The Fern and Manfred Steinfeld Program in Judaic Studies

Congratulations to Gregory Kaplan, this year's winner of the Gilya Schmidt Award​! Dr. Kaplan's contributions to the study of religion and of Judaism reflect the legacy of Emerita Professor Dr. Gilya Schmidt's own excellent work. Learn more about Dr. Kaplan's scholarship here: https://loom.ly/sNWkj5I University of Tennessee College of Arts & Sciences

Still looking for something to fill your fall course schedule? Jewish Studies has you covered. Whether you're interested in the ancient Near East or contemporary America, whether you want to watch movies or learn to read a whole new alphabet, we've got something for you. Check out our Fall 2026 course offerings, all still open for registration!

Have you ever studied Jewish texts and wondered how closely they correspond to the lives of actual Jews? Or wanted to know how we would even go about learning what daily life was like thousands of years ago? This Thursday, Pratima Gopalakrishnan will help us think about these questions, in our final Emerging Voices lecture of the academic year. Dr. Gopalakrishnan will share her research on documents from the Cairo Geniza, and in so doing will help us think about the economic and social realities of medieval Jewish life.

As always, this event will take place at 6 PM EST on Zoom and it is open to ALL, so head over to the registration page to get full details and the link to register. We're grateful to have co-sponsorship from University of Tennessee Department of Religious Studies, History, Middle East Studies, and the Marco Institute. We hope to see you there! http://tiny.utk.edu/gopalakrishnan26

UTK Frankel-Ricketts Global Scholars in Poland in Krakow and at Wieliczka salt mine

UTK Frankel-Ricketts Global Scholars in Poland at the old synagogue in Krakow.

Hamantaschen available for you to come get in McClung Tower 501! To learn more about the history of this tasty Purim treat, check out this article: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/why-do-jews-eat-hamantaschen-on-purim/

Have you ever wondered why a glass is broken at a Jewish wedding? Or whether there is any truth to the notion that all Jewish holidays can be summarized as "they tried to kill us, we won, let's eat"? These examples, and many others, speak to a complex combination of communal joy and suffering found throughout Jewish history. Come and hear more about the origins and dynamics of this combination by attending our first Emerging Voices in Jewish Studies lecture of the spring semester! Next Tuesday, February 24 at 6 PM EST on Zoom, Erez DeGolan of Fordham University will bring us into the "sea of Talmud" to teach us about Jewish joy and imperial power, in and beyond late ancient Roman Palestine.

Head to http://tiny.utk.edu/degolan26 to get the Zoom link for Dr. DeGolan's talk. As with all events in our Emerging Voices series, the talk is entirely online and open to everyone, so we hope to see you there!

Reminder that we are excited to host Shari Rabin tomorrow to hear about her new book, *The Jewish South: An American History*! The book narrates the history of Jews in the South from the colonial period to the present, and shows us how Jews in this understudied region have shaped the American Jewish story.

Dr. Rabin's talk will take place at 6:30 tomorrow at the Hodges Library Auditorium, with a Southern vegetarian reception to follow! It will also be live-streamed so anyone can tune in from anywhere. Head to http://tiny.utk.edu/rabin26 to register and get the link. We hope to see you there!

The Jewish South: An American Story This year's Abraham and Rebecca Solomon and Ida Schwartz Distinguished Lecture on Judaic Studies is a discussion of Professor Shari Rabin’s book The Jewish South: An American History (Princeton University Press, 2025) which is the first narrative survey of southern Jewish history. Exploring dynami...

We are excited to announce that our Abraham and Rebecca Solomon and Ida Schwartz Distinguished Lecture on Judaic Studies will be delivered next Thursday by award-winning scholar Shari Rabin of Oberlin College. Dr. Rabin will discuss her new book, *The Jewish South: An American History*, a cutting-edge work that draws attention to the rich archives of Southern Jewish lives. The first synthetic history of Jews in the South, Dr. Rabin's book has just been shortlisted for a National Jewish Book Award!

The lecture will take place at 6:30 in the Hodges Library Auditorium, with a reception to follow. It will also be live-streamed; check out the event page for full details and the link to register: https://calendar.utk.edu/event/the-jewish-south-an-american-story?utm_campaign=widget&utm_medium=widget&utm_source=Calendar We hope to see you there!

Welcome back, Vols!! We've got big things coming your way this Spring. Our Emerging Voices in Jewish Studies lecture series keeps rolling with three more talks from young scholars doing cutting-edge work. If you've ever wondered about how Judaism balances grief with joy, or struggled to make sense of violent images in religious texts, or wanted to know what it was really like to be a medieval Jewish merchant, or if you're just curious about what conversations are happening these days in the study of Jews and Judaism, we've got something for you!

Each of the talks in our Emerging Voices series are delivered via Zoom, and are open to the public; so mark your calendars, and we hope to see you there. You can get all the info and links to register on our website: https://judaic.utk.edu/lecture/emerging-voices.php

Eli Rosenblatt, “Black Christian Hebraism: Charles Lee Russell and the Afro-Protestant Encounter with Rabbinic Culture, 1918-1948,” April 9 at 6 PM (register: http://tiny.utk.edu/rosenblatt25)