School of Foreign Service - Georgetown

Remembering the Good: Social Memory and the Resistance to Violence in Le Chambon-sur Lignon

Margaret Paxson, George Washington University

Co-sponsored by the French Department

Dr. Margaret Paxson, an anthropologist, is Visiting Scholar, Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, Elliott School and Senior Associate at the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Paxson studies the problem of social memory and the transformation of societies in times of war and peace. She has conducted long fieldwork projects in the Russian north and the North Caucasus, and in rural France. She will present a lecture on social memory and the resistance to violence in Le Chambon-sur Lignon during WWII.

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Rev. Jason Poling is the founding pastor of New Hope Community Church. He is pursuing a Doctor of Ministry at Biblical Theological Seminary and blogs for the Baltimore Sun's 'In Good Faith' and the Washington Post's 'On Faith.'

Professor Bill Egginton is Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities in the Department of German and Romance Languages and Literatures at Johns Hopkins University. His most recent book, In Defense of Religious Moderation, was published by Columbia University Press in 2011.

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The latest issue of Faith Complex, featuring in the Chronicle of Higher Education, featuring an interview with Dr. Tawfik Hamid, an Egyptian-born Muslim who in his youth joined the ranks of the radical Islamist group Jamaa Islamiya (JI). While floating in those circles in the late 1970s he made the acquaintance of one Ayman al-Zawahiri, currently the leader of Al Qaeda.

Click to watch the video and hear Hamid's views on Islamic groups in the Arab world and the Arab Spring.

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Hannah Rosenthal is Special Envoy and head of the Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism in the Obama Administration. Prior to joining the State Department, Ms. Rosenthal had been engaged in advocacy and social justice issues as Executive Director of the Chicago Foundation for Women, leading one of the largest women’s funds in the world, and as Executive Director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, where she worked on domestic and international policy. She will talk about her role as Special Envoy and the trends she is seeing as she travels around the world. A light reception will follow the event.

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SFS Professor Bruce Hoffman and Dr. Sarah Fainberg discussed the implications of the assassination of Osama Bin Laden on both the Islamic world and the United States. Watch this episode of Faith Complex below or at the Chronicle of Higher Education.

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Christian Anti-Semitism: The Unfinished Reckoning. A lecture by James Carroll.

Herman Allen "Hal" Israel Annual Lecture in Jewish-Catholic Relations.

Since the Holocaust, Christians have faced directly the tie between religious anti-Judaism and racial anti-Semitism. (World Council of Churches declarations, Vatican II, etc.), but that is the beginning of the reckoning, not the end. Texts remain problematic. Doctrines still breed contempt. More broadly, Christian anti-Semitism spawned a positive-negative bi-polarity that defined Western attitudes toward Jews - but also shaped thinking about colonized peoples, with ongoing implications for today's conflicts. The work of dismantling structures of anti-Semitism must continue.

James Carroll, one of the most adept and versatile writers on the American scene today (Denver Post), is the author of ten novels and six works of non-fiction, including the National Book Award winning An American Requiem; the New York Times bestselling Constantine's Sword, now an acclaimed documentary; House of War, which won the first PEN-Galbraith Award; Practicing Catholic, which Hans Kung calls "brilliantly written, passionate, and vivid." His most recent book is Jerusalem, Jerusalem: How the Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World, published in Spring 2011. He lectures widely, both in the United States and abroad. James Carroll is Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at Suffolk University in Boston, where he lives with his wife, the novelist Alexandra Marshall.

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One of Israel’s most celebrated novelist, Meir Shalev is a bestselling author in Israel, Holland, and Germany. Shalev’s writing is often compared to Gabriel Garcia Marquez for his ability to create worlds inhabited by the richness of invention and obsessiveness of dreams....He delivers both startling imagery and passionate, original characters whose destinies we follow through love, loss, laughter and death. Shalev will be interviewed about his latest memoir My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner.

From the author of the acclaimed novel A Pigeon and a Boy comes a charming tale of family ties, over-the-top housekeeping, and the sport of storytelling in Nahalal, the village of Meir Shalev’s birth. Here we meet Shalev’s amazing Grandma Tonia, who arrived in Palestine by boat from Russia in 1923 and lived in a constant state of battle with what she viewed as the family’s biggest enemy in their new land: dirt.

