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- [00:00]
Geraldine Godefin
This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace, and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message, and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for, from
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Sasha Goldstein Saba
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Geraldine Godefin
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Sasha Goldstein Saba
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Geraldine Godefin
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Sasha Goldstein Saba
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Geraldine Godefin
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- [02:15]
Sarah Bunin Benor
Thank you. So nice to be here.
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Sasha Goldstein Saba
Thank you so much.
- [02:18]
Geraldine Godefin
Gillette, let me introduce you briefly. So Sarah Buenen Benor is Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies and Linguistic at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles. And Sasha Goldstein Saba is Assistant professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, and very relevant for our discussion today. She is Senior Scholar for Pedagogy at the Posen Library, and she serves as one of the editors of the modules that we will be discussing today. So perhaps before we actually delve into the initiative itself, I would love to hear from both of you, you about kind of your professional trajectory and what led you to the. The roles that you're in and how that impacted your. Your work for the Posen Library so far. Sasha, let's start with you.
- [03:04]
Sasha Goldstein Saba
Okay, so I'm actually an assistant professor in Middle Eastern studies, and my specialty is Jews in the Islamic world. But before I did my PhD, I worked for 10 years in publishing. And this is going to become really relevant for my work with Posen. So when I write, I write really about Jews in the Islamic world In the late 19th and early 20th century, their connections to other Jewish communities, questions of modernity, all of these really, really interesting questions. However, as I said, I spent 10 years helping authors publish their books. But a big part of this in the early 2000s was the question of taking books and putting them on digital platforms. And this ties into my work with Posen because the Posen Library of Jewish Civilization and Culture started off in the late 90s as an idea to anthologize Jewish civilization and culture through 10 volumes, starting with the very earliest texts we have from Torah up until today, and really, you know, discussing religious tradition, intellectual creativity. So these 10 volumes have been evolving. The last one will come out this year, actually. But in parallel to that, a couple years ago, the, the main. The editor in chief, Deborah Dashmore, and the CEO, Rachel Weinstein, realized that the way people access information is changing. And so all of this material would go online. But putting an anthology online of thousands and thousands of pieces of printed material, it's not the same as a book. And so because I'd worked in publishing for so long and was also a scholar in Jewish studies, I've been working with the Posen Library for a couple of years about how to make it an anthology work as an online platform.
- [05:03]
Geraldine Godefin
Great. Thank you, Sasha. What about you, Sarah?
- [05:06]
Sarah Bunin Benor
Well, I did a PhD in linguistics. And even while I was in grad school, I was already doing some public engagement around Jewish languages and bringing together scholars online. I did, I created a website called jewish languages.org and then I started working at Hebrew Union College. And in 2020, I consolidated some of the public facing projects that I had been working on into the Jewish Language Project, an initiative of Hebrew Union College. My research is about Jewish languages and names and American Jews and Orthodox Jews. And I also write a lot of public facing articles and I'm interested in pedagogy and in public education. And so when this fellowship came up of scholars creating modules on the Posen Library, I luckily, Sasha posted about it on Facebook and I happened to see her post. And so I said, yeah, I feel like I should do this because, I mean, who has time? But I teach classes anyway, and I might as well create new materials for my classes. If you teach the same class many, many years in a row, you have to switch it up, otherwise it gets stale and it doesn't work as well. So I do switch up my materials, my syllabus, and the things that I do in my classes all the time. And this was a really good opportunity to. To think through the pedagogy in ways that I hadn't previously. Great.
- [07:02]
Geraldine Godefin
And so perhaps, Sasha, you can walk us through how the idea came about, because. So this is a fellowship that started last year. And for full disclosure, alongside Sarah, I was one of the fellows. We were eight people working on different themes. Actually, I think it's worth mentioning the themes because I think it really is crucial to our understandings of the Posen Library's effort to really expand also its collection and the topics it wants to spotlight. So, Sarah, you were working on Jewish culture around the world. And we'll unpack this over the course of our conversation today. I worked on a module on Jewish emancipation, citizenship and belonging. And then we had six other colleagues working on Jewish encounters with American citizenship. A colleague working on Jews of the Middle east and North Africa, someone working on Sephardic Jewish history and culture in Spain and beyond. There was another module on Sephardic journeys, focusing more specifically on literature, memory, and culture. Another colleague of ours worked on the origins of Rabbinic Judaism. And finally, we had a module on mysticism. So, Sasha, back to you. Tell us about how the idea for the fellowship came about and how you decided to seek scholars. We would be focusing specifically on those eight themes as opposed to other. Many other themes.
