Sandra K Wasserman Jewish Studies Center

Mission

The Sandra Kahn Wasserman Jewish Studies Center (WJSC) in the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College reflects the legacy and heritage of the college, its tradition of educating New York City immigrants, its diverse population, and its special relationship to and place within Manhattan.

The WJSC is uniquely positioned to take advantage of Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business, School of Public Affairs, and Weissman School of Arts and Sciences as well as the Baruch Performing Arts Center. The WJSC is dedicated to teaching and informing the Baruch community and public about the history and experiences of Jews in America, specifically in New York City. Public programs, courses, events, and campus activities will focus on the Jewish immigration to New york City, and address some of the biggest issues and challenges currently facing today’s American Jewish community — Jewish philanthropy, Jewish business ethics, Jewish politics, Jewish identity and continuity, and the changing face of American Jewry.

Fall Public Events 2024

Kristallnacht Commemoration Event
• November 7th, 6:00 pm, VC 14-270 – An evening with journalist Gershom Gorenberg: “October 7 & Kristallnacht: What we should and shouldn’t learn from history.”

Holocaust Literature Author Talk with Ari Richter
• November 12th, 4:00 pm-5:00 pm, VC 14-266 – Discussion with graphic novelist Ari Richter on his graphic family memoir, Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz.

Holocaust Literature Author Talk with Roslyn Bernstein
• December 3rd, 4:15 pm-5:15 pm, VC 14-280 – Reading and discussion with Professor Emerita Roslyn Bernstein on her award-winning novel, The Girl Who Counted Numbers.

Film Series: Resistance During the Holocaust – The Courage to Care
• September 22nd-24th – Irena’s Vow: 48-hour streaming with a Zoom talk back with screenwriter Dan Gordon on September 24th at 5:30 pm EDT.

• October 21st-23rd – Resistance: They Fought Back: 48-hour streaming with a Zoom director talk back with Paula Apsell on October 24th at 6:00 pm EDT.

Spring Public Events 2024

Blacks and Jews: Together and Apart film series

Periphery

Co-sponsored by the Department of Black and Latinx Studies

Free 48-hour streaming: February 5th through February 8th
Director Zoom talk back with Sara Yacobi Harris: February 8th at 6:00 pm

Periphery is a photographic and film exhibition created in partnership by No Silence on Race (NSOR) and the Ontario Jewish Archives (OJA). Periphery is a short film about ethnic diversity in the Jewish community in Toronto, Canada. Sharing narratives from individuals of multiracial and multiethnic backgrounds, Periphery creates space to look, listen, and learn from participants as they share their experiences and explore ideas of representation, intersectionality, ethnicity, race, and sexuality. Periphery invites us to appreciate the richness of Jewish identity and cultural expression while illustrating the feeling of grappling to belong. The film and portraits draws our attention inwards and invites us to examine how we foster and support a broader and richer view of the Jewish community.

Blacks and Jews: Together and Apart film series

I Shall Not Be Silent 

Co-sponsored by the Department of Black and Latinx Studies

Free streaming and Zoom discussion on March 19th at 5:00 pm EST with director Rachel Eskin Fisher, Baruch Prof. Jamel Hudson and Baruch students

As the civil rights of Jews were systematically being stripped away in 1930s Berlin, one young rabbi refused to be silent. His name was Joachim Prinz. Uncowed by Nazi monitoring and repeated arrests, Prinz continued to let his voice be heard, urging Jews to leave Germany. Finally expelled from the country in 1937, Prinz himself arrived in the United States and was horrified by the racism he found. As rabbi of Temple B’nai Abraham in Newark, NJ, and later as president of the American Jewish Congress, Prinz became a leader in the civil rights movement, even speaking at the 1963 March on Washington.

