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Jewish Refugees, 1941

Center News

New Alumna Sonia Isard Honored with Two Awards

Graduating senior Sonia Isard, concentrator in Economics and Russian & East European Studies as well as minor in Judaic Studies, is recipient of two awards: the Raoul Weinberg Humanitarian Prize from the Honors Program and the Alfred G. Meyer Prize from the Center for Russian & East European Studies.

A staple in the Judaic Studies program, Sonia Isard participated in academic activities that far exceed normal expectations of any student. In fall 2007, Sonia took Judaic Studies 601, the introductory course required for all Judaic Studies graduate students, where Professor Anita Norich described her as outstanding. An advanced Yiddish speaker, Sonia is the only undergraduate participant in the faculty-sponsored invitation-only Leyenkrayz (reading circle). She is known as the first to volunteer for outreach events, happy to share her experiences with potential concentrators and minors. So exceptional are her abilities that when graduate students organized a series of roundtable discussions on Jewish studies, many were unaware that Sonia was not a graduate student and quickly invited her to join.

During Sonia's junior year, she traveled to St. Petersburg to study Russian language and culture for a term. Sonia quickly adjusted to her new environment and filled her time volunteering at the local Jewish Community Center. As a volunteer English language instructor, Sonia became very popular with the young children she was teaching as well as their parents. An excellent musician, Sonia played violin and sang in a local choir. At the end of the term, she chose to stay in St. Petersburg for the rest of the academic year, working as a part-time teacher and continuing to learn from the community.

Returning from Russia, Sonia began working on her honors thesis project. Combining methodologies of anthropological research, historical study and literary analysis, the project explores the economic system in the Jewish shtetls of Ukraine. After being awarded a Stanely D. Frankel Summer Fellowship, Sonia traveled to the Ukrainian town of Mogilev-Podolski to participate in an ethnographic study of Ukrainian Jews, a project coordinated by the Judaica Center at the European University at St. Petersburg. She was the only undergraduate student participant and the only non-native Russian speaker. Sonia's project required her to interview Mogilev-Podolski residents, asking strangers highly personal questions about past economic activities. After this successful trip, Sonia would report on her findings at SEFER, an annual conference on Jewish studies in Moscow.

Beyond a stellar academic record, Sonia is an engaging and personable person. She floats comfortably between diverse cultural and scholarly arenas. She consistently impresses faculty members throughout Judaic Studies as well as other academic departments and programs, including the Residential College and Honors Program of which she is a member of both. MAZEL TOV to Sonia on her graduation and for both prizes!

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