April 20, 2021
How and why Afro-Asian Jews in Israel became associated and engaged with Global Black thought throughout the 20th century will be explored in a virtual talk by Professor Bryan K. Roby on Thursday, May 6, at 7:30 p.m. EDT. Registration is required.
Bryan K. Roby
In his talk, “Israel in Black & White: The Centrality of Black Thought for Afro-Asian Jewry in Israel" Roby will reflect on present-day Black cultural production in Israel and look at shifting notions of Blackness and Jewishness among Mizrahi and Ethiopian Israelis.
“Roby is an innovative scholar of social movements. Those familiar with the Israeli Black Panther movement of the 1970s immediately understood that they had taken their inspiration from the Black Panthers in the United States. Roby’s scholarship shows us how much deeper the connections run. I look forward to hearing his analysis of the continued influence of black thought on identity and social movements in Israel today,” says Deborah A. Starr, director of the Jewish Studies Program.
March 16, 2021
“Shtisel,” an Israeli television series about a family living in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem, is an international hit on Netflix. Its director and writer, Yehonathan Indursky, will talk about the series during “The Making of Shtisel,” an online event hosted by Cornell’s Jewish Studies Program on March 24, 4 – 5 p.m. Registration is required. This event is made possible because of support from the Hope and Eli Hurowitz Fund.
The event is co-sponsored by the Cornell Department of Near Eastern Studies and the Center for Israel Studies at Binghamton University.
Yehonathan Indursky
“I think it’s important for students to learn about the creative process, and to have an opportunity to ask questions of writers, filmmakers and artists,” said Deborah A. Starr, professor of modern Arabic and Hebrew literature and film in the Department of Near Eastern Studies and director of the Jewish Studies Program. “Supporting this sort of program is part of the mission of Jewish Studies. Although, this year, we cannot host speakers in person, the technology makes this program available to the wider Cornell community both on and off campus.”
Le notti bianche (1957)
We began this short week with a look at the enthusiastic response to Mark Harris’s
Mike Nichols: A Life, and opening this month’s round on new and noteworthy books, we turn to a few more biographies. For a
New York Times profile of literary biographer Hermione Lee, widely admired for her books on Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, and Penelope Fitzgerald, Charles McGrath spoke recently with novelist Julian Barnes who recalled the day that playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard approached Lee and asked her if she might consider making him her next subject. When she asked why he’d set his sights on her, he replied, “Because I want it to be read.” When