SPECIAL EVENTS Sunday 20th July ENS, Salle DUSSANE (Main

SPECIAL EVENTS Sunday 20th July ENS, Salle DUSSANE (Main building, ground flour, map: 9) 13.30-­‐15.30 Preliminary Session: Hebrew manuscripts and collections as a meeting point between cultures Chair: Colette Sirat Colette Sirat, EPHE Title: Introduction: Les manuscrits hébreux : sources de l’histoire. Hebrew manuscripts, sources of history. Abstract: For the middle ages and the early modern period, the history of the Jewish people is based essentially on the written word, and the written word is preserved essentially in the manuscripts kept in public libraries. We know of about 70.000 manuscripts, books which were voluntarily preserved as books; added to them are the fragments which were preserved by mere chance: more than 250000 in the genizot and dozens of thousands in bindings. All of these are remnants of the about 1 to 2 million books written in Hebrew letters. They are mostly in the Hebrew language but also in Aramaic, Greek, Arabic, Persian, French, Yiddish, Spanish, Italian… and even Chinese. These manuscripts are the basis of 3 kinds of history. 01. The history of texts, which may be studied using the two-­‐dimensions digitalized photographs transferred on internet. 02. The history of the codicological and paleographic features of the three-­‐dimensional “body” of the manuscript. This study teaches us 1 )the quality of parchment or paper, the quires the manuscript is made of, the style of the script; 2) the kind of persons who ordered the manuscript, the ones who wrote it, those who read it; 3) it gives us the possibility to place it in the cultural context it was made in, its time and place. This cultural context is the one Jews were living in: be it Greek, Arabic or Christian. The Jews were housed, dressed as their non-­‐Jewish neighbours, they were speaking the same vernacular language (children, women, many simple men knew only a few Hebrew words). They wrote the same kinds of books. These two kinds of history may be found in good catalogues, which begin to be written. 03. However, if we can study the Hebrew manuscripts, it is thanks to a third history: that of the mostly non-­‐Jewish collectors who bought them since the middle ages and of the librarians who carefully kept them and go on keeping them safe in libraries where scholars can study them. It is my privilege to introduce three of the great libraries curators of Hebrew manuscripts. Laurent Héricher, Head Curator of Oriental Manuscripts, Bibliothèque Nationale de France Title: Kings of France as Hebrew manuscripts collectors Ilana Tahan, Curator of Oriental Manuscripts, British Library, London Aviad Stollman, Curator of Judaica Collections, Israel National Library Wednesday 23rd July Semi-­‐Plenary Lectures and Workshops Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme 13.30-­‐15.30 Panel: Teaching Jewish Studies: Issues, Challenges and Solutions Organizer: Alberdina Houtman Chair: Alberdina Houtman Alberdina Houtman, Protestant Theological University, Netherlands Introduction: The situation of Jewish Studies is changing fast in Europe due to new developments in Eastern Europe, the changing interests of students, the introduction of new media, drastic budget cuts and more. Consequently, there is a need for educational support. Teachers have to adapt to new student populations and to the use of new media, and they are often forced to teach subjects that are outside their own field of expertise. In this panel we will investigate the situation in different fields and in different parts of Europe. We will discuss the development of curricula and new ways of learning, and we will try to initiate the formation of a ‘community of teachers’, who can help and advise each other. Following on from this, the EAJS will facilitate in the coming years workshops in different parts of Europe to support the development of new teaching material and methods. Sacha Stern, University College London, UK Introducing Judaism Andres Piquer Otero, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain Title: Teaching Jewish Studies: Languages Abstract: The teaching of languages related to Jewish studies is a particularly challenging realm, given a hardly avoidable academic fragmentation which appears in different but complementary levels: 1) tuition in very different programs and departments (e.g. Jewish Studies; Semitic Studies; Theology; Near Eastern/Oriental Studies; Religious Studies; Modern Languages); 2) different layers of centrality of a language for Jewish Studies (from the centrality of Hebrew and Aramaic, through distinctly Jewish languages or linguistic varieties such as Yiddish or Ladino, to languages and dialects of a more complex academic definition (e.g. Judaeo-­‐Arabic); and, finally, to languages highly relevant for cultural contextualization of the Jewish people in different phases and locations of their history (to name a few, Ancient Near Eastern languages such as Akkadian and Ugaritic, Classical Arabic, or Greek.) Finally, teaching of Hebrew in particular presents a dichotomy of its own, as it is both a classical language in the history of Judaism and a modern, spoken and literary language (thus integrated into the EU standards of language learning and levels of proficiency.) This paper will try to present these challenges for reflection and propose some ideas or guidelines which imply flexibility, eclecticism, and the encouragement of interdisciplinary collaboration and structuring in the development of language curricula for Jewish Studies. All in all, the option taken in the syllabus and in the classroom should cater for vast scope of our discipline, but also for the equally rich and variegated interests and priorities of our students. Pavel Sládek, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic Title: Teaching Jewish Religion and Jewish Thought in Prague Abstract: Since the end of the dictatorship of the Communist Party in 1989, we witness an important growth of humanities in Czech academic institutions, including the emergence of programs of Jewish Studies of all levels. The present paper will address critically select problems of teaching Jewish religion and Jewish thought, concentrating chiefly on the following issues, some of which are not specifically related to the conditions of Czech academia: 1) Studentsʼ access to primary sources and the knowledge of Jewish languages: how much philology do we need? 2) Studentsʼ reading habits and the limitations imposed by the local intellectual canon: go local or global? 3) Teaching Jewish thought and culture out of the broader general context: the pros and cons of double-­‐majors. 4) Teaching Judaism as an “extinct” culture: shouldn’t our students meet real Jews? 5) Encyclopaedic demand and curricular rigidity – Czech and Anglo-­‐Saxon models compared: can we avoid teaching outside our fields of expertise? Bart Wallet, VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands Title: Teaching Jewish History: Contexts, Methods, Materials Abstract: All over Europe universities are offering courses in Jewish history, both ‘grand narratives’ and in-­‐
depth courses focusing on specific topics, periods, countries etc. The contexts in which Jewish history is being taught – departments, audiences – differ greatly. Teaching a course in a history department demands another arrangement of the material than teaching in a Jewish studies context. Having rabbinical students challenges a professor in a different way than dealing with Christian theology students. This paper will analyse the main trends in teaching Jewish history, draw up an inventory of the existing methods and materials, offer best practices and articulate desiderata. It will e.g. discuss structuring Jewish history classes, relating Jewish history to general history, using the various textbooks, sourcebooks, working with new media etc. The presentation invites all who teach Jewish history to participate in the discussion, sharing their own experiences and reflect on how the EAJS and we as colleagues can help each other to stay updated and to respond to changing intellectual, pedagogical and academic conditions. 15.30-­‐16.30 David Fishman, Jewish Theological Seminary, USA Title: Launching 'Yerusha' Program of the RFE; Our Inheritance. Our "Yerusha": Securing the Jewish Documentary Legacy in Europe 16.30-­‐17.30 Francesca Trivellato, Yale University, USA Title: Jewish-­‐Christian Credit Relations and the Economic History of Early Modern Europe 17.30-­‐18.30 Yaakov Shavit, Tel Aviv University, Israel Title: The Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible: Worlds Apart? 18.30-­‐20.30: Cocktail Party SESSIONS Monday 21st July ENS, Salle CÉLAN (Main building, ground flour, map: 14) Session: 001: Jewish Philosophy -­‐ Middle Ages 9.00-­‐10.30 The Logic of Falāsifa in Judeo-­‐Arabic and Hebrew Texts Chair: Steven Harvey Charles Manekin, University of Maryland, USA Title: New Light on Alfarabi's Logical Writings in Medieval Hebrew Philosophy Abstract: It has been argued that some of the logical writings of Alfarabi were among the first philosophical writings of the Arabic Aristotelians translated into Hebrew, antedating the translation of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed in 1199. They appear to have been studied throughout the Middle Ages, even after the logical doctrines of Aristotle were available via the commentaries of Averroes. My paper will present the results of my ongoing research into these writings and their transmission, with special emphasis on a short treatise on dialectic, the Art of Disputation, which seems to be extant only in Hebrew, and which, to my knowledge, has escaped the notice of scholars. Ariel Malachi, Bar-­‐Ilan University, Israel Title: Reason, Revelation and Logic: A New Perspective on Yehuda Hallevi and the Islamic "Falāsifa" Abstract: Yehuda Hallevi's attitude towards rationalism and philosophy has been discussed in prior studies, and several approaches have been presented in relation to it. I wish to discuss a new perspective regarding this issue. The main arguments I wish to present are: (a) that in spite of the general notion that Hallevi was an anti-­‐rationalist thinker, he nonetheless offered the learned reader a rational and coherent attitude towards reason and philosophy. (b) That this attitude relies directly on Aristotelian logic as presented in the writings of the "falāsifa". (c) That this attitude functions as a philosophical-­‐methodological basis for establishing both the criticism of philosophy as well as the defense of Judaism. In this context, I will argue that as much as Halevi rejected the philosophical premises and as a result, the philosophical conclusions, he did not reject the philosophical method itself, i.e.: the contemporary principles of Logic. Reading the Kuzari, while paying the proper attention to the logical terminology used within, can show how Hallevi established the aforementioned critique and defense, and gives the reader a new perspective regarding the relation between reason and revelation. Furthermore, such reading can be used as a basis for a wider effort of answering some of the questions regarding the Kuzari raised in prior research. Yehudah Halper, Tulane University, USA Title: The Logic of Metaphysics in Hebrew Commentaries on Aristotle's Metaphysics Abstract: Logic occupied a place of high accolade among medieval thinkers on the grounds that it provides the basis for scientific certainty and thereby the basis for