A virtual event presentation by Rabbi Jane Kanarek, Ph.D.

ABOUT THE EVENT:

TBA

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Rabbi Dr. Jane Kanarek is Professor of Rabbinics and Dean of Faculty at the Hebrew College Rabbinical School. She is the author of Biblical Narrative and the Formation of Rabbinic Law and the co-editor of Learning to Read Talmud: What It Looks Like and How it Happens and Mothers in the Jewish Cultural Imagination, the latter two of which were finalists for the National Jewish Book Awards. In fall 2025 her book Beyond Brutality: Reclaiming Female Presence in Bavli Sotah was published by Brandeis University Press.

A virtual event presentation by Dr. Golan Moskowitz

Please note event times are listed in MT

ABOUT THE EVENT:

From the Yiddish stage to ballrooms, pageants, and reality television, Jewish performers have long shaped, and been shaped by, the art of drag. In this talk, Golan Moskowitz explores the entangled histories of Jewishness and drag performance in America, tracing figures from Pepi Littman and Bessie Thomashefsky to Harvey Fierstein and Sasha Velour. Drawing on his forthcoming NYU Press book, Moskowitz examines how ideas of conditional whiteness, disidentification, and "detachable ethnicity" illuminate the ways Jewish performers have used drag to negotiate visibility, difference, and belonging. Part cultural history and part meditation on performance itself, the talk asks what drag reveals about the long, complicated project of American Jewish identity.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Golan Moskowitz is a Sizeler Family Professor in Judaic Studies at Tulane University in New Orleans and a core faculty member of the Stuart & Suzanne Grant Center for the American Jewish Experience. He is the author of Wild Visionary: Maurice Sendak in Queer Jewish Context (Stanford University Press, 2020) and has published several articles and book chapters on post-Holocaust memory and Jewish literature, art, and film. Dr. Moskowitz serves as Book Review Editor for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and as Director of the annual Jewish American & Holocaust Literature (JAHLit) Symposium. 

A virtual event presentation by Dr. Richard Sarason

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Among the most significant finds in the Cairo Genizah are fragmentary prayer books that conform to the liturgical customs and prayer formulations of the old rite of Eretz Yisrael, which died out by the fourteenth century after the Crusades.  This talk will present some of these materials, including those that have recently been incorporated into some contemporary prayer books in Israel and the Diaspora.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

RICHARD S. SARASON is The Deutsch Family Professor of Rabbinics and Liturgy, and Director of the Pines School of Graduate Studies, at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.  His publications include books and articles in the areas of early rabbinic literature, Midrash, and the history and phenomenology of Jewish prayer and ritual.  He earned a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Brown University (1977) and rabbinic ordination from Hebrew Union College (1974).

A virtual event presentation by Dr. Sarah Imhoff

ABOUT THE EVENT:

What happens when we rethink American Jewish thought through the voices of women? This class explores the ideas, writings, and contributions of women who have shaped American Jewish life and thought, from philosophers and scholars to activists, educators, and communal leaders such as Henrietta Szold. Together, we’ll expand our understanding of what counts as “Jewish thought” and consider how these women’s perspectives have shaped American Judaism.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Sarah Imhoff is Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies and Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Chair in the Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University. She is author of Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism (Indiana University Press, 2017) and The Lives of Jessie Sampter: Queer, Disabled, Zionist (Duke University Press, 2022) and, with Susannah Heschel, The Woman Question in Jewish Studies (Princeton University Press, 2025). She is also the editor of Judaism in 5 Minutes (Equinox, 2025) and, with Andrea Dara Cooper, co-editor of Jewish Women Thinkers (Wayne State University Press, forthcoming). She is the founding co-editor of the journal American Religion.