Abraham and Rebecca Solomon and Ida Schwartz Distinguished Lecture on Judaic Studies

Monday, October 4, 2021

• Julia Watts Belser of Georgetown University spoke on "The Politics of Risk and Resistance: Thinking Gender, Disability, and State Violence through Ancient Jewish Story" which examined the uses the talmudic text to grapple with contemporary questions surrounding power and risk. Julia Watts Belser's research centers on gender, sexuality, and disability in rabbinic literature, as well as queer feminist Jewish ethics. She directs an initiative on Disability and Climate Change, which brings together disability activists, artists, policy makers, and academics to address how disability communities are disproportionately affected by environmental risk and climate disruption. She is the author of Rabbinic Tales of Destruction: Gender, Sex, and Disability in the Ruins of Jerusalem (Oxford University Press, 2018) and Power, Ethics, and Ecology: Rabbinic Responses to Drought and Disaster (Cambridge University Press, 2015). She has held faculty fellowships at Harvard Divinity School and the Katz Center for Advanced Jewish Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Tuesday, February 9, 2021

• Arielle Agababa Levites from George Washington University spoke on "Preserving Jewish Culture: Growing Spirituality in a Contemporary Jewish Agricultural Program" Dr. Arielle Levites is the managing director of CASJE (Consortium for Applied Studies in Jewish Education). Her research focuses on contemporary American Jewish education. Her manuscript, Raising Jewish Spirits: American Jews, Religious Emotion, and American Spirituality, is under advance contract with Rutgers University Press. She has conducted applied studies on behalf of American Jewish educational enterprises, with a focus on young adults and teens. Her work has been recognized with awards from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and the Network for Research in Jewish Education. She holds a BA from Brown University in Religious Studies, a MSEd in Religious Education from the University of Pennsylvania, and a PhD from NYU in Education and Jewish Studies.

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

• Adrienne Krone of Allegheny College spoke on "Sustainability and Spirituality in the Jewish Community Farming Movement". Dr. Adrienne Krone is an assistant professor of Religious Studies and Director of Jewish Life at Allegany College. She has a bachelor of arts degree from Stony Brook University and both a masters of arts and doctoral degree on from Duke University. Areas of interest include history of religion in the U.S., Modern Judaism, religion and food.

Thursday, March 28, 2019

• Professor Richard Elliot Friedman, the Ann and Jay Davis Professor of Jewish Studies in the Department of Religion presented on his latest scholarship on the Book of Exodus. Friedman is best known for his book Who Wrote the Bible (1987), but has also written The Exile and Biblical Narrative, The Disappearance of God, The Hidden Face of God, the Hidden Book of the Bible, Commentary on the Torah, The Bible with Sources Revealed, The Bible Now, and most recently, The Exodus. He has been interviewed by CNN’s Larry King and on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition” and “Radio Times” and “Talk of the Nation.” Articles and citations of his work have appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, Time, Newsweek, and other print media. He was a consultant for the Dreamworks film “The Prince of Egypt,” for Alice Hoffman's The Dovekeepers, for NBC “The Eternal Light,” for A&E “Mysteries of the Bible,” and for A&E “Who Wrote the Bible?,” for PBS “Nova: The People of the Covenant: The Origins of Ancient Israel and the Emergence of Judaism,” for European television's ARTE “The Bible Revealed,” and for PBS “The Kingdom of David.”

February 8, 2017

• Professor Anna Shternshis of the University of Toronto, and author of Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923 – 1939 and the forthcoming When Sonia Met Boris: Jewish Daily Life in Soviet Russia will present "Machine Guns and Lonely Orphans: Yiddish Music in the Soviet Union during the Holocaust" her research on Yiddish Music in the Soviet Union during the Holocaust.

February 2015

• Amy Jill Levine of Vanderbilt University is a popular and candid speaker on the Jewish aspects of Christianity. For the February 2015 David L. Dungan Memorial Lecture, the Department of Religious Studies invited Professor Levine to speak on the parables of Jesus. The Fern and Manfred Steinfeld Program in Judaic Studies was on of the many co-sponsors of the evening.

