Fall 2013

Tuesday, September 24, 2013, (rescheduled from last fall). Professor Lawrence Baron: Jewish non–Jewish Romances about Israel: From Ari to Zohan.
Professor Baron has held the Nasatir Chair of Modern Jewish History at San Diego State University since 1988 and directed its Jewish Studies Program until 2006. He has authored and edited the Modern Jewish Experience in World Cinema (2011) and Projecting the Holocaust into the Present: The Changing Focus of Contemporary Holocaust Cinema (2005).This presentation traces the evolution of Jewish non-Jewish love stories on films. What began as the promotion of the melting pot ethic changed in Holocaust films into a matter of life and death, a political issue in Israeli films about Arab-Jewish couples, and an expression of multiculturalism in recent Hollywood films.Location: Russell House, 350 High Street, Middletown, CT at 8 P.M

 

Tuesday, October 1, 2013. Maya Arad : A View From Abroad: Writing Hebrew Literature in California.
Maya Arad, a writer in Residence at the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford University shares the joys and challenges of living across physical and linguistic borders, as the only major Hebrew author to reside outside of the state of Israel. Maya Arad studied in England and the US, residing, since 2002, in the Bay Area. One of the leading Israeli authors of her generation, she is now the author of eight books, six of them work of fiction. Many of her books have become best-sellers and her debut novel in verse “Another Place, a Foreign City” won the Ministry of Education and Culture award and in 2005 was shortlisted for the Sapir prize. Location: Russell House, 350 High Street, Middletown, CT at 8 P.M

 

Monday, October 14, 2013. Dror Burstein :Why Aren’t There Any Dinosaurs in Israeli Literature?
Dror Burstein is a Visiting Professor at Clark University. He will read from a forthcoming English translation to his memoir “Netanya” and discuss time and space in contemporary Hebrew literature. Burstein has been awarded the Jerusalem Prize for Poetry (1997), the Ministry of Science and Culture Prize for Poetry (2002), the Prime Minister’s Prize (2005) and the Bernstein Prize for his first novel Avner Brenner (2003).Location: Russell House, 350 High Street, Middletown, CT at 8 P.M.

 

Thursday, November 7, 2013. Ron Leshem: Israel as Number One Exporter of TV Shows.
Ron Leshem, an award-winning writer and acclaimed novelist.With only two television networks – hardly 20 years old, barely profitable – faraway, isolated and war-weary, the Israeli industry has become an premiere exporter of TV formats, from drama series to game shows and docu-reality. The production cost of a drama episode in Israel is parallel to the refreshments’ budget on a set of an American production. Yet Showtime’s “Homeland”, and HBO’s “In Treatment”,both adaptations of original Israeli shows, have expanded the influence of the young industry across the world.
Location: Russell House, 350 High Street, Middletown, CT at 8 P.M