Elias Canetti, Centennial Symposium

A program co-sponsored by Leo Baeck Institute, The Primo Levi Foundation, American Sephardic Federation and CUNY Graduate Center. Nobel-prize winning author and poet Elias Canetti was born in Bulgaria, educated in Switzerland and Germany, and suffused with the culture of his Turkish descendants as well as his Jewish forebears. His masterpieces, Auto-Fé and Crowds and Power are considered among the most original books of the 20^th century.

Participants include: Claudio Magris, University of Trieste, Prof. Lilian Weissberg, University of Pennsylvania, Prof. Gloria Ascher, Tufts University, Prof. Robert Elbaz, University of Haifa.

RSVP: CJH box office at (917) 606-8200
Admission $10.00 for LBI members, students, faculty; $20.00 for guests

Leo Baeck Institute and Elysium Between Two Continents present "A Crack in the Creation"

Leo Baeck Institute in cooperation with Elysium Between Two Continents, will present a program entitled “A Crack In the Creation”, a Musical Literary Collage presenting works by composers and writers who were declared “degenerate” by the Nazis and were subsequently forced to emigrate. Musical Director: Dan Franklin Smith; Directed by: Gregorij H. von Leitis.

RSVP: CJH box office at (917) 606-8200
Admission $10.00 for LBI members; $15.00 for guests

Tuesday, November 8, 2005, 7:00 pm

Leo Baeck Institute Annual Memorial Lecture by architect
Peter Eisenman

Architect Peter Eisenman will deliver the 49th Annual Leo Baeck  Lecture on "The  Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe", the new installation in the heart of Berlin.  Mr. Eisenman is the architect of this Memorial, dedicated to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. He will speak not only of the controversy and debate that preceded the project, but also of the remarkable will by the Germans to establish a very visible permanent memory for future generations.

RSVP: Norma Kirschen at (212) 744-6400 or nkirschen@lbi.cjh.org
Admission $5.00 for LBI members; $11.00 for guests

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Monday, November 21, 2005, Cocktails 6:00 pm Dinner 7:00 pm 

Leo Baeck Instititute 50^th Anniversary Gala Dinner at the Harmonie Club, New York City

Mr. Otto Schily, German Minister of the Interior, will receive the prestigious Leo Baeck Medal on the occasion of the Annual Leo Baeck Dinner, this year to celebrate the Institute's 50th anniversary. The medal will be awarded by Dr. Henry Kissinger, Former U.S. Secretary of State. 

A formal invitation will be sent out after the summer. 

For more information please contact Norma Kirschen at (212) 744-6400 or nkirschen@lbi.cjh.org

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Tuesday, December 6, 2005, 7:00 pm

Lecture and Book Signing with author Daniel Charles

Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber The Nobel Laureate Who Launched The Age of Chemical Warfare is the title of a brand new book by Daniel Charles. Mr. Charles will give a talk on this brilliant German-Jewish Nobel Prize-winner whose discoveries gained their greatest notariety in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Books will be available for sale and signing by the author.

RSVP: Norma Kirschen at (212) 744-6400 or nkirschen@lbi.cjh.org
Admission $5.00 for LBI members; $11.00 for guests

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Tuesday, December 13, 2005, 7:00 pm

Screening of "Fifty Years of Leo Baeck Institute" followed by discussion with filmmaker Robert Frye

Mr. Robert Frye, internationally known filmmaker and documentarian, will preside at a showing of the 30 minute video, “Fifty years of Leo Baeck Institute” which he produced and directed. This will be the first showing of the film, generously supported by the German Information Center in Washington D.C. Mr. Frye will be available for questions and commentary.

RSVP: Norma Kirschen at (212) 744-6400 or nkirschen@lbi.cjh.org
Admission $5.00 for LBI members; $11.00 for guests.

