NY event aims to ‘pull back curtain’ on how scholars think about Jewish history

NY Event Aims to Reveal How Scholars Approach Jewish History

There is a growing interest in understanding how scholars work and the internal debates within academia, said Gavriel Rosenfeld, president of the Center for Jewish History, in an interview with JNS.

Symposium Details

The Center for Jewish History in New York City will host a daylong symposium titled The Past, Present and Future of Jewish History on November 2. The event will bring together 20 prominent historians to address key questions in the field of Jewish history.

Event Structure and Themes

Purpose and Outreach

The symposium is part of a broader initiative to open scholarly discussions, often limited to universities, to an intellectually engaged public audience.

“When we established the Jewish Public History Forum in the spring of 2023, our goal was to make high-level scholarship accessible to the broader public,” Rosenfeld explained. “We have hundreds of academics in our orbit, and we want their ideas to reach a wider community.”
Background Context

This event follows renewed public interest in Jewish history sparked by the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in October.

Summary: This New York symposium aims to bridge the gap between academic scholarship on Jewish history and the general public, fostering wider access to scholarly insights and debates.

more

JNS.org JNS.org — 2025-11-01

More News