The Sandra Kahn Wasserman Jewish Studies Center at Baruch is hosting a robust series of readings, films, and talks this semester. Here’s the schedule for the center’s Fall 2021 programming. For Zoom registration links, email [email protected].
READINGS, LECTURES, DISCUSSIONS:
October 12, 2021, 5:30 pm on Zoom: A reading and conversation with Corie Adjmi, author of Life and Other Short Comings. Adjmi’s award-winning fiction and personal essays have appeared in dozens of publications, including North American Review, Indiana Review, South Dakota Review, Evansville Review, HuffPost, Man Repeller, Motherwell, Kveller and others. In 2020 her collection of stories, Life and Other Shortcomings, won an American Fiction Award and was a Best Book Awards finalist.
November 1, 2021, 5:30 pm on Zoom: Public lecture with attorney and activist Ady Barkan. Barkan is an American lawyer and liberal activist, a co-founder of the Be a Hero PAC and director of the Fed Up campaign and Local Progress at the Center for Popular Democracy. Barkan was diagnosed with the terminal neurodegenerative disease ALS in 2016 and has been called “the most powerful activist in America.”
December 7, 2021, 5:30 pm: Discussion with novelist and journalist Sayed Kashua, in conversation with Professor Brian Horowitz, Tulane University. Kashua is the author of the novels Dancing Arabs, Let It Be Morning, which was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; Second Person Singular, winner of the prestigious Bemstein Prize; and Track Changes. Kashua wrote a weekly column for Haaretz and is the creator of the prize-winning sitcom, Arab Labor. Kashua was born in Israel to Palestinian parents. He moved to the U.S. to teach in 2014, writing a Haaretz column titled “Why Sayed Kashua is Leaving Jerusalem and Never Coming Back: Everything people had told him since he was a teenager is coming true. Jewish-Arab co-existence has failed.”
JEWISH/LATINX FILM SERIES co-sponsored by Baruch Weissman’s Department of Black and Latino Studies, ISLA – the Initiative for the Study of Latin America, and Baruch Performing Arts Center (BPAC). Free 48-hour streaming access.
October 7-8, 2021: Nora’s Will, Mexico, directed by Mariana Chenillo, 2010. Nora’s Will is a comedy like nothing you’ve seen before, a truly unique tale of lost faith and eternal love from one of Mexico’s most talented new filmmakers, Chenillo, who was the first female director to win Mexico’s Best Picture of the Year award. When his ex-wife Nora dies right before Passover, José (Fernando Luján) is forced to stay with her body until she can be properly put to rest. He soon realizes he is part of Nora’s plan to bring her family back together for one last Passover feast, leading José to reexamine their relationship and rediscover their undying love for each other.
November 3-4, 2021: Leona, Mexico, directed by Isaac Cherem, 2021. Leona is an intimate, insightful, and moving film that tells the story of a young Jewish woman from Mexico City who finds herself torn between her family and her forbidden love. Ripe with all the drama and interpersonal conflicts of a Jane Austen novel, watching her negotiate the labyrinth of familial pressure, religious precedent, and her own burgeoning sentiment is both painful and beautiful – there are no easy choices to be made and the viewer travels back and forth with her as she struggles with her heart to take the best path.
December 5-6, 2021: Mr. Kaplan, Uruguay, directed by Alvaro Brechner, 2014. Jacob Kaplan lives an ordinary life in Uruguay. Like many of his other Jewish friends, Jacob fled Europe for South America because of World War II. But now turning 76, he’s become rather grumpy, fed up with his community and his family’s lack of interest in its own heritage. One beach bar may, however, provide him with an unexpected opportunity to achieve greatness and recover his family’s respect in the community : its owner, a quiet, elderly German, raises Mr. Kaplan’s suspicion of his being a runaway Nazi. Ignoring his family’s concerns about his health, Jacob secretly recruits Contreras, a more loyal than honest former police officer, to help him investigate. Together, they will try to repeat the historic capture of Adolf Eichmann, by unmasking and kidnapping the German and secretly taking him to Israel.
