The College Commons Podcast

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.

Author Helene Wecker and the immigrant experience told through the lives of mythical monsters. Helene Wecker’s first novel, The Golem and the Jinni, was awarded the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature, the VCU Cabell Award for First Novel, and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize, and was nominated for a Nebula Award and a World Fantasy Award. Its sequel, The Hidden Palace, was published in June 2021, and received a National Jewish Book Award and a Golden Poppy Award. A Midwest native, she holds a B.A. in English from Carleton College and an M.F.A. in Fiction Writing from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in literary journals such as Paper Brigade, Joyland, and Catamaran, as well as the fantasy anthology The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and children.

CCAR Chief Executive Rabbi Hara Person defends abortion rights, in the wake of Dobbs. Rabbi Hara Person is the Chief Executive of Central Conference of American Rabbis. She is the first woman Chief Executive in the history of the CCAR. As Chief Executive, Rabbi Person oversees lifelong rabbinic learning, professional development and career services, CCAR Press -- liturgy, sacred texts, educational materials, apps, and other content for Reform clergy, congregations and Jewish organizations -- and critical resources and thought leadership for the 2,200 rabbis who serve more than 2 million Reform Jews throughout North America, Israel, and the world. She was ordained in 1998 from HUC-JIR, after graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Amherst College (1986) and receiving an MA in Fine Arts from New York University/International Center of Photography (1992). Rabbi Person served as Educator at the Brooklyn Heights Synagogue from 1990-1996, and was the Adjunct Rabbi there from 1998-2019. She also serves as the High Holy Day Rabbi of Congregation B’nai Olam, Fire Island Pines, NY. Previously, she was the CCAR’s Chief Strategy Officer. In that capacity, she oversaw communications, served as Publisher of CCAR Press, and worked on overall organizational strategy. Prior to joining the CCAR, she worked at the URJ, where she was Managing Editor of The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, named the National Jewish Book Award Book of the Year in 2008.

The central role that art and material culture played in the assimilation and identity of French Jews in the fin-de-siècle. The House of Fragile Things, Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award Winner of the Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award (History) In the dramatic years between 1870 and the end of World War II, a number of prominent French Jews—pillars of an embattled community—invested their fortunes in France’s cultural artifacts, sacrificed their sons to the country’s army, and were ultimately rewarded by seeing their collections plundered and their families deported to Nazi concentration camps. In this rich, evocative account, James McAuley explores the central role that art and material culture played in the assimilation and identity of French Jews in the fin-de-siècle. Weaving together narratives of various figures, some familiar from the works of Marcel Proust and the diaries of Jules and Edmond Goncourt—the Camondos, the Rothschilds, the Ephrussis, the Cahens d'Anvers—McAuley shows how Jewish art collectors contended with a powerful strain of anti-Semitism: they were often accused of “invading” France’s cultural patrimony. The collections these families left behind—many ultimately donated to the French state—were their response, tragic attempts to celebrate a nation that later betrayed them. James McAuley is a Global Opinions contributing columnist and former Paris correspondent for The Washington Post. He holds a PhD in French history from the University of Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar.