[caption id="attachment_4136" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Dr. Carmen Ortiz Hendricks"]
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Dec 18, 2007 --
Wurzweiler's First Fulbright Senior Specialist
In February,
Carmen Ortiz Hendricks, DSW, associate dean and professor at Wurzweiler School of Social Work, will travel to Beersheba, Israel, as a Fulbright Senior Specialist. Hendricks is the first faculty member from Wurzweiler to be invited to participate in the program.
The Fulbright Senior Specialists Program provides short-term academic opportunities for US faculty and professionals to encourage new activities that go beyond traditional Fulbright research. Applicants to the program are recommended by specialist peer review committees and approved by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.
Hendricks will spend three weeks in Israel giving special lectures to undergraduate and postgraduate students and staff on current trends in US social work practice and theory with an emphasis on multicultural issues. She plans to give these lectures at Bar-Ilan University and Tel-Hai Academic College, in addition to her host institution Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
“This will be my first time visiting Israel,” Hendricks, an alumna of Wurzweiler, said. “I am proud to represent Wurzweiler and excited to participate in such a unique learning experience.”
She will introduce Israeli students to the Code of Ethics of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) and will focus on cultural competence, the idea that social workers should understand and have a firm knowledge base of their clients’ diverse cultures.
“I want to learn what culturally competent social work means in Israel and what social workers might be able to do differently here in the US,” Hendricks said.
Louis Feldman Publishes Seventeenth Book
Louis H. Feldman, PhD, the Abraham Wouk Family Professor of Classics and Literature, recently published a book,
Philo's Portrayal of Moses in the Context of Ancient Judaism. According to its publisher, the University of Notre Dame Press, the book presents “the most comprehensive study of Philo’s
De Vita Mosis that exists in any language.” Philo was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher whose work,
De vita Mosis, refuted the Hellenistic attacks on Moses’ life and character and was a vital part of his attempt to reconcile Judaism and Hellenism.
Feldman’s book uses rabbinic material to illuminate important parallels and differences between Philo’s writing on Moses and rabbinic literature. “Through Feldman’s careful analysis, Moses emerges as unique among ancient lawgivers,” said the publisher.
Feldman is the author and editor of over sixteen books, including
Josephus's Interpretation of the Bible and most recently
Judaism and Hellenism Reconsidered. Professor Feldman has been a full-time member of the Yeshiva College faculty since 1955, teaching courses in Greek and Latin at elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels, as well as courses in Greek and Roman history, classical mythology, masterpieces in Greek and Latin literature in English translation, and Hellenistic Jewish intellectuals.
Two Profs Appointed Journal Editors
Two Yeshiva College professors were recently named editors of two distinct journals.
Steven Fine, PhD, professor of Jewish history and director of the Center for Israel Studies, is one of four editors of
Images: A Journal of Jewish Art and Visual Culture, while
Lauren Fitzgerald, PhD, associate professor of English and director of the Yeshiva College Writing Center, was appointed co-editor of
The Writing Center Journal.
Images is a scholarly journal that publishes articles on Jewish visual culture in all disciplines—including architecture, painting, sculpture, graphics, textiles, and photography—from Greco-Roman antiquity to the present. It also explores historiography and theory, and every edition contains reviews of books and exhibitions, and notices of scholarly conferences or symposia on Jewish art.
Images is published by Brill, an international academic publisher.
The Writing Center Journal is an official peer-reviewed publication of the International Writing Centers Association. It is a bi-annual journal dedicated to publishing articles, reviews, and announcements that explore issues or theories related to writing center dynamics and administration. Fitzgerald was chosen by a selection committee for her broad understanding of writing center scholarship, her experience with writing center administration, and her publication and editorial experience.
A longtime writing professional, Fitzgerald was also recently elected to serve on the executive committee of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), a professional organization for researching and teaching composition, from writing to new media.
Large YC Presence at Biblical Meeting
Five members of the Jewish studies faculty at Yeshiva College recently attended the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature/American Academy of Religion in San Diego.
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Shawn Zelig Aster, assistant professor of Bible, presented two papers “Jerusalem Replaces Babylon: The Neo-Babylonian Background to Isaiah 60” and “Isaiah 2:2-4 and Micah 4:1-5: The Vision of the End of Days as a Reaction to Assyrian Power.”
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Moshe J. Bernstein, PhD, professor of Bible, presented “Three Ways of Interpreting the Bible at Qumran” at a session recognizing the 60th anniversary of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and was a respondent in a session on Medieval Jewish Interpretation of Psalms.
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Steven Fine, PhD, professor of Jewish history, presented “Between Rabbinic Text and Archaeology: Meyers’ Contribution to the Study of Greco-Roman Judaism” at a session in honor of Professor Eric Meyers, and a paper on “’Israelite’-Christian Relations in Late Antique Palestine: Samaritan, Jewish, and Christian Schools during the Forth Through Sixth Centuries CE”; he also was a respondent to a paper on “Visual Representations of Worship in Ancient Rome, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Ostia: First and Second Centuries CE.”
