College Commons

Author Ashley Goldberg imagines the human and communal cost of sexual abuse in the Jewish community. Abomination, Winner of the 2022 National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction Ashley Goldberg is a writer from Melbourne, Australia. His stories have appeared in New Australian Fiction 2021, Meanjin, Chiron Review and Award Winning Australian Writing among others. His work has been longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize. He holds an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University and has been the recipient of the KYD/Varuna Copyright Agency Fellowship and the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre Fellowship. His debut novel, Abomination, was published by Penguin Random House Australia in May 2022 and won the Debut Fiction Prize at the National Jewish Book Awards.

Sarah Imhoff introduces us to Jessie Sampter who broke the Zionist mold. The Lives of Jessie Sampter: Queer, Dis­abled, Zionist - National Jewish Book Award Finalist in Women's Studies Imhoff is Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Chair in Jewish Studies and Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and the Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University. She writes about religion and the body with a particular interest in gender, sexuality, disability, and American religion, as well as religion and law. 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). She is the founding co-editor of the journal American Religion.

Author Laura Hobson Faure on how French Jews accepted, negotiated and even rejected American Jewish aid after the Holocaust. A “Jewish Marshall Plan”: the American Jewish Presence in Post-Holocaust France, winner of the National Jewish Book Award in Writing Based on Archival Material. Laura Hobson Faure is a professor at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University-Paris 1, where she holds the chair of Modern Jewish history and is a member of the Center for Social History (UMR 8058). Her research focuses on the intersections between French and American Jewish life, during and after the Holocaust. She is the author of A “Jewish Marshall Plan”: the American Jewish Presence in Post-Holocaust France (Indiana University Press, 2022) which won a National Jewish Book award, and Rescue: The Story of Kindertransport to France and America (forthcoming, Yale University Press). She also co-edited L’Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants et les populations juives au XXème siècle. Prévenir et Guérir dans un siècle de violences (Armand Colin

Author Dani Shapiro teases out the kaleidoscopic layers of Jewishness, loss, secrets and discoveries in her award-winning novel, Signal Fires. Signal Fires, winner of the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. Dani Shapiro is the author of eleven books, and the host and creator of the hit podcast Family Secrets. Her most recent novel, Signal Fires, was named a best book of 2022 by Time Magazine, Washington Post, Amazon, and others, and is a national bestseller. Her most recent memoir, Inheritance, was an instant New York Times Bestseller, and named a best book of 2019 by Elle, Vanity Fair, Wired, and Real Simple. Both Signal Fires and Inheritance were winners of the National Jewish Book Award. Dani’s work has been published in fourteen languages and she’s currently developing Signal Fires for its television adaptation. Dani’s book on the process and craft of writing, Still Writing, has just been reissued on the occasion of its tenth anniversary. She occasionally teaches workshops and retreats, and is the

Author Lisa Brahin shares her family’s riveting story of escape from the pogroms. Lisa Brahin is an accomplished Jewish genealogist, researcher and writer. Inspired as a young girl by Alex Haley’s ROOTS, she spent many summers audio taping the stories of her grandmother’s traumatic childhood during the 1917-1921 anti-Jewish pogroms in Ukraine. Those tapes were the primary source for her historical family saga, TEARS OVER RUSSIA: A Search for Family and the Legacy of Ukraine’s Pogroms (Pegasus Books, 2022).   With a lack of previously published sources to turn to, Lisa used her genealogical skills to locate and interview former residents of her grandmother’s shtetl, Stavishche, Russia (which soon became Ukraine). Curators in four countries assisted her in finding unpublished documents, written in five languages, that would help to validate her grandmother’s tales. In 2003, she assisted in finding the lost location of the original manuscript Megilat HaTevah, which she considers to be one of the most important

Journalist Oren Kessler dives into the enduring legacy of the Arab Revolt of 1936. Oren Kessler is a journalist and political analyst based in Tel Aviv. He has served as deputy director for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society in London, Arab affairs correspondent for The Jerusalem Post, and an editor and translator at Haaretz English edition. ​ Raised in Rochester, New York, and Tel Aviv, he holds a BA in history from the University of Toronto and an MA in diplomacy and conflict studies from Reichman University (IDC Herzliya). ​ Kessler’s work has appeared in media outlets including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Politico. Palestine 1936 is his first book.

