All ALEPH Institute for Jewish Culture classes are taught by the University of Denver’s Center for Judaic Studies faculty and Ph.D. candidates. For more information on any of the ALEPH Institute for Jewish Culture programs, please contact Jamie Polliard at 303.871.2343 or via email at jpolliar@du.edu.

Faculty for Fall 2007

Professor David Shneer
David earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of California and is associate professor of history and director of the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Denver. He has written books on Yiddish Studies, Jewish culture and history, and on contemporary Jewish life. He has taught Yiddish language and literature on and off for eight years and teaches every summer at the National Yiddish Book Center in Massachusetts.

Professor Sarah Pessin
Sarah is an associate professor at the University of Denver, where she joined the Department of Philosophy and the Center for Judaic Studies in Fall 2004. Sarah earned her PhD in Philosophy from Ohio State University. She works on various topics in Jewish and Islamic philosophy, mysticism and poetry, Neoplatonisms, and healing and cross-cultural dialogue. Sarah is interested in the nature of the sacred and its relation to inter-human engagement and response.

Professor Julie Lieber Julie is currently an adjunct professor of history and Judaic Studies at the University of Denver. Julie came to Denver a little over a year ago from New York City, where she was working on her dissertation and very involved in adult education within the New York Jewish community. She received her B.A. and M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and is completing her PhD in European History from the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation is entitled “Jewish Women in Fin-de Siecle Vienna: A Study in Gender Construction.”

Janet Rumfelt
Janet is currently the Scholar in Residence for the Holocaust Awareness Institute at the Center for Judaic Studies. She is a PhD candidate in Religion, Ethics, and Philosophy at Florida State University. Her dissertation is on religious identity in modern Jewish and Christian thought. In 2004, she was accepted into the Center for Advanced Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and her paper on Holocaust representation won the graduate student award at the southeastern meeting for the American Academy of Religion.