The 34th Annual Pearl and Troy Feibel Lecture on Judaism and Law
The Pearl and Troy Feibel Lecture on Judaism and Law was established in 1988 by Pearl Feibel with support from Barbara Feibel Robins, James Feibel (z”l), Donald Feibel (z”l), and Robert Shamansky (z”l).
On March 29, the Melton Center presented the 34th annual Pearl and Troy Feibel Lecture on Judaism and Law at the Columbus JCC featuring Robert Katz, Professor of Law and John S. Grimes Fellow at Indiana University McKinney School of Law. Before the public lecture, Professor Katz joined members of the Feibel family and several Ohio State faculty for dinner, continuing the personal and scholarly connections that have shaped the lecture series since its founding.
Professor Katz presented “American Law’s Jewish Question: Religion, Race, and Free Speech in an Age of Campus Antisemitism.” His lecture examined the ways American law has struggled to categorize Jews within its major frameworks, including religion, race, ethnicity, and free speech. He discussed constitutional protections, civil rights approaches to anti-Jewish harm, and contemporary campus debates about antisemitic expression.
Drawing on recent campus controversies nationwide, Katz asked whether American law can better address Jewish identity as an ethnoreligious tradition and protect religious and secular Jews alike. Katz recently published Antisemitism and the Law and is the founder and director of the Center for the Study of Law and Antisemitism. After the lecture, Katz took questions from the audience in a discussion that extended the evening’s focus on law, Jewish identity, and campus antisemitism. The event concluded with a dessert reception.