a rational account of the universe. Metaphysics, too, gives the ontological ground for science, yet metaphysics was often opened to skepticism by medieval Jewish thinkers, including Maimonides. One source for this skepticism is that Aristotle himself opened up such basic questions as “what is being?” or “can there be a scientific study of being?” in the early books of the Metaphysics. In a similar vein, in the Long Commentary on Book Gamma of the Metaphysics, Averroes remarks that metaphysics has its own unique logic and suggests that this logic has a dialectical rather than demonstrative basis. That is, Averroes suggests that the unique logical foundations of metaphysics are not demonstrative, i.e., are not completely certain. This paper will examine three medieval and renaissance approaches to the question of whether Aristotle’s Metaphysics succeeds in developing a logic that could be used as the basis for other sciences. The first approach, found in Averroes’ Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, suggests that this foundational problem is surmountable and that a reliable logical basis for science can be made in metaphysics. Averroes’ Middle Commentary was widely circulated in Hebrew translation and was influential on medieval Jewish thought. A second approach, found in Abraham Bibago’s 15th century commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, is more skeptical, suggesting the unreliability of science, while still encouraging philosophical reflection. Bibago explains this position in detailed comments comparing Averroes’ Middle Commentary on the Metaphysics with his Commentary on the Posterior Analytics. For Bibago, philosophical speculation is an unending task and the ideal human pursuit. The third approach is that of Judah Moscato, the 16th century Italian thinker, who did not write a commentary on the Metaphysics, but displays knowledge of the work in his Nefuṣot Yehudah. Like Bibago, whom he read, Moscato treated the logic of metaphysics as not completely certain and questioned whether people could have any significant knowledge of it. Unlike Bibago, Moscato rejects Aristotelian metaphysical study as well as Aristotelian science. He replaces it, instead, with a Platonist-­‐like way of reading Biblical passages as images of the divine. Moscato’s rejection of Aristotelian logic and metaphysics leads to a mystical turn. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session 002: Cultural Contacts 11.00-­‐13.00 Chair: David Lemler Montse Leyra Curia, Universidad San Damaso, Spain Title: R. Shemuel Ben Meir and Hugh and Andrew of St. Victor’s ‘in hebreo’ interpretations in their commentaries on the Pentateuch Abstract: In their Latin commentaries on the Pentateuch, the twelfth-­‐century authors Hugh (1090/1100-­‐
1141) and Andrew (died 1175) of St. Victor ascribe many interpretations to the Hebrew text (in hebreo) or to the Hebrews (Hebrei, secundum Hebreos). Since the works of B. Smalley, scholars such as M. Awerbuch, R. Berndt and G. A. C. Hadfield have pointed out several close parallels to these interpretations in the commentary on the Pentateuch written by R. Shemuel Ben Meir (1080/85 and 1160), one of the twelfth-­‐
century Jewish writers of the Northern French school of literal exegesis. S. Kamin and E. Touitoo have observed similarities in exegetical method between interpretations by the Victorines and those coming out of the Northern French School of Jewish exegesis, particularly interpretations of Rashbam. However, no systematic analysis of all Victorine’s in hebreo interpretations has been carried out with respect to the specific linguistic principles and literary-­‐rhetorical devices found in Rashbam’s commentary. My first aim in this paper is to ascertain whether in their in hebreo interpretations Hugh and Andrew of St. Victor can be shown to have employed linguistic principles and literary-­‐rhetorical devices that are characteristic of the Northern-­‐French school and can be found in Rashbam’s commentary. Secondly, I shall try to point out further parallels between the Victorines’ in hebreo references and interpretations in Rashbam’s commentary. My intention is to determine whether Rashbam can be proved to have been a direct source for certain interpretations of the Victorines. Ari Ackerman, Schechter Institute, Israel Title: Taxonomy, Methodology and Scholastic Techniques in the Legal Writings of Hasdai Crescas Abstract: Hasdai Crescas, the fifteenth century Hispano-­‐Jewish philosopher, is justifiably considered one of the most significant and innovative medieval Jewish thinkers. In his day, though, his reputation and influence also extended to the sphere of Jewish law. Unfortunately, little of Crescas' literary output in this area remains. I will argue in my lecture, though, that part of the rich and inventive legal universe of Hasdai Crescas can be surfaced. This unearthing is made possible by our ability to ajar two windows that allow us to peer into Crescas' novel and noteworthy activity in the realm of Jewish law. These apertures are two brief discussions on halakhic matters that are embedded within his philosophic works. The first—a short treatment of the nature of codification, which criticizes Maimonides' Mishneh Torah—appears in the introduction to Crescas' philosophic work, or Hashem and was probably intended as part of the introduction to a legal compendium, entitled tentatively Ner Elohim, which Crescas intended to write. The second appears in his philosophic sermon, Derashat ha-­‐Pesach. From these two texts, we can surmise the nature of the legal code that Crescas intended to write. I will focus on one particular feature of his intended code: a comprehensive taxonomy of halakhah through a series of dichotomous classifications. I will investigate the relationship between this aspect of his halakhic approach with his philosophic writings. In addition, I will argue that Crescas' methodology of codification draws from legal trends among Christian glossators and commentators in law schools of European universities in the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. Like the Christian glossators and commentators, Crescas aspired to provide an all-­‐comprehensive taxonomy by classifying the law through a series of subdistionctiones. Doron Forte, Ben-­‐Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: The Reception and Rejection of Latin Scholastic Wisdom among Jewish philosophers in 15th Century Spain Abstract: The correspondence between Eli Habilio and Rabbi Shem Tov ibn Shem Tov as a test case". Rabbi Shem Tov, the last known scion of the Ibn Shem Tov Family, was one of the most prominent and prolific Jewish philosophers in the second half of the 15th century in Spain. As a full-­‐fledged "old school" Averroist, who taught Aristotelian writings and composed elaborated commentaries on them, his attitude towards the expanding influence of Scholastic thought upon Jewish intellectual circles was characterized by suspicion and distrust. Eli Habilio, on the other hand, represents an opposite approach: Not only that he denied the irrelevancy of Scholastic knowledge, but he emphasized its crucial role to the continuity and revival of Jewish philosophy. By translating many writings from Latin to Hebrew, Habilio himself took an active role in the presentation and distribution of Scholastic philosophy among Jewish readers. In the lecture I will review the general attitude of the Jewish philosophers towards Scholastic philosophy in 15th century Spain. I will examine if the correspondence (that survived in a single manuscript) between the figures mentioned above can be taken as a trustworthy representation of the varying approaches. The awareness to the diverse opinions towards Scholasticism is crucial, in my mind, for true understanding of the development of Jewish philosophy at the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance era. Just as the personal relationship between Shem Tov and Habilio are not one-­‐dimensional, and we cannot speak of complete devotion and dedication (as I suggest) -­‐ so is the attitude of Jewish philosophers towards Latin Scholasticism. I think that this purposed lecture is very fitting with the keynote theme of the Xth Congress and I will be honored to take part in such a distinguished event. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch meeting of the Ex-­‐Com of the EAJS Session 003: Medieval Jewish Philosophy 14.00-­‐15.30 Under the Crescent Chair: Gad Freudenthal David Lemler, EPHE/ENS, Paris, France Title: Saadya’s Contradictions on the Creation of the World: a Conceptual Approach Abstract: In his Commentary on Proverbs 30, 3 (CP), Saadya states that the creation of the world is part of « God’s science », a knowledge man is unable to access. However, he himself writes long developments on that issue in Part 1 of his Book of Beliefs and Opinions (BBO) and the Commentary on Sefer Yetsirah (CSY) is entirely dedicated to it. Georges Vajda (« Sa’adya, commentateur du “Livre de la Création” ». Annuaire de l’EPHE, Sciences religieuses. 1960. p. 3-­‐35) suggested that this contradictions might be explained by the different audiences of these diverse works, CP being a popular exegetical text while BBO and CSY adress the educated scholar. I would like to propose an alternative view on this problem. For theological (safeguarding the possibility of Torah and miracles) as well as philosophical (proving God’s existence) reasons, creation ex nihilo was a doctrine of fundamental importance for Saadya. This doctrine though raises a major epistemological problem, which Saadya acknowledges in all his texts on the issue. While it is possible to think about or to conceive of a creation from nothing, it is however impossible to have a proper representation of such a thing. All known process of genesis, with which absolute creation could be compared, always consist in the reorganization of pre-­‐existing elements. Saadya thus constructs a purely intellectual concept of creation ex nihilo in his BBO, while recognizing the impossibility of imagining how such a creation took place. He thus offers a concept, devoid of any proper imaginative content. From that point of view, it seems possible to understand why a rationalist thinker like Saadya decided to write a commentary on Sefer Yetsirah (SY). The attempt at rationalizing the arcane teachings of the SY might be explained not only by polemical motivations against contemporary mystical and magical interpretations of this work (cf. BEN-­‐SHAMMAI H. « Saadya’s Goal in his “Commentary on Sefer Yezira” ». In: LINK-­‐SALINER R, ÉD. A Straight Path: Studies in Medieval Philosophy and Culture. Essays in Honor of Arthur Hyman. Washington D. C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1988. p. 1-­‐9), but also as a response to internal difficulties of Saadya’s thought. CSY is an exegetical and philosophical instrument that allows him to « fill » his concept of creation ex nihilo. Saadya states that the view expressed in the SY is not identical with that of the Torah and that it merely describes the way Abraham imagined the process of creation. In his Commentary, Saadya offers a rationalistic interpretation of this imaginative cosmogony. Since it is both authoritative (attributed to Abraham) but not yet true (since it does not offer the view of the Torah proper), SY allows Saadya to elaborate a quasi-­‐scientific discourse on an object, which, by its very nature, is outside the scope of science. Behind its