Robert Shapiro
Professor
Judaic Studies
Location: 3109 James Hall
Phone: 718.951.5000 x3990
Fax: 718.951.4703
Email:
Born in Germany, Robert Shapiro was raised and educated in New Jersey and Maryland. Shapiro held fellowships at the Max Weinreich Center of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He has taught at Baltimore Hebrew University, Yeshiva University, the University of Maryland, the National Yiddish Book Center and the Ramaz School in New York City. He has been at Brooklyn College since 2002. His published books include Holocaust Chronicles (KTAV and Yeshiva University Press, 1999), Why Didn't the Press Shout (KTAV and Yeshiva University Press, 2003), and Lodz Ghetto: A History (Indiana University Press with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2006). His latest book is The Warsaw Ghetto Oyneg Shabes-Ringelbaum Archive: Catalog and Guide (Indiana University Press in association with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, 2009).
Education:
Ph.D., Columbia University - 1987 (History)
M.Phil., Columbia University - 1975 (History)
B.A. (general and departmental honors), Johns Hopkins University - 1972 (History)
Areas of Expertise:
History and culture of the Jews in Poland, with emphasis on the 20th century, especially in the city of Lodz. Holocaust-era diaries and other contemporaneously written personal accounts, especially in occupied Poland and Lithuania. East European Jewish literature and folk culture, especially in Yiddish, Hebrew and Polish.
Books and Publications
Reviewed 4 books for CHOICE Magazine of the American Library Association in the fields of Jewish Studies and Holocaust Studies, including
*Sara Bender, In enemy land: the Jews of Kielce and the region, 1939-1946, tr. by Natalie Greenwood and Saadya Sternberg. Academic Studies Press, 2019, in CHOICE Vol. 57, Issue 9, May 2020;
*Kaplan, Marion. Hitler's Jewish refugees: hope and anxiety in Portugal. Yale, 2020, in CHOICE Vol. 58, Issue 2
[Oct 2020];
*Brendan McGeever, Antisemitism and the Russian Revolution. Cambridge, 2020, IN PRESS.
Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert, eds. How Yiddish changed America and how America changed Yiddish,Restless Books, 2020 [IN PREPARATION].
(Books and Publications: Book Review) 2020
Wodziński, Marcin. Historical atlas of Hasidism. Princeton UP, 2018, review in CHOICE MAGAZINE of the Association of American Libraries. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2019
Hasidism: a new history, by David Biale et al. Princeton UP, 2017 review in CHOICE MAGAZINE of the Association of American Libraries, (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2018
Kosharovskiĭ, Yuli. "We are Jews again": Jewish activism in the Soviet Union, ed. by Ann Komaromi; tr. by Stefani Hoffman. Syracuse, 2017. Choice Vol. 55, Issue 9, May 2018 (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2018
Rice, Monika. "What! Still alive?!": Jewish survivors in Poland and Israel remember homecoming. Syracuse, 2017. Choice Vol. 55, Issue 12, Aug 2018 (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2018
Waxman, Zoë Vania. Women in the Holocaust: a feminist history. Oxford, 2017. Choice Vol. 55, Issue 8, April 2018 (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2018
Cesarani, David. Final solution: the fate of the Jews, 1933-1949. St. Martin's, 2016. Choice Vol. 55, Issue 2, Oct 2017 (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2017
Co-edited and co-translated, et al., Encyclopedia of the Ghetto: The Unfinished Project of the Lodz Ghetto Archivists. Polish State Archive, 2017. (Books and Publications: Book (Edited)) 2017
Goldstein, Ivo. The Holocaust in Croatia, by Ivo Goldstein and Slavko Goldstein. Pittsburgh/United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2016. Choice Vol. 54, Issue 9, May 2017 (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2017
Khiterer, Victoria. Jewish city or inferno of Russian Israel?: a history of the Jews in Kiev before February 1917. Academic Studies Press, 2016. Choice, vol. 54, issue 5, Jan. 2017. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2017
Rees, Laurence. The Holocaust: a new history. PublicAffairs, 2017. Choice Vol. 55, Issue 4, Dec 2017 (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2017
Teller, Adam. Money, power, and influence in eighteenth-century Lithuania: the Jews on the Radziwill estates. Stanford, 2016. Choice Vol. 54, Issue 8, April 2017 (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2017
Chare, Nicholas. Matters of testimony: interpreting the scrolls of Auschwitz, by Nicholas Chare and Dominic Williams. Berghahn Books, 2015 (c2016). Choice, vol. 54, issue 4, Dec. 2016. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2016
Co-editing and translating from Yiddish Jacob Shatzky, History of Warsaw Jews, vol. 1 (NY: YIVO, 1947), in collaboration with Paul Glasser, under contract with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. (Books and Publications: Forthcoming Publications) 2016
Comprehensive English-Yiddish dictionary, ed. by Gitl Schaechter and Paul Glasser; Chava Lapin, associate editor. Indiana, 2016. Choice, August 2016. Vol. 54, no. 5. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2016
Going to the people: Jews and the ethnographic impulse, ed. by Jeffrey Veidlinger. Indiana, 2016. Choice, vo. 54, issue 4, Dec. 2016. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2016
Peretz, Pauline. Let my people go: the transnational politics of Soviet Jewish emigration during the Cold War, tr. by Ethan Rundell. Transaction, 2015. Choice, vol. 53, issue 9, May 2016. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2016
Review of Conscripted Slaves: Hungarian Jewish Forced Laborers on the Eastern Front during the Second World War, by Robert Rozett (Yad Vashem Publications, 2014). Jewish Book World (the Jewish Book Council's quarterly). (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2015
Review of Kim Wunschmann, Before Auschwitz: Jewish Prisoners in the Pre-war Concentration Camps (Harvard U Press, 2015), in CHOICE Magazine of the American Library Association, Nov. 2015, vol. 53, no. 3. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2015
Steinhart, Eric C. The Holocaust and Germanization of Ukraine. Cambridge/United States Holocaust Memorial Museum/German Historical Institute, 2015. Choice, vol. 53, issue 3, May 2015. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2015
Wünschmann, Kim. Before Auschwitz: Jewish prisoners in the prewar concentration camps. Harvard, 2015. Choice, vol. 53, issue 3, Nov. 2015. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2015
Review Blood Libel in Late Imperial Russia: The Ritual Murder Trial of Mendel Beilis, by Robert Weinberg (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013). Jewish Book World (the Jewish Book Council's quarterly). (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2014
