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MAPPING JEWISH L.A.TECHNOLOGY REVEALS LA'S JEWISH HISTORY 3

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FROM THE DIRECTOR:COMMENCING OUR THIRD DECADE

It is a great pleasure to welcome you to the 2014-15 academic year at the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies. With the generous support of our community, the Center celebrated our 20th anniversary at UCLA by putting on our largest roster of public programs to date. We are very pleased to be able to touch so many lives by bringing the riches and diversity of the Jewish tradition to new generations of students.

The coming academic year promises even more, including three international conferences, a suite of new undergraduate service learning courses, and the launch of several new exhibitions in the “Mapping Jewish LA” project (which is formally profiled in the centerfold of this newsletter). The Center will also be sending two of our graduate students to China as part of our new exchange program with the Diane and Guilford Glazer Institute of Jewish and Israel Studies at Nanjing University, as well as welcoming two of their graduate students to UCLA, where they will participate in a graduate student conference on future directions in Jewish Studies in March.

For undergraduates, the Center will support four service learning courses with the support of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles: the first on the Iranian-Jewish experience in Los Angeles, the second on the Holocaust and eyewitness testimony, the third on interfaith dialogues between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and the fourth on the history of Jewish political and social activism in LA.

The Center remains steadfast in its support of critical inquiry, path breaking research, and innovative teaching of all aspects of Jewish culture and civilization. As a vital community resource and intellectual beacon, the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies resonates deeply with UCLA’s public service mission. We are excited to begin our 21st year at UCLA and look forward to continuing to grow with you.

I hope to see you at many of our programs this year.

Todd Samuel Presner Sady and Ludwig Kahn Director, UCLA Center for Jewish Studies

Professor, Germanic Languages and Comparative LiteratureChair, Digital Humanities Program

■ From Hugo Ballin’s Los Angeles, courtesy UCLA Library Dept. of Special Collections. Ballin and Assistants (El Rodeo Elementary, 1934). Ballin directs the work of Don R. Smith, Charles Jorgenson and Robert Woolsey on the mural at the Beverly Hills public school, for the Work Projects Administration (WPA).

■ From Grand Central Market, courtesy Roman Family. Irving’s Market (ca. 1931). Irving, the eldest of the Roman brothers, was the first to start his own market. Here his children, Larry and Gloria, stand in front of his New Jersey shop, a precursor to several L.A. area markets.

■ From The White Plague, Wikipedia.org. Dr. Jörgen Erik Lehmann (1898–1989). Working in Sweden during WWII, Lehmann discovered para-amino salicylic acid (PAS). Used together with streptomycin, PAS became the first efficacious therapy for TB.

■ From The White Plague, courtesy Dr. Elizabeth Short. JCRA Sanatorium campus (late 1910s). The City of Hope began in 1913, when a group of compassionate volunteers

established the Jewish Consumptive Relief Association (JCRA) and raised money to start a free, nonsectarian sanatorium to help those afflicted with TB.

■ From Hypercities Map Archives, courtesy Huntington Digital Library. The City of Los Angeles, by H.J. Stevenson, U.S. Dept. Surveyor (1884).Hypercities.com is a digital project created by Todd Presner.

■ From Hugo Ballin’s Los Angeles, photo: David Wu. ‘Burbank Industry’ mural (Burbank City Hall). In this panel from the 1940s, Ballin showcases Burbank-built airplanes, the motion picture industry, agriculture, a power plant, and scenes of family life, all representing the community’s economic and social base.

■ From Iranian Jewish Life in Los Angeles, photo: Joel Lipton. Shulamit Nazarian, owner/director of Shulamit Gallery, was born

in Tehran and at 15 moved with her family to Israel and then to L.A. An active volunteer with Milken Community H.S., the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Zimmer Children’s Museum and USC Hillel, Ms. Nazarian also supports arts and education through her gallery’s non-profit entity, Shoe-LA.

■ From Hugo Ballin’s Los Angeles, courtesy UCLA Library Dept. of Special Collections. Getz House Dining Room. Ballin’s murals won rave reviews from both local and national art and architecture critics and earned him the respect of Architect Gordon B. Kaufmann who also hired Ballin to decorate the Eisner Home in Hancock Park and the lobby of the L.A. Times building (1935).

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COVER STORY: CJS PIONEERS MAPPING JEWISH L.A.

Using digital mapping technologies and multimedia, Mapping Jewish LA (MJLA) uncovers previously hidden histories of the Los Angeles Jewish community, preserves them, and makes them accessible to the general public. An archive like no other, www.mappingjewishla.org gives new access not only to materials in UCLA’s library, other archives, and private collections that are available nowhere else—it also provides the broad context for understanding Jewish history and the significance of the archival materials themselves.

It is interactive: visitors choose which exhibitions to view and can select which paths to follow. Do you have a memory of your own to add? You can share stories or facts through the comments section at the bottom of each page. Mapping Jewish LA exhibitions are being created by curators from a wide range of disciplines, motivated by personal interest, professional expertise, and what they discover in the archive. To date, curators include historians, students, a graphic artist, a museum educator, and a demographer. We hope it will help you better understand Jewish Los Angeles and inspire more efforts to better preserve and present this history.

MJLA WAS LAUNCHED TWO YEARS AGO BY CJS WITH THREE MAJOR OBJECTIVES: • To focus attention on the second largest Jewish community in North America and encourage more

research on its history, institutions, and influences locally, nationally, and internationally• To make the more than 160 years of Jewish life in Los Angeles palpable to the general public through

digital content and mapping technologies• To model a digital platform that can be used to delve into the complex, multilayered histories of any

community in any city

IN ITS FIRST TWO YEARS, THE MJLA TEAM HAS MOVED TOWARD THESE OBJECTIVES BY:• Producing the first-ever public research guide to all the materials held by the UCLA Library and

Special Collections related to Jewish LA• Developing and publishing a variety of online exhibitions on all aspects of Jewish LA• Exploring the use of a mobile app to expand where and how the project reaches the public

I welcome Dr. Caroline Luce as the new Chief Curator of MJLA and, in my new position, look forward to deepening the collaboration with UCLA’s History Department.

Karen WilsonFounding Chief Curator

Under the leadership of project founder and director Todd Presner, Dr. Caroline Luce is taking

over the role of MJLA Chief Curator from Dr. Karen Wilson who oversaw the development of the digital exhibitions for its first two years. Wilson will begin a new position as Graduate Career Officer for the UCLA History Department. Luce is excited about the opportunity of “harnessing the power of digital tools to excavate historical materials.” Prior to this, Luce served as MJLA’s primary researcher. While preparing a public research guide to Jewish related archives in the UCLA library, Luce discovered the fascinating papers of muralist and filmmaker Hugo Ballin which led to the MJLA exhibition Hugo Ballin’s Los Angeles.

Her dissertation, “Visions of a Jewish Future: the Jewish Bakers Union and Yiddish Culture in East Los Angeles, 1908-1942,” explored the complexities of working-class identity and Yiddish-based labor and community organizing in Boyle Heights and inspired the MJLA exhibition White Plague in the City of Angels. Luce’s current project involves digitizing and translating poems by Los Angeles based Yiddish writers. She will also teach a service-learning course about LA Jewish History in the spring with the support of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. [See pp. 9-12.]

PROJECT WELCOMESCAROLINE LUCE AS NEW CHIEF CURATOR

Photos: David Wu

editorsMary Enid Pinkerson

Vivian Holenbeck design

David WuCenter for Jewish Studies

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STUDENT ACHIEVEMENTS

MAURICE AMADO PROGRAM SUMMER RESEARCH FELLOWSHIPS ■ Ceren Abi [History] for research in Istanbul libraries on the impact of the Allied occupation after World War I on the diverse Jewish communities of the Ottoman Empire.

■ Bryan Kirschen [Spanish & Portuguese] for field work on interactions of U.S. Ladino speakers with modern Spanish speakers. He also received a Bluma Appel Summer Research Fellowship for this project.