March 13th on Zoom 5:00 pm EST

Pioneering German-Jewish Pilots During World War I: in-person panel with awarding-winning journalist and Baruch Distinguished Lecturer Ralph Blumenthal, Dr. Jason Crouthamel, Professor of History, Grand Valley State College, Elimor Makevet, author of Jewish Flyers and the World War and former NYT art director Steven Heller, co-founder and co-chair of the MFA Designer as Author program at the School of Visual Arts, New York.

April, date and time, TBA

Blacks and Jews: Together and Apart film series

BlacKKKlansman (dir. Spike Lee, 2018)

Co-sponsored by the Department of Black and Latinx Studies

Free 48-hour streaming 
Zoom event 

Tuesday, April 2, 4-5:30pm

“Salzwedel Concentration Camp Reunion” short film and talkback with Joelyn Flomenhaft

“Salzwedel Concentration Camp Reunion: A Liberator and Survivors Speak” is a short documentary based on the oral history of Joelyn Flomenhaft’s father, Norman Werbowsky, a combat medic in the 84th Infantry, 309th Medical Battalion. He did not often speak about his WWII experience because he wanted to shield his family of the horrors that he had seen. However, at 90 years old, he wanted to finally talk about his service and ultimately served on the Speakers Bureau of The Museum of Jewish Heritage. Fate would have him reconnect with two Holocaust survivors, whom he liberated, sitting the audience listening to him speak at two different times. The short highlights their reunion, held in Long Beach, NY. The short premiered on JLTV, a cable station, in August 2014 and continues to be featured for Holocaust education.

Tuesday, April 16, 4-5:30pm       

Translator Danielle James will speak about her upcoming book, Return to the Place I Never Left. The book provides a first-hand historical account of the Holocaust from Flemish to English. A memoir-in-verse, written in short, rhythmic sentences, this book reveals the memories of a man who’s experienced pain, extensive and deep. It’s about a teenage boy, Tobias Schiff, who was deported in Antwerp and survived multiple years in multiple concentration camps. Schiff is a Holocaust survivor whose narrative offers a personal, harrowing account of his experiences during one of history’s darkest times. Schiff’s narrative is distinguished by its raw emotional depth and vivid detail, providing an intimate view of the realities of life in Nazi death camps and the long-lasting impact of trauma. Through his eyes, readers are transported to the concentration camps, witnessing the atrocities and struggles that defined daily existence, seeing his tenacity while broken, beaten, and starved, and learning what enabled him and others to cling to the last shred of life while surrounded by death.

April 17th

Conference: “Understanding Antisemitism in Global and Local Contexts”

Panels: Antisemitism and Latin America; Antisemitism and Israel; and Antisemitism on Campus

Engelman Recital Hall, BPAC

Monday, May 6th, time TBA

Yom HaShoah Student Poetry Zoom event

Baruch College students will take part in the nationwide effort to honor the victims of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution by holding a Yom HaShoah / Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony on May 6 at 6pm. The event coincides with the nation’s annual commemoration of the Holocaust established by Congress and led by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. The ceremony, which is open to all Baruch students, staff, faculty, and community members, will feature readings of poetry written by those who witness the Holocaust, both survivors and those who were murdered by the Nazis. Through our Holocaust Remembrance event, the Wasserman Jewish Studies Center seeks both to commemorate the tragic history of the Holocaust and to reflect on the lessons it holds for our lives today.

May, time and date, TBA

Looking for Roots, Finding Flowers (2008): screening and talk back with director Daniel Jacobson

This documentary explores the filmmaker’s evolving relationship to the cyclical understanding of time and memory propounded by the Jewish tradition and his ambivalence towards the legacy of the Holocaust. Steven Metzler, a survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp and the filmmaker’s grandfather, recounts his experiences and returns to his native Romania after 63 years to find his grandfather’s house which he lived in as a child. What the family discovers on their journey transforms their understanding of time, memory, and religious ties forever.