- [08:33]
Sasha Goldstein Saba
One could talk about so many themes. So as part of this push to say, okay, how do you take 10 volumes, thousands and thousands of primary source excerpts, which usually go up to about 1500 words, to give you an idea, and also a lot of visual culture, how do you make it relevant online? And so one thing is having a really robust searchable database. But even that is a little bit complicated. And we really want people to engage with this, with the material, because it's so interesting and diverse through teaching. And the platform is open access for some things you need to register. But that actually just has to do with the copyright agreements with publishers. They don't give your data to anyone or anything like that. So we said, how can we make it relevant and easy also in the classroom? And how can we engage with scholars to actually even make the platform better? And so the idea was to have kind of curated or edited course modules or kind of mini syllabi. And we said, let's get people who really work in a specific area. And then, you know, you can say, I am teaching this modern approach to Jewish culture around the world from Sarah Bunin Benor. Right. Or I'm going to look at Jewish citizenship from the perspective of Geraldine Goodfell. And it was really important of us one, that we compensate the editors of the modules because, because it's a lot of work to put together and I'm sure you'll talk about that, but also that they're named, that this is, this is, you know, Posen Library really cares about being polyvocal, really showing Jews and Judaism in all its breadth and diversity. And so we wanted people to be saying, well, this is this scholar's approach and this is that scholar's approach. So to start off, we looked for a little bit of variety. We had an open call with different themes and then we selected people kind of of what we thought was interesting, frankly, and also what we thought would translate into being usable for the classroom. And so if we look at both of your modules, I think most Intro to Jews in Judaism courses in some way engage with Jewish culture around the world. And we know about all the great work that Sarah is doing in terms of Jewish languages. So we knew there would be a lot of diversity, both how to present Jewish languages, but for English speakers also, because everything on the platform is translated into English. And also citizenship is such an important question today. Questions of longing and belonging within Jewish studies. And so I would say the two of you made really compelling applications and we were really excited to have you develop these modules. I'll also say that you can see the, the first eight modules online now and we have a new smaller cohort this year of five people. And because last year there was a lot of modern contemporary and then two modules which link more to Israelite religion and ancient Judaism. We actually have for this autumn two early modern modules, one early Modern module on Ashkenaz and one early Modern module on not just the Sephardic world, but really the Arabic speaking world. So early Ottoman material, for example. And then we've also decided to do some specific contemporary topics. So where there's going to be one topic on the Holocaust and why? Because this is what people Teach.
- [12:07]
Sarah Bunin Benor
Right.
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Sasha Goldstein Saba
And we really want to assist instructors in their teaching to be able to teach using primary sources, because I think that's where pedagogy is going and getting even first year undergraduates in the classroom to be able to engage with primary source material.
- [12:23]
Geraldine Godefin
Great. So, Sarah, let's, let's talk about your module a little bit. Sasha mentioned the idea of creating really usable materials. So I would love to hear from you about how you went about doing this in your own module. So just to clarify this for our listeners, each module is divided into four classes, and for each of those four classes, I think we could select up to six or seven sources. And every person who was writing a module was fully responsible for selecting the sources that they wanted to include in their modules. So tell us about how you made that selection. How much did you draw on what was already in the Posen Library's collection? How much did you add to the collection, and what were the kind of the overarching principles really driving your selection of materials for the module?
