warburg, Cassirer, Panofsky, and the Hamburg School
EMILY LEVINE, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
(The University of Chicago Press)
In the Category of Modern Jewish History—Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania:
The Rag Race: How Jews Sewed Their Way to Success in America and the British Empire
ADAM D. MENDELSOHN, University of Cape Town
(New York University Press)
In the Category of Philosophy and Jewish Thought:
The Modernity of Others: Jewish Anti-Catholicism in Germany and France
ARI JOSKOWICZ, Vanderbilt University
(Stanford University Press)
Revelation and Authority: Sinai in Jewish Scripture and Tradition
BENJAMIN D. SOMMER, Jewish Theological Seminary
(Yale University Press)
WINNERS
In the Category of of Jewish Literature and Linguistics:
Poetic Trespass: Writing between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine
LITAL LEVY, Princeton University
(Princeton University Press)
Unclean Lips: Obscenity, Jews, and American Culture
JOSHUA LAMBERT, Yiddish Book Center / UMASS-Amherst
(New York University Press)
In the Category of Medieval and Early Modern Jewish History:
Palaces of Time: Jewish Calendar and Culture in Early Modern Europe
ELISHEVA CARLEBACH, Columbia University
(Harvard University Press)
In the Category of Modern Jewish History—European Countries:
The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755–1816
PAWEL MACIEJKO, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
(University of Pennsylvania Press)
HONORABLE MENTIONS
In the Category of of Medieval and Early Modern Jewish History:
After Expulsion: 1492 and the Making of Sephardic Jewry
JONATHAN RAY, Georgetown University
(New York University Press)
The Scandal of Kabbalah: Leon Modena, Jewish Mysticism, Early Modern Venice
YAACOB DWECK, Princeton University
(Princeton University Press)
Sinners on Trial: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation
MAGDA TETER, Wesleyan University
(Harvard University Press)
In the Category of Modern Jewish History—European Countries:
Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk
ELISSA BEMPORAD, Queens College, CUNY
(Indiana University Press)
Yankel's Tavern: Jews, Liquor, and Life in the Kingdom of Poland
GLENN DYNNER, Sarah Lawrence College
(Oxford University Press)
In the Category of Biblical Studies, Rabbinics, and Jewish History and Culture in Antiquity:
The Intellectual History and Rabbinic Culture of Medieval Ashkenaz
EPHRAIM KANARFOGEL, Yeshiva University
(Wayne State University Press)
In the Category of Social Science, Anthropology, and Folklore:
The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement
NATHANIEL DEUTSCH, University of California - Santa Cruz
(Harvard University Press)
In the Category of Jews and the Arts—Visual, Performance, and Music:
Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust
DAVID SHNEER, University of Colorado - Boulder
(Rutgers University Press)
HONORABLE MENTIONS
In the Category of Biblical Studies, Rabbinics, and Jewish History and Culture in Antiquity:
The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture: Jewish Ways of Seeing in Late Antiquity
RACHEL NEIS, University of Michigan
(Cambridge University Press)
Stories of the Law: Narrative Discourse and the Construction of Authority in the Mishnah
MOSHE SIMON-SHOSHAN, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
(Oxford University Press)
In the Category of Social Science, Anthropology, and Folklore:
Jewish Identities in Postcommunist Russia and Ukraine: An Uncertain Ethnicity
ZVI GITELMAN, University of Michigan
(Cambridge University Press)
Jewish Poland Revisited: Heritage Tourism in Unquiet Places
ERICA T. LEHRER, Concordia University
(Indiana University Press)
In the Category of Jews and the Arts—Visual, Performance, and Music:
MARC MICHAEL EPSTEIN, Vassar College
Medieval Haggadah: Art, Narrative & Religious Imagination
(Yale University Press)
In the Category of Biblical Studies, Rabbinics, and Jewish History and Culture in Antiquity:
The Intellectual History and Rabbinic Culture of Medieval Ashkenaz
EPHRAIM KANARFOGEL, Yeshiva University
(Wayne State University Press)
In the Category of Social Science, Anthropology, and Folklore:
The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement
NATHANIEL DEUTSCH, University of California - Santa Cruz
(Harvard University Press)
In the Category of Jews and the Arts—Visual, Performance, and Music:
Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust
DAVID SHNEER, University of Colorado - Boulder
(Rutgers University Press)
HONORABLE MENTIONS
In the Category of Biblical Studies, Rabbinics, and Jewish History and Culture in Antiquity:
The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture: Jewish Ways of Seeing in Late Antiquity
RACHEL NEIS, University of Michigan
(Cambridge University Press)
Stories of the Law: Narrative Discourse and the Construction of Authority in the Mishnah
