Scholar-in-Residence Shabbat

Join us to learn from our Scholar-in-Residence, Professor Daniel Schwartz, over Shabbat Dinner and a Potluck Kiddush.

See below for:

• Shabbat Dinner -- Friday, January 16
• Potluck Kiddush -- Saturday, January 17
• About Our Scholar-in-Residence

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Shabbat Dinner:

Shared Streets, Shared Words: Jews, Blacks, and the Ghetto



Friday, January 16 at 6:30pm in Hirsch Hall

The word ghetto began with Jewish history, yet by the late 20th century it was more commonly associated with Black urban life in America. That shift echoed a familiar urban pattern: neighborhoods once densely Jewish became overwhelmingly Black, and the term ghetto moved with them. What happens when a word so marked by one group’s past is taken up by another? How do shared words shape solidarity—or strain it? And what anxieties surface when communities feel their histories are being eclipsed, appropriated, or misunderstood? This talk explores the shifting meanings of ghetto and the ethical challenges that arise when different groups frame their experiences through the same vocabulary.

Kabbalat Shabbat service will be held at 5:30pm, followed by Shabbat dinner around 6:30pm and the discussion around 7:30pm.

Potluck Kiddush:

World of Their Children (and Grandchildren, Great Grandchildren): The Making of the Jewish Upper West Side



Saturday, January 17 after services in Hirsch Hall

When Irving Howe published World of Our Fathers in 1976, he offered both an elegy for the immigrant Yiddishkeit of the Lower East Side and a critique of what followed: the “world of their children,” whose Jewishness seemed thinner, flatter, and more conventional by comparison. Yet the Upper West Side unsettled that judgment and became something singular—a Jewish urban space in America with an unmatched density of types, institutions, and energies that shaped American Jewish life and American arts and letters alike. Jews, including Howe himself, helped build that world. This talk explores how it took shape.

Kiddush will be a potluck: We’ll provide the main dish, you bring salads (green, vegetable, grain or bean), side dishes, or dessert.

In order to make sure our meal is balanced, if your last name begins with the letters A-M, please bring in a side dish or salad. If your last name begins with N-Z, please bring in a dessert.

About Our Scholar-in-Residence

Daniel B. Schwartz is Professor of Jewish History at George Washington University. He is the author of The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image (2012) and Ghetto: The History of a Word (2019), and the editor of Spinoza's Challenge to Jewish Thought: Writings on His Life, Philosophy, and Legacy (2019). He writes regularly for the Jewish Review of Books and other outlets. His current project explores Jews, the Upper West Side, and American intellectual and cultural life in the 20th century.