■ Ethan Pack [Comparative Literature] to attend a two week summer school in Granada, one of the major centers of Al-Andalus (Islamic Spain) followed by archival research in Israel on the writings of the medieval Sephardic Rabbi Abraham Abulafia. Pack’s research is supported by a Bluma Appel Summer Research Fellowship, as well.

CHASKEL & SARA ROTER SUMMER RESEARCH FELLOWSHIPS■ Ceren Abi [History]

■ Roii Ball [History]

■ Max Baumgarten [History]

■ Michael Casper [History]

■ Joanna Chen [Information Studies]

■ Timothy Hogue [History]

■ Moise Isaac [NELC]

■ Lindsay King [History]

■ GRADUATE STUDENT AWARDS JACK H. SKIRBALL FELLOWSHIP IN MODERN JEWISH CULTURE

■ Shir Alon1 [Comparative Literature] is researching the involvement of Jews in the nascent Arabic modernist literary scene in Baghdad, the parallel Hebrew and Arabic literary cultures of Jerusalem during the British Mandate, and the collaboration of Jews and Arabs producing Marxist literary journals in 1950s Haifa. As part of the fellowship, which also includes support from the Michael & Irene Ross Fund, Alon will teach an adult education class at the Skirball Cultural Center.

■ Bryan Kirschen2 [Spanish & Portuguese] Skirball Fellow for 2013-14, taught “Judeo-Spanish: The Language of the Sephardic Jews” and the class was so popular it will be offered again this winter.

For more info on both classes visit www.skirball.org

STEPHEN O. LESSER CHINESE TRAVEL GRANT IN JEWISH STUDIES

■ Jason Lustig [History] spent ten days in China in early September and presented a series of mini-lectures on his research as part of an inaugural exchange program with the Glazer Institute of Jewish and Israel Studies at Nanjing University.

■ Rosanna Lu [NELC] will visit Nanjing and lecture in March 2015.

As part of this new exchange program, Chinese students will also come to UCLA to participate in a Jewish studies graduate student conference in Winter quarter. (See p. 7) CJS STUDENT FELLOWS 2014-2015

JOANNA CHEN—Civic Engagement Fellow

JENNIFER GUTIERREZ—Maurice Amado Jr. Fellow

BRYAN KIRSCHEN—Maurice Amado Sr. Fellow

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SARAH & EUGENE ZINN MEMORIAL SCHOLARSHIP FOR HOLOCAUST STUDIES

■ Joshua Milstein [History] will attend Paideia, The European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden, a non-denominational academic framework that was established in 2000 with funding from the Swedish government to revitalize Jewish text study in Europe. Milstein’s research project during the eight month program will focus on the question of Jewish faith in the aftermath of the Holocaust.

MAURICE AMADO PROGRAM SCHOLARSHIP IN SEPHARDIC STUDIES

■ Yaron Spiwak [Jewish Studies] will use the grant to create a documentary about the journey of his mother’s large family from Fez, Morocco to Israel in the 1950s. He plans to interview his mother and her eight siblings and create a video.

HELIX PROJECT VISITS EASTERN EUROPE

■ Rich Ruff and ■ Marnina Wirtschafter received partial scholarships from CJS to participate in the Helix Project, now a joint initiative of Yiddishkayt and the historic Workman’s Circle. The three-week cultural immersion study tour took the students to Eastern Europe to follow the paths of Yiddish poets and artists and visit centers of Jewish political activism and reconstruction. In the photo above4, the stone wall behind Rich and Marnina is the foundation of what was once the central synagogue in Brest (Yiddish: Brisk)—the town that was home to Marnina’s great-great grandparents. Graduate student Michael Casper (History) accompanied the group.

BLUMA APPEL SUMMER RESEARCH FELLOWSHIPS

■ Bryan Kirschen [Spanish & Portuguese], ■ Jason Price [NELC], ■ Melissa Ramos [NELC], ■ Jody Washburn [NELC], and ■ Ethan Pack [Comparative Literature] received grants for research related to biblical archeology. Above3: Washburn recently received a fellowship from the West Semitic Research Project at USC where she received intensive training in Reflectance Transformation Imaging techniques which she then used to photograph cave inscriptions from Khirbet Beit Lei and Khirbet el-Qom held at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and the Israel Antiquities Authority storage facility in Beth Shemesh. (Photo: Vladimir Naikhin)

USC SHOAH FOUNDATION WORKSHOP

■ Rachel Deblinger [History] spent a week at the USC Shoah Foundation’s "Researching the Holocaust" workshop which brought together graduate students from the United States, Canada, and Israel to exchange ideas, conduct on-site research, and share their results. It is the second installment of a workshop series, now co-organized by the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research and Yad Vashem in Israel.

■ UNDERGRADUATE KUDOSHERMINE AND SIGMUND FREY SCHOLARSHIP

■ Elisabeth Hodara [Biology] spent the summer as a fellow at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot. She had the opportunity to participate in cutting edge laboratory research in stem cell biology and genetics while practicing her Hebrew and experiencing Israeli culture.

CJS STUDENT FELLOWS 2014-2015JOANNA CHEN—Civic Engagement Fellow

JENNIFER GUTIERREZ—Maurice Amado Jr. Fellow

BRYAN KIRSCHEN—Maurice Amado Sr. Fellow

PAYTON PHILLIPS QUINTANILLA—Maurice Amado Jr. Fellow

JINGJING ZHANG—Visiting Research Fellow (Beijing Foreign Studies University)

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The Cairo Geniza consists of over 380,000 fragments of writing on parchment, paper, papyrus and cloth written over the course of a millennium (870 to 1896 CE). While the vast majority are biblical, Talmudic, and rabbinic texts, the Geniza’s 8,000-18,000 ‘documentary’ fragments also include contracts, doctors’ prescriptions, shopping lists, and letters among businessmen involved in trade with India—a collection of sources that provide a unique window on Jewish life in the Muslim city.

Jessica Goldberg, associate professor of history, is leading a multi-institutional working group in developing a research website to make these remarkable primary sources more accessible to scholars, teachers, and the interested public with seed money from the University of Pennsylvania and UCLA. Since the documentary materials are written in dialects of medieval vernacular Arabic in Hebrew characters, often interspersed with Hebrew and Aramaic, very few scholars have direct access to this material. Moreover, the fragments have been dispersed among more than 30 libraries around the world. An academic workshop at UCLA, Languages of Everyday Writing in the Medieval Islamic World: History, Methodology, Digital Prospects, Dec. 8-9 will address the complex linguistic issues related to this corpus. Participants will include Goldberg’s co-investigators: Mark R. Cohen (Princeton), Marina Rustow (Johns Hopkins), Miriam Frenkel (Hebrew University), Ben Outhwaite (Cambridge), Phillip Ackerman-Lieberman (Vanderbilt), and Eve Krakowski (Columbia).

By common Jewish custom, texts containing the name of God become sacred, and when such texts cannot or should not be used, they require a sacred resting place, a geniza. Many Jewish communities bury the contents of a synagogue’s geniza box in the cemetery periodically, but for centuries Cairo’s Jews simply stuffed all kinds of worn books and scraps of paper through a hole in the wall of the women’s balcony of the Ben Ezra synagogue in Fustat (‘Old Cairo’) and into a small storeroom where Egypt’s dry climate preserved them. In the late nineteenth century, the astonishing collection of accrued material was discovered and mostly acquired by European and American scholars and collectors.

“The documentary materials are one of the most important extant sources for both medieval Islamic social and economic history, and for medieval Jewish communal and cultural history” according to Goldberg. The new website will for the first time allow non-specialists to effectively deploy these sources in research and teaching, in addition to serving as a place for specialists to actively continue the work of editing documents, collecting, and sharing data. The goal is to integrate images and transcriptions of documents from the ‘documentary’ Geniza,

catalogue and describe unique kinds of material, and develop publicly accessible and editable databases. The conference is sponsored by CJS with support from the UCLA Viterbi Program in Mediterranean Jewish Studies and the UCLA Maurice Amado Program in Sephardic Studies and cosponsored by the UCLA Department of History and the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Check out http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Taylor-Schechter/index.html. This workshop is intended for faculty and graduate students.