November 10, 2014

• The annual Abraham and Rebecca Solomon and Ida Schwartz Distinguished Lecture will be given by Professor Deborah Dash Moore, Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of History, Frankel Center for Judaic Studies Director, University of Michigan. Her lecture is titled "Urban Origins of American Judaism." The event is co-sponsored by the Departments of Religious Studies and History.

October 24, 2013

• The 20th Anniversary of the Fern and Manfred Steinfeld Program in Judaic Studies was celebrated with a lecture by Dr. Daniel Boyarin, Hermann P. & Sophia Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture, University of California at Berkeley. His lecture was entitled, "Imagining No Judaism" and was co-sponsored by the departments of English, History, Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures, and Religious Studies.
  • Web Cast

February 19, 2013

• The Third Annual David L. Dungan Memorial Lecture at the University of Tennessee was delivered by Dr. Paula Fredriksen, The William Goodwin Aurelio Chair Emerita of the Appreciation of Scripture at Boston University and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She spoke on "SIN: Original and Otherwise."
  • WUOT Interview
  • Video of Lecture

November 22, 2010

• 2010-2011 Schusterman Visiting Israeli Professor Alec Mishory gave a lecture entitled, "Alphabet of Creation': Some Aspects of Beauty and Uniqueness of the Hebrew Alphabet," This lecture was co-sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences, School of Art, Departments of Religious Studies and History, Abraham and Rebecca Solomon and Ida Schwartz Distinguished Lecture Fund for Judaic Studies, Karen and Pace Robinson Enrichment Fund, Knoxville Jewish Alliance, and the Jewish Community of Knoxville.

October 1, 2009

• Schusterman Visiting Israel Professor Igal Bursztyn, from Tel Aviv University, spoke on "Film and Zionism: Cinema in Jewish Cultural Renewal from 1896-2009." This lecture was cosponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences, Departments of Religious Studies and History, Rebecca Solomon and Ida Schwartz Distinguished Lecture Fund, University of Tennessee; Knoxville Jewish Alliance, and the Jewish Community of Knoxville.

November 6, 2008

• Dr. Rivka Ribak, 2008-09 Schusterman Visiting Israel Professor and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Communication at the University of Haifa presented a lecture entitled, "People of the Book: Resistances to the Media in Israel." The lecture was cosponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences, Departments of Religious Studies and History, the Rebecca Solomon and Ida Schwartz Distinguished Lecture Fund, University of Tennessee; Knoxville Jewish Alliance, and the Jewish Community of Knoxville.

February 8, 2008

• Professor Andrea Berlin, Morse-Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Archaeology University of Minnesota, gave a lecture entitled, "New Light on the Period of the Maccabees: Excavations at Tel Kedesh." This lecture was cosponsored by the Departments of Religious Studies, History and Classics and the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the Abraham and Rebecca Solomon and Ida Schwartz Distinguished Lecture Fund for Judaic Studies, as well as the Knoxville Jewish Alliance.

April 23, 2007

• Dr. Ehud Toledano, Graduate School of Historical Studies, Tel Aviv University, presented a lecture entitled, "As if Silent and Absent: Bonds of Enslavement in the Islamic Middle East." This lecture was co-sponsored by the Departments of Religious Studies, History, the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and the Abraham and Rebecca Solomon and Ida Schwartz Distinguished Lecture Fund for Judaic Studies, as well as the Knoxville Jewish Alliance.

October 6, 2006

• Professor Peter Machinist, Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages, Harvard University, Lecture on "God and Humans in the Creation Stories of Genesis." 

October 23 and 24, 2003

• Professor Jodi Magness, Kenan Distinguished Professor of Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, "The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls" and "Jerusalem in the Era of Herod the Great."

February 20, 2002

• Professor Carol Meyers, Religious Studies Department, Duke University, "All about Eve: The Latest Word on the First Lady."

October 28, 2001

• Professor Richard J. Bernstein, Vera List Professor and Director, Graduate Program, New School for Social Research, New York, "Levinas: Evil and the Temptation of Theodicy."