Spring 2005

Tuesday, January 11, 2005 7:30pm

Lecture
cosponsored by YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Leo Baeck Institute

Bryan Mark Rigg, author of "Rescued from the Reich: How one of Hitler's soldiers saved the Lubavitcher Rebbe"
(Yale University Press, 2004)

A German Jew in Hitler's Army named Ernst Bloch was evidently chosen by his military superiors and US intelligence officers to head a mission to rescue Rebbe Joseph Schneersohn, leader of the Lubavitcher Jews of Poland. This amazing true story of intrigue, drama, and morality forces us to rethink our understanding of the Holocaust, both in American and in European history.

How could the great spiritual leader be saved when thousands of other Jews in Nazi controlled Poland could not? The answer, Bryan Rigg suggests, is because there was a significant effort made on his behalf by some influential American Senators, administration officials and Justice Louis Brandeis as well as by Lubavitchers, at the same time the Gestapo was convinced that officer Bloch was fiercely loyal to Germany and was unaware of the flaws in its military system.

To quote Leo Baeck Institute Trustee, Professor, and author Henry Feingold, this book is "well-researched, unfailingly interesting, and lucidly written. It is remarkable that someone from outside chabad has been able to write an inside story of Lubavitch - and do it so well".

In Rescued From The Reich there are heroes, there are villains, there are the courageous and there are the cowards, but often they are all connected in the moral ambiguity of the moment. The incredible dangers of wartime Europe make this not only understandable, but even justifiable.

One must know the story as Mr. Rigg tells it to fully appreciate the complexity of German, Russian, American and Jewish relations in the midst of the Holocaust.

RSVP: CJH box office at (917) 606-8200
Admission free to LBI and YIVO Members with membership card
Guests $5.00

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Tuesday, February 1, 2005 7pm

Lecture
cosponsored by YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Leo Baeck Institute

Edith Kurzweil, author of "Nazi Laws and Jewish Lives: Letters from Vienna"
(Transaction Publishers; New Brunswick & London, 2004)

In this new volume, Edith Kurzweil turns her objective intellectual analysis to a very personal account of the correspondence between her mother and her grandmother, written between April 1940 and December 1941 when Edith's grandmother, Malvina Fischer, was in the process of being deported by the Nazis. The plight of the Viennese Jews is alluded to in the dramatic correspondence, where each piece of mail was opened and read by censors. Ms. Kurzweil is able to recognize the allusions and interpret the nuances that were necessitated by the climate of fear and terror, and the prospect of death.

The letters, as Edith Kurzweil writes, provide a missing link - the impact of specific anti-Jewish laws on people who were about to be deported. As the grip of the authorities continued to tighten, the letters reflect increasing panic before ceasing altogether.

Ms. Kurzweil, former editor of Partisan Review, is the author of many essays and several books on American and European culture, including The Freudians, a comparative perspective on the development of psychoanalysis in Austria, England, France, Germany and the United States.

RSVP: CJH box office at (917) 606-8200
Admission free to LBI and YIVO Members with membership card
Guests $5.00

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Thursday, March 17, 2005 6:30pm

Symposium
Presented by Leo Baeck Institute and Fordham University Center on Religion and Culture, in association with the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding

Understanding the Divide Between Judaism and Christianity: What Happened Centuries Ago? Why Does it Matter Now?

When and how and why did this division take place? What has been its impact over two millennia? In the twentyfirst century, we are still working out line of commonality and cleavage that some theologians trace back to the first century. By appreciating how our religions differed from the outset, we can remake the paradigm of Jewish-Christian relations today.

Panelists:

• Dr. Bruce D. Chilton, Professor of Religion
  Institute of Advanced Theology, Bard College
• Dr. Jacob Neusner, Research Professor of Theology
  Institute of Advanced Theology, Bard College
• Rev. Donald Senior, President, Catholic Theological Union

Moderator:

• Susannah Heschel, Chair, Jewish Studies Program, Dartmouth College

RSVP: CJH box office at (917) 606-8200
$10/$5 for students and seniors

 

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Tuesday, March 29, 2005 and Wednesday, March 30, 2005 7:30pm

Concert
Robin Hirsch: Mosaic, Fragment of Jewish Life

A one-man show “Kinderszenen: Scenes from a Childhood,” is the first of a seven part performance cycle adapted by scholar and writer Robin Hirsch from his memoir, Last Dance at the Hotel Kempinski (“one of the best books ever written on the long arm of the Holocaust”-Jewish Book News). With humor, insight, anger and understanding it re-creates fragments of a life, which was once whole but which was decimated, deracinated, and scattered across the earth.

