The Center For Jewish History Welcomes The 2018-2019 Fellows

By: Aug. 23, 2018
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The Center for Jewish History welcomes a new cohort of outstanding fellows to spend the 2018-2019 academic year engaged in their cutting-edge research. They will be working with the Center's Partners' archives on their original projects. Varying in their disciplinary and chronological scope, the fellows' scholarship weaves a fascinating and complex picture of the field of Jewish studies today.

Each year the Center for Jewish History hosts a cohort of scholars as well as a distinguished senior scholar. This year we are pleased to announce that Prof. Anita Norich, Tikva Frymer-Kensky Collegiate Professor at the University of Michigan, joins us as the National Endowment for Humanities Senior Scholar. Prof. Norich will use her time at the Center to conduct original research on women who wrote Yiddish prose fiction in the middle of the 20th century. She is one of the most accomplished scholars of Yiddish literature; a prolific author and translator, she recently published Writing in Tongues: Translating Yiddish in the 20th Century. Her next book will be coming out in 2019.

Joining Prof. Norich will be doctoral students pursuing diverse research in Jewish studies:

  • Netta Cohen, University of Oxford
  • Brett Levi, New York University
  • Geoffrey Levin, New York University
  • Anastasiia Strakhova, Emory University
  • Joël Sebban, Sorbonne University

Netta Cohen, University of Oxford

"When Climate Takes Command: Jewish-Zionist Scientific Approaches to Climate in Palestine, 1900-1967"

In her original project, Cohen asks about the role of climate and environment - both abstract concepts and concrete conditions - in shaping and reshaping Jewish identity. Cohen analyzes scientific Zionist discourse about the climate, presenting its three aspects: the architectural, medical, and agricultural.

During her time at the Center, she will be focusing on particular collections of writings of Jewish physicians, architects, and agronomists to further enrich her study.

Brett Levi, New York University

"Expanding the Borders of Holiness: The History of the Postwar Haredi Landscape"

Levi's study focuses on the history of Orthodox/Haredi relationships to territory and space in Israel, North America, and Western Europe since World War II. How did Orthodox and Haredi communities reconstitute themselves with respect to postwar geopolitical realities and wider Jewish migration and settlement trends, and how did they engage spatially with their new places of habitation?

At the Center, he will engage in archival research and writing to examine the American and European components of his project.

Geoffrey Levin, New York University

"Another Nation: Israel, American Jews, and Palestinian Rights, 1949-1977"

Levin's project traces the emergence of Palestinian rights as an issue in American Jewish politics and relations with Israel. He makes two arguments in his research: that changing domestic inter-communal relationships impacted American Jewry's engagement with questions surrounding Palestinian rights, and that Israelis and Arabs played a much more active role in shaping such engagement than has ever been realized.

Exploring sources available at the American Jewish Historical Society, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, and the Leo Baeck Institute, Levin will further explore American Jewish engagement with these questions by drawing from the travel reports of Jewish delegations to the Middle East, minutes of meetings involving Israelis and Arabs, and Jewish publications that dealt with Palestinian affairs.

Anastasiia Strakhova, Emory University

"Imagining Emigration: Crossing the Borders of Russian Jewry during the Era of Mass Migration, 1881-1917"

In her research, Strakhova compares the bureaucratic regulations of Tsarist Russia, the press discourse about mass emigration, and the personal accounts of the emigrés, to capture the development of the Russian Jewish diaspora in the era of mass migration.

At the Center, she will focus on the last part of her study, i.e. the analysis of personal accounts of the emigrés.

Joël Sebban, Sorbonne University

"The Invention of the 'Judeo-Christian Tradition:' the Nation-State, the Synagogue and the Christian Churches in France, from Napoleon to the Vichy Regime, 1806-1940."

Sebban is the inaugural CJH-Fordham University fellow in Jewish-Christian relations, tracing the much unexplored process of the invention the notion of "Judeo-Christian tradition," and illuminating its position in the creation of modern nation-states. He focuses on France and the US in the 19th and 20th centuries.

At the Center and at the Fordham University archives he will be exploring the dialogue between Jews and Christian in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Center for Jewish History illuminates history, culture, and heritage, and provides a collaborative home for five Partner organizations: American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University Museum and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Our public programs create opportunities for diverse audiences to explore the rich historical and cultural material that lives within the Center's walls. The Partners' archives comprise the world's largest and most comprehensive archive of the modern Jewish experience outside of Israel. The Center's experts are leaders in unlocking archival material for a wide audience through the latest practices in digitization, library science and public education. A Smithsonian Affiliate and a partner of the Google Cultural Institute, the Center has become one of the world's foremost research institutions, offering fellowships, a wide array of exhibitions, symposia, conferences, movies, and lectures.


For over 15 years, fellowship awards at the Center for Jewish History have supported cutting-edge research in the rich collections of the Center's partners - American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University Museum, and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. More than 100 humanities scholars at various stages of their careers and research projects have taken up residence at the Center and profited from opportunities to share their work with leading scholars in their fields. Support from the NEH and other funders has been critical in helping to build an interdisciplinary community of scholars.



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