Join the Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies for a conversation between author (and CJS alum!) Angela Botelho and CJS Director Deena Aranoff about Botelho's new book German Jews and the Persistence of Jewish Identity in Conversion: Writing the Jewish Self.
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About the book, from De Gruyter: "This book explores the fraught aftermath of the German Jewish conversionary experience through the story of one family as it grapples with the meaning of its Jewish origins in a post-Holocaust, post-conversionary milieu. Utilizing archival family texts and multiple interviews spanning three generations, beginning with the author’s German Jewish parents, 1940s refugees, and engaging the insights of contemporary scholars, the book traces the impact of a contested Jewish identity on the deconstruction and reconstruction of the Jewish self. The Holocaust as post-memory and the impact of the German Jewish culture personified by the author’s parents leads to a retrieval of a lost Jewish identity, postmodern in its implications, reinforcing the concept of Judaism as ultimately a family affair. Focusing on the personal to illuminate a complex historical phenomenon, this book proposes a new cultural history that challenges conventional boundaries of what is Jewish and what is not."
Angela Kuttner Botelho received her Master's Degree at the GTU's Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies in 2013 upon completion of her Honors Master's thesis, a chapter of which was published as "The Marrano in Modernity: The Case of Karl Gutkow," Nexus 3, 123-143 (Rochester: Camden House Press, 2017). Botelho has participated in numerous academic conferences, primarily presenting aspects of the book project which culminated in the current German Jews and the Persistence of Jewish Identity in Conversion: Writing the Jewish Self (DeGruyter 2021). Her background includes a career as Deputy Attorney General for the State of California and advanced degrees in French Literature and Community Mental Health. Botelho is currently a visiting scholar at the GTU.
Dr. Deena Aranoff is Director of the Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies, Senior Lecturer in Medieval Jewish Studies, and Core Doctoral Faculty at the GTU since 2006 where she teaches courses on Jewish history, culture, and mysticism.
Book cover image courtesy of De Gruyter.
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