GTU Center for Jewish Studies

Please join us TOMORROW (Tuesday) at 12:30 in the Dinner Boardroom for a celebration of CJS student scholarship. This program will consist of presentations from CJS doctoral students Margie Jacobs, Morey Lipsett, and Dan Stein, as well as a presentation from our spring M.A. graduate, Tamar Levin. For more details, please see the link in our bio.

Please join us on April 27th for the upcoming CJS conference on “Healing in Jewish History and Thought." This daylong program will feature scholars from UC Berkeley, Stanford, GTU, and beyond. The keynote by Nathaniel Deutsch (UC Santa Cruz) is entitled, "In Lilith's Shadow: Pregnancy and Childbirth Among Jewish Immigrants on the Lower East Side," with a response by Jordan Katz (UMass Amherst). The conference is cosponsored by UC Berkeley's Center for Jewish Studies and Stanford's Taube Center for Jewish Studies. For more details, please see the link in our bio.

Prof. Sam Shonkoff's "Modern Judaisms" seminar convened last week at @themagnes to engage with three objects that illuminate entanglements between religion and politics for early modern European Jews. Thanks to Learning and Engagement Coordinator @dialter54 for his guidance and generosity!

Join us for the Distinguished Faculty Lecture on Tuesday, November 18, 2025 at 5pm (in person at 2400 Ridge Road, Berkeley and online). In Religion and Remedy: Medicine in Classical Jewish Texts, Dr. Deena Aranoff will explore how the healing arts appear in Biblical and Rabbinic writings and how figures like Moses Maimonides reshaped their significance in the medieval period. She will also consider how religious practice and community itself may offer forms of remedy needed in our contemporary moment. A response will be offered by Dr. Rebecca Esterson. All are welcome. Learn more and register at the link in our bio. #GTUEvents #DistinguishedFacultyLecture #JewishStudies #ReligionAndMedicine #InterdisciplinaryScholarship

Thanks to everyone who joined the GTU’s Center for Jewish Studies and Center for the Arts & Religion yesterday for an incredibly rich afternoon of learning! This immersive experience of sacred mobility in Jewish ritual and diasporic contexts included teaching from scholar Francesco Spagnolo in the temporary ritual dwelling of the Sukkah, followed by a tour of “Sacred Mobility: The Travels of Hindu and Eastern Orthodox Holy Images” with co-curators Olga Yunak and Justin Grosnick  “Sacred Mobility” is open to all, free of charge in the Doug Adams Gallery (2400 Ridge Rd. Berkeley) Tuesdays through Fridays, 10am - 4pm. • • • #GTU #GTUBerkeley #CARe #GTUCARe #GTUCJS #CJSGTU #CenterForJewishStudies #Sukkah #Sukkot #SacredMobilityGTU #FrancescoSpagnolo #Diaspora #ArtAndReligion #UCBerkeley

We built a sukkah today. Everyone, please make yourself at home here until we deconstruct it after the holiday on October 16th.

Join us for a special evening celebrating the launch of Mother’s Milk: Essays on Child-rearing, the Household and the Making of Jewish Culture by GTU’s own Deena Aranoff. This thought-provoking book explores how enduring aspects of Jewish culture emerge from the rhythms of family life and parenting. For the launch, Deena will be in conversation with Sam Shonkoff, opening up a dialogue on parenting, religion, everyday life, and the unfolding of revelation. Monday, September 29, 2025, 5:00 pm, at the Dinner Boardroom, 2400 Ridge Road, Berkeley. Free and open to the public. Learn more at the link in our bio. #GTUEvents #JewishStudies #BookLaunch #GTUFaculty #MotherhoodAndFaith

What a beautiful program today with GTU professors Kamal Abu-Shamsieh and Deena Aranoff on terms for “healing” in Arabic and Hebrew.

Please join us for an exploration of the Arabic and Hebrew terms for healing. Both Arabic and Hebrew are organized around strong verbal root systems that branch out into many related meanings. In this program, we will explore the principal terms for healing in each language as well as their semantic range. This program will feature Profs. Kamal Abu-Shamsieh and Deena Aranoff in conversation. Light pizza lunch for those attending in-person. The program is also accessible via Zoom. More details and registration through the link in our bio.

The @gtucjs recently hosted a special screening of the GTUx Original Series, After Orthodoxy. The brainchild of noted scholar Naomi Seidman, this video series explores scholarship, religion, activism, and art as experienced by those who have left Orthodox communities and since reengaged with them in unique ways. Please enjoy this recording of the screening and conversation between Deena Aranoff, Naomi Seidman, and Zalman Newfield on YouTube (link in bio).

Still kvelling from the @gtuberkeley commencement ceremony on May 22. Here are a few pics of our CJS graduates!

Please join us at the GTU on June 11! Register now at the link in our bio. We're at an intriguing moment in the history of psychedelics and religion. Nearly a decade ago, a team of scientists from Johns Hopkins & NYU observed the effects of psilocybin on dozens of religious leaders from different traditions. The researchers sought to replicate and improve upon the groundbreaking “Good Friday Experiment” of 1962, conducted by a Harvard PhD candidate who measured the impact of psilocybin on local divinity students. Central questions in both studies were: Given tendencies of psychedelics to induce “mystical” or “spiritual” states typically associated with religions, what happens when you administer them to seasoned religious practitioners from traditions that don't normally incorporate psychedelics? Are these individuals somehow primed for the psycho-spiritual terrain? Do psychedelics change their religious identities or outlooks? For a variety of reasons, publication of the scientific article from the Hopkins/NYU study was stalled for years. Just recently, on May 19, Michael Pollan published his own article in The New Yorker about the study, its contexts, and its controversies. Then, the scientific article finally appeared on May 30 in the journal Psychedelic Medicine. In a panel discussion at the Graduate Theological Union and via livestream on June 11, Pollan will engage in discussion with Rabbi Zac Kamenetz, who participated in the Hopkins/NYU study; Aidan Seale-Feldman, a medical & psychological anthropologist researching contemporary psychedelic “churches” with an eye toward secularism; Bia Labate, an anthropologist who has published extensively on Indigenous plant medicine traditions, as well as other marginalized psychedelic cultures; and Michael Silver, a neuroscientist and co-director of the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics. Sam Shonkoff, a scholar of religion at the Graduate Theological Union, will moderate. Together, these speakers will shed light on the cultural significance of the Hopkins/NYU study and how its results and reception ought to inform perspectives on psychedelics, religions, and the entanglement between them.