Kangisser Cohen on Yehuda Bacon 21 Aug 22

Hitler’s intention and regime was the destruction of the Jewish people. Intrinsic to their murderous policy, the Nazis separated Jews from their families and friends. The Nazi ghetto was the “last place” in which the traditional structure of the family was preserved. This lecture will examine the experience of the Jewish family during this period of extreme suffering: separation, expulsion and death of its members. The presentation will focus on survival strategies – planned and unplanned that each member of the family adopted in order to survive. This lecture will be based on the post-war diaries of Holocaust survivor Yehuda Bacon.

“I no longer had my own bed, my cupboard, my books, my family couldn’t take care of me as much, a new life began for me.”
Yehuda Bacon, July 23, 1945

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Set in 1953, A Place to Call Home describes the social changes sweeping Australia in the aftermath of a devastaing world war that endangered the homeland and opened the continent to new trends that challenged hierachies based on class, ethnicity, and sexual identification. Prof Donna Robinson Divine talks about the worldwide impact of this series as a Jewish and Australian story.

Jewish law was transmitted from God to Moses on Mt. Sinai and through Moses to the leaders and rabbis of every generation. Yet, the realities of the twenty-first century are not the realities of Mt. Sinai. How have the rabbis utilized the basic tenets of Jewish law to adopt and adapt to the changing realities of each generation? In this lecture Rabbi Mintz will focus primary on the development of the community eruv which reflects this tension and its resolution through the centuries. Mintz’s – Mandelbaum New York Encounters

Based on her experience at Sotheby’s for more than 20 years, Sharon Liberman Mintz will explore some of the most exciting Judaica discoveries and auctions of the last decade. The intriguing stories behind the magnificently illuminated Hebrew manuscripts, rare printed books, exceptional silver and paintings as well as the collectors who vie for these treasures will be presented. Mintz’s – Mandelbaum New York Encounters

Sumptuously decorated marriage contracts have been integral to Jewish weddings for centuries and represent a magnificent expression of tradition in Jewish art. This lecture with expert Sharon Liberman Mintz examines ketubbot dating from the 12th through 21st centuries as microcosms of Jewish culture and testimony to the creativity and artistic heritage of the Jewish people.Mintz’s – Mandelbaum New York Encounters

Jews first arrived in New York in 1654. How did the community develop over the centuries? what were the challenges for the Jews of New York as they struggled to maintain their Jewish traditions while also integrating into the economic and social framework of this growing metropolis? Rabbi Adam Mintz will utilize primary and secondary sources to explore this fascinating topic. Mintz’s – Mandelbaum New York Encounters

Gary A. Rendsburg
England as a Custodian of the Jewish Past

Most people are well aware of England’s role as a center of antiquarianism, and most are equally aware of England’s abiding interest in all matters biblical (witness Wycliffe, Tyndale, Authorized Version, etc.). Much less well known is England’s role as the custodian of the Jewish past. To put it plainly: No other country in the world possesses both the quality and the quantity of Hebrew manuscripts in its library collections – almost all of which were collected by Christian scholars (and not Jews): Thomas Bodley, John Selden, Edward Pococke, Robert Huntington, Benjamin Kennicott, et al. Why is this so? And how did it happen? This lecture will survey all of this material, and more, as it proceeds through the centuries, commencing with the Middle Ages and then crafting the narrative from Tudor times to the Victorian age.

Gary Rendsburg’s Ancient Israel at Mandelbaum

Gary A. Rendsburg
The Jews of Arabia

The least known Jewish community in the ancient world is the network of Jews who populated the Arabian Peninsula during the years between the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. and the rise of Islam during the 7th century C.E. Nonetheless, a significant amount of material written in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Arabic, and South Arabian – much of it discovered only within the past several decades – illuminates these Jewish communities. Jews lived in oases in northern Arabia, they lived as Jewish tribes in and around Medina, and they even formed the basis of a Jewish kingdom in Yemen – while the wealthiest among them arranged for their burials in the land of Israel, notwithstanding the great distances involved. The narrative reminds us how time and again the historian of Judaism needs to have the broadest cultural and geographical horizons.

Gary Rendsburg’s Ancient Israel at Mandelbaum

Gary A. Rendsburg
Septuagint, Synagogue, and Symbiosis: The Jews of Hellenistic Egypt

The conquests of Alexander the Great brought Hellenism to the entire Near East in the late 4th century B.C.E. No Jewish community reflects the symbiosis of Hellenism and Judaism better than the large and thriving community of Egypt – especially in Alexandria, though in other locales as well. They translated the Bible into Greek, they built synagogues (called proseuche in Greek) dedicated to the Ptolemy kings and queens, they wrote Jewish literature in Greek, they were fully integrated into the society and the economy, and in one case they even constructed a temple in Egypt (to rival the one in Jerusalem).

Gary Rendsburg’s Ancient Israel at Mandelbaum