The first session of the International Forum for Young Scholars was held at the Dubnow Institute in Leipzig on 18-28 July 2004. It was organized by The Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East European Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in cooperation with the Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture at Leipzig University, and the International Center for Russian and East European Jewish Studies in Moscow.

 

The purpose of the Forum was to promote the research and career progress of promising young scholars from Europe, the former Soviet Union, the United States and Israel. The Forum aimed to become an ongoing program, comprised of 15-20 advanced Ph.D. students (ABD) and recent Ph.Ds (before tenure-track appointments). The Forum was to meet once a year and was intended to allow these young scholars an opportunity for cross-fertilization in their fields with their own peers and with an esteemed group of senior scholars led by Profs. Jonathan Frankel (z"l), Dan Diner, Zvi Gitelman, Oleg Budnitskii and Israel Bartal.

 

Program of the Forum 2004

 

Twenty-one participants from eight countries took part in the first session of the Forum:

 

1. Eugene Avrutin (University of Michigan): Jews and the Imperial State: Identification Politics in Tsarist Russia
2. Dmitri Belkin (University of Tübingen): Vladimir Solov'yov's Perception of Judaism
3. Havi Ben Sasson (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem): Modern Polish History and Holocaust Studies
4. Konstantin Burmistrov (Russian State University for Humanities): Jewish Kabbalah and Esoteric Currents in Europe  during the 17th-18th Centuries
5. Roni Gechtman (University of King's College): The History of the Yiddish-Speaking Labor  Movement in the First Half of the 20th Century
6. Francois Guesnet (Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture): Jewish Intercession: Poland, Germany and France
7. Louise Hecht (University of Vienna and Visiting Research Fellow at Hebrew University of  Jerusalem): Haskalah in Eastern Europe
8. Agnieszka Jagodzinska (The University of Wroclaw and Visiting Research Fellow at Hebrew University of Jerusalem): Integration of Warsaw Jews into Polish Society, 1850-1914
9. Joshua Karlip (The Jewish Theological Seminary of America): Jewish Socialism, Diaspora Nationalism and Yiddishism, 1905-1940
10. Yvonne Kleinmann (Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture): Jewish Folk Culture in 18th Century, Polish-Lithuanian Context
11. Mindaugas Kvietkauskas (Vilnius University): Multinational Literary Modernism in Vilnius, 1904-1918
12. Vladimir Levin (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem): Russian Jewry during the Period of Reaction, 1907-1914
13. Anna Lipphardt (Potsdam University): Cultural Memory, Trauma and Migration
14. Pawel Maciejko (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem): Ritual Murder Accusations in Early Modern Poland-Lithuania
15. Nathan Meir (University of Southampton): Community and Charity in an Imperial Russian City: Jews of Kiev, 1859-1914
16. Michael Miller (Columbia University): Jews and Politics in the Habsburg Empire
17. Marina Mogilner (Kazan State University): Russian Jewry in a Larger European Context
18. Frank Michael Schuster (University of Lodz): The Impact of World War I on the Jewish Population of Lithuania, the Polish Kingdom, Galicia and Bukovina
19. Joshua Shanes (Northwestern University): Jewish Nationalism in Habsburg Galicia, 1883-1907
20. Anna Sorokina (Russian Academy of Sciences): The Influence of Slavic Languages on Yiddish
21. Arkadii  Zeltser (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem): Soviet Modernization and Inter-Ethnic Conflict: Belorussia in the 1920-1930s