2026 EJLCC SPEAKERS
Izabella
Tabarovsky
is a scholar of Soviet antizionism and contemporary antisemitism,
the author of Be
a Refusenik: A Jewish Student’s Survival Guide
,
and a sought-after speaker and lecturer.
She is a fellow with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC; senior fellow with the Z3 Institute for Jewish Priorities in Palo Alto; and a fellow with the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and the Comper Center for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism at the University of Haifa.
A contributing writer at Tablet , she has also published in Newsweek, Sapir, Quillette, The National Interest, Fathom, The Forward, and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency . Her essays have appeared in several edited volumes, including October 7: The Wars over Words and Deeds (Academic Studies Press); The Rebirth of Antisemitism in the 21st Century: From the Academic Boycott Campaign into the Mainstream (Routledge); Mapping the New Left Antisemitism: The Fathom Essays Sionismo y antisionismo: Un debate necesario and Jewish Priorities: Sixty-Five Proposals for the Future of Our People (Wicked Son). Her work has been translated into Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Polish, Russian, Czech, and other languages.
June 29: From the USSR to American Campuses Today: The Ideological Roots of Contemporary Antizionism
June 30: The New Refuseniks: Jewish Courage and Defiance in an Age of Antizionist Pressure
Rabbi
Josh Stanton
Rabbi Joshua Stanton is Associate Vice President for Interfaith and Intergroup Initiatives at Jewish Federations of North America, where he empowers leaders from 141 Jewish Federations across the continent to become bridge-builders in their regions. He also serves as spiritual co-leader of East End Temple in Manhattan. Rabbi Stanton is coauthor with Rabbi Benjamin Spratt of Awakenings: American Jewish Transformations in Identity, Leadership and Belonging and the forthcoming book, “Revival: Portraits of America’s Spiritual Builders.” His articles, media appearances, and interviews have appeared in more than a dozen languages, and he has spoken at the United Nations, White House, and interfaith conferences around the world.
July 6: The Jewish Awakening
July 7: Visions of Peoplehood
Amanda
Berman
is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Zioness, where she works
to empower and activate Zionists on the progressive left to stand proudly in
social justice spaces as Jews and Zionists. She is also a civil rights attorney
who previously worked to fight antisemitism legally, spearheading such
groundbreaking initiatives as the international action against Kuwait Airways
for its discrimination against Israeli nationals, and the dual cases against
San Francisco State University for its constitutional and civil rights
violations against Jewish and Israeli students and community members.
Amanda
writes on Jewish, social justice and civil rights issues, speaks and presents
before diverse audiences, and is a media contributor across various mediums and
outlets. She is a graduate of the Anti-Defamation League’s Glass Leadership
Institute, the recipient of Hadassah’s prestigious Myrtle Wreath Award, and was
listed by the Algemeiner as one of the top “100 people positively contributing
to Jewish life” in 2018.
Amanda
graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Diplomatic History
and a Master of Governmental Administration and received her Juris Doctor from
the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where she was a Public Service Scholar;
served in the Bet Tzedek Legal Services Clinic, providing legal services to the
underrepresented; served in the Advanced Human Rights Clinic, providing legal
services to immigrants and refugees; sat on the Executive Board of the Cardozo
Advocates for Battered Women; and was a Fellow in the Holocaust, Genocide and
Human Rights Clinic. She practiced securities litigation at Cahill Gordon &
Reindel LLP before dedicating her career to the advancement and protection of
the Jewish people and the Zionist community.
July 13: Zionism and Progressivism: The Twin Jewish Mandates of Particularism and Universalism
July 14: Jews as a Football: The Political Weaponization of Antisemitism on Left and Right
Yoni Appelbaum
is a deputy executive editor at The Atlanticand the author ofStuck: How the Privileged and the
Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity. Dr. Appelbaum is a social
and cultural historian of the United States. Before joiningThe Atlantic, he was a lecturer
on history and literature at Harvard University. He previously taught at Babson
College and at Brandeis University, where he received his Ph.D. in American
history.
July 20: The Anti-Semitic Origins of American Zoning
July 21: The Jews Who Brought You the Weekend
Rebecca Kobrin
is the
Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History, in
Columbia University’s Department of History, where she teaches in the field of
American Jewish History, specializing in modern Jewish migration. She is also
the Co-Director of the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia.
