Dear FRIENDS,
This was a deeply difficult year, as I know it has been for many of you. Colleagues in the Melton Center and on campus have been exemplary in working together to navigate this time after the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023 and the tumultuous events following. While we do not know what the coming year holds, I look forward to navigating it with you and continuing Sam Melton’s vision to foster the study of all aspects of the Jewish experience on campus and in the community.
Over the course of the year, Melton Center faculty spoke publicly about the war and its repercussions, discussed the events in their classrooms, and participated in university programs aimed at informing a wider population. We partnered with the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, the Middle East Studies Center, the Department of Near Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures (NESA) and the Department of History on programs in the fall, the links to which you can find on our website. More recently, a group of faculty and staff have formed an antisemitism working group to support the university community during these times.
Our faculty accomplished great things this year through new scholarship and artistic production, as well as grants and awards recognizing their accomplishments. We are pleased to welcome new faculty Harriet Fertik (Classics), Ben Folit-Weinberg (Classics), and James D. Moore (NESA) into the Melton Center, along with our first Writer-in-Residence Lucia Mann. We are thrilled to congratulate Melton faculty Robin Judd (History) and Isaac Weiner (Comparative Studies) on their promotion to the rank of professor. And, we bid warm wishes and farewells to our retiring faculty members Tamar Rudavsky (Philosophy), who expertly stewarded the Melton Center with her directorship over 25 years, and Stuart Lishan (English), who enlivened the teaching of creative writing on our Marion campus. You will find introductions to and celebrations of these faculty in the pages of this report.
The Melton Center awarded multiple scholarships and awards to our students, as we do every year, thanks to the support of our generous donors. Our students are producing exciting work and introducing new ideas into Jewish studies.
Our programming continued to span the breadth of Jewish studies. In this year’s Thomas and Diann Mann Symposium Series called “Comix and Comics,” Samantha Baskind (Cleveland State University) presented lectures on Jewish contributions to comics in conjunction with Ohio State’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library, and we partnered with Ohio State’s Center for the Study of Religion on a “Humor and Laughter in Religion” symposium, wherein we learned from Jennifer Caplan (University of Cincinnati) about Jewish humor alongside speakers on the role of laughter and humor in Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. We continued our tradition of presenting Jewish films with the premiere of Michael Turner’s Holocaust afterlives film Monument (2023). Our Faculty Research Panel at Columbus’s JCC brought Ohio State faculty work into the community for a lively discussion. We rounded out our programming with lectures by Ilana Webster-Kogen (SOAS University of London) on the musicological role of Torah chanting in North African Jewish communities in France, and Eliyana Adler (The Pennsylvania State University) on the experiences of Polish Jewish refugees from the Holocaust in the Soviet Union during and after World War II.
We hope that you will join us for our events in the coming year. We will kick off a two-year Thomas and Diann Mann Symposium Series on Jewish Leadership with a lecture by Sarah Federman (University of San Diego), and we will welcome Rachel Harris (Florida Atlantic University) for the annual Thomas and Diann Mann Lecture on Israel and America. Our annual Pearl and Troy Feibel Lecture on Judaism and Law will feature Lynn Kaye (Brandeis University) in the spring. We also look forward to lectures and workshops by Alan Verskin (University of Toronto), Mika Ahuvia (University of Washington), and much more.
To help you feel connected to the Melton Center even when you are far away, we have added an Alumni News section to this annual report. If you are an alum of one of our major, minor or graduate programs, please keep in touch and send us your news. Information on how to do so is in that part of the newsletter. It is rewarding to see what our alums are doing with Jewish studies degrees and research interests, and how you continue to build the field and serve the community.
I look forward to seeing you at a program or two this year and I encourage you to come visit our library to experience one of the best Judaica collections in the country.
Your support is vital to the work that we do. If you are in Columbus, I am happy to meet you for coffee or a nosh. Do not hesitate to get in touch.
Shanah tovah u’metukah and warmest wishes for a happy, healthy and sweet year ahead.
— Hannah Kosstrin
Director, Melton Center for Jewish Studies
