Submitted by the University of Cincinnati Department of Judaic Studies
“Understanding Jews and Judaism Through Ages” is the topic of the 2024-2025 Jacob and Jennie L. Lichter Lecture Series organized by the Department of Judaic Studies of the University of Cincinnati. Recent scholarship has brought attention to “lived religion,” that is, defining and making sense of religion as it is actually experienced. The concept can be applied to Jewishness as a whole. Although Jewish community consists of a variety of people of various ages and generations, defining Jewishness, Judaism, and Jewish identity tends to be limited by default to Jews in the prime of their adult lives. However, the lived Jewishness and Judaism of children, high school-aged and college-aged students as well as the elderly are rarely examined and appreciated in their own right. To be sure, there have been studies about Jews during specific ages such as Ivan Marcus’s classic Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe and more recently Mira Balberg and Haim Weiss, When Near Becomes Far: Old Age in Rabbinic Literature. Such works, however, focus on childhood and old age as ways that middle-aged adult Jews talk about their own Jewish experience. Transcending the normative view that all Jewish ages lead to and from the central adult years, the 2024-2025 Jacob and Jennie L. Lichter Lecture series invites us to consider how to conceptualize Judaism and Jewishness during different stages of life. The series will be focusing on the Jewish experience of children, college students, and the elderly.
In existence now for over forty years, the annual Jacob and Jennie L. Lichter Lecture Series for 2024-2025 begins the journey of “Jews Through Ages” with a lecture by Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Michigan State University Dr. Laura Yares entitled “Through the Eyes of a Child: What the Jewish Sunday School Movement Can Teach Us About American Jewish History” on Tuesday, October 29, 2024, 7:00 PM at the Taft Center, 1 Edwards, UC Uptown Campus. The series continues with a lecture by Dr. Shira Kohn entitled “Fashioning Collegiate Identity: Jewish Sororities and Self-Presentation in 20th Century America”, Monday, November 11, 2024, 4:00 PM at Cincinnati Hillel, 2615 Clifton Ave, Cincinnati, OH 45220. The final lecture will be given by Associate Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies Dr. Elisha Russ-Fishbane, on “Old Age as a Paradigm and Ideal in Medieval Jewish Culture” on Thursday, January 30, 2024, 7:00 PM at the Taft Center, 1 Edwards, UC Uptown Campus.
