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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260309T173000
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SUMMARY:EVENT POSTPONED: The Complex Interplay of Religion\, Law and Politics in Israel
DESCRIPTION:We regret to inform you that this March 9th on-campus event featuring Orly Erez-Likhovski as been postponed\, as the speaker is unable to fly to us from Israel due to the war with Iran. We will notify you when/if we can host this event in the future. \n______________________________ \nWithout the protections of a written constitution and a clear separation of religion and state\, Israelis face unique challenges in securing fundamental rights to equality and religious freedom under Israeli law. Although Israel’s Declaration of Independence commits to “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion\, race\, or sex” the authority of the Orthodox Chief Rabbinate and the disproportionate influence of Orthodox political parties within Israel’s parliamentary system have contributed to violations of the rights of women\, non-Orthodox Jews\, members of the LGBTQ+ community and Palestinian citizens of Israel. Israeli lawyer and activist Orly Erez-Likhovski will discuss key legal battles in Israel to protect and advance Israeli democracy and religious pluralism. \nSpeaker: Orly Erez-Likhovski\, Director of Israel Religious Action Center\nModerator: Carol Bakhos\, Robert E. Archer Chair in the Study of Religion\, Director\, UCLA Center for the Study of Religion \nCLICK HERE for more information and to register for this in-person event. After registering\, you will be emailed an RSVP confirmation. If you do not receive your email confirmation\, please check your spam or junk mail folders. \nAbout the Speakers \nOrly Erez-Likhovski has served as an attorney at the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC) since 2004\, as Director of the Legal Department from 2014–2021\, and Director of IRAC since 2021. In these roles\, she has brought about significant legal achievements such as making gender segregation on public transportation illegal\, ending the Orthodox monopoly on state-funded salaries to rabbis\, filing (and winning) the first-ever class action suit regarding exclusion of women\, and disqualifying racist candidates from running to Israel’s parliament. Orly holds a bachelor’s degree in law from Tel Aviv University and a master’s degree in law with a focus on human rights law from Columbia University in New York. She is a member of the Bar Association in Israel and New York. \nCarol Bakhos (moderator) is Professor of Late Antique Judaism and Jewish Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures and teaches for the Study of Religion IDP.  Since 2012 she has served as Chair of the Study of Religion program and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion at UCLA. Her most recent monograph\, The Family of Abraham: Jewish\, Christian and Muslim Interpretations (Harvard University Press\, 2014)\, was translated into Turkish (2015). In 2018\, Bakhos received an NEH Summer-Institute grant to direct “Religious Landscapes of LA: Teaching and Exploring Religious Diversity Through Civic Engagement\,” for K-12 educators. \n  \nOrganized by the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. This event is part of the Center’s series “Religion in Israeli Society.” Co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for the Study of Religion.
URL:https://religion.ucla.edu/event/the-complex-interplay-of-religion-law-and-politics-in-israel/
LOCATION:Bunche Hall 10383
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260409T153000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260409T163000
DTSTAMP:20260330T213137Z
CREATED:20260330T213137Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260330T213137Z
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SUMMARY:The Dread Heights: Tribulation and Refuge after the Syrian Revolution
DESCRIPTION:Muslim charities and community organizations have assumed a significant role in refugee support since the Syrian catastrophe: in Jordan and Canada\, as elsewhere\, they deliver food aid\, house orphans\, and organize remedial education. But Islam is more than just a resource for humanitarian projects. The Dread Heights details how the Islamic tradition guides refugees\, relief workers\, and religious scholars in a world of brutal sieges and mass displacement. Even as refugees become objects of humanitarian concern suspended between national orders\, this ethnography brings another suspension into view: a form of life whose gestures are illuminated by the Quranic figure of the Heights. In the shadow of war\, beyond humanitarian order\, Islam offers an orientation to the devastation of the present. \nBasit Kareem Iqbal is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Associate Member in the Department of Religious Studies at McMaster University. An anthropologist and longtime academic editor\, his research explores the difficulty of the present within and across distinct traditions and forms of life. He is author of The Dread Heights: Tribulation and Refuge after the Syrian Revolution (2025) and editor of collaborative journal issues on tribulation (2022)\, the destruction of loss (2023)\, the incapacitations of tradition (2026)\, and the unmooring of the present (2027). His current projects include translating a book on the representation of violence and writing a series of essays on evil in creation. \nREGISTER HERE \nSponsor(s): Center for Near Eastern Studies\, Center for Middle East Development\, Center for Study of International Migration\, Islamic Studies\, and the Center for the Study of Religion
URL:https://religion.ucla.edu/event/the-dread-heights-tribulation-and-refuge-after-the-syrian-revolution/
LOCATION:Bunche Hall 10383
CATEGORIES:CSR
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260513T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260513T131500
DTSTAMP:20260408T175158Z
CREATED:20260407T205938Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260408T175158Z
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SUMMARY:Music and Religion in Popular Culture:  The Case of Orthodox Jews and Christian Contemporary Music
DESCRIPTION:Since the 1960s religious practitioners have created their own music to express their beliefs and values to shield the community from popular culture.  The Irony is they use the popular culture that they reject from American culture in their music.  This presentation by Mark Kligman (UCLA) will highlight important composers and groups with audio and video examples of Orthodox Jewish and Christian Contemporary Music. \nRSVP required here for in-person attendance. \nRegister for Zoom link here. \nCo-sponsored by the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies and the Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience.