MOSHE SIMON-SHOSHAN, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
(Oxford University Press)
In the Category of Social Science, Anthropology, and Folklore:
Jewish Identities in Postcommunist Russia and Ukraine: An Uncertain Ethnicity
ZVI GITELMAN, University of Michigan
(Cambridge University Press)
Jewish Poland Revisited: Heritage Tourism in Unquiet Places
ERICA T. LEHRER, Concordia University
(Indiana University Press)
In the Category of Jews and the Arts—Visual, Performance, and Music:
MARC MICHAEL EPSTEIN, Vassar College
Medieval Haggadah: Art, Narrative & Religious Imagination
(Yale University Press)
Samantha M. Cooper, American Jews and the Making of the New York Opera Industry, 1880-1940
Debby Koren, Responsa in a Historical Context: A View of Post-Expulsion Spanish-Portuguese Jewish Communities through Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Responsa
Yosie Levine, Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi and the Battlegrounds of the Early Modern Rabbinate
Judith Lin, Belonging to Exile: Sephardic Homelands through Poetry
Lucas Wilson, At Home with the Holocaust: Postmemory, Domestic Space, and Second-Generation Holocaust Narratives
Polly Zavadivker, A Nation of Refugees: Lost Stories of Russia’s Jews in World War I
Esther Brownsmith, Three Biblical Metaphors of Women as Food: The Cutlet, the Dumpling, and the Vine
Rachel Feldman, Messianic Zionism in the Digital Age: Jews, Noahides, and the Third Temple Imaginary
Yaniv Feller, The Jewish Imperial Imagination: Leo Baeck and German Jewish Thought
Rachel Gordan, Postwar Stories: How Judaism Became an American Religion
Miriam Mora, Carrying a Big Schtick: American Jewish Acculturation and Masculinity in the Twentieth Century
Joseph Skloot, First Impressions: Sefer Ḥasidim and Early Modern Hebrew Printing
AJ Berkovitz, A Life of Psalms in Jewish Late Antiquity
Ayelet Brinn, “Even Women”: Gender, Mass Culture, and the Rise of the American Yiddish Press
Sarah Cramsey, Uprooting the Diaspora: Jewish Belonging and the "Ethnic Revolution" in Poland and Czechoslovakia, 1936–1946
Gordon Dale, The Life and Works of Rabbi Ben Zion Shenker
Grace Kessler Overbeke, The First Lady of Laughs: Standing Up for Jean Carroll
Rotem Rozental, Pre-State Photographic Archives and the Zionist Movement
Alexandra Birch (Columbia University): Hitler’s Twilight of the Gods: Music and the Orchestration of War and Genocide in Europe
Krista Dalton (Kenyon College): How the Rabbis Became Experts: Social Circles and Donor Networks in Jewish Late Antiquity
Jacob Daniels (University of Texas at Austin): The Jews of Edirne: The End of Ottoman Europe and the Arrival of Borders
Amit Levy (University of Haifa): A New Orient: From German Scholarship to Middle Eastern Studies in Israel
Eli Rubin (Chabad.org): Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity: An Existential History of Chabad Hasidism
Sarah Ellen Zarrow (Western Washington University): Displays of Belonging: Polish Jewish Collecting and Museums, 1891-1941
Carrie CiFers
University of Virginia, Department of Religious Studies
“Deciding Dinah: An Investigation in the Narrative Ethics of Genesis 34 and Its Re-Presentation in Jubilees, Josephus’
Judean Antiquities, and Joseph and Aseneth”
Molly Theodora Oringer
UCLA, Department of Anthropology
“Spatial Relations: Post-War Rehabilitation and the Afterlives of Jewish Terrains in Lebanon”
Steven Weiss Samols
University of Southern California, Department of History
“Capturing Difference, Making History: The Photobook as a Jewish Artifact”
Rebekah Van Sant-Clark
University of Oxford, Department of Theology and Religion
“Re-presenting Dislocation: The Poetics of Exile and Wilderness in Ancient Jewish Texts”
Patrick Angiolillo
New York University, Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies
“Praying By the Name: Divine Epithets in Ancient Jewish Prayer”
Sarah Greenberg
Cornell University, Department of Government
“‘The Law Is Not in Heaven’: Authority and Covenant in Jewish Political Thought”
Philip Keisman
CUNY Graduate Center, Department of Modern European History
“‘If in a Town With a Post Office, Go to the Local Post Office’: A German-Jewish Mission to Civilize in the Central European Borderlands””
Maggie Carlton
University of Michigan, Department of History
"Mothering the Race: Racial Uplift and Motherhood in Interwar Detroit"
Matthew Dudley
Yale University, Department of History
"Into the Anti-Archive: Jewish Law, Family, and Ottoman Imperial Administration in the Early Modern Cairo Geniza"
Rebekah Haigh
Princeton University, Department of Religion
"Scripting Identity: (En)Gendering Violence in the War Scroll and the Book of Revelation"
Shirelle Doughty
University of California, Berkeley, Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures
"Women and Haskalah: Rethinking Women's Role in the Development of Modern Hebrew and
Yiddish Literatures"
Eliav Grossman
Princeton University, Department of Religion