DECEMBER 8-9, 2014

PROGRAMMING HIGHLIGHTS:GENIZA ENTERS THE DIGITAL AGE

Solomon Schechter studying documents from the Cairo Geniza, c. 1895. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

An eleventh-century business letter from the Egyptian countryside. Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library

Magical text with names of angels written over a palimpsest of dowry list. Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library

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Thinking Beyond the Canon: New Themes and Approaches in Jewish Studies is the subject of a conference for graduate students and junior scholars, March 8-9, 2015. Panels will focus on the untold stories of newly discovered or understudied figures and actors who have helped shape Jewish history and culture, as well as those who approach Jewish studies research and teaching in innovative ways.

Modern Jewish studies emerged in 19th century Germany from the study of a distinct Jewish canon—the history and meaning of biblical and rabbinic literature—and Semitics, the study of the languages and literatures of the Ancient Near East. In recent decades the research topics of Jewish studies scholars have broadened to the point that young scholars are asking if there is still a canon, a boundary line between what is and is not Jewish studies.

Graduate students from across the United States and around the world are invited to submit proposals for the conference. “We are incredibly excited about bringing together young scholars like ourselves who are pushing the boundaries of Jewish Studies,” says Taly Ravid, a doctoral candidate in English who is organizing the conference along with Jason Lustig and Anat Mooreville, doctoral candidates in History, with the assistance of David N. Myers, Chair, Department

of History. “When scholars come together at conferences, they often lack the time for serious discussion or debate, or alternately are razor-focused on a sub-specialty where everyone already knows each other. We hope that this conference will break the mold and not only allow participants to present their work but also receive significant feedback and develop a professional network of other scholars at the outset of their careers.”

In addition, several senior scholars will take part, responding to presentations and participating in a roundtable on Jewish studies in the 21st century. "We feel it is critical to take stock of the current developments in our field,” Lustig noted. “As disciplinary boundaries waver and dissolve, now is an ideal moment to imagine the future of Jewish studies.” He added that the conference will further develop UCLA as an important center for research and teaching in Jewish studies. The conference is sponsored by CJS with the generous support of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and the Joy and Jerry Monkarsh Community Series in Jewish Studies and is cosponsored by the UCLA Department of History and the UCLA Department of English. Call for papers: www.beyondthecanonconference.com The conference is intended for graduate students.

MARCH 8-9, 2015

GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE TO IMAGINEFUTURE OF JEWISH STUDIES

Poet and artist Liana Finck will discuss her new, widely acclaimed graphic novel A Bintel Brief: Love and Longing in Old New York on Thursday, Nov. 13 at 12pm in 306 Royce Hall.

A Bintel Brief is Liana Finck’s evocative, elegiac love letter to the turn-of-the-century Jewish immigrants who transformed New York City and America itself. The original "A Bintel Brief" ("A Bundle of Letters") was an advice

column for Jews fresh off the boat in The Jewish Daily Forward, a.k.a. The Forverts, a feature regarded by many as the prototype for “Dear Abby.” It was started in 1906 by the paper’s hugely gifted editor

Abraham Cahan, who also wrote the classic immigrant novel The Rise of David Levinsky (1917) and it ran for the next 60 years. Written by a diverse community of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, these letters spoke to the daily heartbreaks and comedies of their new lives, capturing the hope, isolation, and confusion of assimilation.

Liana Finck attended Cooper Union College and studied in Belgium on a Fulbright Fellowship. A recipient of a Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists, her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Forward and Tablet, among other publications. She lives in New York City.

RSVP: cjsrsvp@humnet.ucla.edu or (310) 267-5327

LIANA FINCK: YIDDISH GRAPHIC NOVELIST12PM - NOVEMBER 13, 2014

Jason LustigPhotos: David Wu

Taly Ravid Anat Mooreville

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The life and ideas of Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) will be the focus of a conference on May 3-4, 2015, curated by his daughter Susannah Heschel (Dartmouth) and Kenneth Reinhard (UCLA) and featuring a keynote address by African-American theologian Cornel West.

&Conference in honor of Abraham Joshua Heschel

Moral GrandeurSpiritual Audacity

Not only a theologian of extraordinary eloquence and poetic vision, Abraham Joshua Heschel was also a key figure in social justice movements in the United States in the 1960s and early 70s, including the civil rights movement, the movement against the war in Vietnam, and the transformations of the Catholic Church known as Vatican II. His books, including The Sabbath, Man Is Not Alone (1951), God in Search of Man (1955), The Prophets (1962), and Torah min HaShamayim (1962) (Heavenly Torah, translation 2006), have had immeasurable impact on Jewish life and thought, as well as on numerous non-Jewish thinkers around the world.

Born into a distinguished family of Hasidic rabbis in Poland, Heschel received a traditional yeshiva education and studied for his Orthodox rabbinical ordination, before going on to study philosophy and theology in Berlin where he also received a liberal rabbinical ordination at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums. He escaped the Nazis and came to America in 1940 with the help of Hebrew Union College, teaching there until 1946, when he accepted a position at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Heschel was close friends with Martin Luther King, Jr., and participated in the 1965 march on Selma, in the front row with King, Ralph Bunche, and Ralph Abernathy. Heschel encouraged King to take a public stance against the war in Vietnam. When King was assassinated in 1968, Rabbi Heschel was invited by Mrs. King to speak at her husband’s funeral.

Keynote speaker Dr. Cornel West is an activist, author, and public intellectual. The son of a Baptist minister, West received his undergraduate education at Harvard and his Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton. He was The Class of 1943 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton until 2011, when he left the school to become Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where he teaches a course on Heschel.

West is prominent outside of academia, as well. He appears frequently on Real Time with Bill Maher, The Colbert Report, CNN and C-Span as well as on The Tavis Smiley Show on PBS, and has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films.

The conference will feature talks by key figures in contemporary Jewish thought and practice, as well as Christian scholars and public figures. Panels will discuss Heschel and social justice, and Heschel’s poetry and spiritual practices. Susannah Heschel will emphasize the continuing urgency of her father’s life and ideas today. As Prof. Reinhard noted, “Heschel’s ideas and writing are more relevant than ever, a beacon of wisdom and joy for our dark times.”

Additional conference participants include: Dror Bondi (Ein Prat Seminary) whose book on Heschel won the Shalem Prize, Aryeh Cohen (American Jewish University) author of Justice in the City, Hent de Vries (Russ Family Chair in the Humanities, Johns Hopkins), Elliot Dorff (Rector and Sol & Anne Dorff Distinguished Service Professor in Philosophy, American Jewish University), Robert Erlewine (Associate Professor of Religion, Illinois Wesleyan University), Donald E. Pease (Professor of English, Dartmouth), Naomi Seidman (Koret Professor of Jewish Culture, Graduate Theological Union), and Elliot Wolfson (Glazer Professor of Jewish Studies, UCSB).

Abraham Joshua Heschel, Essential Writings (2011), edited by Susannah Heschel, is recommended reading in preparation for the conference which is sponsored by the CJS with the support of the Natalie Limonick Fund in memory of Miriam Nisell Rose. Cosponsored by the UCLA Department of English, the UCLA Department of History, the UCLA Center for the Study of Religion and the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. Pre-registration required: cjsrsvp@humnet.ucla.edu.

MAY 3-4, 2015

MORAL GRANDEUR & SPIRITUAL AUDACITY:CONFERENCE IN HONOR OF ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL

Photos: David Wu

Cornel West

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The idea for this digital exhibit grew out of my dissertation research on labor and community organizing among the Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jews who came to Los Angeles in the 1900s and 1910s. When the immigrants who I studied reflected on their experiences in these years, many pointed to the city’s large population of “tuberculars” (those suffering from tuberculosis and other chronic lung diseases) as the most pressing social issue in the Jewish

community at the time and one that animated much of their early community activism.

