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️ Foiled: Jordanian officialsarrested nearly two dozen people over the weekend in connection to a plot to overthrow King Abdullah II. Former Crown Prince Hamzah bin Hussein, the king’s half brother, led the efforts and is now reportedly under house arrest.
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He’s Running: Imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti registered to run in the Palestinian Authority election at the last minute, shaking up the first scheduled vote in the territories in 15 years.
⚕️ First Aid: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, 85, is reportedly on his way to Germany to seek medical treatment. Looking Up: The New York Times’s Isabel Kershner explores life with a “green passport” in Israel’s “brave new post-pandemic future.”
February 12, 2021 SHARE
Holocaust studies scholar Erin McGlothlin has been named vice dean of undergraduate affairs in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, effective June 1, announced Feng Sheng Hu, the Lucille P. Markey Distinguished Professor and dean of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences.
McGlothlin
McGlothlin is professor of German and chair of the university’s Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and professor of Jewish studies in the Department of Jewish, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies (JIMES).
She will succeed Jennifer R. Smith, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, who has been named to the new position of vice provost for educational initiatives in the Office of the Provost.
Tulane University has received a $1 million gift and an additional matching challenge grant of up to $1 million from the TAWANI Foundation, led by Colonel (IL) Jennifer N. Pritzker, IL ARNG (Retired). The gift will establish the Audrey G. Ratner Excellence Endowed Fund for American Jewry and Jewish Culture in the School of Liberal Arts moving the Department of Jewish Studies significantly closer to its goal of creating a world-class hub of Jewish learning dedicated to the innovative and holistic study of American Jews.
Named in honor of the prominent Chicago philanthropist’s mother, the fund will support action-oriented programming, innovative student engagement activities and cutting-edge research, primarily through the Audrey G. Ratner Jewish Leadership Course and the Audrey G. Ratner Speaker Series. The fund will significantly grow American Jewish studies at Tulane and provide transformative opportunities to build forward-thinking leaders of the future.
Littman Library of Jewish Civilization; 368 pages, $46.85)
Israel, the Jewish people, and Jewish thinkers have always been caught in the struggle between universalism and particularism. Theodore Herzl envisaged Jewish sovereignty as a way for Jews to become “normal”, allowing them to take a seat among the nations of the world. Yet many Zionists are more like Yeshayahu Leibovitz, who valued sovereignty simply because it freed him from subordination to goyim. Herzl wanted Jews to become part of the larger world; Leibovitz wanted to stay away. The Tanakh, too, suffers from this dialectic: Jews have a universal mission in the world “to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth” (Gen. 12:3), but also are “a people who dwells apart” (Numb. 23:9).