The Heidi Urich Annual Lecture on Jewish Genealogy
Holocaust scholarship has generally been critical of the role of American Jewry during the Shoah. Many believe that American Jews could have done much more than they did to save the Jews of Europe. However, recent research documents the clandestine rescue of hundreds of thousands of Jews by the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and other agencies; the Jewish resistance to German Bund pro-Nazi activities in the U.S.; and the work of the Overseas News Agency, the Jewish Labor Committee, and the World Jewish Congress. This new scholarship, Jonathan Sarna argues, calls for a full-scale re-evaluation of American Jewry’s role in saving Jews and fighting Nazism during the Holocaust years.
JGSGB members: The program is free. Members do not need to register. You can find the Zoom link by logging in to your JGSGB Membership account. Once logged in, use the “What would you like to do” dropdown to locate the members-only page for the Zoom link. You will also receive an email with the Zoom link on the morning of the program. This program will be recorded, so members will be able to view it on the members-only Page.
Non-members: Click here to receive the Zoom link. If you do not receive an email with the link to the program within 15 minutes, please check your spam folder.
Jonathan Sarna is a leading scholar of American Jewish history. His renowned treatise, American Judaism: A History, won the Jewish Book Council’s Book of the Year Award in 2004 and is now available in a 2nd edition. Coming to Terms with America: Essays on Jewish History, Religion, and Culture (JPS 2021) is the most recent of his more than thirty books on American Jewish history. He is University Professor and the Braun Professor of America Jewish History at Brandeis University.
Rabbi Avi Killip `14 is the executive vice president at 
Rabbi Avi Strausberg `15 is the senior director of National Learning Initiatives at 
Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld became President of Hebrew College in July 2018. Rabbi Anisfeld first came to Hebrew College in 2003 as an adjunct faculty member of the Rabbinical School and then served as Dean of Students from 2005-2006. She went on to serve as Dean of the Rabbinical School for eleven years, from 2006-2017. Rabbi Anisfeld graduated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1990, and subsequently spent 15 years working in pluralistic settings as a Hillel rabbi at Tufts, Yale and Harvard universities. She has been a regular summer faculty member for the Bronfman Youth Fellowships in Israel since 1993 and is co-editor of two volumes of women’s writings on Passover, “The Women’s Seder Sourcebook: Rituals and Readings for Use at the Passover Seder” (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2002) and “The Women’s Passover Companion: Women’s Reflections on the Festival of Freedom” (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2002). She writes and teaches widely, weaving together Torah, rabbinic commentary, and contemporary poetry and literature in her wise and compassionate approach to the complexities of the human experience and the search for healing and hope in a beautiful but fractured world.
Rabbi Nehemia Polen is Professor of Jewish Thought at Hebrew College and is a leading expert in Hasidism and Jewish thought. A widely published author, his books include The Holy Fire: The Teachings of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto (Jason Aronson Inc., first ed., 1977); The Rebbe’s Daughter (Jewish Publication Society, 2002), based on Polen’s research as a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow and recipient of a National Jewish Book Award; Filling Words With Light: Hasidic and Mystical Reflections on Jewish Prayer (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2004), written with Lawrence Kushner; and From Tiberias, With Love: A Collection of Tiberian Hasidism, volume I: Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk, edited by Aubrey Glazer (Fons Vitae Press, 2020.) Polen holds a doctorate from Boston University, where he studied with and served as a teaching fellow for Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel. Prior to his career in Jewish academia, Polen served for 23 years as a congregational rabbi.
Rabbi Or Rose is the founding Director of the 
Rabbi Shani Rosenbaum`21 joined the Hebrew College faculty in 2021. Her teaching focuses on rabbinic and halakhic literature. Shani holds a BA in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University and rabbinic ordination from her teachers at Hebrew College. She has also pursued immersive Torah study in a range of yeshiva settings, including Midreshet Lindenbaum, Matan, Beit Midrash Har’el, Yeshivat Hadar, Yashrut, and the Pardes Kollel. Shani spent her early career working on the programming teams of several organizations pursuing justice through a Jewish lens, including Encounter and OLAM, where she produced the Global Torah podcast. In 2020, she conducted a “Jewish Law and Ethics Hackathon for the Age of COVID-19” for T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. In addition to her courses in the Rabbinical School, Shani teaches Talmud, Halakha and Midrash through 
Dr. Susie Tanchel, Vice President of Hebrew College, joined Hebrew College in the summer of 2020, after serving as Head of School at JCDS, Boston’s Jewish Community Day School. During her 9 year tenure at JCDS, Tanchel was an accomplished and deeply beloved leader, guiding the school to preeminence as a national model of excellence in pluralistic Jewish education, and creatively embodying its abiding commitments to community, centrality of Hebrew language, and teaching the whole child. She was a recipient of the 2018 Covenant Award for Jewish Educators.
Rabbi Neal Gold teaches and writes about Jewish texts, Israel, and intersections between Jewish life and the contemporary world. He is also a student, recently completing an MA in Near Eastern & Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. He is adjunct faculty and a lecturer for Hebrew College’s 
By Deborah Feinstein