Review In the shadow of the shtetl: small-town Jewish life in Soviet Ukraine, by Jeffrey Veidlinger (Indiana, 2013). Choice (magazine of the American Library Association), August. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2014
Review of Czechs, Slovaks and the Jews: 1938 - 1948 -- Beyond Idealisation and Condemnation, by Jan Lanicek (Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2013). Choice (magazine of the American Library Association). (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2014
Review of Marching Into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus, by Waitman Wade Beorn (Harvard, 2014). Choice (magazine of the American Library Association), August. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2014
Review of The Golden Age Shtetl: A New History of Jewish Life in East Europe, by Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern (Princeton, 2014). Choice (magazine of the American Library Association). (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2014
Review of The Long Life and Swift Death of Jewish Rechitsa: A Community in Belarus, 1625-2000, by Albert Kaganovitch (University of Wisconsin Press, 2013). Jewish Book World (the Jewish Book Council's quarterly). (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2014
Review of The Tragedy of a Generation, by Joshua Karlip (Harvard University Press, 2013). Choice (magazine of the American Library Association). (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2014
Review of YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture: Scholarship for the Yiddish Nation by Cecile Kuznitz (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Choice (magazine of the American Library Association). (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2014
Review of Barricades and Banners: The Revolution of 1905 and the Transformation of Warsaw Jewry, by Scott Ury (Stanford University Press, 2012). Choice (magazine of the American Library Association). (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2013
Review of Choosing Yiddish: New Frontiers of Language and Culture, eds. Lara Rabinovich, Shiri Goren and Hannah S. Pressman (Wayne State University Press, 2013). Choice (magazine of the American Library Association). (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2013
Review of The Origins and Onset of the Romanian Holocaust, by Henry Eaton (Wayne State University Press, 2013). Jewish Book World. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2013
Review of Portraits in Literature: The Jews of Poland, an Anthology (Vallentine Mitchell, 2011), ed. and transl. Hava Bromberg Ben-Zvi. Jewish Book World. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2012
Review of Russian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-20, by Oleg Budnitskii; transl. Timothy J. Portice (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). Jewish Book World. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2012
Review of The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement, by Nathaniel Deutsch (Harvard University Press, 2011). Jewish Book World. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2012
Submitted completed annotated translation from Polish of Diary of the Lodz Ghetto, by Jakub Poznanski (Warsaw, 2002) to Indiana University Press for review for publication. (Books and Publications: Forthcoming Publications) 2012
Shapiro, Robert Moses and Tadeusz Epsztein. The Warsaw Ghetto Oyneg Shabes-Ringelblum Archive: Catalog and Guide. Translated from the Polish by Robert Moses Shapiro.
Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press (in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, Poland). (Books and Publications: Book (Edited)) 2009
Łódź Ghetto: A History, by Isaiah Trunk, revised paperback edition. Ed., trans. and intro by Robert Moses Shapiro. Indiana University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (Books and Publications: Book (Edited)) 2008
The Warsaw Ghetto Oyneg Shabes--Ringelblum Archive Catalog and Guide translation and copyediting. Indiana University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland. July 2009. (Books and Publications: Forthcoming Publications) 2008
Review of Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine, by Omer Bar-Tov. Jewish Book World Quarterly. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2008
Review of The Jews of Pinsk, 1506-1880, by Mordechai Nadav. Jewish Book World Quarterly. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2008
Shapiro, Robert and Piotr Wrobe. Poyln: A Memoir of Polish Jewry, Volume 1, by Y.Y. Trunk. Translated from Yiddish by Anne Clark. University of Toronto Press. (Books and Publications: Book (Edited)) 2007
Awards, Honors and Fellowships
Appointed a Fellow of the Brandeis University Schusterman Institute for Israel Studies New York Faculty Seminar conducted at the CUNY Graduate Center in January 2016. (Grants and Fellowships) 2016
Facilitated the appointment and stay of the Polish literary historian Dorota Nowak, who is on the faculty of the University of Olomouc in the Czech Republic, to her tenure of the Judaic Studies Department's Visiting Research Fellowship, following in the steps of Prof. Pawel Goldstein, now of the University of Manchester, who was a Visiting Research Fellow from Lodz, Poland, during summer 2015. In Fall 2016, the Judaic Studies Department hosted Dr. Shira Kahn of New York University as a Visiting Research Fellow, to be followed in Spring 2017 by Dr. David Stern from Bar Ilan University. The Visiting Research Fellowship is an unfunded program that provides selected scholars with office space, computer, internet access and BC Library access during stays of from one to ten months. (Grants and Fellowships) 2016
In October, the Brooklyn College Foundation and the Tow Family Foundation agreed to extend to a third year the period of my tenure of the Tow Professorship originally awarded in April 2015 for the period 2015-2017. My Tow Professorship tenure has been extended through August 2018 in support of research on the organizations that comprised Jewish civil society in Lodz, Poland, in the years immediately preceding the Second World War and the Holocaust during which Europe's second-largest Jewish community was destroyed by the Nazi Germans. (Grants and Fellowships) 2016
Awarded a Tow Professorship for 2015-2017 in support of research on the organizations that comprised Jewish civil society in Lodz, Poland, in the years immediately preceding the Second World War and the Holocaust during which Europe's second-largest Jewish community was destroyed by the Nazi Germans. (Grants and Fellowships) 2015
Awarded a Tow Professorship for 2015-2017. (Awards and Honors) 2015
Fellowship for participation in the 10-day Seminar for Jewish Diaspora Educators at the Yad Vashem International School for Holocaust Education in Jerusalem, July 2015. (Grants and Fellowships) 2015
