22 MAR 2021 · Prof. Havi Dreifuss, a historian of the Holocaust at Tel-Aviv University, affiliated with Yad Vashem, discusses the accessibility of information and knowledge in her podcast. She highlights the pros of digital research, the diversity and an amount of quality online material that one can access with the click of the button on their computer. She argues whether the digital reality is sufficient enough for the academia, although it gives a lot of opportunities to teach students and meet excellent scholars from the parts of the world she would never expected. If you want to learn more about the issue of information accessibility and its credibility in the digital research era and to learn about the “personality” of the stationary archive, listen to Prof. Havi Dreifuss’ podcast! Havi Dreifuss, is professor of Jewish history and head of the Institute for the History of Polish Jewry and Israel-Poland Relations at Tel Aviv University, as well as director of the Center for Research on the Holocaust in Poland at the International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem. Her research deals with various aspects of everyday life during the Holocaust, including the relationship between Jews and Poles, religious life in light of the Holocaust, and Jewish existence in the face of extermination. Her latest book, The Warsaw Ghetto - The End (April 1942 - June 1943) won the Shazar Prize for the Study of Jewish History, and will be published in English.

17 FEB 2021 · Professor Marcin Wodziński discusses the challenges that await Jewish studies during the post-pandemic period. He studies condition and the future of Jewish studies through the prism of motivation of Jewish studies students, their scientific achievement ratio, and academic interests of young researchers who work on their doctoral dissertations. The professor also identifies effective solutions for the development of Jewish studies in Poland.

17 DEC 2020 · Dr hab. Katarzyna Person, an expert on Holocaust and its aftermath on post-war history of Europe. Affiliated with Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute. In her lecture, she discusses the problem of infectious diseases that the prisoners of the Warsaw Ghetto faced. Her podcast is intended to expose unique resources of the underground Warsaw Ghetto archive, known as the Ringelblum Archive.

9 DEC 2020 · Prof. Samuel D. Kassow, a historian affiliated with the Trinity College (Hartford, Connecticut), a renowned expert on the history of Jews in 20th century and the author of many works devoted to the Ringelblum’s Archive. In his podcast, he speaks about the problems of infectious diseases in the Warsaw Ghetto. Kassow reaches out to the listeners in an engaging way, by describing the drama of the ghetto residents and epidemiological hazards created by living conditions in closed-off Jewish district.

19 NOV 2020 · Professor Jeffrey Shandler dedicates his lecture to Joseph Opatoshu’s short story on the black wedding ceremony. Opatoshu’s short novels became genuine chronicles of European Jewry and description of Jewish customs associated with death in the wake of epidemics. Professor Shandler takes the Opatoshu’s plague weddings as a benchmark to Jewish reactions to human tragedy caused by cholera epidemics. The lecturer efficiently combines the problem of literary descriptions of beliefs and rituals with social divisions and problems of stratification among East European Jews. Jeffrey Shandler is Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University. His translations from Yiddish include Yankev Glatshteyn’s Emil and Karl, the first Holocaust novel for young readers. His next book, Yiddish: Biography of a Language, has been published this fall.

12 OCT 2020 · Professor Natan Meir continues the fourth podcasts panel with his lecture on fighting epidemics in Poland in the modern period. Professor Meir explains whether the plague weddings were the last resort for Eastern European Jewry, why it was common for the marginalized minority to choose this ritual during hard times and consider it as an effective remedy for epidemics. Natan Meir is a professor in Judaic Studies at Portland State University. His latest book, published in 2020 - “Stepchildren of the Shtetl: The Destitute, Disabled, and Mad of Jewish Eastern Europe, 1800-1939” perfectly describes his academic research areas which are Eastern European Jewry, modern Jewish history and diminished Jewish minority’ account.

25 SEP 2020 · Professor Shaul Stampfer opens the fourth podcast panel on History of Jewish responses to epidemics in the modern period. To explain the preconditions of the epidemics in modern times, professor Stampfer takes us on a journey through time and compares living conditions of a contemporary human to its hunter-gatherer ancestor. Professor Stampfer shares in-depth analysis of Jewish responses to epidemics by presenting the confrontation of social classes; the political elite and doctors with religious minorities and the poor. Shaul Stampfer is Professor emeritus at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a scholar of East European Jewry specializing in the history of Lithuanian yeshivas and Jewish demographics.

2 SEP 2020 · The podcast of professor François Guesnet takes the listener into the realm of 19th century Hrubieszów. He presents the history of Jewish society in the course of 19th century, immediately after the outbreak of cholera. In his lecture, professor Guesnet addresses the impact of cholera epidemics on Jewish community in 19th century Poland and its relationship with the state authorities during the plague. By listening to his podcast, one can find out how the magical thinking influenced Jewish folk medicine and what it had to do with Jewish burial society. François Guesnet works at the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the University College London and specializes in the history of Jews of the last two centuries. He is an author of many research papers on the history of Eastern European Jewry.

19 AUG 2020 · The next panel of our podcast series is dedicated to epidemics in Jewish folk medicine and its starts with the lecture of dr Marek Tuszewicki. He delves into the world of magic with regard to Jewish folklore and folk medicine. Dr Tuszewicki will tell us how the people once tried to outsmart the epidemics of cholera by carrying the deceased through the window and what power the magic amulets had and what made them special. Dr Marek Tuszewicki is affiliated with the Institute of Jewish Studies of the Jagiellonian University. His research interests focus among others on Jewish folk culture, Jewish literature and Yiddish language.

18 AUG 2020 · Prof. Jeremy Brown dedicates his lecture to the pandemic in the Talmud, thus ending the second thematic block of our podcast series. What were the fundamental reactions to the pandemic in the past? Why should people keep their feet inside their houses when the epidemic strikes? To these and many other questions one can find answers in the podcast. Jeremy Brown is associate professor of emergency medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington DC and the director of the Office of Emergency Care Research at the National Institutes of Health. Not only does he have a successful career path in the field of medicine but also he stands out among other scholars with his interest in judaic studies and talmudology. He is the author of “Influenza: The 100-year Hunt to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History”. His research interests focus on explaining the Jewish reception of modern-day diseases and their interpretation in the Talmud.