apparent contradictions, Saadya’s approach to the question turns out to offer a genuine and thorough attempt at coping with the intrinsic problems raised by the concept of creation ex nihilo. Almuth Lahmann, Universität Bern, Schweiz, Switzerland Title: Saadya Gaon and Yaḥyā ibn ʿAdī as Recipients of the Nicomachean Ethics? Abstract: It is known that the Islamic philosopher of the tenth century al-­‐Fārābī (ca. 870-­‐950), who was based in Baghdad, overtly adopted concepts of the Aristotelian Ethics. These are, amongst others, the ethical and the intellectual virtues and the doctrine of the mean (mesotēs; tawassuṭ), which he mentions in his works -­‐ perhaps most prominently in the Aphorisms of the statesman (Fuṣūl muntazaʿa) or in the Guidance on the Path to Happiness (at-­‐Tanbīh ʿalā sabīl as-­‐saʿāda). In this paper, I want to demonstrate that two of al-­‐Fārābī’s contemporaries in Baghdad also refer to certain aspects of the Aristotelian Ethics. In 933 Saadya Gaon (882-­‐942), then the former head of the Sura Academy, philosopher and grammarian, argues in his Kitāb al-­‐Amānāt wa-­‐l-­‐Iʿtiqādāt (Doctrines and Beliefs) for a conduct of life, which is based on decisions and actions in just the right time. Unlike al-­‐Fārābī, who follows his teacher Aristotle to conceptualize ethical virtues as a mean between two extremes, Saadya Gaon seems rather to transform this Aristotelian ethical concept. However, about in the middle of the 10th century the Syrian-­‐orthodox theologian and philosopher Yaḥyā ibn ʿAdī (892-­‐972), then leader of the peripatetic school in Baghdad composed his ethical treatise Kitāb tahḏīb al-­‐aḫlāq (The Reformation of Morals). His approach also seems to refer to the Aristotelian doctrine of the mean, though criticizes it in some respect. However, there is a clear difference between Yaḥyā ibn ʿAdī and Saadya Gaon regarding the context of moral conduct. Saadya Gaon seems to consider the individual in relation to the social in general whereas Yaḥyā ibn ʿAdī relates the individual with what was then the society of the Abbasid Empire. This paper will mainly focus on the Aristotelian concept of the mean (mesotēs). Mordechai Cohen, Yeshiva University, USA Title: Halakhic Hermeneutics of a Poet: Moses Ibn Ezra vs. Maimonides Abstract: Recent scholarship has revealed that Maimonides drew upon Muslim jurisprudence (uṣūl al-­‐fiqh) to develop his bold halakhic hermeneutical model that integrates Bible exegesis and talmudic halakhah. Given its sophistication, it is not unreasonable to conjecture that precedents for Maimonides’ hermeneutical system had been circulating among earlier Andalusian Jewish scholars who adapted Muslim terms and concepts to describe the halakhic process. To date, brief discussions of this nature have been identified in the writings of Baḥya Ibn Paquda, Judah ha-­‐Levi and, most recently, in the newly discovered fragmentary writings of the eleventh-­‐century Granada dayyan David ben Saadya ha-­‐Ger. I would like to bring to light some relevant remarks by the poet and literary critic Moses Ibn Ezra (born c. 1055, also in Granada). In his poetics, The Book of Discussion and Conversation, Ibn Ezra compares the intellectual creativity of prophets and legal scholars. While the prophets employ their ingenuity to render God’s message in the most excellent poetic and rhetorical format, the legal scholars actually augment the Law by extrapolating new conclusions from what is stated explicitly in scripture—a concept he describes in terms borrow from Muslim jurisprudence. In my paper I aim to explore the unique literary perspective on this subject brought to bear by Moses Ibn Ezra by contrast with the legal-­‐philosophical vantage point of Maimonides and his halakhically-­‐oriented Andalusian predecessors. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session 004: Sins and Transgressions in Jewish Medieval Thought 16.00-­‐18.00 Chair: Gad Freudenthal Albert Van der Heide, Leiden University/Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands Title: Five centuries of Aqedah Exegesis Abstract: Nearing the completion of an anthology of Aqedah exegesis, I would like to present here some of the results of my analysis of those parts of Bible commentaries, homilies, and works of religious thought that deal with Abraham's trial, the sacrifice of Isaac, as told in Genesis 22. Apart from the various views on the influential topic of the Aqedah itself—their mutual influence and blending—a long-­‐term survey from Saadya to Abrabanel has much to tell about the nature and history of medieval Jewish Bible exegesis. Dror Ehrlich, Bar-­‐Ilan University, Israel Title: The Status Principle in Medieval Jewish and Christian Discussions of Hell Abstract: One of the main criticisms of the classic retributivist doctrine of eternal punishment in contemporary philosophy of religion is that it is not morally justified to condemn a person to infinite punishment when his wrong deeds and the amount of harm he can cause are undoubtedly finite. This criticism is based on the assumption that the severity of sin, which determines the level of the appropriate punishment, is measured according to the extent of harm caused or that was intended to be caused. One of the ways to address this problem is by changing the criterion for evaluating the severity of sin. Instead of measuring it based on the extent of damage, it can be assessed by the existential status of the object of sin – in other words, the importance of the entity toward which the transgression was directed. Philosophers and theologians who follow this line of thinking assume that in the religious context, the object of sin is God. Since God’s nature is infinite in essence, any sin carried out against Him is infinite in severity, and thus justifies infinite punishment, meaning eternal hell. In contemporary philosophy of religion, this principle is known as “the Status Principle”. However, it was already introduced and discussed in medieval Christian theology by Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas. In this lecture, I would like to show that three Jewish thinkers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, who were familiar with, and to some extent influenced by, Christian theology, also used this principle in their discussions of eternal punishment in hell. The first two, R. Nissim Gerondi and R. Hasdai Crescas, mention it quite briefly, but their disciple, R. Joseph Albo, discusses it in a much broader and systematic manner. Apart of presenting and analyzing these discussions, I will try to indicate their contribution to the relevant philosophical discourse of our days. Adiel Zimran, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: Comparison of Adam’s Sin in Medieval Philosophy: Judaism, Christianity and Islam Abstract: The story of the sin of Adam, the first man, appears in the holy scriptures of all three religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It describes the archetypal ‘sin’ and the ways in which it is to be corrected. Embedded within the story are many key concepts for understanding the theology and sociology of religion. For example, the Garden of Eden symbolizes the utopia to which humanity strives, while ‘sin and atonement’ describes the possible and appropriate relationship between man and God. In this lecture I will examine how the interpretation of the story of Adam’s sin developed in medieval philosophy, through a comparison of the three religions. This comparison is particularly interesting in view of the fact that the Moslem conquest led to the domination of the Arabic language throughout the empire and created an intellectual affinity between Jews and Muslims. During that period, some Muslim and Jewish schools of thought gave precedence to rationality rather than myth, leading to changes in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. In light of these changes, I will explore how the ethos of ‘the complete man’ and the fundamental concepts of sin and atonement changed accordingly. The lecture will focus on three great Jewish thinkers whose writings reveal differing attitudes towards sin: Maimonides (Spain and Egypt, 12th century), Nahmanides (Spain, 13th century), and Isaac Ibn Latif (Spain, 13th century). I will analyze the models presented by these philosophers in light of commentaries by the Christian theologian Augustine and the Muslim philosopher Avicenna. Ram Ben-­‐Shalom, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: Isaac Nathan of Provence and the First Jewish Work on the Seven Deadly Sins Abstract: Isaac Nathan lived in Provence during the fifteenth century. He was the most affluent merchant in the Jewish community of Arles, and one of the wealthiest figures in the city in general, a financier taking part in a wide range of business activities and a prominent leader of the Jewish communities in Provence. Nathan is best known as the author of the first Hebrew Concordance of the bible, Me’ir Netiv, a project of far-­‐reaching importance undertaken in Arles between the years 1437 and 1447. My purpose in this lecture is to analyzed Isaac Nathan’s work Me’ametṣ Koacḥ (still unpublished), which is the first Jewish work on the seven deadly sins and the four virtues. Isaac Nathan came to the conclusion that the Christian method of the deadly sins and the virtues was the correct basis for the organization of Jewish ethics, rooted primarily in Scripture, but also in Rabbinic literature. He believed that Jews should not hesitate to adopt what is fitting and true in Christian theological literature. Beyond this bold step of accepting the “other”, we find, in Meʾameṣ Ko'aḥ, an attempt to devise a unitary ethical method that would be acceptable to Jews and Christians alike. 18.00-­‐19.30: RFE Alumni Meeting 19.30-­‐21.00: General Meeting of the European Association for Jewish Studies Monday 21st July ENS, THÉÂTRE (Main building, basement, Stairs C) Session: 001: Books within Books: Medieval Hebrew Fragments in European Libraries 9.00-­‐10.30 Chair: Martha Keil Andreas Lehnardt, Mainz University, Germany Title: Newly Discovered Hebrew Binding Fragments in Germany Abstract: In the last months several new Hebrew binding fragments have been discovered and published. The paper will present the findings and discuss their significance for further research. The session will also celebrate the publication of a new volume of the "European Genizah: Texts and Studies" series. Together with Judith Schlanger / Andreas Lehnardt edited the proceedings of a 2011 EAJS colloquium in Oxford. Ursula Schattner-­‐Rieser, Instiute for Biblical Sciences and historical Theology Title: New Hebraica Fragments from the Genizat Tirolensia Abstract: In contrast to the East of Austria, its western part and especially the Genizat Tirolensia ist still widely unexplored. Until recently the Tyrolean libraries had never been checked systematically on Hebrew and Aramaic fragments of medieval Hebrew books and documents recovered from book bindings and notarial files and the 18 fragments of the University library are chance finds. However a systematically recording is promising: in less than a year eight new fragments have been found and identified. The establishment of Jews in North-­‐ and South Tyrol is documented since the 13th century. Among the new finds are unique Talmud fragments, a Haftarah exemplary, Halakhah commentaries from Ashkenazic, Sephardic and Italian provenance shedding new light on the spiritual life of the Jews of medieval Tyrol. Further findings are to be expected and it is obvious that the history of the Jews of this border region has to be rewritten and completed. In this paper we want to present the new findings and the material for a new cross-­‐border project within the European network "Books within books: Hebrew Fragments in European Libraries". Magdalena Jánošiková, Oxford Centre for Jewish Studies, UK Title: Moravian Hebrew Fragments in the Context of the Moravian Book Culture Abstract: The paper looks at the Hebrew fragments incorporated into other bindings as the wider phenomenon that reflects the book culture in Moravia. Around a hundred of fragments are found in the oldest preserved bodies of books as well as in newer ones. We will focus on the book culture in Moravia to reveal what the unifying factors in the production of the binding could tell us about the Hebrew fragments. And, vice versa, what could fragments tell us about the books of the XVth-­‐XVIIth century. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session: 002 Books within Books 11.00-­‐13.00 Chair: Andreas Lehnardt Tamás Visi, Kurt and Ursula Schubert Centre for Jewish Studies, Palacky University, Olomouc, Czech Republic Title: Liturgical Fragments from Moravia Abstract: The paper will examine Hebrew fragments of liturgical content that have been preserved in book bindings. On the basis of marginal corrections in liturgical fragments as well as rabbinic texts such as Eizik Tirna's Sefer ha-­‐minhagim some trends in the development of Jewish liturgy in late medieval Central Europe will be identified and analyzed. Tamas Turan, The Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary Title: The Beginnings of the Research on Hebrew Manuscript Fragments in Europe -­‐ A Centennial Tribute to Alexander Scheiber Abstract: Hebrew manuscript fragments were occasionally found and described in scholarly literature already in the 19th century. The lecture will trace the increasing scholarly attention paid to this type of source material, which culminated in more systematic research projects aiming at finding and utilizing such fragments in recent decades. In Hungary Hebrew manuscript leaves were found and described since 1877. Alexander Scheiber (1913-­‐1985), rector of the Rabbinical Seminary in Budapest after WWII, not only continued this research but also pioneered in doing quasi-­‐systematic investigations in Hungary since the early 1960s. Alina Lisitsyna, Russian State Library, Russian Federation Title: Undescribed Fragments from the Gunzburg Collection: Classification, Origin, Context Abstract: The paper deals with more than 300 uncatalogued handwrtitten fragments from the barons Gunzburgs` collection, which is kept in the Russian State Librray in Moscow. The main part of the collection was described at the end of the 19th century by the Gunzburgs` librraians Senior Sachs and Samuel Wiener and this part still remains unknown to the public. It consists of fragments of different genres such as Biblical commentaries, Midrash, philosophical treatises, private letters, mariiage contracts in Hebrew, Aramaic and Judaeo-­‐Arabic. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session: 003 Books within Books II 14.00-­‐15.30 Chair: Judith Kogel Mauro Perani, University of Bologna, Italy Title: An Incredible Romance Story at the University Library of Bologna: the Rediscovery of the Oldest Sefer Torah in our Possession Abstract: An ancient scroll for liturgical use, 36 meters long, containing the Hebrew Pentateuch, copied at the end of the 12th century in an elegant oriental square script by a scribe in accordance with the writing and graphic Babylonian tradition is given as a present in 1304 to the friar Eimerico Giliani in Bologna when he becomes the General Master of the Order of the Dominicans at their convent. The Scroll was at that time already known to be very ancient by Jewish scholars, and shows graphic signs different from those of more recent Sifre Torah. Bernard de Montfaucon, in 1702 says that in Bologna in the convent of the Dominicans this Sefer Torah was shown and reported the information on its antiquity. About eighty years later Benjamin Kennicot in his Dissertatio generalis in Vetus Testamentum Hebraicum (Oxford , 1780) dates the Scroll to the end of the 11th century, and Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi, a few years later, in his Variæ lectiones Veteris Testament (Parma 1784) dates it from the beginning of the 13th century. When Napoleon extends his empire over Italy Northern, suppresses religious orders and delivery their manuscripts to public institutions: the booklore of the convent of St. Salvatore and that of San Domenico in Bologna, where the Sefer Torah was held, are deposited in the University Library of Bologna. Then almost all the Hebrew manuscripts, including our Roll, are brought to the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, but with the anti-­‐
Napoleonic Restoration, almost all return to Bologna. In the 1889, the librarian in the Bologna University Library Leonello Modona, a Jews from Cento, writes the first catalogue of the small collection of Bologna. But some time before, after consulting the two Torah Scrolls, the ancient one and another from the 15th century, someone replaces the two scrolls swapping their containers and self-­‐mark. For this reason, in the catalog of Modona, the data relating to the roll 1, the ancient one, are attributed to the roll 2, and vice versa. In 2013, Mauro Perani, wanting compile a new catalogue of the collection, realizes that what had become wrongly the roll 2 shows an ancient oriental square script, dating back to the 12 century, date confirmed by two carbon 14 exam, while the other Sefer can be dated to the 15 century. However, it is not yet clear the exchange, revealed by further research carried out by a Librarian charged with the manuscripts room, and started thanks to a suspicion arose following the sure date of our ancient scroll. It is copied in Babylonian tradition for the use of tagin, particular and curled letters, as well as the layout of some particular texts. The Bologna Sefer Torah is a rare example of the Babylonian tradition, disappeared after the 12th century, when the Palestinian one prevailed, but attested in Sefer tagin composed in the 8th century and quoted by Sa‘adyah Ga ‘on. Silvia Di Donato, EPHE, Paris, France Title: Themes and Forms of Re-­‐used Hebrew Fragments in the so-­‐called "French Genizah": New Researches on Parisian fragments Abstract: New researches on nearly 150 Parisian fragments of re-­‐used medieval Hebrew manuscripts and documents recovered from book bindings offer new material for the history of the Jewish knowledge and Hebrew book heritage of the middle Ages. I will present and analyse some historical, textual and material aspects of the French fragments I am studying within the project “Books within books: Hebrew Fragments in European Libraries”. Silvia di Donato, Emma Abate and Elodie Attia, Title: Books within Books database. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session: 004 Books within Books II 16.00-­‐18.00 Chair: Judith Kogel Esperança Valls Pujol, Universitat de Girona, Spain Title: The Last Fragments of Hebrew Manuscripts Recovered from the Historical Archive of Girona (2013) Abstract: The Arxiu Històric de Girona, has a collection of Hebrew manuscripts were reused as book bindings of medieval notarial books. Between September 2012 and February 2013 has been restored 144 new fragments. Now the collection has a total of 1094 manuscripts. These new documents contain exegetical commentaries, resolutions adopted by the community, sale deeds, loans records, sales inventories of local merchants, a part of a testament, various issues of jurisprudence and fragments of poetic compositions. The aim of this paper is to present an overview of these new documents. Donatella Melini, Università di Pavia, Italy, & Roberta Tonnarelli, EPHE, Paris, France Title: Jewish Fragments and Musical Instruments: an Unusual Relation Abstract: Our paper’s aim is to communicate the existence of a particular typology of fragments of Jewish codices: fragments held within musical instruments and their function. During an archival campaign about the 16th-­‐17th lutherie a very interesting viol was found; inside it, in fact, we found some parchment strips coming from Jewish codices. This circumstance absolutely unusual both in the field of lutherie and in the field of the research of reused Jewish manuscripts stimulated many questions about their presence inside the instrument (when they were inserted, where they come from, etc.). An interdisciplinary approach immediately appeared as necessary; scholars of the Jewish culture could, in fact, help to trace the history of this musical instrument. A complete codicological and paleographic analysis of the strips will be conducted considering these fragments within the phenomena of reused fragments, the so-­‐called Genizah. Besides it would be very important to search for other instruments that share the same particularity; this could increase on one side our knowledge about a particular (and unknown) aspect of lutherie and on the other side could provide new research path in Jewish studies by considering the musical instruments as a place (an unusual place) for the retrieval of these fragments. Piergabriele Mancuso, Medici Archive Project, Florence, Italy Title: The "Natione Israelitica" Archival Fund: a Documentary and Material Source for the Study of Jewish History Abstract: The "Natione Israelitica" is a 72 volume set containing virtually all sentences and cases passed by the Hebrew courts in Florence between 1620 and the beginning of the 19th century. These volumes which are now kept in the state archive in Florence contain an incredible source of information concerning the life, family ties and socio-­‐economic status of the Jews of Florence and Tuscany. In spite of this and even thought the volumes of the "Natione Israelitica" are among the very few pieces of material culture produce in the Ghetto of Florence, and although this is one of the very few archival funds containing official texts and legislation written in Hebrew, they have never been the object of a systematic study. According to a recent survey, some of these volumes were bound using waste materials, among which music scores containing sections of a melodrama on a sacred subject and some instrumental music probably produced inside the ghetto around the end of the 17th century. The aim of this paper is to outline briefly the history of this fund, and to describe its main textual, linguistic and material features with special emphasis on the music scores recently discovered, probably the most ancient testimonies of artistic music production in the ghetto of Florence during the Grand Ducal age. Monday 21st July ENS, AMPHITHÉÂTRE RATAUD (Building NIR, basement, map: 24) Session: 001: Rabbinic Exegesis/Traditions 9.00-­‐10.30 Chair: Tamar Kadari, Bar Ilan University, Israel Title: "Honey and Milk beneath Your Tongue" (Song of Songs 4:11): On an Allegorical Code in the Rabbinic Commentary on the Song of Song Abstract: In this lecture I will call attention to a unique and interesting phenomenon in rabbinic literature. A set of images in the Song of Songs relating to milk, nursing, and a mother's breasts and home were interpreted by the sages by means of a single allegorical code. The sages use the image of milk as a symbol of Torah, the mother's home as representing Mount Sinai, and the act of nursing as the process of teaching and transmitting the written and oral Torah. In my lecture I will analyze a passage from midrash Shir Hashirim Rabbah on the verse, "If only you were like a brother, who was nursed at my mother's breasts" (Songs 8:1), and I will compare it to its parallel in midrash Pesikta de Rav Kahana. Based on this comparison I will highlight the extraordinary ideas that appear in midrash Shir HaShirim Rabbah, and I will contend that they were influenced by Jewish-­‐Christian polemic about the question of the rightful owners and interpreters of Torah. By invoking early Christian sources I will demonstrate that the question of who is the real Israel and who controls the true keys to unlocking the secrets of Torah stood at the heart of the polemic between Jews and Christians in the early centuries of the Common Era, and shaped midrash Shir Hashirim Rabbah as we know it. Gerhard Langer, Institut für Judaistik Wien, Austria Title: Leviticus Rabbah in the Context of the House of Study Abstract: Burton Visotzky has shown, that Leviticus Rabbah functions as a collection of midrashic materials mostly known from other textual contexts, adapted to a Hellenistic form of proems and "gufa". Visotzky calls it "a fifth-­‐century Galilean miscellany of rabbinic traditions tangentially related to Leviticus, with quasi-­‐