"The New Mishnah: Rabbinic Literature Between Late Antiquity and Early Islam"
Fellowship Recipients
ANNA BAND
University of Chicago, Department of History
“At Home in My Room: Jewish Spaces of Longing and Belonging in World War I through Weimar Berlin”
BENNY BAR-LAVI
University of Chicago, Department of History
“Figures of Godless Immanence: Judaism and Islam in the Christian Political Discourses of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe”
AMANDA SIEGEL
University of California, Berkeley,Department of Comparative Literature
“Jewish-Argentine Literature: Its Origins, Its Others, and Its ‘Afterlives’”
HANNAH ZAVES-GREENE
New York University, Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies
“Able to Be American: American Jews and the Public Charge Provision in United States Immigration Policy, 1891–1934”
Honorary Fellows
DANIELLA FARAH
Stanford University, Department of History
“Forming Iranian Jewish Identities: Education, National Belonging, the Jewish Press, and Integration, 1945–1981”
NICOLE FREEMAN
The Ohio State University, Department of History
“Our Children Are Our Future: Child Care, Education, and Rebuilding Jewish Life in Poland after the Holocaust, 1944–1950”
The AJS also recognizes the following finalists:
SAMUEL CATLIN
University of Chicago, Department of Comparative Literature and the Divinity School
“The Rest is Literature: Midrash, Secularism, and the Institution of ‘Theory’”
SAMUEL SHUMAN
University of Michigan, Departments of Anthropology and Judaic Studies
“Cutting Out the Middleman: Displacement and Distrust in the Global Diamond Industry”
SOPHIA SOBKO
University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Education
“Weaponized as White: The Contradictions of White, Soviet Jewish Assimilation in the United States”
DIKLA YOGEV
University of Toronto, Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies and Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies
“Police Legitimacy among the Haredim in Israel”
Alison Curry
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of History
"In the Space of the Dead: Tradition, Identity, and Everyday Life in the Jewish Cemeteries of Poland, 1918–1945"
Omer Shadmi
University of Haifa, Department of Jewish History
"The Imaginary Geography of the Babylonian Talmud and the Production of Babylonia"
Tzipora Weinberg
New York University, Department of Hebrew & Judaic Studies
"Still Small Voices: The Development of Orthodox Thought and Practice by ‘Lithuanian’ Jewish Women,
1921–1945"
Isaac Roszler
New York University, Department of Hebrew & Judaic Studies
"Legal Accretions in the Narratives of the Babylonian Talmud"
Roy Shukrun
McGill University, Department of Jewish Studies and University of Groningen, Department of Middle East Studies
"Moroccan Jewish Transnationalism: Movement and the Emergence of a
Global Diaspora in the 20th Century"
ROBIN BULLER, Department of History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
“Sephardi Immigrants in Paris: Navigating Community, Culture, and Citizenship between France and the Ottoman Empire, 1918–1945”
BAR GUZI, Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University
“Insisting on God: Naturalistic Theism in Twentieth-Century American Jewish Thought”
NECHAMA JUNI, Department of Religious Studies, Brown University
“Halakhic Women: Gender, Practice, and Obligation in American Orthodox Judaism”
TAMAR MENASHE, Department of History, Columbia University
“The Imperial Supreme Court and Jews in Cross-Confessional Legal Cultures in Germany, 1495–1690”
CHAYA NOVE, Department of Linguistics, CUNY Graduate Center
“Phonetic Contrast in New York Hasidic Yiddish Vowels”
REBECCA POLLACK, Department of Art History, CUNY Graduate Center
“Contextualizing British Holocaust Memorials and Museums: Form, Content, and Politics”
MIRIAM SCHULZ, Department of Germanic Languages, Columbia University
“Gornisht iz nit fargesn, keyner iz nit fargesn: Soviet Yiddish Culture, the Holocaust, and Networks of Memory, 1941–1991”
BEATA SZYMKOW, Department of History, Stanford University
“The Emergence of Polish Lwow: Violence and State Building in a Multiethnic City, 1918–1939”
MIRIAM-SIMMA WALFISH, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University
“Rabbis, Parents, and the Dynamics of Cultural Transmission in the Babylonian World”
MATTHEW BRITTINGHAM, Department of Religion, Emory University
“‘Our Jewish Workingmen May be Proud of Our Torah and of Our Religion’: Jewish Immigrants, Judaism, and the Yiddish Mass-Market (1900–1930)”
PRATIMA GOPALAKRISHNAN, Department of Religious Studies, Yale University
“Domestic Labor and Marital Obligations in the Ancient Jewish Household”
SARA HALPERN, Department of History, The Ohio State University
“‘These Unfortunate People’: The International Humanitarian Response to European Jewish Refugees in Shanghai, 1945–1951”
CHEN MANDEL-EDREI, Department of Comparative Literature, University of Maryland
