Release date: Feb. 8, 2005
Contact: Elaine Justice, Associate Director, University Media Relations,
at 404-727-0643 or elaine.justice@emory.edu

Yosef Yerushalmi to Deliver Emory's Tenenbaum Lecture

Internationally renowned author and scholar Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi will explore the varied relationships between Jews and the powers that have ruled over them during Emory University's annual Tenenbaum Family Lecture in Judaic Studies at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 3. The lecture will be held in the Reception Hall of the Michael C. Carlos Museum, 571 S. Kilgo Circle on the Emory campus. Admission is free. For more information, call 404-727-6301 or go to www.js.emory.edu/tenenbaum.

Yerushalmi, the Salo Wittmayer Baron Professor of Jewish History, Culture and Society and director of the Center for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University, is one of very few historians of Jewry whose scholarly interests span both medieval and modern times. His research interests range from the Sephardi diaspora to 19th- and 20th-century German Jewry, Jewish history writing and psychoanalysis.

Yerushalmi is the author of "Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory" (1982), one of the most widely read works in Jewish history. The book is credited with bringing a generation of students to the study of Jewish history as well as Jewish historical representation, consciousness of time, narrative and tradition, and the role of history-writing in Jewish identity. His book on Freud occasioned a response from the philosopher Jacques Derrida in his book "Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression" (1995), and Yerushalmi and Derrida appeared publicly together in dialogue in 1997 on the subject of Freud's Jewish identity.

The Tenenbaum Family Lecture Series, sponsored by Emory's Donald A. Tam Institute for Jewish Studies, celebrates the family of the late Meyer W. Tenenbaum of Savannah, Ga., a 1931 alumnus of Emory College and a 1932 alumnus of Emory Law School.

Emory University is known for its demanding academics, outstanding undergraduate college of arts and sciences, highly ranked professional schools and state-of-the-art research facilities. For more than a decade Emory has been named one of the country's top 25 national universities by U.S. News & World Report. In addition to its nine schools, the university encompasses The Carter Center, Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Emory Healthcare, a comprehensive metropolitan health care system.

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