Roslyn Bernstein’s novel follows a young woman’s voyage of discovery in 1961 Israel. Roslyn Bernstein is the author of several books, including Boardwalk Stories, a collection of 14 fictional tales set from 1950 to 1970, and Engaging Art: Essays and Interviews from Around the Globe, a collection of 60 of her online avant-garde art pieces. She is also the co-author of Illegal Living: 80 Wooster Street and the Evolution of SoHo, written jointly with the architect Shael Shapiro. Her most recent novel is The Girl Who Counted Numbers. Since the 1980s, she has been reporting from around the globe for such print and online publications as the New York Times, Newsday, the Village Voice, New York Magazine, Medium, Huffington Post, and Guernica, focusing primarily on cultural reporting, contemporary art, and in-depth interviews with artists and curators. Currently, Professor Emerita in the Department of Journalism and the Writing Professions at Baruch College of the City University of New York (CUNY), she taught jour

Author Hen Mazzig dives into the varieties and challenges of Jewishness diversity, while also capturing our shared experience, identity and story. Hen Mazzig is an award winning Israeli author, a writer, and a speaker who has inspired thousands around the world with his story for over a decade. He was named as one of the Algemeiner’s top 100 people positively influencing Jewish life in 2018 and 2021, Top 50 online pro-Israel Influencers, and Top 50 LGBTQ+ Influencers. In 2022 the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis chose Hen to be its' Portrait in Courage award laureate. Hen's first bestselling book, "The Wrong Kind of Jew" was released in 2022.

Author Oren Schneider was raised by his grandfather, Alex, who survived Buchenwald and built a life in Israel, against all the odds. Oren Schneider was born in Israel, a third generation to holocaust survivors and seventh generation to farmers from the Galilee. He is an entrepreneur and business owner who enjoys music, cooking, travel, people and especially the combination of all four. He lives with his family in Brooklyn.

Congressional observer Ira Shapiro revisits his past critiques of Congress. Ira Shapiro’s forty-five-year Washington career has focused on American politics and international trade. Shapiro served twelve years in senior staff positions in the U.S. Senate, working for a series of distinguished senators: Jacob Javits, Gaylord Nelson, Abraham Ribicoff, Thomas Eagleton, Robert Byrd, and Jay Rockefeller. He served in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative during the Clinton administration, first as general counsel and then chief negotiator with Japan and Canada, with the rank of ambassador. In his most recent book on the U.S. Senate, The Betrayal: How Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans Abandoned America (Rowman & Littlefield; May 17, 2022), Shapiro turns his gaze to how the Senate responded to the challenges posed by the Trump administration and its prospects under President Biden.

Author Jai Chakrabarti explores unexpected avenues to discovering family and identity in his new short story collection. Jai Chakrabarti is the author of the novel A Play for the End of the World (Knopf), which won the National Jewish Book Award for debut fiction, was the Association of Jewish Libraries Honor Book, and was long-listed for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He is also the author of the story collection A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness (Knopf, Feb 2023). His short fiction has appeared in One Story, Electric Literature, A Public Space, Conjunctions, Gulf Coast, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Short Stories, and awarded a Pushcart Prize and also performed on Selected Shorts by Symphony Space. His nonfiction has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Writer’s Digest, Berfrois, and LitHub. He was an Emerging Writer Fellow with A Public Space and received an MFA in Creative Writing from Brooklyn Co

Host Josh Holo and author Dara Horn have a lively and thought-provoking discussion about her controversial new book. Dara Horn is the award-winning author of five novels and the essay collection People Love Dead Jews, and the creator and host of the podcast Adventures with Dead Jews. One of Granta magazine’s Best Young American Novelists and a three-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award, among other honors, Horn received her doctorate in Yiddish and Hebrew literature from Harvard University, and has taught these subjects at Sarah Lawrence College, Yeshiva University, and Harvard. She has lectured at hundreds of venues across North America, Israel and Australia. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and four children. Photo credit by: Michael B. Priest

Lilith Magazine Editor Susan Weidman Schneider shares a groundbreaking Jewish feminist short story collection spanning 40 Years. Susan Weidman Schneider, one of Lilith’s founding mothers, has been editor in chief since the magazine launched. Her writing about Jewish women’s philanthropy, the Jewish stake in abortion rights, the persistence of gender stereotyping and more have been credited with moving the needle on feminist change in the Jewish world. She’s the author of Jewish and Female and Intermarriage, and co-author of Head and Heart, a book about money in the lives of women.

Young author Suzette Sheft retells her grandmother’s story of survival during the Holocaust. Suzette Sheft is a 16-year-old student at the Horace Mann School in New York City. She lives in Manhattan with her mother, twin brother, and two dogs. In her free time, she enjoys writing, reading, running, volunteering, and spending time with her family. She won a Scholastic Silver Key for an excerpt of Running for Shelter, her debut novel. The book is dedicated to her late father who inspired her to write and share her family’s story.

