“” is hosted by , associate professor of history, and , professor of international studies and director of the , which is in the UW Jackson School of International Studies.

As Marhoefer says in the first episode, the series is “a deep dive podcast on stuff that matters now in Jewish life, politics, history and culture — from a scholarly perspective.”

Each of five episodes features a UW faculty member. The series begins with history professor talking with Marhoefer and Pianko about anti-Semitism in the United States and the “historical amnesia,” as Glenn said, Americans seem to have about their country’s anti-Semitic past.

Pianko said events of recent years such as the Charlottesville, Virginia, “Unite the Right” rally and the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting have affected colleagues on scholarly and personal levels. Since many Stroum Center affiliates teach and conduct research related to anti-Semitism, he said, it made a fitting topic for the podcast series.

“As a historian, I recognized anti-Semitism as a part of American history,” Pianko said. “However, the scholarly narrative of American Jewish history focused on the exceptional nature of the American Jewish experience. The U.S. never experienced the same degree of anti-Semitism or persecution that shaped the European Jewish experience.

“Watching recent events unfold has challenged the assumption of American exceptionalism and raised a host of new scholarly questions with very broad public implications,” Pianko said.

In subsequent episodes:

• Marhoefer discusses the rise of Nazi Germany and asks: Can it happen here?
• , professor of Spanish and Portuguese studies, explores how anti-Semitism has changed over time
• , associate professor of history and Jewish studies, examines Jewish prejudice against other Jews; and
• , associate professor of history, discusses Russian anti-Semitism experienced by 19th-century Jewish settlers to Ottoman Palestine.

“Jewish Questions” is produced, recorded and edited by Stroum Center communications manager. The podcast series is funded by a grant from the Jewish Federation of Seattle and by the center.

For more information, contact Marhoefer at marl@uw.edu. Pianko at npianko@uw.edu or Schoonmaker at kschoon@uw.edu.

Block was among many Stroum Center faculty and student affiliates who presented at the 50^th annual of the Dec. 16-18 in Boston. The Stroum Center is part of the UW’s Jackson School of International Studies.

At the conference, Block held a roundtable discussion titled “Teaching the Holocaust in the Age of Trump,” where he said participants remarked on how student attitudes had changed since the panel was first proposed last February.

“Until Pittsburgh, students, even in courses dedicated to study of the Holocaust, did not consider anti-Semitism a real threat and did not think of Jews as a vulnerable minority,” Block said.

Though the Holocaust itself seems to have “receded in importance for today’s students,” he said, “students were for the most part more aware of anti-Semitism and more concerned about similar risks to vulnerable groups today.”

Block said in the last two years, U.S. immigration policies and those elsewhere “have made comparisons between Nazi Germany and these practices necessary and instructive. The vilification of specific groups, the explicit appeal to racist ideologies, and the disrespect for democratic institutions and practices have led even cautious Holocaust historians to warn that the similarities are too close for us to believe it could never happen here.” Jews remain a target of bigotry, he added, and “Jewish life even in America is under renewed threat.”

Missing from the dialogue, Block added, were participants from the South or from schools with religious affiliations. Given the strong response to the December discussion, he said, there may be follow-up discussions at the German Studies Association conference in the fall.

Other presentations by UW Stroum Center affiliates included:

• “Uncovering the : Ladino and the Future of Jewish History” by , associate professor of international studies, history and Jewish studies
• “Animals and the Holocaust in Hebrew Literature,” by , professor of Hebrew and comparative literature
• “Radicalism and Violence in Religious Zionist Thought” by doctoral student
• “Ottoman Jews and the Emergence of Modern Psychiatry,” by doctoral student

Two Stroum affiliates — , UW assistant professor of Germanics and , assistant professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization — also wrote featured articles for the 50^th anniversary issue of , the association’s magazine. Oehme reflected on a key teacher and her path to studying Old Yiddish in “From Old Yiddish to Modern Mentorship” and Zafer told of what brought him to study Judaism in “Found in Translation.”

, director of the Stroum Center and professor of international studies, wrote on the center’s that the founders of the association, which has historically been based in the Northeast, “would have likely been surprised to see the especially strong showing of ÌìÃÀÓ°ÊÓ´«Ã½ faculty and graduate students playing important roles in this jubilee celebration.”