Philip and Muriel Berman Center for Jewish Studies
Spring 2008 Programs

These programs are open to the public without charge unless otherwise noted.

Thursday, February 7, 4:15 p.m.
102 Maginnes Hall, Lehigh University

"Mendel's Daughter:
The Art of Remembering"

Martin Lemelman, freelance illustrator and Kutztown University professor, will discuss how memory, research, interviews and art come together in his graphic memoir, Mendel's Daughter. He will also show images and discuss his amazing journey to Ukraine to see the intact house of his grandfather and to meeting people who helped his mother survive the Holocaust in the forests of Poland.

Mendel's Daughter is his first graphic novel memoir. It was published in the United States by Free Press/Simon and Schuster, in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape/Random House and in France by Editions ca et la. Martin is a professor in the Communications Design Department at Kutztown University. He has been a freelance illustrator since 1976. His client list has included McGraw/Hill, the Children's Television Workshop, Scholastic, Parent's Magazine Press, Crayola and the Jewish Publication Society, among others. He has illustrated more than 30 children's books, and his work has been published in such magazines as the New York Times Book Review and Sesame Street Magazine.

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Tuesday, March 18, 12:10 p.m.
203 Maginnes Hall, Lehigh University (by invitation only)

Faculty Lunch
Yechiel Klar, Russell Berrie Visiting Professor,
Department of Psychology, Lehigh University,
and Department of Pyschology at Tel Aviv University
will discuss

“But we are the victims...”: Holocaust Remembrance and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Hilik Klar, an Israeli social psychologist, will describe a research program in progress at Tel Aviv University that examines how individuals confront the moral complexities involved in intractable intergroup conflicts. In his talk, he will focus on an area that particularly intrigues him--the complicated and somewhat contradictory role that Holocaust remembrance plays in Israel's current conflict with the Palestinians.

Hilik received his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University. A faculty member at Tel Aviv since 1990, he holds the position of Senior Lecturer. Besides his current position at Lehigh, he has also served as a visiting professor at the University of Kansas, Carleton University in Canada, and the University of Connecticut. He done his primary research in the general field of social cognition, decision making, and social comparison processes. However, in the last decade he has spent more of his time and teaching efforts on issues shaping Israeli existence.

Cosponsored by the Berman Center and the Department of International Relations.

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Tuesday, March 25, 4:15 p.m.
102 Maginnes Hall, Lehigh University

"Painted Memories:
A Jewish Childhood in Poland
Before the Holocaust"

an illustrated lecture by

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
University Professor and
Professor of Performance Studies
at New York University

 

Lest future generations know more about how Jews died than how they lived, Mayer Kirshenblatt, who is now 91 years old, has made it his mission to remember the world of his childhood in living color. Born in 1916 in Opatow, Poland (Apt in Yiddish), he left for Canada in 1934 and taught himself to paint at age 73. His daughter Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has been interviewing him for forty years.

Barbara will present an illustrated lecture based on the book she and her father created together, They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland before the Holocaust. She will explore the long collaboration between father and daughter and the role of "listening with love" in recovering a lost world. Intimate, humorous, and refreshingly candid, this extraordinary work is a blend of memoir, oral history, and visual interpretation. It is a remarkable record of Jewish life in a Polish town before World War II, as seen through the eyes of an inquisitive boy.

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is University Professor and Professor of Performance Studies at New York University, where she is also Affiliated Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. Her books include Image before My Eyes: A Photographic History of Jewish Life in Poland, 1864-1939 (with Lucjan Dobroszycki); Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage; and The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times (edited with Jonathan Karp). They Called Me Mayer July was a finalist for the 2007 National Jewish Book Award. Her edited volume Writing a Modern Jewish History: Essays in Honor of Salo W. Baron recently won the 2006 National Jewish Book Award. She is currently leading the core exhibition development team for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto. She is the recipient of many honors, including resident fellowships at the Getty Research Institute and Hebrew University and the Guggenheim Fellowship. She and her husband, Max Gimblett, an artist, live and work on New York's Lower East Side.

The program is sponsored by the Berman Center for Jewish Studies, the Religion Studies Department, and the Paul Levy Fund for Jewish Studies.

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Tuesday, April 8, 4:10 p.m.
Maginnes 102, Lehigh University

Reading: "Postcards from the South"
by Marjorie Agosín
award-winning poet and human rights advocate

In her presentation, Marjorie Agosín will reflect on how her writing is informed by major historical events such as the Holocaust and the Chilean dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. She considers herself “a product of these events” and her writings intend to address them.  She will speak about being a Jew in Chile as well as an exile in the United States. During her lecture she will describe the cultural influences of her works as well as the historical situation that has informed them. Agosín is the author of more than twenty volumes of poetry, fiction and memoir.

Sponsored by the Modern Languages and Literatures Lecture Series, Latin American Studies, and the Berman Center for Jewish Studies.

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Sunday, April 13 (not open to the public)

Student Trip to New York City to
The Tenement Museum
The Museum of Jewish Heritage

with lunch at Katz's Deli

Philip and Muriel Berman Center for Jewish Studies
Lehigh University, 9 W. Packer Ave., 324 Maginnes Hall, Bethlehem, PA 18015-3082
610 758-4869 • Fax 610 748-4858 • inber@lehigh.edu