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Shalom E. Holtz, assistant professor of Bible, presented a paper on “Recovering Biblical Courtroom Vocabulary: Arguing the Case for Adversarial ‘Yahad.’”
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Aaron Koller, instructor in Bible, presented papers on “Swords into Plowshares and Nations into States: Isaiah 2/Micah 4 in the Contexts of Assyrian Hegemony and Political Theory” and “Lexicography of Realia: Two Examples from the Semantic Field of Blades.”
Other Faculty News
Rabbi J. David Bleich, PhD, Herbert and Florence Tenzer Professor of Jewish Law and Ethics at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and
rosh yeshiva [professor of Talmud] at Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, gave a number of presentations in Berlin, Germany in November: he spoke on "A Twenty-five Million Dollar Funeral," at Bet Midrash de-Berlin, on "Life or Liberty: The Issue of Personal Autonomy" at Berliner Studien zum Judischen Recht and Humboldt University, and on "Sale of Organs" at Organisation der Judischen Artze und Psychologen.
Mordechai Cohen, PhD, associate professor of Bible at Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies, published "A Review of Robert Eisen, The Book of Job in Medieval Jewish Philosophy," in
The Journal of Religion 87 (2007), 136-138, in which he discusses the literary, theological, and kabbalistic streams of Jewish interpretation of Job. He also published “Great Searchings of the Heart: Psychological Sensitivity in Nahmanides’ Commentaries on the Torah and Job” in Hebrew in
Teshura Le-Amos: Collected Studies in Biblical Exegesis Presented to ‘Amos Hakham, ed. M. Bar-Asher, N. Hacham, Y. Ofer (Alon Shvut: Tevunot, 2007), 213-233. In this volume dedicated to one of the foremost modern Orthodox Bible scholars in Israel today, Cohen brings to light the human side of the interpretive work of Nahmanides.
Joanne Jacobson, PhD, professor of English at Yeshiva College, will be featured on Milt Rosenberg’s “Extension 720,” a leading author interview program on Chicago’s WGN Radio, on Friday December 21. Jacobson will be discussing her book,
Hunger Artist, a memoir about growing up Jewish in postwar suburbia.
James Otteson, PhD, director of the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Honors Program at Yeshiva College, gave a quote about business ethics for a recent article on msnbc.com. The article, “Workers should be wary of shady business deals” reports on a survey showing that ethical lapses in the business world are on the rise.
Shmuel Schneider, PhD, chair of the department of Hebrew language and literature at Yeshiva College, spoke on "The Relations Between the Secular ('Hilonyim') and Religious ('Datyim') Segments of Israeli Society" at Congregation Adereth El in New York City, in October.
Rabbi Moshe D. Tendler, PhD, professor of biology at YU and the Rabbi Isaac and Bella Tendler Professor of Jewish Medical Ethics at RIETS, spoke about "The Role of Science in the Torah Curriculum of Our Yeshivot," at the Seventh Miami International Torah and Science Conference in Surfside, FL, in December.
For previous faculty achievements,
click here.
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Dec 31, 2007 --
New York, NY, December 31, 2007 – Business and the rabbinate may seem to be disparate areas of study, but as Yeshiva University Center for the Jewish Future (CJF) is demonstrating, the rabbi has much in common with a business executive.
At two three-day long seminars, held from November 16-18 and again from December 16-19, CJF teamed up with YU’s own Sy Syms School of Business (SSSB) to focus on the rabbi’s role as an executive of his synagogue and his partnership with its lay leaders. The objective of this program is to tackle the traditional challenges of the modern orthodox rabbinate by applying contemporary business management skills where they are appropriate.
Thirty rabbis from across the United States and Canada and 30 key officers from their respective synagogues’ lay leadership participated in the workshops at the Hyatt Regency Bonaventure Conference Center in Weston, FL. The participants learned management techniques that will help them enhance their leadership skills, increase avenues of communication, and improve the governance of their congregations.
The seminars are part of CJF’s Legacy Heritage Fund Rabbinic Enrichment Initiative (LHREI), which is supported by the Legacy Heritage Fund Limited in New York City.
The program’s facilitators included Steven Nissenfeld, PhD, and Brian Maruffi, PhD, both clinical professors of management at SSSB, and Robert Leventhal, a senior consultant at the Alban Institute, which helps religious congregations address their needs in a changing world.
"The concept is outstanding – a real break through. It creates a model of the rabbi-lay leader team which, from a management and organization perspective, can be used to build a truly successful, high-performing synagogue,” said Dr. Nissenfeld. “The support and collaboration of CJF and SSSB has proven to be exceptional.”
Dr. Maruffi pointed out that “rabbis are in a difficult position because they are at the same time both leaders and employees. The benefits that a program such as LHREI gives to individual rabbis should be admired and replicated.”
Joey Lifschitz, a member of the board of directors of the Young Israel of the West Side in Manhattan, said "I can write volumes about what I gained, and the theoretical and practical education I received was a real eye opener. YU and CJF were responsible for such an important initiative, and I am eager to relate my experience to my synagogue's board and members." none
