Joshua begins at Bard this Fall, after spending the last nine years serving a congregation in Ashland, Oregon. He was ordained through the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 2006 and then in 2018, he received his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Pacific University. He is a Bard alum (1996), a Rabbis Without Borders fellow, and also serves as the Associate Rosh Yeshiva at the Center for Contemporary Mussar – where he teaches text, theology, and practice of Jewish approaches to mindfulness and service. Joshua is excited to be back at Bard with his wife, Vanessa, and their nine-year old daughter, Paloma – and to work as part of the Interfaith Chaplaincy.
Bevin Blaber
Visiting Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies
Affiliations: Interdisciplinary Study of Religions, Jewish Studies Email:[email protected] Office: Hopson 205
Bevin Blaber
Bevin Blaber is a scholar of philosophy of religions. Her work centers on continental philosophy, ethics, and modern Jewish thought and literature, with particular emphasis on post-Holocaust thought. In her first monograph, an interdisciplinary project combining philosophical, literary and historical analyses, she examines French philosopher and theorist Maurice Blanchot’s earliest work: articles published in right-wing French journals in the years preceding World War II. Her current work explores ways that conceptions of guilt and atonement are figured in instances of state or community-perpetrated atrocities, and the impact of these definitions on attempts, both legal and extra-juridical, to grapple with legacies of these events. She has previously taught at the University of Chicago and Grinnell College. BA, Williams College; AM, PhD, University of Chicago Divinity School. Also studied at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, where she was Visiting Dissertation Research Fellow. At Bard since 2022
Leon Botstein
President of the College; Leon Levy Professor in the Arts and Humanities
B.A., University of Chicago; M.A., Ph.D., Harvard University, Department of History. Lecturer, Department of History, Boston University (1969); special assistant to the president, Board of Education, City of New York (1969–70); president, Franconia College (1970–75). Editor, The Musical Quarterly (1992– ). Music director and conductor, American Symphony Orchestra (1992– ) and Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra/Israel Broadcast Authority (2003– ). Conductor, Hudson Valley Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra (1981–92). Coartistic director, Bard Music Festival (1990– ). Guest conductor, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Bern Symphony, Bochum Symphony Orchestra (Germany), Budapest Festival Orchestra, Düsseldorf Symphony, Georg Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra (Bucharest), Hudson Valley Philharmonic, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Madrid Opera, NDR Symphony Orchestra (Hamburg), New York City Opera, ORF Orchestra (Vienna), Philharmonia Orchestra (London), Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, Romanian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Philharmonic Orchestra, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Wroclaw Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. Recordings with the American Symphony Orchestra (Arabesque, Vanguard Classics/Omega, Koch/Schwann, New World Records, Telarc); BBC Symphony Orchestra (Chandos, Telarc); Hanover Radio Symphony Orchestra (Koch International Classics); London Philharmonic Orchestra (IMP Masters, Telarc); London Symphony Orchestra (Telarc, Carlton Classics); National Philharmonic of Lithuania (Arabesque), NDR Radio Philharmonic (Koch International); NDR Symphony Orchestra (New World Records); Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston (CRI); Royal Scottish National Orchestra (Arabesque). Recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts, Austrian Cross of Honor First Class, Centennial Medal from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Frederic E. Church Award for Arts and Sciences, National Arts Club Gold Medal. Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Trustee emeritus, Central European University (board chair, 2007–2022; board member, 1991–2022); board member, Open Society Institute, National Foundation for Jewish Culture. Member, National Advisory Committee for Yale–New Haven Teachers, National Council for Chamber Music America. Past chair, Association of Episcopal Colleges, Harper’s Magazine Foundation, New York Council for the Humanities. Articles in newspapers and journals including Christian Science Monitor, Chronicle of Higher Education, Gramophone, Harper’s, Musical Quarterly, New Republic,New York Times, 19th-Century Music, Partisan Review, Psychoanalytic Psychology, Salmagundi, Times Literary Supplement. Essays and chapters in a number of books about art, education, history, and music, including the Cambridge Companions to Music series and the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Contributor to volumes in the Bard Music Festival series on Bartók, Beethoven, Brahms, Copland, Debussy, Dvoˇrák, Elgar, Haydn, Ives, Janáˇcek, Liszt, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Prokofiev, Schoenberg, Schumann, Shostakovich, Strauss, and Tchaikovsky, published by Princeton University Press. Editor, The Compleat Brahms (W. W. Norton, 1999). Author, Jefferson’s Children: Education and the Promise of American Culture(Doubleday, 1997); Judentum und Modernität: Essays zur Rolle der Juden in der Deutschen und Österreichischen Kultur, 1848–1938 (Böhlau Verlag, 1991; Russian translation Belveder, 2003); The History of Listening: How Music Creates Meaning (forthcoming, Basic Books); Music and Modernism(forthcoming, Yale University Press). (1975– ) Leon Levy Professor in the Arts and Humanities
