2014–2015 Events
Public Events
Canada and the Holocaust: The Untold Story
Wednesday, September 10, 2014, 12 Noon, Goldberg Room, Boalt Hall
Irving Abella, Chair for the Study of Canadian Jewry
J. Richard Shiff, Professor, Department of History, York University, Toronto
Gourmet Ghettos: Modern Food RitualsWednesday, September 10, 2014, 5:00 – 7:00pm, Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley
A new exhibition exploring eating, identity and activism in Jewish life and beyond.
George Breslauer, Executive Vice-Chancellor and Provost, Emeritus (Opening Remarks)
Narsai David, Food and Wine Editor, KCBS San Francisco, Berkeley Food Rituals
Francesco Spagnolo and India Mandelkern, Curators of Gourmet Ghettos Sara Felder, Juggler and Playwright, The Bagel and the Croissant
Co-sponsored by the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life and by the Center for Jewish Studies, UC Berkeley
The Future of the Israeli–Palestinian Peace Proces
Tuesday, October 21, 2014, Reception: 5 pm, Moderated Discussion: 5:45 pm, The Great Hall of the Bancroft Hotel, 2680 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA
Abraham Sofaer, Hoover Institution, Former Legal Advisor, U.S. Department of State, Former Federal Judge, Former Egypt-Israel Negotiator
Janine Zacharia, Stanford University, Former Jerusalem Bureau Chief, Washington Post, Former Washington Bureau Chief, Jerusalem Post
View recording here.
A Robbins Collection Lecture on Jewish Law and Thought
Maimonides on Mourning: Jewish Law and Emotion
Thursday, November 6, 2014, 5:15 pm, Bancroft Hotel
Moshe Halbertal, Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem; Professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy at The Hebrew University; Professor of Law, New York University
Co-sponsored by the Robbins Collection, UC Berkeley School of Law
View recording here.
Piyyut: Hebrew Poetry and World Music
Thursday, November 13, 2014, 7:00 pm, The Magnes, 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley
Robert Alter, Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley
Yair Harel, Schusterman Artist-in-Residence, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life
Co-hosted by the Magnes Collection
View recording here.
The Private Sphere as Public Policy? A Symposium on Law and Society in Israel
Tuesday, February 17, 2015, 2:30 – 5:00 pm, Goldberg Room (297 Law Building), Berkeley Law
Presenters:
Introduction: Jonathan Simon, Adrian A. Kragen Professor of Law; Director, CSLS
Hila Shamir, Associate Professor, Buchman Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University
Ori Aronson, Assistant Professor, Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law
Shira Offer, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bar-Ilan University
Avishai Benish, Assistant Professor, Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Respondent: Malcolm Feeley, Claire Sanders Clements Dean’s Professor of Law
Co-Sponsored with the Center for the Study of Law and Society, UC Berkeley School of Law
View recording here.
Like Dreamers: What I’ve Learned about Israel’s Right/Left Divide
Wednesday, March 11, 2015, 5:30 pm, Boalt 105
Yossi Klein Halevi, Journalist and Author; Senior Fellow, Shalom Hartman Institute
Jewish Songlines Concert: Judeo-Spanish and Yiddish Music and Dance Peformance
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Esti Kenan-Ofri and Michael Alpert
A collaboration between The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life with the Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies. With support from the Israel Institute and the Consulate General of Israel to the Pacific Northwes
View recording here.
Between Honour and Authenticity: Zionism as Theodor Herzl’s Life Project
Wednesday, April 22, 2015, Reception: 5 pm, Lecture: 5:30 pm, Warren Room, 295 Boalt Hall
Derek Penslar, Samuel Zacks Professor of Jewish History, University of Toronto, Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies, University of Oxford
In 1895, Zionism became the latest manifestation of Theodor Herzl’s ongoing project to attain both
honour and authenticity. The very act of striving towards these two affective states, overlapping yet
at times contradictory, fueled Herzl’s Zionist passion and sustained him through the nine years during
which he irrevocably transformed the Jewish world.
View recording here.
