The lecture, celebrating Black History Month, featured John Eaves, whose discussions have helped build bridges between Black and Jewish communities in cities across the United States. Eaves teaches political science at Spelman College, is the former chairman of Fulton County, and founded Black and Jewish Leaders of Tomorrow.

Guest Speaker John Eaves has helped build bridges between Black and Jewish communities in cities across the country.

Rochol Shurin, an early childhood education major concentrating in Judaic studies, shared her experiences growing up as African American and Jewish in Jerusalem.

Eaves was joined by Rochol Shurin, an early childhood education major concentrating in Judaic studies. Shurin shared her experiences growing up as African American and Jewish in Jerusalem before moving to Flatbush in 2001. Her experiences and perspective on multiculturism were captivating, and the audience enjoyed an engaging Q&A session after the talks.

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Beyda earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Yeshiva University in Manhattan. He then entered ������Ƶ, where he attended the educational leadership program. In spring of 2000, he received his rabbinical ordination from the Sephardic Rabbinical College in Brooklyn and began serving as a rabbi at Congregation Bnei Yitzhak. An ardent advocate of both Jewish and secular education, he plans to continue expanding and enriching the school’s mission of combining Torah B’Ivrit (immersion) and general studies. Here, he talks about his switch from accounting to education, his career path to the Yeshivah of Flatbush, and his plan to reach out to colleges and universities to open the way for students considering higher education.

Can you tell us a bit about your background?

I was born in Manhattan but grew up on the Jersey Shore. I married a girl from Brooklyn—my wife, Yvette, is also a ������Ƶ grad!—and have lived in Brooklyn ever since.

What drew you to ������Ƶ?

I was drawn to the college’s graduate program for educational leadership because it was local and was extremely practice-oriented. There were excellent mentors in the program who shared their years of experience with me. The late educational leadership professor Robert Leder, of blessed memory, was instrumental in shaping my approach to guiding teachers. And Hal Epstein, an adjunct professor in the School of Education, stressed the importance of communal relationships.

I started as a financial statements auditor at Deloitte but found my calling as a rabbi and a classroom teacher. As I grew in my career in education, I saw that I would be well served by training in educational leadership. The knowledge, experience, and degree I received at ������Ƶ were critical to my career advancement.

Can you tell us about your time as a high school teacher?

Before taking on administrative duties, I spent nearly 15 years as a classroom teacher. Even as an administrator, I’ve continued to teach a course or two each year. Teaching has always been a passion; I love shaping young people’s minds by challenging them to think and supporting them as they work out answers to important questions.

What were your immediate goals when you became head of Yeshivah of Flatbush Joel Braverman? You were previously the principal.

My immediate goal was to reorganize the way our leadership team worked. This involved promoting a number of colleagues, hiring others with fresh perspectives, and redesigning our organizational chart to match our needs for growth and innovation. Building and maintaining a balanced team with members who trust one another has allowed us to undertake a number of other initiatives that have impacted the school: a renewed focus on religious growth, including alternative methods for assessing student learning, changing our methods of faculty supervision and development, revamping our college guidance program, and redesigning the way our schedule works.

You were also the head rabbi of Bnei Yitzhak Congregation.

For over 20 years, I served as a pulpit rabbi in Congregation Bnei Yitzhak in Brooklyn. In that role, I was blessed to develop rewarding relationships with dozens of families. When I took over the headship at Flatbush, I felt that I had to let someone else take the reins.

You have been described as an agent of change for the Yeshiva of Flatbush. Could you discuss your role as such?

The Yeshivah of Flatbush has been a flagship institution for American Jewish education for nearly 100 years. The school has been successful for as long as it has because its leaders have never rested and were not content with “good enough.” I’m blessed to have the opportunity to continue that tradition of seeking constant improvement.

One of the 10 Core Values of the school is the study of the sciences, humanities, and the arts. Does this value include preparing for higher education?

