2021-2022 Frankel Institute Second Temple Judaism: The Challenge of Diversity
Fellow, Alexei Sivertsev
"Construction of Jewish Identities in 2nd Temple Period"

Alexei Sivertsev, "Construction of Jewish Identities in 2nd Temple Period"

During the late 1940s and early 1950s, the fledgling State of Israel scrambled to accommodate a flood of Jewish immigrants from war-torn Europe and from the Middle East and North Africa. The Middle Eastern and North African Jews, who came to be known as Mizrahi, or Eastern, Jews, were seen as backwards and primitive by the Zionist establishment. Two events exemplify this attitude: the Yemenite Childrens Affair, wherein the children of Yemenite Jewish families were taken by Israeli hospitals for treatment, and when their families inquired after them, were told that they’d died; and the Ringworm Affair, which subjected thousands of Mizrahi immigrants to multiple radiation doses as a treatment for the fungal skin infection ringworm–a treatment that raised the risk for cancer and other diseases.

In this episode, legal scholar Inbal Blau, a legal scholar and assistant professor at the Ono Academic College in Israel, and a fellow at the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies, examines how tort law has enabled the victims of these affairs to gain a measure of compensation, and questions to what extent monetary compensation can help right past wrongs, known in legal scholarship as “transitional justice.”


The 2022-2023 fellowship year at the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies, "Mizrahim and the Politics of Ethnicity," includes scholars from the United States and Israel who explore Mizrahi (Arab-Jewish) society and cultural as an interdisciplinary and intersectional field of study.

Inbal Blau, "Mizrahi Discourse on Transitional Justice"

2015-16 Frankel Institute Secularization/Sacralization
Fellow, Kirsten Fermaglich
Project Title: A Rosenberg by Any Other Name



Kirsten Fermaglich, "A Rosenberg by Any Other Name"

2015-16 Frankel Institute Secularization/Sacralization
Fellow, Guy Stroumsa
Project Title: The Secularized Study of the Abrahamic Religions in the Nineteenth Century

Guy Stroumsa, "The Secularized Study of the Abrahamic Religions in the Nineteenth Century"

2015-16 Frankel Institute Secularization/Sacralization
Fellow, Shaul Kelner
Project Title: Strategic Sacralization in American Jewish Politics: The Contradictions of Cultural Mobilization in the American Soviet Jewry Movement

Shaul Kelner, "The Soviet Jewry Movement"

2015-16 Frankel Institute Secularization/Sacralization
Fellow, Marc Caplan
Project Title: Yiddish Modernity in Weimar Germany

Marc Caplan, "Yiddish Modernity in Weimar Germany"

2015-16
Yiddish Lecturer, Anya Quilitzsch
Yiddish at Michigan

Anya Quilitzsch, "Yiddish at Michigan"

2016-17 Frankel Institute Israel Histories, Societies, and Cultures: Comparative Approaches
Fellow, Bryan Roby
Project Title: Blackness and the Double-Consciousness of Arab Jews: A Comparative History of the Mizrahi and African-American Experience

Bryan Roby, "Blackness and the Double-Consciousness of Arab Jews"

A Jewish Studies podcast series featuring the research of Frankel Institute fellows at the University of Michigan.

Inbal Blau, "Mizrahi Discourse on Transitional Justice"

Jewish Studies at the University of Michigan