Eventually I came to see the tuberculosis epidemic as a quintessential Los Angeles problem: as a result of aggressive advertising campaigns to foster growth and development by promoting the region’s warm, dry climate, city leaders ended up attracting half a million new residents to the city—including over 100,000 whose frailty and dependence on aid seemed to contradict the city leaders’ civic vision. While some leaders sought to exclude these new migrants, Jewish community leaders—both wealthy and working-class—mobilized in response to “the white plague” (tuberculosis), resulting in the creation of three of the city’s most important health care facilities: Kaspare Cohn Hospital (renamed Cedars of Lebanon Hospital), the Mt. Sinai Home for Incurables, and the Jewish Consumptive Relief Association’s Duarte sanatorium (better known as the City of Hope). I designed The White Plague in the City of Angels to examine the origins of these three institutions by mapping them in the matrix of science, technology and treatment, public health policy, and social attitudes about disease and contagion that shaped the place of illness in healthful Southern California.

As part of the UCLA Library’s “Collecting Los Angeles” initiative, Caroline Luce surveyed the Library’s holdings related to Los Angeles’ Jewish history and, with the help of subject-specialist librarian David Hirsch, compiled them into a public research guide. The guide serves as a portal for locating resources related to the history of Los Angeles' Jewish community from the founding of Jewish organizational life in 1854 to today.

Included are records of archival materials housed in the UCLA Department of Special Collections organized by topic, bibliographies of local Hebrew and Yiddish-language publications, maps and municipal

records, resources about religious life, tips for accessing historical books, journals available at UCLA, and more. Links to a wide variety of e-resources are also provided, including online reference sources, bibliographies, genealogical resources, databases, journal collections and organizational websites. (Please note that while some electronic resources are freely available, others are subscription services provided by the UCLA Library, and may not be available from off-campus locations.)

To explore the guide, go to www.MappingJewishLA.org and click on UCLA Research Guide.

“Perhaps as many as one quarter of the city’s new arrivals had come to Southern California to get well in the health resorts, spas, and hospitals of an emerging ‘sanitarium belt.’ With no effective medical treatment available, unable to work, and challenged to find suitable housing, these ‘tuberculars’ became hopelessly dependent on local charities and relief programs. As a result, the well-established Jewish community of Los Angeles faced the first significant test of its rapidly growing size and diversity.”

THE WHITE PLAGUE IN THE CITY OF ANGELSCurator: CAROLINE LUCE, PhD

JCRA Sanatorium campus, late 1910s

S. Charles Lee Sketch, Mount Sinai Hospital, 1930s

Kaspare Cohn Hospital, ca. 1902

RESEARCH GUIDE: LOS ANGELES JEWISH HISTORY

Caroline LucePhoto: David Wu

Courtesy of Dr. Elizabeth Short

Courtesy of the Jewish Museum of the American West

Courtesy of the UCLA Library Digital Collections

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While surveying the holdings of UCLA’s Department of Special Collections related to L.A.’s Jewish history, Caroline Luce came across a beautiful collection of sketches, paintings and photographs belonging the muralist Hugo Ballin. Ballin’s work decorates the interiors of buildings throughout Southern California, including the Griffith Observatory and Wilshire Boulevard Temple, but Dr. Luce was struck by the lack of historical details about his life and how few scholarly reflections were available on his multi-faceted career as a painter, filmmaker, and muralist.

Working with CJS staff to create a new digital environment to showcase Ballin’s murals, Luce also forged a collaborative community of scholars, history buffs, stewards and admirers of Ballin’s work. They shared anecdotes, information, and resources and provided access to the murals. This digital exhibition would not have been possible without their support. Special thanks to Mark Pine and the staff at the Griffith Observatory, Howard Kaplan and the staff of Wilshire Boulevard Temple, the staffs of Burbank City Hall, El Rodeo Elementary School and Santa Monica Mausoleum, and Mary Hudson, Chris Kallenburg, Richard Kim, Cing Chang, Carol Hitner, Wes Clark and the staff at the UCLA Department of Special Collections.

HUGO BALLIN'S LOS ANGELES Curator: CAROLINE LUCE, PhD

“Hugo Ballin’s murals are beloved by many and his work will likely be familiar to anyone who has visited the spaces that it decorates. But historical details about Ballin’s life and scholarly reflections on his multi-faceted career as a painter, filmmaker, and muralist, are as widely dispersed as his murals. This exhibit brings together the knowledge held by those familiar with Ballin’s work with the archival materials in the Hugo Ballin Papers housed at the UCLA Library’s Department of Special Collections as a means of enhancing our understanding of Ballin’s life and how his years in Los Angeles influenced his ideas about art, audience and representation. By placing the materials housed in the Ballin archives in their relevant historical, aesthetic and spatial contexts, our aim is to 'map' his career in Los Angeles, emphasizing both his contributions to the city’s artistic and architectural history as well as the influence that the city had on his career…

…While using digital tools to present Ballin’s work affords us the opportunity to bridge gaps in historical understanding about him, bringing Ballin’s murals into the digital environment takes his art out its original context: the physical spaces where his murals reside. We hope that by promoting Ballin’s work, this exhibit will encourage you to visit those spaces for yourselves and experience Ballin’s murals in their original form."

Interactive 360 degree panoramas of the Griffith Observatory and the Wilshire Blvd Temple allow the viewer to get a closer sense of occupying the spaces where the murals are housed.

"Moses" detail from Wilshire Blvd Temple

"The Four Freedoms," Burbank City HallPhoto: David Wu

Panorama: David Wu

Photo courtesy Wilshire Blvd Temple

Courtesy of the Jewish Museum of the American West

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Two years ago, I began collecting personal stories of immigrant Jews who ran grocery stores here in Los Angeles from the 1920s–1950s with a view towards creating a small exhibition in the gallery of the Studio for Southern California History. When the Studio was forced to close its exhibition space in Chinatown due to lack of funding, I had to look for another avenue to present my work.

In early 2013, I contacted Dr. Karen Wilson and she invited me to curate a digital exhibition for MappingJewishLA.org.

I am inspired by NPR’s StoryCorps, one of the largest oral history projects of its kind, and my own family’s experiences as immigrant grocery store owners. My journey has taken me all over the city and has led to connections I never expected. My favorite encounter was with Maurice “Bob” Hattem, son of I.M. Hattem, a Sephardic Jewish immigrant who established one of the first self-service grocery stores in Los Angeles. I was invited to his home by his son, Michael Hattem to discuss the family

history. When I arrived, I was ushered into the living room and shown a 35mm film of the opening of the first Hattem’s Market in 1927. Much to my surprise, my great uncle, Jack Roman, Hattem’s deli manager (whom I never knew), was in this film. I had brought two of my older cousins with me for this meeting, and I could see their eyes fill with tears in seeing Jack so young and energetic. It was an unforgettable moment.

Since the exhibition was published, it seems to have taken on a life of its own. I have been invited to speak about my project at multiple locations including the Autry National Center, Woodbury University and Temple Sinai of Glendale. What strikes me the most is the universal interest in the subject. People from all backgrounds have come to me to ask how they can tell the stories of their immigrant uncles, fathers, brothers, and mothers whose grocery businesses have provided opportunities for families to thrive in Los Angeles. In digging up this “Forgotten History,” I have not only given my family (and myself) a deeper connection to the development of Los Angeles, but I have opened up an avenue for others to deepen their own connections to the history of this diverse city.

Cate Roman is Associate Professor of Graphic Design at Woodbury University.

HUGO BALLIN'S LOS ANGELES Curator: CAROLINE LUCE, PhD

FROM GRAND CENTRAL MARKET TO SUPERMARKET: L.A. JEWISH GROCERSCurator: CATE ROMAN, MFA

“Since 1850, Jewish merchants have been a fixture in Los Angeles. In 1865, Prussian Jewish immigrant Harris Newmark started what became the largest wholesale grocery firm in Southern California. By the 1880s, his chief rival, Hellman, Haas & Co., opened a two-story wholesale grocery on Los Angeles Street near the Plaza. These pioneer firms remained active as a new generation of Jewish entrepreneurs arrived. When the Grand Central Market opened in 1917, many of the stalls were operated by Jewish merchants.