We believe the study of the arts, sciences, and humanities is a religious imperative and an important part of being a good person. Upon graduating from high school, our students are expected to continue their education at the university level and beyond.

The high school’s history states that Flatbush Yeshivah “evolved into a unique complement of Jewish and American values that focus on all aspects of education.”

Our school was founded at a time when Jewish people were learning to strike the right balance of holding onto their traditions while integrating into American society. Our answer has been to have a rigorous course of study in both Judaic subjects and the kind of secular subjects one would expect in a prestigious independent school. This prepares and encourages students to, in a manner consistent with their Jewish values, find their unique ways to impact the world for the better.

How do you think yeshivas can work with higher education in service to your students?

It would be an excellent idea to invite students in 11th and 12th grades to visit campuses and see what higher education offers. I envision our students interacting with faculty and student leaders and visiting labs and other specialized facilities.

Do you see the vision becoming a reality any time in the near future?

I’ve been fortunate enough to have conversations with ������Ƶ about this, and I believe we can begin to materialize some of these ideas there in the not-too-distant future.

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Allan Amanik, associate professor, Judaic Studies

������Ƶ: Could you tell us about your work with students from traditional Jewish backgrounds?

Allan Amanik: “Navigating ������Ƶ After Yeshiva” is a series of workshops that helps students from traditional Jewish backgrounds succeed in secular higher education. It is especially geared toward those from Hasidic communities who often struggle because of a lack of preparation and little support from their high schools. We’ve arranged this semester, over three sessions, to have counselors from such offices as Student Affairs, Financial Aid, Personal Counseling, and the Women’s and LGBTQ centers share resources with students and meet them one-on-one. This series is an effort to help students learn about the support available on campus while also introducing staff to their unique challenges. We hope very much these workshops are the start of a larger focused support program for these students.

������Ƶ: What was the inspiration for this?

AA: The inspiration was the need to facilitate visibility. We’ve had students over the years from Hasidic backgrounds in our courses who’ve shared that they felt either alone or invisible in trying to figure out the complexities of college for themselves. Even though they were born in New York City, many lack strong skills in English composition, science, math, etc., to say nothing of a deeper understanding of the bureaucracy or degree requirements of secular higher education. The workings of GPAs, course selection, the consequences of failing or dropping classes are just a few points that often come up. Then there are issues of housing and food insecurity and paying their own way since many are going it alone.

������Ƶ: So these students come from a place where you don’t usually go on to higher education?

AA: Some are not only the first in their families to pursue a college education, but they come from worlds that often stigmatize that path and have barely prepared them. Unfortunately, this has resulted in needlessly long times to complete degrees, and some students simply give up.

After listening to students over the years and hosting a series of focus groups last semester, Judaic Studies designed this workshop series as a first step in identifying common issues, highlighting existing resources, and building the infrastructure to better support current and future students throughout their degrees. After all, there are so many Hasidic communities in Brooklyn, and ������Ƶ houses CUNY’s only official Judaic Studies Department, so it seems only natural to build a focused program like this here.

������Ƶ: Can you talk about how these workshops help orthodox students navigate the secular world?

AA: I think the metaphor of a bridge is a useful way to frame this. Every student will bring a different relationship to their community, faith, family, and the path they see for themselves going forward. This program certainly doesn’t advocate one way or another. Still, it does seek to give students the best tools to chart that path academically and professionally to honor whatever best suits them. And ideally, as we learn from students at different stages of their academic career, we’ll better understand other areas where they need help. We’ll be better able to tailor programming to first-year students, for instance, while preparing seniors for the next steps after graduation.

������Ƶ: Let’s switch gears a bit and discuss your previous work. U.S. history, American Jewish history, immigration, ethnicity, and gender studies are your fields of research. You have also published two books on funeral practices in America—Dust to Dust: A History of Jewish Death and Burial in New York�����Ի���Till Death Do Us Part: American Ethnic Cemeteries as Borders Uncrossed. How did they both come about?

