This symposium celebrates the forthcoming 38-chapter volume The Oxford Handbook of Judaism and Film edited by Olga Gershenson. This volume offers the first comprehensive survey of the flourishing interdisciplinary field, while challenging the geographic and conceptual boundaries of Jewish cinema. For too long, the field has circled around a narrow set of places and stories, about immigration, assimilation, antisemitism, and the Holocaust. This Handbook proposes a broader, more capacious understanding of Jewish film—one that moves past the assumption that Jewishness on screen must be mimetic, historical, or tied to the US, Europe, and Israel. Highlighting new research on Jews on and off screen in India, Ethiopia, Turkey, Mexico, the Arab world, and beyond, the contributions show how Jewishness operates as a global interpretive mode rather than a fixed set of themes. This expanded lens reveals how Jewish frames of thinking, cultural practices, and historical experiences structure filmmaking and spectatorship across wildly diverse geographies and contexts. The result challenges old stereotypes and opens up a bigger, more complex world of Jewish film.

This symposium is an experimental and experiential format. Instead of formal presentations, we will have three kinds of sessions: Salons, Classrooms, and Screenings.

SUNDAY, APRIL 19
Michigan League, Koessler Room (3rd Floor)
10:00 - 10:30 AM Welcome
10:30-11:15 AM Session 1: Judaism in Hollywood Biblical Epics
11:30 AM - 12:30 PM Session 2: Jews in Indian Cinemas
12:30 - 2:15 PM Lunch Break
2:15 - 3:00 PM Session 3: Reading Jewish Films as Jewish Texts
3:15 - 4:15 PM Session 4: Disability films and the Aftermath of the Holocaust
4:30 - 5:15 PM Session 5: Pedagogy, Judaism, and Film


MONDAY, APRIL 20
Michigan League, Room D (3rd Floor)
10:00 - 10:45 AM Session 6: Fashion and Whiteness in American Jewish Immigration Films
11:00 AM - 12:15 PM Session 7: Judaism on Screen: from “Off the Derech” to Haredi
12:15 - 2:00 PM Lunch Break
2:00 - 2:45 PM Session 8: Erwin Leiser’s Holocaust Documentary "Mein Kampf" (1960)
3:00 - 4:00 PM Session 9: Jewish Film Festivals
4:15 - 5:00 PM Session 10: Jewishness in Post-Stalinist Soviet Cinema and TV

Rackham Graduate School, Amphitheater (4th Floor)
6:30 - 8:30 PM Film Screening: "Sabbath Queen" (2024, dir. Sandi Simcha DuBowski, USA, 105 min)
8:30 - 9:00 PM Session 11: Post-screening Discussion

This feature documentary follows Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie's epic journey as the dynastic heir of 38 generations of Orthodox rabbis including the Chief Rabbis of Israel. He is torn between rejecting and embracing his destiny and becomes a drag-queen rebel, a queer bio-dad and the founder of Lab/Shul, a pop-up experimental congregation. Sabbath Queen joins Amichai as he reinvents religion and ritual, challenges patriarchy and supremacy, champions interfaith love, and stands up for peace and an end to the Occupation in Israel/Palestine.
Trailer


TUESDAY, APRIL 21
Michigan League, Koessler Room (3rd Floor)
10:00 - 10:45 AM Session 12: Ethiopian Jews on Screens
11:00 AM - 12:15 PM Session 13: Jews in Arab Cinemas
12:15 - 2:00 PM Lunch Break
2:00 - 2:45 PM Session 14: Jewish-Muslim Relations in Film
3:00 - 4:00 PM Session 15: Jewish British Cinema

Rackham Graduate School, Amphitheater (4th Floor)
6:30 - 8:30 PM Film Screening: "My One and Only" (2025, dir. David Tauber, Israel, 104 min.)
8:30 - 9:00 PM Session 16: Post-screening Discussion

Weeks after giving birth to her first child, a young ultra-Orthodox woman arrives at her rabbi's wife's home, claiming her husband has been replaced. He looks identical, but she insists he's a double. Does she need psychiatric care, or is her husband a demon? This mystery drama can be read as a nuanced exploration of how people change in relationships or as a new instance of Israeli horror productions.


Co-Sponsors:
Department of Film, Television, and Media
Ann Arbor Jewish Film Festival