- [13:21]
Sarah Bunin Benor
Well, my module was unusual in that most of the materials that I ended up choosing were not in the Posen Library previously, but they are now. And in fact, I had approached the Posen Library several years ago with a suggestion of adding a digital. Adding a bunch of videos and audio clips because I felt like the materials that they had were mostly or all in print and that there was so much more to learning about Jewish history and the Jewish world that you can't get just in print, but that you, you can get if you have the recordings. And so I ended up creating that thing that I was recommending to the Posen Library on my own through the Jewish Language Project using a platform called Jewish Cultures Mapped. And so then I drew on some of those videos and audio recordings in my module. But I, I did find in each of the classes several, no, I probably one or two things that were already in the Posen Library, and then the rest of it I found in other sources. So my four classes are food, music, language and names. And the point of the whole module is the diversity of Jewish communities around the world, how Jewish culture balances integration and distinctiveness, that is being part of the surrounding society, but also apart from the surrounding society, and also how Jews use both tradition and innovation or creativity in the work that they do culturally. So the class on languages has one source that was in the Posen Library before, about Hebrew, about. About how languages are, about. About Hebrew and, and Yiddish, essentially a Zionist poem from 1910. But the rest of the sources were from various other places like the. There were. There were a few things from the Jewish language website. Like, we have several translations of who Knows one, the Passover song, into multiple Jewish languages. And I chose four of them. Well, Hebrew, but then also Ladino Bukharian, Judeo Arabic, and Judeo Georgian. And the point of this particular activity is that students will see the translations. They're translated, but then they're also translated into English. And you can see the similarities and differences in the 13 things of who knows 1. And the students are supposed to get an understanding, not just of how similar Jewish communities are around the world, that they all have this song. Not all, but most of them have this song translated into a local language. But then they all have some Hebrew words that they use within it. And there are slight differences in the songs showing how these things change as they spread from community to community. And also they. They get a sense. Wow, I didn't realize that Jews spoke all these languages. I didn't know there were Jews in Georgia. What even is Bukharian? And there's Judeo Arabic, but not just Judeo Arabic. There's Syrian. And not just Syrian. There's Halabi Syrian. So the students get a sense of the diversity and the unity of the Jewish world through my module.
- [17:24]
Geraldine Godefin
I must say, I love all the classes. I thought the first class on languages was great. And one source that really stuck with me from your module is the promotional video for the Yeshiva Shari Torah, where they speak as you write in the module, Orthodox, Jewish, American, English. And I would want for you to unpack what this means. And I also want to say that YouTube was definitely not getting it right because the subtitles were completely off. So clearly it's its own distinct language. So just as an example of what you just described, I wonder if you could just, like, zoom in on this particular type of dialect. I don't know if that's how you would call it, but yeah, tell us more.
- [18:12]
Sarah Bunin Benor
Yes, well, this was. This took a lot of work because you're right, YouTube doesn't do. YouTube's auto captioning does a terrible job with Jewish English because it is not English. It is a variety of English, a dialect of English that is not mutually intelligible sometimes with regular American English. And this is actually something that the Jewish Language Project is working on because we have a dictionary called the Jewish English Lexicon, where we collected, and we are still collecting words that Jews use when they're speaking English that are distinct. And in Orthodox communities, there are many, many of those words. So Mostly from Hebrew and Yiddish, but some from Aramaic and in non Ashkenazi communities from other languages as well. But the video that you're referring to is a promotional video for Yeshiva that is so hard to understand that I've used it in my teaching for several years, but I had never actually transcribed it. And so I actually asked a, a student, a research assistant of mine, an undergraduate who had, who went to a Jewish day school and has a strong Jewish educational background. I asked her to transcribe it and she could transcribe some of it, but she had a lot of trouble with it, showing that this is not just Jewish English, this is really Orthodox English because she wasn't Orthodox. And so then I finished the transcription and I put links to the entries in the Jewish English lexicon for each of the Hebrew, Yiddish and Aramaic words. Words here. I'll just give you a little example. I'm looking at the transcript now and one of the people in the video says, it's my, it's my. Sorry, I'll start over again there. It's my utmost tefila to hakodesh baruch hu that he gives the Rosh Yeshiva Rav Mordechai Walmart Shlita, the continued Qaichis, the continued Siata Deshmayah he's had until now to continue being Marbit's Torah and a building Talmud Chachamim for the future. So that sentence, when I play this video for students in my classes and I teach a lot of students who aren't Jewish and very few students who are Orthodox. And when I at usc, at the University of Southern California and even in my classes at Hebrew Union College, Reform rabbis in training, hardly anyone can understand the full video. And I'll say, how many of you understood that? And nobody. Well, some people will raise their hand and say, I understood a little bit. And, but, but, and so then we talk about is this English and what makes a language distinct and how do you differentiate between languages and dialects?
- [21:04]
Geraldine Godefin
That's fantastic.
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Sasha Goldstein Saba
And I think what's like so great about this example is that it's not something that if you're not really a specialist on Jewish languages or it's something you've thought about that you wouldn't been able to find. And so Sarah put this in her module. And then also if you go to the actual page of the module and you see the source and your students can watch the video, there are also wonderful discussion questions in class. And in this case it's really even like a classroom activity.
- [21:34]
Sarah Bunin Benor
Right?
