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On 28-29 August Yarnton Manor was host to the 7th Mendel Friedman Conference in Yiddish. The conference is held every second year under the joint auspices of the Faculty of Modern Languages and Literatures and OCHJS. The theme of this year’s conference was “Yiddish in the 1920s”. Fourteen scholars from America, Israel and Europe presented papers on a wide range of topics including women’s magazines in Yiddish between the wars, Soviet Yiddish poetry and newspaper polemics between rival Hasidic sects in Hungary.
A feature of this year’s conference was a formal dinner in honour of Jack and Naomi Friedman, as well as of Professor Alison Finch, widow of Professor Malcolm Bowie, founder president of Oxford’s Humanities Research Centre. The dinner also marked the launch of the volume David Bergelson: From Modernism to Socialist Realism, edited by Joseph Sherman and Gennady Estraikh (London: Legenda, 2007). The essays in this volume stemmed from the 6th Mendel Friedman Conference held in August 2005, which was devoted to the work of David Bergelson (1884-1952).
The conference concluded with an evening of readings in Yiddish and English commemorating the 55th anniversary of Stalin’s murder of leading Soviet Yiddish intellectuals and writers (on 12 August 1952).
Earlier in the summer the students’ graduation party was held on 20 June, after completion of the examination period. All nine students on the course achieved the MSt, two of them with Distinction. The prize for the best dissertation was awarded to UK student Al Peters (from Devon) for his thesis entitled “The Tower of Babel and the Confusion of Tongues”.
The President thanked Dr Natan Meir (in his absence) for undertaking the teaching duties of Dr Rechter during the academic year, and also bade an appreciative farewell to Dr Kerstin Hoge. Kerstin, the Centre’s Lector in Yiddish for six years, is now a University Departmental Lecturer in German Linguistics. We wish her all the best in her new role.
Meanwhile, fifteen newly arrived students have embarked upon the 2007-2008 MSt course: four from Germany, three from the USA, two from the UK, two from Poland, and one each from Denmark, Israel, Canada, and Hungary.
We are also delighted to welcome a clutch of new faculty members.
Dr Adam Silverstein – already a familiar figure in the Oriental Institute where he previously held a temporary lectureship - has taken up the post of Fellow in Jewish-Muslim Relations. Dr François Guesnet joins us from the University of Potsdam (where he held a Visiting Professorship in Historical Social Sciences) as Research Fellow in Russian-Jewish History, chiefly of the 19th and 20th centuries. Dr Raffaella Del Sarto is our new Pears-Rich Research Fellow in Israel Studies, a joint post with the Middle East Centre at St. Antony's College. Dr Del Sarto’s research interests include politics and society of modern Israel and EU-Mediterranean relations. Dr Francesca Bregoli, whose field is early modern Jewish History and who has made a particular study of the Jewish community of Livorno, is our first Albert and Rachel Lehmann Junior Research Fellow in Jewish Studies.
In addition, Dr Haike Beruriah Wiegand joins the teaching staff as Lector in Yiddish, and Dr Garth Gillmour will be offering a course module for the MSt this year, introducing the archaeology of ancient Israel with specific focus on the Iron Age.
Finally, every happiness to former colleague Emanuele Ottolenghi and wife Nicole on the birth of their son. Baby Ottolenghi arrived on Saturday 29 September weighing in at 6 pounds 7 ounces. Congratulations also to Baljit, a member of the housekeeping team at Yarnton, who gave birth to a daughter in August, a welcome sister for Rahul.
Peter Oppenheimer - President
Sue Forteath - Bulletin Compiler
