Hi all,

don’t forget to check out the information on the final project including the checklist! Reprinted below for your convenience:

Your final project is to create an exhibit on Jewish literature from and life in  your city using Artsteps. You may use items you analyzed in your shorter assignments and that are on the syllabus, but you aren’t limited to these. Your exhibit should contain at least the following items related to Jewish life:

• 2  works of Jewish literature from any era from your city
• 2 portraits of Jews from your city any era (miniatures, paintings, silhouettes, daguerreotypes, photographs)
• 3 Jewish objects from your city (gravestone, food, music, newspaper, ritual bath, judaica, house, marriage contract, etc.). One object must be a synagogue. 
• 1  map of your city with at least 5 Jewish sites indicated on it
• 1 event that changed Jewish life in your city
• Your exhibit should covers at least 3 historical eras of the five discussed in this class
• Three themes that you think are important for understanding Jewish life and literature in your city.
• One connection or comparison to Jewish life/literature in a different city in your region.
• One connection or comparison to Jewish life/literature in a city outside of your region (but is on the class list).

Here are some online collections that you may find useful as you select items for your exhibit and your city directory:

• Jewish Atlantic World Database
• Jews Across the Americas Archive
• AJHS Archive
• Portraits: Loeb Portrait Database
• Arnold and Deanne Kaplan Collection of Early American Judaica, U Penn
• U Washington Archive (also Sephadic Studies Digital Projects)
• Magnes Collection, UC Berkeley ( also Western Jewish Americana)
• JTS Digital Collections (marriage contracts and more)
• John Carter Brown Library Digital Collections (by location) (Archive of early American images)
• Jewish Heritage College, College of Charleston; College of Charleston Special Collections (digital); Portion of the People: Three Hundred Years of Southern Jewish Life
• National Museum of American Jewish History (Philadelphia & US); More exhibits.
• Fotoarchief Stichting Surinaams Museum
• Biblioteca Digital del Patrimonio Iberoamericano (BDPI)
• SALALM Digitized Primary Sources (Latin American and Caribbean)
• Jewish Diaspora Collection (Florida, Latin America, Caribbean)
• Newspapers Resources: By location.  Historical Jewish Press Collection (US). Jewish Newspapers, NYPL. Caribbean Newspapers, 1718-1876. America’s Historical Newspapers. Latin American Newspapers.
• Maps: David Rumsey Map Collection
• Food: American Foodways: The Jewish Contribution. Jewish American Cookbooks, NYPL. The Jewish Cookery. The Settlement Cookbook. Converso Cookbook. [General Digital Collections of cookbooks, not all Jewish!l: Historical Mexican cookbooks. Feeding America. Vintage Cookbooks. 10,000 Vintage Cookbooks. ]
• Music:  Music & Prayer, Jewish Digital Collections
• Slavery: enslaved.org

https://qz.app.do/pg/what-currency-did-ny-use-when

So excited for this upcoming event! Thursday, April 22 at 5:30 pm CST.Panelists: https://events.tulane.edu/…/black-and%E2%80%8B-or…Register: https://tulane.zoom.us/…/regi…/WN_mRD8W16ORGqBFFNBADEpHA

POEM 1: Written on the day that I left the Bowery* (1805)

Farewell to the Suns early ray

Which thro’ the thin foliage is seen

Farewell, to the Bird on the Spray

And farewell, the now faded green

—–

I go – where Sickness & Death

Have spread their dire influence around

Where Disease was inhaled with the breath**

And the victims of both have been found

—–

Where the Parent with sorrowing eye

Has watched o’er her agonized child

And suppressing the heart-rending sigh

Her feelings – so acute made her wild

In madness that rest was procured

Which Reason could never obtain.

And while its bright power was obscured

She felt a relief from her pain

Such scenes fill the Bosom with woe

And caused the unbidden tear

In unrestrained torrents to flow

On the sad and premature bier

Oh God! may my prayer ascend

And be heard in thy Mighty Domain

My city, oh deign to defend

Let millions not lose (?) thee in vain.

NOTES by me:* The lower part of the city where she lived was evacuated that summer, and the Nathans fled along with most Jews. A marine hospital was set up off Staten Island to treat the sick. Because of the timely evacuation, many fewer died that year than in earlier epidemics.** here she is referring to miasma. Most doctors and lay people believed that people caught yellow fever by breathing in bad smells of decaying things and bodies.

POEM 2 Reflections on passing our new Burial Ground (1829?)