URL:https://religion.ucla.edu/event/music-and-religion-in-popular-culture-the-case-of-orthodox-jews-and-christian-contemporary-music/
LOCATION:Kaplan 365
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260529T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260529T153000
DTSTAMP:20260506T192343Z
CREATED:20260506T192343Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260506T192343Z
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SUMMARY:Gods and the Abyss: Encountering Oceanic Agency at the Edge of the Ancient World
DESCRIPTION:This presentation examines how coastal communities in antiquity conceived of the sea not merely as a physical environment\, but as a powerful\, living force endowed with agency. Such perceptions became especially vivid in the aftermath of coastal catastrophes. The Gulf of Cádiz\, on the southwestern edge of the Iberian Peninsula\, serves as the primary case study. Its broad floodplains and pronounced tidal regimes made it highly vulnerable to extreme events\, including storm surges and tsunamis\, which repeatedly reshaped both the landscape and human experience. By tracing how societies from antiquity to the present have responded to episodes of catastrophic marine flooding through religious practice and ritualized forms of engagement\, the paper explores the complex interplay between human action and the more-than-human agency of the sea. \nManuel Álvarez-Martí-Aguilar is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Málaga (Spain) and currently a Getty Villa Scholar. His research interests include modern historiography of the ancient world and the cultural intersections between local Iberian communities—especially Tartessos—and the Phoenicians. His recent work focuses on the impact of earthquakes and tsunamis on coastal communities of the Iberian Peninsula\, as well as their resilient responses to these kinds of environmental shocks with often catastrophic consequences. He has co-edited\, with Francisco Machuca Prieto\, the volume Historical Earthquakes\, Tsunamis and Archaeology in the Iberian Peninsula (Springer\, 2022) and co-organised the workshop Fluid Horizons: Charting Ancient Environmental History and Blue Humanities (University of London\, 2024). \nCo-sponsored with the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures and the Kershaw Chair of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies \n 
URL:https://religion.ucla.edu/event/gods-and-the-abyss-encountering-oceanic-agency-at-the-edge-of-the-ancient-world/
LOCATION:Kaplan 365
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260531T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260531T160000
DTSTAMP:20260413T202533Z
CREATED:20260413T201623Z
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SUMMARY:(De)medicalization and the Dying Body: Sallekhanā\, Kinship\, and the Limits of Liberal Bioethics
DESCRIPTION:In this talk\, Miki Chase (U of Wisconsin-Madison) explores how trajectories of illness and care\, such as terminal cancer or anticipated cognitive decline\, are reinterpreted through Jain doctrinal frameworks in the narratives of adult children of women who undertake the Jain ritual fast to death (sallekhanā or santhāra). Drawing on ethnographic accounts of women’s deaths in contemporary urban Jain households\, Chase traces how narratives of bodily decline are reframed not as losses to be managed through medical intervention but as conditions of spiritual possibility that invite ascetic detachment and renunciation. Rather than resisting biomedical or bioethical paradigms outright\, these narratives inhabit a complex zone of overlap where cognitive clarity is both a medical and religious ideal; the attenuation of pain is karmically elevated rather than clinically managed; and the logic of institutionalized care is subtly displaced not by the absence of obligation but by alternate forms of care. In tracing the limits of bioethical paradigms that presume the necessity of medicalization and institutional oversight\, this talk describes how “illness narratives” and “santhāra narratives” coalesce to challenge prevailing understandings of what it means to die well\, and how suffering\, pain\, and the medicalized body is accounted for in the lives—and deaths—of Jain women. \nRSVP here to attend in person \n(Parking information for Royce Hall) \nRegister here for Zoom link \nMiki Chase is Assistant Professor in South Asian Studies and holds the Śrī Anantnāth Endowed Chair in Jain Studies. Her research and teaching focuses on