encyclopedic chapter divisions” (Golden Bells and Pomegranates, 179). In my paper I try to argue for a less pessimistic view regarding the thematical unity of different chapters, which on the first sight seem to be only loosely connected, but can be defined on a deeper level as organized and structured. I will focus on the element of study, learning and teaching, which binds different contexts together. Adiel Kadari, Ben-­‐Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: Did Elijah Show Respect to Royalty? Abstract: Of all the Biblical prophets, Elijah was accorded a unique status in rabbinic literature. He is mentioned hundreds of times in the Talmud and midrash in various contexts, both aggadic and halakhic, contemporaneous and eschatological. In this lecture, part of a larger research project dealing with the depiction of Elijah in rabbinic literature, I will focus on an exegetical tradition that describes the figure of Elijah as one who showed respect to royalty. This exegetical tradition will be compared to early Christian injunctions to respect imperial rule. The Book of Kings relates that at the end of the description of Elijah’s dramatic confrontation on Mount Carmel, when a heavy rain started to fall, Elijah girded his loins and ran ahead of King Ahab’s chariot, an act that was explained in tannaitic sources as a gesture of respect for the monarch. This explanation, which does not accord with the Biblical depiction of Elijah as a zealous defender of God’s words who did not hesitate to offer scathing criticism of King Ahab, was accepted by medieval and modern Biblical commentators. In this lecture I wish to offer a critical examination of this exegetical tradition so as to uncover the ideological stance that it reflects and the conflicting ideas with which it is in tension. My discussion will focus on a passage from the Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael, Bo, Masekhta d’Pisha, section 13, which is the earliest instance of this exegetical tradition. I will consider the redaction of this passage and the ideas that it expresses, and I will compare it to the figure of Elijah in Second Temple sources. In this context, I will compare the Mekhilta’s approach to the various New Testament charges to respect the imperial authorities, including “Fear God, honor the king.” (First Peter, 2:17). In addition, I will try to point to various layers within the Mekhilta passage, each of which expresses a different ideological stance with regard to the attitude towards the monarchy. Finally, I will offer a hypothesis regarding the historical context that gave rise to this exegetical tradition, and the identity of its authors, and I will point to the commonalities between Jewish and Christian religious and ideological ways of dealing with life under Roman pagan rule. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session 002: 11.00-­‐13.00 Survie et néant dans la longue durée juive Organizer: Misgav Har-­‐Peled Chair: Misgav Har-­‐Peled Misgav Har-­‐Peled, Tel Aviv University, Israel Title: Election, extermination et survie Abstract: A Sinaï, au moment de la conclusion du pacte avec Yahvé, suite à « l’affaire » du veau d’or, l’Eternel souhaite exterminer Israël, son peuple. Cette anecdote nous servira comme point de départ pour observer le lien que le judaïsme antique faisait entre élection et la menace d’extermination. Il sera proposé que par le biais d’une réflexion sur la possibilité de l’extermination du peuple élu, le judaïsme pensait entre autre l’élection comme un état d’exception; une survie, vue comme une existence conditionnée qui oscillent entre la bénédiction et la malédiction, entre l’éternité et le néant. On s’interrogera notamment sur la contradiction entre les menaces d’extermination du peuple élu dans la Bible d’un côté et la négation de la possibilité d’une extermination totale du peuple, comme elle manifeste dans l’idée du reste d’Israël (« sherit Israel »). Dans un deuxième moment de la réflexion on proposera certaines hypothèses quant à la manière dont la dialectique de l’élection entre extermination et éternité se développa dans le judaïsme rabbinique. Amos Squverer, CRPMS-­‐ Paris Diderot, France Title: Le vœu totalisant de l’extermination et l’acte monothéiste: relecture du traité Avoda Zara Abstract: Le vœu profond qui se cache derrière un discours d’extermination est la croyance en la totalité -­‐
soit une position intégriste. Dans l’extermination, on cultive l’idée d’un déracinement possible, d’une résolution définitive, d’une « solution finale » qui va nous débarrasser de ce qui empêche cette totalité. Nous proposons de saisir le judaïsme comme un discours qui, par structure, résiste à ce vœu de totalisation en ayant comme vocation de réintroduire un point manque qui échappe à la totalisation. L’acte monothéiste est celui de la de-­‐totalisation par soustraction. A concevoir ainsi le judaïsme, on comprend pourquoi il manie un rapport très serré et intime avec un discours de l’extermination. Le discours juif se constitue comme l’envers d’un discours totalisant. Plus encore, on comprend pourquoi la structure même de la discursivité juive a pour nécessité ce fond discursif totalisant qui permet l’émergence même de la spécificité juive. En étant un discours qui émerge dans ce mouvement antitotalitaire, il est conduit inévitablement à former un couple avec des conceptions totalisantes. Le judaïsme peut même être conduit, dans certains contextes historiques, à inventer cette altérité pour réaffirmer le mouvement ou mettre en acte l’opération, qui crée son identité. Notre intervention propose de mettre en travail ce mouvement pour éclairer la posture rabbinique envers l’idolâtrie telle qu’elle est déployée dans le traité de l’idolâtrie (Avoda Zara). Il s’agit de saisir ce couple éternel idolâtrie/monothéisme comme une matrice qui donne à comprendre ce qui est en jeu dans cette dialectique ou tension discursive judaïsme/extermination. Ron Naiweld, CNRS, France Title: L’idéologie de survie et ses racines dans les discours juifs et chrétiens Abstract: Je voudrais présenter la thèse suivante : les racines de l’angoisse de l’extermination (hashmada) dans le judaïsme médiéval sont à trouver dans la manière des auteurs chrétiens de l’antiquité tardive d’associer le peuple juif au judaïsme. Ces auteurs établissaient un lien existentiel entre les deux entités, ce qui fait que la disparition de l’une entraine l’extermination de l’autre. En effet, la lecture des textes chrétiens concernant les juifs, de Paul, Ignace ou Tertullien, nous permet de déceler comment le discours chrétien développe une structure dans laquelle le « judaïsme » devient un système de pensée et des pratiques qui prend du sens seulement dans la mesure où il est adopté par les membres d’une ethnie spécifique – les juifs. Ce lien entre la « religion » juive d’une part et l’ethnos juif de l’autre peut nous paraître évident aujourd’hui, mais les discours juifs antiques, comme de Philon ou des rabbins, font souvent preuve d’une tendance universaliste claire. Certes, dans les deux discours (Philonien et rabbinique), les juifs constitue toujours un groupe ethnique, mais il s’agit d’un ethnos qui ouvre sa porte aux membres d’autres peuples ; une personne appartenant à un autre ethnos peut se judaïser et appartenir, au moins de facto, au peuple juif, avec tous les avantages matériels, sociaux et spirituels que cela pourrait avoir. Cette acceptation de l’ethnos juif (ou du judaïsme) apparaît déjà, selon Shaye Cohen, dans l’époque des Maccabées. C’est seulement chez certains auteurs patristiques, et cela pour des raisons intérieures au discours chrétiens (notamment les conflits avec les autres sectes chrétiennes et la quête de légitimation dans l’espace romain), que l’on trouve un effort global de fermer les portes de l’ethnos juif. Le christianisme développe une image du monde où le « judaïsme » occupe un rôle déterminant – par sa fausseté, il est le symbole de la vérité ; par sa matérialité, il désigne l’esprit. Or puisque le judaïsme ne peut être soutenu que par des juifs, la disparition de ces derniers est une éventualité qu’il faut éviter à tout prix. Un monde sans juifs est un monde sans judaïsme, où le christianisme n’a aucun support. La christianisation de l’empire romain fait que cette image chrétienne du monde se propage sur les plans juridique et idéologique. Les autorités chrétiennes conservent les juifs, tout en veillant (avec ou sans succès) à ce que le judaïsme ne se diffuse pas au-­‐delà de ceux qui sont déjà juifs. Cette image, à son tour, est intériorisée par les juifs eux-­‐mêmes en terre chrétienne, lesquels acceptent l’identification entre le « judaïsme » et l’ethnicité juive. En effet, au moins dans le monde chrétien, le judaïsme est littéralement ce qui maintient les juifs vivants ! Youval Rotman, Tel Aviv University, Israel Title: “Extermination” of the converted believer as means of survival Abstract: The following presentation will focus on the question of conversions as an existential threat to Judaism. While not a threat on the life of the individual on the private level, conversions from Judaism was formulated as a public death, and was regarded as an existential threat to the existence of Judaism on the public level. This was especially the case in the Middle Ages, when conversions to Christianity and to Islam became a cultural and political policy. Jews responded to this policy by perceiving conversions of Jews as an extermination de jure of the individual. Conversion out of Judaism became in the monotheistic medieval world to designate a symbolic death of the individual believer to the Jewish collective –shmad – a term derived from the Hebrew verb ‘to exterminate.’ However, the perception of conversion out of Judaism as social death, as the ‘extermination’ of the converted Jewish believer de jure to his community, must also be considered as means of survival of the Jewish collective. In other words, naming and marking the converted Jews as ‘self-­‐exterminated Jew’ (mshumad), was aimed to identify conversion as a threat to the existence of the Jewish collective, and hence also as means of its survival. Putting the converted Jew ‘ex’ of the Jewish collective ‘terminus’ was aimed also to protect the existence of this collective and its borders. The paper will examine the particular way in which Jewish communities formulated and addressed the subject of conversion on the level of the Jewish collective. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session 003: Contemporary Israel 14.00-­‐15.30 Satire, Humor, Language and Identity in Israel Chair: Gideon Kouts Yonith Benhamou, EHESS, Paris, France Title: Jewish Humor and Satire in the Yishuv: towards Israeliness (1925-­‐1948) Abstract: Only at the end of the 18th century with the emergence of the Haskalah movement (the Jewish Enlightenment) in Eastern Europe most Jewish parodic and satirical texts appear. Visual parody, illustrations and cartoons come up relatively late in the Jewish press when we compare it to non-­‐Jewish journals in a same country. In the Yiddish press, cartoons as well as satirical literature were built on religious traditional texts, used a subversive style, and were published in secular Jewish humoristic journals. Paradoxically, this practice combined texts considered as sacred with profane humor. It reminded about the traditional Purim-­‐shpil (Purim plays) whose comical main resource was the parody of prayers and sacred texts which gave rise to the reversal and transgression of the prohibited. Although this whole world suddenly disappeared with the Shoah, taking away Jewish humor and its productions, this tradition persevered in the Yishuv (Jewish settlements in Palestine before the creation of the State of Israel). Several satirical magazines continued to be published during Jewish holidays and especially during Purim, and to make a mockery of the Passover Haggadah. The immigrants from the third and fourth aliyah continued to perpetuate the art of satire and developed it. At the end of the 20’s and the beginning of the 30’s, with the arrival of composers, actors, painters, and singers from Russia, Hungary and Poland, an artistic ferment was born. This cultural renaissance gave rise to the first satirical cabaret (Ha-­‐kumkum) brought to Tel-­‐Aviv by Avigdor HaMeiri, an immigrant born in Hungary who came to Palestine from Odessa. A similar revolution took place in the Hebrew press. The popular success of the famous column “Ha-­‐tur Ha-­‐shevii” (“the seventh column”) from Nathan Alterman in the daily newspaper Davar (Word) proved it. It had the particularity to deal with political affairs in rhymed prose. In Hebrew journals, some humoristic illustrations and cartoons started to appear, drawn by the pioneers of Israeli pictorial satire that were Arye Navon and Yehoshua Edri. Most of the caricatures were published in the Saturday editions of the daily newspapers. Yet, with the Westernization and secularization of the country, satire and parody distanced themselves from folklore and religious texts and ceased to be associated exclusively with Jewish holidays. They started to portray a “state in the making”, while they were progressively becoming more politicized. This allowed them to better embrace the Zionist cause and national values, as well as to leave the field of the sacred in order to better take root in the field of the profane, from Jewish to Israeli culture. Juliana Portenoy-­‐Schlesinger, Universidade de São Paulo, Brasil Title: The Language in the Centre of the Identity Battle and the Last Stronghold of the New Israeli Arab Abstract: This paper analyses the role language plays in Sayed Kashua’s chronicles in Haaretz newspaper. As tools of identity, both Hebrew and Arabic are, according to the interpretation of these chronicles, at the same time fixed and flexible ways to deal with the other and with oneself in the battle of cultural and moral integrity in Israel. Jan Zouplna, Oriental Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences Title: Culture, Language and Identity in early Revisionist Zionism Abstract: The differences that existed in the views of the founders of the Revisionist Union (RU) and the official Zionism of the interwar era were not insignificant. No less apparent were those with Revisionist off-­‐
shoots, which were later to constitute the Israeli right. Interestingly, these differences went far beyond the realm of politics in the strict sense of the term. It was not the culture, but the social organism (state/polity) and territory that were regarded as the essential characteristics of nationhood by the Revisionist leaders of the 1920s and early 1930s. Small wonder, therefore, that criticism of the excessive “culturalism” of contemporary Zionism was enlisted early on. Its focus on cultural projects in Palestine, such as the one of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, was met with high-­‐handed contempt. In terms of language, early Revisionism was not shy of an unorthodox approach either. Nominally, the RU considered, in agreement with other Zionist factions, the “hebraization” of Jewry to be an integral part of its platform. In practice, RU leaders objected to any form of subsidizing Hebrew language schools and culture. Overall, the RU founders displayed a clear preference for non-­‐Jewish languages in both private communication and party propaganda. However, the identity of Revisionist acculturated elites was not based on a simple set of negative elements. The objective of establishing, to use their terms, a bridgehead of Europe in the East contained an affirmative identity component. Modern Jewish identity was seen as a fusion of Judaism and post-­‐enlightenment Europe. Accusing rival factions of sticking to the mentality of the ghetto, combining a distrust of and servility in relation to non-­‐Jews, the RU founders instead accentuated the existence of a community of historical bonds which had shaped the Jews and Europe alike. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session 004: Contemporary Israel 16.00-­‐18.00 Media and Identity in Israel and the Jewish World Chair: Yaakov Shavit Gideon Kouts, Université Paris 8, France Title: The Wanderings of "Ha-­‐Levanon": The Palestinian and Oriental Connection Abstract: Ha-­‐Levanon (The Lebanon), the first Hebrew monthly in Palestine (1863) was carried by its editor, Yehiel Bril, from the Holy Land to destinations abroad shortly after it was founded. Its stops were Paris, where it appeared in 1865-­‐ 1870 as a strictly Orthodox Jewish weekly; Mainz, Germany, where it was published in 1871-­‐ 1882; and London in 1886, where it reached the end of its career and where Bril passed away. In his wanderings, Bril had to adjust to different countries and regimes-­‐ a living example of the “wandering Jew” embodied in the press. Ha-­‐Levanon’s “Palestinian” orientation was evident from the start. This is not surprising, since in his first journalistic “posting” Bril was the first Hebrew foreign correspondent in Palestine (of Ha-­‐Magid). The subtitle of The Lebanon, published in Jerusalem and indicative of its contents as the tradition of this press warranted, was: “Messenger of Peace from Jerusalem, bringing news from the entire Holy Land, divulging secrets from Syria, Yemen and India: everything that an Israelite would want to know...”. The first two items in the subtitle were mirrored in the first two sections of the paper. The paper’s Palestinian-­‐Oriental orientation was proclaimed openly by its editors (Bril, I.M. Salomon. Michal Hacohen) in an “announcement” that they published before Ha-­‐Levanon made its debut, addressed specifically to the European public, and inspired by their wish to satisfy these distant brethren curiosity. The contents of the current-­‐affairs articles, however, caused internal dissent. It was hard for Bril and his peers not to become “involved”, and Bril brought with him this involvement to Paris, Mainz and London as well. Ouzi Elyada, University of Haifa, Israel Title: Les récits de catastrophes dans la presse populaire hébraïque de Jérusalem : Le cas du ‘Titanic’ Abstract: Depuis l’apparition de la presse populaire moderne en Europe dans la deuxième moitié de XIXe siècle, les faits divers et notamment les récits de catastrophes y occupent une place centrale. Les producteurs de la presse populaire cherchent d’abord à émouvoir et à divertir le lecteur, et non pas à l’informer et ils trouvent dans les récits de catastrophes naturelles et humaines le matériel qu’il fallait pour créer une histoire spectaculaire et sensationnelle qui fait trembler le lecteur. Ce genre de récit, serve les rédacteurs pour propager une vision de monde déterministe et fataliste, une vision qui minimise le libre arbitre de l’individu et souligne l’importance du hasard et du destin. Eliezer Ben Yehuda et son fils Itamar Ben-­‐Avi ont fondé en Eretz-­‐Israel le premier journal populaire qui portait le titre « Hazevi », et plus tard, » Haor ». De son apparition en 1884, d’abord comme hebdomadaire, le journal accordait une attention particulière aux faits divers, et aux histoires de catastrophes en particulière. Cette démarche a été renforcée après la transformation de « Hazevi » en organe quotidien en 1908. Les histoires spectaculaires et sensationnelles de crimes et de catastrophes servaient comme moyen pour persuader et séduire le lecteur à acheter le journal populaire, jour après jour. Dans ce papier je vais examiner comment « Hazevi », devenu en 1910 « Haor », avait couvert en avril-­‐mai 1912 l’évènement spectaculaire de la catastrophe du ‘Titanic’ et quelle signification il accordait à cet évènement. Dan Caspi & Nelly Elias, Ben-­‐Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: Media and Minorities in Israel: Four Research Traditions Abstract: This paper enumerates four social science research traditions that impacted the study of media and minorities in Israel; melting-­‐pot, pluralistic, multi-­‐culturalism and hybrid tradition. Each was shaped in a specific sociocultural and historic context, based on the dominant social and academic paradigms of its time, yet remained intact even as circumstances changed. The survey of the following research traditions may reveal the maturation process of Israeli social science. In retrospect, it appears preferable to view the four research traditions as cotemporaneous and competitive. Orly Tsarfaty, Emek Yezreel College, Israel Title: Struggle between Identities: Chabbad Movement and the Israeli-­‐Arab Peace Process Abstract: The ultra-­‐orthodox-­‐Jewish society in Israel is a subculture preserving a traditional Jewish way of life founded on the Bible and on the Jewish Law Books. The Zionist movement’s concept of human redemption was an essential contradiction to the religious belief of miraculous messianic redemption. This controversy on a theological and ideological level between the orthodox and the secular-­‐Zionist Jews lies at the foundation of the orthodox negation of the very existence of the State of Israel and of the secular democratic culture prevailing here. This society is however united in its struggle against the secular society and its cultural hegemony. The ultra-­‐orthodox negate the modern way of life and everything it stands for, among others the use of mass media, particularly the visual media. An analysis of the communication patterns in this community shows the preservation of traditional communication patterns. The use of the newspaper is recognized by all factions of orthodox society as a legitimate medium. Though the Hassidic Chabbad movement, it is not the biggest