Welcome to the 2025-2026 academic year!

Dear colleagues, students, and friends of the Center,

We begin this new academic—and Jewish—year with great enthusiasm. Thanks to the commitment of our faculty and our new Teaching Fellows program, the Center will have an even stronger presence across campus in 2025–2026, offering courses in more departments than ever. Alongside our classes, we will host lectures, workshops, conversations, and performances—ranging from explorations of the ancient world to reflections on the challenges of the present moment. You are warmly invited to join us in person, or from home through our YouTube channel and our new podcast, Cite and Sound.

I would also like to highlight three publications: Steven J. Zipperstein’s forthcoming biography of Philip Roth, Stung by Life (accompanied by a November 19 event featuring major Jewish authors); Ariel Mayse’s Laws of the Spirit: Ritual, Mysticism, and the Commandments in Early Hasidism (the focus of a winter quarter event); and a new translation of the bestselling Happy New Years by our writer-in-residence, Maya Arad.

While it is not always easy to be optimistic, I hold to the hope that “the year and its curses will end, and a new year and its blessings will begin.” We remain devoted to our mission: to learn, think, and explore together as an intellectual community—engaging with the many meanings of Jewishness, deepening its intersections with other disciplines, and sustaining the university as a space of courageous and responsible inquiry.

Best wishes, and shana tova,

Vered Karti Shemtov
Faculty Director, Taube Center for Jewish Studies