intersections of religion\, law\, and gender in questions of care around death and dying in India\, with a specific focus on Jainism. \nDr. Chase received her PhD from the Department of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University\, and her doctoral work received the Mohini Jain Presidential Chair in Jain Studies Best Dissertation Prize (2024). Her research focuses on the contemporary practice of the legally contested Jain voluntary ritual fast until death known variably as sallekhanā\, santhāra\, or samādhi-maraṇa\, examining how lay Jains reconcile ideals and concepts outlined in scripture with the interreligious pressures of urban life and modernization of death\, foregrounding the centrality of women’s moral subjectivities in such negotiations. Her research has been funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and the American Institute for Indian Studies (AIIS)\, including the Rachel F. and Scott McDermott Junior Research Fellowship. Her book in progress is tentatively titled The Ambiguity of the Vow: Law\, Kinship\, and Gender in Pathologizing the Jain Fast Until Death. \n 
URL:https://religion.ucla.edu/event/demedicalization-and-the-dying-body-sallekhana-kinship-and-the-limits-of-liberal-bioethics/
LOCATION:Royce Hall 306
ORGANIZER;CN="Center for the Study of Religion":MAILTO:csr@humnet.ucla.edu
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20261015T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20261015T173000
DTSTAMP:20260812T183937Z
CREATED:20260812T183937Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260812T183937Z
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SUMMARY:Study of Religion Welcome Reception
DESCRIPTION:Lift a glass to the new academic year and meet friends old and new! \nWelcome remarks by Dean Stern and Professor Bakhos at 4:30p. \nRSVP required by October 11. See you there!
URL:https://religion.ucla.edu/event/study-of-religion-welcome-reception/
LOCATION:Royce Hall 306
CATEGORIES:CSR
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ORGANIZER;CN="Center for the Study of Religion":MAILTO:csr@humnet.ucla.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20261026T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20261026T171500
DTSTAMP:20260814T170818Z
CREATED:20260812T184127Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260814T170818Z
UID:7157-1793030400-1793034900@religion.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:The Paradox of Pointless Suffering
DESCRIPTION:Why do we suffer? Why do people die young? Is there any point to our excessive pain\, physical or emotional? This talk explores the ways that we have tried to minimize or eliminate suffering\, and examines people’s attempts to find ways to live with pointless suffering. Ultimately\, to be fully human—and to have healthy culture—means to acknowledge a mysterious paradox: we must simultaneously accept suffering and oppose it. \nRSVP to attend in person \nRegister for Zoom link \nScott Samuelson studied philosophy at Grinnell College (BA\, 1995\, valedictorian) and Emory University (PhD\, 2001).  He is currently a Professor of Practice in the Departments of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Iowa State University. In 2014\, he was named Distinguished Humanities Educator by the Community College Humanities Association.  Inspired by his students\, he wrote his first book The Deepest Human Life: An Introduction to Philosophy for Everyone (University of Chicago Press\, 2014)\, which has been well received not just by prominent reviewers but by numerous non-philosophers who found their philosophical voice with its help.  The book has been translated into Chinese and Portuguese.  Samuelson has published articles in the Wall Street Journal\, the Huffington Post\, the Chronicle of Higher Education\, The Philosopher’s Magazine\, and Christian Century.  His article “Why I Teach Plato to Plumbers” in The Atlantic has been widely circulated.  He’s been interviewed on NPR and given various public lectures and talks\, including a TEDx talk “How Philosophy Can Save Your Life.” \nScott Samuelson was the recipient of the 2015 Hiett Prize in the Humanities. \nCo-sponsored by the UCLA Center for Buddhist Studies.
URL:https://religion.ucla.edu/event/the-paradox-of-pointless-suffering/
LOCATION:Royce Hall 306
CATEGORIES:CSR
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ORGANIZER;CN="Center for the Study of Religion":MAILTO:csr@humnet.ucla.edu
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