Spring 2018
Monday, March 12, 4:30 p.m.
Issues in Judaism Lecture Series Spring 2018
presents
JEWS ON LONG ISLAND AND IN THE UNITED STATES
Perspectives on the American Experiment: "Melting Pot" or "Mosaic"
Part 1: 1654-1917
More Progress Than Prejudice for Jews
The late Leo Hershkowitz resourcefully examined factors that enhanced the position of Jews in America, as well as those who fostered dimensions of xenophobia.
Thursday, April 5, 4:30 p.m.
Part II: 1918-2018: The Rise of Vicious Anti-Semitism; The German-American Bund and the KKK on Long Island and in the Eastern United States
Prejudices persisted even as the Jews, whose diversity is still seldom recognized, advanced as America's super-achieving "minority." Speaker for both lectures: Michael D'Innocenzo, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Hofstra University.
Professor D'Innocenzo is a founding member of Hofstra's Center for Civic Engagement and co-editor, American Immigration and Ethnicity: Melting Pot or Salad Bowl? His current projects include an NEH grant with East Meadow Library, "Becoming American" and the National Issues Forums, Kettering Foundation's new deliberation project, "Coming to America: Who Should We Welcome, What Should We Do?" Location for both lectures: Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library
Funding for these lectures has been provided in part, by the Dorothy and Elmer Kirsch Endowment Fund for the Hofstra Cultural Center.
Wednesday, April 18, 4:30 p.m.
Film Screening and Discussion: 1945
The film, set in 1945, tells the complex story of an Orthodox man and his adult son who return to a small village in Hungary. The village residents are both remorseful and suspicious, as they expect the worst. All must come to terms with the war atrocities they may have witnessed or perpetrated, as well as their own personal gain vs. the rights of the Jewish victims whose property they now possess.
Directed by Ferenc Török. Based on the short story Homecoming by Gábor T. Szántó. Country of origin: Hungary. In Hungarian with English subtitles.
B/W cinematography, 91 min. (2017)
"This beautifully shot black-and-white film, set in one day, brings to life a community ravaged by war, hate, and guilt. A must-see film."
— Lincoln Spector, BayFlicks.net
"An honest film that commits itself to portraying Hungary in this intermediate post-war period showing that fearing that which is foreign (back then Jews, today migrants) never pays off."
— Roberto Oggiano, Cineuropa
Speaker: Professor Annette Insdorf will introduce the film and lead a discussion following the screening.
Annette Insdorf is professor of film at Columbia University's School of the Arts, and moderator of the popular Reel Pieces series at Manhattan's 92nd Street Y, where she has interviewed over 200 film celebrities. She is the author of Intimations: The Cinema of Wojciech Has; Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski; François Truffaut, a study of the French director's work; Philip Kaufman; and the landmark study Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust (with a foreword by Elie Wiesel). Insdorf is hosting two series on FilmStruck, Indelible Shadows and Cinematic Overtures. The latter is based on her book Cinematic Overtures: How to Read Opening Scenes.
Book signing to follow: Cinematic Overtures: How to Read Opening Scenes
Student Center Theater, Mack Student Center, North Campus
Thursday, April 26, 4:30 p.m.
Memorials and Forgetting: Holocaust Sites in Post-Communist Europe
Speaker: Professor Cynthia Paces
Cynthia Paces is department chair and professor of history at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ). She teaches courses on modern Europe and leads TCNJ's Holocaust and Genocide Study Tour. She is the author of Prague Panoramas: National Memory and Sacred Space in the 20th Century and is currently researching commemorations of the 1942 Lidice Massacre.
Book signing to follow: Prague Panoramas: National Memory and Sacred Space in the 20th Century
Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus
Co-sponsored by the Hofstra Cultural Center and the Office of the Dean, Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
This film tells the story of a Roman Jewish community that, two and a half weeks into the German occupation of Rome, was ordered by SS Colonel Herbert Kappler to produce 50 kilos of gold within 36 hours, or he would deport 200 Jewish heads of family. Over a feverish day and a half, this already poor, working class community managed to come up with the 50 kilos of gold in order to save one another. Oro Macht Frei reveals the sad delusion of a community that – believing they had paid their ransom and would be left alone – did not go into hiding.
Monday, April 18, 7 p.m.