As Los Angeles grew into a modern metropolis, Jewish grocers were on the forefront of grocery store innovation

and quick to adapt to changing business styles. In the 1920’s, grocery shopping shifted from clerk served to self-serve and then later to the supermarket model. Follow four family stories—Hattem’s, Roman’s, Boy’s, and Gelson’s— beginning in the early 1900’s to discover the Jewish contribution to the way Los Angeles shops for groceries.”

Hattem's Western Ave Market

Boy's Market in Highland Park

Courtesy Security Pacific National Bank Photo Collection, Los Angeles Public Library.

Courtesy Hattem Family

Courtesy the Roman Family

Cate RomanPhoto: Ava Rielle

Irving Roman was the eldest of the brothers and the first to start his own market. Here his children, Larry and Gloria, stand in front of Irving's Market, located in New Jersey, ca. 1931.

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Exhibit curator Saba Soomekh was born in Tehran and immigrated with her family to Los Angeles as a small child. Her book, From the Shahs to Los Angeles: Three Generations of Iranian Jewish Women between Religion and Culture, was awarded the Gold Medal 2013 Independent Publisher Book Award (Religion category) and served as the primary textbook for a recent sociology class she taught at UCLA. The students, many of whom were second generation Iranian-Jews, appreciated both the opportunity to think critically about how their families have adjusted to life in

America and the chance to personally engage community leaders in the areas of religion, philanthropy, public service, and business.

Dr. Soomekh observed, “I believe very few of the students had considered how difficult it was for Iranian Jewish families to immigrate to a new country, learn a new culture and to start all over again—emotionally and financially. I think this course made the Iranian Jewish students feel a closer bond with their parents and their culture, and it allowed the other students the opportunity to learn about and better understand a very large ethnic community in Los Angeles.”

Community partners for the project included 30 Years After, the Iranian American Jewish Federation, Sinai Temple, Nessa Synagogue, Chabad, Y&S Nazarian Family Foundation and three local businesses: Elat Market, Shulamit Gallery, and Urgent Gear. The class will be offered again in Winter 2015 with the support of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.

FROM GRAND CENTRAL MARKET TO SUPERMARKET: L.A. JEWISH GROCERSCurator: CATE ROMAN, MFA

IRANIAN JEWISH LIFE IN LOS ANGELES: PAST AND PRESENTCurator: SABA SOOMEKH, PhD

“Collected here are reports, interviews, and images created by teams of UCLA students enrolled in 'Iranian Jewish Life in Los Angeles: Past and Present,' a Sociology course taught by Dr. Saba Soomekh in the fall of 2013. As the students learned, the Iranian Jewish community represents an important chapter in recent Los Angeles history.

Following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, tens of thousands of Persian Jews migrated from Iran, forming one of the wealthiest waves of immigrants to ever come to the United States. Through their course work, the students studied how immigration has affected different generations of Iranian Jews and documented the remarkable ways Iranian Jews have rebuilt their community and their own lives. Here they add the stories of Iranian Jews to the map of Jewish Los Angeles.”

Saba Soomekh

TO SEE FULL EXHIBITS, VISITwww.mappingjewishla.org

NEW PUBLICATIONS

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AFFILIATED JEWISH STUDIES FACULTY

CAROL BAKHOS*

Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion.

ARNOLD J. BAND

Professor Emeritus of Hebrew and Comparative Literature.

LIA BROZGAL

Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies.

AARON BURKE

Associate Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology.

ELLEN DUBOIS

Professor of History.

NANCY EZER

Lecturer in Hebrew.

SAUL FRIEDLÄNDER

Distinguished Emeritus Professor of History. JESSICA GOLDBERG

Associate Professor of History.

LEV HAKAK

Professor of Hebrew Literature.

THE FAMILY OF ABRAHAM: JEWISH, CHRISTIAN & MUSLIM INTERPRETATIONSCarol Bakhos Harvard University Press, 2014

The term "Abrahamic religions" has gained considerable currency in both scholarly and ecumenical circles as a way of referring to

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In The Family of Abraham, Carol Bakhos steps back from this convention to ask a frequently overlooked question: What, in fact, is Abrahamic about these three faiths? Exploring diverse stories and interpretations relating to the portrayal of Abraham, she reveals how he is venerated in these different scriptural traditions and how scriptural narratives have been pressed into service for nonreligious purposes. Grounding her study in a close examination of Jewish Midrash, medieval Muslim Stories of the Prophets, and the writings of the early Church Fathers, Bakhos’ analysis dismantles pernicious misrepresentations of Abraham's firstborn son, Ishmael, and provocatively challenges contemporary references to Judaism and Islam as sibling religions. As Bakhos points out, an uncritical adoption of the term "Abrahamic religions" not only blinds us to the diverse interpretations and traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but also artificially separates these faiths from their historical contexts.

THE FAITH OF FALLEN JEWS: YOSEF HAYIM YERUSHALMI AND THE WRITING OF JEWISH HISTORYDavid N. Myers & Alexander Kaye, editorsBrandeis University Press, 2013

From his first book, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto, to his well-known volume on Jewish memory, Zakhor, to his treatment of Sigmund Freud in Freud's Moses, Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (1932-2009) earned recognition as perhaps the greatest Jewish historian of his day, whose scholarship blended vast erudition, unfettered creativity, and lyrical beauty. This volume charts his intellectual trajectory by bringing together a mix of classic and lesser-known essays from the whole of his career. The essays in this collection, representative of the range of his writing, acquaint the reader with his research on early modern Spanish Jewry and the experience of crypto-Jews, varied reflections on Jewish history and memory, and Yerushalmi's enduring interest in the political history of the Jews. Also included are a number of little-known autobiographical recollections, as well as his only published work of fiction.

SEPHARDI LIVES: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY, 1700-1950Julia Phillips Cohen &Sarah Abrevaya Stein, editors Stanford University Press, 2014

Jewish studies and Middle Eastern studies have seen an unprecedented diversification in focus over the course of the last twenty years, yet

neither pedagogical materials nor documentary compendia have kept pace with these dramatic changes. This comprehensive reader fills the void in modern Jewish and Ottoman history, presenting a staggering array of primary sources generated by or about Sephardi Jews in the heartland of modern Judeo-Spanish culture (Southeastern Europe and the Levant under Ottoman and post-Ottoman rule) and in its diaspora (the United States, the Caribbean, South America, Europe, and Africa). The approximately 150 sources were originally written in fifteen languages, including Ladino, Hebrew, Ottoman Turkish, Modern Turkish, French, Greek, Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Yiddish, and English. Individuals researching life in the nation-states that emerged after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire will find in this collection perspectives and selections previously inaccessible to them. By making available many largely unknown works, this volume promises to expand the fields of Jewish studies, Ottoman studies, and Middle East studies in multiple and crucial ways.

yosef hayim

yerushalmi

and the

writing of

jewish history

TheFaithofFallenJews

Edited by davi d n . my e r s and alexander kaye

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AFFILIATED JEWISH STUDIES FACULTY

DAVID HIRSCH

Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies Librarian, YRL and Adjunct Assistant Professor, NELC.

GIL HOCHBERG*

Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Gender Studies.

ELEANOR KAUFMAN*

Professor of Comparative Literature, English, and French and Francophone Studies.

MIRIAM KORAL

Lecturer in Yiddish.

MARK KLIGMAN

Mickey Katz Endowed Chair in Jewish Music, Professor of Musicology and Ethnomusicology. EFRAIN KRISTAL

Professor of Comparative Literature.

DAVID N. MYERS*

Professor and Robert N. Burr Chair of History.

TODD S. PRESNER*

Professor of Germanic Languages and Comparative Literature, Chair of the Digital Humanities Program, Sady and Ludwig Kahn Director of CJS.

KENNETH REINHARD

Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and English, Director of UCLA Program in Experimental Critical Theory.

TEOFILO F. RUIZ

Professor of History.

YONA SABAR

Professor of Hebrew and Aramaic.

WILLIAM SCHNIEDEWIND*

Kershaw Chair of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies, Chair of the Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures and Professor of Biblical Studies and Northwest Semitic Languages.

