Memory and Inheritance: Bearing Witness to My Grandmother’s Story - Elana K. Arnold

Rethinking the Dilemma of Bombing Auschwitz: Support, Opposition, and Reservation – Zohar Segev (UC Los Angeles)

The deportation of Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz-Birkenau began in May 1944. The extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, to which Hungarian Jews were deported, was located within the range of the Allies’ bomber aircraft. This led to demands being made to bomb the site.

Withstanding Reason: Shestov and Levinas in Times of Catastrophe (UC Berkely)

No thinker seems further removed from our current preoccupations than Lev Shestov, the Russian-Jewish émigré who, in the 1920s and 1930s, surprised the Parisian elite with his untimely work. But it is perhaps Shestov's untimeliness that makes him our contemporary. Our humanity is facing what seems to be an inevitable process of self-destruction: ongoing climate catastrophe, nuclear threat, pandemics, economic collapse and, finally, the replacement of cognitive work by artificial intelligence. 

Ladino In & Beyond the Home (UC Los Angeles)

In its thirteenth consecutive year, the ucLADINO conference supports and celebrates the growing preservation of Ladino language and culture in the Judeo-Spanish diaspora. The theme for this year’s ucLADINO conference centers around Ladino in and beyond the home, exploring language and culture in domestic spaces and in migration. How has Ladino taken shape within domestic worlds and how has Ladino adapted in transit, carried from one home to the next?

Schedule

(with links)

Frayed: The Disputes Unraveling Religious Zionists - Yair Ettinger

As Ettinger affirms in his new book Frayed: The Disputes Unraveling Religious Zionists, contrary to the belief of some, orthodoxy in Judaism is not, and never was, static or monolithic. Modern-day Orthodox Religious Zionism has been unraveled through interaction with modernity, leaving behind multiple, conflicting strands. Some have adapted to changes in modern-day life, others not.