AA: In some ways the easiest answer is family. I grew up in a fairly tight-knit Jewish immigrant community in New Jersey, which has undoubtedly shaped my broad fields of research. Dust to Dust came when I was processing some very difficult losses in my family. But beyond the personal, death and end-of-life planning are such rich sites to explore immigration, urban history, and family and gender ideals that the book offered a fresh perspective on the long sweep of Jewish history in America and New York City. And as so many Jewish communities have consistently prioritized Jewish funeral rites at the same time that they’ve innovated around life insurance, cemetery real estate, and communal networks providing them, death and dying revealed a powerful lens to chart the evolution of America’s largest Jewish center from the 17th century to the late 20th.

Till Death Do Us Part is an edited volume that does many of the same things but takes a much broader view. This one is comparative, looking at various ethnic, racial, and religious groups in America and a common drive to maintain separate cemeteries and funeral industries. We tried to explore why that norm has so long gone unquestioned in America. In questioning it, we also hoped to unearth what it can tell us about American society more broadly. Approaches to death offer insight into the living and the class-, faith-, and race-based hierarchies shaping American identity. At the same time, it also reveals many elements that transcend those divisions.

����:��In a profile on him in an earlier issue of this magazine, one of your former students, Samori Harris, credits you with encouraging him to expand on a research paper he did exploring the relationship between Black and Jewish people during the Civil Rights movement.

����:��Samori was an amazing student and we remain in contact. He was drawn to the idea of political coalitions between Black and Jewish Americans in the 1960s, particularly Jewish New Yorkers traveling south for civil rights work. I was then just beginning my current research on social justice activism among Jewish, Black, and Latina women in New York between the 1930s and 1980s. So we took the opportunity to learn together.

He helped me design a new course called Black-Jewish Activism: Coalitions in America. Through the Mellon Undergraduate Transfer Student Research Program we began initial research on my current book project. That work focused on juvenile justice activism by the National Council of Jewish Women in New York over the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to court-watching and probation reform, Council performed several studies exposing failings in juvenile prisons and detention centers. Samori followed an additional line of inquiry by looking at Black communal and professional institutions doing similar work. Close study of mass incarceration in the period deeply impacted each of us, but so did the model of efforts to fight it that could relate to the present day.

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But, after a while you begin to understand that the lessons learned from the texts—some that date back to 550 ������ƵE—could not be more relevant or thought provoking. You also realize that the students are being offered a rare gift that few other American colleges offer.

Brodsky, an associate professor who is also the chair of the Judaic Studies Department, says the course has been around for years but was rebooted again for the Spring 2020 semester. Apart from the obvious goal of developing students’ Biblical Hebrew language skills and their knowledge of the Hebrew Bible, one of its major goals is to get the students to see that there have always been a variety of approaches, both traditional and scholarly, to the Bible.

“I want students to see that even within traditional/religious approaches and among scholarly approaches, there is not and has never been one single way to approach the text,” says Brodsky. “Some of those are traditional and/or religious, and some are modern and/or academic. What I want students to see from the comparison of all these approaches is that we share many of the same questions about the text, and then each approach offers a different lens that leads to a different perspective and therefore answer. Taken together, these various perspectives offer us a richer and more nuanced understanding of the text and its reception.”

The course—which counts toward the Judaic studies major and the foreign language requirement—sees students with varying knowledge of Hebrew read through the Book of Samuel, considered one of the most engaging sagas in the Hebrew Bible. Students cover three chapters of the Bible each class, reading selections of it together in Hebrew for the first 35 minutes, and then stepping back and discussing the chapters as a whole in English for the second 35 minutes.

One class in October saw students sitting in the round—another distinct class characteristic—engaging in a lively debate on the contradictions sprinkled through various texts.

“While you will see different answers, they are asking the same questions,” Brodsky says. “These contradictions gave birth to the richness and complexity that is Judaism. The answer to Judaism is really in the questions themselves.”

