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AJS Conversation Series

 

The AJS seeks ways to increase access to scholars who need to present their scholarship remotely. With this goals in mind, we offered the 2024 Conversation Series with the following presentations. Recordings are available to AJS members through the end of April.

The 20/20 Vision of Holocaust Education: Engaging with Immersive Survivor Testimony
View the Recording (AJS member login required)

Aliyah from Argentina in Pandemic and Post-pandemic Times: Generations of Jewish Youth and Adults between the Global and the Local
View the Recording (AJS member login required)

God, Gender, and Bible Translation
View the Recording (AJS member login required)

Talking Across Disciplines: New Directions in Gender and Sexuality Research
View the Recording (AJS member login required)


The 20/20 Vision of Holocaust Education: Engaging with Immersive Survivor Testimony

Ilana Weltman, University of Wisconsin–Madison in conversation with Sarah Ellen Zarrow, Western Washington University

February 5, 2024

View Recording (AJS Member login required)

For decades, Holocaust Survivors participated as essential eyewitness educators at Holocaust museums in the U.S. and abroad. As the Holocaust Survivor population ages, Dimensions in Testimony was designed in response to the imminent need to capture this interactive testimonial experience for future generations. Dimensions in Testimony is an interactive 3D Hologram technology, a form of Mixed Reality (MR), in which the real and virtual objects are combined. This MR technology is breaking ground at several Holocaust museums. As an emerging Holocaust Education technology, research on its educative impact, or lack thereof is limited. This conversation will explore how museum visitors, school groups, and museum staff at the Illinois Holocaust Museum, experience and perceive the utility of the 3D interactive hologram technology as a form of Holocaust education. Participants will discuss the impact of this new interactive testimony/biographical technology as a form of Holocaust history education.


Aliyah from Argentina in Pandemic and Post-pandemic Times: Generations of Jewish Youth and Adults between the Global and the Local

Alejandro Cozachcow, Universidad de Buenos Aires, in conversation with Adrián Krupnik, Tel Aviv University

February 6, 2024

View Recording (AJS Member login required)

This conversation will explore the Jewish migration from Argentina to Israel (aliyah) in the pandemic and post-pandemic period since 2020. The presenters will examine data in the context of the health, economic, and political crisis resulting from the pandemic. The discussion will focus on two main issues. First, the general trends of aliyah during the period taking into account the national and global context. Second, a comparative analysis of the survey results for the generations of Jewish youth and adults regarding socialization in the local Jewish community and characteristics of the migration process. This research is centered in the field of Jewish Studies and expects to contribute to the analysis of the transformations of the young and adult generations of the Jewish communities worldwide and the relations between these communities and Israel during recent years.


God, Gender, and Bible Translation

Participants: Elias Sacks, The Jewish Publication Society; Everett Fox, Clark University; Hanne Loeland Levinson, University of Minnesota; David E.S. Stein, and Beth Lieberman, HUC-JIR (Los Angeles)

February 6, 2024

View Recording (AJS Member login required)

English-language Hebrew Bible translations have largely depicted God with masculine pronouns, labels, and other terminology. These renderings rest on a range of traditional understandings—for example, that God either is male or was understood as male in the Bible’s original historical context, or that masculine-oriented terminology is appropriate even if the Deity is beyond gender or cannot be confined to one gender. Recent decades, however, have seen a number of attempts to reassess this approach to translation on religious, historical-linguistic, and other grounds. This conversation will explore a wide range of questions about gender, god-language and English Bible translation, addressing both the use of masculine-oriented god-language, and possibilities of adopting gender-inclusive terminology when translating the Tanakh. Key questions will include:

•    What does the Hebrew Bible say about God’s gender?

•    To what extent does the text of the Hebrew Bible support the use of gender-neutral language and pronouns in relation to God?

•    How should Bible translators concerned with questions relating to gender translate the tetragrammaton (God’s four-letter name)?

•    What have we learned from recent attempts to offer gender-neutral English-language translations of the Hebrew Bible?


Talking across Disciplines: New Directions in Gender and Sexuality Research

Participants: Marjorie Lehman, The Jewish Theological Seminary; Sarah Imhoff, Indiana University; Max Strassfeld, University of Arizona; Jennifer Caplan, University of Cincinnati; Karolina Krasuska, University of Warsaw

February 5, 2024

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In this cross-disciplinary session, scholars from the fields of Jewish literature, history, and culture will enter into a conversation prompted by their recent books to explore how their contributions to the field of gender and sexuality inform the other. Our overall objective is also bi-directional in that we will examine the ways that gender perspectives impact Jewish Studies and the ways that Jewish Studies enhances the field of gender and sexuality more generally. Karolina Krasuska, a scholar of American Jewish Literature, will generate a discussion that includes responses to the following questions:

•    Where are we today and what is different today about the kind of research we are doing?

•    Where do we think we should be headed and what do we continue to overlook?

•    What emerges from shedding a cross-disciplinary light on our work?