With help from Rabbi Paula Winnig (Rodef Sholom), graduate students Kyle Willis and Anne Vallas, and Dr. Adam L. Fuller, we set up our Sukkah on DeBartolo Plaza. We extend our deepest gratitude to Sarah Lown and Randi Partika for providing us with such lush and fragrant schach (the branches on top).

The Sukkah will remain on DeBartolo Plaza until Thursday, September 30. It’s full of informational posters which teach about the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. This year, the holiday is from Monday evening, September 20th through Wednesday night, September 29th. (The final day is also the holiday of Simchat Torah, when Jews traditionally celebrate completing the annual cycle of reading the Five Books of Moses in synagogue.)

Each fall, Jews traditionally erect a temporary dwellings called a Sukkah (literally “booth”) in preparation for the Festival of Booths, Sukkot. Families eat festive meals in the Sukkah. Some even sleep in them. The holiday and the Sukkah itself commemorate the biblical tale of how ancient Israelites wandered through the desert for forty years before entering the promise land of Canaan. It also recalls the fall harvest—when Israelites constructed temporary shelters in their fields—and then set out on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem with their offerings.

In partnership with the Jewish Studies Program at Kent State University, we are soliciting applications from emerging scholars without tenure-track employment to deliver one of three lectures in Spring 2022. Selected applicants will also offer a guest lecture in a Jewish-studies course at one of our institutions (or offer a workshop for faculty). All lectures and talks will be virtual. We intend for this to be an annual and ongoing program. The theme for this year is “Jews around the World.” For more information and to apply, please click here.

Dr. Adam Fuller, a CJHS affiliated faculty member who teaches Jewish-studies courses at YSU, spoke to WFMJ on Sunday about “the resurgence of terror groups in Afghanistan.” Watch here.

Dr. Adam Fuller, a member of the CJHS Academic Advisory Committee and affiliated faculty member, spoke on the first panel of a conference organized by the Center for the Study of the United States at Tel Aviv University, “The Americanization of the Israeli Right.” Dr. Fuller’s panel, “Neo-Conservatism,” also featured Ilan Peleg (Lafayette University), Gayil Talshir (Hebrew University), and Yitzhak Mor (Hebrew University). Guy Ben-Porat (Ben Gurion University) moderated.

To find Dr. Fuller’s talk (the only in English), jump to minute 19:30.

“Meetings and Movements Across Cold-War Boundaries: Jewish People and Artifacts in Contact”

The political discourses of the Cold War, and the first decades of reflection upon it following the regime changes in Central Europe in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, portrayed a world divided by ideology and bifurcated by militarized borders. Our roundtable explores areas and moments of contact between Jews and Jewish communities across Cold-War boundaries, with the goal of deepening our understanding of the Cold War as a global phenomenon, and of shared cultural patterns across the divides. We look at the meetings of individuals and organizations, as well as the circulation of artifacts and capital. We explore how local, national, and bloc politics conditioned the varied initiatives and experiences of stakeholders, while widening our focus to appreciate what so many instances of cross-boundary “contact” can teach us about the Cold War, in this case, with specific attention to Jewish politics, culture, and life in the postwar world.

Moderator: Rebekah Klein-Pejsova, Purdue University

Discussants: Amy Fedeski, University of Virginia; Rachelle Grossman, Harvard University; Jacob Labendz, Youngstown State University; Sasha Senderovich, University of Washington; Jonathan Zisook, CUNY Graduate Center