As living creatures, we inhabit the uncertain terrain between life and death, taking part in the constant ebb and flow of life, the coming together and coming apart that is the human condition. How do we inhabit this realm, the realm between solution and dissolution, between birth and breakdown? How do we experience the terrible fragility of being human? What perspectives do we generate that shield us from its implications, and what perspectives draw us more deeply into the vulnerable aspects of life? As mortal beings, how do we grapple with the horrors of war, violence, as well as the ecological crisis unfolding before our eyes?

Please join us for a day of papers and conversation on the very weighty and painful matters of life, death, war and conflict, in the context of Jewish history and the history of Jewish thought.

Schedule 

1:00-2:45pm — Discursive Afterlives

• Eva Mroczek (UC Davis): "Before After Hurban: Time, Lament, and Moral Injury During Catastophe"
• Daniel Boyarin (UC Berkeley): "‘Give me Libertas or Give me Death?’ On the Ambivalence of Josephus”
• Sven-Erik Rose (UC Davis): “Ethics in Extremis in the Warsaw Ghetto Writings of Yitskhok Bernshteyn” 
• Emily Gottreich (UC Berkeley): “Jewish Ghosts in the Arab Gulf”

Chair: Sam Shonkoff (GTU)

3:00-4:20 — Death and Dissolution

• Roni Masel (UC Berkeley): “Don’t Read This Book, Burn It: Misreading the Catastrophe and Jewish Literary Modernity”
• Joel Beinin (Stanford): “Settler Colonialisms and Deadly Violence”
• Sam Shonkoff (GTU): “Assimilation, Sovereignty, Diaspora: The Politics of ‘Mystical Death’ from a Jewish Perspective”

Chair: Deena Aranoff (GTU)

4:35-5:55 — To Life

• Ari Kelman (Stanford): “Learning to Live in the Future”
• Deena Aranoff (GTU): “Jewish Ritual and Life Formation”
• David Biale: (UC Davis): “We Await Eternity as it Approaches”

Chair: Charlotte Fonrobert (Stanford)

6:00–7:00 — Dinner reception

7:00pm: Keynote

• Sarah Abrevaya Stein (UCLA): “Swimming Through History”

Presiding: Ethan Katz (UC Berkeley)