Category: News

A new article

The story I recounted in Rooted Cosmopolitans centered on nationalism, not religion, as the forgotten engine of Jewish human rights activism. Religion was not completely absent. Rather, Jewish ethics and theological beliefs were filtered though larger categories of politics. To clarify what that meant, I went back to the story to examine what religious human […]

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Marking the Fifth Anniversary of Charlottesville 2017

We just marked the fifth anniversary of the deadly events of August 11-12, 2017, that proved so destructive to the Charlottesville community and foretold many dangers to come in American society. For the occasion, I wrote for Newsweek about the relationship between antisemitism and racism in the ideology of White Supremacy. I also hosted a […]

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Talking Charlottesville after Colleyville

In recent days, I did two in-depth interview conversations about the broader meaning of Charlottesville for democracy, American Jews, and the problem of antisemitism. First, I spoke here with the Jewish Forward’s Aviya Kushner in detail about some of my observations about the trial that did not make it into my Atlantic article. Then, as […]

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Why Charlottesville Matters

After a month of observing the Charlottesville trial of America’s leading white supremacists, I composed my thoughts about its significance. Read on here for my piece in The Atlantic.

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Hate on Trial: My Thoughts on the Charlottesville Trial

This month I am attending the trial in the federal civil lawsuit against the organizers of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville that left one woman said and several other victims severely injured. I am preparing some thoughts on its legal and historical significance for a publication as part of my larger book-in-progress […]

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Lemkin’s Lost Poem

Last year I was amazed to discover an unknown Holocaust poem in Hebrew written by Raphael Lemkin, the Polish Jewish lawyer famous for coining the term “genocide.” I knew Lemkin wrote poetry in Hebrew and Yiddish, but I’d never been able to locate any of it in his extant papers or other published sources. Then, […]

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New issue of the Association for Jewish Studies Review

It is nearly six months since I took on a new role as co-editor of the Association for Jewish Studies Review. We publish this academic journal twice a year, and in its pages we present an incredible sampling of scholarship across the entirety of Jewish history, religion, culture, and more. My co-editor, Alyssa Gray, and […]

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The Jewish Grandchildren of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson

What can Charlottesville’s forgotten Jewish past teach us about the American struggle for freedom? As part of my new role as Ida and Nathan Kolodiz Director of Jewish Studies at the University of Virginia, I have been exploring the the university and the town’s Jewish past. I wrote this short blogpost for the UVA Alumni […]

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Big News from Charlottesville

This August I began a new position as the Ida and Nathan Kolodiz Director of the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Virginia. I am delighted by the opportunity to work with colleagues and students to continue the important work of Jewish Studies at UVA and beyond. You can find more information about the […]

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New Publication: “Prisoners of Zion: American Jews, Human Rights, and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” (2019 Belin Lecture in American Jewish Affairs)

Last year I had the honor to deliver the annual David W. Belin Lecture in American Jewish Affairs at the University of Michigan Frankel Center for Judaic Studies. In my talk, “Prisoners of Zion: American Jews, Human Rights, and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” I extended the story I told in Rooted Cosmopolitans, explaining what happened between […]

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Rooted Cosmopolitans wins the American Historical Association Rosenberg Book Prize

October has brought the exciting news that Rooted Cosmopolitans has won the 2019 American Historical Association Dorothy Rosenberg Prize awarded for “the most distinguished work of scholarship on the history of the Jewish diaspora published in English during the previous calendar year.” I am honored to accept this award from my fellow historians and to […]

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Recent Awards and Honors for Rooted Cosmopolitans

Rooted Cosmopolitans has been named one of the best books of the year by Ha’aretz newspaper and a favorite book of the year by the European Journal of International Law Blog. It has also been named a Finalist for the 2019 PROSE award by the Association of American Publishers’ Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division in […]

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