Revel held its fourth annual Year-End Student-Faculty Reception this past May 23rd, providing an opportunity for current and new students to meet with their classmates and professors. It was also a chance to celebrate the vibrancy of Revel and our school’s events over this past year: the annual shabbaton and yom iyun, a reception marking the publication of New Perspectives on Jewish-Christian Relations in honor of Dean Berger, a first-time Revel PhD lecture series at The Jewish Center, and lectures by visiting scholars Mark Cohen of Princeton University and Debra Lipstadt of Emory University.
Dean Berger and Associate Dean Cohen shared the following exciting Revel news:
- The PhD program continues to grow and will expand next year from twenty-four to a total of thirty-one students, mentored by Revel’s newly appointed PhD program coordinator, Prof. Daniel Rynhold.
- Revel is introducing a new dual MA/MS degree program with Azrieli, to be coordinated by Prof. Jeffrey Glanz and Stu Halpern, currently Revel Assistant Director of Student Programming and Community Outreach.
- Coinciding with our school’s 75th anniversary (Revel was founded in 1937), new space in Furst Hall is being constructed to house the Revel administrative suite and student-faculty lounge. In the future this identifiable “Revel space” will be a base for our school’s further growth and outreach.
In faculty news: the following scholarly monographs have been published by Revel professors over the past year:
- Palaces of Time: Jewish Calendar and Culture in Early Modern Europe, by Elisheva Carlebach
- Opening the Gates of Interpretation: Maimonides’ Biblical Hermeneutics in Light of His Geonic-Andalusian Heritage and Muslim Milieu, by Mordechai Cohen
- Beyond Expulsion: Jews, Christians, and Reformation Strasbourg, by Debra Kaplan
- A Biblical Translation in the Making: the Evolution and Impact of Saadia Gaon’s Tafsir, by Richard Steiner
The following volumes by our faculty are forthcoming:
- Knowledge of God and the Development of Early Kabbalah, by Jonathan Dauber
- Jews in Gotham: New York Jews in a Changing City, 1920-2010, by Jeffrey S. Gurock
- The Intellectual History and Rabbinic Culture of Medieval Ashkenaz, By Ephraim Kanarfogel.
- “Under the Hammer of History: Diaspora Nationalism and Yiddishism between Hope and Despair, by Joshua Karlip
- Nathan Birnbaum and Jewish Modernity, by Jesse Olson
For more information on these and other Revel faculty publications, see the “Research” tab of the Revel website.
Willie Roth, editor-in-chief of the second volume of the Revel student online journal (see Volume 1 at http://yu.edu/revel/research/) announced that the work on this important student publication is moving along, but that he is still taking further essay submissions. For more information, contact willie.roth@gmail.com.
Dean Berger took the opportunity at the reception to recognize our graduates this year and celebrate their achievements. The graduates shared their future plans, some of whom are continuing their academic Judaic studies. Congratulations to the following students who have earned their MA this year who attended the reception: Ezra Blaustein, A.J. Berkowitz, Yaelle Frohlich, Estee Goldschmidt, Sara Lefkowitz, Yitzchak Ratner, Moriah Rosensweig, Yosef Rosen, Anna Sce, Gidon Shamir and Yaakov Weiner.
Representing their fellow graduates, Yaelle Frohlich and Yaakov Weiner delivered brief presentations based on their recent graduate research. Yaelle spoke about the social-cultural differences between the original Hebrew version of Bialik’s poem be-‘Ir ha-haregah (“In the City of Slaughter”) and its Yiddish translation by the poet himself. Yaakov discussed the various rabbinic interpretations of the biblical verse “an eye for an eye” and their halakhic implications in light of ancient Near Eastern and Middle Persian parallels.
The reception provided a wonderful venue to hear from our students and we wish them the best of luck in their future endeavors.
Article by Rona Steinerman
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