Participant in the Facing History and Ourselves online course, "Human Behavior and the Holocaust for Educators in Jewish Schools," October-December. Awarded Certificate for Completion of the program. (Grants and Fellowships) 2015
Raised $2,500 from a variety of sources to bring the Jan Karski Foundation exhibition, "The World Knew: Jan Karski's Mission During the Holocaust," to the Brooklyn College Library for three months. (Grants and Fellowships) 2015
Spring 2015 award of release from teaching one course in order to complete work on my translation from Polish of Jakub Poznanski's diary from the Lodz Ghetto during the German occupation of Poland, 1939-45. (Grants and Fellowships) 2015
Tow Faculty Travel Fellowship, in support of my project to translate from Yiddish a previously unknown encyclopedic guide to Jewish civil society in Lodz, Poland, on the eve of the Second World War and Holocaust. Translation is based on the sole surviving copy of the book. The fellowship will be used for expenses related to research in Poland and Israel. (Grants and Fellowships) 2015
CUNY Diversity Projects Development Fund grant, for the Language-Identity-Diversity Project, bringing Professor Ilan Stavans and other socio-linguistic and literary scholars to Brooklyn College, March-April. (Grants and Fellowships) 2014
Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on East Central European Migration at Columbia University, June. (Grants and Fellowships) 2014
Accepted as participant in the POLIN Seminar of the new Museum of the History of the Jews in Poland in Warsaw, with sponsorship of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Education and Culture. July. (Grants and Fellowships) 2013
Fellow of the annual Yiddish Teachers Seminar, sponsored by the League for Yiddish, during the Yiddish-Vokh program. Baltimore, August. (Grants and Fellowships) 2011
Fellow of the Holocaust Education Foundation's Summer Institute on Holocaust and Jewish Studies, Northwestern University, June-July. (Grants and Fellowships) 2011
PSC-CUNY research grant, for released time from one course in Fall 2010 in connection with preparation of a translation of a Łódź ghetto diary originally written in Polish. (Grants and Fellowships) 2010
PSC-CUNY research grant, for research travel to Poland for a comparative study of Jewish ghetto leadership in Zagłębie (Eastern Upper Silesia) and Łódź. (Grants and Fellowships) 2010
Special Certificate of Merit, Society of American Archivists, in recognition of the signal contribution made through the publication of my book, The Warsaw Ghetto Oyneg Shabes-Ringelblum Archive: Catalog and Guide, co-edited by Tadeusz Epsztein and translated and edited from the Polish original by me, Washington, D.C., August 2010. The book was published in 2009 by Indiana University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, Poland, the repository of the Ringelblum Archive. (Awards and Honors) 2010
Tow Faculty Travel Fellowship, for research in Poland for a comparative study of Jewish ghetto leadership in Zagłębie (Eastern Upper Silesia) and Łódź. (Grants and Fellowships) 2010
PSC-CUNY Research Grant, to translate and edit the recently discovered Polish diary from the Lodz Ghetto by Rywka Lipszyc, in association with the Holocaust Center of Northern California and the Center for Jewish Research at the University of Lodz, Poland. 2009-10. (Grants and Fellowships) 2009
United States Embassy in Warsaw, Poland, provided me with a grant from Fulbright-Hays funding (at the request of the Center for Jewish Research at the University of Lodz) to cover my airfare and expenses for my two-week stay in Lodz in order to present several invited lectures in conjunction with the events of the commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the liquidation of the Lodz Ghetto in August 1944. Aug. 17-31. (Grants and Fellowships) 2009
Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture research grant, in support of a project to translate from Yiddish the Sonderkommando Documents Discovered in the Ash Pits at Auschwitz-Birkenau. (Grants and Fellowships) 2008
PSC-CUNY Research Grant, for Villain or Hero: David Gertler, Sonderkommando Chief of the Lodz Ghetto. (Grants and Fellowships) 2008
PSC-CUNY Research Grant, in support of a project to translate from German, Polish and Yiddish The Encyclopedia of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto that was compiled in the Lodz Ghetto during 1944. (Grants and Fellowships) 2008
Tow Faculty Travel Fellowship, for travel to Poland and Israel for a project to translate the Sonderkommando Papers found in the ash pits at Auschwitz-Birkenau. June-July. (Grants and Fellowships) 2008
ForeWord magazine's "Book of the Year Awards" Bronze Medal in the field of history for a work published in 2006 for Lodz Ghetto: A History, by Isaiah Trunk. Ed. and trans. Robert Moses Shapiro. Indiana University Press. (Awards and Honors) 2007
Lodz Ghetto: A History (Indiana University Press with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum) was named a Choice magazine Outstanding Academic Title 2007. (Awards and Honors) 2007
Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture research fellowship, for preparation of translations of diaries from the Lodz ghetto written in Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew and German; research in Lodz, Poland, at the State Archive in Lodz and at the Jewish Community of Lodz, June. (Grants and Fellowships) 2007
PSC-CUNY Grant, for travel in connection with translation of the Encyclopedia of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, a document created in German, Polish and Yiddish in the final months of the Lodz Ghetto in occupied Poland in 1944. (Grants and Fellowships) 2007
PSC-CUNY research fellowship, in support of project to prepare and publish translations of diaries from the Lodz ghetto: purchase of recent Polish publications, research in Israel and Poland, November-December 2006, January and June 2007. (Grants and Fellowships) 2007
Tow Faculty Travel Fellowship, for research on diaries from the Lodz ghetto during the Second World War; three weeks in Israel at Yad Vashem Library and Archive and the Jewish National University Library Institute of Manuscripts, January. (Grants and Fellowships) 2007
Research Activities
Final summer on the Tow Professorship, spending two weeks of June in Israel at Yad Vashem, Hebrew University, and the National Library of Israel, as well as the Museum of the Jewish People Bet HaTefutsot at Tel Aviv University. 25 days in Poland, divided between 8 days touring the Zaglebie region (Eastern Upper Silesia) Jewish communities in the region of Auschwitz; and stays in Krakow, Warsaw, and Lodz, pursuing research about prewar Lodz Jewry, the wartime Lodz ghetto, and the contemporary postwar history of Polish Jewry. Also participated for 5 days at the annual convention of the International Association Jewish Genealogy Societies in Warsaw. 2018
