The College Commons Podcast

Grace Overbeke uncovers the stories behind the career of legendary Jewish comedian Jean Carroll. Grace Overbeke, PhD: Grace Kessler Overbeke is an Assistant Professor in the Theatre Department of Columbia College with a focus on Comedy Writing and Performance. Previously, she served as the Perilman Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish Studies at Duke University. Her most recent scholarship appears in Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, Theatre Topics, and Theatre Annual. Other publications appear in The New England Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, Studies in American Humor, and The Jewish Forward. She was the recipient of the Mark and Ruth Luckens International Prize in Jewish Thought and Culture, and the Northwestern Crown Center Fellowship for Jewish and Israel Studies. She received her B.A. in Theatre and English from Wesleyan University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Northwestern University's Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama.

Professor Eric Lawee uncovers the complexities and fascination of our most influential author. Eric Lawee is a full professor in the Department of Bible at Bar-Ilan University, where he teaches the history of Jewish biblical scholarship. His Rashi’s Commentary on the Torah: Canonization and Resistance in the Reception of a Jewish Classic won the 2019 Jewish Book Award in the category of Scholarship of the Jewish Book Council. It was also the 2021 finalist for a Jordan Schnitzer Book Award in the category of Medieval and Early Modern Jewish History and Culture of the Association for Jewish Studies. Lawee holds the Rabbi Asher Weiser Chair for Medieval Biblical Commentary Research and directs Bar-Ilan's Institute for Jewish Bible Interpretation.

Prof. Gordon Dale traces the path of traditional Hasidic music. Dr. Gordon Dale, the Inaugural Dr. Jack Gottlieb, z”l, Scholar in Jewish Music Studies, currently serves as the Visiting Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music (DFSSM) at HUC/New York. Effective July 1, 2022, he will become the Assistant Professor of Jewish Musicology in the DFSSM. Dr. Dale has most recently conducted extensive research in the Hasidic communities of New York and Israel, and has lectured across the United States on topics related to Israeli popular music, and Jewish music and mysticism. Dr. Dale is currently the Executive Director of The Jewish Music Forum, a project of the American Society for Jewish Music, and is a past president of the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Special Interest Group for Jewish Music. He holds a Ph.D. from The Graduate Center, CUNY, an M.A. from Tufts University, and a B.S. from Northeastern University. His forthcoming book, The Life and Works of Rabbi Ben Zion Shenker won the 2021 Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award.

Stories and identities collide and coalesce as Ladino-speaking Jews land in Mexico. Assoc. Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Michigan, Dr. Devi Mays studies the transnational Jewish networks in the Mediterranean and globally, with a focus on Sephardic Jews, gender, and identity. In her 2020 book “Forging Ties, Forging Passports,” she tells the stories of Sephardi migrants to Mexico with, their networks among formerly Ottoman lands, France, the United States, Cuba, as well as Mexico. Mostly, Dr. Mays points out the manner in which geographic and social mobility challenged the physical borders of the state and the conceptual boundaries of the nation. “Forging Ties” won a 2020 National Jewish Book Award a 2021 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award.

Professor Alexander Kaye reminds us that Orthodoxy does not necessarily seek a monopoly on the power of state. Alexander Kaye is the Karl, Harry, and Helen Stoll Assistant Professor of Israel Studies at Brandeis University, and is the author of "The Invention of Jewish Theocracy: The Struggle for Legal Authority in Modern Israel" (Oxford University Press, 2020). His research deals in the history of Jewish thought, with a special focus on political thought, the history of law and theories of Jewish modernity. He is also an expert in Israel Studies, and his research in the history of Israel focuses on the relationship between law, religion and politics, and in particular in the history of religious Zionism.

Blurb: Washington insider Ira Shapiro takes the Senate to task – and asks us to fix it. Ira Shapiro’s forty-five-year Washington career has focused on American politics and international trade. Shapiro served twelve years in senior staff positions in the U.S. Senate, working for a series of distinguished senators: Jacob Javits, Gaylord Nelson, Abraham Ribicoff, Thomas Eagleton, Robert Byrd, and Jay Rockefeller. He served in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative during the Clinton administration, first as general counsel and then chief negotiator with Japan and Canada, with the rank of ambassador. In his two previous highly regarded books on the U.S. Senate, Ira Shapiro chronicled the institution from its apogee in the 1970s through its decline in the decades since. Now, in his new book -- The Betrayal: How Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans Abandoned America (Rowman & Littlefield; May 17, 2022), Shapiro turns his gaze to how the Senate responded to the challenges posed by the Trump administration and its prospects under President Biden.

Professor Annabel Herzog dives into a unique Jewish philosopher's approach to ethics and politics. Annabel Herzog is a Professor of Political Theory at the School of Political Science, and Director of the M.A. Program in Cultural Studies, at the University of Haifa. Her work has focussed on 20th-century philosophers, such as Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas, Albert Camus and Jacques Derrida; on Philosophy and Literature; on Contemporary Jewish Philosophy; on Memory and Trauma, on Ethics and Politics. Her book: Levinas's Politics: Justice, Mercy, Universality (University of Pennsylvania Press: 2000 won of the 2021 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award in Philosophy and Jewish Thought.

An early-modern myth of Jewish credit frames age-old antisemitic tropes. Francesca Trivellato is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Early Modern European History at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. She is the author, most recently, of The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells us about the Making of European Commercial Society (Princeton University Press, 2019), which won the 2020 Jacques Barzun Book Prize in Cultural History and the 2021 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award in medieval and early modern Jewish History and Culture.

How the Jewish community can become truly diverse and inclusive in the 21st Century. Warren Hoffman is the executive director of the Association for Jewish Studies, the largest academic Jewish studies membership organization in the world. He has spent his career working in Jewish communal agencies, including JCCs and Federations, to bring change, innovation, and new ideas to legacy organizations. He holds a PhD in American literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Hoffman is the author of two books: The Passing Game: Queering Jewish American Culture and The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical. Miriam Steinberg-Egeth has been a leader in the Philadelphia Jewish community since 2006, providing interdenominational and intergenerational opportunities for Jews of all backgrounds to connect with communal experiences that work for them. Her roles have included director of the Center City Kehillah, administrator for the Board of Rabbis of Greater Philadelphia, and director of Hillel of Greater Philadelphia's Jewish Graduate Student Network. She is currently the Strategic Manager at Hadar and is also the writer of a weekly advice column, "Miriam's Advice Well."

Dr. Jason Lustig uncovers epic struggles over archives, the repositories of our stories and identity. Dr. Jason Lustig is a Lecturer and Israel Institute Teaching Fellow at the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. His first book, A Time to Gather: Archives and the Control of Jewish Culture (Oxford University Press, 2021), traces the twentieth-century struggle over who might “own” Jewish history, especially after the Nazi looting of Jewish archives. Dr. Lustig is also the host and creator of the Jewish History Matters Podcast, which is online at JewishHistory.FM. He received his Ph.D. at the UCLA Department of History, and has also been a Harry Starr Fellow in Judaica at Harvard University’s Center for Jewish Studies and a Gerald Westheimer Early Career Fellow at the Leo Baeck Institute.