JEREMY SMOAK

Lecturer in Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East.

SARAH ABREVAYA STEIN

Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies and Professor of History.

STEVEN SPIEGEL

Professor of Political Science.

ROGER WALDINGER

Professor of Sociology.

JONATHAN M. ZASLOFF

Professor of Law.

HYPERCITIES: THICK MAPPING IN THE DIGITAL HUMANITIESTodd Presner, David Shepard, & Yoh KawanoHarvard University Press, 2014

The prefix “hyper” refers to multiplicity and abundance. More than a physical space, a hypercity is a real city overlaid with information

networks that document the past, catalyze the present, and project future possibilities. Hypercities are always under construction. Not a book about maps in the literal sense, HyperCities describes thick mapping: the humanist project of participating and listening that transforms mapping into an ethical undertaking. A digital platform transmogrified into a book, it explains the ambitious online project of the same name that maps the historical layers of city spaces in an interactive, hypermedia environment. The authors examine the time-layers of Jewish Berlin, the media archaeology of Google Earth, the cultural–historical meaning of map projections, and explore recent events—the “Arab Spring” and the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster—through social media mapping that incorporates data visualizations, photographic documents, and Twitter streams. A full-color, collaboratively authored and designed work, HyperCities includes a “ghost map” of downtown LA, polyvocal memory maps, avatar-based explorations of ancient Rome, and hour-by-hour mappings of the Tehran election protests of 2009. A companion website includes dozens of projects, historical maps, code modules, and historic documents: http://thebook.hypercities.com

SAHARAN JEWS AND THE FATE OF FRENCH ALGERIA Sarah Abrevaya Stein University of Chicago Press, 2014

The history of Algerian Jews has thus far been viewed from the perspective of communities on the northern coast who became, to some extent, beneficiaries of

colonialism. But to the south, in the Sahara, Jews faced a harsher colonial treatment. In Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria, Sarah Stein asks why the Jews of Algeria’s south were marginalized by French authorities, how they negotiated the sometimes brutal results, and what the reverberations have been in the postcolonial era. Drawing on materials from thirty archives across six countries, Stein tells the story of colonial imposition on a desert community that lived and traveled in the Sahara for centuries. She paints an intriguing historical picture—of an ancient community, trans-Saharan commerce, desert labor camps during World War II, anthropologist spies, battles over oil, and the struggle for Algerian sovereignty. Writing colonialism and decolonization into Jewish history and Jews into French Saharan history, the book is a fascinating exploration not of Jewish exceptionalism but of colonial power and its religious and cultural differentiations, which have indelibly shaped the modern world.

*Faculty Advisory Committee member

VISITING FACULTY 2014-2015CANDICE LEVY—Lecturer in Near Eastern Languages & Cultures

NAHID PIRNAZAR—Lecturer in Iranian Studies

SABA SOOMEKH—Lecturer in Sociology

DAVID: THE DIVIDED HEARTRabbi David Wolpe Yale University Press, 2014 David may be the most perplexing and enigmatic Biblical figure. He was many things: a warrior who subdued Goliath and the Philistines;

a king who united a nation; a poet who created beautiful, sensitive verse; a loyal servant of God who proposed the great Temple and founded the Messianic line; a schemer, deceiver, and adulterer. David Wolpe, an honorary member of the CJS Advisory board and a lecturer in Jewish studies, takes a fresh look at David in an attempt to find coherence in his seemingly contradictory actions and impulses. What emerges is a fascinating portrait of an exceptional human being who, despite his many flaws, was truly beloved by God.

FACULTY HONORS

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FRIEDLÄNDER WINS 2014 DAN DAVID PRIZE

Saul Friedländer, the inaugural “1939” Club Chair in Holocaust Studies (1987-2014), split the Dan David Foundation's $1 million prize in “History and Memory” with renowned French historian Pierre Nora and Polish

writer and activist Krzysztof Czyzewski. Prize winners donate 10% of their award to doctoral and postdoctoral scholarships in their field. Friedländer said he will split the $33,000 allotment between Tel Aviv University and UCLA, the universities where he has spent the majority of his career. In announcing the award, the foundation credited Friedländer’s writing with putting into practice “in an admiringly precise and convincing way his belief that the victims' perspective of events in the Holocaust is as relevant and as legitimate as that of the perpetrators or the onlookers.” Once hotly debated, this is today “a fundamental assumption in many and varied historical works, as has been exemplarily demonstrated in his own magnum opus (2 vol.), Nazi Germany and the Jews.” Friedländer began teaching at Tel Aviv in 1976 and joined UCLA’s history department in 1987. For the next decade, he split his time between them before retiring from the Israeli university in the late 1990s. Friedländer retired from UCLA in 2011 but continued teaching one course a year. He wrapped up his final course at UCLA this past spring, which marked his 50th anniversary in the classroom.

STEIN DELIVERS MOSSE LECTURES

Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies and Professor of History, presented three open lectures on Extraterritorial Dreams: Sephardi Jews, Citizenship, and the Calamitous Twentieth Century, Sept. 9-11, 2014 as the George L. Mosse Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The distinguished bi-annual series is a joint program between the Departments of History at UW-Madison and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem endowed by Mosse, an influential German-born cultural historian, who divided his time between the two institutions. Leading scholars are invited to present their work in several talks which are later published as a book by UW Press.

THE 1939 SOCIETY HONORS PRESNER

The 1939 Society honored Todd Presner, Sady and Ludwig Kahn Director of CJS and Professor of Germanic Languages, and three other Holocaust educators, Marilyn Harran, Holli Levitsky and Jody Myers, at a luncheon in Beverly Hills on Nov. 17, 2013. Over the past four years, Presner has developed an innovative “service learning” course for undergraduate students, Between History and Memory: Interviewing Holocaust Survivors in the Digital Age, in partnership with the Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles’ Café Europa, the 1939 Society, the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust and, UCLA Hillel. (Buzzfeed.com included it on a list of “8 Coolest Classes to take at UCLA.”) The class will be offered Winter 2015 with the support of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.

CJS FELLOWS 2014-2015WILLIAM KATIN—Summer Research Fellow

CAROLINE LUCE—Michael & Irene Ross Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Chief Curator of "Mapping Jewish LA"

HOW TO ACCEPT GERMAN REPARATIONSSusan Slyomovics University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014

In a landmark process after the Holocaust, Germany created the largest sustained redress program in history, amounting to more than $60 billion. When human rights violations are

presented primarily in material terms, acknowledging an indemnity claim becomes one way for a victim to be recognized. At the same time, indemnifications provoke difficult questions about how suffering and loss can be measured: How much is an individual life worth? How much or what kind of violence merits compensation? Susan Slyomovics, professor of Anthropology and NELC, explores this and other compensation programs, both those past and those that might exist in the future. Do crimes of colonialism merit reparations? How might reparations models apply to the modern-day conflict in Israel and Palestine? The author points to the examples of her grandmother and mother, Czechoslovakian Jews who survived the Auschwitz, Plaszow, and Markkleeberg camps together but disagreed about applying for the post-World War II reparation programs. The result is an investigation of practical implications, complicated by the difficult legal, ethnographic, and personal questions that reparations inevitably prompt.

ZEISL: KLEINE SINFONIE / NOVEMBER / CONCERTO GROSSOEric Zeisl, composer Antonio Lysy, cellistNeal Stulberg, conductorUCLA Philharmonia Yarlung Records, Audio CD and booklet, 2014

A central figure among Los Angeles Jewish émigré musicians, Viennese-born Eric Zeisl (1905-1959) scored for Hollywood films, taught composition and music theory, and composed richly tonal music with a modern sensibility. The CD includes three world premiere recordings: representing his Viennese years are his bold, richly scored Little Symphony: After Pictures of Roswitha Bitterlich (1935-36) and the intimate November: Six Sketches for Chamber Orchestra (1937-40). Epitomizing Zeisl’s maturity in Los Angeles is the dramatic Concerto Grosso for Cello and Orchestra (1955-56), his last large-scale orchestral work.