Reflections on the Lecacy of Nuremberg: The 70th Anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials
International Conference at UC Berkeley with funding from the Joseph and Eda Pell Endowed Fund for Jewish Studies
April 27–28, 2015
Monday, April 27 at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life
5:30 pm: Reception
6:15–7:00 pm: Film Screening: Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today
7:00–8:00 pm: Q & A with Sandra Schulberg, filmmaker and producer; Richard Buxbaum, Professor of Law, UC Berkeley School of Law, Saira Mohamed, Asst. Professor of Law, UC Berkeley School of Law
Tuesday, April 28 at the Bancroft Hotel
8:30 am: Breakfast
9:00 am: Welcome — Kenneth Bamberger, Professor of Law, UC Berkeley School of Law; Director, Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies; and John Efron, Koret Professor of History, UC Berkeley
9:15AM–10:45 AM: Panel I: Nuremberg as Legal and Historical Precedent
Moderator: Andrea Sinn, the DAAD-Professor for German History, UC Berkeley
Speakers:
Michael Marrus, Senior Fellow of Massey College and the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor Emeritus of Holocaust Studies, University of Toronto (Nuremberg’s Forgotten Origins: International Humanitarian Law)
Michael Bazyler, Professor of Law, Fowler School of Law, Chapman University, 1939 Society Law Scholar in Holocaust and Human Rights Studies (The Nuremberg Trials and the Birth of Modern International Law)
10:45 AM: Coffee Break
11:00 AM–1:00 PM: Panel II — Where Were the Jews at Nuremberg? Rethinking the Roles of Victims and Perpetrators in Trials of the Holocaust
Moderator: John Efron, Koret Professor of History, UC Berkeley
Speakers
Richard Buxbaum, Professor of Law, UC Berkeley School of Law (The Nuremberg Trial: Jews as Victims of ‘Realpolitik’)
Hanna Yablonka, Professor of Holocaust Studies, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (The Eichmann Trial: Was It the Jewish Nuremberg?)
Eric Stover, Adjunct Professor of Law and Public Health, UC Berkeley School of Law; Faculty Director of the Human Rights Center (From Eichmann to the Present: Victim Testimony in War Crimes Trials)
1:00 PM–2:30 PM: Lunch
2:30 PM–4:00 PM Panel III — History, Memory, and Morality: Revisiting the Holocaust and Nuremberg through the Lens of Today
Moderator Irving Abella, Shiff Professor of Canadian Jewish History at York University
Speakers
Devin Pendas, Associate Professor, Department of History, Boston College (Contextualizing Nuremberg Today: War and Genocide, Human Rights, War Crimes Trials)
Lawrence Douglas, James J. Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought, Amherst College (On Law, History, and Memory: War Crimes Trials as the Atrocity Paradigm)
4:30 PM: Reception
5:30–7:00 pm Keynote Lecture: Justice After Nuremberg
Speaker: Justice Rosalie Abella, Supreme Court of Canada
The conference is organized jointly by the Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies and the Center for Jewish Studies, UC Berkeley, and is funded generously by The Joseph and Eda Pell Endowed Fund for Jewish Studies.
Co-sponsors: UC Berkeley School of Law; the Department of History; The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life; the Jewish Student Union; the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies; the Human Rights Center; the Berkeley Human Rights Program; the Center for German and European Studies/Institute of European Studies; the Institute of International Studies; and The State Bar of California, International Law Section
Academic Events
Anti-Trafficking in Israel: Nationalism, Borders, and Markets
Hila Shamir, Associate Profesor at the Buchman Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University; Visiting Scholar, Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies
The Revolution of the Third Generation: Redefining Israeli Identity through Traditional Music and Song
Francesco Spagnolo, Curator of The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life and a Lecturer in the Department of Music, and Yair Harel, Founder and Director of Invitation to Piyut and a leading figure in the piyut revival movement in Israel
Should Israel Entrench its Constitutional Identity?
Ruth Gavison, Professor of Law, Hebrew University in Jerusalem; One of the founders and former President of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel
How Serious Is the Threat of Dual Authority in the Israel Defense Forces?