Consultant to the research team preparing the 25th anniversary special exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The theme of the exhibition will be the American response to the rise of fascism and the Third Reich. The exhibition will open at the museum in April 2018 for a three-year run, after which time it will travel. I provided assistance in locating sought after Yiddish, Hebrew and English press front-pages for display. 2016
Yiddish translation co-editor of the English version of _The Encyclopedia of the Litttsmanstadt/Lodz Ghetto_, prepared clandestinely by the staff of the Jewish ghetto administration's Archive in 1943-44, the final year of t of the second-largest Jewish ghetto created by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during the Holocaust. Before the annihilation of over 90 per cent of the Lodz ghetto's Jews, the ghetto archivists undertook to prepare a remarkable encyclopedic guide to the bizarre ghetto society to help future scholars better understand the ghetto's unique vernacular comprised of terms in Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish, and German. The project is sponsored by the State Archive in Lodz, Poland, in association with the Center for Jewish Research at the University of Lodz. Publication in English is 2017 is intended to make this remarkable Holocaust document accessible to the broadest readership. 2016
Photographic and video documentation of the first Hasidic Jewish wedding in Lodz, Poland, since the Holocaust, celebrated at the Lodz Jewish Community Center in June 2016. 2015
Research in Poland and Israel during June-July 2015, focusing on archives, libraries, and museums in Lodz and Warsaw, Poland, and in Jerusalem, Israel, in addition to extensive study of the surviving buildings and streets of pre-Holocaust Lodz. Facilitated with Tow Foundation support and support from the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. 2015
Participant in the Polin Academy Summer Seminar at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, Poland, advising on the pedagogical application of the new permanent exhibition, with special regard for students and tourists visiting from the United States. 2013
Attendee, dedication of the Zegota obelisk at the Holocaust Survivors Park in Lodz, Aug. 25. 2009
Invited guest to the opening of three exhibitions, on the Old Town neighborhood of Lodz, located in the courtyard of the building of the former Jarocinski Vocational Talmud Torah; on the destruction of Jewish communities in the Lodz region, displayed at the Museum of Polish Independence Movements; and on the Arie Ben-Menachem satiric album of photographic montage clandestinely prepared in the Lodz Ghetto. Aug. 24. 2009
Meeting with Michael Schudrich, the chief rabbi of Poland, to discuss the current state of Polish Jewry and the commemoration of Jewish history in Poland. Warsaw, Aug. 23. 2009
Meeting with the granddaughter and great-granddaughter of the late Dr. Jakub Poznanski, author of a Polish diary from the Lodz Ghetto that I have translated into English and am now annotating. I was given access to the family archive of photographs and documents, which I was permitted to photograph, Aug. 23. 2009
Visited the Museum of the City of Lodz, located in the former palace of Israel Kalmanovitsh Poznanski, where I located and studied the retrieved outdoor Sukkah mural originally located in the courtyard of Ezra Szykier, a major wine merchant and Jewish communal leader who died in 1920. Aug. 21. 2009
Consultant, Holocaust Center of Northern California, regarding the newly discovered anonymous diary from the Lodz Ghetto. Participated in authentication of the diary manuscript and planning for transcription, translation and eventual publication and exhibition of the diary by an anonymous young Jewish woman who wrote in Polish, Yiddish and Hebrew. 2008
A stay of 23 days in Lodz, Poland, to conduct research on the history of Jews in Lodz and the Lodz Ghetto imposed by the Germans during the Second World War, with special emphasis on ghetto diaries. June 4-26. 2007
Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums
March 3, 2020, invited participant in the Symposium on Israel, BDS and Journalism on American College Campuses, sponsored by the Academic Engagement Network, with principal speaker senior foreign affairs reporter Lahav Harkov of the Jerusalem Post (a former student of mine before she emigrated to Israel). (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2020
Participant in International Advanced Yiddish Seminar led by Prof. Miriam Trinh of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem on theme of Yung Yiddish: Holocaust Survivor Authors in Israel, contributing to discussions of the context and interpretation of the selected works of poetry and short stories. Seminar met over ZOOM platform for 10 weekly sessions between March and May 2020. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2020
Participant in the International Seminar on Early 20th Century Yiddish Short Fiction led by Dr. Yitskhak Niborski of the Medem Yiddish Center in Paris, conducted over ZOOM online weekly for 10 weekly sessions between March and June 2020, with presentations about the history and significance of the issue of right of residence for Jews in the Tsarist Russian Empire, as well as commentary and analysis of selected Yiddish short stories from Russia and Poland between 1900 and 1920.. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2020
Participant in Webinar on "Rabbinic Responsa Regarding Jewish Law during the Holocaust," sponsored by Project Witness in Brooklyn, NY, in association with recent publications for middle and secondary school courses. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2020
Association for the Study of Nationalities annual conference at Columbia University School of International Affairs, May 2019, discussant for papers presented at the session on "Antisemitism and Anti-Jewish Violence Before and During the Second World War," including papers by scholars from Israel, Romania, and USA. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2019
Week of Commemorative Observances of the 75th Anniversary of the Final Liquidation of the Lodz Ghetto, the last ghetto in German-occupied Poland in August 1944: Invited to participate in a series of panels and events with Polish scholars and survivors, under the sponsorship of the Marek Edelman Center for Dialogue in Lodz, Poland, August 23-31, 2019. Contributed remarks regarding the Lodz Ghetto and the survivor-scholars Dr. Isaiah Trunk and Dr. Lucjan Dobroszycki. Invited participant in the main memorial convocations at the Lodz Park of the Survivors sponsosred by the Edelman Center and at the Radegast Rail Station Museum sponsored by the President of the City of Lodz Municipality. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2019