- [21:34]
Sasha Goldstein Saba
Because so what Sarah says in the discussion questions is watch the video without the transcript. Do you understand what the speakers are saying? Do you think Orthodox Jewish English is a separate language from general American English? So I think like this is the perfect example of pedagogy online, where we've put something online, we've paired a primary source with a scholar's interpretation of why it's significant, and then you've also provided the material about how to use it in the classroom. Chronic migraine 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more, can make me feel like a
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Geraldine Godefin
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Sasha Goldstein Saba
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Geraldine Godefin
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Sasha Goldstein Saba
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Geraldine Godefin
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- [23:01]
Sarah Bunin Benor
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Geraldine Godefin
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Sasha Goldstein Saba
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Geraldine Godefin
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- [23:59]
Sasha Goldstein Saba
Wow.
- [24:00]
Geraldine Godefin
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- [24:01]
Sarah Bunin Benor
That's right.
- [24:03]
Geraldine Godefin
Go ahead, Sarah.
- [24:04]
Sasha Goldstein Saba
Sorry.
- [24:05]
Sarah Bunin Benor
That's right. And I do that in my other classes as well. In the food module, there's a lesson about Jewish foods around the world that is also a classroom activity. And what I did was I took things that I had been doing in my classroom and I formalized them, because when you do them in the classroom, you don't necessarily document everything that you do. But I did hear. And so I. In my food module, I used one article from the Posen Library that was already there about what is Jewish food. And I also used a map that I had created for the Jewish Language project about Shabbat stew around the world. And some people think of this as hamin, some people think of it as cholent, but there are several other words for it, like tabit and adafina and orissa. And so there's just. It's just a visual of a map with the words for that Shabbat stew that Jews use around the world. And then another thing I used was tablet has a the Hundred Most Jewish Foods article or collection. And I then put this collection on, on the website. Well, part of it, because it's. It's very long. But I selected several of them. I think 50 of them. And then I have an activity about talking about what makes these foods distinctively Jewish and what are the roles of religious observance, immigrant cultures, and Israel in making people think that these foods are distinctively Jewish.
- [25:51]
Geraldine Godefin
That's.
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Sarah Bunin Benor
That's remarkable.
- [25:52]
Geraldine Godefin
And I, I did notice that there were definitely points of connection between your module and Karen's module, because Karen is very interested in food as well. And the kind of cultural transmission inherent in food making and food sharing. And food is also a great way to talk about women because historically, women have been left out of historical narratives. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how to integrate the perspectives of women or gender analysis through the kind of sources that you've displayed in the module. And I would love, Sasha, also your thoughts on this based on the other modules that you've edited as part of the fellowship.
- [26:35]
Sarah Bunin Benor
Yeah, well, I do talk about women a bit in my module, but I think you could have a whole other module focusing on gender dynamics using cultural sources. But yeah, I think it's really important to look at culture like language, names, food and music, and that that really brings in sources from people who. Not just Women, but also people who aren't scholars and, and didn't write the, the letters that are used in some other historical sources and, and some other historical modules. But by looking at the music and the names that Jews have used around the world and the, the language and the food, I mean you, you do get at some of these less heard voices.
- [27:35]
Geraldine Godefin
Yeah.
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Sasha Goldstein Saba
So I think one of the things, well, the library in general is very, very mindful to one, be representative of the larger Jewish experience. So that means geographic diversity, covering as many languages as possible that Jews have spoken, but also being mindful of gender, of being mindful of political affiliation, approaches to actual practice of Judaism. And I think that women's voices is always a challenge in the contemporary period. It's much easier to find parody for the older periods. There's definitely been an attention to this. And what was great with Karen Skanazi's module, which was Sephardic Journeys, Literature, Memory and Jewish culture. And is she really focused actually on women's voices? So her first classes, Sephardic women and the 19th century struggle for equality, but the last class was on food. And this was a really wonderful way to kind of resurrect women's voices because we do have examples of their recipes. And so she kind of drew on that as recipes of a form of transmission and an expression of Jewish culture, especially if you're tracing Jewish migratory patterns. And I think kind of the convergence between different modules is something that we really look for. And so depending on what someone's teaching, perhaps they would take one of the courses that Sarah put together and one of the courses that Karen put together and then help that be part of a wider curriculum. And so it's definitely built that like each individual module has a general overview, it has four classes and each class has from five to eight primary sources linked to it. But there are certainly connections between them. And as we build up and add modules every year, the hope is that this can kind of be a one stop shop in some ways to build your modules. And also that people have different approaches to their teaching so that you can actually have a really holistic way that you teach in the classroom, even if you're not a specialist in that particular field. So I love the idea of taking the Sarah's module on food and Karen's, well, class on food and Karen's class on food and then putting that together and looking at different approaches to Jewish food and how we, how we explore Jewish culture through food, for example. And I would pair that also talking about Karen's module by saying that she did a class called Becoming Cultural Expression and Identity through Art and Story. So. So her approach was very cultural in this regard. But then Jeff Levine did another module on Jews of the Middle east and North Africa Empire, Colonialism and Identity. And his module, he also talks about Mizrahi identity, but really from a political perspective. So in that case, if you're looking at Mizrahi identity, you could then have one class which focuses on the cultural aspect and another one that's on the political aspect. And so we're hoping that people mix and match as well.
