Jewish Heritage Lecture features author Samuel G. Freedman

Award-winning author Samuel G. Freedman will speak on Tuesday, March 15, as part of the Jewish Heritage Lecture Series.

Freedman’s lecture, titled “My Family, My Community, My People: A Journalist’s Journeys through the Jewish World,” will begin at 7 p.m. in the Memorial Union. The talk is free and open to the public.

His book “Jew Versus Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry” won the National Jewish Book Award for non-fiction and made the Publishers Weekly Religious Best Sellers list. Freedman’s latest book, “Who She Was: My Search for My Mother’s Life,” will be published in April by Simon and Schuster Inc.

A reporter for The New York Times from 1981-87, Freedman currently writes the weekly column “On Education” as well as frequent articles on culture. He is a member of the USA Today board of contributors and has written for numerous other publications, including New York magazine, Rolling Stone, Salon.com and BeliefNet.

A tenured professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Freedman was named the nation’s outstanding journalism educator in 1997 by the Society of Professional Journalists.

He graduated from UW–Madison in 1977 with degrees in journalism and history and wrote for the Daily Cardinal while he was an undergraduate.

Freedman’s appearance is part of a lecture series sponsored by the George L. Mosse/Laurence A. Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies, the Madison Jewish Community Council and the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies. The series is supported by the Ettinger Family Foundation and the Mosse Program.