Spring 2025 Semester Recap

Dear Jewish Studies students, staff, faculty, and friends:
With the close of the academic year and another semester behind us, we look forward to the reset that summer brings. We ended the school year with two memorable celebrations that allowed reflection on the hard work of our students, staff, and faculty in Jewish Studies. Now, we look ahead with excitement to Fall 2025 — a season of new beginnings, continued growth, and scholarly engagement. 

Class of 2025

The Jewish Studies Graduation Recognition and Award Ceremony took place on Friday, May 16th. This special event included a musical program provided by Jewish Studies major and graduate, Molly Handelman, who sang Somewhere Over the Rainbow and Olam Chesed Yibaneh. The student address was provided by graduating senior and Jewish Studies major Bree Katz. As always, the graduate awards ceremony was a poignant and meaningful event. For those who were unable to attend, a video recording is forthcoming. Mazel tov to our graduates:

• Eric Fischer - BA Jewish Studies (Honors), Religious Studies, Psychology 
• David Franke - BA Environmental Studies, minor Jewish Studies
• Abigail Friedland - BA Speech-Language-Hearing, minor Jewish Studies 
• Molly Handelman - KU Honors; BA Jewish Studies (Honors), Music
• Charlie Johnson - KU Honors; BA Global & International Studies, History, Political Science, & Religious Studies; minor Arabic, Jewish Studies, & Middle East Studies
• Bree Katz - BA Jewish Studies (Honors), Applied Behavioral Science, minor Psychology
• Rachel Kricsfeld - BA Jewish Studies, Visual Art
• Sam Naudet - BA Religious Studies, East Asian Language & Cultures, minor Jewish Studies
• Katherine Strane - BA Jewish Studies, English
• Sarah Sutton - BA Religious Studies, Jewish Studies, minor History

Student Awards
We are proud to recognize the following award recipients:  

• Kit Strane received the Jewish Studies Appreciation Award for her outstanding volunteerism, including her service on the hiring committee where she brought patience, professionalism, and invaluable insight.  
• Bree Katz was awarded the Danciger Service Award for her dedication as both a student and staff member, significantly contributing to the program’s success.  
• Rachel Kricsfeld received the Shelley M. Rissien Award for Hebrew Language for her deep commitment to Hebrew studies and her creative senior capstone project Scenes from the Start.  
• Eric Fischer was awarded the David and Sharyn Katzman Award for academic excellence in Jewish Studies. A true mensch, Eric graduated with departmental honors and will pursue his MA at the University of Illinois. 

Our Amazing Students

Following this year’s graduating class, we have six Jewish Studies majors and 20 Jewish Studies minors. In addition, through our various courses, we serve students across KU’s departments and schools, with hundreds of students enrolled in at least one Jewish Studies course. We are proud to continue expanding our reach and impact.

Jewish Studies Learning Community
Launched in 2024, the Jewish Studies Learning Community supports both academic and extracurricular engagement. This spring, nine Jewish Studies majors earned a $500 award at the end of the semester for their participation. They fulfilled the community requirements by attending Jewish Studies events and meeting with Dr. R.B. Perelmutter, who served as the faculty advisor for the group. Congratulations go to Eric Fischer, Molly Handelman, Bree Katz, Cami Katzen, Derrick Schaefer, Kit Strane, Sarah Sutton, Adina Thompson, and Alyson Weinberg.

Research & Recognition

• Derrick Schaefer and Sarah Sutton received the Danciger Research Award in Jewish Studies. Derrick’s work focused on the preservation of Ladino including in online spaces, while Sarah presented a comparative study on women athletes in the U.S. and Israel.
• Scott Manuel was accepted to the GUSEGG 2025 International Summer School in Austria. His participation, partially supported by the Danciger Research Award in Jewish Studies, demonstrates his commitment to global civic engagement.
• Charlie Johnson, a Jewish Studies minor and 2025 graduate, was named the James C. Gaither Junior Fellow by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace—the first KU student to receive this prestigious honor.

