American Jewish Life
The Second Annual Conference on Jewish Life in the Diaspora
Two centuries ago, the United States constituted a tiny corner of the Jewish world. Today, it’s home to a vast array of Jewish communities characterized by religious, ethnic, political, cultural, and linguistic diversity. In the 21st century, what does it mean to be Jewish in America, and how have those meanings shifted over time? Has the United States become a modern Jewish “promised land,” as some thinkers have argued, or has its Jewish “golden age” passed? We’ll explore these questions and others with three acclaimed writers: Samira Mehta, Daniel Mendelsohn, and Shulem Deen. Each will share personal stories from their lives as Jews in the United States – including accounts of immigration, religious innovation, family histories from the Holocaust, and diasporic identity – as well as their critical reflections on the past, present, and future of American Jewish life.
This conference is made possible by funding from Samuel A. Waxman.
Visit the event home page here.
Keynote Panel
Sunday, Nov. 10 | Nau 101 | 5 PM
Keynote Conversation on American Jewish Life [Open to the Public; Catered Reception to Follow]
Panelists
Daniel Mendelsohn; Samira Mehta; Shulem Deen (moderated by Caroline Kahlenberg)
Participant Bios
Daniel Mendelsohn is an internationally bestselling and award-winning memoirist, critic, essayist and translator. A longtime contributor to the New Yorker and New York Review of Books, where he is Editor-at-Large, he has been a columnist for BBC Culture, New York, Harpers, and the New York Times Book Review. His books include An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic (2017), named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Library Journal, Kirkus, and Newsday, and The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (2006), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Jewish Book Award, among many other honors; three collections of essays and criticism, most recently Ecstasy and Terror: From the Greeks to Game of Thrones; and a translation, with commentary, of the complete poems of Constantine Cavafy. His translation of Homer’s Odyssey will be published next April by the University of Chicago Press.
Samira K. Mehta is an Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Jewish Studies and the Director of the Program in Jewish Studies University of Colorado Boulder. She is the author of the National Jewish Book Award finalist Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Interfaith Family in the United States (UNC Press, 2018) and a book of personal essays called The Racism of People Who Love You: Essays on Mixed Race Belonging (Beacon Press, 2023), which Oprah Daily called “the epitome of a book meeting a moment.” She is currently completing a book project called God Bless the Pill: Contraception and Sexuality in American Religion, also for UNC Press. She is the primary investigator on a Henry Luce Foundation funded project called Jews of Color: Histories and Futures and has a book contract for a book with Princeton University Press called A Mixed Multitude: A History of Jews of Color in the United States.
Shulem Deen is a writer, journalist, and translator. He is the author of the book “All Who Go Do Not Return,” which won a National Jewish Book Award and, for the French edition, a Prix Medicis. His book tells the story of growing up within the Hasidic community, and the heavy cost of leaving it, and he now writes on the intersection of religious and secular life in the Jewish world. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the New Republic, Salon, and other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Parking
Nau Hall is located at 1540 Jefferson Park Avenue. Free street parking is available nearby. Additional paid parking is available in the Central Grounds Garage, a ten-minute walk from Nau Hall.