“Planned Encounters: The Aesthetics and Ethics of Modern Hasidic Narratives—A Historical and Literary Perspective”
ADI NESTER, Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Colorado, Boulder
“People of the Book: Biblical Music Dramas and the Hermeneutic Formation of Collectivity”
NOAM SIENNA, Department of History, University of Minnesota
“Making and Reading Jewish Books in North Africa, 1700–1900”
DANIELLE WILLARD-KYLE, Department of History, Rutgers University
“Living in Liminal Spaces: Refugees in Italian Displaced Persons Camps, 1945–1951”
MEIRA WOLKENFELD, Department of Talmud, Yeshiva University
“Scent and Self: The Sense of Smell in the Cultural World of the Babylonian Talmud”
The AJS ALSO RECOGNIZES THE FOLLOWING FINALIST:
C. TOVA MARKENSON, Departments of Theatre and Drama, Northwestern University
“Performing Jewish Femininity: Prostitution and Protest on the Latin American Yiddish Stage (1900–1939)”
AYELET BRINN, Department of History, University of Pennsylvania
Miss Amerike: The Yiddish Press’s Encounter with the United States
GEOFFREY LEVIN, Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University
Another Nation: Israel, American Jews, and Palestinian Rights, 1949–1977
DANIEL MAY, Department of Religion, Princeton University
After Zion: Exception, Plurality, and Tragedy in Twentieth Century Jewish Political Thought
MARIS ROWE-MCCULLOCH, Department of History, University of Toronto
The Holocaust in a City under Siege: Occupation, Mass Violence, and Genocide in the Russian City of Rostov-on-Don, 1941–1943
ADRIEN SMITH, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Stanford University
The Functions of Yiddish: Jewish Language and Style in the Late Soviet Union, in Comparative Perspective
ALLISON SOMOGYI, Department of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
“Mine Was Not Hell, It was Purgatory”: Female Diarists and Jewish Life in Budapest under the Arrow Cross Regime, October 1944–February 1945
M ADRYAEL TONG, Department of Theology, Fordham University
“Given As A Sign”: Circumcision and Bodily Discourse in Late Antique Judaism and Christianity
ALEX WEISBERG, Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University
Before There Was Nature: Land, Ethics, and New Materialism in the Early Rabbinic Sabbatical Year Laws
SHLOMO ZUCKIER, Department of Religious Studies, Yale University
Flesh and Blood: The Reception of Biblical Sacrifice in Selected Talmudic Sources in Comparative Context
The AJS also recognizes the following finalist:
SARAH WOLF, Department of Religious Studies, Northwestern University
The Rabbinic Legal Imagination: Between Praxis and Scholasticism in the Babylonian Talmud
AVIV BEN-OR, Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University
The Possibilities of an Arab-Jewish Poetics: A Study of the Arabic and Hebrew Fiction of Shimon Ballas and Sami Michael
SARAH GARIBOVA, Department of History, University of Michigan
Memories for a Blessing: Jewish Mourning Practices and Commemorative Activities in Postwar Belarus and Ukraine, 1945-1991
BRENDAN GOLDMAN, Department of History, Johns Hopkins University
Jews in the Latin Levant: Conquest, Continuity and Adaptation in the Medieval Mediterranean
SONIA GOLLANCE, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Pennsylvania
Harmonious Instability: (Mixed) Dancing and Partner Choice in German-Jewish and Yiddish Literature
SIMCHA GROSS, Department of Religious Studies, Yale University
Empire and Neighbors: Babylonian Rabbinic Identity in Its Imperial and Local Contexts
YAEL LANDMAN, Department of Bible, Yeshiva University
The Biblical Law of Bailment in Its Ancient Near Eastern Contexts
JASON LUSTIG, Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles
'A Time to Gather': A History of Jewish Archives in the Twentieth Century
The AJS also recognizes the following finalists:
MAX BAUMGARTEN, Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles
From Watts to Rodney King: Peoplehood, Politics, and Citizenship in Jewish Los Angeles, 1965-1992
MARC HERMAN, Department of Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania
Enumeration of the Commandments in the Judeo-Arabic World: Approaches to Medieval Rabbanite Jurisprudence
CONSTANZE KOLBE, Department of History, Indiana University
Trans-Imperial Networks: Jewish Merchant Mobility Across and Beyond the Mediterranean in the Nineteenth Century
JAMES REDFIELD, Department of Religious Studies, Stanford University
The Sages and the World: Categorizing Culture in Early Rabbinic Law
Abby Gondek
“The Women Behind Morgenthau: Gendered Power Networks and the U.S. War Refugee Board (1940s–50s)”
Sandra Gruner-Domic
“Jewish Migration to Bolivia during the Holocaust: Post-colonial Immigration, Race Relations, and Nationalism”
Philip Keisman
‘“Simply Tell Us of News and Wonders and We Will Listen:’ The Editor's Role between Information Conduit and Creative Hand”
Emily Kopley
“The Life and Work of Berta R. Golahny”
