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THE 2005 SAMUEL & ALTHEA STROUM
LECTURESHIP IN JEWISH STUDIES
“Sephardi Jewries and the Holocaust”
Histories of the Holocaust nearly always focus on its impact on
Ashkenazi Jewry, according to Aron Rodrigue, the Eva Chernov
Lokey Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor of History at Stanford
University; its impact on Sephardi Jewries is seldom examined.
His lectures on Sephardi Jewries and the Holocaust, presented as
the 30th Annual Samuel & Althea Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies,
were intended to right the balance.
Prof. Rodrigue’s first lecture, “The Holocaust and the End of Judeo-Spanish
Culture in the Balkans,” introduced the audience to
the complex forces that shaped the Sephardi experience. Sephardic
Jewries defined themselves through their understanding of their
transplantation from Andalusian Iberia, and the multiple layers of
cultural, linguistic, and socio-political influence to which they were
subjected. The rich, transnational communities they formed in the
Balkans were essentially destroyed in the Holocaust.
Rodrigue’s second lecture, introduced by his former student,
UW Professor Sarah Stein, was entitled “Rhodes, the Island
of Memory,” and charted the fate of the Jews of Rhodes before
and during the Holocaust. The Jewish community there,
ruled by various Asian and European empires, and in the period
leading up to the Holocaust, by Italy under the fascists,
was exposed to modernity in ways very different from those
experienced by Jews in the heart of Europe. Yet they ultimately
experienced the same fate as Jews farther to the north and
west, subjected to the same efficiently organized Nazi genocide.
Rodrigue’s final lecture, “North African Jewry and the Trauma
of World War II,” took up the neglected story of the Jews of pres-
From Lectures
to Books
For almost 30 years
the University of Washington
Press has been
publishing books based
on the Stroum Lectures.
Many of the books have
won awards, been used
as textbooks, and won a wide readership among those interested
in the Jewish people. Some become classics; Zakhor: Jewish History
and Jewish Memory, by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, has been in print
since 1982. In 2004, the UW Press published three books based on
Stroum lectures.
Based on Calvin Goldscheider’s 2000 Stroum lectures, Studying
the Jewish Future explores the power of Jewish culture and assesses
the perceived threats to the coherence and size of Jewish communities
in the United States, Europe, and Israel. In an unconventional
and provocative argument, Goldscheider (Professor of Sociology
and Ungerleider Professor of Judaic Studies Emeritus at Brown
University) departs from the limiting vision of the demographic
projections that have shaped predictions about the health and
future of Jewish communities and asserts that "the quality of
MARY LEVIN @UNIVERSITY PHOTOGRAPHY
Althea Stroum, Prof. Aron Rodrigue, Prof. Paul Burstein
ent-day Algeria, Morocco, and Libya during the Holocaust. Prof.
Rodrigue showed how colonialism, nationalism, and the modern
machinery of the Holocaust intersected in North Africa to produce
a history largely eclipsed by the history of Ashkanazi Jewry, but
which was entirely parallel in its traumatic effect.
The three lectures were delivered to overflow crowds, whose
level of interest and many questions made it very difficult to bring
the question periods after each lecture to an end.
In addition to delivering the Stroum lectures, Prof. Rodrigue
traveled to Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation in Seward Park
to give an informal talk about Ladino literature. Hazzan Aryeh
Greenberg’s introduction emphasized how important Jewish
Studies scholarship has been to him as he has developed new approaches
to teaching young Sephardic Jews about their roots.
All three lectures are now available in streaming video and on UWTV.
For information, go towww.uwtv.org/programs/displayseries.asp?collid=527
Jewish life has become
the key to the future
of Jewish communi -
ties." In a review of the
book in Contemporary
Sociology, Y. Michal
Bodemann of the University
of Toronto writes
that Goldscheider “presents
us with a refreshing
alternative vision” of the
Jewish future, very different from the typical gloomy portrait; he
presents “an upbeat prognosis for Jewish life,” based on a creative
analysis of the Jewish family, community, and culture.
Michael Stanislawski’s 2002 Stroum lectures have been published
as Autobiographical Jews: Essays in Jewish Self-Fashioning. The
book examines autobiographical writing by Jews from antiquity
to the present, and considers the ways in which such writings can
legitimately be used as sources for Jewish history. Stanislawski
analyzes autobiographies by Josephus, Osip Mandelstam, Stefan
Zweig, and others, seeing them as artifacts of individuals’ quests to
make sense of their lives, for themselves and for their readers. Prof.
Olga Litvak of Princeton University has called Autobiographical Jews
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