海角社区
Sonic Heritage Diversity: The Songs of Middle Eastern and North African Jews in Montreal
SSHRC IDG Archives Workshop
- Date: Tuesday, August 19, 2025
- Time: 9:30 am 鈥� 3:00 pm
- Location: 海角社区
By invitation.
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Department of Jewish Studies Welcome Event (2025-2026 Academic Year)
In partnership with JSSA and Nu Magazine
- Date: Thursday, September 4, 2025
- Time: 5:30 鈥� 7:00 pm
- Location: Arts 160
- RSVP:
An opportunity to learn about the Department of Jewish Studies, to launch a year of teaching, events, and research, and to gather and reconnect. Food and drink will be served.
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Department of Jewish Studies Film Screening with Director Cl茅o Cohen
Que Dieu te prot猫ge (May God Be with You, dir. Cl茅o Cohen, France, 2021)
- Date: Monday, September 8, 2025
- Time: 2:30 鈥� 5:00 pm
- Location: Peel 3475 Screening Room
- Limited seating, RSVP required:
Cl茅o Cohen鈥檚 directorial debut is an investigation of her identity as the granddaughter of Jewish Arabs who at some point in the past emigrated from Tunisia and Algeria to France. In an intimate setting, Cohen questions her grandparents in front of the camera about the course their lives have taken. Are they more attached to Judaism or to their Arab origin? What do they think of their current host country, France, the former colonial power? Do they feel African or European? And how do they expect their descendants to form their own identity? Their answers are sometimes crystal clear, sometimes more cryptic. In between interviews, Cohen looks to the work of Albert Memmi (1920-2020), a French-Tunisian writer of Jewish origin. The conversations with Cohen provoke introspection among members of both the older and younger generation. At the same time, this personal quest reflects the complexity of a history that brings together colonialism, anti-Semitism and racism, as well as religious, cultural and political issues.
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鈥淭he Jewish Maghreb: Experiences in Greater Paris since 1981鈥�
with Sami Everett (University of Southampton and Aix-Marseille University)
Part of the Jewish Studies Seminar series
- Date: Wednesday, September 10, 2025
- Time: 4:00 鈥� 6:00 pm
- Location: Leacock 738
- RSVP:
This talk presents multiple case studies examining journeys of return among Algerian Jewish populations and their descendants. It likewise explores how these physical and metaphorical voyages illuminate complex relationships with homeland, memory, and identification.
Samuel Sami Everett is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Southampton and the Im茅ra Institute for Advanced Study of Aix-Marseille University. He is a cultural anthropologist specializing in the historical-colonial and spatial-political dimensions of North African Jewish identification.
Coffee, tea, and pastries will be served.
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The Levites Annual Lecture, 2025:
鈥淎mateur Films and Sephardi Joy: A Global Spin鈥�
with Sarah Abrevaya Stein (UCLA)
Presented by the Department of Jewish Studies
- Date: Monday, September 15, 2025
- Time: 5:30 鈥� 7:00 pm
- Location: Thomson House Ballroom (3650 McTavish Street)
- RSVP required:
This talk explores family photographs and amateur films of Sephardi communities as a springboard from which to dive deeply into the everyday lives of southeastern European Jewish children, women, and men before the Holocaust. Scattered in private hands and a few archives around the world, family films capture Sephardi Jews living before their near-total extermination鈥攁nd offer a moving and intimate glimpse of a lost milieu. In this presentation, Stein thinks about amateur film and photography as sites of interaction, shaped by intimate relationships between photographer and subject, which offer a unique 鈥渁rchive of joy鈥� for the Sephardi world. Our site of entry is Ottoman Monastir [current day Bitola in the Republic of North Macedonia], a city that has been Ottoman, Serbian, Bulgarian, Yugoslavian, German, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and North Macedonian over the last 120 years.
Sarah Abrevaya Stein is Distinguished Professor of History and Viterbi Family Chair in Mediterranean Jewish Studies at UCLA. She is the author or editor of ten books, including, most recently, Wartime North Africa: a Documentary History, 1934-1950 (Stanford University Press, co-authored with Aomar Boum, 2023), and Family Papers, a Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux 2019), named a Best Book of 2019 by The Economist and an Editor鈥檚 Choice Book by the New York Times Book Review. She is recipient of the 2025 Salo W. and Jeanette M. Senior Scholar Award for Scholarly Excellence in Research on the Jewish Experience from the University of Vienna, the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, two National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and multiple National Jewish Book Awards.
鈥淗asidic Women, the Arts, and the Digital Paradox鈥�
with Jessica Roda (Georgetown University)
Part of the Jewish Studies Seminar series
- Date: Monday, October 27, 2025
- Time: 4:00 鈥� 6:00 pm
- Location: Thomson House Ballroom (3650 McTavish St.)