Josh Calvo
Visiting Instructor in Jewish Studies
Josh Calvo
Joshua Calvo’s research and teaching interests include Arabic and Hebrew language and literature, modern and classical; Sephardic and Arab Jewish history and culture; Ladino and Judeo-Arabic; the experimental novel; literary translation; and creative writing. In 2019–20 he held a fellowship position at the Center for Arabic Study Abroad, American University of Cairo. He is the author of “The Ruins,” in Youssef Rakha’s sultanseal.com, a repository of essays, fiction, poetry, translations, reviews, and photography (2019, with additional essays forthcoming). Publications also include translations of Seliman Menahem Mani’s “The Valley of Demons” (1884) in Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7, 1880-1918, forthcoming; four prose poems by Mahmoud Darwish for A Blade of Grass: New Palestinian Poetry (Smokestack Books, 2017). In addition to Hebrew and Arabic (near fluent), his languages include French, Spanish, Ladino, Ugaritic, Finnish (reading), and elementary Japanese, Quechua, and Hungarian.
Bruce Chilton
Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion; Executive Director, Institute of Advanced Theology, Bard College
B.A., Bard College; M.Div., General Theological Seminary, ordination to the diaconate and the priesthood; Ph.D., Cambridge University. Books includeAbraham’s Curse; Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography; God in Strength;Rabbi Paul: An Intellectual Biography; Judaic Approaches to the Gospels;Mary Magdalene: A Biography; Revelation; Trading Places; Jesus’ Prayer and Jesus’ Eucharist; Forging a Common Future; and Jesus’ Baptism and Jesus’ Healing. Editor in chief, Bulletin for Biblical Research; founding editor,Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Studying the Historical Jesusseries (E. J. Brill and Eerdman’s). Fellowships and awards: with Jacob Neusner, Choice magazine award, best academic book (1998); Evangelical Scholars Fellowship, A. Whitney Griswold Center (Yale University); Heinrich Hertz Stiftung, Theological Develop ment Fund of the Episcopal Church, National Conference of Christians and Jews. Executive Director, Institute of Advanced Theology, Bard College. (1987– )
Yuval Elmelech
Associate Professor of Sociology; Director, Social Policy Program; Research Associate, Levy Economics Institute
B.A., M.A., Tel Aviv University; Ph.D., Columbia University. Fellowships: Public Policy Consortium (2000), Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (2000), Paul Lazarsfeld Fellowship (1995–2000), all at Columbia University. Grants: National Science Foundation (1999); Seed Grant, Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, Columbia University (2001); Russell Sage Foundation (co-investigator, 2005). Author,Transmitting Inequality: Wealth and the American Family (Rowman and Littlefield, 2008). Contributor: Social Science and Medicine, Social Forces, Social Science Research, Sociological Inquiry, Megamot (Hebrew), Russian Jews on Three Continents, Global Aging and Challenges to Families. Research Associate, The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. (2001– )
Elizabeth Frank
Faculty, Center for Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture; Joseph E. Harry Professor of Modern Languages and Literature
B.A., M.A., Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley. Fellowships: Ford Foundation (1967–72); Temple University (1977); The Newberry Library (1977); American Council of Learned Societies (1977); National Endowment for the Humanities. Recipient, 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for Louise Bogan: A Portrait (1985). Author of the novel Cheat and Charmer (Random House, 2004) and numerous articles on literature, art, and literary and art criticism in New York Arts Journal, Art in America, Journal of Modern Literature, Twentieth-Century Literature, ARTnews, Bennington Review, The Nation, Salmagundi, New York Times Book Review, Partisan Review, others. Author, Jackson Pollock (1983), Esteban Vicente (1995).
Vanessa Grajwer Boettiger is an ordained rabbi with training in pastoral counseling, group work, and meditation and mindfulness practices for teachers and retreat leaders. Her interests also include somatic psychotherapy, trauma work, dream work, and yoga. She has served as a pastoral counselor, human design-oriented counselor, and chaplain at the VNA and Hospice in Bennington, Vermont. She is the recipient of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship recipient, awarded to 18 graduate students working within the North American Jewish community.
