- My Journey to German-Jewish Reconciliation
- Understanding Reconciliation: From Obstacles to Facilitators to Rewards
After 29 years as a linguistics professor at Northwestern University, Prof. Judith N. Levi took early retirement from academia in 2001 in order to more actively pursue her deep personal interest—as the daughter of German Jews—in German-Jewish dialogue and reconciliation. Since then, she has written a book and numerous essays about her positive and stereotype-shattering experiences on 13 visits to Germany since 1998. She now lectures in both the US and Germany on these experiences, as well as on the challenging nature of reconciliation more generally. In June 2015, she was honored by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Herr Joachim Gauck, who awarded her the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for her "exceptional achievements in promoting reconciliation between the German and Jewish peoples."
Prof. Levi's book manuscript, Reconciliation Odyssey: A Jew Discovers a Different Germany was published in a German translation in 2016 by Hentrich & Hentrich Verlag Berlin, a publisher specializing in Jewish culture and contemporary history. (It has not yet appeared in English.) Several of the essays she has written on the major themes of her book can be accessed on her Northwestern University website, whose URL appears below; the essay "Flowers in a Field of Ashes" provides an excellent introduction to the experiences and perspective she brings to her lectures. She is currently giving public presentations, with an accompanying PowerPoint slideshow, on the themes indicated above; her audiences in the US have included synagogue congregations, university students, senior citizens' organizations, and other interfaith groups. She also gives book readings as well as talks on her insights into reconciliation, and her life-changing experiences in Germany, to German adults and high-school students.
Born and raised in New York City, she received her B.A. in philosophy from Antioch College in 1964, and her Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Chicago in 1975. While still a graduate student, she became the first full-time instructor in Modern Hebrew ever hired by Northwestern University. During her 29 years at Northwestern University, Prof. Levi served as the Chair of the Department of Linguistics, and as an Assistant Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, while also winning multiple awards as an outstanding teacher. In 1991, the students of the College of Arts and Sciences chose her to be their Commencement Speaker; in that role, she addressed an intergenerational audience of 6,000. She has also lectured widely on her academic research in the US, Canada, Israel, India, Japan, and Nepal, and served for about 30 years as a free-lance language consultant to attorneys in cases involving disputed language.
Prof. Levi has many relatives in Israel (also descendants of German Jews) to whom she is close, and travels there often.