Jenna Weissman Joselit, the Charles E. Smith Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of History at the George Washington University, is a distinguished historian of the American Jewish experience and a former columnist for the Forward.
Jenna Weissman Joselit
By Jenna Weissman Joselit
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Culture Circumcision: The Box Set
George Washington’s letter to the Jews of Newport, R.I., has occasioned a fair amount of discussion of late. When it comes to our colonial patrimony or birthright, though, the Seixas family circumcision set should, by rights, give the presidential missive a run for its money. From the mid-18th century through the early years of the…
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The Schmooze To-Do Lists of the Famous and Creative
Adolf Konrad, packing list, December 16, 1963. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree One of my greatest joys and, along with brushing my teeth, one of the great constants in my life, is making lists. While my abiding affection for ordering, lining up and then crossing out (what pleasure!)…
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The Schmooze Celebrating Jewish Difference in the Dead of Night
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Many moons ago, when I was in college, I rarely pulled an all-nighter. I had too hard a time staying up until the wee hours of the morn. But now, when my internal clock sees to it that I’m wide awake in the middle of the night, I have…
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Culture Anxieties About Moving to Suburbia
Americans are on the move, in retreat from rising floodwaters, mounting mortgages and economic uncertainty. It’s gotten so that we’re hard-pressed to remember a time when the nation’s citizenry relocated from place to place volitionally, on its own steam, a time when mobility tracked upward rather than sideways or backward. I’m prompted to think, and…
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The Schmooze A Marriage Made at the Museum
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Now that June is upon us, it’s high season for weddings — and reason enough for The Jewish Museum in New York to mount an exhibition of ketubot, Jewish marriage contracts. “The Art of Matrimony” showcases 30 different versions of the age-old document. Some hail from the Cairo genizah…
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The Schmooze In the Navy Now
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Since coming to Washington, D.C., 18 months ago, I’ve had lots of rewarding experiences, but none quite as memorable as my recent excursion to the U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command at the D.C. Navy Yard, where I delivered a speech in commemoration of the Holocaust to a varied and…
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Culture Taking Time To Make Time
Time fascinates me, personally as well as professionally. For one thing, I don’t have enough of it. For another, one of my favorite historical monographs — A. Roger Ekirch’s “At Day’s Close” (W.W. Norton & Company, 2005) — just happens to be a study of night. Drawing on folktales, material culture, ecclesiastical regulations and bedtime…
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The Schmooze ‘Ten Commandments’ for the TV Nation
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree For decades now, Cecil B. DeMille’s cinematic extravaganza, “The Ten Commandments,” has held pride of place on television screens across America, its timing sandwiched between Pesach and Easter. An invented holiday tradition if ever there was one, the annual broadcast of a nearly four hour film given over to…
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