Invited as a designated interlocutor to comment upon and raise questions regarding research papers on the theme of modernization and migration at the 4th annual Polish Jewish Studies Workshop, held at Rutgers University, March 4-6, 2018. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2018
Association for Jewish Studies Annual Conference, Washington, DC, chaired session on "Migration and the Tsarist Russian/Soviet Jewish Experience." (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2017
Invited panel participant at the Ruth Gay Symposium in Modern Jewish History at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Center for Jewish History. The November 16, 2016 symposium is dedicated to "Digitization and Publication of the Complete Oyneg Shabes-Ringelblum Clandestine Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto." Presenters include Prof. Samuel Kassow of Trinity College, Dr. Eleonora Bergman of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, and Prof. Robert Moses Shapiro of Brooklyn College. Professor Shapiro's contribution reflects his catalog and guide to the Oyneg Shabes-Ringelblum Archive co-published by Indiana University Press, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, as well as his preparation of the finding aid for the Hersh Wasser Collection of documents at the YIVO Institute. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2016
Invited lecture in Polish at the Marek Edelman Center for Dialogue in Lodz, Poland, on "Being a Polish Jewish Historian in Brooklyn," June 2015. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2015
Spoke at Tanger Auditorium for the BC Adult Literacy Program's students and then guided them through the Jan Karski Exhibit in the BC Library Art Gallery. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2015
Spoke about Ruth Gruber's life and career at the opening reception of the exhibition about her and her work displayed at the BC Library Art Gallery. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2014
"The Clandestine Warsaw Ghetto Oyneg Shabes-Ringelblum Archive in the Hersh Wasser Collection at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research" keynote address. YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Center for Jewish History. The talk was part of a panel discussion with Professor David Engel (New York University). New York, April 7. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2013
"Lodz Ghetto Leader Rumkowski in Jakub Poznanski's Polish Diary of the Lodz Ghetto, 1939-1944." Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies. Washington, D.C., December. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2011
"Making Bricks Without Straw: Yiddish and Hebrew at Brooklyn College in the 21st Century." Department of Modern Languages and Literatures' Symposium on Languages in Brooklyn. Brooklyn College, March 3. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2011
"Diaries From the Lodz Ghetto." Center for Jewish Research, University of Lodz. Aug. 25. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2009
"Lodz Ghetto Diaries and the Needs for Future Research." Lodz Ghetto Research Workshop, organized by the Center for Jewish Research of the University of Lodz. Aug. 30. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2009
"Looking for Lodz in the Oyneg Shabes-Ringelblum Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto." Center for Jewish Research, University of Lodz, Poland. Aug. 19. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2009
Interpreted and commented upon a Polish presentation on the Lodz State Archives holdings for Jewish genealogical research. Aug. 19. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2009
Lectured to students of the Center for Jewish Research of Lodz University during an excursion to the sites associated with Chelmno, the first operational Nazi German death camp on Polish soil. Aug. 20. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2009
Talk during which I revealed the previously unknown existence of a Polish diary from the Lodz Ghetto that was discovered in San Francisco, whose initially anonymous author has been tentatively identified as a young woman named Rywka Lipszyc, about whom more information is being sought. Lodz Ghetto Research Workshop, organized by the Center for Jewish Research of the University of Lodz. Aug. 28. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2009
"Lodz in Jewish History, Literature and Culture." Mala Litera Bookstore. Lodz, Poland, June 23. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2008
"Press During the Holocaust." Rabbi Herbert Tarr Institute of Jewish Studies. Roslyn Heights, N.Y., Nov. 6. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2008
"Why Didn't the Press Shout?" Kristallnacht Remembrance Program. Mt. Sinai Jewish Center. New York, Nov. 9. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2008
"'But Wasn't Everything Destroyed?': Primary Sources Reflecting the Lodz Ghetto." Annual Family History Seminar of the Jewish Genealogy Society of New York. Hebrew Union College. April 22. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007
"Lodz and Its Jewish Community, 1800-2007" (in Yiddish). Lodz Jewish Community Center, to a visiting group from the Medem Library of Paris during their visit to Lodz, Poland. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007
"Lodz Ghetto: A History." Holocaust Resource and Memorial Center, Queensborough Community College. Oct. 21. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007
"Looking for Lodz in the the Ringelblum Archive of the Lodz Ghetto." New Perspectives on the Lodz Ghetto Panel, Association for Jewish Studies Annual Conference. Toronto, Dec. 18. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2007
"Poland and Jews." Alon Shvut Yeshiva. Jan. 16. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007
"Poland in the Jewish Past and Present" lecture in Hebrew. Mofet Institute Seminar on the Place of the Holocaust in Various Sectors of Israeli Society. Herzlia, Israel, Jan. 14. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007
"The Current Fashion of Jewish Tours to Poland, Some Critical Observations" lecture in Hebrew. Michlalah Jerusalem College Seminar for Israeli Guides Accompanying Tours to Poland. Jan. 9. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007
"The Vaad Ha-hatsalah: Orthodox Jewish Rescue Committee, 1939-1945." Museum of Jewish Heritage. New York, Nov. 18. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007
"YIVO's EPYC Curriculum and Website on East European Jewish Culture." Delivered to Wexner Foundation Fellows at the YIVO Institute of Jewish Research. New York, Nov. 13. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007
Shapiro, Robert, Samuel D. Kassow and Joanna B. Michlic. "Lodz Ghetto Archives and the Clandestine Ringelblum Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto." Ghetto Archives in Occupied Poland Panel. YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. New York, Oct. 23. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007
