Alongside a distinguished career in college and university planning, Ira Fink has assembled a significant research collection of books on synagogue architecture and Jewish ceremonial art. A graduate of UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design and a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, Dr. Fink’s family collection includes one of the few surviving sets […]

Barbara Goldstein is a historian of European fascism. She received her PhD from the University of Vienna, Austria with a dissertation devoted to newsreel films created by the Austrian Police between 1929-1938 as part of governmental fascist propaganda campaigns.One of Goldstein’s focuses and special interests is in historic administrative structures and “infamous people” in the […]

Shana Penn is executive director of the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture and a visiting scholar at the Graduate Theological Union's Center for Jewish Studies. Her award-winning book, Solidarity’s Secret: The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland (University of Michigan Press, 2005) examined women’s leadership role in defeating Poland’s communist regime. Presently, Penn is completing […]

Polish-born Yiddishist and oral historian Agnieszka Ilwicka will talk about her research project "Love in the Ruins: Jewish Life in Lower Silesia 1945-1968." After World War II, Lower Silesia was the largest Jewish settlement in Europe. Ilwicka will share her journey through Yiddish, Polish, Hebrew, and German stories recorded in the U.S., Israel, Germany, and […]