court, it is the most active and the best known to Jews in the world and in Israel. Their Hassidic doctrine grants a central place to teaching the rules of Chassidism to all Jews, based on the belief that such activity will accelerate the messianic revelation. For this purpose, they make use of all the media, including visual media. In the second half of the Eighties Chabbad, began to publish her two own weekly papers: “Sichat Hashavoua” (The weekly conversation) and “Kfa Chabbad”. At the beginning of the Nineties, Chabbad Chassidim were undergoing a peak of messianic expectation. The papers were extensively broaching the subject and the preparations necessary for the Messiah’s Revelation. With the beginning of the Israeli-­‐Palestinian peace process, after the signature of the first Oslo Agreement (1993) Chabbad, began a public political struggle, unprecedented for them and for the whole orthodox community in Israel. Chabbad`s opposition to a peace process that would entail any territorial compromise, as expressed in their papers, opened the public discussion of the issues at the core of the controversy within Israeli society. The struggle for the borders of the State of Israel did not remain in the realm of political discussions, but took on a religious and cultural character. Chabbad contributed to a strong identification between religious/secular identity and ideology, by equating the “correct” Jewish identity with the opposition to giving up parts of the Land of Israel. Monday 21st July ENS, Salle des ACTES (Main building, 1st flour, Stairs A) Session: 001: Archeology 9.00-­‐10.30 Chair: Paul Salmona David Gurevich, University of Haifa, Israel Title: The Question of Josephus' "Serpent's Pool" in Jerusalem Abstract: An unroofed water pool was posited by scholars in a location north-­‐west of the Damascus Gate, in the upper part of the Tyropoeon valley in Jerusalem. This pool cannot be found today. However, in 1901 Clermont-­‐Ganneau suggested situating at this point the Lacus Legerii, a water reservoir mentioned in the Crusader sources. A pool at the discussed location was indicated on Wilson's map from the year 1902. Furthermore, a study conducted by Broshi in 1990, identified the pool with the "Serpent's Pool" mentioned by Josephus (War, 5.108). Nevertheless, based on the careful analysis of a cartographic material, rare photographs and German aerial photographs of Jerusalem from World War I, the present paper proposes to negate the existence of a pool in this location. Therefore, the former identification of the "Serpent's pool" shall be re-­‐evaluated. Josephus's description (War, 5.108) suggests that the "Serpent's pool" was a prominent landmark in the area between Mount Scopus and the northern city walls of the late Second Temple period. Another water pool, known as "The Pool near the Tombs of the Kings", was located in the Upper Kidron valley. The pools was excavated partially in the 19th century by Wilson and Schick. However, this reservoir was ignored by contemporary studies, such as the Israel Survey, and its location appears to have been lost ever since the 19th century. The research conducted by the author has reestablished the location of this reservoir near the Nahalat Shim'on neighborhood, 1200 m. north to the Damascus Gate. Based on the above conclusions, the possibility of identifying the "Serpent's Pool" with "The Pool near the Tombs of the Kings" is suggested as a central source of inquiry for future studies. Baruch Eyal, Bar Ilan University, Israel Title: The Jewish Elite in Jerusalem and Roman Culture: Self Identity in Changing Circumstances as Reflected in a Palatial Complex Abstract: The Palatial Building uncovered in the upper city of Jerusalem is one the most impressive buildings known from the Land of Israel in the Roman Period. The structure's size, dated to the first century BCE – first century CE, is more than 600 square meters, and it includes a large courtyard, a system of rooms, and ritual baths. One of the striking features of the building is the use of decoration – mosaics and walls plastered with stuccos and frescos. The decoration on the structure's walls includes two types which appear one after the other. During the first phase the builders applied colorful frescos, also known as the second style of Pompeii and are dated to the first century CE. This fresco was later replaced with stucco, imitating ashlar stones. This type of decoration is known as the first style of Pompeii, and was common in Rome during the second-­‐first centuries BCE. It appears, therefore, that the order of the styles was reversed – the more colorful, second style of Pompeii was used during the earlier phase, while the "older" and simpler first style of Pompeii was used later. Not only was this style used in the Palatial building in Jerusalem about a century after it went out of fashion in the Hellenistic world in general and in Italy in particular, but this style was adopted in this building after the newer and more modern style was known and used. I would like to suggest that it is possible that the phenomenon is connected with the social processes that were operating in Judea and Jerusalem on the eve of the Great Revolt. During this period the Jews redefined themselves vis-­‐à-­‐vis the Roman culture, as can be seen also in the "eighteen decrees" mentioned in Mishnah Shabbat 1:4 (and parallels) on the eve of the War of Destruction. It appears that the adoption of the archaic and "conservative" style was part of the Jews' renegotiation of their identity, in contrast and perhaps even in resistance to the contemporary Roman culture. The use of the "archaic" style is not a result of being conservative, if at all this is "active conservatism" on behalf of the head of the household, who wanted to show his wealth and status on the one hand, while on the other did not wish to be seen as "Roman" anymore. This goal was achieved by using decoration style which appeared archaic and rooted in the past. Alexander Bar-­‐Magen Numhauser, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain Title: A Supposed Coin with Hebrew Characters from the 8th Century CE Iberian Peninsula. A Numismatic and Historiographical Review. Abstract: The relatively recent publication of a 19th Century manuscript written the numismatist D. Antonio Delgado y Hernández in 2001 presented new evidence over a coin (a gold solidus) parallel to "transition" Arab-­‐Byzantine coins of the 8th Century with a unique central inscription in its obverse that received multiple interpretations. As Antonio Delgado's interpretation of the characters as Hebrew remained unpublished for a century and a half, later scholars discarded such interpretation without a satisfactory alternative reading. In this paper a physical and historiographical review of that rare coin series shed new light over the reading of such characters, their interpretation, and their potential relevance for the archaeology and history of the Jewish people. However it raises more questions regarding the context and reason why such coins were originally struck, particularly in a time where frontiers of cultural and religious nature were being broken and transformed in the Western Mediterranean. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session: 002: Archeology 11.00-­‐13.00 Chair: Enrico Tromba, EPHE, Paris, France – Università di Bologna, Italy Title: The Synagogue of Bova Marina (IV – VI century CE): Analysis of the structure and the possible relation with the buildings of the land of Israel Abstract: The project will seek to analyze the structure of the synagogue of Bova Marina, in the province of Reggio Calabria, southern Italy. The building lived two phases of life between the fourth and the beginning of the seventh century ce. We will present the structure of the synagogue, the various possible interpretations and the important archaeological finds: from ceramics to tomb structures, up to the mosaic of fine workmanship. At the same time we will present the possible case of a parallel with the contemporary buildings of the Land of Israel. Roxane Amsellem, Paris Ouest Nanterre, France Title: La symbolique de la couronne dans l'iconographie juive tardo-­‐antique. Abstract: La couronne est un symbole employé dès l’époque du second Temple. Elle apparaît notamment sur les ossuaires, les linteaux des tombeaux et les sarcophages retrouvés en Judée. Elle est également présente sur les pièces de monnaies juives dès la période maccabéenne. En diaspora, elle est attestée, dès le IIIe siècle avant notre ère, sur des stèles honorifiques de Délos de la communauté juive de Samarie. Elle est représentée, sur divers supports, en contextes variés, tout au long de la période tardo-­‐antique, et ce, massivement en Palestine. Par conséquent, la couronne compte parmi l’un des symboles les plus usités du répertoire iconographique juif. Elle est communément figurée sous la forme d’une épaisse couronne de feuillages composites. Par ailleurs, cette dernière est, à maintes reprises, accompagnée de symboles adjacents. Ces combinaisons de motifs sont très diverses et aucune ne semble l’emporter sur l’autre : candélabres, aigles, poissons, volatiles, palmes, cédrats, conques, lions, fleurs, vigne. Deux courants se distinguent quant à l’interprétation de ce symbole : pour les uns (Rharmani, Hachlili), sa présence est essentiellement décorative, dénuée d’une symbolique particulière; pour les autres (Goodenough, Levine), ce symbole est extérieur au judaïsme et proviendrait de répertoire gréco-­‐romain. De fait, elle symboliserait la Victoire (Niké) et ferait donc partie des symboles païens introduits dans le répertoire juif. Nous proposerons alors une autre lecture du symbole en nous appuyant sur la littérature juive antérieure et contemporaine de ces vestiges archéologiques. Après avoir présenté les principales occurrences de ce motif dans le patrimoine archéologique juif en Palestine et en diaspora, nous examinerons dans quelles circonstances apparait ce même symbole tout d’abord dans la bible, puis dans littérature intertestamentaire, rabbinique et mystique juive. Ainsi, nous démontrerons que l’étude de ces corpus littéraires s’avère décisive pour la compréhension de ce symbole, dont la dimension proprement juive fut ignorée jusqu’à présent. Ben Zion Rosenfeld, Bar Ilan University, Israel Title: Stages of the Compilation of the Rekhov Inscription in light of Interdisciplinary Inquiry Abstract: One of the most impressive inscriptions from the Roman Byzantine period in the land of Israel was uncovered in the ancient synagogue in the village of Rekhov in the Beit She'an valley. Since its publication forty years ago, it has been analyzed from various perspectives, and much progress has been made in understanding the text and its historical context. Nevertheless, it has been recognized that the text is compiled of various segments, and individual research of each segment has revealed difficulties and dilemmas that have not yet been resolved. In the current research the authors aim to contribute to understanding the way in which the segments were compiled and the process that can be traced through which the inscription reached the form that was uncovered. The research method is to utilize interdisciplinary methods, incorporating geographic perspective and literary comparison, to achieve the above objective. In order to provide an example for this approach it is important to highlight the period of Rabbi Judah the prince (Rebbi). It will be shown