(Edmonton) – The Wirth Institute is hosting the Winter 2025 Jewish Studies week from March 2–7 and it includes a number of activities including a piano recital and reception on March 2, the Annual Tova Yedlin Lecture on March 4 and both a lecture and an informal discussion by the incoming Belzberg Family and Jewish Federation of Edmonton assistant professor of Jewish Studies on March 7.
The week kicks off with a very special piano recital by renowned pianist Mikolaj Warszysnki on March 2 at 1 pm at the University of Alberta Timms Centre for the Arts in Edmonton (87 Avenue, 112 St NW, Edmonton).
On March 4, the Tova Yedlin lecture will be held at 12 noon at the Arts Lounge in the University of Alberta Arts and Convocation Hall. The topic of the lecture is “Nostalgia and Homecoming in the 20th-Century Hasidism.” The keynote speaker is Wojciech Tworek, Head of the Taube Department of Jewish Studies at the University of Wroclaw.
He is the author of Eternity Now (SUNY, 2019) which examines the teachings of Shneur Zalman of Liady, the founder of Chabad Hasidism. Currently he is completing a book on the Chabad communities in interwar Poland and – together with Marcin Wodziński – an anthology of Hasidic stories.
The lecture looks at making sense of exile and displacement and coming to terms with the loss of one’s hometown and community. This talk explores the stories of Joseph Isaac Schneersohn (1880–1950), the leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, and their role in the survival and flourishing of his community through the First and Second World Wars.
Focusing on the social and performative function of these stories, Tworek examines how the nostalgic depictions of the Chabad ancestral home in the Russian townlet of Lubavitch was translated into ideas, collective memories, foodways, tangible practices, and brick-and-mortar institutions. These elements helped forge a new Chabad community in interwar Poland and safeguarded its survival in 1940s America. In effect, the literary reworking of the trauma of loss and displacement prepared the ground for the resurgence of Hasidism after the tragedies of the First World War and the Holocaust, first in Poland and later in North America and Israel.
On March 5 at 1 pm a lecture focused on “Travels in the Jewish/German Orient: Histories and Historiographies” will be delivered by Alexander W. Marcus, the incoming Belzberg Family and Jewish Federation of Edmonton Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Alberta. His primary research focuses on Jewish communities of late antiquity (~2nd-7th c. CE), examining the Babylonian Talmud alongside contemporaneous literary sources and artifacts deriving from Sasanian Mesopotamia.
He is the editor of a forthcoming volume entitled The Aramaic Incantation Bowls in their Late Antique Jewish Contexts (Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2025). He holds a PhD in Religious Studies from Stanford University and an MA in Jewish Studies from the Graduate Theological Union. He was previously the Jacob & Hilda Blaustein Postdoctoral Associate in Jewish History at Yale University and a researcher in Ancient Judaism at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He has taught at Stanford University, Grinnell College, Yale University, Western Kentucky University, and Franklin & Marshall College.
Marcus’ scholarly interests extend from ancient and medieval religious traditions to contemporary topics in religious life and culture, interreligious interactions, and issues of historical memory and representation. His pedagogical interests include historical and contemporary hermeneutics, the transmission and development of knowledge traditions, Christian-Jewish and Muslim-Jewish relations, gender/sexuality and religion, religion in popular culture, and intersections of religion and power.
He has also worked in the realms of Jewish education and conflict transformation. He has organized and participated in international conferences pertaining to Muslim-Jewish dialogue and the Israel-Palestine conflict, and he sits on the Academic Advisory Council of American Friends of Combatants for Peace.
On March 7 from 2-3:30 guest speaker Alexander Warren Marcus will be present for a lively discussion at the Central European Café located in the Arts (Student) Lounge in Arts and Convocation Hall. A delicious assortment of beverages and European-style pastries will also be available. As always, the Central European Cafe is free to attend, open to the public, and does not require registration to attend.
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