Shapiro, Robert, Yehuda Bauer, Israel Gutman, David Engel, Yitschak Mais and Judith Baumel Schwartz. "Popular History, Judaism and Resistance." Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust Symposium. Museum of Jewish Heritage. New York, Oct. 28. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007
Professional Leadership
Member of Brooklyn College Faculty Council Committee on Graduate Curriculum and Degree Requirements. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2020
Chair of the BC Faculty Council Committee on Undergraduate Curriculum and Degree Programs, 2018-19. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2019
Member of Brooklyn College Faculty Council Committee on Graduate Curriculum and Degree Requirements. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2019
Appointed member of the College President's Special Advisory Committee on Campus Security. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2016
Alternate Member of Faculty Council representing the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Fall 2015. (Professional Leadership: Public Service) 2015
Appointed member of the board, Brooklyn College Association. (Professional Leadership: Public Service) 2015
Invited participant in the Kutno, Poland, Day of Commemoration of the Ghettoization and Deportation of the Kutno Jewish Community, June 2015. Along with Dr. Eleanora Bergman of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, I was one of two Jewish participants in the commemorative activities, in recognition of my late teacher, Dr. Isaiah Trunk, a native of Kutno who survived the Holocaust to become one of the most important historians of the Catastrophe of European Jewry. (Professional Leadership: Public Service) 2015
Member of Faculty Council Committee on Course and Standing. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2015
Member, Departmental Appointments Committee. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2015
Member, Faculty Council's Committee on Undergraduate Curriculum. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2015
Member, New York City Parks Department's Holocaust Memorial Advisory Community. (Professional Leadership: Public Service) 2015
Member, Promotion and Tenure Committee, School of Humanities and Social Sciences. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2015
Organizer, Israel, Academic Freedom and the Role of Scholars in Peacemaking: A Faculty Seminar, sponsored by the Judaic Studies Department, the Tanger Hillel at Brooklyn College and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. Speakers included Professor Cary Nelson of University of Illinois and former president of the American Association of University Professors and Professor Eric Alterman of the Brooklyn College Department of English. Brooklyn College, Feb. 24. (Professional Leadership: Public Service) 2015
Appointed to the New York City Parks Administration's Holocaust Memorial Advisory Committee. (Professional Leadership: Public Service) 2014
Chair of panel of papers on Jewish communal fundraising, health care and body image at the annual conference of the Association for Jewish Studies. (Professional Leadership: Public Service) 2014
Member, Promotion and Tenure Committee, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Brooklyn College. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2014
Member, Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, Faculty Council, Brooklyn College. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2014
Organized the Languages-Identity-Diversity Project, featuring a three-day visit by distinguished literary scholar and author Professor Ilan Stavans of Amherst College, who came to Brooklyn College to make five public presentations, including the Frances Haidt Memorial Lecture in Judaic Studies. Stavans met with students in more than a dozen undergraduate courses as well as the faculty of the Brooklyn College School of Education. In addition, the LID Project sponsored a lecture by Professor Miriam Segal (Queens College) on "A New Sound in Hebrew: National Identity and National Poet" and a symposium on "Women and Other Jews Using Jewish Languages" that focused on contemporary Yiddish and Ladino. March 31 to April 3; April 24. (Professional Leadership: Organizational Leadership Position) 2014
Anonymous peer reviewer, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, published by Purdue University Press. (Professional Leadership: Public Service) 2013
Member, Promotion and Tenure Committee, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Brooklyn College. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2013
Member, Undergraduate Curriculum Committee of Faculty Council, Brooklyn College. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2013
Member, On-site Evaluation Team for the National College Credit Recommendation Service of the University of the State of New York Regents Research Fund, which evaluated the programs of Pirchei Shoshanim, an innovative Jewish educational program of hybrid Internet courses for students all over the world, based in Lakewood, N.J. July. (Professional Leadership: Public Service) 2012
Member, Faculty Council Core Curriculum Committee. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2011
Member, Faculty Council's Core Curriculum Committee. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2010
Acting chairman, Judaic Studies Department, Fall. (Professional Leadership: Public Service) 2009
As a guest of the director of the Museum of the City of Lodz and curator of the new exhibition, "Secrets of the World of Hasidim," I toured the exhibit and provided commentary on how the exhibits displays. Aug. 21. (Professional Leadership: Public Service) 2009
Lectured in Hebrew to a group of Israeli and American seminary students from Kiryat Arba during their three-hour walking tour of Lodz and sites associated with the Nazi-imposed ghetto. Aug. 22. (Professional Leadership: Public Service) 2009
Departmental representative to Faculty Council (fourth year). (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2008
Member, Faculty Council Committee on the Core Curriculum (second year). (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2008
Member, Faculty Council Core Curriculum Committee. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2007
Organized and chaired the Teachers Seminar on Polish-Jewish Relations at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York, co-sponsored with the Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York and the Forum for Dialogue Among Nations. May 9. (Professional Leadership: Public Service) 2007
Screening and discussion of the first feature film about Auschwitz, The Last Stop (Poland, 1947). Yom Ha-Shoah / Holocaust Commemoration. Brooklyn College. April 18. (Professional Leadership: Public Service) 2007
