Following the British conquest of Ottoman Palestine, Jews across the British Empire—from Jerusalem to Johannesburg, and London to Calcutta—found themselves at the heart of global Jewish political discourse. As these intellectuals, politicians, activists, and communal elites navigated shifting political landscapes, some envisioned Palestine as a British dominion, leveraging imperial power for Jewish state-building, while others fostered ties with anticolonial movements, contemplating independent futures. This talk, based on Imber’s new book Uncertain Empire: Jews, Nationalism, and the Fate of British Imperialism (Stanford University Press, 2025), will explore this intricate interplay between British imperialism, Zionism, and anticolonial movements from the 1917 British…
Yiddish in the Land of Sunshine examines how a cohort of young Jewish radicals from Eastern Europe helped reshape multiracial left-wing activism in Southern California. It traces their migration from the Russian Empire to Los Angeles and their involvement in labor and left-wing movements. Focusing especially on Boyle Heights, the book explores how the neighborhood’s diverse communities shaped Yiddish public culture and Jewish political organizing. It highlights the relationships, collaborations, and tensions that emerged as Jewish radicals built multiracial coalitions with Mexican, Asian, and African American neighbors. Drawing on previously untranslated Yiddish sources, the book challenges traditional Jewish immigration narratives centered…
In this talk, Prof. Boum will develop the concept of aesthetic funds of knowledge to name the embodied, socially transmitted, and commercially usable repertoires through which Sephardic Moroccan Jews built aesthetic and sartorial competence across Debdou, France, and the Americas. Drawing on ten years of ethnographic and archival research in the Moroccan Jewish community in Los Angeles and building on Luis Moll’s account of the relation among household, community, and education, he examines how the Marcianos and other LA- and Montreal-based Moroccan Jews, whose family history links rural Moroccan Jewish life to transnational fashion commerce, negotiated Sephardic cultural identity and…
Zionism in Translation concerns exchanges—primarily of letters but also drafts, reviews, and other ephemera—sent to or from Jerusalem in the decades around 1948. All were written in German and Hebrew by a fascinating range of literary figures, including Hannah Arendt, Gershom Scholem, Yehuda Amichai, Ludwig Strauss, Erich Auerbach, Walter Benjamin, Leah Goldberg, Peter Szondi, Paul Celan, and Tuvia Ruebner. The writers discussed in the book contend with the genocidal violence that brought the rich historical relation between German and Hebrew to a seeming end. They also grapple, in different ways, with the new reality in Israel/Palestine in the wake of…
It is well known that the French Catholic Church, which opposed Hitler before 1940, silenced itself during the German occupation. But Aliza Luft shows that the Church was more than silent: it was complicit. Behind closed doors, bishops repeatedly assured Jewish leaders of the Church’s support—only to betray their trust amidst the Nazi threat. Aliza Luft is Associate Professor of Sociology at UCLA, where her research examines how classifications of self and other shift in contexts of war and genocide and drive decisions to participate in, resist, or abstain from violence. Her book, Sacred Betrayal: How the French Catholic Church…
Tuesday, September 29, 2026 • 314 Royce Hall • 4 PM UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies Open House Celebration Share a bite with the Leve Center faculty, staff, students, and community friends. Learn about our diverse projects, programs, and courses. RSVP
Please join us on Friday, May 22, 2026 for a talk by Sasha-Mae Eccleston entitled “Book Discussion – Epic Events: Classics and the Politics of Time in the United States Since 9/11” All are welcome!
The phenomenon of “Godfearing”—adoption by gentiles, usually supposed to have been pagan—of Jewish practices including support for local Jewish communities and attendance in synagogues—has loomed larger in scholarship than it does in the sources. But the phenomenon surely existed. Some ancient writers suggest that in the first century most diaspora jewish communities had a “fringe” of gentile sympathizers who functioned for Jewish communities as protectors and mediators with local governments. Godfearing comes to the fore again in major texts of the early fifth century CE. How much of the traditional picture can be salvaged? (Spoiler: some) How continuous was fifth-century…
A dominant trend in scholarship about Jews in the Roman Imperial diaspora emphasizes the Jews’ achievement of a successful balance between integration and separation, and regards this happy equilibrium as essentially stable for centuries. I will argue that this view rests on a fundamental misreading of the sources. Asia Minor (modern Turkey) provided the richest evidence for the dominant view but when disentangled tells a story of conflict, instability and, above all, poverty. This rather gloomy picture changed for the better only in the fourth century CE, before a steady decline starting in the fifth. Seth Schwartz is the Lucius…
