Session 7, Monday, December 18, 2006 1:30 PM – 3:30 PM
[Abstracts]

7.1
“Texts” in Jewish Studies
Sponsored by the American Academy for Jewish Research (AAJR)
Chair: Todd M. Endelman (University of Michigan)
Songs That Speak: Text, Tune, and Testimony as Sources for Jewish
Studies
Kay K. Shelemay (Harvard University)
Ephemera as Historical Sources
Hasia R. Diner (New York University)
Reading Art in Jewish Renewal
Chava Weissler (Lehigh University)

7.2
Jewish Modernism in Different Voices
Chair: Julian A. Levinson (University of Michigan)
Between Self and Other: Displacement, Dislocation, and Deferral in
Dovid Bergelson's Mides ha-din and Alfred Döblin's Reise in Polen
Marc Caplan (Harvard University)
A Song in the Desert? Else Lasker-Schüler and Jewish Modernism in
Berlin
Jonathan S. Skolnik (German Historical Institute)
The Sign of the Times: Modernism and Zionism in Rachel's Poetry
Naomi Brenner (University of California at Berkeley)

7.3
Constituents' Perspectives on Synagogues and Schools
Chair: Melissa Klapper (Rowan University)
Divisions in Community: Bar and Bat Mitzvah and the Synagogue
Patricia Munro (University of California at Berkeley)
“School as Shul”: New Perspectives on the Relationships of Parents
to Their Children's Schools
Randal F. Schnoor (York University) and Alex Pomson (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Identity Interplay: The relationship between Personal and
Professional Identities among Teachers Working in Jewish, Catholic,
and Urban Public Schools
Sharon Feiman-Nemser (Brandeis University) and Bethamie Horowitz (Mandel Foundation)
Respondent: Rela Mintz Geffen (Baltimore Hebrew University)

7.4
Ethnicity, Gender, and Nation in Israeli Cinema
Chair and Respondent: Shai Ginsburg (Duke University)
State as Trauma
Uri Cohen (Columbia University)
Capturing the Real: Dover Koshashvili and the Politics of Identity in
Israeli Cinema
Eran Kaplan (University of Cincinnati)
Toward a New Understanding of Mizrahi Images in Israeli Cinema
Yaron Peleg (George Washington University)

7.5
Memory of the Holocaust in Poland: From 1945 up to the Present
Chair: Joanna B. Michlic (Richard Stockton College)
From Moses to Radegast Monument: The Evolution of Holocaust
Memorials in Lodz, Poland
Helene Sinnreich (Youngstown State University)
Teaching the Holocaust Where It Happened to the Grandchildren of
Perpetrators, Bystanders, and Victims
Annamaria Orla-Bukowska (Jagiellonian University)
Shtetls Without Jews: Early Accounts of Postwar Poland by Emigre
Travelers
Jack Kugelmass (University of Florida)

7.6
Cities of Silver and Gold: Is Urban Jewish Life in the Western U.S. a
Harbinger of the Future of American Jewry?
A Session in Memory of Vivian Klaff
Sponsored by the Mandell L. Berman Institute—North American Jewish Data Bank at the University of Connecticut
Chair: Arnold Dashefsky (University of Connecticut at Storrs)
Has the West Been Won or Lost? Cohesion among Western Jews in
Comparison to Jews Elsewhere
Laurence Kotler-Berkowitz (United Jewish Communities)
A Tale of Two "Jewish?" Cities: San Diego and Phoenix
Ron Miller (North American Jewish Data Bank)
From Margin to Mainstream: The Seismic Shift among Jews in the
San Francisco Metro Area
Bruce A. Phillips (HUC-JIR)
Gambling on a Jewish Future: The Jews of Las Vegas
Ira M. Sheskin (University of Miami)

7.7
“Experience the Disaster”: Literature, Art, Music, Film
Chair: Lynn Rapaport (Pomona College)
Decoding Musical Documentary: Subject Roles in Steve Reich's
Different Trains
Amy Wlodarski (Dickinson College)
Cinematic Representations of Hungarian Jewry after the Holocaust
Catherine Portuges (University of Massachusetts-Amherst)
Shoah déjà vu in American Feature Films about Third Generation
Lawrence Baron (San Diego State University)

