A Morning of Jewish History and Culture

Robert Watson / Lynn University This is the surprising and inspiring story of how Truman, a man raised in an anti-Semitic home and the last president to lack a college degree, ended up becoming a champion of statehood. We will explore Truman’s important Jewish friendships, the maturation in his thinking and world view, and his working relationship with the leaders of the Zionist movement and Israel’s founders, all of which led the president to take a courageous stand against influential British diplomats, his own State Department, and numerous other opponents of Israeli statehood.

Truman’s extraordinary support neither began nor ended with the recognition of Israel in 1948. Rather, he was the driving force behind an array of initiatives – some public, some behind the scenes – to make the dream a reality.

Robert Watson / Lynn University
Robert Watson is a Professor of American Studies at Lynn University. A frequent media commentator, he has been interviewed by CNN, MSNBC, “Time,” “USA Today,” “The New York Times,” and the BBC and others, and has appeared on C-SPAN’s “Book TV,” “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” He has received multiple Professor of the Year awards at Lynn and other universities, published 40 books on topics in history and politics, and his book “America’s First Crisis” won the book of the year award in history at the Independent Publishers’ awards.

German Resistance in WWII: What We Know Now That We Didn’t Know Then Anne Nelson / Columbia University

Conventional wisdom has long suggested that the entire German nation succumbed to Nazi ideology. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, stunning new evidence locked in the Stasi archives became available to support a deeper understanding.

German resistance movements existed through most of the Nazi period. One of them, the Rote Kapelle, succeeded in infiltrating the Nazi regime in order to attack it from within. The group included U.S.-educated German academics, an Air Force intelligence officer, and a broad array of artists, academics, physicians, and workers. The movement combined Conservatives and Communists; Catholics, Lutherans and Jews – and almost half of them were women.

Anne Nelson / Columbia University
Anne Nelson has taught International and Public Affairs at Columbia University since 1995 and was formerly the director of the International Program at the Columbia School of Journalism. She has written extensively on media, conflict, and human rights. She was a war correspondent in Latin America, and reported from Eastern Europe and Asia, with work appearing in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Harper’s, BBC, CBC, NPR and PBS. Her writing has won six awards, including the Livingston Award for international reporting.

Jewish Music: From Gershwin and Bernstein to Sondheim and Simon Orin Grossman / Fairfield University

The Jewish influence on American popular and classical music is immense, and includes almost all the composers and lyricists who created the Broadway and Hollywood musical and the Great American Songbook. In addition, the composers influential in creating an American sound for Classical music were predominantly Jewish-Americans.

This presentation examines some of the ways Jewish music and Jewish-American cultural history influenced such songwriters and composers as George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, Harold Arlen, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein and many others. We will also come to understand the special attributes of the United States that made this country receptive to these contributions.

Orin Grossman / Fairfield University
Orin Grossman is renowned internationally for his knowledge of music. He lectures and performs concerts throughout the US and Europe, he teaches Performing Arts at Fairfield University, and has served as the University’s Academic Vice President. Professor Grossman has been particularly associated with the music of George Gershwin, performing concerts of his song transcriptions and classical pieces to critical praise around the world, including performances in Cairo and New York. Professor Grossman was also chosen to play for the New York City Mayor’s Awards of Honor for Arts and Culture.