The University of Kentucky's Passport to the World series is entering its fifth year and with that anniversary comes a number of exciting announcements. This upcoming year the program will highlight an entire region - the Middle East.

This past April, the University of Kentucky's Jewish Studies Program was lucky enough to host a lecture with renowned scholar and author Catherine Rottenberg. The talk, titled "The Making of an Icon: Black Harlem and the Jewish Lower East Side," concluded a series of special events hosted over the past year by the Jewish Studies Program. Rottenberg is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics and the Gender Studies Program of Ben Gurion University in Beer-Sheva, Israel.

For nearly two decades, the Jewish Studies program has drawn students and faculty from all over UK to teach and learn about Jewish culture, language, history, and beyond. In this podcast, I spoke with up-and-coming Jewish Studies Director, Jan Fernheimer, about what’s in store for Fall 2013, including a visiting scholar from Israel, a film series, and opportunities to connect with communities within and beyond the Commonwealth.