Content
The Harris Center supports and presents various lectures, book talks, and other discussions on timely topics relating to Judaic Studies.
"All Joking Aside: Jewish Comedy is Serious Business"
Jennifer Caplan
Tuesday, October 6 at 6:30 pm
Unity Room/201, Jackie Gaughan Multicultural Center
This talk will examine not just the changing trends in American Judaism from the 1960s to today, but more importantly the way we talk and think about those trends. Using Jews and their relationship to comedy as a metric for Jewish engagement, especially among younger Jews, we will make a case that the "crisis" that people have been predicting for a half century never transpired, and that American Judaism is, in fact, thriving.
Caplan is the author of Funny, You Don't Look Funny: Judaism and Humor from the Silent Generation to Millennials.
"Swimming Against Stereotype: Czech Water Polo Player, Officer, and Jew"
Helen Epstein
Tuesday, October 13, at 6:30 p.m.
Unity Room/201, Jackie Gaughan Multicultural Center
Helen Epstein is best known for her non-fiction trilogy Children of the Holocaust; Where She Came From; and The Long Half-Lives of Love and Trauma. In 2022, she published Getting Through It: My Year of Cancer during Covid.
Born in Prague, Helen grew up in New York City. She graduated from Hunter College High School, Hebrew University, and Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, then began freelancing for diverse publications including the Sunday New York Times. Her profiles of legendary musicians are collected in the book Music Talks. She began teaching journalism at New York University in 1974 and became the first woman in the department to be awarded tenure. In 1986, she left NYU to move to Massachusetts. She now lectures at universities; health organizations; high schools; synagogues, libraries and churches, and writes for the New England cultural website The Arts Fuse.