Grandma Tonia was never seen without a cleaning rag over her shoulder. She received visitors outdoors. She allowed only the most privileged guests to enter her spotless house. Hilarious and touching, Grandma Tonia and her regulations come richly to life in a narrative that circles around the arrival into the family’s dusty agricultural midst of the big, shiny American sweeper sent as a gift by Great-uncle Yeshayahu (he who had shockingly emigrated to the sinful capitalist heaven of Los Angeles!). America, to little Meir and to his forebears, was a land of hedonism and enchanting progress; of tempting luxuries, dangerous music, and degenerate gum-chewing; and of women with painted fingernails. The sweeper, a stealth weapon from Grandpa Aharon’s American brother meant to beguile the hardworking socialist household with a bit of American ease, was symbolic of the conflicts and visions of the family in every respect.

The fate of Tonia’s “svieeperrr”—hidden away for decades in a spotless closed-off bathroom after its initial use—is a family mystery that Shalev determines to solve. The result, in this cheerful translation by Evan Fallenberg, is pure delight, as Shalev brings to life the obsessive but loving Tonia, the pioneers who gave his childhood its spirit of wonder, and the grit and humor of people building ever-new lives.

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The Roosevelt Administration’s handling of the Jewish refugee issue has been a hotly debated topic for the last decade. No single event has had more influence on this debate than the ill-fated Voyage of the SS St Louis.

The SS St Louis was a luxury liner that left Hamburg, Germany in May of 1939, carrying 937 Jewish refugees attempting to escape Nazi Germany. The passengers had purchased landing permits from the Cuban Government and hoped to find safe haven in Havana. When they arrived at the Port of Havana, they were refused entry and the ship sailed north towards Miami, Florida in the hope that the US Government would give them refuge. In early June, they arrived off the coast of Miami Beach within sight of palm trees and the city lights. The desperate passengers made their official request to the US State Department to be allowed to enter the United States. On June 6, 1939, they received their answer; entry to the United States denied. The ship was forced to return to Europe where many of the passengers perished at the hands of the Nazis. This highly publicized drama on the high seas became the symbol of the world’s indifference to the plight of Jewish suffering at the hands of Adolf Hitler.

Robert Krakow, playwright, documentarian and an alumnus of Georgetown Law School will give a docu-drama presentation that will include:

1) Archival footage of Voyage of the SS St Louis

2) Excerpts from the Trial of FDR which highlight the following issues:

a. The political motivations of Cordell Hull and FDR in refusing safe haven to the passengers

b. The saga of the SS St Louis in the larger political context of America policy on Jewish refugees during the pre-war and wartime periods

c. The impact of Cordell Hull’s wife Jewish ancestry on his decisions regarding Jewish refugees

d. The impact of the SS St Louis in furthering the Nazi anti-Jewish polemic

3) The story of the SS St Louis and its contemporary relevance on issues of immigration and refugee policy

Attending the event as an honorary guest, will be Herbert Karliner, one the last remaining survivors of the historic voyage.

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Flory Jagoda (born Flora Kabilio in 1925 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina) is a Jewish American and Bosnian guitarist, composer and singer. She is known for her interpretation of Ladino songs.

Biography Flory Jagoda arrived in America as a war bride in 1946. She grew up in the Bosnian village of Vlasenica and in Sarajevo. She grew up in the Sephardic tradition in the musical Altaras family.

The Sephardic community of Sarajevo and its surrounding communities were nearly obliterated during World War II. During the war Jagoda was interned on the island of Korcula on the Dalmatian Coast. Her family escaped to Italy where she met and soon married Harry Jagoda, then in the U.S. military after which she immigrated to the United States.

Jagoda's recording Kantikas Di Mi Nona (Songs of My Grandmother) consists of songs her grandmother, a Sephardic folksinger, taught her as a young girl. Following the release of her second recording, Memories of Sarajevo, she recorded La Nona Kanta (The Grandmother Songs), songs she herself wrote for her grandchildren.

Now in her 80’s Flory has stated that Arvoliko: The Little Tree, released in 2006, will be her final solo recording. The tree, located in Bosnia, is said to be the only marker of the mass grave of 42 massacred members of the Altaras family. She refers to her four recordings as representing the four musical stages of her life. In 2006 she also released a series of duets with Ramón Tasat, Kantikas de amor i vida: Sephardic Duets.

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