- [30:39]
Geraldine Godefin
So I love that idea. As far as I know, right now on the Posen Library, there's no way to really make direct connection across modules. Right. Am I wrong? So are you developing or thinking about how to do this? So that instructors, like, that idea that you suggested is fantastic. Some way for instructors to really take all those modules together and kind of crisscross them. So how are you thinking about actually translating this into, like, how would you build this into the platform that the Prozen Library currently has at its disposal?
- [31:16]
Sasha Goldstein Saba
So that's a really good question. The first thing I'll say is that we're always improving the website, also the technical side in terms of search, which is very, very quickly evolving, and how to make it more intuitive, because navigating a big database isn't always easy for the modules. This year with the new cohort of fellows, we've actually asked them to write about how their modules connect to other modules. And so I think there'll be a small update eventually on the website which mentions this. So that will kind of be the first way to do it. And for example, if you look at Sarah's module under, it says additional resources. Right. And so there. There are other sources which were connected to her different classes, and then there was a bibliography of other things you can use. But there we might add ways you might want to make connections. So that's the first step. And then in a later stage, but we're really not there yet, you might be able to kind of select different classes and make your own little course syllabus from all of the module material online. Um, but I would also say that both former fellows like yourselves, but also people using it, were always happy to have feedback and suggestions because the goal is really just that people use the platform.
- [32:37]
Sarah Bunin Benor
Yeah, it's interesting that. It's interesting that Karen and I actually used sources from the same book, different sections of the memoir by Samantha Ellis called Always Carry Salt. And so it's in her class on literature and it's in my class on language.
- [33:01]
Geraldine Godefin
Yeah, well, and I think that's where, Sasha, to go back to your earlier point, there is real value in valuing, I mean, in really putting forth the expertise of individual scholars and their own unique perspectives. Because as you said, Sarah, people can use. You can draw from the same source, but their insights will be different or they will select different passages. And I think that's really the strength of this initiative, that every scholar comes with their own unique set of perspectives and understandings based on all kinds of factors that shape their scholarship and their private life. And I think that's really the value of creating those really carefully curated modules.
- [33:46]
Sarah Bunin Benor
Yeah. And Geraldine, I think I remember in the meetings we had in preparing these modules, you and Lila Corwin Berman had a lot in common in the modules that you were working on. So maybe you could say a little bit about that.
- [34:00]
Geraldine Godefin
Oh, that's a great. Okay, that's a great question. So Lila and I were similar, are similarly interested in the question of citizenship in the modern era. And actually I recently conducted an interview with Lila on her book for the New Books Network, which you should check out. You will know everything about her recently published work on this topic. And we, I guess, approached the topic from different angles because her primary focus was on the United States. And I wanted to look at the question of citizenship in the modern era, especially as it related to Jewish experiences outside of the United States. So in many ways, our modules really complement each other. And it really having us work kind of alongside each other on this topics really made me realize the need to have both global perspectives on citizenship as well as on really any other question, as well as really in depth case studies. Because I found that Lila's module allows you to really understand how the question of citizenship has played out in her case in the United States over multiple centuries, and to really see how the Jewish case has intersected with the case of other minority groups in the United States. And really, in order to focus that deeply into this kind of question, you need to have the space to focus on one national or other local case. And so my approach was quite different because I didn't do this. I covered a lot of other countries. And the strength, I would say, I mean, Sasha, tell me what you think, because you've edited this carefully, but I would say say that the strength of my module is really the transnational and the comparative approach. And that's where really you need those modules, because you need those two approaches. And then as you said, if you're an instructor looking at a particular topic. You can use both the citizenship on kind of global history of Jews in the modern era and Lalai's module on the United States. Having those two perspectives really allow you to kind of play with the scale of analysis in a way that I think is particularly valuable for scholars. Got a Sam's Cafe pizza. Order up. You know the best part about this spicy Italian sausage?