Stuart Cohen, Professor of Political Studies, Bar-Ilan University
Was the Ottoman Institution of Petitioning the Sultan Obsolete by the End of the 19th Century?: The Case of the District of Jerusalem
Yuval Ben-Bassat, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Middle Eastern History, University of Haifa; 2014–2015 Abramson-Israel Institute Visiting Professor, UC Berkeley
On "Sheep Gone Astray": A Muslim Headscarf in a Nazareth Catholic School and a Sephardi Student in an Ashkenazi Ultra-Orthodox School
Michael Karayanni, The Bruce W. Wayne Chair in International Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
In the Name of Energy Security: The Struggle Over the Exportation of Israeli Natural Gas
Itay Fischhendler, Associate Professor at the Geography Department, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; 2014-2015 Visiting Professor, UC Berkeley
Men, Money, and Materiel: How Israel Won the 1948 War
Derek Penslar, Samuel Zacks Professor of Jewish History, University of Toronto; Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies, Oxford University
Stuent Events
Angles on the Middle East Conflict: A Journalist’s Angle
Friday, September 19, 2014
Sue Fishkoff, Editor of the Jewish News Weekly of Northern California
Angles on the Middle East Conflict: A Historical Angle
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Yuval Ben-Bassat, Senior Lecturer of History of the Middle East, University of Haifa, Abramson Israel Institute Visiting Professor
Angles on the Middle East Conflict: An Enviornmental Angle
Friday, October 31, 2014
Itay Fishhendler, Senior Lecturer of Geography, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Jewishness of Israel: Meaning, Justification, Implications
Wednesday, November 5, 2014, 5:40 PM, 132 Law Building
Ruth Gavison, Professor Emeritas of Human Rights Law, Hebrew University
Haim H. Cohn, Founding President of Metzilah Center for Zionist, Jewish, Liberal, and Humanist Thought
Israel is often described as a Jewish and democratic state. Some argue that it cannot be both Jewish and democratic as this legitimates discrimination against the Arab minority in Israel and strengthens theocratic tendencies within Israel. On the other hand, in the recent negotiations with the Palestinians, Israel demanded that a final status agreement includes recognition that Israel is a Jewish state, to clarify that the two states are seen as granting self-determination to Jews and Palestinians respectively. Against this background, a new examination of the meaning and implications of the Jewishness of Israel is indeed required.
Angles on the Middle East Conflict: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in Regional Context: A Mediator’s Perspective
Friday, November 14, 2014
Peter Bartu, Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies, UC Berkeley; UN Mediator and Negotiator
Judaism in the Israel Defense Force: Bridge or Barrier?
Thursday, November 20, 2014, 5:40 PM, Warren Room, 295 Law Building
Stuart Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Political Studies, Bar-Ilan University; Chair of the Department of Government and Politics at Ashkelon Academic College
For many years, the IDF High Command regarded Jewish religious rites and norms as a stimulant to cohesion within the ranks. Consequently, even though overwhelmingly secular, it encouraged the celebration of many traditional rituals. Do the assumptions upon which that policy was based still hold? Could it not be argued that, today, religion acts as a force-divider even more than as a force-binder?
Jewish Nightlife: An Evening of Celebration with Poetry and Music
Thursday, December 18, 2014, Performances by Berkeley Students: 5–6 pm, Piyyut Bay Area Project: 7–8:30 pm, the Magnes, 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley
Yair Harel, Director, Schusterman Artist-in-Residence for The Magnes Collection
End of Semester Performance featuring UC Berkeley Students and Piyyut North America Workshop Participants
Film Sreening: Zero Motivation
Thursday, February 26, 2015, 7:00 pm, Warren Room, 295 Law Building
The Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies invites you to a free screening of the 2014 Best Narrative Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival, Israeli film Zero Motivation. The film is a dark comedy which follows the daily lives of several women serving their army time in the HR department. After the film will be a discussion led by Professor Shira Offer.
Reflections on the Israel Election
Tuesday, April 7, 2015, 6:30 pm, Warren Room, 295 Law Building
Janine Zacharia, Journalist
Identity Through Art: A Multicultural Performance
Thursday, April 30, 2015, 6:30 pm, Goldberg Room, UC Berkeley
Aaron Samuels, Author and Slam Poet
Join us for a night of performance, Aaron Samuels will perform and hold a Q&A, followed by several student and alumni groups.