Martina Mampieri
“Life in Ink: The Journey of a Refugee Bibliophile from Renaissance Italy to Postwar America”
Elly Moseson
“Jewish Magic in Early Modern Europe”
Irina Nicorici
“Uneasy Refuge: Romanian Jews and the Question of Soviet Citizenship, 1934–1948”
Shiri Zuckerstatter
“In-Between the Lines: The (Covert) Hebrew Letters of Modern Jewish American Literature”
Laura Auketayeva
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Ziva Gunther
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
Rachel Ko
University of Toronto
Sayan Lodh
Presidency University
Shiyong Lu
New York University
Mar Martinez
University of Central Florida
Manjari Mukherjee
Tufts University
Ludwig Beethoven J. Noya
Valparaiso University
Rhoda Terry-Seidenberg
Touro University
Cheuk Him Ryan Sun
University of British Columbia
Public Program: Shakespeare and Sacred Texts: A Midsummer Retreat
Lead Applicant: Julia Reinhard Lupton, Professor of English, University of California, Irvine
Co-sponsors: Rabbi Marcia Tilchin and the Jewish Collaborative of Orange County;
Academy for Judaic, Christian, and Islamic Studies
Public Program: On the Road to Zion by Sholem Asch: A World Premiere Radio Drama and Roundtable Discussion on Polish Jewry
Lead Applicant: Lisa Newman, Director of Public Programs, Yiddish Book Center
Co-sponsors: Congress for Jewish Culture
and The Faux Real Theatre Company
Public Program: Indecent
Lead Applicant: Joel Berkowitz, Professor of Foreign Languages & Literature and Director, Center for Jewish Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Co-sponsors: Jewish Museum Milwaukee,
Milwaukee Chamber Theatre, Tapestry Program of the Harry and Rose Samson Jewish Community Center, UWM LGBT Studies Program, and Yiddish Book Center
Public Program: Global Day of Jewish Learning: Jewish Women Breaking Boundaries
Lead Applicant: Matthew Kraus, Associate Professor of Judaic Studies and Director, Hebrew Program, University of Cincinnati
Co-sponsors: Mayerson
Jewish Community Center and Women Writing for a Change
Public Program: Medieval Afternoon
Lead Applicant: Miriamne Krummel, Professor of English, University of Dayton
Co-sponsors: Dayton Metro Library, Jewish Federation of Greater Dayton, and Beth Abraham Synagogue
Public Program: “The Jewish Language Project Presents a Multimedia Event: Passover around the World”
Lead Applicant: Sarah Benor, Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR)
and Courtesy Professor of Linguistics at the University of Southern California
Co-sponsors: Pico Union Project, USC Casden Institute
Public Program: “Celebrating the Music of Mieczyslaw Weinberg”
Lead Applicant: Paula Sanders, Director
of the Boniuk Institute and Professor of History, Rice University
Co-sponsors: Da Camera, Holocaust Museum Houston
Public Program: “Letters to Erich: Family Disruption and Holocaust Memory”
Lead
Applicant: Nancy Sinkoff, Academic Director of the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life
and Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History, Rutgers University
Co-sponsors: New Brunswick Jazz Project, New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education
EVELYN DEAN-OLMSTED, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras
To Be Mexican, Jewish, and Arab: Language and Laughter in Mexico City
JOSHUA FRIEDMAN, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Brooklyn College
Yiddish Returns: Language, Intergenerational Gifts, and Jewish Devotion
JESSICA RODA, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Ethnographic Research in the Aftermath of Violence, Concordia University
Ruptures and Reconstruction of Kinship Ties among OTD (Off the Derech) Communities: Gender, Sexualities, and Personhood in New York City
RACHEL GORDAN, Scholar-in-Residence, Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, Brandeis University
How Judaism Became an American Religion
JILLIAN POWERS, Lecturer in American Studies/Sociology Department Undergraduate Advising Head (Spring 2016), Brandeis University
Traveling to Belong
MATTHEW BOXER, Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies and Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program, Brandeis University
Judaism as a Contact Sport: Lessons from Small Jewish Communities
Dr. Boxer’s project focuses on the effects of Jewish community size on Jewish identity and represents an important application of both demography and theories of identity development to a problem that has largely been understudied in the sociology of American Jewish life. His rigorous and unsentimental look at the small population centers in which a significant number of Jews can be found provides a helpful understanding of the prospects for the future of Jewish belonging and identity in such communities. Grounded in a commitment to applied social research, Boxer represents an approach to the sociology of American Jews that seeks to engender discussions both in the academy and beyond.
