Israeli Politics and Palestinian Politics: Internal Pressures and the Prospects for Peace
A conversation with Abraham Diskin, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Political Science at Hebrew University and Rex Brynen, Ph.D., Professor of Political Science at McGill University (co-sponsored with the Case Center for Public Policy)
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
7:30?9:00 p.m.
Ford Auditorium, Allen Medical Library
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Purim and Passover: History, Myth, Theology and Art in the Jewish Spring Festivals
Public lecture by Ori Z. Soltes
Goldman Professorial Lecturer in Theology and Fine Arts
Georgetown University
Thursday, March 30, 2006
4:00pm, Mather Memorial, Room 201, 11120 Bellflower Road, Cleveland (located on the corner of Ford and Bellflower, across from the Peter B. Lewis Building).
Sponsored by the Judaic Studies program.
Free and open to the public
Visitor Parking: Metered lot on the corner of Ford and Euclid and in the underground lot below Severance Hall (entrance on East Boulevard).
Ori Z. Soltes will compare and contrast the two key Spring holidays in Jewish tradition. He will address history, myth, theology and art in the narrative context of both festivals, the importance of each in shaping Judaism and Jewish identity, and the reflection of these issues in the rich visual traditions of the Haggadah and the Megillat Esther.
Ori Z. Soltes is Goldman Professorial Lecturer in Theology and Fine Arts at Georgetown University, as well as a frequent lecturer in the National and Resident Associate Programs of the Smithsonian Institution. He is also the Executive Director of the Committee for the Republic, whose mission is to generate public discourse regarding the dangers imposed on the American Republic by the current Imperial face it presents to the world. Professor Soltes is the former Director and Curator of the B'nai B'rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, where he curated over 80 exhibitions. He has taught and lectured in 23 other universities and museums throughout the country, on subjects ranging from the Arab-Israeli conflict to The Body in Ancient Art. As Director of the National Jewish Museum, he co-founded the Holocaust Art Restitution Project, of which he currently continues as chairman. Both before and since his years as a museum Director, he has guest-curated exhibitions across the United States and overseas.
Professor Soltes was educated in Classics and Philosophy at Haverford College, in Classics at Princeton University and The Johns Hopkins University and in Interdisciplinary Studies at Union University. He is the author of over 130 articles, exhibition catalogues, essays and books on a wide range of topics, and the writer, director and narrator of seven documentary videos, including a 26-part, 13-hour-long work on the definition of Jewish art, called Tradition and Transformation. His most recent books are Fixing the World: Jewish American Painters in the Twentieth Century (University Press of New England Press, 2002) and Our Sacred Signs: Art in the Christian, Jewish and Muslim Traditions, (Westview Press, 2005). Three current book projects include The Ashen Rainbow: Essays on the Arts and the Holocaust, (Bartleby Press, forthcoming, 2006); Untangling the Tangled Web: A Brief Guide to the Problematic of the Middle East (forthcoming, 2006); and Beyond Heaven and Earth: Mysticism in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim Traditions (forthcoming, 2006).
Mr. Soltes has varying degrees of working knowledge in some two dozen languages, and has lectured or taught throughout the United States, in various parts of the former Soviet Union, in Israel, Italy, France, Spain, Germany and Austria.
Soltes Resume
