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UCLA acquires major collection of Sephardic Jewish past

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Symbolic key from the 1932 dedication of L.A.’s Temple Tifereth Israel (courtesy of STTI Archive)

The UCLA Sephardic Archive has acquired one of the most significant collections ever assembled chronicling Los Angeles Sephardic Jewish history. The materials tell of the migration of Sephardic Jews to California from the Mediterranean, Middle East and North Africa at the turn of the 20th century; the shaping of Sephardic culture in Los Angeles; and Sephardic Jews’ contributions to the Jewish and urban fabric of L.A.

Marking its first major acquisition, the archive partnered with UCLA Library-Special Collections to acquire the Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel (STTI) archive, which includes a rich trove of photographs, papers, audio-visual materials and rare books dating to the mid-19th century. Many are written in the endangered language of Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), the language of Mediterranean Jews descended from the medieval exiles from Iberia.

Launched in 2015, UCLA’s Sephardic Archive is the first of its kind in the U.S. and aims to be one of the world’s largest collections—as yet unseen—of Sephardi Jewish life. An early focus will be on the local Ladino-speaking community, whose immigrant pioneers came to L.A. from modern-day Turkey and the Balkans in the early 20th century. The archive will then be expanded to include L.A.’s North African, Persian and other Middle Eastern Jewish communities.

“UCLA is the ideal institution to safeguard and steward a collection of such enormous significance,” said Sarah Abrevaya Stein, director of the archive, professor of history and holder of the Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies. “We are in L.A., which is home to one of the oldest and largest Sephardic communities in the country, and we have the world-class resources to pioneer a comprehensive and invaluable archive of Sephardic culture.”

Jerusalem rabbinate’s 1912 recognition of the L.A. Sephardic Jewish community (courtesy of STTI archive)

Most archives and libraries dedicated to preserving documents and objects of the Jewish past have focused on European Jewish histories. In contrast, UCLA’s archive will span the southern Mediterranean and Middle East. Made possible by a lead gift from the Sady Kahn Foundation with additional support from the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies Community Advisory Board and the Maurice Amado Foundation, the archive complements UCLA’s unparalleled academic expertise and course offerings related to the study of Sephardic Jewish history.

Chris Silver, UCLA doctoral student in Jewish history and the archive’s project manager, said that the recent acquisition of the STTI archive would launch UCLA’s efforts in the most meaningful way, given its connection to the local community (the Temple is located on Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood). The STTI archive was created in 1981 and stewarded by Maurice I. “Bob” Hattem, a descendant one of the earliest founders of the Sephardi communidad in L.A. The diverse collection includes institutional records, research papers, newsletters, pamphlets, scrapbooks and newspaper clippings. The archive also possesses an impressive audio-visual collection of reel-to-reel, cassette and VHS tapes.

According to Stein, time is of the essence. “Materials held in these collections can be acutely vulnerable and at risk of being lost forever—often languishing in garages and other facilities ill-equipped for preservation,” she said. “It is imperative to collect, preserve and make them available for scholars and members of the community.”

The UCLA Sephardic Archive hopes to reverse the historic neglect of these primary source materials.

19th-century Ottoman birth certificate of a Sephardic Temple congregant (courtesy of STTI Archive)

Michael Hattem, son of Bob Hattem and member of STTI and the archive’s community advisory board, said, “The partnership between STTI and UCLA will keep the rich heritage of Sephardim alive for generations to come.”

After gathering and cataloguing the materials, Stein and her researchers plan to create a visually rich and historically informative interactive exhibit available online to users all over the world. The digital exhibit will be accompanied by a temporary physical exhibit at the Sephardic Temple featuring items drawn from the STTI archive and marking the community’s centenary anniversary. Finally, the archive will serve as a research resource for UCLA graduate students writing their dissertations on related topics and for community members interested in learning more about their past.

To learn more, please go to the archive’s webpage.

