ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question: What unusual thing did 18th-century Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn agree to let his friends do to preserve a tangible memory of him after his death?

Between April 25 and May 16, the Center of Human and Social Sciences (CCHS) of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) offered a Postgraduate Course called “Visual Culture and Modern Jewish Society”. The course consisted of six lectures that focused on several major issues of modern Jewish society and culture from the eighteenth century to the present, through the use of a wide range of visual material. It was taught by Professor Richard I. Cohen, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Professor Cohen was born in Montreal, Canada, and studied History and Sociology at McGill University before immigrating to Israel in 1967. After completing his Ph. D. at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he became a member of the Department of Jewish History (now the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry), and served as its chair several times.

Dr. Cohen has been a visiting professor at Yale University, Jewish Theological Seminary, Wesleyan University, University of Pennsylvania, Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU, Munich).

His major fields of interest are Jewish social and cultural history in the modern period with special attention to visual culture; the history of modern French Jewry; the interrelationship between Jews of western Europe and Jews in Islamic countries; Jewish historiography and museology.