"Kinderszenen" begins with the meeting of his parents at a costume ball in Berlin under the shadow of Hitler. It follows their dramatic escape to London just in time to be bombed by their former countrymen. It concludes with the hard-won celebration of their silver wedding anniversary on the island of Mallorca. In between are scenes from a complicated coming-of-age as the son of German Jews in postwar Britain, a very English education, and brief appearances by Her Majesty the Queen, His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, and Field Marshall Viscount Bernarnd Montgomery of El Alamein.

Robin Hirsch was born during the Blitz in Lond to German Jews who had fled Hitler. He is a former Oxford, Fulbright and English-Speaking Union Scholar and the recipient of numerous awards both for his writing and for his performances.

RSVP: CJH box office at (917) 606-8200
$15/$10 for students, seniors and Leo Baeck Institute members.

 

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Thursday, April 21, 2005, 7pm

Second Annual Joint Symposium of the Leo Baeck Institute and the German Historical Institute, Washington, DC

Rethinking Embourgoisement and the Jews of Germany

Simone Laessig:
How German Jewry turned Bourgeois: Religion, Culture, and Social Mobility in the Age of Emancipation

Till van Rahden:
Jews and the Ambivalences of Civil Society in Germany, 1800 to 1933

Simone Laessig teaches history at the University of Dresden and is currently a research fellow at the German Historical Institute, Washington, DC. She is the author of Juedische Wege ins Buergertum: Kulturelles Kapital und sozialer Aufstieg im 19. Jahrhundert (2004)

Till van Rahden teaches history at the University of Cologne. He is the author of Jews and Other Germans: Contesting Equality in Breslau, 1860 to 1925 (forthcoming 2006) and the co-editor of Juden - Buerger - Deutsche (2001). He serves on the board of the Leo Baeck Institute, London.

Admission is free to members; $5.00 to non-members or email her at nkirschen@lbi.cjh.org.
To RSVP for please call Mrs. Kirschen at 212-744-6400.
 

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Thursday, May 5, 2005 7pm

Film Screening and discussion with the filmmaker
in cooperation with Dr. Christoph Thun-Hohenstein of the Austrian Cultural Forum and Ambassador Michael Breisky, Consul General of Austria

Watermarks

"Hakoah Vienna" was a sports club founded in 1909 after a law was passed forbidding Jews to join Austrian sports clubs. The founders hoped to prove that Jews could succeed not only in intellecutal and artistic pursuits, but in athletic events as well.

In 1938, when the Nazis took over Austria, the club was closed, but the leaders were able to help most members find safe passage to other countries. The film alternates between contemporary scenes, including a reunion of the surviving members of the Olympic swim team, and footage of their triumphant achievements of long ago. The glory of being honored and the humiliation of being ostracized are both well-documented in this cinematic jewel.

"Watermarks" was shown in New York at the Jewish Film Festival at Lincoln Center prior to a limited engagement run at sold-out screenings in theatres across the country. Please join us for this special opportunity to see the film and meet with writer/director Yaron Zilberman. Mr. Zilberman will answer questions and describe how he came to the idea of making a movie about these long-forgotten but truly memorable women.

Director: Yaron Zilberman, 2004, France, Israel, U.S.
English, German & Hebrew, 80 minutes.

RSVP: CJH box office at (917) 606-8200
$10/$5 for LBI & YIVO members, students and seniors.