Fall Public Events 2023

The Thread Collectors: A Novel. Discussion and lunch with authors Shaunna J. Edwards and Alyson Richman, in conversation with Dr. Jessica Lang 

RESCHEDULED : November 28, 12:00 pm-2:00 pm

Co-sponsored by the Department of Black and Latinx Studies

Special thanks to Kenya Lee (Chief of Staff to President Wu) and Olga Dais (College’s Legal Counsel)

Latin American Jewish Women Writers Series: Argentine human rights activist, poet and professor Alicia Partnoy (Loyola Marymount University)

October 17th, 2:30 pm-4:00 pm

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Fridays: Understanding Antisemitism, Jewish History and the Jewish Experience with April Powers (Project Shema Funder)

October 20th, 12:00 pm-1:30 pm on Zoom

Special thanks to Dr. Anna D’Souza (Associate Professor, Marx School)

Blacks and Jews: Together and Apart film series

A free streaming of the documentary Project 2×1, about West Indian and Chabad Hasidic communities in Crown Height, from 10/22-10/24,

Followed by a Zoom talk back with director Hannah Roodman in conversation with journalist Collier Meyerson, creator of the podcast Love Thy Neighbor: Four Days in Crown Heights That Changed New York, on 10/25 at 6:00 pm.

Immigrant Baggage: a conversation with author, scholar and translator Dr. Maxim Shrayer, (Professor of Russian, English and Jewish Studies, Boston College) and Dr. Sarah Valente (co-director, Wasserman Jewish Studies Center)

October 26th, 6:00 pm-7:30 pm

Kristallnacht concert with pianist Carolyn Enger: Mischlinge Exposé

Enger’s The Mischlinge Exposé interweaves video testimony from her father and godmother, both Holocaust survivors, with music and art from the salon period to the present, exploring the complexities of German-Jewish identity before, during and after the Holocaust.

November 14th, 6:00 pm

Engelman Recital Hall, BPAC

Latin American Jewish Women Writers Series: Chilean-American writer and scholar Marjorie Agosin (Wellesley College) 

November 16th, 2:30 pm-4:00 pm

Latin American Jewish Women: Argentine novelist Alicia Kozameh

November 30th, 2:30 pm-4:00 pm

Spring Public Events 2023

Interfaith Initiative: Faith, Conflicts and Coalition Series:

Antisemitism/Anti-Judaism: a conversation between Professor David Nirenberg, Tenth Director and Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, and Professor Magda Teter, Professor of History and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University

February 7th at 6:00 pm on Zoom

An in-person reading and discussion with Jane Saginaw, author of the memoir Because the World is Round

February 23rd at 6:00 pm

An in-person conversation about Albert Memmi with Jonathan Judaken and Michael Lejman, editors of The Albert Memmi Reader, following a screening of Margaux Fitoussi and Mo Scapelli’s short film El Hara

March

A conversation with Achy Obejas, novelist, poet, translator and journalist, author of Days of Awe, part of our Discovering Crypto-Jewish Identities series

March 28th at 6:00 pm

Interfaith Initiative: Faith, Conflicts and Coalition Series:

In-person discussion with Sander Gilman and Zhou Xun:“I Know Who Caused COVID-19”: Pandemics and Xenophobia

April 17th at 5:30 pm

Yom HaShoah poetry event:

April 18th

With Baruch’s Mishkin Gallery:
Artist Aura Rosenberg’s cinematic interpretations of philosopher Walter Benjamin’s Berlin Childhood Around 1900 and Theses on the Philosophy of History
Screening and Public Conversation featuring:
Aura Rosenberg, Dr. Susan Buck-Morss, CUNY Graduate Center, Dr. Laura López Paniagua, Bard College Berlin

April 27th

An in-person conversation with Ben Moser, Pulitzer-Prize winning author and translator of Susan Sontag: Her Life and Work and Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector

April 27-April 28 (Free streaming)