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- [37:44]
Sasha Goldstein Saba
Me slow when network is busy. See terms and in the classroom, I mean, I think that your module paired with Lila's module could really be a robust basis for a course on Jews and citizenship, right? Especially because a lot of the teaching in Jewish studies that happens outside Israel happens in North America. In Europe it's much smaller. So you would think that if there was a class on Jews and citizenship in North America, you would want to spend time on kind of these transnational ideas, these questions of modernity which you cover really, really well in your module and then pivot towards Lila's module, which is really a case study on the American context and as you said, like. But I think it's also interesting to see this difference in approach and then understand how they work together as well. The other thing I'll say, you know, about these modules, which I think you all remember, is that we have both the Posen in House editors, myself and my co editor, Noam Pianco, who's at the University of Washington. And, and we read them both from a perspective of a little bit of peer review is always a good thing, but really with an eye towards pedagogy. And then we also have undergraduates read them for their perspective. And so these are undergraduates who have already taken some courses in Jewish studies. But the goal is really to say to the students, like, can you follow this? If you were in a course, would you be able to understand what was going on? And that motivated a lot of the feedback we gave to the fellows as well. Because sometimes for us, we're so in it, we think, oh, this is amazing. And then the students would say, oh, well, this is a little bit confusing. Right. So we, I think it's this combination of academic rigor, but really with this eye towards. This should be usable even if you're not a specialist in the field. Right. So, Sarah, if you need to end up teaching a course on Jewish citizenship, we hope you'll come to the, you'll come to the, the Posen Library website to do that.
- [39:48]
Sarah Bunin Benor
That would be the first place I would start in creating my syllabus.
- [39:52]
Geraldine Godefin
Yeah.
- [39:52]
Sarah Bunin Benor
And, and also it's good that we all are teaching and can try out our, our modules. I tried out several of the lessons that I included and materials, and it was actually really helpful because I had hadn't previously used Kol Nidre in the classroom for teaching about Yom Kippur and for teaching about Jewish music, but I ended up using it for those two classes. One was in my Intro to Judaism class, and the other one was in a class on Jewish language in the 21st century. Or maybe it was my Jewish names class, I forget, but I used that activity that I included in my module. So it's basically recordings of the Kol Nidre prayer, or Kal Nidre, as it's called in some communities in Ashkenazi American, Syrian American, and a symphonic version. And the students, I then paired those with related musical forms. So the Syrian one is paired with a Syrian Muslim prayer video, and then the Ashkenazi one is paired with a church concert that has a similar orchestral style with organ and choir. And then the students can listen to those and say, oh, wow. Jews around the world have had different musical styles, but it's also useful in teaching about Yom Kippur around the world because so much of what we teach is based on what we know. And having more exposure to forms of culture around the world helps us to Diversify our teaching.
- [41:52]
Sasha Goldstein Saba
And I think you mentioned this before, but I'm coming back to it, is this idea of when we took the anthology and went from print to online, the big thing it opened up was this available was this possibility to integrate the audio and the visual. And I think when Sarah contacted Posen, she was, like, a little bit too early because we just weren't there yet with the platform, although it was very generative for your own work. And. And so what this actually, the fellowship actually helps us do is to purposefully add videos. Right? Because everything that's on the platform is curated. And so I think that, like, that yeshiva video is a perfect example or different variations in Jewish music. If there's an introductory text, if there are some classroom discussion prompts, it just makes it much more worthwhile. And it also avoids you having to scour the Internet for some visual for your teaching last minute, which I think we've all had to do. But I want to thank you, Geraldine, because you used your module for some teaching recently, and it was online teaching, so I was curious a little bit about how that was as well. So my.
