In addition to Kraft-Hiatt funds for programming and scholarship, the gift from the Kraft and Hiatt families endows a professor in Judaic studies at Holy Cross and supports recurring programming from a scholar-in-residence. This work is also supported by a community of Holy Cross faculty.
Kraft-Hiatt Professor in Judaic Studies
In addition to Kraft-Hiatt funds for programming and scholarship, the gift from the Kraft and Hiatt families endows a professor in Judaic studies at Holy Cross. A similar chair, the Myra and Robert Kraft and Jacob Hiatt Professor of Christian Studies, was created at Brandeis University.
Alan J. Avery-Peck is Kraft-Hiatt Professor in Judaic Studies at the College of the Holy Cross. Specializing in Jewish history and religion in the first six centuries C.E., Avery-Peck is an author, co-author, and editor of numerous books and articles. These include "The Encyclopaedia of Judaism" (second edition in 4 vols., Brill, 2005) and "The Encyclopedia of Religious and Philosophical Writings in Late Antiquity: Pagan, Judaic, Christian" (Brill, 2007). He is the author of the commentary to Second Corinthians in "The Jewish Annotated New Testament" and is editor of the journal The Review of Rabbinic Judaism. At Holy Cross, Avery-Peck teaches courses on topics ranging from ancient Judaism through modern Jewish history and thought. He offers a seminar on the social and theological implications of the Holocaust and a course on the Jewish practices and theology out of which emerged the figure of Jesus and his earliest Christian followers. A new seminar introduced in 2018 teaches the history of anti-Semitism. He also serves on the Kraft-Hiatt Faculty Advisory Committee. In 2013-2014 and again in spring 2015, Avery-Peck taught at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, where he held the title Distinguished Visiting Professor of Religious Studies.
Kraft-Hiatt Scholar-in-Residence
Alan Rosen
Through the Kraft-Hiatt Fund, the College of the Holy Cross has been fortunate to host Dr. Alan Rosen, scholar of Holocaust literature, for public lectures and class visits over several years. Rosen is a lecturer at Yad Vashem, and has held fellowships at the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah in Paris and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Rosen earned his Ph.D. in literature and religion at Boston University where he studied under the supervision of renowned Holocaust survivor, Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel. He has taught Holocaust literature at colleges and universities in Israel and the United States.
He is author of "The Wonder of their Voices: The 1946 Holocaust Interviews of David Boder" (Oxford University Press, 2010), "Sounds of Defiance: The Holocaust, Multilingualism, and the Problem of English" (University of Nebraska Press, 2005) and "Dislocating the End: Climax, Closure, and the Invention of Genre" (Peter Lang, Inc., 2001), and is editor of a number of collections reflecting on Elie Wiesel's work. His recent book "The Holocaust's Jewish Calendars: Keeping Time Sacred, Making Time Holy" (Indiana University Press, 2019) has been named as a recipient of The 2020 Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research.
Past Lectures
Monday, March 20, 2023
Torah and Mitzvahs in Hell: What Might We Learn from the Astonishing Jewish Religious Activity in Auschwitz?
November 13, 2019
Memory as Protest: How and Why We Remember the Holocaust
October 30, 2018
Holocaust Witness: Back to Basics
November 1, 2017
Out of the Depths: Jewish Religious Life and Practice During and After the Holocaust
November 3, 2014
To Capture the Fire: The Life and Works of Elie Wiesel
February 28, 2012
"The Words, Too, Will Nourish": Poetry and Resistance
March 2, 2011
Killing Time, Saving Time: Defying the Holocaust by Counting the Days
February 13, 2008
Broken Homes, Broken Hearts: The Holocaust and its Languages
Kraft-Hiatt Faculty Advisory Committee
A Faculty Advisory Committee oversees the Kraft-Hiatt initiative. Its members include:
Alan J. Avery-Peck, Kraft-Hiatt Professor in Judaic Studies
Daniel Bitran, Professor, Psychology
Noel Cary, Associate Professor, History
Ed Isser, Associate Professor, Theater
Mahri Leonard-Fleckman, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
Neal Lipsitz, Associate Dean for Student Development; Lecturer, Psychology
Jacob Damm, Visiting Assistant Professor, Classics
Thomas M. Landy, Director, McFarland Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture
The Kraft-Hiatt Program for Jewish-Christian Understanding at the College of the Holy Cross is a member of the Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations, an association of centers and institutes in the United States and Canada devoted to enhancing mutual understanding between Jews and Christians.