Event Archive 2016 - Present

Daniel Schwartz, Herbst Family Professor of Judaic Studies in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Joyce Z. Greenberg Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Chicago for Spring Quarter will present a public lecture on Thursday, May 4. A (kosher) reception will follow.

Annie Greene, PhD student in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, will present at the Jewish Studies Workshop. Light refreshments will be served. For information, contact the workshop coordinators Anna Band (aband@uchicago.edu) or David Cohen (davidc1@uchicago.edu).

Join us for the David A. Kipper Ancient Israel Lecture Series Title Armageddon and the Roman VIth Ferrata Legion: New Excavations at Legio, Israel Lecturer Matthew J. Adams, Director, W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, Jerusalem Description In the late 1st and early 2nd Centuries CE, dangerous Jewish (and incipient Christian) rebels were causing problems for the Roman Empire in Palestine. Though the First Revolt resulted in the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE and in the establishment of a permanent base of the Xth Legion there, these groups continued to harass their overlords. Historical sources indicate that the Roman VIth Ferrata Legion was deployed to Palestine in the early 2nd Century CE to provide support for the Xth, a sure sign that the rebels were acting up again. The VIth Legion established their base somewhere near Megiddo, but its exact location has been a long-standing question in the archaeology of the period. Using historical and geographical sources, aerial photography, and remote sensing, the Jezreel Valley Regional Project searched for potential locations of the elusive fortress. In 2013 and 2015, one of these locations was examined by excavation, providing the first glimpse of a 2nd Century Roman military base yet uncovered in the entire eastern Empire. Together with the early Christian Prayer hall discovered by Yotam Tepper of the Israel Antiquities authority in 2005 in the adjacent Jewish village of Caparcotani, the new excavations have new implications for Jewish-Christian-Roman relations and for the composition of the Book of Revelation. Registration recommended at http://legio.eventbrite.com Reception to follow The David Kipper Ancient Israel Lecture Series was established through a gift from Barbara Kipper and the Kipper Family and includes an annual public lecture as well as a lecture for scholars at the Oriental Institute, an internationally renowned center for the study of the ancient Near East. Dr. David Kipper was a clinical psychologist who served on the faculty of Bar Ilan University in Israel as an associate professor in the Department of Psychology. In 1995 he was named a research professor of psychology at Roosevelt University. He wrote extensively on psychotherapy and was the author of the book Psychotherapy through Clinical Role Playing and more than seventy chapters and articles in professional journals. He was a long-standing member of the Oriental Institute Visiting Committee and was well-known for his support of the arts, including the Joffrey Ballet and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Please join us for a Neubauer Collegium Director's Lecture featuring David I. Kertzer. Reception to follow. In 1938, Mussolini surprised many Italians—not least Italy’s Jews—by proclaiming a new “racial” policy, setting a pure Italian race against a foreign, noxious Jewish race. He soon followed this with a series of racial laws that stripped the Jews of their rights as citizens, removed them from their jobs and professions, and cast all Jewish students out of the public schools. This Director’s Lecture, based partly on documents found in the newly opened Vatican archives for this period, will chronicle the active role played by the pope, his emissaries to Mussolini, and others in the Vatican in the Italian embrace of anti-Semitism as state policy. David I. Kertzer is the Paul Dupee University Professor of Social Science at Brown University, where he is also Professor of Anthropology and Italian Studies and, from 2006 to 2011, served as Provost. He was awarded the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for his most recent book, The Pope and Mussolini, which has appeared in eleven languages. Among his many other books, his The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara was a finalist for the 1997 National Book Award for Nonfiction, and is currently being made into a film by Steven Spielberg. Kertzer is an authority on Italian politics, society, and history; political symbolism; and anthropological demography. He co-founded and served for many years as co-editor of the Journal of Modern Italian Studies. In 2005 he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.