7.8
Walls and Halls: Building Jewish Space
Chair: Shelley Hornstein (York University)
Augustus and Herod the Great: A Roman Model for Jewish Space
René Bloch (University of Lausanne)
The Eruv as Wall: Material, Ritual, and Halakhic Implications
Jennifer Cousineau (University of California at Berkeley)
Icons of Separation: Artistic Responses to the Barrier in Israel
Susan Goodman (The Jewish Museum)
Respondent: Berel Lang (Wesleyan College)

7.9
Inter-penetration of Halakhah and Aggadah
Chair: Robert Brody (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
How Much Anthropomorphism? Allowing the Aggada to Speak for Itself
Shamma Friedman (Jewish Theological Seminary/Bar-Ilan University)
He Took the Knife: Biblical Narrative Becomes Rabbinic Law
Jane Kanarek (University of Chicago)
The Shaming of Abdan (bYevamot 105b)
Jeffrey L. Rubenstein (New York University)
Samuel ibn Tibbon's Theory of the Eternal Recreation of the World: Physics, Metaphysics, and Theology
Gad Freudenthal (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/Center for Advanced Judaic Studies)

7.10
The Red Divide: Communism, Anti-Communism, and Anti-Semitism on
the American Shore
Chair: Israel Bartal (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
The Making of a Jewish Communist: The Case of Moyshe Olgin
Tony E. Michels (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Anti-Communist Critiques of the Black-Jewish Alliance
Jonathan Karp (Binghamton University, SUNY)
The Pursuit of Secular Heresy: Neoconservatism's Campaign against
Jewish Communism
Nancy Sinkoff (Rutgers University)
Moscow in America: Yiddish Culture in Conflict
Matthew B. Hoffman (Franklin and Marshall College)

7.11
Priestly Politics
Chair: Rachel Sharon Havrelock (University of Illinois, Chicago)
The Political Symbolism of the Priestly Source
William H. Propp (University of California, San Diego)
Dionysiac Play in Exodus 32
Bruce Rosenstock (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Ritual and Symbolic Exile: New Readings via Ancient Greece
Gershon Hepner (Independent Scholar)
Purity of Lineage in Ezra and Neo-Babylonian Temples
Asher Ragen (Harvard University)

7.12
Past and Present in Israeli Politics, Religion, and Society
Chair: Nitza Druyan (Hofstra University)
Bridal Counselors, Halachic Counselors, and Purity Assessors:
Negotiating the Face and Future of the Orthodox Community in Israel
Orit Avishai (University of California, Berkeley)
Tefilot Hadashot Kan V'akhshav ; or “ani hiloni light ” : Creating
Community and Reconnecting to Judaism and Israel through Prayer
among Nonobservant Israelis
Adina B. Newberg (Reconstructionist Rabbinical College)
The 1948 War Effort and the Demand for Equality in Sacrifice
Moshe Naor (University of Toronto)
The First Jewish Settlements in Ottoman Palestine through Women's
Eyes (1878/82–1903)
Margalit Shilo (Bar-Ilan University)

7.13
Issues in Jewish Linguistics
Chair: Benjamin H. Hary (Emory University)
A Short Linguistic History of Ukrainian Yiddish
Paul D. Glasser (YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)
Lexical Variation as Indicator of Jewish Denominational Ethnic Identity
Aliza Sacknovitz (Georgetown University)
The Translation of Loanwords: A Dilemma for the English-Hebrew
Translator
Brenda Malkiel (University of Haifa/Bar-Ilan University)
Functions of Hebrew in Moroccan Judeo-Arabic
Norman A. Stillman (University of Oklahoma)
Direct Object Marker in Spanish
Rifka Cook (Northwestern University)

7.14
Reading for Gender in Modern Jewish Thought
Chair: Laura S. Levitt (Temple University)
Reading for Gender in Moses Mendelssohn's Jerusalem
Susan Shapiro (University of Massachusetts-Amherst)
Rosenzweig's Mitzvah and the Absent Female
Mara Hillary Benjamin (Yale University)
The Shulamite and the Male-Male Eros of Franz Rosenzweig
Zachary J. Braiterman (Syracuse University)

7.15
How Much Christianity in Rabbinic Judaism?
Chair: Michael D. Swartz (Ohio State University)
History, Theory, and Text: On the Christianization of the Rabbis
Charlotte Fonrobert (Stanford University)
Was There a Rabbinic Response to Christianity in Late Antiquity?
Robert G. Goldenberg (Stony Brook University, SUNY)
Divinely Born: Shared Narratives and Divided Imaginations of Jews,
Christians, and Philosophers
Galit Hasan-Rokem (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Respondent: Andrew Jacobs (University of California, Riverside)