One of its major goals of David Brodsky’s Biblical Hebrew course is to get the students to see that there have always been a variety of approaches, both traditional and scholarly, to the Bible.

Brodsky also uses examples from the Midrashic hermeneutic—one about how many times unleavened bread should be eaten during the seven-day Passover festival. While some biblical passages said seven, others said six, and a midrash (a traditional form of Jewish commentary) interpreted the contradiction to imply just one day is required. Rather than shying away from these contradictions, for midrash, they are intentional and key to unlocking the deeper meanings of the text. Brodsky showed the class that ancient and modern, traditional, and academic scholars all notice these same contradictions. What they do with them reveals their respective approaches. For Brodsky, this is an important aspect not only to the class but to Jewish life.

What also makes the course special is the number of students enrolled. According to Brodsky, outside of Israel where these types of classes are more commonplace, you might find just a handful of students studying Biblical Hebrew in other American colleges and universities. At ������Ƶ, there are 18 students enrolled in the class this semester—a fact also highlights the rich and diverse student body at the college and the surrounding borough.

“What I really enjoy about the Hebrew Bible is that it is a complex text without a simple interpretation,” says student Norma Sutton. “The Book of Samuel, which we are studying for class this semester, is a psychologically insightful, politically nuanced text that is also a riveting saga about love, war, conflict, and the struggle for peace and prosperity. I love everything from doing close readings of the text that can only be accomplished through a careful honing of linguistic and philological skills to the broad scope of the narrative.”

Sutton is a junior majoring in Judaic studies. She took the course because of her love of languages, particularly Hebrew and specifically the Book of Samuel.

“There are so many nuances to the Hebrew language, and really learning the various binyanim helps you understand more,” Sutton added. “I love analyzing the biblical texts, finding contradictions or grammatical problems, asking the questions and really diving in to finding the answers, the same way Rabbis and academics have done for years.”

Sutton added that studying with her classmates in the round was also enjoyable. And if she becomes a teacher, that is a style of teaching she would like to utilize.

“As a proud observant Jew, with a full family of my own at home, it’s beautiful to have the knowledge of ancient Hebrew, to be able to find the origins of various laws, customs, and traditions in the biblical text,” Sutton says. “This course is also helpful for my future goals. It is strengthening my skills with the Hebrew language, it’s learning Torah, analyzing various interpretations and perspectives, and it is taught in a fun and engaging style. As the semester continues, I realize just how much I love the Hebrew language.”

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On May 12, the Judaic Studies Department handed out eight scholarship awards totaling $8,400 to a dozen students at its annual student awards event.

The scholarships came courtesy of several generous donors, and they reflected the contributions the students have made, both in and out of the classroom.

“Thanks to the generosity of alumni, professors emeriti, and their families, the Judaic Studies Department was able to reward these extraordinary students with scholarships that helped amplify the rich history and heritage of the Jewish people,” said David Brodsky, associate professor and department chair of Judaic Studies. “We are very fortunate to have such generous support, as it goes a long way in inspiring and empowering our students.”

Jonathan Taubes, who earned a Rose Goldstein Memorial Scholarship, is in his first semester in Judaic studies. He said receiving the award was incredibly gratifying. Taubes is currently working at a Jewish non-profit and aims to continue serving his community in the future through similar work.

“I am really happy to be involved with the Judaic Studies Department at ������Ƶ,” Taubes said. “I immediately felt right at home when I started here and that this was the right place for me to be.”

Esther Hidary is an English major who received a Holocaust Studies Memorial Award. She said taking the course “Holocaust Literature” really opened her eyes, and that she plans on taking more Judaic studies courses. “The class was incredible, and I really feel honored to receive this award to be a part of this program,” Hidary said.

