“Where were the Women? A History of Gendered Synagogue Space” - An illustrated lecture by Samuel D. Gruber
2025-02-05 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Arnold Hall, 96 Wentworth Street, Charleston, SC, 29424, United States
Traditionally men and women have been separated in Jewish worship spaces, though in fact, we know little with certainty about the role of women in Jewish religious life in antiquity and their physical place within religious buildings. There is evidence of women’s involvement in the building and administration of synagogues throughout the Roman Empire, but few details. Most scholarship of the last 150 years, however, has been predicated on later Jewish practice, which for more than a millennium emphatically separated the sexes, and with a few exceptions, discouraged regular female participation. That is still the case in most synagogues of the world and in Orthodox synagogues in the United States.
Beginning in the 19th century, however, as new forms of Jewish worship developed first in Europe and even more so in 19th century America, the role of women increased in synagogue life. By the mid-19th century in many American Reform synagogues women and men could sit together. Women were still forbidden from publicly reading the Torah or officiating in regular religious services, but they were more visible in the synagogue, and overall, in Jewish public life. In the 20th and 21st centuries, Jewish women have forged an identity of their own that draws on Jewish and American values and sensibilities.
Samuel D. Gruber (BA, Princeton University; Ph.D. Columbia University) has been a leader in the documentation, protection, and preservation of historic Jewish sites worldwide for 35 years. He was founding director of the Jewish Heritage Program of World Monuments Fund (1988-1996) and Research Director of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad (1998 through 2008). He presently directs Gruber Heritage Global, a cultural resource consulting firm and is president of the not-for-profit International Survey of Jewish Monuments. From 1994 until 2022 he taught courses in Art History and Jewish Studies at Syracuse University. He has also taught at Binghamton, Colgate, Cornell, and Temple Universities and Le Moyne College. Dr. Gruber has curated two on-line exhibitions for the College of Charleston: Life of the Synagogue and Synagogues of the South, and helped organize the project to document all synagogues of South Carolina.

North African Jews in Christian South Carolina: Slavery, Diplomacy, and Religion Across the Atlantic
2025-10-26 09:00 - 12:00
Dr. Max Modiano Daniel is the public historian and Jewish Heritage Collection coordinator at Special Collections in the Addlestone Library. He also teaches in Jewish Studies. His areas of research include Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews, American Jewish history, race and ethnicity, and Jewish languages.
Sponsored by the Yaschik/Arnold Jewish Studies Program

Oy Vey, King George! American Jews and the Revolution
2025-11-16 09:00 - 12:00
Adam Jortner, the Goodwin-Philpott Eminent Professor of Religion in Auburn University’s Department of History, specializes in the history of religion during the American Revolution and early republic, with particular focus on religious liberty, patriotism, theology, and new traditions. Since joining Auburn in 2009, he has published The Gods of Prophetstown—winner of the 2013 James Broussard Prize—and Blood from the Sky, and is a frequent contributor to NPR’s Backstory. His forthcoming Audible lecture series, God and the Founding Fathers, continues his exploration of religion’s central role in America’s founding.

The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai featuring Dr. Melissa Klapper
2026-02-05 18:00 - 19:30
Dr. Melissa R. Klapper is Professor of History and Director of Women’s & Gender Studies at Rowan University. She is the author of numerous books and articles about American Jewish women’s history and the history of American childhood, including Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women’s Activism, 1890-1940, which won the National Jewish Book Award in Women’s Studies; Ballet Class: An American History; and, with Dianne Ashton, The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai. Her work has been award many grants and fellowships, and she lectures frequently in both communal and academic settings.
Hybrid event; Registration link to follow.

Imagining Early American Jews, with Dr. Michael Hoberman
2026-03-22 10:00 - 12:00
Michael Hoberman is a professor of American literature at Fitchburg State University and an adjunct professor of history at Yeshiva University. He is also the author of several books on Jewish history in the US, including New Israel/New England: Jews and Puritans in Early America and A Hundred Acres of America: The Geography of Jewish American Literary History. His articles appear in popular venues and scholarly journals.
During the Spring of 2026, Hoberman will serve as a fellow at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is completing a book about Theodore Seixas Solomons, the San Francisco-born Jew who created the John Muir Trail.
Doors will open for brunch at 9:00 AM
Hybrid Event; Registration link to follow

Blue Notes & Bagels: How New Orleans Jazz Inspired the Israeli Sound
2026-10-11 09:00 - 11:00
Dr. Leonard Stein holds a PhD from the University of Toronto’s Centre for Comparative Literature and is a postdoctoral fellow at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He also lectures on poetry, music, and American culture at Tel Aviv University and Hemdat Hadarom Academic College of Education. His work sits at the intersection of music, film, and literature across cultures and eras, with a particular focus on the literature of medieval Spain and the modern Sephardic diaspora — the subject of his forthcoming book from Wayne State University Press. He is currently researching the reception of American musical cultures in Israeli society.
Hybrid event. In-person brunch meets at Arnold Hall, 96 Wentworth Street, Charleston, SC 29424
Sponsors: Norman J. and Gerry Sue Arnold Center for Israel Studies; Pearlstine/Lipov Center for Southern Jewish Culture; Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina

Echoes of Justice: What Some of History's Most Infamous Trials Teach Us Today
2026-11-11 09:00 - 11:00
Maurice Samuels is the Betty Jane Anlyan Professor of French at Yale University, where he chairs the Department of French and serves as the inaugural director of the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism. A Chicago native, he graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1990, spent a year at the École normale supérieure in Paris, worked for three years in Hollywood, and returned to Harvard to earn his Ph.D. in 2000. Before joining Yale in 2006, he taught at the University of Pennsylvania. A specialist in the literature and culture of nineteenth-century France, Samuels has written five books, including Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair (2024), The Betrayal of the Duchess (2020), The Right to Difference (2016), and Inventing the Israelite. He has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, the MLA’s Scaglione Prize, and a Cullman Center Fellowship.
Judge Richard Gergel is a United States District Judge for the District of South Carolina, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2010. Born in Columbia, South Carolina, he completed both his undergraduate studies and his J.D. at Duke University before spending nearly three decades in private practice, focusing on personal injury and civil rights law. In addition to his judicial career, Gergel is an accomplished author and historian. He co-authored a history of the early Jewish community in Columbia and wrote Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring, which chronicles a pivotal 1946 South Carolina case that helped catalyze the modern American civil rights movement.
