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Nextbook's History, Culture & Ideas series invites scholars, critics, and journalists to explore 3,000 years of Jewish civilization. Previous events have included Maya Arad, Alona Kimhi, & Nava Semel on Israeli writing, Sander Gilman on Jewish and the invention of cosmetic Surgery and Douglas Century on legendary boxer Barney Ross.

Want to know where an event is happening? Check out our Washington, DC locations and directions.

WASHINGTON DC JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER

Michael Dirda
May 8 2007, 7:30 PM
Washington DCJCC
Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda explores the life and work of Isaac Babel. Born in Odessa in 1894, Babel became a Soviet literary sensation in 1926 with the publication of his collection Red Cavalry, which drew on his experiences as a journalist in the Polish-Soviet War of 1920. Babel went on to publish two plays and a collection of stories, The Odessa Tales, which depicts the merchants, rabbis, and gangsters of Odessa's Jewish ghetto. But under Stalin, Babel came under increased scrutiny. "Now they will come for me," he said after the suspicious death of the writer Maxim Gorky in 1936. Four years later, Babel was shot to death in a Soviet prison. Dirda was senior editor for the Washington Post Book World and is the author of several books. He wrote the introduction to the Norton edition of Babel's Red Cavalry.
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Rebecca Goldstein
Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity
September 17 2006, 3:00 PM
Washington DCJCC
On July 27, 1656, Amsterdam's Jewish community declared Baruch Spinoza excommunicated, and, at the age of 23, he became the most famous heretic in Judaism. He denied the immortality of the soul and challenged the accepted belief that the Torah was literally given by God. In her new book, Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity, Rebecca Goldstein rediscovers the flesh-and-blood man beneath the veneer of rigorous rationality and shows how his Sephardic heritage shaped his work. Goldstein is the author of Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel and five novels, including The Mind-Body Problem. This event is presented in partnership with the Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival. For more information about the Festival, visit www.dcjcc.org/arts/literature.

Esther Schor
Emma Lazarus: American Original
October 26 2006, 7:30 PM
Washington DCJCC
In 1903, sixteen years after Emma Lazarus's death, a plaque with her poem "The New Colossus" was mounted on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The addition transformed a monument to the American Revolution into a symbol of hope for millions of immigrants and made Emma Lazarus famous. But as Esther Schor shows in her new biography, Emma Lazarus, this was only a surprising epilogue to a life of remarkable achievements. Drawing on recently discovered letters, Schor traces Lazarus's childhood among New York's Sephardic elite, her teenage friendship with Emerson, and her work on behalf of victims of Russian pogroms. Schor is a poet and professor of English at Princeton.
Listen to visitors at the Statue of Liberty read Emma Lazarus' historic poem "The New Colossus".

Isabel Vincent
White Slaves: The Trafficking of Jewish Women
January 23 2007, 7:30 PM
Washington DCJCC
From the 1860s to 1939, thousands of poor young women from Eastern Europe were sold into prostitution by a notorious Jewish gang called the Zwi Migdal. The "white slaver" even became a figure of literature in works like I.B. Singer's Scum and Sholem Aleichem's "The Man from Buenos Aires." In her book Bodies and Souls, Isabel Vincent describes how Jewish women were lured to cities like New York, Buenos Aires, and Rio de Janeiro. She also shows how these women, shunned by the Jewish community, banded together to form their own cultural institutions. Vincent's other books include Hitler's Silent Partners: Swiss Banks, Nazi Gold,and the Pursuit of Justice.

Jonathan Wilson
Chagall Revealed
March 19 2007, 7:30 PM
Washington DCJCC
In his new book, Marc Chagall, Jonathan Wilson traces the painter's life from his impoverished youth in Belarus to the art schools of St. Petersburg to galleries of Paris and New York. Detailing Chagall's use of Yiddish idioms, his obsession with Jesus, and his bold experiments with color and form, Wilson challenges the conventional notion of Chagall's work as sugary or nostalgic. He also shows how Chagall's work represented a last flowering of Yiddish culture in Europe. Wilson is a novelist, short-story writer, and critic. His books include A Palestine Affair and An Ambulance Is on the Way.

Nextbook's History, Culture & Ideas series invites scholars, critics, and journalists to explore 3,000 years of Jewish civilization. Previous events have included Dara Horn on I.B. Singer, Daniel Mendelsohn on identity and desire, and Jacqueline Osherow on Yiddish poetry.

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2005-2006 History, Culture & Ideas
2004-2005 History, Culture & Ideas
2003-2004 History, Culture & Ideas