- RSVP:
Have you had a glimpse of the mesmerizing music videos of ultra-Orthodox women celebrities like Bracha Jaffe or Devorah Schwartz, captivating over half a million viewers on YouTube? Or the myriad films and Yiddish plays crafted by Hasidic girls in Montreal and New York? Probably not.
In this talk, Jessica Roda offers a rare entry into these hidden artistic worlds. Drawing on her unique work, the first translocal ethnography of Hasidic women in North America, who mobilize the arts to transform religion, Roda introduces the audience to a world rarely visible to outsiders. She explores how women artists, whether still part of the ultra-Orthodox community or navigating complex ties to it, engage in music, dance, and film online and on-site to challenge expectations and reshape the image of Hasidicness. As an active observer and participant, Roda brings singular insight into these private feminine spaces and shows how their artistic expressions push us to think about Hasidism beyond the local and the traditional. Much like in mainstream society, celebrity status is rare, but stars like the above are household names in these circles, and their influence on Jewish music and culture is wide-reaching.
Jessica Roda is an associate professor of Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University. She is an anthropologist and ethnomusicologist trained between Europe and North America, whose research explores music, religion, cultural heritage, gender, health, and media. She is the author of Se R茅inventer au Pr茅sent (PUR, 2018) and For Women and Girls Only (NYU, 2024), and has published over twenty scholarly articles, as well as an edited volume and a special issue of an academic journal. Roda has received numerous fellowships and awards for her work, notably the Society for Ethnomusicology鈥檚 Special Interest Group for Jewish Music Book Award for For Women and Girls Only. She is currently working on a new project exploring practices of healing and spirituality that mobilize psychedelics in comparative settings, both within and beyond the Jewish Orthodox world.
Beyond academia, Roda is also a trained pianist, flutist, and modern-jazz dancer (City of Paris Conservatory). She grew up in French Guiana, a formative experience that continues to shape her perspective as a person, educator, and anthropologist.
Coffee, tea, and pastries will be served.
鈥淪chmatte Week Vs. Rosh Hashanah: The Influence of Ruth Finley's Fashion Calendar鈥�
with Natalie Nudell (Fashion Institute of Technology)
Please note the venue change for this event - this will now be held in the Thomson House Ballroom (NOT LEA 927)
Part of the Jewish Studies Seminar series
- Date: Monday, November 3, 2025
- Time: 11:30 am 鈥� 1:00 pm
- Location: VENUE CHANGE - this will now be held in the Thomson House Ballroom
- RSVP:
Natalie Nudell will discuss her research on the history of the 20th century American fashion and creative industries and her recent monograph In American Fashion, Ruth Finley's Fashion Calendar (Bloomsbury, 2024). The talk will also present the grant-funded and open-source Fashion Calendar Research Database, a digitization and digital humanities project that was launched by The Fashion Institute of Technology in 2023.
Natalie Nudell is a fashion and textile historian with a research focus on the 20th century American fashion industry centered on Fashion Calendar, labor, and digital humanities. She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the History of Art Department at the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York, where she is also the Director of the Fashion Calendar Research Database. Nudell wrote and produced the documentary "Calendar Girl," (2020) now available on iTunes, Amazon and Tubi. Her book, In American Fashion: Ruth Finley鈥檚 Fashion Calendar, was published by Bloomsbury Press in September, 2024. She is an associate editor of the Fashion Studies Journal and a founding member of the Fashion Studies Alliance. Nudell holds an MA in Visual Culture and Costume Studies from NYU and a BA in History from Concordia University.
Coffee, tea, and pastries will be served.
鈥淢ore Than Friends: Muslim-Jewish Intimacy in Algerian Music鈥� with Jonathan Glasser (William & Mary)
- Date: Monday, November 17, 2025
- Time: 4:00 鈥� 6:00 pm
- Location: Leacock 232
- RSVP:
Music is a major site for remembering the Jewish presence in Algeria, and in many ways works against dominant discourses of Muslim-Jewish conflict and Jewish outsider status. But digging deeper uncovers multiple ways to read Muslim-Jewish intimacy around music, some of which edge into rivalry, hierarchy, and difference. This talk weighs these multiple interpretations, drawing on historical archives and contemporary memory in Algeria and in France.
Jonathan Glasser is Associate Professor of Anthropology at William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. He is the author of The Lost Paradise: Andalusi Music in Urban North Africa (University of Chicago Press, 2016), which won the L. Carl Brown Book Prize from the American Institute for Maghrib Studies and a Mahmoud Guettat International Prize in Musicology from the Tunisian Ministry of Cultural Affairs. His journal articles have appeared in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, American Ethnologist, Anthropological Quarterly, 贬别蝉辫茅谤颈蝉-罢补尘耻诲补, and Turath. Glasser recently completed a book manuscript titled More Than Friends: Muslim-Jewish Intimacy in Algerian Music.
