Response to Shooting at Tree of Life Synagogue

. . .קֹ֣ול בְּרָמָ֤ה נִשְׁמָע֙. . . רָחֵ֖ל מְבַכָּ֣ה עַל־בָּנֶ֑יה “A voice is heard in Ramah . . . Rachel is weeping for her children.” (Jeremiah 31:15)   Dear Members of the UC Santa Cruz Center for Jewish Studies Community, We write in mourning for the Jewish community of Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh and also in […]

Rachel Gross

November 8, 2018 @ 1:30 pm – Rachel Gross, The Jewish Deli Revival: Buying and Selling American Jewish Nostalgia

In recent years, there has been a nostalgic resurgence of interest in the Jewish deli menu. Restaurateurs and purveyors of Jewish food are deliberately making American Jewish food fit for the twenty-first century, emphasizing sustainability, local produce, and a nostalgic longing for family and communal histories. By selling and consuming a revitalized deli cuisine, American Jews […]

Jewish Studies Shabbat

May 18, 2018 @ 7 pm – Prospective Student Shabbat

Interested in learning more about the Jewish Studies major and minor at UC Santa Cruz? Come meet our illustrious Jewish studies professors, Muray Baumgarten, Bruce Thompson, and Alma Heckman for a special Shabbat dinner at Santa Cruz Hillel! Come hear about next year’s exciting course line up, talk to current students in the program, and […]

Call For The Diarna Fellowship

Call For UCSC Diarna Summer Fellowship 2018

UCSC Center for Jewish Studies Summer Fellowship at Diarna Now accepting applications for Summer 2018! Apply by April 30, 2018 at 5:00 p.m. Organization: Digital Heritage Mapping (DHM), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, specializes in virtual documentation of global cultural heritage sites. DHM is partnered with the American Sephardi Federation at The Center for Jewish History […]

Pauline Lewis

May 10, 2018 @ 7:10 pm – Pauline Lewis: “Telegraphing Violence: The Role of Telegrams in the Armenian Genocide and its History”

Telegrams played a central role in the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Yet, unlike the plethora of scholarship on industrial technology and the Holocaust, few have examined the place of modern technology in the Ottoman government’s systematic removal and execution of Armenian citizens. In this lecture, Pauline Lewis will discuss the relationship between the Ottoman telegraph […]

Image from the film Casablanca

Real-life ‘Casablanca’ story is even more dramatic than the Hollywood classic

The Times of Israel quoted Alma Rachel Heckman, the Neufeld-Levin Chair of Holocaust Studies and assistant professor of history and Jewish studies, in an article about a new book that explores the story of the many Jewish refugees in the Vichy Moroccan port of Casablanca fleeing the Holocaust. Heckman states that what might have befallen Casablanca’s Jews had […]