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In medieval Cairo, Jews placed worn-out texts like letters, recipes, and everyday notes into a synagogue storeroom known as a geniza. By chance, nearly 40,000 fragments were preserved, offering a rare window into Jewish life a thousand years ago. In this talk, Dr. Goldman explores how historians use these materials to reconstruct daily life, from family and education to poverty and communal responsibility, and concludes with a striking case of Jews bringing an internal dispute over Maimonides to the papal court

In honor of Yom HaShoah, Gratz College presents: Mamaleh A Legacy of Loss and Love

In Mamaleh: A Legacy of Loss and Love, Elaine Culbertson offers a powerful and deeply personal memoir that weaves together her mother Dora Freilich’s recollections of surviving two years in Auschwitz and immigrating to America with her own reflections on growing up in the shadow of trauma. At times startling, at times humorous, and always poignant, the book tells a moving mother-daughter story of survival, resilience, love, and the challenges of building a new life in a new world.