As students and faculty return to the University of Michigan’s campus this Fall for a hybrid semester, the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies is excited to continue offering virtual programming throughout the term.

The Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies began the academic year events schedule on September 30 by joining the Enoch Seminar
for a virtual book review of Gabriele Boccaccini’s Paul’s Three Paths to Salvation. We will continue to host events related to the Institute theme year “Second Temple Judaism: The Challenge of Diversity” in the coming months, including the upcoming conference “Was Paul an Apocalyptic Jew? A Case in Jewish Diversity in the Second Temple Period” which will take place virtually on October 25-27. Watch the Frankel Center website for details.

The Frankel Center has two additional virtual symposia in October. On October 19 at 4pm, guest speakers Efrat Yerday and Adane Zawdu will present on the subject “Ethiopian Jews: The Politics of Difference in Israeli Historiography.” This will be followed on October 11 at 12-3pm with a symposium that is a part of the Abrahamic Vernaculars Lecture Series, titled “Black Abrahamics: Recent Research on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in Black Communities.”

The Frankel Center will also continue their relationship with the Jewish Muslim Research Network this year. The JMRN is an interdisciplinary and
international network of scholars of Jewish and Muslim studies whose innovative programming has enriched our online event offerings in the last year. The research network was co-founded by Dr. Adi Saleem Bharat who is an LSA Collegiate Fellow in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan where he will be an Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies beginning in Fall 2022. Bharat is also affiliated with the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, the Global Islamic Studies Center, and the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies.

While completing his PhD at the University of Manchester, Bharat co-founded the Jewish Muslim Research Network (JMRN) with his friend and colleague Katharine Halls.  Last year, JMRN formed a relationship with the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies that allowed the two networks of Judaic scholars to create and benefit from a host of academic events. The Frankel Center and JMRN plan on working together again the coming academic year to continue facilitating important conversations around Jewish and Muslim studies.

The series will kick off on November 8 at 9a with the Zoom webinar “I Know Who Caused COVID-19":  Pandemics and Xenophobia" with speakers Sander Gilman, Emory University and Zhou Xun, University of Essex. Register at: https://myumi.ch/Axw1y. A complete list of topics, participants, and dates will be available soon.