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Laura Levitt, a professor of religion, Jewish studies and gender at Temple University, earned the inaugural Fine Fellowship.

Created by the 51��Ʒ��Ƶ Jewish Studies Program in collaboration with the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center, the fellowship will fund Levitt’s travel to 51��Ʒ��Ƶsburgh and study of materials related to the Oct. 27, 2018, attack on the Tree of Life – Or L’Simcha Congregation synagogue. The bulk of these materials — including ephemera, correspondence, oral histories and institutional records — are held in the Rauh Jewish Archives’ October 27 collections. Levitt will also study archives from the University and the city of 51��Ʒ��Ƶsburgh.

Levitt’s project, “Offerings of Grief, Offerings of Rage: Revisiting Tree of Life Synagogue and George Floyd Square,” will center on gifts visitors have brought to the site of the 51��Ʒ��Ƶsburgh synagogue as well as the George Floyd Global Memorial in Minneapolis. She will present her findings in spring 2025.

A scholar of Holocaust memory, trauma and loss, Levitt is also the author of “The Objects that Remain,” “American Jewish Loss after the Holocaust” and “Jews and Feminism: The Ambivalent Search for Home.”