Israelism Film Screening
Monday, Nov. 27, 2023
Join us for a special screening of the new award-winning film Israelism, which focuses on two young American Jews raised to defend the state of Israel at all costs, one of whom joins the Israeli military while the other fights for Israel on “the other battlefield,” America’s college campuses. Yet a chasm emerges in their Jewish identities after witnessing Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinian people firsthand. Overall, their stories reveal the American Jewish community’s generational divide regarding what the Jewish State means to Jewish Americans. The film screening will be followed by a moderated discussion led by a member of the Swig JSSJ Program faculty. This event is co-sponsored by the Program in Middle Eastern Studies and the Department of Politics.
This Is Your Song Too: Phish and Contemporary Jewish Identity
Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2023
The rock band Phish has a diehard fan base and a dedicated community of enthusiasts — Phishheads — who follow the band around the country. What may be surprising to some, however, is that a significant percentage of Phishheads are Jewish. Aside from two members of the band raised as Jews themselves — bassist Mike Gordon and drummer Jonathan Fishman — Phish has even been known to play Hebrew songs in concert. This event celebrates the publication of the book This Is Your Song Too: Phish and Contemporary Jewish Identity, co-edited by JSSJ faculty member Oren Kroll-Zeldin. The book argues that Phish is one avenue through which contemporary Jews find cultural and spiritual fulfillment outside the confines of traditional institutional Jewish life. In effect, Phish fandom and the live Phish experience act as a microcosm through which we see American Jewish religious and cultural life manifest in unique and unexpected spaces. Joining Kroll-Zeldin in conversation will be the book’s co-editor, Ariella Werden-Greenfield, who is also the associate director of the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History and special adviser on antisemitism at Temple University, as well as book contributor Rabbi Joshua Ladon, director of education for the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.
“Open Doors” Sukkot
Sep. 29 – Oct. 6, 2023
We will build our Sukkah this year on Welch Field between St. Ignatius Church and Kalmanovitz Hall. Everyone is invited to spend time in the sukkah throughout the week-long Sukkot holiday, held this year at the end of September and the beginning of October. Everyone is welcome to hang out, eat lunch or dinner with friends, or use this temporary structure as a place to relax and recharge. In addition, we will be hosting special events and programs in the sukkah throughout the week. For more information, contact Rabbi Camille Shira Angel or stop by University Ministry.
JSSJ Open Doors Shabbat Sukkot with JCCSF and Value Culture
Friday, Oct. 6, 2023
Skywatchers: The Slow Art of Belonging with ABD Productions
Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2023
Join us for a special evening with ABD Productions and Skywatchers’ artist-activists. Established in 2011, Skywatchers brings artists into durational collaboration with residents of San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, as they believe a relationship is the first site of social change. Large-scale transformation begins with intimate, interpersonal interactions that engender change for all involved: artists, participants, and audiences. Centering residents’ lives and experiences, this multi-disciplinary, mixed-ability ensemble creates artworks that amplify neighborhood stories while interrogating the poverty industrial complex, illuminating marginalized narratives, and positioning community voices in the civic discourse through the arts. This evening will include presentations of Skywatchers’ art, followed by conversations with their artists. Part of the JSSJ “Open Doors” Sukkot Program, this event is co-sponsored by the Department of Critical Diversity Studies and the Department of Performing Arts and Social Justice.
Warnings from Rwanda: Social Responsibility and Genocide
Wednesday, Sep. 27, 2023
Social Justice Passover Seder
Tuesday, April 11, 2023
The 13th annual social justice Passover Seder will focus on anti-racism. We will tell the Passover story while connecting the ancient story of moving from slavery to freedom and contemporary anti-racist activism.
The Alvin H. Baum Jr. Memorial Lecture
Sunday, March 26, 2023
The second annual Alvin H. Baum Jr. Memorial Lecture in honor of an LGBTQIA+ Jewish social justice activist will be delivered by former California State Senator Mark Leno.