- [43:03]
Geraldine Godefin
My module doesn't have videos, but you're inspiring, Sarah. And when I. When I. I used to teach in a physical classroom where I used. Where I used a lot of. Of. Of videos, and it just completely changes, I think the ways that students relate to the materials, I really see great, great value in. But to go back to your question, Sasha, I'm currently an online instructor for different institutes in Jewish studies. And I found that people just love primary sources. So the audience for those classes that I'm teaching are mainly laypeople who are not scholars, who are usually retirees who have both time and interest in those topics. But not necessarily, not necessarily prior knowledge. And the consistent feedback I've gotten from the people who take my classes is that the emphasis on primary sources and the close reading of primary sources that we do in the classroom really allow us to understand history in a totally different way than in context where there's less emphasis on primary sources. And the reason I'm saying this is I think that is really the great value of the Posen Library, because whatever the genre or the format of the source that we're looking at, the ability to access people's voices from the past gives really texture to our understanding of history in a way that I think has no equivalent. And I'm really seeing this. And I thought that teaching online can be a little challenging because you don't connect the people in the classroom exactly in the same way. You don't have that kind of human. Well, I thought I wouldn't have that human connection that I have usually when I share a physical space with people. But I found that actually the primary sources, even when taught online, allowed me to really engage students in a way that allowed us to actually connect, especially at one class. I taught over the course of 10 sessions, 10 weeks. And by the end of it, I felt like we. It's as if we had actually been in the. In the physical classroom together. And I really created the sources and the discussions we were able to have around those sources for really allowing us to build that human connection.
- [45:28]
Sarah Bunin Benor
I also, once in my class, I taught an asynchronous session. Most of my class sessions for that class, it was a rabbinical student class about Jewish languages. And most of the sessions were synchronous online. But this session was asynchronous, meaning the students do it at their leisure. And I actually used almost all sources from the Posen Library beyond my module. Some of them were in my module, but most of them were not. And I just had the students click on the links in the Posen Library and then answer questions about the. The sources. It was. It was about the history of Hebrew and Hebraism.
- [46:17]
Geraldine Godefin
That's great. I actually want to step back because the three of us are researchers and educators, and we're approaching those modules really, from the perspective of educators. So I'd love to step back and reflect on what it's like to teach Jewish studies in this particular moment that we're in. I would love to hear about the challenges that you're facing as educators. I would love to hear about perhaps a myth that you would want to dispel about Jews and Jewish cultures and linking this back to the Posen Library. How can the Posen Library really help instructors who are facing such challenges? And how can really, this amazing collection of primary sources and the initiatives around the modules really help dispel the kind of myth or preconceived ideas that. That you have seen expressed in your classroom or in other places about Jewish life and culture?
- [47:13]
Sarah Bunin Benor
Well, I teach undergrads at usc, which has a pretty diverse Jewish student body. And it wasn't always like that. You know, most of the students there were Ashkenazi. And now I'm seeing a lot of students whose ancestry is from Iran and from Morocco and other parts of the Middle east and North Africa. And so I. I'm. I'm using my students as a way in, like in my intro to Judaism class, for example, when we talk about any particular ritual or holiday or life cycle event, I have the students talk about their own experiences with those things. But first, for institutions where that isn't the case, you really need materials that demonstrate that diversity. So the myth that I am dispelling in my classrooms and that I think I see this on evaluations, when the students say, I didn't know that Jews were so diverse. I didn't know that there were Jews all around the world. You know, especially if they're coming from one particular perspective, whether it's Ashkenazi or Persian or whatever. By learning about all the different, not all, but most of the other different Jewish communities around the world, they gain a much richer understanding of Judaism and the Jewish people. And I think this is really important, especially for the non Jewish students who have preconceived notions about what Jews are and where they come from. I mean, especially in this day and age when people think, when a lot of non Jews think about Jews as all coming from Poland, it's really important to represent the diversity of the Jewish people in our teaching.
- [49:08]
Sasha Goldstein Saba
So I think, similarly, I teach in a classroom where maybe I'll have one Jewish student, Max. So it's very, very different. And my students come in with no knowledge, but also because of the current political moment, they're very skeptical of anything they're going to hear, and they're concerned that it's going to be some type of political propaganda in one direction or another. And that's where teaching with primary sources is really, really helpful. Because then you can show the students, you can say, look, you can read about how Jews thought about their place in the world in Baghdad in 1941, in Poland in 1910, in Morocco in 1870. And you can really see this diversity. And I think when you teach in a diverse classroom, because my students come primarily from Europe, but of heritage from all over the world, when they see this diversity, I think they connect to diverse Jewish experience experiences in a much more authentic way. But that's also grounded in scholarship. And also I think in this day of AI, in all honesty, you really need pedagogical tools and platforms with full citation, right? Because it's very tempting to find things on the Internet quickly that work for your teaching. But the students are savvy and they should be. And you should be able to tell them where things come from and be able to empower them to go further in what interests them. And so I think that at this moment in time, the Posen Library is a really really important pedagogical resource. I also think it has the advantage of being open access, frankly, because again, I teach at a large public institution in the Netherlands. We're very mindful of the cost of buying books for students. And so we really try to actually assign articles which are accessible through the university library or textbooks which are also digitally accessible. But primary sources are a little bit more complicated. And so more and more as I develop my syllabi, I'm just trying to assign primary sources. And again, I think the advantage of these sources, thinking about how they translate into the classroom, is the length of in that if you have A source that's 500 words or 1500 words, sometimes you can even do this in the classroom, like watching the video. It's not, you know, a 30 page article that you're going to assign to students. I still hope that they read those articles, but I think more and more it's a challenge to get students to read outside the classroom and they need to read and they need to engage with the material. So my hope is that, you know, these modules and I, and I think it's already happening little by little will really, you know, highlight the way we can do some deep reading in the classroom, even with first year students.