Within those walls made sacred to the dead,

Where yet no spade has rudely turned a sod,

No requiem changed for a spirit fled,

No prayer been offered to the throne of God.

There in due form shall holy rites be given,

And the last solemn strain float so high in Air,

That listening Angels shall bear it to Heaven,

And the soul of the just be deposited there.

—

Perhaps a Head white as Mountains Snow

When colder far, than that its semblance wears

May find a rest where weeping willows grow

And moisten the Graves with the drips of their tears.

And there may the mourner solitary stray

In pensive mood to seek a Mother’s Tomb

And giving range to mem’rys early day

Sorrowing ask why has she gone so soon

Forbear to question—in low submission bend

to Him who rules in graciousness of power

who calls the Beings of his realms below

To place them in his own Eternal Bower.

Mortal let this console _____repine no more

written in the 77th year of my age [ie 1829]

The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute has extended the deadline for applications for the 2021 Gilda Slifka Internship Program, our eight-week, paid summer internship for undergraduates and  graduate students with an interest in Jewish Gender Studies.
Gilda Slifka summer interns assist HBI affiliated scholars and staff on projects related to Jews and gender. Undergraduate interns also carry out their own research project and participate in weekly discussions and activities. Graduate students may join the undergraduate group activities, or devote their time to their own research. All interns receive a weekly stipend. 
Sample of 2021 research projects: 

• Negating Time: Jewish Ideologies of Occupation and Pious Busyness from Antiquity to the Present 
• Women Wrote: Non-male Sources for Torah Study 
• “Exile” in the Imagination of Modern Jewish Women 
• The Mizrahi Feminist Turn in Israeli Art 

New application deadline: Monday, April 5, 2021

Inquiries: dolins@brandeis.edu
*** The 2021 Gilda Slifka Internship Program will run remotely.  

Avi­va Ben-Ur February 26, 2021

“Fire­crack­ers burst into the air and zigzagged errat­i­cal­ly across the ground. Masked rev­el­ers poured into the streets. Men, women, Chris­tians, Jews, enslaved and free, filled the air with the chaot­ic sounds of shout­ing and singing. Adults and chil­dren donned ​“inde­cent” cos­tumes, some beat­ing drums. The pun­gency of intox­i­ca­tion waft­ed through the trop­i­cal breezes. No, this was not the com­mem­o­ra­tion of nation­al inde­pen­dence, a mark­ing of the end of war, or New Year’s Eve in a plea­sure gar­den. This was the Jew­ish hol­i­day of Purim, as cel­e­brat­ed in the Dutch Caribbean two cen­turies ago.[1]…”

[click here for the rest of the article…]

Looking for a good novel related to the course materials to read for fun? Here are a few that might interest you…

I actually kind of love her colorized. She looks softer somehow.

Some of you may have seen a news article about the “Rare Colonial-era Mikveh Unearthed in Venezuela.” I ended up cutting it from the readings in order to get us back on track, but if you want the inside scoop on this find, check out the entry by Blanca de Lima (Universidad Nacional Experimental Francisco de Miranda), Coro Mikveh (Venezuela, c. 1853-60). You will see the newspaper has some out of date info, though I love their photo! 😉

Jewish Women!

Applications are live for both graduate and undergraduate students interested in the 2021 HBI (Hadassah-Brandeis Institute) Gilda Slifka Internship. The Gilda Slifka Internship Program provides students with a variety of opportunities to learn about the work of Jewish women’s and gender studies and try their hand at research in the field. Application due March 15th! More information and to apply: https://www.brandeis.edu/hbi/programs/internship/index.html

Material Culture!

Bard Graduate Center is excited to announce their 2021 Undergraduate Summer School in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture. Open to advanced undergraduates (rising juniors and seniors) and recent college graduates, the program draws on resources at BGC and around New York City to provide an intensive, two-week program on material culture studies. Our topic for 2021 is “Re-Dress and Re-Form: Intersectionality in the History of Fashion and Design, 1850 to Today.” The course will introduce students to the history of design and fashion in the United States and Europe from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day with a focus on how conceptions of race, gender, and class have shaped the world of goods as we know it. Led by faculty members Michele Majer and Freyja Hartzell, this summer school will combine small seminars and behind-the-scenes access to collections. Eligible for three upper-level undergraduate credits.

Program dates: Monday, July 12–Friday, July 23, 2021
Applications due: April 1, 2021Contact: summer.school@bgc.bard.edu