LAURA LIMONIC, Department of Sociology, State University of New York at Old Westbury
The Privileged ‘In-Between’ Status of Latino Jews
Exploring the complex intersection of Latino and Jewish identities among Jewish immigrants from Latin America, Professor Limonic’s research situates the sociology of American Jews in the context of broader social and demographic patterns that are reshaping America’s ethnic landscape. Equally well-versed in the sociology of immigration, of Latinos and of American Jews, Limonic demonstrates how first-rate sociological research weaves together strands from multiple subfields to contribute something new and innovative to each. Her work offers a model for a sociology of American Jewry that is deeply engaged at the discipline of sociology’s cutting edge.
MATTHEW BERKMAN, Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania
Ethnic Institutional Development and Political Mobilization in the United States: A Comparison of Jewish, Cuban, and African American Experiences
MIJAL BITTON, Humanities and Social Sciences in the Professions, New York University
Syrian Jews in America: In Search of Community
AJS also recognizes the following finalist:
MIRA NICULESCU, Department of Sociology, Ecole de Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
After the Jewish Buddhists: Reconstructing Jewish Spirituality in a Global Age
JONATHAN JACKSON, Department of Anthropology, Syracuse University
Unholy Alliance: Queer Kinship and Reform Judaism
ROTTEM SAGI, Department of Sociology, University of California, Irvine
Who's In My Bed: Strange Bedfellows in the American Pro-Israel Movement
The AJS also recognizes the following projects, which received honorable mention:
SHOSHANNAH FRYDMAN, Department of Social Welfare, CUNY Graduate Center
Tradition and Transition: American Orthodox Jewish Women Becoming and Being Sexually Active within Marriage
Mira Niculescu, Department of Sociology of Religion, Ecole de Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
Reconstructing Jewish Spirituality in a Global Age
JAY (KOBY) OPPENHEIM, Department of Sociology, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York
'Once Removed': A Comparative Study of ‘Russian Jews’ in New York and Berlin
Mr. Oppenheim’s dissertation explores the experiences of children of immigrants from the wave of Russian-speaking Jewish immigration to the U.S. and Germany from 1989 onward. Between 300,000 and 500,000 immigrants arrived in the U.S. and an additional 200,000 resettled in Germany. The transition of outsiders to insiders, of integrating or assimilating into a new society, involves lengthy and often vexing negotiation of social and symbolic boundaries. The project focuses on the complex of experiences that characterize the construction of ethnic identity in immigrant-receiving societies, capitalizing on the divergent trajectories of this group to undertake a comparative analysis of identity formation in both Europe and the United States.
EMILY SIGALOW, Departments of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies & Sociology, Brandeis University
Intersecting Traditions: The Jewish Encounter with Buddhism since 1893
Ms. Sigalow’s dissertation, "Intersecting Traditions: the Jewish Encounter with Buddhism since 1893," contributes to the understanding of the growing religious syncretism of American Jews. Through observation of eighteen related Jewish and Buddhist organizations and over eighty in-depth interviews with Jewish people from these organizations, Sigalow develops a framework distinguishing converts, practitioners, enriched and seekers, which illuminates the different types of contacts Jews have with Buddhism, and will be a useful tool to understanding contacts between Jews and other religions, as well. The research also sheds light on the impact of Buddhism on a wide range of Jewish practices.