BA, Yale University; CPE, University of Pennsylvania Hospital; ordained, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. At Bard since 2021.
Cecile E. Kuznitz
Associate Professor of Jewish History and Coordinator of Jewish Studies
A.B., magna cum laude, Harvard University; M.A., Ph.D., Stanford University. Awarded fellowships from American Council of Learned Societies (1997–98); Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture (1999–2000); National Foundation for Jewish Culture (1999–2000); Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania (2002); Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies (2004); United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2007). Author of YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture: Scholarship for the Yiddish Nation (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Articles published in American Jewish History, TheYivo Encyclopedia of the Jews in Eastern Europe; S. Ansky at the Turn of the Century; The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies; Yiddish Language and Culture: Then and Now. Visiting assistant professor of Jewish history/Jewish studies, Georgetown University (2000–2003). (2003– )
David Nelson
Rabbi and Visiting Assistant Professor Emeritus of Religion
BA from Wesleyan University, Master' Degree and Rabbinic Ordination from Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, PhD from New York University. His rabbinic experience has included five years in a small congregation, fifteen years at CLAL, a think-tank and center for leadership education, five years in a community center, and three years as the primary writer and teacher for the Reform Movement's Israel organization. He has taught in a wide range of venues, and, following the 2005 publication of his Judaism, Physics and God: Searching for Sacred Metaphors in a Post-Einstein World, has focused increasingly on issues of science and religion.
Joel Perlmann
Levy Institute Research Professor; Senior Scholar, Levy Economics Institute; Director, Middle Eastern Studies Program
B.A., Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Ph.D., Harvard University. Research grants from NIMH, NEH, NSF, NIE, Spencer and Russell Sage Foundations, Princeton Institute for Advanced Study. Author of Ethnic Differences: Schooling and Social Structure among the Irish, Italians, Jews, and Blacks in an American City, 1880–1935 (winner of the Willard Waller Award, American Sociological Association); Woman's Work?: American Schoolteachers, 1650–1920 (with Robert Margo); Italians Then, Mexicans Now: Immi grant Origins and Second-Generation Progress, 1890–2000. Coeditor, Immigrants, Schooling, and Social Mobility: Does Culture Make a Difference? and The New Race Question: How the Census Counts Multiracial Individuals. Papers in numerous journals, including Journal of American History, William and Mary Quarterly, The Annals, Historical Methods, International Migration Review, The Public Interest. Senior Scholar, Levy Economics Institute (1994– ). (1994– )
Shai Secunda
Jacob Neusner Chair in the History and Theology of Judaism
Bachelors in Talmudic Literature, Ner Israel Rabbinical College; Masters in Liberal Arts, Johns Hopkins University; M.A and Ph.D, Yeshiva University (Iranian Studies at Harvard University). Has taught at Yale, where he served as a Blaustein Postdoctoral Fellow; and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he served as a Mandel Scholion Fellow and a Martin Buber Society Fellow. Publications include the monograph The Iranian Talmud: Reading the Bavli in its Sasanian Context (Philadelphia, 2013); Encounters by the Rivers of Babylon: Scholarly Conversations Between Jews, Iranians and Babylonians in Antiquity (ed., with Uri Gabbay; Tübingen, 2014); and articles in Association of Jewish Studies Review; Bulletin of the Asia Institute; Iranica Antiqua; Jewish Quarterly Review; Jewish Studies Quarterly; and Studia Iranica (with Domenico Agostini and Eva Kiesele). Languages include Hebrew, Aramaic, and Persian. He is a member of the Association of Jewish Studies and the International Society of Iranian Studies. At Bard since 2016.
Justus Rosenberg in Marseille in 1941. Photo courtesy Justus and Karin Rosenberg
In Memoriam
Justus Rosenberg, Professor Emeritus of Languages and Literature (1921–2021)
Justus Rosenberg, Professor Emeritus of Languages & Literature and Visiting Professor of Literature, died at home in Annandale on October 30, 2021, having celebrated his 100th birthday on January 23, 2021. Justus was a hero of the French Resistance who escorted well-known émigré writers and intellectuals, among them Heinrich Mann Franz Werfel and many others, through the treacherous Pyrenees to safety in Spain. For his service later in the war in aid of the U.S. Army, Justus received a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, and in 2017, the French ambassador to the United States decorated him as a Commandeur in the Légion d’Honneur, one of France’s highest distinctions. Justus arrived at Bard in 1962, where he taught European literature and many languages to generations of Bard students. In the spirit of the Jewish tradition in which he was raised, “May his memory be a blessing.”