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Professor Mark Kligman has been appointed the inaugural holder of the Mickey Katz Endowed Chair in Jewish Music. He joined the faculty of the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture on July 1. Kligman's primary appointment will be in the Herb Alpert School of Music department of ethnomusicology, and he will hold a joint appointment in the department of musicology in the UCLA College.

A native of Los Angeles, Kligman comes to UCLA from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York where he was Professor of Jewish Musicology. He has also taught courses at Columbia, Rutgers and Penn, where he pursued research on contemporary trends in Jewish music at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies in 2001. He earned his doctorate at NYU in 1997.

Kligman’s primary expertise is the liturgical music of Middle Eastern Jewish communities. Working mainly in the discipline of ethnomusicology, he explores the rich interconnection of music and cultural life in Mediterranean contexts. He is the author of Maqam and Liturgy: Ritual, Music, and Aesthetics of Syrian Jews in Brooklyn (Wayne State University Press, 2009) and is co-editor of Musica Judaica, the only scholarly journal devoted solely to Jewish music.

Particularly noteworthy is Kligman’s dedication to the growth of Jewish music in the academy as the Sephardi/Mizrahi section head for the Association for Jewish Studies and in other roles including as a board member of the American Society of Jewish Music. At UCLA, Professor Kligman said he looks forward to “building the performance and study of Jewish music into the academic and cultural life of UCLA and to the larger community and Jewish community. I will be studying the music of Jewish life in LA in its various diverse and interesting capacities.”

Professor Jessica Goldberg studies the medieval history of the Mediterranean basin, Christian Europe, and the Islamic world, specializing in economic and legal institutions and culture. After earning an A.B. in Social Studies from Harvard, Goldberg spent several years teaching high school math, then completed a Ph.D. in history at Columbia U. in 2006. Before joining the UCLA faculty as Associate Professor of History

in 2013, she taught at Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania.

Her research interests include the history of medieval business and industry, regional identity in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and the idea and practice of law in medieval societies. She is also an innovator in the use of digital technologies in historical research. She is the author of Trade and Institutions in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Geniza Merchants and their Business World (Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Professor Goldberg is currently working on a monograph on the emergence of Genoa in the eleventh and twelfth centuries as a major player in the Mediterranean world, and re-examining the bases of the city’s economic and political growth and centrality within the context of both European and Mediterranean institutional development. As part of this project, she is working with several collaborators to explore the possibilities of using computers to analyze relationships within thousands of medieval contracts using natural language processing.

She is also continuing work with sources from the Cairo Geniza: organizing and co-editing a guide to the use of the documentary materials from the Geniza; preparing a typological study of commercial letters; and working with Avrom Udovitch on a volume of annotated translations of merchant materials. The documentary sources of the Cairo Geniza have been an important source for Goldberg’s historical work and she is currently leading a multi-institutional working group to develop a research website to make these sources more accessible to scholars, teachers, and interested parties.

NEW FACULTY

MARK KLIGMAN NAMED INAUGURAL MICKEY KATZ PROFESSOR

JESSICA GOLDBERG BRINGS INNOVATION TO MEDIEVAL HISTORY

See related story, p.6

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The Center’s Student Leadership Council is an official UCLA student organization that provides student input to the Center's Director and Advisory Board, organizes programs for students, encourages student participation in regular CJS programs, and establishes a link with Jewish studies alumni. In 2013-14, Leadership Council members organized four programs:

LEADERSHIP COUNCIL ENGAGES STUDENTS

UCLADINO HOLDS 3RD SYMPOSIUM

“Preservation & Revitalization” of Judeo-Spanish was the theme of the third annual ucLADINO Symposium held March 5-6, 2014. Renowned scholars, graduate students, authors, and activists presented research and discussed efforts in Judeo-Spanish speaking communities across the globe. Eliezer Papo, Director of the Moshe David Gaon Center for Ladino Culture at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, and Karen Sarhon, Coordinator of the Ottoman-Turkish Sephardic Culture Center in Turkey, were the keynote speakers. Bryan Kirschen, Bethany Beyer, and Payton Phillips Quintanilla organized the event which received support from CJS and the UCLA Maurice Amado Program in Sephardic Studies as well as the Campus Programs Committee of the Program Activities Board, the UCLA Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the Graduate Students Association, and the G.E. Von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies.

Singer Sarah Aroeste performed a mix of experimental, feminist, rock-beat, retro-chic, Mediterranean-infused original Ladino songs at the culmination of the conference. Her performance was sponsored by the Fowler Museum and the Dortort Center for Creativity in the Arts at UCLA and cosponsored by CJS.

ucLADINO is a student-run organization in its fourth year at UCLA dedicated to promoting the knowledge and use of the Judeo-Spanish language(s). In addition to the annual symposium, the group hosts guest lectures, cultural events, and biweekly language workshops for beginners and intermediate speakers. On Dec. 5, 2013, ucLADINO also participated in a Los Angeles event for the first International Day of Ladino organized by Israel’s National Authority of Ladino.

In the coming year, Bryan Kirschen will continue directing ucLADINO with assistance of Payton Phillips Quintanilla and Jennifer Gutierrez who will each hold a Maurice Amado Fellowship. For more information, please visit www.ucladino.com.

STUDENT NEWS

From left: Bethany Beyer, Karen Sarhon, Bryan Kirschen, Eliezer Papo, and Payton Phillips Quintanilla.

Velena Hernandez arranged a discussion with former “Shanghailanders” in conjunction with the exhibition Jewish Refugees in Shanghai (1933-1941) which the Center sponsored together with UCLA Hillel, the UCLA Confucius Institute, and the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies.

Helen Luu invited students to a lunch with Orit Stieglitz, director of the Bardejov Jewish Preservation Committee, which is restoring the Jewish communal properties of this small town in north-eastern Slovakia, and creating a memorial for the more than 3,000 Jews from the vicinity who perished in the Holocaust.

Jewish and Middle East Studies Librarian David Hirsch provided a private tour of the Department of Special Collections’ Judaica holdings at a lunch that was organized by Tessa Nath and cosponsored by the American Library Association student chapter at UCLA.

The 2014 Academy Award winning short documentary, The Lady in No. 6: Music Saved My Life, provided a note of optimism to the campus observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day. The film screening , organized by Yaron Spiwak and cosponsored by UCLA Hillel’s Bearing Witness program, is based on an interview with a very joyous, Alice Herz Sommer, who at 109 was the world's oldest pianist and its oldest Holocaust survivor.

Photo: David Wu

Photo: Bruin Life

NEW GIFTS

“SHANGHAILANDER” ELLEN GOODHILL DONATES NEARLY $1 MILLION FOR HOLOCAUST STUDIES

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Ms. Goodhill was born in Shanghai, China, where her parents were able to escape the Holocaust. Her father, Fritz Berger, survived Dachau before coming to Shanghai with wife Jenny and their infant son, Gustav. Tragically, Gustav and his nanny were killed by a drunken Japanese officer in 1942.

After World War II ended, the family moved to Canada and then to Southern California in 1951. Ms. Goodhill had a long career as an Information Technology project manager at UCLA, KB Homes, WellPoint, and Southern California Edison, from which she recently retired. She was a past president of the Association of IT Professionals’ Los Angeles Chapter. Ellen passed away in August 2013 and is survived by her husband, Sholomo Nitzani, and brother Gary Berg, shown with their father in Shanghai in 1949. ”This transformative gift will provide vital graduate student support in all areas of Holocaust studies and establish a living legacy for Ellen’s parents and brother. It will propel the next generation of scholars by linking the past with the future,” said Todd Presner.

MAPPING JEWISH LA RECEIVES MAJOR GIFT

An impactful planned gift of $50,000 to the Center from Lillian Wurzel will support the Mapping Jewish Los Angeles Initiative. Born in New York and raised in Los Angeles, Lillian earned a BA in Psychology from UCLA in 1933. She received an MA in social service administration from the University of Chicago and went on to have a 65-year career in social work in Santa Clara and Contra Costa County. Lillian passed away in March 2013 in San Jose, at age 100. During World War II, Ms. Wurzel worked as a field director for the Red Cross and received a commendation from President Truman. She was active in professional and community organizations as well as

at UCLA where she served as a Community Outreach Volunteer, Pioneer Bruin, and VIP for the School of Arts & Architecture.

