Deborah Hertz

Deborah Hertz was trained in graduate school as a historian of Germany, with a focus on the late eighteenth century and on German Jewry. Over the years, she has taught at the State University of New York at Binghamton (1988 to 1996), Sarah Lawrence College (1996 to 2003), and has held teaching positions at Harvard University (1984 to 1985 and also 1991 to 1992), Hebrew University (1987 to 1988), Tel Aviv University (2001 to 2003), and Haifa University (1994 to 1995). She has written two books about conversion and assimilation among Jews in Germany, especially in Berlin. Her current project is a history of radical Jewish women in Russia and Palestine. In that book-in-progress she seeks to understand which of the modern political movements at the close of the nineteenth century offered greater personal and career satisfaction to young women eager to change the world. Her teaching has addressed topics in modern Jewish history, including the Holocaust, Zionism and modern Israel, and the history of Jewish women and the Jewish family. She is fascinated by the challenge of understanding the modern Jewish experience in the context of racism, religious tradition, and modern nationalism. Professor Hertz enjoys bringing undergraduate students together with Holocaust survivors and the wider public engaged with history. She co-founded and co-directs the Holocaust Living History Workshop: https://library.ucsd.edu/visit/library-workshops/holocaust-living-history-workshop/index.html.

For more about Deborah Hertz, see her website: https://www.deborahhertz.com/.