World Jewry

Dr. Sarina Chen

Dr. Chen is a Schusterman Visiting Scholar at Northeastern University.

Dr. Sarina Chen is a Jewish studies professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on Jerusalem, ethnography, Jewish thought, national-religious society in Israel and women and Judaism in modern times. She received her Ph.D. in Jewish Studies from the Hebrew University’s Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies. She has written several articles addressing Jewish Studies and Jewish art, including the textbook Jerusalem and Art (1996) for a televised course by Israeli Educational Television. She has taught classes on memory and folklore, Jewish culture, women and Judaism, Jewish art and Jerusalem.

• The Temple Mount –Conjuncture of Beliefs, History, and Politics.
• Jewish Women and Revolutionary Movements
• The "Art" of Zealots – A Jewish-Israeli Case
• The Destruction of the Temple: When did it happen and why?
• The Wandering Jew: A Curse, legend and self-identity.
• The Concept of "Sacrifice" in the Jewish –Israeli discourse
• The Israeli Nobility: The story of Dayan Family.
• The “sense” of seeing Jerusalem: Through the perspective of 19th Century Christian Pilgrims
• Introduction to Israeli films

Gil Pereg

Gil Pereg is a youth and Talmudic educator who lead one of the largest, most influential coeducational secular high schools in the Israeli public school system. He is currently working on his Doctorate in education at Northeastern University.

Gil Pereg, a Jewish philosopher and an educator who also holds an MPA from Harvard and a Law degree from Bar Ilan University has focused his career on educating youth and on Talmudic studies. Leading Blich High school, one of the largest, most influential and well-known coeducational secular high schools in the Israeli public education system, Mr. Pereg employs a policy of tolerance and acceptance in this multicultural upper school.

He is dedicated to helping students and teachers internalize democratic values and are passionate about perpetuating humanistic ideals toward a more cohesive, understanding society.

Mr. Pereg is an alumnus of the Israeli Wexner program and the Eisenhower fellowships and is currently working on his Doctorate in education at Northeastern University in Boston. He is 39, and married with two children.

• Jewish, religious and non-religious education in Israel
• Leadership in schools
• Talmud and Midrash
• Jewish philosophy

Bernard Horn

Bernard Horn is professor of English at Framingham State College, specializing in Hebrew literature, both Biblical and modern. He is an expert on Israel’s great novelist A.B. Yehoshua.

Bernard Horn is a distinguished essayist, teacher, lecturer, and poet. His numerous publications cover the fields of American literature, the Bible as literature, and technical writing. Among his recent works is the well-received Facing the Fires: Conversations with A.B. Yehoshua. His translations of poetry by Yehuda Amichai have appeared in The New Yorker and Moment magazines. He has also written about the biblical episodes of the Golden Calf, the Spies, and the Korach Rebellion. His new book of poems, Our Daily Words, winner the 2009 Old Seventy Creek Poetry Prize, includes many poems that touch on Israeli matters.

Professor Horn is the recipient of five National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships in contemporary and Biblical literature. He has also spent time teaching and researching in Israel and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to teach there. He is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Connecticut.

• The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai
• A.B. Yehoshua’s Jerusalem
• Observations of an American in Israel: A Discussion on the Situation in Israel Today
• Zionism, the Holocaust, and Jewish Identity in A.B. Yehoshua’s Fiction
• Nationality and Religion in the Binding of Isaac
• What Happened in Eden? A Liberal Jew’s Reading of Genesis 3

Dr. Lawrence Lowenthal

Dr. Lawrence D. Lowenthal is the National Senior Advisor to the American Jewish Committee. He was the Executive Director of the Greater Boston Chapter of the American Jewish Committee, the pioneer Human Relations agency in the United States for the last 17 years. He is also a visiting professor at Northeastern University.

During his 30 years of organizational work in the Greater Boston area, Dr. Lowenthal has been involved in interfaith and intergroup activities, written extensively about human rights issues for the local press, appeared frequently on radio and TV, hosted a local radio interview program, and taught courses on Jewish history, film, literature, and humor.

A former academic, Dr. Lowenthal taught English and American literature at Washington State College, New York University, and Gettysburg College before moving to Israel with his family in 1970. From 1970-1975, he taught English and American Literature at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University. Drafted into a new immigrant unit of the Israeli Army in 1974, he went through basic training on the West Bank, anti- aircraft training in Herzilya, and served a tour of duty in Sharm el-Sheik at the southern tip of the Sinai Desert.

Dr. Lowenthal received his B.A. in English from Northwestern University, and his Ph.D. in English from New York University.

• Israel and the Middle East
• The "New" Anti- Semitism
• Germany Today and its Relation to the Jewish People
• The Holocaust and its impact on American Culture and Society
• Religion and American Politics
• Israelis and American Jews