Pedagogical Achievements
Graduate course on "Archival Research in Yiddish Sources" at the Bard College-YIVO Institute on East European Jewish Heritage at the Center for Jewish History, New York, with participation of doctoral students from Germany, Israel and Russia. January. 2012
Chairman and organizer, YIVO EPYC Educators Seminar on East European Jewish Heritage, to be held at the Center for Jewish History in June 2009. 2008
Community Activities
January 23, 2020, invited lecture on "Significant Trends in Modern Eastern European Jewish History" in the Annual Dahan Lecture Series at the Beth Tfiloh Congregation in Baltimore, MD. 2020
Organizer and discussion leader of the series "Recent Films on the Modern Jewish Experience" at the Netivot Shalom Congregation in Baltimore, MD, bi-weekly in April-May 2020. 2020
"A Rosen by Any Other Name: Secrets of East European Jewish Family Names," Limmud Baltimore event. Johns Hopkins University. April 21. 2013
Participant, Lodz Jewish religious community's Hasidic "tish" in celebration of the beginning of the Hebrew month of Ellul. Aug. 20. 2009
Speech on the peculiar history of the Jews of the Zaglebie region in Poland, called East Upper Silesia by the Nazi Germans. Annual memorial meeting of the Sosnowitz-Bendiner Society at the Woodbury, N.J., Jewish Cemetery. My talk included a never-before translated Polish letter from the parents of a six-year-old Jewish child in hiding, a final communication from parents to their daughter on the eve of the parents' deportation to Auschwitz. Sept. 13. 2009
"Diaries From the Lodz Ghetto." Young Israel of Forest Hills. Queens, N.Y., April 15. 2007
"Hasidim, Mitnagdim and Other Jewish Revolutionaries in Eastern Europe." Sea Breeze Jewish Center. Brooklyn, N.Y., March 27. 2007
"Jewish Geography in Eastern Europe." Sea Breeze Jewish Center. Brooklyn, N.Y., March 13. 2007
"Like a Branch to a Root: The Israeli Poet Leah Nebenzahl." Netivot Shalom Congregation. Baltimore, April 15. 2007
"Secrets of Eastern European Jewish Family Names." Sea Breeze Jewish Center. Brooklyn, N.Y, March 20. 2007
Screening and discussion of In the Shadow of Your Wings: The Diary of Moshe Flinker (Israel, 2005), Baltimore Hebrew University, July 24. 2007
Other Professional Activities
March 2, 2020, invited participant in the celebration of the publication of the translated Yiddish memoir Oddysey of an Apple Thief by Wolf Rozenbaumas, held at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in the Center for Jewish History in NYC. 2020
March 4, 2020, participant in discussion at the Fordham University Jewish Studies Book Seminar on Prof. Elissa Bemporad's book, Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets 2020
Organized the Annual Frances Haidt Memorial Lecture events held on Monday, April 8, at Tanger Auditorium of the BC Library. Lecture by Prof. Samuel D. Kassow of Trinity College on "History and Catastrophe: The Secret Archive in the Warsaw Ghetto;" and screening of the film "Who Will Write Our History?" based on Prof. Kassow's award-winning book of the same title about Emanuel Ringelblum and the Oyneg Shabes clandestine archive in the Warsaw Ghetto. Event was co-sponsored by the Departments of Judaic Studies, History, Sociology, and Film, and by the Wolfe Institute for the Humanities and Brooklyn College President Anderson's project "We Stand Against Hate," as well as the Tanger Hillel at Brooklyn College. 2019
Brought Zuzanna Radzik, executive board member of the Forum for Dialogue group, to meet with students in Jewish Diaspora and History of the Holocaust classes, to present the work and approach of the Polish Forum for Dialogue organization. April 30, 2018. 2018
October 30, 2018: Invited lecture at the Holocaust Studies Center at Ramapo State College in Ramapo, NJ, "Comparing and Contrasting Two Holocaust Diaries: Anne Frank in Amsterdam and Jakub Poznanski in Lodz." 2018
Peer reviewer of proposed book manuscripts in Jewish studies for Oxford University Press and Syracuse University Press. 2018
Polish delegation of 12 prominent Polish attorneys, legal scholars, business leaders, newspaper editors, and diversity educators, brought to USA by the Forum for Dialog organization that promotes awareness of the depth of Jewish contributions to Polish culture and society by encouraging Polish high school students to explore and uncover the generally unknown history of Jewish communities who lived in their hometowns and comprised a large part of the local populace until the Holocaust. The delegation came to Brooklyn to meet with Prof. Robert Shapiro on 13th Avenue in the heart of Borough Park, to explore a portion of an intensely Jewish neighborhood. The Delegation was facilitated and brought to the USA with the aid and support of the American Jewish Committee. April 26, 2018. 2018
Continuing service on Faculty Council as representative of the faculty in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences; on the Course and Standing Committee of Faculty Council; on the Board of the Brooklyn College Association that oversees Student Activities Fees spending; and on the President's Advisory Committee on Campus Safety. 2017
Participant in the Johns Hopkins University Library's February 2017 celebration of the life and career of the Jewish historian Arthur Hertzberg (1921-2006), whose personal library of 7,000 volumes and papers were deposited at the Sheridan Libraries of the Johns Hopkins University. I spoke about Hertzberg as both my teacher and as a communal leader and spokesman during a long public career that stretched from the 1943 March on Washington by hundreds of Orthodox rabbis seeking the rescue of European Jewry to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's March on Washington for Civil Rights and beyond. Rabbi Dr. Hertzberg was a specialist in the history of the Enlightenment, having sought to understand why the heroic Voltaire could not escape from the childhood anti-Jewish prejudices of his childhood, even as he preached reason and tolerance. 2017
Interviewed in November 2016 by German researcher Dr. Veronique Mickisch, who is writing an intellectual biography of my teacher, Isaiah Trunk, a native of Poland, who achieved prominence as a Holocaust historian with books on the Lodz Ghetto and on the Judenraete or Jewish Councils imposed by Nazi Germany on the captive Jews in hundreds of ghettos during the Second World War. Dr. Trunk's scholarship on the ghettos and Jewish Councils became standard works, especially during the controversy surrounding Hannah Arendt's allegations that the members of the imposed Jewish Councils were culpable and co-responsible for the murderous fate that befell millions of East European Jews. Brooklyn College alumnus Raul Hilberg, himself one of the foremost historians of the Holocaust, was often told that he should have read Trunk's Yiddish scholarship on the Lodz Ghetto. This challenge resulted in my publication of an English translation of Trunk's _Lodz Ghetto: A History_. 2016