- [52:03]
Geraldine Godefin
I actually think this is a great place to end. Unless, Sasha, you feel like there are topics we haven't covered. Feel free to weigh in. But usually on the podcast we end the conversation by asking about the scholars that we're interviewing, their future projects and directions for research. So I actually want to add asked that question for the Posen Library. So what do you see as important future directions for the Posen Library? So Sasha, from your perspective as a senior scholar for pedagogy and Sarah, as a contributor to the Posen Library.
- [52:37]
Sasha Goldstein Saba
So looking forward this year, we have our next round of fellows. You can go online, you can read about them, and in the late autumn, early winter, definitely take a look out for five new modules which will be online and in general beyond the modules because it takes time to build up a full library of modules that can really cover everything in Jewish studies. And we want to do this well. And that takes time. We're looking at other ways to help scholars as they think about their teaching, use the platform and use the sources. And so what I would say to people is if you're one, if you have ideas, two, if you need some help finding sources, please reach out to us. There's contact material on the website and we have an amazing team of editors. They all have PhDs in Jewish studies. And we really want to help you elevate your teaching and engage with primary sources.
- [53:37]
Sarah Bunin Benor
Well, that's perfect, because I was going to suggest some kind of concierge. Concierge service. Because there's so much material on the Cozen library that if you don't know what's on there, it's hard to find everything that you want. I mean, it's not really hard because you just search for it and there's a really good search function. But I think. And also the modules that we created have, if you like this, you might also be interested in this. And so that's really useful. But I do think having that contact information is really useful for anyone who wants to use this for their teaching, but also for their research. I mean, you know, when we do our research, we obviously use academic sources, but we also maybe sometimes, if it's a new topic, we'll start with something basic. And this is a really good introduction. Like, if I want to start doing research on Jewish citizenship, I'm going to look at Geraldine and Lila's modules as a way to start because not only do they have the general information about the topic, but also they have a bibliography and other sources. And I've actually already cited my own module because I had never written about Jewish culture in this unified way before. You know, I had written about Jewish languages and Jewish names. But doing this module, because we had to create the introductory page really made me think about it in a more holistic way, bringing together the language, the names, the music, and the food. And so I've already cited that in another article to talk about how what I was talking about regarding names or language or whatever was a broader cultural phenomenon.
- [55:32]
Geraldine Godefin
That's fantastic.
- [55:33]
Sasha Goldstein Saba
So I would say it's not called a concierge service, but may the worst of our problems be that so many people are contacting us that we need to work out a new way to deal with the queries. So I would definitely encourage people, if they have questions about the platform, if they want to integrate into their teaching, we're really happy to assist them with that. And. And I think, as you said, Sarah, like, it is useful if you kind of want to dip your toe into a subject that you know less about. I mean, both of you spent so much time writing these really thoughtful and excessive introductions to your fields. And I do think they're very useful for researchers who are beginning to think about new new directions with their research or thinking about being a little bit comparative.
- [56:18]
Geraldine Godefin
Sarah and Sasha, thank you so much for sharing your insights and for the remarkable work you're doing through the Posen Library. And thank you to our listeners for joining us on the New Books Network today.
- [56:28]
Sarah Bunin Benor
Thank you. Bye everyone.
- [56:30]
Sasha Goldstein Saba
Thank you. Geraldine. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of the New Books Network.
- [56:36]
Sarah Bunin Benor
We are an academic podcast network with
- [56:39]
Sasha Goldstein Saba
the mission of public education. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend and rate us on your preferred podcast platform. You can browse all of our episodes on our website, new booksnetwork.com Connect with us on Instagram and BlueSky with the handle ebooksnetwork, and subscribe to our weekly
- [56:56]
Sarah Bunin Benor
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