Friends of Jewish Studies at Smith College

Hag Aviv sameah, a zisn un koshern peysakh!!!
Jewish Studies wishes all of its friends a meaningful Passover.
We are especially excited to have welcomed this year LeiAnna Hamel as visiting professor of Jewish Studies with a specialisation in Yiddish literature and culture. Next year we welcome assistant professor of Jewish Studies Maytal Mark, who works on the intellectual history of Jews in the Arab world. And on April 17 we welcome Ayelet Tzabari, an award-winning fiction writer and memoirist of Yemeni Jewish women’s experience, for a talk.
May all of us be renewed in this season of renewal.

Learn Yiddish for credit this summer at Tel Aviv University! Generous scholarships and stipends are available for students.
Join Smith's very own Justin Cammy alongside some of the best Yiddish language and culture teachers in the world (Yaad Biran, Miriam Trinh, Eliezer Niborski, Rachel Rubinstein, Marc Caplan, and more!). July 5-30. Registration opens Feb 1. https://en-humanities.tau.ac.il/naomiyiddish/about

Late breaking fall 2025 offering: WLT 218 Holocaust Literature with LeiAnna X. Hamel at Smith. Why has Yiddish—the language of 5 million Jewish victims—traditionally been
neglected in narratives of the Holocaust? How do Yiddish sources change our understanding of Holocaust representation? How can Yiddish help us to think about the Holocaust as a global
event and, conversely, how can Holocaust Studies help us think about Yiddish as a global
culture? This course will explore these questions by examining a variety of genres including
archival documents, poetry, fiction, testimony, film, visual art, and monuments as well as critical theories of representation.

End of semester Jewish Studies dinner and a shot from graduation with two graduates of this year's Yiddishlands seminar.

If you’re around campus for graduation weekend on Saturday May 17th the Religion department and the Program in Jewish Studies has a nice reception from 3–5 p.m. on Dewey Hall front porch (Rain location: Dewey Common Room). Do feel free to join the fun.

Congratulations to Quinn Matthews '25 for the successful defense of an honors thesis in Jewish Studies under the supervision of Professor Justin Cammy, "Yiddish Drag: How We Dress Up Our Futures in Our Pasts."

Hag sameah — a meaningful Passover to all!

When You Believe Michelle Pfeiffer, Sally Dworsky · The Prince Of Egypt (Music From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) · Song · 1998

Friends in the area: two student events to consider!

A local event from colleaugues at Beit Ahavah in Florence this Friday.

Fall 2025 courses have just been released...

The Program in Jewish Studies at Smith has just announced its list of upcoming events:

T Feb 25: Poet Sabrina Orah Mark reading from Happily (featured on the Jewish Women’s Archive “Can We Talk” (7pm, Weinstein Auditorium, a Poetry Center Event)

W Feb 26: Emily Branton (Mount Holyoke College), “Let Them Place My Name Upon It: Monuments and History-Telling from the Ancient Near East to Haynes House” (4:30pm, Seelye 201)

W March 5: “A Yiddish Poet in Africa,” with Smith Professors Justin Cammy and Katwiwa Mule, and Marc Caplan from Heinrich Heine University,(4:30pm, The Poetry Center)

Th March 6: Chancellor Shuly Rubin Schwartz (Jewish Theological Seminary), “Female Jewish Religious Leadership in North America” (7pm, Smith College Conference Center)

M March 31: Ethan Schwartz (Villanova), “Prophecy and the Biblical Call for Justice: The Anti-Jewish Structure of a Well-Meaning Christian Motif” (4:30pm, Seelye 201)