Posen Foundation Announces Two Major Initiatives at AJS Conference in LA

LOS ANGELES, December 22, 2009 - At a reception last night at the 41st Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, The Posen Foundation announced the public launch of two new and important initiatives:

• The forthcoming publication of Volume X of The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization: An Anthology of Primary Sources, Documents, Texts, and Artifacts, with Yale University Press, the first of ten 1,000-page volumes collecting all global expressions of Jewish culture, from ancient times to the present; and

• A newly designed and expanded online journal, Secular Culture & Ideas, which has distinguished itself as a beacon for intelligent, insightful, and cutting-edge writing on secular Jewish culture and history.

These are only two of the latest and most visible of The Posen Foundation’s recent projects, which include a number of international initiatives in Jewish education and the study of secular Jewish culture.

The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization

In this ambitious and far-reaching project, a distinguished board composed of the world's leading scholars of Jewish history, literature, philosophy, religion, and culture was appointed to identify and assemble the primary sources, documents, texts, and artifacts constituting Jewish culture and civilization, from ancient times to the present. For the purposes of The Posen Library, expressions of Jewish culture will include hundreds of chronologically, geographically, generically, linguistically, and thematically organized extracts from historical, philosophical, religious, legal, literary, exegetical, political, folkloristic, artistic images, and artifacts. All volumes will be richly illustrated with images of illuminated manuscripts, architecture, religious objects, folk art, design, drawings, paintings, sculpture, photography, film, and other arts, high and low, including music and theater. According to James E. Young, editor-in-chief, “A special effort will be made to include works that have been traditionally neglected and marginalized by prevailing canons.”

Secular Culture & Ideas www.secularjewishculture.org

With a new URL, a new design, and an expanding trove of articles, essays and interviews, the online journal Secular Culture & Ideas opens an exciting public window onto the best and most vibrant writing today on secular Jewish culture, history, and ideas.

Edited by the Center for Cultural Judaism, the site now has an editor’s blog, “Secular News & Notes,” and a large, navigable archive, which includes theme issues, interviews with literary luminaries such as Tony Kushner and Rebecca Goldstein, and a large collection of articles that are frequently used by other Posen Foundation educational projects.

Myrna Baron, who has overseen the website’s relaunch, notes that “The beauty of this site is that it not only brings to a broader public on the web a treasure trove of articles on secular Jewish culture, but with the joint Posen Library announcement tonight, we see how Secular Culture & Ideas can also serve as a focal point of Posen Foundation initiatives.” Currently the site has articles about The Posen Library by volume editors Deborah Dash Moore (Volume X) and David Roskies (Volume IX), and Editor-in-Chief James Young. The site also has featured articles translated from the Hebrew language New Jewish Time: Jewish Culture in a Secular Age, as well as articles from Contemplate: The International Journal of Secular Jewish Thought. We’ve also featured excerpts from readings on syllabi in the Posen Project grant program. “University students shouldn’t be the only ones who have access to these wonderful articles,” Baron continued.

The website will continue to spotlight secular Jewish history, ideas, values, and identity. The focus on global Jewry—and not just Israel or “the Diaspora”—is a hallmark of Secular Culture & Ideas. So is the emphasis on the diversity of secular Jewish cultures.

In addition to interviews with Tony Award winning playwright Tony Kushner, Pulitzer Prize winner Natalie Angier, and author Rebecca Goldstein, notable new and recent articles featured in Secular Culture & Ideas include essays by David Biale on Spinoza; Naomi Seidman on the latter-day shtetl of Boro Park, Brooklyn; Ted Merwin on Jews in the entertainment industry; Aaron Lansky and Michael Wex on the renaissance of Yiddish; Ilan Stavans on resurrecting Hebrew; and Caryn Aviv and David Shneer on the contentious idea of “Diaspora.” “It’s important to acknowledge the variety of Jewish life and thought, both throughout the world and through the millennia,” said Baron. “Similarly, many popular assumptions—say, that Yiddish is dying—are simply incorrect, and we hope to correct them.”

For information on the Posen Foundation initiatives, contact Myrna Baron at myrna@culturaljudaism.org or 212-564-6711 x301.

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Volume Editors & Forthcoming Volumes / The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization
James E. Young, Editor-in-Chief

Editors & Forthcoming Volumes

I. 2000 B.C.E.–120 C.E. Jeffrey Tigay
II. 120 C.E.–800 C.E. Seth Schwartz and Carol Bakhos
III. 800–1096 Menahem Ben-Sasson
IV. 1096–1500 Ora Limor and Israel Yuval
V. 1500–1750 Yosef Kaplan
VI. 1750–1880 Elisheva Carlebach
VII. 1880–1918 Eli Lederhendler
VIII. 1918–1939 Todd Endelman and Zvi Gitelman
IX. 1939–1973 David Roskies and Samuel Kassow
X. 1973–2005 Deborah Dash Moore and Nurith Gertz

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