TABLE OF CONTENTS From the Director of the Bennett Center .................................. 1 Fall 2024 - Spring 2025 Highlights and Events ........................... 2
VOLUME THIRTY-ONE, NUMBER ONE
FALL 2025
JUDAIC STUDIES ANNUAL NEWSLETTER
Looking Ahead .......................................... 4 A PU B L I C ATION OF THE BE NNE TT C E NTE R F OR J UDA IC STUDI ES
Faculty Focus............................................... 5
AT F A I R F IE LD UNIVE RSITY
Undergraduate Courses – Fall 2025 ....................................................... 6 Honor Roll July 2024 - June 2025......................... 7 Judaic Studies Faculty & Friends ..................................... 8
Robin Kanarek, Glenn Dynner, Anne Appelbaum, and Joe Kanarek
Looking back over the 2024-25 academic year I am filled with gratitude towards our donors, supporters, and friends for enabling us to bring extraordinary speakers to guide us, challenge us, and stimulate lively discourse this year: Aomar Boun, Bari Weiss, David Myers, Nomi Stolzenberg, Massimo Faggioli, Joseph Angel, Tobi Kahn, Anne Applebaum, and Peter Haslund; as well as dazzling concert/talks like Mark Ludwig’s Terezín Project and Krakauer and Tagg’s Good Vibes Explosion. The timing of each event was uncanny, helping us cope with fresh tragedies and dilemmas throughout the year while fostering a deep sense of community and cross-communal discourse. The Bennett Center emerged as a guiding light for Fairfield University during some challenging times.
new opportunities at the University of Virginia. However, the Center will be in very good hands. My successor, Yaron Ayalon, PhD (Princeton University Class of 2009), brings a range of new expertise to the Bennett Center: Sephardic Jews, the Ottoman Empire, the Middle East, Israel, and more. Dr. Ayalon and I have been working to create a spectacular slate of speakers and performances for the 2025-26 academic year. We hope that you will warmly welcome him and continue to support the Bennett Center’s growing, vibrant community of life-long learners.
Glenn Dynner, PhD It is with mixed feelings that I announce that the 2024-25 academic year was my final year as Director of the Bennett Center, as I depart to pursue
fairfield.edu/judaicstudies
Former Director, Bennett Center for Judaic Studies
1