Dr. Rotem Rozental dives into the treasure of the Jewish National Fund’s pre-state photographic archive. Rotem Rozental, Ph.D, is the Executive Director of the Los Angeles Center of Photography. Between 2016-2022, she served as Chief Curator at American Jewish University, where she was also Assistant Dean of the Whizin Center for Continuing Education and Senior Director of Arts and Creative Programming. Her upcoming book, Pre-State Photographic Archives and the Zionist Movement is in press with Routledge Publishers, and was named recipient of the Jordan Schnitzer First Book Award by the Association for Jewish Studies. Rotem is a lecturer at USC Roski School of Art and Design Critical Studies Department, and teaches seminars about photo-theory at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. She mentors artists worldwide and contributes regularly to magazines, journals and exhibition catalogues. Her writings about contemporary art and image-based media, as well as Jewish and Israeli art, were published in Artfo

Grace Overbeke uncovers the stories behind the career of legendary Jewish comedian Jean Carroll. Grace Overbeke, PhD: Grace Kessler Overbeke is an Assistant Professor in the Theatre Department of Columbia College with a focus on Comedy Writing and Performance. Previously, she served as the Perilman Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish Studies at Duke University. Her most recent scholarship appears in Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, Theatre Topics, and Theatre Annual. Other publications appear in The New England Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, Studies in American Humor, and The Jewish Forward. She was the recipient of the Mark and Ruth Luckens International Prize in Jewish Thought and Culture, and the Northwestern Crown Center Fellowship for Jewish and Israel Studies. She received her B.A. in Theatre and English from Wesleyan University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Northwestern University's Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama.

Professor Eric Lawee uncovers the complexities and fascination of our most influential author. Eric Lawee is a full professor in the Department of Bible at Bar-Ilan University, where he teaches the history of Jewish biblical scholarship. His Rashi’s Commentary on the Torah: Canonization and Resistance in the Reception of a Jewish Classic won the 2019 Jewish Book Award in the category of Scholarship of the Jewish Book Council. It was also the 2021 finalist for a Jordan Schnitzer Book Award in the category of Medieval and Early Modern Jewish History and Culture of the Association for Jewish Studies. Lawee holds the Rabbi Asher Weiser Chair for Medieval Biblical Commentary Research and directs Bar-Ilan's Institute for Jewish Bible Interpretation.

Prof. Gordon Dale traces the path of traditional Hasidic music. Dr. Gordon Dale, the Inaugural Dr. Jack Gottlieb, z”l, Scholar in Jewish Music Studies, currently serves as the Visiting Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music (DFSSM) at HUC/New York. Effective July 1, 2022, he will become the Assistant Professor of Jewish Musicology in the DFSSM. Dr. Dale has most recently conducted extensive research in the Hasidic communities of New York and Israel, and has lectured across the United States on topics related to Israeli popular music, and Jewish music and mysticism. Dr. Dale is currently the Executive Director of The Jewish Music Forum, a project of the American Society for Jewish Music, and is a past president of the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Special Interest Group for Jewish Music. He holds a Ph.D. from The Graduate Center, CUNY, an M.A. from Tufts University, and a B.S. from Northeastern University. His forthcoming book, The Life and Works of Rabbi Ben Zion

Stories and identities collide and coalesce as Ladino-speaking Jews land in Mexico. Assoc. Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Michigan, Dr. Devi Mays studies the transnational Jewish networks in the Mediterranean and globally, with a focus on Sephardic Jews, gender, and identity. In her 2020 book “Forging Ties, Forging Passports,” she tells the stories of Sephardi migrants to Mexico with, their networks among formerly Ottoman lands, France, the United States, Cuba, as well as Mexico. Mostly, Dr. Mays points out the manner in which geographic and social mobility challenged the physical borders of the state and the conceptual boundaries of the nation. “Forging Ties” won a 2020 National Jewish Book Award a 2021 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award.

Professor Alexander Kaye reminds us that Orthodoxy does not necessarily seek a monopoly on the power of state. Alexander Kaye is the Karl, Harry, and Helen Stoll Assistant Professor of Israel Studies at Brandeis University, and is the author of "The Invention of Jewish Theocracy: The Struggle for Legal Authority in Modern Israel" (Oxford University Press, 2020). His research deals in the history of Jewish thought, with a special focus on political thought, the history of law and theories of Jewish modernity. He is also an expert in Israel Studies, and his research in the history of Israel focuses on the relationship between law, religion and politics, and in particular in the history of religious Zionism.