Jewish Studies
Jewish Studies WEek Winter 2025
Sunday, March 2nd
1:00 p.m. MST
TIMMS Centre for the Arts
87 Avenue, 112 St NW
Concert Recital & Reception
Jewish Studies Week Piano Recital
Featuring works by György Ligeti, Erwin Schulhoff, Władysław Szpilmann, & George Gershwin
The abundance of talented Jewish composers at the onset of the 20th century is indeed astounding, and because of the hostile political landscape of Europe leading up to the Second World War, many of these emerging talents were lost all too soon. In this intimate concert recital, renowned pianist presents a programme showcasing varying musical styles from avant-garde to jazz, featuring composers of Jewish heritage from Central European countries.
Dr. Mikolaj Warszynski (D.Mus) enjoys a versatile career as pianist, lecturer, and pedagogue. Currently teaching at the Chopin piano studio in Edmonton, he has taught piano in Quebec at the University of Montreal and at the Cégep de Drummondville, at the University of Daegu in South Korea, Brno conservatory in Seoul; and at the Flaine Opus74 Academy in the French Alps. Canadian pianist of Polish origin, Mikolaj Warszynski released a debut CD for the Parisian Anima Records in 2015, with music by Haydn, Liszt, Szymanowski, and Chopin, and his most recent album Lisztomania was released for the Wirth Institute label in 2018. Invitations to many prominent music festivals and societies have led to masterclasses and recent performances in China, Italy, France, Czech, South Korea, Poland, Austria, Hungary and across Canada. Warszynski has performed in Warsaw at the Royal Łazienki Park under the Chopin monument and at the Chopin Festival in Gdansk at the Baltic Philharmonic; in 2010 as part of the Chopin bicentennial celebrations, Warszynski toured with Chopin Concerto No. 2 across Canada. As a soloist, Warszynski has performed with the Kielce Philharmonic Orchestra, the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Edmonton and most recently the Red Deer Symphony Orchestra. As part of the ZUMI Duo with piano duet partner Zuzana Simurdova, Mikolaj has recently completed a recording of the complete Dvorak Legends. As a recipient of a doctorate scholarship from Quebec in support of his dissertation entitled “Exoticism and intercultural influences in the piano cycle Metopes (1915) by Karol Szymanowski”, Dr. Warszynski has gone on to perform lecture-recitals at Universities in Canada for Congress for the Humanities, and in the USA for the College of Music Society. Mikolaj completed studies with distinction at the 海角社区 with Marek Jablonski, and “cum laude” at the Rotterdam Conservatory in the Netherlands with Aquiles Delle Vigne, before completing both his master's and doctorate degrees at the University of Montreal with Marc Durand and Paul Stewart. Warszynski has been an artist-in-residence in Banff, Aspen, Salzburg and Paris. Currently, Warszynski is the artistic director of the Mazurka Music and Art Society and is the Music Liaison at the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies at the 海角社区.
Tuesday, March 4th
12:00 p.m. MST
Arts (Student) Lounge, Arts & Convocation Hall
2025 Annual Tova Yedlin Lecture
Nostalgia and Homecoming in the 20th-Century Hasidism
Wojciech Tworek is the Head of the Taube Department of Jewish Studies at the University of Wrocław. He is the author of Eternity Now (SUNY, 2019) which examines the teachings of Shneur Zalman of Liady, the founder of Chabad Hasidism. Currently he is completing a book on the Chabad communities in interwar Poland and – together with Marcin Wodziński – an anthology of Hasidic stories.
About the lecture
How does one make sense of exile and displacement? How does one come to terms with the loss of one’s hometown and community? This talk explores the stories of Joseph Isaac Schneersohn (1880–1950), the leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, and their role in the survival and flourishing of his community through the First and Second World Wars. Focusing on the social and performative function of these stories, I examine how the nostalgic depictions of the Chabad ancestral home in the Russian townlet of Lubavitch was translated into ideas, collective memories, foodways, tangible practices, and brick-and-mortar institutions. These elements helped forge a new Chabad community in interwar Poland and safeguarded its survival in 1940s America. In effect, the literary reworking of the trauma of loss and displacement prepared the ground for the resurgence of Hasidism after the tragedies of the First World War and the Holocaust, first in Poland and later in North America and Israel.
Wednesday, March 5th
Lunch - 12:30 p.m. MST | Lecture - 1:00 p.m. MST
Arts (Student) Lounge, Arts & Convocation Hall
Travels in the Jewish/German Orient: Histories and Historiographies
Alexander W. Marcus is the incoming Belzberg Family and Jewish Federation of Edmonton Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at the 海角社区. His primary research focuses on Jewish communities of late antiquity (~2nd-7th c. CE), examining the Babylonian Talmud alongside contemporaneous literary sources and artifacts deriving from Sasanian Mesopotamia. He is the editor of a forthcoming volume entitled The Aramaic Incantation Bowls in their Late Antique Jewish Contexts (Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2025). He holds a PhD in Religious Studies from Stanford University and an MA in Jewish Studies from the Graduate Theological Union. He was previously the Jacob & Hilda Blaustein Postdoctoral Associate in Jewish History at Yale University and a researcher in Ancient Judaism at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He has taught at Stanford University, Grinnell College, Yale University, Western Kentucky University, and Franklin & Marshall College. Marcus’ scholarly interests extend from ancient and medieval religious traditions to contemporary topics in religious life and culture, interreligious interactions, and issues of historical memory and representation. His pedagogical interests include historical and contemporary hermeneutics, the transmission and development of knowledge traditions, Christian-Jewish and Muslim-Jewish relations, gender/sexuality and religion, religion in popular culture, and intersections of religion and power. He has also worked in the realms of Jewish education and conflict transformation. He has organized and participated in international conferences pertaining to Muslim-Jewish dialogue and the Israel-Palestine conflict, and he sits on the Academic Advisory Council of American Friends of Combatants for Peace.
Seven Aramaic incantation bowls, in situ (Nippur, southern Iraq); photo from H. V. Hilprecht, Explorations in Bible lands during the 19th century (Philadelphia: A. J. Holman and Company, 1903), reproduced in Christa Müller-Kessler, Die Zauberschalentexte in der Hilprecht-Sammlung, Jena, und weitere Nippur-Texte anderer Sammlungen (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005)
Friday, March 7th
2-3:30 p.m. MST
Arts (Student) Lounge, Arts & Convocation Hall
Central European Cafe
Our March Central European Cafe offers a delicious assortment of beverages, European-style pastries, and an inviting atmosphere for lively discussion! We will be joined by Jewish Studies Week guest speaker Alexander Warren Marcus. As always, our Central European Cafes are free to attend, open to the public, and do not require registration to attend.
