Today’s Israelite Samaritans are ‘living history’, as we respect and observe our way of life and heritage. Through our sometimes difficult past, we have learned to coexist harmoniously with our neighbours, and we are a bridge for peace (gesher leshalom) between all peoples . We are the root of the Abrahamic religions in the region, including Samaritanism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Druze and Bahai faiths. Though rooted deeply in the past, we are a vibrant modern community with contemporary enterprises and interests. In March 1919 there were only 141 individuals, in Nablus and Jaffa. By September 2014, the Israelite Samaritan Community numbered 770 souls, divided into four households, all in the Holy Land. This talk will explore the past, present, and future of the Israelite Samaritan people.

Benny recently published "The Israelite Samaritan Version of the Torah: First English Translation Compared with the Masoretic Version" with Eerdmans Publishing.

http://www.israelite-samaritans.com/benyamim-tsedaka/

Professor Joel Gordon will explore the depiction of ‘normative’ religious practices and personal expressions of religious identity in recent Egyptian movies with a particular focus is on Egyptian youth.  Whereas in the past signs of piety had been restricted to either ‘traditional’ Egyptians – often in comic fashion – or political extremists, a few recent films have dared to depict ‘normal’ veiled women and bearded men and even a social environment in which questions of piety, morality and proper behavior dominate the discussions, concerns and conflicts between young Egyptians.  These films may point to a growing willingness by film artists to honestly explore social trends that have been taboo, especially as Egypt enters a new political era.

Prof. Joel Gordon: Professor of History and Director of Middle East Studies, University of Arkansas; Specialist in modern Egyptian history and Arab popular culture; Author of Nasser' Blessed Movement, Revolutionary Melodrama, and Nasser: Hero of the Arab Nation

Since 1999 hundreds of thousands of young North American Jews have visited Israel on an all-expense-paid 10-day pilgrimage-tour known as Birthright Israel. The most elaborate of the state-supported homeland tours that are cropping up all over the world, this half-billion-dollar venture seeks to deepen the ties binding the Jewish Diaspora to Israel. But unlike Jewish pilgrimages of millennia past, Birthright Israel adopts and adapts the practices of modern mass tourism. What happens when a state looks to tourism to create a new pilgrimage ritual for the 21st century? How does the act of touring shape identity? How do the organizers of Birthright seek to turn the identity-shaping potentials of tourism to the service of building Jewish identity, and how are their efforts complicated by inherent aspects of tourism itself?

Shaul Kelner is Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University and Director of Vanderbilt's Program in Jewish Studies. He studies the cultural politics of American Jewish identity.

Prof. Kelner has been a Fellow of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Institute for Advanced Studies, and a visiting scholar at Tel Aviv University. He is the author of Tours That Bind: Diaspora, Pilgrimage and Israeli Birthright Tourism (NYU Press, 2010), which received awards from the Association for Jewish Studies and American Sociological Association.