In getting at the heart of Nazi atrocities Primo Levi said that it was a result of seeing "every stranger as an enemy". We goes on to say, "this conviction lies deep down like some latent infection...and does not lie at the base of a system of reason." Ultimately, it led to the death camps like Auschwitz.
Jeremy Dauber is the Atran Professor of Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture and director of Columbia's Institute of Israel and Jewish Studies; he also teaches in American studies.
He is the author of Antonio's Devils: Writers of the Jewish Enlightenment and the Birth of Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature (Stanford University Press, 2004); In the Demon's Bedroom: Yiddish Literature and the Early Modern (Yale University Press; 2010); The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem (Schocken Books, 2013); and Jewish Comedy. He is also the co-editor and -translator, with Joel Berkowitz, of Landmark Yiddish Plays (SUNY Press, 2006), an anthology of Yiddish drama. He is also editor, with Barbara Mann, of Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History, a leading journal in the field of Jewish literature.
His research interests include Yiddish literature; comparative Jewish literature; the Yiddish theater; American Jewish literature and popular culture; and American literature and popular culture.
Jeremy Dauber
* Director of Undergraduate and Graduate Yiddish Studies,
* Atran Professor of Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture, * Director Emeritus, Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies
* PhD in Comparative Literature at UCLA.
