An Evening with the Rock-Singers

Thursday, October 22, 2026

Time: 5:30pm

Location: Kelley Presentation Room

Title: Religion and Politics in Mandatory Palestine: The Roots of the Israeli and Palestinian
Religious Right Today

Dr. Aaron Rock-Singer is a transnational historian of the modern Middle East with a particular focus on Islamic and Jewish movements that fuse religion and politics, Dr. Rock-Singer is currently a Research Fellow at the University of Michigan’s Raoul Wallenberg Institute and teaches courses in Judaic Studies, Middle East Studies, and History.

Dr. Rock-Singer received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania (2007), his M.Phil from St. Antony’s College, Oxford (2010) and his PhD from Princeton’s Department of Near Eastern Studies (2016). Dr. Rock-Singer's research draws on mass and small media to trace the changing relationship between religion, politics and society in the 20th-century Middle East. His first book, Practicing Islam in Egypt: Print Media and the Islamic Revival was published by Cambridge University Press (2019) and his second book, In the Shade of the Sunna: Salafi Piety in the 20th-Century Middle East, by the University of California Press (2022). He is currently at work on a third monograph, tentatively entitled Worshipping the Nation: Exclusivist Politics in Mandatory Palestine, 1917-48. Bridging Islamic and Judaic Studies, as well as histories of Mandate Palestine with those of transnational Islamic reform, Worshipping the Nation draws on Arabic and Hebrew-language sources to trace the linked emergence of Islamic and Jewish religion-political visions under the British Mandate.

RECEPTION – 6:15-7

Adolph and Ruth Schnurmacher Scholar-in-Residence Lecture

Time: 7:00pm

Location: Kelley Presentation Room

Title: Reproducing Judaism: How Jewish Tradition is Remade through the Everyday Lives of
American Jews

While Judaism is often thought about as a religion that happens in and through synagogues, ancient texts, and rabbis, this talk will explore American Judaism as a living, growing tradition that is maintained through bodies. “Reproducing Judaism” will show how American Jews of different ages, sexual identities, and levels of observance participate in the creative, reproductive labor of nurturing religious tradition.

Dr. Cara Rock-Singer is the Lama Shetzer Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies at the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she is also affiliated with the Gender and Women’s Studies Department and the Science and Technology Studies Program.

She is the author of Gestating Judaism: The Corporeal Technologies of American Jewish Religion (University of Chicago Press, 2026). This book examines how Jewish women utilize gendered bodily technologies to challenge normative structures within American and Israeli religious life. Dr. Rock-Singer is currently working on her second book project, Inherited Futures: The American Jewish Life of Genetics and Epigenetics, which incorporates her undergraduate research on genetics and epigenetics into her research on contemporary Judaism. Specifically, Inherited Futures investigates how modern science and technology have created novel forms of Jewish religion: new kinship practices that aimed to eliminate Tay Sachs, ritual communities that lend spiritual support to BRCA carriers, and popular media that has inculcated belief in epigenetic inheritance of Holocaust trauma. This book will shed new light on the role of biological science in imagining Jewish collective identity in 20th-century America.

Supported by Adolph and Ruth Schnurmacher Foundation

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A Conversation with Marc Dollinger

Dr. Marc Dollinger is among the leading scholars of Jewish-Black relations in America and holds the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies and Social Responsibility at San Francisco State University.

He has served as research fellow at Princeton University’s Center for the Study of Religion as well as the Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow and Lecturer in the Humanities at Bryn Mawr College, where he coordinated the program in Jewish Studies.

Professor Dollinger is author of four scholarly books in American Jewish history, most recently Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing The Alliance in the 1960s. He has published entries in the Encyclopedia Judaica, the Encyclopedia of Antisemitism, and the Encyclopedia of African American Education. His next project, an academic memoir titled Laundering Antisemitism: Identity Politics, Ethnic Studies, and the University, Jewish Publication Society, traces his experiences as an identified Jewish (and Zionist) professor in the current political climate.

Dr. Dollinger currently serves on the executive board of the Union for Reform Judaism. He is also board president of URJ Camp Newman. Professor Dollinger is a past president of both the Jewish Community High School of the Bay and Brandeis Hillel Day School. He served on the board of the American Jewish Historical Society where he chaired the academic council. He sat on the California advisory committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, was named Volunteer of the Year by the SF Jewish Community Federation, and was awarded the San Francisco JCRC’s Courageous Leader award.

Professor Dollinger has spoken about his research on the PBS docu-series Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History, with the CEO of the NAACP on CNN as well as the CNN-podcast “Silence Is Not An Option,” the NFL Network, ESPN, and Germany’s National Public Radio. Just for fun, Dr. Dollinger helped actress Helen Hunt learn about her Jewish roots on the prime-time NBC show, “Who Do You Think You Are?”

Date & Time: Thursday, November 12 at 7:30pm

Location: Diffley Board Room in Bellarmine Hall

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A Moral Emergency: What Judaism Demands of Us Today

Join us for a timely and thought-provoking talk with Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, PhD, one of the most influential voices in contemporary Jewish social activism. He will reflect on ethical leadership, justice, and the role of faith in addressing today’s most urgent social challenges, drawing from his work as a rabbi, educator, and community organizer.

Rabbi Yanklowitz is a sought-after educator, social justice activist, and motivational speaker, as well as the author of nineteen books on Jewish spirituality, social justice, and ethics. He has published three books with CCAR Press, Pirkei Avot: A Social Justice Commentary(2018), The Book of Jonah: A Social Justice Commentary(2020), and The Book of Proverbs: A Social Justice Commentary (2022).

As a global social justice activist and educator, Rabbi Yanklowitz has volunteered, staffed trips, and taught across the world, including in Israel, Ghana, India, France, Thailand, El Salvador, England, Senegal, Germany, Switzerland, Ukraine, Argentina, South Africa, and Haiti. Rabbi Dr. Yanklowitz has also served as a rabbinic representative, facilitator, and speaker at the World Economic Forum in Geneva and Davos. Rabbi Shmuly's religious journey was filmed in the Independent Lens/PBS documentary The Calling. Rabbi Shmuly earned a master's degree from Harvard University in Leadership and Psychology, another master's from Yeshiva University in Jewish Philosophy, and a doctorate from Columbia University in Moral Development and Epistemology. He obtained rabbinical ordination from the Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School and two additional, private ordinations in Israel. He has twice been named one of America's Top Rabbis by Newsweek. In 2016, the Forward named Rabbi Shmuly one of The Most Inspiring Rabbis in America. In 2016, the Forward included Rav Shmuly as one of the fifty most influential Jews. In the same year, Rabbi Yanklowitz was selected for the Ariane de Rothschild Fellowship in Cross-Cultural Leadership and Innovative Entrepreneurship at the University of Cambridge.

Date & Time: Thursday, November 19 at 7:30pm

Location: Dolan School of Business Event Hall

Cost: $25 General $20 Quick Center Members (Free for Students, Faculty, Staff)

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