The awardees and their scholarships they earned included:

• Norma Sutton: Pearl Altman Memorial Scholarship—awarded to a junior, senior, or graduate student majoring in Judaic studies or a program under the guidance of the department.
• Alyssa Rodes: John F. Kennedy Human Relations Award—awarded to an outstanding student majoring in Judaic studies who has rendered meaningful human service to the school or community.
• Chaya Pearson, Daniel Silverstein, Esther Hidary, Savannah Berk, Aharon Grama, Effy Gottlieb, and Jonathan Taubes: Rose Goldstein Memorial Scholarship—an endowed scholarship dedicated to meeting the financial needs of students.
• Sylvia Cohen: Abraham S. Goodhartz Memorial Scholarship—an annual scholarship for a student pursuing Judaic studies.
• Shannon Nizard: Faculty Hillel Associates in Judaic Studies Award—awarded to a graduating senior for excellence in Judaic studies.
• Alyssa Rodes: Israel Gerber Memorial Award—awarded to a senior who has achieved distinction in Judaic studies and who has completed Judaic studies.
• Esther Hidary and Daniel Silverstein: Holocaust Studies Memorial Award— awarded to students who have done work of distinction in Holocaust studies courses.
• Norma Sutton: Leon and Rosa Reznik Memorial Award—awarded to an outstanding adult student majoring in Judaic studies.

Learn more about the Judaic Studies department at ������Ƶ.

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Through its diverse and interconnected award-winning departments, the School of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) and its students are well-equipped to become leaders and influencers in an ever-changing and interdependent world.

Now, the important research these students are doing in the educational laboratory that is HSS will be showcased in the Second Annual ������Ƶ HSS Expo scheduled for two full days on April 25 and 26. The Expo will bring together all of ������Ƶ’s longstanding HSS end-of-year student events in a single forum.

HSS Dean Ken Gould first conceived of the Expo for Spring 2020. When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the campus, the first annual event was held online. The Expo is returning in a hybrid form in 2022 to give the public a chance to see again the high level of intellectual output of ������Ƶ students while providing them the opportunity to test out new ways to display their scholarly work and research.

For Gould, highlighting and supporting the humanities has never been more important.

“HSS is the core of our liberal arts education and the center for cutting-edge interdisciplinary research and teaching rooted in strong disciplines,” Gould says. “This two-day event will help us continue to build our academic community, both on and off-campus, and let our brilliant students shine and get acclimated to presenting and engaging with the public.”

The HSS offerings at ������Ƶ are extremely robust and include departments focused on Africana Studies, Classics, Communication Arts, Sciences, and Disorders, English, History, Judaic Studies, , Modern Languages and Literatures, Philosophy, Political Science, Puerto Rican and Latino Studies, and Sociology.

One of the Expo highlights includes several HSS students from ������Ƶ’s Department of History and other disciplines presenting their research on April 25 at 7 p.m. This event will be live-streamed and available to view at .

In all, the two-day Expo will showcase approximately 50 students. Some of the presentations include:

• A student panel discussion on the history and current state of activism, including the Occupy Movement and Covid-19. Undertaking research into the events that shaped the ������Ƶ experience, student panelists will interview alumni about what drew them to activism on campus, if and how ������Ƶ transformed their lives, and what lessons current students might draw from their experiences. (April 25, 2:15 – 3:30 p.m.)
• Research from the ongoing Asian American Pacific Islander Project. Students will present a documentary they created and a partial clip of an interview from a current podcasting project. (April 25, 2:15 – 3:30 p.m.)
• History and Religion majors—all upper-level seminar students—will talk through theoretical and historical issues on the question of religious experience. Do religious objects have agency or are their worth and meaning inscribed by the users of these objects? Does religious experience “really” happen, or is it simply a product of psychological issues? Those and many other questions will be explored. (April 26, 10 – 10:45 a.m.).

������Ƶ’s offerings in the humanities and liberal arts are recognized nationwide. Last year, the college was ranked as the top public liberal arts college in New York City and among the top 50 liberal arts colleges in the nation, according to . The college was one of only two New York State colleges or universities that made the site’s list of renowned liberal arts institutions.