The AJS also recognizes the following projects, which received honorable mention:
SCHNEUR ZALMAN NEWFIELD, Department of Sociology, New York University
Degrees of Separation: Patterns of Personal Identity Formation Beyond Boundaries of Ultra-Orthodox Judaism
Mr. Newfield’s dissertation, "Degrees of Separation: Patterns of Personal Identity Formation Beyond Boundaries of Ultra-Orthodox Judaism," focuses on the bridges between the Lubavitch and Satmar communities and the outside world through interviews with sixty members of the Lubavitch and Satmar communities on the subject of their process of “distancing” themselves from their ultra-Orthodox communities.
ROTTEM SAGI, Department of Sociology, University of California-Irvine
Who’s in My Bed: Strange Bedfellows in the American Pro-Israel Movement
Ms. Sagi’s dissertation, “Who’s in my Bed: Strange Bedfellows in the American Pro-Israel Movement,” contributes organizational and social movement perspectives to understanding the American pro-Israel movement in both historical and contemporary contexts. Ms. Sagi’s development of a database of over seven-hundred Jewish American organizations’ purpose statements, as well as archival research and in-depth interviews, promotes an organizational analysis which is rare and needed in the social scientific study of American Jewry.
CAROLINE BLOCK, The Johns Hopkins University
Rabbis, Rabbas and Maharats: Aspiration, Innovation and Orthodoxy in American Women’s Talmud Programs
This project examines the recent emergence of women’s Talmud programs in the American Modern Orthodox Jewish community. These Orthodox Jewish women engage in the full-time study of the traditional rabbinic curriculum, though they will not become rabbis. The project examines the intersection of the Judaic practice of transmitting rabbinic authority and knowledge through textual studies and the American practice of denominationalism rooted in communal and congregational institutions. This study will illuminate how spiritual experience operates with law, how female religious leadership is linked to tradition and American culture, and how the study of text and tradition can address women and piety as well as religion and the public sphere.
BRITT TEVIS, University of Wisconsin
May It Displease the Court: Jewish Lawyers and the Democratization of American Law
This project is an important contribution to American Jewish history, and focuses on the place of Jews in American professions. Without a keen understanding of why Jews were drawn to the law and how the law was changed by their presence, we are missing one of the most important foundations of American Jewish culture. While many scholars have noted the remarkable number of Jewish lawyer since the early twentieth century, no scholar has successfully analyzed its impact. Ms. Tevis not only documents the antisemitism that they encountered, but also examines the impact Jews had on the “democratization” of American law. She has focused on areas such as labor, free speech and civil rights. Both immigrant and native-born lawyers carved out new fields of the law, and expanded freedoms in American society. In addition her study compares Jews in American law to the role that they played in a number of European countries. Her dissertation will, therefore, compare and contrast American and European Jewish lawyers.
The AJS also recognizes the following project, which received honorable mention:
WENDY FERGUSSON SOLTZ, The Ohio State University
Separate but Not Equal: The Jewish Fight for Racially Integrated Education, 1930-1965
This project offers an original perspective on Jewish involvement in the fight for integrated education for African Americans in Southern public and private schools and colleges between 1920 and 1970. The dissertation will be built on four case studies that explore the American Jewish philanthropists who brought this issue into the public arena in the 1920s, Jewish refugee faculty at Southern colleges and universities scattered throughout the South, the Jewish lobbyists and lawyers involved in the Brown v. Board of Education case, and Habonim, the Zionist youth group’s involvement in the fight for integrated education.
RACHEL GROSS, Princeton University
Objects of Affection: The Material Religion of American Jewish Nostalgia
Rachel Gross's dissertation project, "Objects of Affection: The Material Religion of American Jewish Nostalgia," is a material culture and ethnographic study of American Jews' nostalgia for their communal homelands of Eastern Europe and New York's Lower East Side of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This nostalgia, a sentimental, generalized looking back at mythologized pasts from which they are safely distant, is an integral religious feature of American Jews' practice in the latter half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. Nostalgia is both an emotion and a practice, one that has become increasingly commoditized and institutionalized in recent decades, though no less a significant source of personal and communal meaning. The project focuses on four broad case studies: the material culture of Jewish genealogy; historic synagogues used as heritage sites; children's books and dolls; and American Jewish foodways, focusing on "kosher style" restaurants and delis. This project examines how American Jews use each of these kinds of material to create an affective, sentimental connection to the past that produces communal, religious meaning in the present and conveys social desires for the future.