Her research, teaching,
and publications engage in the fields of international migration, urban
history, Jewish history, American religion, and diaspora studies. She
received her B.A. (1994) from Yale University. She earned a Ph.D. from
the University of Pennsylvania. She served as the Blaustein Post-Doctoral
Fellow at Yale University) and the American Academy of Jewish Research
Post-Doctoral Fellow at New York University. Her book Jewish Bialystok and Its
was
awarded the Jordan Schnitzer prize (2012). She is the editor of Chosen Capital: The Jewish Encounter
with American Capitalism and is co-editor with Adam Teller
of Purchasing Power: The
Economics of Jewish History. (In 2015, she was awarded
Columbia University’s Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award for her outstanding
teaching and her inspirational mentoring of her students.
Her book, A Credit to the Nation: Jewish Immigrant
Bankers and American Finance, 1870-1930 brings together
scholarship in Jewish history, American immigration studies, and American
economic history. She is one of the principal investigators leading the
award-winning digital humanities Historical NYC Project,
an award-winning map that visualizes the demographic and spatial
changes wrought in New York City between 1850 and 1940.
July 2:
A Credit to the Nation: Sender Jarmulowsky and his Bank on Orchard Street
July 28:
Bank of United States: The Failure that Changed American Banking
Stuart
Eizenstat is
an American diplomat and attorney. He has held many positions. He was the former
Chief White House
Domestic Policy Adviser (1977-1981) under President Jimmy Carter. He was U.S. Ambassador to the European Union,
Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, Under Secretary of State
for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs, and Deputy Secretary of the
Treasury (1993-2001). Beginning in 1993,
he was Senior U.S. Government official in charge of Holocaust Justice in
Clinton, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations.
In the Biden
administration, he served as Special Adviser to Secretary of State Antony
Blinken on Holocaust Issues. In this capacity, he played a major role in the
negotiation of the Best Practices for the Washington Principles on
Nazi-Confiscated Art (2024), now supported by 34 countries. He was appointed by
President Biden as Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Council (2022-present).
In 2008, the Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat Distinguished
Professorship in Jewish history and culture was endowed in Eizenstat's honor at
the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For his work he has received the
Courage and Conscience Award from the
Government
of Israel, the Knight
Commander's Cross (Badge and Star) of the
Order of Merit of the Federal Republic
of Germany, the
French
Legion of Honor from
the
Government
of France, and the
International Advocate for Peace Award from the Cardozo Journal of Conflict
Resolution.
Since 2009, he
has served as pro bono Special Negotiator for the Jewish Claims Conference in
negotiations with the German government, obtaining billions of dollars of
benefits for poor Holocaust survivors, for home care, social and medical
services, enhanced pensions, hardship payments, child survivor and
Kindertransport survivors, special supplemental payments for the poorest of the
poor, and worldwide educational benefits.
He has authored four books, scores of newspaper and magazine articles, is
a frequent lecturer, and has made numerous television and radio appearances
He is a decorated
diplomat by France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Israel, U.S. governments.
August 3: The Art of Diplomacy: How American Negotiators Reached Historic Agreements that Changed the World from Kennedy to Trump
August 4: The Holocaust: Past, Present and Future.
Marion Ein Lewin
Marion Ein Lewin had a successful career as a health policy expert and scholar, graduating from Barnard College and Columbia University. She worked in the Congress, at the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and has written extensively on the economics of health care and health care reform. In recent years she has been heavily involved in theater, serving on the board of two of Washington’s leading stages.
August
3: Inseparable: The Hess Twins' Holocaust Journey through Bergen-Belsen to
America
August 17: From Surviving to Thriving: Reimagining Jewish Education for Today’s Learners
August 18: Recharging Israel Education: Courage, Clarity, and Commitment in a Post–October 7 World
Week 9
Morris J. Vogel served as president of New York’s Lower East Side Tenement Museum, widely recognized as an innovative historic site in its interpretation and use of storytelling and social relevance, from 2008 to 2017 and again from 2019 to 2021. Vogel graduated from Brandeis University and received his PhD in American social and cultural history from the University of Chicago before joining the faculty of Temple University. He later served Temple’s College of Liberal Arts as dean before assuming the directorship of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Creativity and Culture Program. Vogel is the author or editor of six books, including The Invention of the Modern Hospital and Cultural Connections: Museums and Libraries of Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley. He founded and directed the National Endowment for the Humanities-funded Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities. While a Pennsylvanian, Vogel served on the Commonwealth’s Historic Preservation Board.
August 24: A Tenement Success Story: Inscribing the Jewish Experience unto the American Promised Land
August 25: Beyond the Jewish Lower East Side: The Tenement Museum’s Expanding Story