In her new book, Free as a Jew: A Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation, Harvard professor emerita Ruth R. Wisse reflects on her experience fleeing the Holocaust as a child, living through the birth of the State of Israel, and teaching Yiddish literature and Comparative Literature at Harvard University for more than 20 years. Wisse’s reminiscences include stories about growing up in the Jewish community of Montreal and vivid memories of meeting and interacting with great figures of the Yiddish cultural world such as Itzik Manger, Avrom Sutzkever, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Rokhl Korn and many others, as well as luminaries Leonard Cohen and Norman Podhoretz. This event will feature Wisse in conversation with Dr. Yoel Finkelman, Judaica Collection Curator at the National Library of Israel.

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Ruth R. Wisse was Professor of Yiddish literature and Comparative Literature at Harvard University from 1993–2014 and before that, helped found the Jewish Studies Department at McGill University. Currently a senior fellow at the Tikvah Fund and recipient of its Herzl Prize, she has written widely on cultural and political subjects for the Wall Street Journal, Commentary, National Affairs, and other publications. Her books include The Schlemiel as Modern Hero, The Modern Jewish Canon: A Journey Through Literature and Culture, No Joke: Making Jewish Humor, If I Am Not for Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews, and Jews and Power. In 2007, she was awarded the National Medal for the Humanities, and in 2004, an Honorary Degree by Yeshiva University.

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Dr. Yoel Finkelman is Curator of the Haim and Hanna Salomon Judaica Collection at the National Library of Israel. After receiving his PhD in Jewish Thought from Hebrew University in 2003, Yoel taught for many years in batei midrash for women in Jerusalem, as well as at Bar-Ilan University and the Givat Washington Academic College. In addition to many articles on Jewish education, sociology, and modern Jewish thought, in 2011 he published Strictly Kosher Reading: Popular Literature and the Condition of Contemporary Orthodoxy.

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In her new book, Free as a Jew: A Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation, Harvard professor emerita Ruth R. Wisse reflects on her experience fleeing the Holocaust as a child, living through the birth of the State of Israel, and teaching Yiddish literature and Comparative Literature at Harvard University for more than 20 years. Wisse’s reminiscences include stories about growing up in the Jewish community of Montreal and vivid memories of meeting and interacting with great figures of the Yiddish cultural world such as Itzik Manger, Avrom Sutzkever, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Rokhl Korn and many others, as well as luminaries Leonard Cohen and Norman Podhoretz. This event will feature Wisse in conversation with Dr. Yoel Finkelman, Judaica Collection Curator at the National Library of Israel.

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Ruth R. Wisse was Professor of Yiddish literature and Comparative Literature at Harvard University from 1993–2014 and before that, helped found the Jewish Studies Department at McGill University. Currently a senior fellow at the Tikvah Fund and recipient of its Herzl Prize, she has written widely on cultural and political subjects for the Wall Street Journal, Commentary, National Affairs, and other publications. Her books include The Schlemiel as Modern Hero, The Modern Jewish Canon: A Journey Through Literature and Culture, No Joke: Making Jewish Humor, If I Am Not for Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews, and Jews and Power. In 2007, she was awarded the National Medal for the Humanities, and in 2004, an Honorary Degree by Yeshiva University.

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Dr. Yoel Finkelman is Curator of the Haim and Hanna Salomon Judaica Collection at the National Library of Israel. After receiving his PhD in Jewish Thought from Hebrew University in 2003, Yoel taught for many years in batei midrash for women in Jerusalem, as well as at Bar-Ilan University and the Givat Washington Academic College. In addition to many articles on Jewish education, sociology, and modern Jewish thought, in 2011 he published Strictly Kosher Reading: Popular Literature and the Condition of Contemporary Orthodoxy.