The Jewish Experience from Basavilbaso to New Amsterdam, dir. Miguel Kohan, 2019

May 11th

Children of the Inquisition, dir. Joseph Lovett, 2019

Free streaming 5/1-5/2 with Zoom director talk back on 5/4 at 6:00 pm

2023 Spring Film Series: Discovering Crypto-Jewish Identities:

 Xueta Island, dirs., Dani Rotstein, Ofer Laszewicki and Felipe Wolokita, 2022. Featuring a talk back with the directors, March 15th

The Last Sephardic Jew, dir. Miguel Angel Nieto, 2004

Sefarad, dir. Rodrigo Santos, 2019

Fall Public Events 2022

13 Drivers’ Licenses exhibit and public lecture

October 24th through October 25th

Public lecture with Lisa Salko: October 25th at 6:30 pm (reception to follow)

Engelman Recital Hall, Baruch’s Performing Arts Center (BPAC)

A tribute to Baruch Distinguished Professor Grace Schulman, on the occasion of her retirement and the launch of her new book: Again, the Dawn: New and Selected Poems, 1976-2002

November 3rd at 6:00 pm

Engleman Recital Hall, Baruch’s Performing Arts Center (BPAC)

Zikkaron Kristallnacht: A Family Story, dir. Eugene Marlow, 2015

An in-person talk back with Baruch Professor Eugene Marlow following the screening

November 10th at 6:00 pm

A reading with Roslyn Bernstein, Baruch Professor Emerita, and author of the novel, The Girl Who Counted Numbers

This event will be Professor Bernstein’s first public reading for The Girl Who Counted Numbers

December 8th at 6:00 pm on Zoom

Fall titles, free 48-hour streaming access 

Spring Public Events 2022

Jess Solomon and Eman El-Husseini, the El Salomons: a married Jewish-Palestinian lesbian comedy couple

February 24th at 7:00 EST pm on Zoom

Public lecture with Dr. Madga Teter

Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies and Professor of History, Fordham University

March 30th at 6:30 pm EST on Zoom

Jewish/Latinx Film Series: Spring titles, free 48-hour streamings

co-sponsored by Black and Latinx Studies, the Initiative for the Study of Latin America (ISLA) and

Baruch Performing Arts Center (BPAC)

February: El Brindis, Chile, directed by Shai Agosin, 2007

March: La Amiga, Argentina, directed by Jeanine Meerapfel, 1988

talk-back with the director following the streaming!

April: The Year My Parents Went on Vacation, Brazil, directed by Cao Hamburger, 2006

 *exact dates and times for spring films, TBA

Co-sponsored with Baruch’s New Media Artspace, Spring Semester visiting artist: Pinar Yolacan

Public artist lecture by Pinar Yolacan, Tuesday, April 5, 2022 from 6:30 P.M. to 7:30 P.M. via Zoom, RSVP here.

Born in Ankara, Turkey in 1981, Pinar Yolacan studied fashion at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and Fine Art Media in Chelsea School of Art before graduating from The Cooper Union with a BFA in 2004. Yolacan had solo shows at YKY in Istanbul, Finnish Museum of Photography in Helsinki, Center for Contemporary Art in Lagos, and Wetterling Gallery in Stockholm. Since 1997, reviews about her work regularly appeared in The New York Times, Art in America, ArtReview, Bidoun, Dutch, Rolling Stone and i-D magazines. Yolacan’s work is in the permanent collections of The J. Paul Getty Museum, Museum of Fine Art, Boston, KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki and International Center of Photography in New York. Yolacan lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

For More Information

Contact jewish.studies.center@baruch.cuny.edu

Dr. Jessica Lang, Co-Director
jessica.lang@baruch.cuny.edu
Office: Newman Vertical Campus, 7-24

Dr. Sarah Valente, Co-Director
sarah.valente@baruch.cuny.edu
Office: 136 E. 25th Street, #1008

Dr. Carina Pasquesi, Managing Director
carina.pasquesi@baruch.cuny.edu
Office: 136 E. 25th Street, #1008

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