Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology
Mount Holyoke College
Mark Auslander considers interwoven journeys in his family and personal histories in the shadow of the Holocaust. His story centers on the enigmatic space of a dark cattle car, one of thousands of Holocaust death trains, within which family members were deported in October 1941. A surviving cousin, Dan Pagis, immortalized the car’s interior in a remarkable poem, which recasts this singular crime scene as a universal story of inhumanity and of a longing for language that shimmers amidst despair and desolation. Inspired by the poem, and the multiple histories it encompasses, Mark considers critical lessons of the 1930s and 1940s for the current moment of crisis, including the life-sustaining power of art in nurturing cultures of democracy, inclusion, resilience and compassion. He also ponders critically his own, contradictory journey as a secular Jewish white male scholar of Africa and the African Diaspora, struggling to interrogate his own positions of privilege and to nurture solidarities with historically oppressed
communities near and far.
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Author
I’m a father, a husband, a dog-owner, and a challah baker (not in order of importance), but writing and talking are what I do for work.
From 2010-2016 I wrote the Beliefs column, about religion, for The New York Times. My fifth and latest book is Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting & the Soul of a Neighborhood. It’s about Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, after the 2018 synagogue massacre. It was reviewed in The New York Times (“propulsive”), The Washington Post (“powerful”), The Wall Street Journal (“compelling”), and elsewhere.
I have also written a book about American religion in the late 1960s, a book about the bar and bat mitzvah in contemporary America, and a memoir of my years as a high school debater. And I co-authored The Newish Jewish Encyclopedia. I hold a Ph.D. in religious studies from Yale, but I believe only medical doctors should be called “Doctor.”
I have done a good deal of magazine and newspaper writing. Here are some very favorite magazine pieces; here is the archive of my Times columns.
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CEO, DIMENSIONS Inc.
Yavilah is the CEO of the Diversity consulting group DIMENSIONS Inc. Through Dimensions, Yavilah services an international portfolio of clients in the areas of Education, Philanthropy, and Social Justice. As an anti-racism activist with an international platform, Yavilah provides training and consulting to numerous social justice projects that span multiple identities and communities. Yavilah serves on the steering committee of the national Women’s March and has been a core part of many large-scale national movement teams, bringing a uniquely intersectional perspective to the ongoing work of racial justice and collective liberation. Yavilah is a pioneer of the Jewish diversity and equity movement and is an advocate and mentor for the empowerment of a transglobal community of Jews of Color. Yavilah was an inaugural recipient of the Spielberg Foundation’s Joshua Venture Fellowship and directed the launch of the Ruderman Synagogue Inclusion Project for Combined Jewish Philanthropies and the Ruderman Family Foundation. Yavilah also directed the Bronfman Philanthropy’s Curriculum Initiative in Boston, where she provided educational consultancy to 600 prep schools across the nation. Yavilah was voted one of “16 Faith Leaders to Watch” by the Center for American Progress in Washington, DC, is a certified coach for the Auburn Theological Seminary’s Pastoral Coach Training Program, and an inaugural fellow of the Sojourner Truth Leadership Circle. Yavilah is a renowned national speaker, educator, and spiritual practitioner. In celebration of the musical traditions passed down to her from three generations of her African-American Jewish family, she is also the writer, producer and performer of the Jewish Gospel theatrical production “The Colors of Water.”