 

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Thursday, June 9, 2005, 7-9pm

Leo Baeck Institute and The Czech Center
are pleased to co-sponsor an evening with

Helen Epstein
Swimming against Stereotype: A Czech Water Polo Player, Officer and Jew

Born in Prague in 1947, Professor Epstein grew up in New York City and graduated from Hunter College High School, Hebrew University, and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She became a journalist when, while still an undergraduate, she found herself in the midst of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

For twelve years she taught at New York University, where she became the first tenured woman professor in the journalism department and for the next two decades freelanced for the Sunday New York Times and other national publications. Her profiles of cultural figures such as art historian Meyer Schapiro and musicians Leonard Bernstein and YoYo Ma have received various awards. She continues to teach writing as a guest at MFA writing programs and in Jewish Studies, Women's Studies and European Studies.

Drawing on cutting-edge scholarship as well as interviews with Central European Jewish athletes, Helen Epstein presents a sketch of Czech water polo champion Kurt Epstein (1904-1975) and his generation of Jewish sportsmen and women.

Helen Epstein is the author of five books of literary non-fiction including Children of the Holocaust and Where She Came From: A Daughter's Search for her Mother's History -a family memoir and social history of 200 years of Central European Jewish life. Those, and her biography Joe Papp: An American Life were cited as Notable Books of the Year by the New York Times.

Admission free to LBI Members with membership card. $5.00 to guests

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Sunday, June 12th , 2005, 1:30pm

The Cantors Concert
HAZZANUT
The Music of the Southern German Tradition

Featuring:

• Cantor Erik L.F. Contzius, Temple Israel, New Rochelle, NY
• Cantor Bruce Halev, Congregation Habonim, NYC
• David Shuler, Martha Hirsch, Accompanists
• Dr. Ralph M. Selig, Artistic Director
• Reflections by Fred Kirschner, grandson of composer Emanuel Kirschner

This Sunday afternoon concert of Jewish liturgical music in the southern German tradition resonates far beyond its geographical origin. The well-known melodies of Louis Lewandowski and Emanuel Kirschner have become part of the representative of synagogues throughout the world. The beautiful strains of Mah Tovu and Adon Olom connect us to each other and to our past, with a timelessness that only music can provide.

We are delighted that Cantors Erik Contzius and Bruce Halev will be the featured soloists in this special concert. Their many years of exposure to and familiarity with this music makes them truly the outstanding interpreters of this Hazzanut!

Fred Kirschner will offer some family reflections on his grandfather, whose legacy clearly lives on.

Tickets: CJH Box Office 917-606-8200
Admission: $10.00 LBI Members, $15.00 Non-Members

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Wednesday, June 29, 2005, 7pm

The American Council on Germany and the Leo Baeck Institute present
Lecture and Book Signing

Roger Cohen
Soldiers and Slaves: American POWs Trapped by the Nazi's Final Gamble

It is hard to imagine that 60 years after the end of World War II there are still stories that have not yet been fully told, but such is the case with Roger Cohen's Soldiers and Slaves. In February 1945, 350 American POWs captured earlier in the war were singled out by the Nazis because they were thought to be Jewish. Loaded onto cattle cars, they were transported to Berga, a concentration camp in Eastern Germany, where they were used as slave laborers to dig tunnels for an underground synthetic fuel factory.

Less than three months later, the war was over. By then, the American POWs had been through hell. More than 70 of them died, the others were starved and brutalized. For a variety of reasons, the Berga story was virtually forgotten.

Roger Cohens writes on foreign affairs for the New York Times, where he as worked since 1990, primarily as Paris correspondent, Bureau Chief in the Balkans and Berlin, and Foreign Editor. With the assistance of the late documentary filmmaker Charles Guggenheim, whose work helped lead Cohen to the Berga survivors, plus a handful of published accounts and records cataloged in the National Archives, Cohen was able to fashion a compelling story of a terrible episode.

Cohen's reporting includes photographic evidence as well as material on the Nazi officers reponsible for Berga, and first-hand accounts of survivors. It also uncovers the reasons the US government did not prosecute the Berga commandants and barely acknowledged the courage of the POWs. Cohen's dramatic account reveals incredible aspects of human endurance even as it suggests new depth of Nazi atrocities.

RSVP: CJH box office at (917) 606-8200