The rankings highlight that businesses everywhere are beginning to acknowledge that the desirable employee today masters writing, psychology, logic, math, graphic design, economics, computer programming, and more.

The HSS Expo has enjoyed extraordinary support from a $50,000 grant from the , which will award 10 students $1,000 awards at a post-event research contest.

More information and to register for the events.

More information about last year’s HSS Expo.

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This 12-month project will launch in fall 2021 and entails digitizing and cataloging 62 hours of film footage shot for the 1997 award-winning documentary A Life Apart: Hasidism in America, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The footage can be characterized as audiovisual field notes on the religious practices, cultural mores, family life, intercommunal relations, and the Americanization process of these distinctive immigrant lives from 1936 to 1996. It includes interviews with scholars, community members, and neighbors from the Brooklyn neighborhoods where the majority of America’s Hasidim live.

“This is another important collection that we are proud to feature in ������Ƶ’s archives,” said Colleen Bradley-Sanders, associate professor and ������Ƶ archivist. “Our hope is that the material can serve as a valuable resource for anyone who is interested in this important history, no matter their faith or religious background.”

This project, which received support from the CUNY Research Foundation, complements another important collection in the college’s Archives and Special Collections. In summer 2019, the archives unveiled the YWCA of Brooklyn Collection, made possible by a two-year processing grant from the NHPRC. It contains materials from the organization from its opening in 1888 to 2010, when the collection was transferred to ������Ƶ. Other collections include Brooklyniana, The Historic Manuscript Collection, The Rare Book Collection, The Robert L. Hess Collection on Ethiopia & the Horn of Africa, and the Stuart Schaar Collection on the Middle East and North Africa.

E-mail the ������Ƶ Archives and Special Collections to learn more. Digitized materials are available through the college’s digital assets platform once the archive goes live.

For students looking to learn more, ������Ƶ also offers a course, The Hasidic Movement: Its History and Literature (JUST 3037/HIST 3104), which explores the historical development of the movement along with its central mystical doctrines and literature.

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SHIN DC III Annual Congressional Holocaust Commemoration Day

January 28, 1:30 p.m.

������Ƶ and its Judaic Studies Department are proud to be a sponsor of . This event highlights underrepresented Jewish Holocaust communities, including Sephardic and Romaniote experiences, under this year’s theme, “Refugees of the Holocaust.” It will include examining the experiences of Sephardic and Ashkenazi refugees in Sephardic lands or communities of North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, the Balkans, the Middle East, and other parts of Asia.

Special guest Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, will tell his Sephardic family’s story of survival and the keynote speaker is Devin Naar, the Isaac Alhadeff Professor in Sephardic Studies at the University of Washington.

For more information, e-mail Sephardic Heritage International DC at info@shindc.org.

“Black and Jewish Multicultural Identities, and Anti-Semitism”

February 4, 12:30 p.m.

“Black and Jewish Multicultural Identities, and Anti-Semitism” will explore the possibilities and meanings that arise when black and Jewish identities merge. This event will feature a lecture by Professor from Anthropology and American Studies at Grinnell College. Gibel Mevorach holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Duke University. She received her B.A. and M.A. in African studies from Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. Gibel Mevorach is author of the books Black, Jewish and Interracial: It’s Not the Color of Your Skin but the Race of Your Kin and Other Myths of Identity, and she has also been published in several notable journals. She moved to Israel in 1970 after graduating from The Brearley School in New York and returned to the United States in 1991 to pursue doctoral studies. She was invited to join Grinnell College as a Scholar-in-Residence in January 1996.

Common Reader/The 1619 Project, With Author Robert Jones Jr. (’06, M.F.A ’08)

February 18, 6 p.m.

As part of the Common Reader/The 1619 Project organized by the Department of English, Robert Jones Jr. reads from his critically acclaimed debut novel, The Prophets. He will be introduced by Wadzanai Mhute, an M.F.A. student in creative writing at ������Ƶ.

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