Invited participant in the United Nations Conference on Holocaust Memorials and Memory in the 21st Century, at UN Secretariat Building on November 2, 2016. 2016
Participant in planning committee for the Wolfe Institute's April 5 lecture by Dr. Anne Kirschner on "Sala's Gift," about her mother's remarkable personal archive of letters, postcards, and photographs accumulated and preserved during five years as a Jewish slave laborer in Nazi German concentration camps from 1940 to 1945. 2016
Since 2014, serving as an occasional resource for program producers regarding East European Jews for the PBS TV program, "Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr." 2016
Since 2015, serving as a member of the Educators Advisory Council of the Kleinman Family Holocaust Education Center in Borough Park, Brooklyn. 2016
Consultations with the curatorial and scholarly staff of the new Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, Poland, June 2015. 2015
Oct. 8, 2015, chaired the screening of "Ahead of Time: The Extraordinary Journey of Ruth Gruber," in Tanger Auditorium, and facilitated questions and answers with the producers of the documentary, in conjunction with the opening of the exhibition on "Ruth Gruber, Photojournalist," from October 2015 to February 2016 at the BC Library Art Gallery. 2015
Participant in Jewish Educators Seminar on Polish-Jewish Dialogue at the Forum for Dialogue Among Nations in Warsaw, Poland, July 2015. 2015
Outside evaluator of scholarly research publications of a candidate for promotion at Western Galilee Academic College, Akko, Israel, February. 2014
Judaic Studies Department representative to the Brooklyn College Office of Assessment Workshops on Assessment Methods and Documentation. 2013
Lecture, "The Paradox of Holocaust Journalism: Stories Published but Not Noticed." Kupferberg Holocaust Resource Center, Queensborough Community College (CUNY). Bayside, N.Y., May 19. 2013
Bringing the Uriel Weinreich Summer Yiddish Program of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research to Brooklyn College, starting in summer 2013. The distinguished YIVO-Weinreich Program is the world's foremost intensive six-week Yiddish language program, established in 1968 at Columbia University. It will bring students from all over the world to Brooklyn, home to more than 200,000 native Yiddish speakers. It is intended to make the Weinreich Summer Yiddish Program a constituent program within the Judaic Studies Department at Brooklyn College from summer 2014. 2012
As Judaic Studies Departmental Library Representative, I revised the list of professional journal subscriptions at the Brooklyn College Library, finding significant savings through elimination of outdated subscriptions while applying a portion of the savings to institute subscriptions to several publications of value for the study of Brooklyn's Jewish communities. 2011
Dissertation fellowship proposal reviewer, Foundation for Jewish Culture. 2011
Outside reader, dissertation defense in the field of East European history, Yale University. 2011
Attendee and participant, various events associated with the commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the liquidation of the Lodz Ghetto, the last Nazi-imposed ghetto in Poland. Aug. 26-30. 2009
Attendee, Conference on the Attitudes and Policies of the London Polish Government-in-Exile and the Home Delegatura Toward Rescue of Jews. Law School of the University of Lodz. Aug. 28. 2009
Attendee, publication press conference held at the Radegast Station Memorial on the site of the embarkation of Lodz Jews sent to Chelmno and Auschwitz, for the publication of the new collection of Lodz Ghetto photographs, Getto Lodzkie, during which I met the regional director of the Institute of National Memory and the director of the Lodz State Archive, two of the most important repositories for my research. Aug. 26. 2009
Interviewed by Lodz Public Television about my research in Lodz and about the recently discovered, previously unknown Lodz ghetto diary of Rywka Lipszyc. Aug. 19. 2009
Meeting with Henryk Panusz, head of the Fundamentum Judaicum Lodzenses Foundation, with whom I discussed the retrieval of former Jewish property and the possible location of the library of the former chief rabbi of Lodz. Lodz Jewish Community Center in Poland. Aug. 26. 2009
Moderator, YIVO Institute Book Group session on Loving Kindness, by Anne Roiphe, at the Center for Jewish History. Feb. 5. 2009
Organizer and chairman, guest lecture on "Global Connections: Memoirs of a "Jewminicana'," presented by Aliza Hausman. Sponsored by the Judaic Studies Department with the Core Curriculum Director's Office and co-sponsored by Phi Beta Kappa, Honors College, Puerto Rico and Latino Studies Department, and the Women's Studies Program. March 17. 2009
Organizer and chairman, Third YIVO EPYC Educators Seminar on East European Jewish Heritage, held for four days at the Center for Jewish History, with participants from five countries and 10 states, including the associate director of the Judaic Studies Department at the University of Nanjing, China. Funded by the Israel Miller Fund for Holocaust Research and Education at the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany and by the Taube Family Foundation for Jewish Life. June 22-25. 2009
Chairman, "Children, Family, and Gender and the Holocaust" session, Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies, Washington, D.C., Dec. 22. 2008
External evaluator, University of Toronto, for the doctoral dissertation of Irena Kohn, "Material Cultural Sources From the Lodz Ghetto: Songs, Photographs and Stories." 2008
Moderator, YIVO Institute Book Group, discussing The Next World, by Dara Horn, Dec. 2. 2008
Organized and chaired "Testimonies of Child Survivors of the Holocaust, 1944-49," the Judaic Studies Departmental Seminar session with Dr. Boaz Cohen of Western Galilee Academic College. Nov. 4. 2008
Outside evaluator of research funding proposal for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. 2008
Associate editor, new Toronto History of Polish Jews Series (University of Toronto Press). 2007
Book talk and interview in Polish with Joanna Podolska of Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper at the Księgarnia Litera book shop in Lodz, Poland, in connection with publication of my translation of Isaiah Trunk's Lodz Ghetto: A History (Indiana University Press, 2006). 2007
Led a three-week evening workshop in Yiddish language, sponsored by the Fundacjum Monumentum Judaicum Lodzense at the Jewish Community Center in Lodz, Poland, for graduate students engaged in research related to Jewish history. June. 2007
Outside evaluator of doctoral dissertation fellowship proposals for the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. 2007