Engaging with Our Students and Community

On January 27, in collaboration with the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education, we commemorated International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The featured presentation, Liberating Auschwitz: Investigating the Crime, was delivered by Dr. Shelly Cline, historian and Director of Education at MCHE. The event drew sixty attendees to the KU Edwards Campus and more than 250 online viewers.

The following day, January 29, we hosted our biannual Jewish Studies Open House, complete with bagels, coffee, and pastries. We were honored by a visit from Dean Arash Mafi, who presented Jewish Studies Administrative Associate, Tyra Kalman, with the University of Kansas Employee of the Month Award.

In March, KU Jewish Studies proudly sponsored tickets to the KU Women’s Hoops Classic in partnership with KU Hillel. Also that month, we participated in Mocktails & Mingle: International Careers, offering students the opportunity to network with representatives from the University Career Center and KU Alumni Association.

On March 13, one day ahead of schedule, we celebrated both Pi Day and Purim by bringing students together for a festive gathering featuring delicious pies from Ladybird Diner and hamantaschen baked by beloved KU Hebrew Coordinator and recent retiree, Shelley Rissien, courtesy of Kehilath Israel Synagogue.
 
Continuing our collaboration with the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education, Jewish Studies staff and students attended the 2025 State of Kansas Holocaust Commemoration on April 28 at the Topeka Civic Theatre. The event included a proclamation by Kansas Governor Laura Kelly and a powerful presentation by Dr. Lindsay MacNeil, historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, who spoke about the lost Jewish community of Eyshishok.

Finally, on May 8, we welcomed students, alumni, partners, and friends to an end of semester bash and retirement celebration honoring Shelley Rissien’s remarkable career at KU. More than fifty guests attended this beautiful tribute to a beloved teacher.

Dorothy Stein Ernest Jewish Studies Colloquium

The Jewish Studies Colloquium is a monthly meeting that allows faculty and affiliates to present research in progress and engage in conversation that furthers their research. In Spring 2025, faculty gathered for three excellent and thought-provoking presentations:  

• January:  Mira Haydu (PhD Candidate, Spanish & Portuguese) presented on her research “From the Middle Ages to Modernity: Iberian Jews in the Shifting Politics of Race.”  
• February: Dr. Shelly Cline, presented “Remembering the Past, Beginning Anew: Holocaust Survivors’ Journey in Kansas City.”
• March: Drs. RB Perelmutter and Bogi Perelmutter presented "Conflict discourse in the Talmud: A pragmatics perspective."

A Productive Semester for Faculty

Kudos to Jewish Studies faculty members Vitaly Chernetsky (Woodsman), Bogi Perelmutter (Power to Yield and Other Stories), and RB Perelmutter (Yoke of Stars), for publishing or releasing books in 2024! Their accomplishments were honored by the Hall Center for the Humanities, Celebration of Books on March 5th.

Dr. Omri Senderowicz was selected as the recipient of the Michael S. Bernstein Dissertation Award for 2025 on behalf of the Jean and Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. Omri also gave invited talks this semester, both local and national:  

• March 27 - panel presentation at the Lawrence Jewish Community Center: "The Film 'No Other Land', Geopolitical Context."
• March 30 - talk at Kehilath Israel Synagogue Men's Club, Overland Park, KS: "The Socialist Experiment of the Kibbutz and its End."  
• April 24 - talk at the Student and Faculty Colloquium, Crown Center for Jewish and Israel Studies, Northwestern University in Chicago:  "Trouble in Utopia: The End of Socialism in an Israeli Kibbutz (1975-2020)."   

Dr. Rami Zeedan had a productive sabbatical in Spring 2025. He has been awarded the KU International Affairs International Travel Fund for Humanistic Research for travel to Israel to conduct field research for the project "Arabic, Hebrew, and Identity: Exploring Generational Identity and Language Practices Among Druze Youth and Adults in Israel,” in addition to a General Research Fund research grant from the University.  