Uri McMillan honored for his book on black feminist art and performance

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The Modern Language Association of America recently announced it is awarding its 15th annual William Sanders Scarborough Prize to Uri McMillan, associate professor of English at UCLA, for his book “Embodied Avatars: Genealogies of Black Feminist Art and Performance,” published by New York University Press.

New exhibition at UCLA celebrates history of Boyle Heights

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In line with its mission to uncover and preserve the rich history of Jewish Los Angeles, the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies will open a new multimedia exhibition next week that highlights the historic experiences of Jews in Boyle Heights.

New book from UCLA’s Ursula Heise examines the conservationist thrall and narratives of extinction

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It all began with the adoption of a Jardine’s parrot in the mid-1990s. Ursula Heise, UCLA English professor and the Marcia H. Howard Chair in Literary Studies, author and leader in the growing study of environmental humanities, was surprised by the animal’s intelligence and ability to communicate.

Anthropologist brings European refugee crisis to the classroom

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Students in two global studies classes at UCLA this quarter will benefit from an eye-opening month their professor spent in Greece this past summer. In July, anthropologist Laurie Hart taught international graduate seminars on the current border crisis at the University of the Aegean on the island of Lesvos.

Literature and film help teach students to understand the brain

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What can Shakespeare, Cervantes, Proust, and even contemporary playwrights and filmmakers contribute to the study of neuroscience? A lot, says UCLA professor of integrative biology and physiology Scott Chandler.

Charlene Villaseñor Black is as good as gold as recipient of top faculty prize

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Within the warm, terra-cotta-colored walls of her office in Dodd Hall, Charlene Villaseñor Black has assembled a whimsical mini-museum of Mexican folk art that includes two baby Jesus dolls, a sacred heart painting, a tiny Frida Kahlo chair and a wooden skeleton with moveable arms and legs.

UCLA receives $1.65 million from Mellon Foundation to continue urban humanities program

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By Margaret MacDonald

 

A $1.65 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will strengthen UCLA’s Urban Humanities Initiative. The program, initially launched by a $2 million award from the Mellon Foundation in 2013, is dedicated to studying contemporary issues in Los Angeles, Tokyo, Shanghai and Mexico City.

The new funding will help UCLA provide graduate and undergraduate students with vital scholarly skills, support curricula and new faculty research on historical as well as contemporary urban issues, and pay for scholars to travel to cities around the Pacific Rim.

Together, the two Mellon grants are the largest received by UCLA for curricula that span the School of Arts and Architecture, the Division of Humanities, and the Luskin School of Public Affairs. The grant continues UCLA’s participation in the Mellon Foundation’s Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities initiative, which since 2012 has provided funding to a total of 16 institutions in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom and South Africa.

At UCLA, urban humanities scholars use innovative means to study cities, merging approaches from architecture and urbanism with historical-critical approaches from the humanities and, in particular, cutting-edge film and mapping techniques from digital humanities.

“The study of urban life in the Pacific Rim embraces global issues that are particularly situated and made visible through the overlapping lenses of design, history, ethnography, visual and literary studies, and spatial analysis,” said Dana Cuff, a UCLA professor of architecture and urban design.

Cuff is the project’s lead principal investigator, along with Todd Presner, a professor of digital humanities; Maite Zubiaurre, a professor of Spanish and Portuguese; and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, a professor of urban planning.

In its first three years, the Urban Humanities Initiative engaged 75 graduate students from across campus in a certificate program, supported more than 30 faculty members, held symposia and produced numerous publications. The program will be extended to undergraduate students in the next three years. After the Mellon funding concludes, it will be administered jointly by the deans of the schools of arts and architecture and public affairs, and the humanities division in the UCLA College.

“We are immensely gratified that the Mellon Foundation is continuing to support our efforts, ensuring that this excellent program will continue to serve our students for many years to come,” said David Schaberg, dean of the humanities division.

