From July 22 till August 19, 2018, five MA students and one PhD student of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy have participated in academic Jewish Studies Internship for the Advanced Students and Junior Faculty at the International Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), relevant Israeli libraries and archives. The photographs from the internship can be found here.
Nadia Ufimtseva
For a researcher who engaged in Jewish Studies, it is difficult to overestimate the importance of an internship at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
In addition to access to the huge library collection at the university and the National Library of Israel, and the ability to communicate with Israeli scholars, it is also important to have an opportunity to compare academic life in Ukraine and Israel. Especially this is the case of difficulties that researchers in Ukraine have to endure, such as restrictions on access to or copying of archival materials, and usually trivial lack of literature on the subject.
Tetiana Malykh
The internship at the Hebrew University is not just a chance to visit the State of Israel but an incredible way to have access to libraries, archives, databases, and digital collections of Jewish Studies.
Thanks to this trip, I had an opportunity to be advised from a specialist on my topic, Dr. Arkady Zeltser; to get the most of the necessary materials for my master thesis; and to obtain valuable experience of an international academic research that has some differences from the Ukrainian one.
I believe that young Jewish Studies scholars at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy need such internship experience to expand the horizons of their own outlook, enrich the source base, and gain inspiration for academic advancement.
Anton Chysnikov
First, I would like to underline the academic part of the internship. Immediately it becomes clear why the Hebrew University in Jerusalem is among the top 100 universities in the world.
Although there were just a few methodological seminars, they were extremely informative and very relevant and useful for my topic. For example, thanks to Dr. Michael Beizer’s talk about the sources for the study of Jewish history, I found a collection of articles’ copies from the Soviet newspapers that covered Jewish themes.
In general, the internship provided me with the opportunity to find out and put together a huge amount of materials that are crucial for my future master thesis.
Lesia Herus
The internship at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem – the most ranked university in Israel and one of the best schools in the world – became an excellent opportunity to enrich my research (“Ukrainian-Jewish Research at the Harvard Ukraine Research Institute in 1977–1997”) and to communicate with leading scholars in the field.
Therefore, the consultations obtained from my tutor (Prof. Shaul Stampfer) meant a lot to me. Together we defined the range of problems, sources, and objectives of the study.
Stepan Blinder
The summer internship to Israel more than successfully performs a function of an academic forum. During this time, I had a chance to work on my research related to the communicative behaviors between Christians and Jews on the example of Volhynian towns of the second half of the 18th century.
Under the supervision of Dr. Judith Kalik (my tutor) and other highly qualified professors, I was discussing different aspects of my research, as well as was given many valuable pieces of advice about improving it with the relevant historiography and sources. Thanks to the internship, I managed to outline deeper the nature of research on Jews in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
It was mainly contributed due to the latest literature in English, Polish, Spanish, and Italian found at the library of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Moreover, the university library has an access to the numerous databases so that a scholar can just download articles in Jewish Studies he/she might need.
Valentyn Androsov
The internship in Israel helped me not only to expand the vision of an academic perspective but I also learned more about a country related to my research. I got a great chance to improve my conversational skills of Hebrew through a genuine immersion into the language environment.
Communication with my tutor (Dr. Vladimir Levin, Director of the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem) and other professors and researchers took place in a relaxed working atmosphere, which stimulated the formulation of new approaches to the study of historical materials on my topic.
