Contemporary Hasidism in Historical Perspective

Wednesday, April 7, 2021 - 7:00pm
VIRTUAL
 
Contemporary Hasidism in Historical Perspective
David Biale  - University of California, Davis (lecturer)
and
Ayala Fader - Fordham University (respondent)
 
Hasidism is one of the most dynamic religious movements in the Jewish world today, rising from the ashes of the Holocaust when most of its communities in Eastern Europe were destroyed. This talk will try to situate contemporary Hasidism in historical perspective, going back to the origins of the movement in the eighteenth century and to its golden age as a mass movement in the nineteenth. 
 
David Biale is Emanuel Ringelblum Distinguished Professor of Jewish History at the University of California, Davis. His most recent books are Hasidism: A New History (with seven co-authors), Gershom Scholem: Master of the Kabbalah and Not in the Heavens: The Tradition of Jewish Secular Thought. He is also the editor of Cultures of the Jews: A New History and the Norton Anthology of World Religions: Judaism. His books have been translated into eight languages and have won the National Jewish Book Award three times. Professor Biale has served as chair of the Department of History at UC Davis and as Director of the Davis Humanities Institute. He also founded and directed the UC Davis Program in Jewish Studies. In 2011, he won the university’s highest award, the UC Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement. He also founded the Posen Society of Fellows, an international doctoral fellowship for students of modern Jewish history and culture.
 
Ayala Fader is Professor of Anthropology at Fordham University. Her research interests include religious worlds, Jewish Studies, gender, language, childhood, and media. She is the author of the award-winning book, Mitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidic Jews (Princeton 2009). The National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities supported her latest book, Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age (Princeton 2020), which was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Fader is the co-founder of the New York Working Group on Jewish Orthodoxies at Fordham’s Jewish Studies Program.
 
 
 

 

Department: 

Jewish Studies