A generous gift from Ellen Goodhill, whose parents fled Nazi-occupied Europe by way of Shanghai, will provide for the Fritz, Jenny and Gustav Berger Fellowship in Holocaust Studies to support graduate student research.

LEAVING A MEANINGFUL LEGACY

There are many ways you can help the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies advance its mission, and any gift can be made in memory or in honor of a special person or event. For more information or to discuss options please contact Associate Director of Development Jillian Fontaine, jfontaine@support.ucla.edu or 310-206-4383.

HONOR ROLL 2014-2015

“SHANGHAILANDER” ELLEN GOODHILL DONATES NEARLY $1 MILLION FOR HOLOCAUST STUDIES

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The UCLA Center for Jewish Studies is extremely grateful for the generosity and visionary support of our donors who have helped build a solid foundation for research, teaching and life-long learning in all facets of Jewish Studies. Thank you!

MANHIGIM (Leaders)Maurice Amado Fdn.

Rose & Al A. Finci

Ellen Goodhill & Shlomo Nitzani

Sady Kahn Trust

Stephen O. Lesser

Y. & S. Nazarian Family Fdn.

Resnick Family Fdn.

Shirley & Ralph Shapiro

Lillian Wurzel Trust

AMUDIM (Pillars)Dr. Gregory L. Charlop

Benita & Bernard I. Ginsberg

Drs. Gerti & Sam Goetz

Roslyn & Abner Goldstine

Sheila & Milt Hyman

Lee & Luis Lainer

Dr. Elaine & Richard Lindheim

Dr. Elaine Meyers &

Daniel Spitzer

Harry C. Sigman

Lucille Ellis Simon Fdn.

David H. Simon

Rita Spiegel

BONIM (Builders)Phyllis & Sanford Beim

Phyllis & Phil Colman

Bernard Friedman

Nadine & Israel A. Levy

Josefine & Dr. Peter Loewenberg

Myra & Bruce H. Newman

Betty G. Sigoloff

Mehry & Dr. Marvin Smotrich

Xerox Fdn.

CHAVERIM (Friends) Jean & Jay Abarbanel

Sara & James Adler

Sara & Dr. David Aftergood

Basil Anderman

Miryam Bachrach

Eva Ballo

Leah Barshap

Dr. Anna G. Baum

Sadelle Birnbaum

Linda & Martin Blank, Jr.

Barbara T.H. Brandon

Rita L. Chotiner

Loretta & Marshall Drazen

Diana Dreiman & Stephen Gilula

Beverly & Mark Fienberg

Susan & Thomas J. Fineman

Karen & John Fishel

Jean & Jerry Friedman

Harriet & Manuel Glaser

Marcie & Clifford P. Goldstein

David A. Gorlick

Dr. Harry L. Green

Randi & Dr. Jerome Greenberg

Ruth Herman

Ellen & Mark D. Hurwitz

Sharon D. Jacobson

Nancy & Sheldon Jaffe

Marlene Kabert-Gerson &

Victor Gerson

Rita Kahane

Helen & Dr. Isaac Kaplan

Paula & Myron Kayton

Annette & Dr. Charles Kleeman

Esther Kleitman & Dr. Steven A.

Moszkowski

Hannah & Marshall F. Kramer

Lynn Kronzek & Rabbi R. Flom

Eric S. Kurtzman

Marsha Lewin & Forrest Latiner

Teri & Dr. Baruch Link

Bea & Leonard Mandel

Rina Mark

Estelle P. Markowitz

Elaine Myers & Daniel Spitzer

Esther & Dr. Michael Miller

Sandra Radoff-Bernstein

Fradya & Rabbi Joel Rembaum

Barbara & Peter Rothholz

Carol & The Hon. Marvin Rowen

Wendy & Ken Ruby

Dorothy & Avram Salkin

Dr. Mary & Dr. Ernest Scheuer

Gail & Lee Silver

Drs. Merilee & Zanwill Sperber

Drs. Judy & Michael I. Stern

Nomi Stolzenberg &

Dr. David Myers

Dorothy & Stanley Stone

Nathan C. Strauss

Lillian & Dr. Charles Trilling

Glenda & Uri Urmacher

Lillian Weiner

Renee & Charles Weisenberg

Mary R. Weissmann

Lori Wolf & Carol Leifer

George Sander Wolfberg

Roselynn & Theodore Wolfberg

Jason Youdeem

AMITIM (Fellows)Anonymous

Gail D. Aspinall

Heather & Jason Axe

Barbara Bilson

Susan & Dr. David Boyer

Manny Chait

Karen Codman

Judy & Bernard Echanow

Joan Forman

Edmund Gelfand

Gordon Gerson

Debbie Hopp

Tobi & Gregory Kaufman

Laraine & Allan Kokin

Eleanor Lindenbaum

Connie & Leslie Martinson

Ruth & Daniel J. Merritt

Brooklyn D. Michalowicz

Patti & Dr. Albert Mizrahi

Carolyn Mooso

Sandra Nisley-Leader &

Lewis Leader

Occidental Petroleum Char. Fdn.

Jerry Rabow

Debra J. Reed

Sylvia & Herbert Rose

Marlene Rotblatt

Lois & Rabbi Moshe J. Rothblum

Nathaniel Sandlow

Renee & Dr. Albert Sattin

Carole & Ellis Levin Schlocker

Leah & Norman Schweitzer

Debra & Jacob Segura

Eileen D. Sever

Dr. Rose & Andrew Steinberg

Rachel & Thomas Tugend

Jacklyn & Michael Waterman

Beverly Liebross Weise

Gayle Weiss

Shirley Shore Williamson

Molly Zachariash

Mae Ziskin

CJS ADVISORY BOARD

Al Finci, Chair

Milt Hyman

Luis Lainer

Stephen O. Lesser

Dr. Elaine Lindheim

E. Randol Shoenberg

Dr. Andrew Viterbi

Elaine Wolf*

Rabbi David Wolpe*

Zev Yaroslavsky*

*Honorary Member

At the Center302 Royce Hall, Box 951485Los Angeles, CA 90095-1485

Phone: 310.825.5387cjs@humnet.ucla.edu

Business hours:

M-TH 9am-12 pm, 1-5pm

Facebook: www.facebook.com/UCLACJS

ANNUAL CJS OPEN HOUSEJOIN US FOR OUR

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2014 • 314 ROYCE HALL • 4 PM

Prof. Todd S. PresnerSady and Ludwig Kahn Director

Mary Enid Pinkerson, PhD Community Affairs Coordinator

Vivian Holenbeck Assistant Director

Chelsea White Program Coordinator

Reina Cabebe Financial & Administrative Coordinator

David Wu Digital Projects & Program Coordinator

at the

centerבמרכז

Center for Jewish Studies

PRE-REGISTRATION REQUIRED FOR ALL CJS EVENTS. TO RESERVE: CJSRSVP@HUMNET.UCLA.EDU OR(310) 267-5327

A Bintel Brief: Love and Longing in Old New York

Liana F inck (A uthor/Illustrator)

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2014 • 306 ROYCE HALL • 12 PM

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2014 • UCLA HILLEL • 7 PM

FOR THE GOOD OFTOMORROW, PRESERVE YESTERDAY

DR. PIOTR CYWIŃSKI(DIRECTOR,

THE AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU STATE MUSEUM)

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2014 • 314 ROYCE HALL• 4 PM

CAROLINE LUCE (UCLA)

LAURA ROSENZWEIG (San Francisco State)

IT DID HAPPEN HERE:

Anti-Nazi Activism inLos Angeles

Discussion on their forthcoming

digital exhibit

In conjunction with the Skirball Cultural Center exhibition

Light & Noir: Exiles and Émigrés in Hollywood, 1933–1950

Image: Anti-Nazi Parade in Los Angeles, CA, Nov. 22, 1938 UCLA Library, Department of Special Collections