The Tenth Annual Maurice Amado Foundation Lecture in Jewish Ethics

Jewish Studies Program • California State University, Northridge

Cultivating Complex Resilience and Engaging Vulnerability in Today’s Troubling Times  
Dr. Dean Bell

Hosted by Rabbi Ed Feinstein

In the face of the unknown and in the midst of crisis, can we ever return to our previous “normal” state?

In this lecture, Dean Bell will use Jewish texts and experiences to show how we can go beyond a return to normalcy by cultivating “complex resilience,” which allows us to learn and grow through disruption. 

Dean Bell is President, CEO, and Professor of History at Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago. A widely published author in the areas of Medieval and Early Modern Jewish history, his most recent book is Interreligious Resilience: Interreligious Leadership for a Pluralistic World (Bloomsbury, 2022, with Michael S. Hogue). He also has served as a faculty member at DePaul University, Northwestern University, Hebrew Theological College, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of California, Berkeley, as President, Vice-President, and Secretary-Treasurer of the Midwest Jewish Studies Association as a member of the Board of Directors of the Association for Jewish Studies. He is also the editor with Keren Eva Fraiman of the forthcoming The Routledge Handbook of Judaism in the 21st Century.