What happens when Jews stop playing by the rules? Join us to celebrate the winner of the Howard I. Friedman Memorial Graduate Essay Prize: historian Andrew Sperling, whose work reveals the deeply Jewish roots of American countercultural rebellion, from the Free Speech Movement to the Chicago Seven. He’ll be joined by painter Robert Russell, whose work excavates the cultural memory of marginalized and displaced communities, including his own—finding in Jewish ritual objects a record of what survives and what is lost. In conversation with Skirball trustee Mitch Kamin, the three will explore how outsider identity, dissent, and the refusal to be forgotten have always been central to the Jewish story.

Read full essay:

"Exorcising the Dybbuk" by Andrew Sperling

Andrew Sperling is the Historian at the American Jewish Historical Society in New York City. Before starting his position, he completed his PhD in History at American University and served as the Leon Levy Fellow at the Center for Jewish History. His research explores American Jewish responses to antisemitism, Jews in the Sixties and Seventies counterculture, and Jewish politics of the post-World War II era. His first book, The Menace Among Us: The Jewish Fight Against Antisemitism, from the Ku Klux Klan to the White Power Movement, will be published by New York University Press in January 2027. 

Established in memory of the Skirball’s founding chairman, Howard I. Friedman, the annual Friedman Prize invites graduate students from across the US and beyond to submit essays offering perspectives on American Jewish experiences.

The Howard I. Friedman Memorial Graduate Essay Prize and related programs are made possible by generous support from the following donors:

Pamela and Jeffrey Balton
Howard Bernstein
Alyce and Philip de Toledo
The Friedman Family
Marcie and Cliff Goldstein
Dennis Holt z"l
Harry and Yvonne Lenart Charitable Foundation
Jessie Kornberg and Aaron Lowenstein
Madeline and Bruce Ramer
May and Richard Ziman