Date: January 13, 2026
Time: 1:00-2:00 PM
Location: Visible Storage Gallery, McLennan Library Building, 4th floor,
Join the 海角社区 Visual Arts Collection and the Student Affairs Liaison for Jewish Students for a special guided tour focused on the Jewish Painters of Montreal, a remarkable group of artists who helped shape the city鈥檚 cultural identity in the mid-twentieth century. Through selected works from the Collection, this tour will highlight how these artists captured the social landscape of their time. Participants will also be invited to consider the artwork itself as a primary document, tracing its journey from the artist鈥檚 studio, through the hands of collectors and patrons, to its eventual place within an institutional collection. Discover how each painting tells not only the story of its subject, but also the layered histories of those who created, valued, and preserved it.
Registration is via myInvolvement:
International Holocaust Remembrance Day
January 27 is International Holocaust Remembrance Day (IHRD). The date marks the 81st anniversary of the liberation of , the Nazi鈥檚 largest concentration and extermination camp. 1.1 million people were killed in the camp; almost 1 million of them were Jews. On this day in 1945, the Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau and its remaining prisoners.
Primo Levi, an Italian Jew, chronicled all he and others endured Auschwitz, including the camp's liberation, in . Tova Friedman also survived Auschwitz. She was among the youngest survivors, and decades later.
The camp has become a symbol of both unimaginable cruelty, but also of tremendous resilience. In 2005, the UN鈥檚 named January 27 International Holocaust Remembrance Day in honor of the victims of Nazism and to encourage Holocaust education. Six million Jews were killed during the Nazi regime, along with millions of others, including Roma-Sinti, homosexuals, communists, Catholics, and the mentally or physically disabled.
Commemorative Lectures
海角社区's International Holocaust Remembrance Day Commemorative Lectures honour the memory of Holocaust victims, raise awareness about antisemitism, and foster education and scholarship to combat hatred and promote understanding.
On January 27, 2026, 海角社区 will welcome Professor Aliza Luft, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles. Professor Luft will share her research on the Holocaust in France in a lecture titled 鈥淏etween God and Vichy: Religion, Race, and the Holocaust in France."
Date: January 27, 2026
Time: 5:00-6:30 PM
Location: Thomson House Ballroom, 3650 McTavish
Professor Luft's research examines the fluctuating relationships between social identity, ideology, and interpersonal, socio-political action in contexts marked by war and violence. Her book, Sacred Treason: Race, Religion, and The Holocaust in France, is forthcoming with Harvard University Press. Another book, the second Handbook of The Sociology of Morality, co-authored with Shai Dromi and Steve Hitlin, was recently published by Springer. She has also published numerous op-Eds and interviews in The Washington Post; New Yorker; LA Times; NY Times, and elsewhere.
An Evening of Learning and Playing Jewish Music with Josh Dolgin
- Date: Thursday, March 12, 2026
- Time: 6:00 PM
- Location: room C-412
- Registration: scan QR code in poster above
鈥淎 Jewish-Muslim Friendship in the Twentieth Century Knowledge Trade鈥�
Mostafa Hussein (University of Michigan)
- Date: Wednesday, March 25, 2026
- Time: 4:00 鈥� 6:00 pm
- Location: Ballroom
- RSVP required:
The lecture examines the concept of 峁岣�ba through focusing on the shared passion for acquiring and disseminating Arabo-Islamic knowledge that connected Muslims and Jews in the first half of the twentieth century. Their common interest in preserving, reproducing, and classifying Arabo-Islamic sources, ranging from books to manuscripts, led Abraham Shalom Yahuda, Mu岣mmad Am墨n al-Khanj墨 and Sam墨 al-Kh膩nj墨 into a decades-long interconfessional 峁岣a (collegiality/friendship). It argues that a form of 峁岣a existed between Yahuda and al-Kh膩nj墨s that facilitated the movement of Arabic and Islamic knowledge from the East to the West motivated not only by mutual economic benefit but also by satisfying intellectual and ideological objectives during the nah岣�a movement and the colonial era. By reframing 峁岣a in this intellectual context, this lecture highlights its role in the complex interplay between cultural exchange and the formation of modern nationalist identity.
Mostafa Hussein is an assistant professor of Jewish-Muslim Studies in the Judaic Studies Department at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His scholarship offers fresh perspectives on Jewish-Muslim intersectionalities, shedding light on the complex cultural and historical interconnections between these communities. Dr. Hussein鈥檚 recently published book Hebrew Orientalism: Jewish Engagement with Arabo-Islamic Culture in Late Ottoman and British Palestine (Princeton University Press, 2025) is shortlisted for the 75th National Jewish Book Award. Dr. Hussein is also the co-editor (with Brahim El Guabli) of Remembering Jews in Maghrebi and Middle Eastern Media (Penn State University Press, September 2024).
With support from the Office of Provost and Executive Vice-President. Co-Sponsored by the Institute of Islamic Studies.