Founded in 1969, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation endeavors to strengthen, promote, and, where necessary, defend the contributions of the humanities and the arts to human flourishing and to the well-being of diverse and democratic societies by supporting exemplary institutions of higher education and culture as they renew and provide access to an invaluable heritage of ambitious, path-breaking work.

 

Professor collaborates with Getty Museum to bring 15th-century manuscript to the public

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UCLA professor and recently named Guggenheim Fellow Zrinka Stahuljak spent the last three years helping the J. Paul Getty Museum bring an important 15th-century Flemish manuscript to life for the general public.

First Director of Jewish Studies and Israel Studies at UCLA gives major lecture on Israel Independence Day

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By: Todd Presner, Sady and Ludwig Kahn Director, UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies

 

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Arnold Band, Professor Emeritus of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, University of California at Los Angeles, delivered the Annual Arnold Band Distinguished Lecture in Jewish Studies, on May 12th to a crowd of 150 people at UCLA. Coinciding with Israeli Independence Day, the lecture was sponsored by the UCLA Alan. D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, and honors the research and teaching of Band, one of the leading scholars of modern Hebrew literature in the world. His lecture was entitled: “The First Decade of Israeli Literature: The Case of Aharon Appelfeld.” Rabbi William Cutter, Steinberg Emeritus Professor of Human Relations at Hebrew Union College, moderated and gave a response.

Band, 86, has taught at UCLA for over 50 years. He founded the department of comparative literature and also established the recently endowed Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies and was the first director of the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. Band is the author of Nostalgia and Nightmare: The Fiction of S.J. Agnon (1968) and The Tales of Nahman of Bratlav (1978), as well as more than 125 articles in Hebrew and English on a wide range of topics in modern Jewish literature and Jewish cultural life. Center Board member and major donor, Alan D. Leve, said “I’m delighted that on this Israeli Independence Day the Center presented a program with distinguished professor Arnold Band, the Center’s founding director.”

The lecture was based upon research Band undertook at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum to investigate the nexus between Hebrew writers S. Y. Agnon and Aharon Appelfeld. He showed how the writing styles and themes of Nobel Prize laureate Agnon, widely considered the leading Hebrew prose writer of the 20th century, influenced the literary works of Appelfeld, who is universally recognized as the most significant Holocaust writer in Hebrew.

Far from forgotten or ignored, Band showed how the Shoah emerged as a central theme in Israeli literature during the crucial first decade of state formation. The history and memory of the Shoah was integral to Israeli collective identity, he argued, and this is reflected in the literary continuity shared between Agnon and Appelfeld. At the same time, Band suggested that the further we advance from the first decade, the more we realize that Israeli literature is more varied and richer than early historians have described it.

For the Leve Center for Jewish Studies, Band’s lecture caps an extraordinary year of programming that also saw the inauguration of a new series in the Archaeology of Ancient Israel. Organized by Aaron Burke (Associate Professor of the Archaeology of the Levant and Ancient Israel in the Near Eastern Languages and Cultures department and a faculty member with the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA), the inaugural lecture drew nearly 100 people and was delivered by one of the founding figures in biblical archaeology, Professor Lawrence E. Stager (Harvard University), Dorot Professor in the Archaeology of Israel and former director of the Harvard Semitic Museum.

Expressing his appreciation of the work of the Leve Center, David Schaberg, UCLA Dean of the Humanities, said that “the Center’s diversity of programs in all aspects of Jewish Studies – from biblical times to the present-day – reflects the goals of the Center to educate, engage, and reach the broadest possible community.” He added that the “vibrancy of its programming is a testament to its strength and purpose as part of public research and teaching institution.”

Band’s lecture was made possible by a generous endowment by Leve Center Board Member, Milt Hyman, a former student of Band’s, and his wife, Sheila. Cosponsors included the UCLA Y. & S. Nazarian Center for Israel Studies and the UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. More information can be found online: http://cjs.ucla.edu

 

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