Announcements

We had an incredible evening with Margaret Boyle and Ilan Stavans as they shared the stories and flavors behind Sabor Judío: The Jewish Mexican Cookbook.

From the fusion of culinary traditions to the deep history of Jewish life in Mexico, it was a beautiful reminder of how food bridges generations and geography. A huge thank you to our guests and everyone who joined the Berman Center for Jewish Studies for this flavorful conversation.

This program was made possible by an endowment from Howard Ballenzweig, whose legacy continues through this contribution in his honor.

It was amazing to welcome Professors Adrienne Krone and Rachel Gross to Lehigh for our fall Berman Center for Jewish Studies event "What do we talk about when we talk about Jewish food?" We had a wonderful conversation about the study of Jewish food with students, faculty, and community members.

This past June, the Berman Center for Jewish Studies co-sponsored a special symposium in Bologna, Italy, on the trajectory of Jewish political theology from antiquity to modernity. Professors Lachter, Eichler-Levine, Lebovic, and Wright all attended the seminar, which brought together scholars from multiple continents and career stages to share their work.

J. H. (Yossi) Chajes, Sir Isaac Wolfson Professor of Jewish Thought in the Department of Jewish History at the University of Haifa, spoke to a large crowd in the HST building last week. On display were over a dozen ancient manuscripts showcasing the iconic "Tree of Life" and other kabbalistic symbols. Chajes explained how such complex graphical scrolls have been a genre of kabbalistic literature in their own right since the Renaissance, and that from the late seventeenth century such scrolls became an indispensable tool to Lurianic kabbalists.

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Artist-in-residence Siona Benjamin's first week at Lehigh was a sunny blend of chalk drawing, comic book collage, class visits, and a wonderful lecture on our mountaintop campus. She will return next week for a screening of her film Blue Like Me on Wednesday 9/18 and a workshop at the Lehigh University Art Galleries  on Thursday 9/19. Please join us!

Jan Gross, professor of history emeritus at Princeton University, gave a public talk last week on Reflections on the 81st Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. He commented on the circumstances of the uprising and the reactions it evoked at the time.

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