LAURA LIMONIC, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Ethnic Options? Jewish Latino Immigrants in the Northeastern United States
The process of immigration requires an examination and often an alteration of people's ethnic identity as they incorporate into a society with different ethno-racial groups than their own. This project focuses on contemporary Jewish immigrants from Latin America who have settled in the United States. Since this group is not easily classified within the North American racial and ethnic schema, their ethnic identity and group affiliation challenges the existing paradigm. A central question is whether these immigrants are to be classified primarily as Jewish; whether, and in what situations, their national identities as Colombian, Argentine, Mexican or Cuban trump their Jewish ethno-religious identity; or if they will choose to eschew these categories all-together and construct a new panethno-religious group, that of Jewish-Latinos. Another issue is how they are adding new diversity to, and having an impact on, U.S. Jewish communities and institutions. This qualitative study contributes to our understanding of contemporary North American Jewry by shedding light on how this immigrant group, whose Jewishness is so salient, navigates the existing North American Jewish communities and either contributes to the reshaping of these communities or creates new enclaves, institutions, and communities that in turn become part of the greater North American Jewish experience.
The AJS also recognizes the following projects, which received honorable mentions:
RACHEL ADELSTEIN, University of Chicago
Braided Voices: Women Cantors in Non-Orthodox Judaism
JOSHUA B. FRIEDMAN, University of Michigan
Intimate Institutions: Post-Vernacularity and the Institutional Mediation Jewish Cultural Continuity in Yiddishland
EMILY SIGALOW, Brandeis University
Jews on Zafus?!: A Study of Jewish-Buddhist Lived Hybridity in America
MOSHE KORNFELD, University of Michigan
Rebuilding Houses, Rebuilding Judaism: Post-Katrina New Orleans and the Rise of the Jewish Social Justice Movement
Rebuilding Houses, Rebuilding Judaism: Post-Katrina New Orleans and the Rise of the Jewish Social Justice Movement integrates ethnographic data on Jewish philanthropy, activism, and service in New Orleans into a historically situated and theoretically informed dissertation on the establishment, growth, and influence of the Jewish social justice movement. In particular, this project frames qualitative social scientific data on Jewish social justice activities in New Orleans in relation to the anthropology of Jews and Judaism, anthropological theories of gift and exchange, and anthropological discussions of the relationship between religion, secularity, and modernity. Ultimately, this anthropological consideration of contemporary American Jewish philanthropy applies ethnographic methodologies to generate an understanding of how American Jews as individuals and as members of a faith/ethnic community perceive their ethical responsibilities in a society that has afforded them unprecedented wealth, comfort, and security. Primary questions to be addressed include the following. What accounts for the rise of Jewish social justice movement? What influence does the Jewish social justice movement have on American Jews and American Judaism? Finally, what does the rise of the Jewish social justice movement say about the position of Jews in American society?
PATRICIA MUNRO, University of California, Berkeley
What If I Drop the Torah? Tensions and Resolutions in Creating B’nai Mitzvah
B'nai Mitzvah is the central life-cycle event for American Jews. As a result, all concerned invest great effort in managing the intrinsic challenges of preparation and enactment. These challenges are not problems with simple solutions, but ongoing tensions that affect the structure of the ritual, of the congregations, and of the lives of individual Jews. My research over the past several years, which includes observation at five congregations and interviews with over two hundred individuals, has led me to identify five key challenges in the B'nai Mitzvah ritual. These are: creating and communicating authenticity, setting limits to participation, routinizing or individualizing the process, assuring competence in enactment, and negotiating public and private space. In the dissertation, I explore different approaches to managing each challenge as well as the characteristics that determining these different approaches. However, while the dissertation looks at a specific ritual, these five issues have broader relevance for American Jewish life. Jews wrestle with what makes Judaism and Jews authentic, with the individualized or rountinized nature of community, with what is sufficient competence in Jewish practice, and with the nature of resource distribution. My hope is that this work will contribute to both a specific and a general understanding of the sociology of American Jewish life.
The AJS also recognizes the following projects, which received honorable mentions:
BECKA ALPER, Purdue University
Does Religious Geography Affect Identity? The Impact of Local Size Characteristics on Religious Networks, Behavior, and Salience
SHAINA HAMMERMAN, Graduate Theological Union
The Fantastic Hasid: A History of Modern Jewish Imagination
JENNIFER ROSKIES, Bar-Ilan University
In Their Own Voices: The Multiple Identities of Jewish Academic Women
INGA VEKSLER, Rutgers University
Remembering the Emigration Journey: Soviet Jews in the Vienna-Rome Pipeline, 1971-1991