Dr. Mechele Leon has been granted a sabbatical for 2025-2026. She will be working in Lawrence and returning to Spain for research on her Jewish heritage tourism project, “Sephardic Tourism, Reparative Citizenship, and the Performance of the Past.”

And a special note to congratulate KU Graduate Student Dominique Stringer (MA 2025, Museum Studies). Dominique was instrumental in creating our online exhibition Homemaking: Building the Jewish Community in Kansas. She is continuing to develop the online project as a platform that highlights the history of the Kansas Jewish Community through its objects. As a fellow of KU’s Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities, Dominique presented her research at the Fellows’ Symposium on May 13. Dominique will continue her education as a PhD student at Indiana University. Congratulations, Dominique!  

Looking Ahead to 2025-2026

Jewish Studies is thrilled to be welcoming Dr. Samantha Cooper as the Robert M. Beren Assistant Professor in Jewish Studies. Samantha comes to us from the Sam and Helen Stahl Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She earned her PhD in Historical Musicology from New York University. She will be teaching courses in Jewish American culture and continuing her research on her forthcoming book, American Jews and the Making of the New York Opera Industry.

We are also delighted that the Israel Institute has renewed funding for three years to support Dr. Omri Senderowicz as our teaching fellow in Israel Studies.  

As our interim director, Dr. Mechele Leon, goes on sabbatical next year, Associate Professor Dr. Ari Linden will lead the Jewish Studies program. Ari joins us from the Department of Slavic, German, and Eurasian Studies. Thank you, Ari, for coming on over to lead the Program in Jewish Studies!  

Alyssa Appelman from the School of Journalism has been awarded a Keeler Family Intra-University Professorship and will be joining Jewish Studies in Spring 2026 semester with the Jewish Studies Program to share her expertise and develop future collaborations. Alyssa is developing new research on the professional experiences of Jewish journalists.

Finally, we are currently in the process of hiring a Hebrew Language Specialist and Academic Program Associate. Shelley left big shoes to fill! Stay tuned for an announcement once this position has been filled.

Fall 2025 Courses

Enrollment is underway! Here’s a quick snapshot of our course offerings:

• Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced Hebrew (HEBR 110, 210, 340)
• Jews, Christians, and Muslims (JWSH 107)
• Understanding the Bible (JWSH 124)
• First year seminar: Life, Death, and Afterlife in Modern Israel (JWSH 177)
• Jewish Latin America (JWSH 300)
• Music in Jewish History (JWSH 300)
• The Spanish Inquisition (JWSH 315) 
• Israeli Palestinian Conflict: An Intro (JWSH 329)
• Mystical Tradition in Judaism (JWSH 330)
• Hitler and Nazi Germany (JWSH 341)
• Ethics and the Holocaust (JWSH 380)
• Foundations in Jewish Studies (JWSH 400)
• Israel from Idea to Statehood (JWSH 410)
• Politics and Government of Israel (JWSH 420)
• Independent Study of Hebrew and Jewish Studies (HEBR 490, JWSH 490)
• Service Learning in Jewish Studies (JWSH 650)

Have questions or want help choosing courses? We're here for you.

Thank You to Our Donors

Finally, the Program in Jewish Studies thanks its generous donors. The Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Kansas City continues to provide essential funding that allows us to support Danciger awards for our students for research, service, travel, Hebrew, and need. We are grateful to Dr. David and Mrs. Sharyn Katzman for their continued support that acknowledges the outstanding work of our students. The Robert M. Beren fund is essential to maintaining a strong program, and we are tremendously grateful to be recipients of the Beren family’s generosity.  

In honor of Shelley Rissien’s many years of service to the program, we have established the Shelley M. Rissien Funds for Hebrew Studies. Donations to the fund will provide ongoing support for Hebrew learning at KU.

To all our donors, thank you! Every donation makes a difference!

Please consider a donation to the Jewish Studies Program.  
https://kujewishstudies.ku.edu/giving-jewish-studies-0

We look forward to reconnecting in the Fall. Shabbat Shalom and have a great Summer!

~KU Jewish Studies