Service is in person in the Brith Shalom Sanctuary and on YouTube.
Dinner and Lecture are in person only.

Dr. Mendel Kranz will present during dinner (for those who sign up for dinner).
Dinner cost is $36.00 per person. Please register below by Tuesday, March 18 at 6:00 PM. 

Title: Antisemitism and Islamophobia.

Description: Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are often portrayed as distinct forms of prejudice, but a deeper examination reveals they are much closer than initially seems. These hatreds share common tropes rooted in Orientalist discourse, which constructs the Jew and the Muslim as the perpetual "Other" – a threat to "Western civilization." Moreover, both ideologies essentialize their targets and traverse religious, ethnic, and racial forms of discrimination.

This talk will help us reconsider the relationship between these pernicious hatreds and recognize their entangled roots in dehumanizing narratives that have recurred across centuries and continent.

Bio: Mendel Kranz is the Samuel W. and Goldye Marian Spain Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish Studies at Rice University. He received his Ph.D. in 2023 from the University of Chicago of Divinity School. His work addresses issues in Modern Jewish History and Thought, Postcolonial Studies, and Religious Studies.

He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled "The Postcolonial Jewish Question: Colonialism, Anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia in Postwar France," which interrogates how Jewish marginalization and anti-Semitism intersected with the histories of colonialism and Islamophobia, beginning with the struggles for decolonization in the 1950s through the end of the century.