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What does it mean to create Jewish culture and perform Jewish identity in Europe and North America in the twenty-first century? Ranging from the klezmer revival in the clubs of Warsaw to the Lower East Side irreverence of Heeb magazine, the ReJewvenation conference will create a space for scholarly discussion of a Jewish cultural renaissance in the making. This conference will bring together a diverse group of scholars and artists in order to address six major aspects of contemporary Jewish culture: ritual, music, new media, visual arts, literature and performing arts. Some of the questions the conference will address include: What does it mean to be part of a Jewish diaspora culture in a global village? How does twenty-first-century Jewish culture negotiate the ever-shifting boundary between religion and secular life or between culture and religion? How have changing attitudes toward gender roles and homosexuality fundamentally re-shaped Jewish culture? What impact has the internet had on the creation (and reception) of Jewish culture? How does the ongoing dialogue among diaspora Jews about Israeli politics and culture manifest itself in contemporary Jewish culture? To what extent do twentieth-century events – such as East European immigration to North America , the Holocaust, and the rise and fall of the Soviet Union – still have an impact on the creation of Jewish culture in the twenty-first century?

Conference Schedule - Printable PDF

Time/place	Activity /Registration	Name	Paper or Topic
FRIDAY October 28th
12:00-2:00 Bahen Centre for Information Technology 40 St. George Street - Rm 1210	Pre-Conference Event: The Disenhouse Lecture in Yiddish Studies	David Roskies	Yiddish Culture at Ground Zero
8:00 Robert Gill Theatre 214 College Street	Opening Address	Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett	Rebel All You Like... Just Be Jewish
	Shabbat Performance	Storahtelling	Hadassah Gross Presents The Rebbetzin's Tisch

Saturday October 29th *Afternoon*
1:30 - 3:00 Wolfond Centre 36 Harbord Street	Shabbat Afternoon Ritual Performance This performance open to students only. Contact Hillel at 416-913-2424 to register.	Storahtelling	Babble: Shultime Parsha Performance
3:30 - 5:00 Wolfond Centre 36 Harbord Street	Roundtable Discussion	Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett	Moderator
		Amichai Lau-Lavie	Jewish Ritual Theatre for the 21st Century
		Melissa Shiff	Kicking the Habit: Making Rituals for Happening People
		Aryeh Cohen	"We Will All Be in Shul for Fifteen Minutes:" Pop/Judaism"
		Anna Shternshis	Kaddish in a Church: Jewish Perceptions of Judaism in Post-Soviet Russia
Saturday October 29th *Evening*
8:00 Al Green Theatre Miles Nadal JCC 750 Spadina Ave. at Bloor	Queer Jewish Weddings Concert	Adrienne Cooper Sara Felder Marilyn Lerner Frank London Lorin Sklamberg	For Tickets Call: 416-978-7986
Sunday October 30th
9:00 Robert Gill Theatre 214 College Street, 3rd Floor	Coffee
9:30-11:30 Robert Gill Theatre 214 College Street, 3rd Floor	The Futures of Jewish Music	Gage Averill	Chair & Respondent
		Mark Slobin	"Embracing Eclecticism: Today's Jewish Multimusicality."
		Aaron Eckstaedt	"On the long way to normality: Semantic changes of klezmer and Yiddish music in post-war Germany"
		Tamar Barzel	“O Little Town of East New York ”: Jewish American Memory and the Music of Composer/Vocalist Shelley Hirsch
		Judah Cohen	"Hey, Turn It Down Over There--I Can't Hear the Echoes!"
11:30 - 1:00 Robert Gill Theatre 214 College Street, 3rd Floor	Lunch – Registration Req.
1:00-2:30 Robert Gill Theatre 214 College Street, 3rd Floor	The Futures of Jewish Literature I: Re-reading the Legacy of the 20th Century	Derek Penslar	Chair and Respondent
		David Roskies	Was Gimpel a Fool?: Rereading and Misreading a Modern Classic
		Sidra Dekoven Ezrahi	"In America Everyday is Purim": Impersonation, Self-Invention, and Comedy in the America Century
		Karen Weisman	“Most Musical of Mourners”: Contemporary Jewish Elegiacs and the Formalist's Dilemma.
2:30 – 3:00 Robert Gill Theatre 214 College Street, 3rd Floor	Break
3:00-5:00 Robert Gill Theatre 214 College Street, 3rd Floor	Addressing Command J: Jewish Laws, Digital Arts	Dot Tuer	Chair and Moderator
		Carol Zemel	Virtual Idolatry: Jeffrey Shaw and The Golden Calf
		Jessica Wyman	Cutting Gender, Splicing Ritual: Melissa Shiff's Gender Cuts: The Jew Under the Knife "
		Norman Kleeblatt	The Complexities of Jewish Patronage for Contemporary Art: Helene Aylon as Paradigm
		Louis Kaplan	Laws of Glass
7:30 – 9:00 XPACE 303 Augusta Ave.	Command J: Dessert and Reception – Registration or invitation required
9:00 – 12:00 Xpace 303 Augusta Ave.	Dance Party at Xpace with Socalled, aka Josh Dolgin
Monday October 31st
8:30 – 9:00 Robert Gill Theatre	Coffee
9:00 – 10:30 Robert Gill Theatre 214 College Street, 3rd Floor	The Futures of Jewish Literature II: New Voices	Andrea Most	Chair and Respondent
		Shaul Bassi	Yidentifications: Jewish Mimicry and Indian Literature
		Paul Zakrzewski	Lost and Found: Trends in New Jewish Fiction
		Mikhail Krutikov	"Virtualizing the Jew in Contemporary Russian Fiction"
10:30 – 11:00	Break
11:00 – 1:00 Robert Gill Theatre 214 College Street, 3rd Floor	Jews in Cyberspace	Daniel Itzkovitz	Chair and Respondent
		Pierre Lévy	Jewish Culture and Hypertextual Thinking
		Shelley Hornstein & Reesa Greenberg	Doing Digital
		Dan Sieradski	“And The Walls Came Tumbling Down”: Ownership, Empowerment and Judaism
1:00 – 2:00 Robert Gill Theatre 214 College Street, 3rd Floor	Lunch – Registration required
2:00 – 4:00 Robert Gill Theatre 214 College Street, 3rd Floor	Performing Jewishness Panel And Roundtable Discussion	David Biale	Moderator
		Ann Pellegrini	After Sontag: Notes on "Jewish" Camp
		Katrin Sieg	Ethnic Drag and Jewish Representation in Contemporary German Theater
		David Shneer	Queer is the New Pink: How Playing with Sexuality Has Become the Marker of Hipness in New Jewish Culture
4:00 – 4:15 Robert Gill Theatre 214 College Street, 3rd Floor	Break
4:15 – 5:30 Robert Gill Theatre 214 College Street, 3rd Floor	Closing Address	Sander Gilman	“Can the Experience of Diaspora Judaism serve as a Model for Islam in Today's Multicultural Europe?” (Joseph and Gertie Schwartz Memorial Lecture)