Josh Lambert, the academic director of the Yiddish Book Center and visiting assistant professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst and Princeton University, will lead a seminar exploring Philip Roth’s controversial short story “Defender of the Faith,” first published in the New Yorker in 1959. The story, about the classic “Jewish problem” of whether Jews should be more loyal to other Jews or to their country, generated responses from Jewish readers that castigated Roth for his own disloyalty to the Jewish people. Lambert will explore themes of self-censorship and Jewish politics. Sponsored by the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History.
Free and open to the public.
Location: Temple University, Anderson Hall Room 821, Women’s Studies Lounge, 1835 N. 12th Street Philadelphia PA 19122
