New Horizons in Jewish Studies/Janice Levi on Jews in Ghana
Department: Jewish Studies
Date and Time: May 20, 2019 | 5:00 PM-6:30 PMEvent Location: Humanities Gateway (HG) 1010
Event Details
New Horizons in Jewish Studies Graduate Essay Prize:
Featuring this year's winner Janice Levi (UCLA) and her research on Jewish identity in Ghana
With a response from Professor Laura Mitchell (UCI History Dept.)
Monday, May 20, 2019, 5pm
This lecture explores how Jewish culture may have been transmitted in West Africa by specifically looking at a community in Ghana. This community, known as the House of Israel, quietly communicates its Jewish identity through whispered or soft-spoken testimony as well as ritual, an unspoken mechanism. The lecture analyzes how this persecuted faith (re)emerged, especially with past Jewish communities in West Africa oftentimes hiding their identity out of fear. Further, the paper seeks to determine how Jewish rhetoric became inscribed into ancestral ritual in Ghana and bolsters a belief of ritual as the transmitter of Jewish culture. Lastly, the paper challenges scholars to look at whispers and ritual as mediums to transmit Jewish culture when under duress.
Janice Levi is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on the history of Jewish presence in West Africa. She completed her undergraduate degree in history at the University of Oklahoma and has received a Master's of Arts in History (from UCLA) and African Studies (from Indiana University).