The Jews of Iran
Sunday, March 5, 2023
Acclaimed scholar Lior B. Sternfeld will offer an interactive presentation on the Jews of contemporary Iran, the largest population of Jews in a Muslim-majority country in the world. A professor of history and Jewish studies at Pennsylvania State University, Sternfeld is the author of Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth Century Iran (2018) and co-author of Jews of Iran: A Photographic Chronicle (2022), along with Hassan Sarbakhshian and Parvaneh Vahidmanesh.
Religious Liberty and LGBTQ+ Rights: Navigating the (Sometime) Conflict
Tuesday, September 13, 6:30-8pm
Fromm Hall, Xavier Auditorium
The seventh annual Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice Human Rights lecture will be delivered by Dr. Chai Feldblum, a renowned civil rights advocate and scholar who specializes in issues regarding LGBTQI+ individuals, people with disabilities, and women. For many people, there is no conflict between the exercise of their religious liberty and their support of LGBTQI+ rights. But for some—especially those who believe complying with LGBTQI+ civil rights laws infringes on their exercise of religion—this is a real conflict. In this talk, Feldblum, a former Commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and one of the authors of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, will discuss ethical reasons for acknowledging this tension, offering ideas for reconciling religious liberty and LGBTQI+ rights in a pluralistic society.
Jews and Indians on Turtle Island: Between Colonialism and Justice
Lone Mountain, Outdoor Sukkah (adjacent to LM Main/Pacific Wing Dorms)
In his award-winning book, The Jews’ Indian: Colonialism, Pluralism, and Belonging in America (2019), scholar David S. Koffman investigates the history of relations between American Jews and American Indians, both in the realm of cultural imagination and face-to-face encounters. The exchanges between these groups were numerous and diverse, at times harmonious, other times discordant. American Jews could be as exploitative of Indigenous cultural, social, and political issues as other American settlers. Yet, at the same time, a cadre of Jewish lawyers, civil servants, and New Deal Era activists played a significant role in turning centuries-long anti-Indian government policy on their head, creating what some would call the most progressive pro-Indigenous approach the U.S. had ever known. Drawing from his extensive and original archival research, in this talk Koffman will discuss this largely unknown piece of modern Jewish history within the context of both the longer, more complex entanglements between settlers and Indigenous Peoples in American history, and contemporary Jewish efforts to grapple with the legacies of colonialism and advance the cause of justice on Turtle Island. Immediately following Koffman’s talk, USF Politics Professor and American Indian Studies scholar Kouslaa Kessler-Mata will moderate a Q&A discussion. Part of the JSSJ “Open Doors” Sukkot Program + in celebration of Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
La Movida with Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta
Thursday, October 13, 6:30-8pm
Lone Mountain, Outdoor Sukkah (adjacent to LM Main/Pacific Wing Dorms)
Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta, a queer Latinx Jewish artist, was raised in Los Angeles California by a family of single women, and grew up traveling and living across the western United States and Mexico with their mother, a cultural anthropologist. One of their most popular pieces of writing, The Easy Body (Timeless. Infinite Light, 2017), is a book-length poem that grew out of their research on the role of reproductive labor in Latin American revolutionary movements, their own matrilineal history, and their experiences navigating reproductive healthcare in the United States as a poor queer person of color. Their most recent work, La Movida (Nightboat Books 2022), which is named both for the Chicana feminist concepts of revolutionary maneuvers and submerged technologies of struggle and the explosive queer punk movement that emerged in Spain during its transition from Franquist Fascism to democracy, moves from bed to street to river, defending memory and falling in love along the way. Cutting across various materials and disciplines, their work has appeared in SFMOMA Open Space, Los Angeles River, galleries, punk houses, plazas, and microcinemas across the U.S. They live in a rent-controlled apartment in the Mission District of San Francisco, a few blocks away from where their mother was born. Tatiana will share some of their powerful work with the USF community. Part of the JSSJ “Open Doors” Sukkot Program.
Malkah’s Notebook: A Journey Into the Mystical Aleph-Bet with Dr. Mira Amiras
Fromm Hall, Maraschi Room