that the need to formulate the inscription is connected with his emendations concerning the borders of the holy land regarding separation of tithes and observance of the Sabbatical year. Rebbi's directives related primarily to the Galilee, and reflect, in our opinion, demographic changes and shift of the Jewish population. These minor migrations from one area in Palestine to another were a result of economic processes that effected the feasibility and opportunities involved in residing in certain areas. This discussion of the borders of Palestine begins in the Tannaitic period and continues in the Jerusalem Talmud in which paragraphs found in the text our found in the Talmud in scattered locations. Each location discussed, indicates population shifts that require restating the borders of the county concerning Jewish law. Each part of the inscription was created locally and reflected the demography of that area. The parts were compiled in the third and fourth century locally. In the fifth century they were all inscribed on the wall of the synagogue, and in the sixth century they were inscribed on the floor in mosaic adding a paragraph relating to the Sebaste area. Our conclusion will be that the inscription in Rekhov reflects the last stage of a long process of compilation that reflects demographic, historic and economic processes that affected the Jews of the Galilee. The geographic viewpoint dictated the structure of each part of the inscription that was compiled locally and later recorded collectively in the inscription. Esther Schneidenbach, Ludwig-­‐Maximilians Universität, München, Germany Title: The cultural Connection of the Jewish Congregations in Ancient Rome Abstract: The inscriptions from the Jewish catacombs in Rome bear witness of the existence of several Jewish synagogue names in antiquity. It can be noticed that the different Jewish congregations of Rome had widespread cultural connections. These relations were expressed by the naming of the congregations. Based on an analysis of the congregational names mentioned in the inscriptions, the synagogues can be differentiated into several groups. This paper analyses the groups that can be distinguished and the cultural connections expressed by their names. Based on an analysis of the congregation names mentioned in the inscriptions, the synagogues can be differentiated in two main groups corresponding to their connections to Rome or outside of Rome expressed by their naming. It can be concluded that the different Jewish congregations of Rome either wanted to express a closer connection to Rome or else to towns and regions outside of Rome, as for instance in Asia Minor, North Africa, Syria or Palestine. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session: 003: Archeology 14.00-­‐15.30 Les catacombes juives de Roma Organizer: Cinzia Vismara Cinzia Vismara, Università degli Studi di Cassino, Italy Title: Les nouvelles recherches sur les catacombes juives de Rome Abstract: Le point sur les activités de recherche menées sur les catacombes juives de Rome après "Archéologie et Judaïsme Alessandra Negroni, Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, Rome, Italy Title: The Inscriptions from the Monteverde Catacomb Abstract: A new complete study on the Monteverde Catacomb and the inscriptions taken from it gives some addictional informations on the ancient Jewish community of Rome that used this cemetery. Elsa Laurenzi, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Italy Title: La catacombe de Vigna Randanini. Abstract: Nouveautés concernant les catacombes juives de Rome 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session: 004: Archeology, Middle Ages 16.00-­‐18.00 Chair: Max Polonovski Philippe Blanchard, Inrap, France Title: Cimetières et pratiques funéraires des communautés juives médiévales en Europe : Premières synthèses Abstract: Proposition de synthèse à partir de plusieurs sites funéraires fouillés en Europe. Marco Milanese, Università Degli Studi Di Sassari, Italy Title: Nouvelles données historiques et archéologiques sur les Juifs à Alghero Abstract: La subvention vise à résumer les résultats les plus récents du projet d'archéologie et d'histoire de la ville juive de Alghero. Hayah Katz, The Open University of Israel Title: Religion and Archeology: the Attitude of Jews and Christians Societies to the Archaeology of the Land of Israel Abstract: The beginning of the archaeological research in the Land of Israel began in the late 19th century by religious Christians, some of whom were officials of the Christian establishment such as Louis Hugues Vincent and Roland Guérin de Vaux who served as the directors of the L'École Biblique et Archéologique Française that had been established in Jerusalem in 1890. American researchers were also characterized by a religious worldview. The most important scholar among them was William Foxwell Albright, who was born in the Republic of Chile when his parents were missionaries. Moreover, many of the American archaeologists -­‐ to the present -­‐ have received their academic education in theological seminars. Apparently, one should expect as in the Christian world, religious Jewish scholars will assume role in the archaeology field also. But until the 1980's the Jewish religious society disapproved of engaging in archeology, both academically and publically. The aim of this paper is to examine what the reasons are for these differences between Jews and Christians societies, and what factors have led to the interest of Jewish religious society in archeology today. Michaela Selmi Wallisova, The Czech Society of Archaelogy, Czech Republic Title: The "Jewish Garden" in Prague -­‐ New Perspectives of Research. Abstract: A contribution to the burial rite of Prague Jewish minority during the Middle Ages, based upon a rescue excavation in modern Vladislavova street. The excavation revealed part of the former cemetery (the so called Jewish garden) with graves from 1274-­‐1478. From the total number of 401 ex-­‐posed graves some were scientifically documented. Apart from spatial analysis, information was also gained concerning burial practises, from which some have no analogies in European literature. Questions addressed by the excavation of this cemetery are of relevance to regions beyond Bohemia. In the years 2009-­‐2013 we have new results from the other 3 excavations from the border of monument reservation (the so called "Jewish Garden"). The excavations were small but very important for archaeological dating of Jewish cemetery. Finding of three early medieval graves in street Na Perstyne (Old Town) open new question about the earlier Jewish cemetery that if it is the same with the cemetery in Vladislavova street. Monday 21st July ENS, Salle BECKETT (Main building, ground flour, map: 13) Session: 001: History of Jewish Law and the Law of the Jews 9.00-­‐10.30 Chair: John Tolan Jerzy Mazur, RELMIN, MSH, University of Nantes, France Title: “Iudicium Judaeorum” – Royal Court for the Jews in Medieval Poland-­‐Lithuania Abstract: The paper will analyze the importance of royal and princely courts created to deal with Jewish matters in Poland and Lithuania. This so called “iudicium Iudaeorum” comprised an important factor in development of the legal policies of the state towards Jews, and provided the minority community with an extensive juridical protection in their disputes with Christians. The sources under investigation will include the royal privileges, court records, as well as selected rabbinical responsa. Tomaso Perani, RELMIN, MSH, University of Nantes, France Title: The Legal Status of Jewish Communities in the Fragmented Social Polities of the Late Medieval Italian Cities. Abstract: Tomaso Perani will address the question of the legal status of Jewish minority within the extremely fragmented society of north Italian cities. He will discuss the Jewish position in such important Italian urban centers as Bologna and Venice, and will look into the issue of their citizenship. He will also compare the status of the Jews with that of other migrants within the Italian context in order to establish how their origin, profession and religion influenced their legal status. Luca Fois, RELMIN, MSH, University of Nantes, France Title: Physical Separation of Jews and Christians in Papal Legislation and the Legal Commentaries of Italian Jurists. Abstract: Papal legislation concerning the physical separation of Jews and Christians will be discussed in the paper. The survey of the well-­‐known pontifical laws on the Jewish-­‐Christian cohabitation will be augmented by the analysis of the legal commentaries produced in such university centers as Padua, Bologna, and the papal curia itself. Examining this legal and intellectual tradition concerning Jewish-­‐Christian interaction will provide a valuable insight into the medieval legal reasoning on religious minorities and their place in society. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session: 002 History of Jewish Law and the Law of the Jews 11.00-­‐13.00 Chair: John Tolan Ahmed Oulddali, RELMIN, MSH, University of Nantes, France Title: Les juifs en terre d’Islam : réflexions sur le statut de dhimmī. Abstract : Les juifs formaient l’une des minorités religieuses importantes du monde musulman médiéval. Bien que moins nombreux que les chrétiens et les zoroastriens, ils étaient présents à peu près sur tout le territoire. Dans certaines régions, le judaïsme était même devenu la deuxième religion. C’est le cas au Maghreb à partir du XIIIe siècle. En tant que membres d’une confession scripturaire (ahl al-­‐kitāb), les juifs avaient le statut de « protégés » (dhimmīs) qui leur conférait des droits tout en leur imposant des obligations. Parmi les droits dont ils bénéficiaient dans ce cadre, il y a le libre exercice du culte et une certaine autonomie administrative et judiciaire. Notre communication se propose de réfléchir sur la portée et les limites de ce statut. Nous y intéressons également aux évolutions qu’a connues la situation des juifs en terre d’Islam. Nadezda Koryakina, RELMIN, MSH, University of Nantes, France Title: Jewish residents versus Jewish foreigners: the legal status of a minority within the minority in medieval Catalonia. Abstract: This paper will concentrate on the legal and technical sense of the word “status” -­‐ the legal status as determined by legal capacity that is the ability to be the subject of legal rights and duties, and to play a role in the legal system. Basing on Hebrew responsa of the 14th century, I will consider the relations between Jewish residents of Medieval Catalan cities and Jewish foreigners arriving to those cities for the purpose of commercial gain. Some of the questions I shall raise here include: Did the individuals of the Jewish minority have the legal status of “foreigners”? In particular, what was the status of minority merchants? Were they subjects of the kingdom or lordship, or foreigners? Did they preserve their liberties as residents of their native cities or they had to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the court in the city where they engaged in commercial activities? To what extent they contributed to the tax paying in the foreign cities? What was the primary criteria for their identification – belonging to the Jewish people or to the population of a particular city? On the other hand, it will be shown that the rights of the Jewish city residents vs Jewish foreigners were guaranteed by the Jewish law. They were protected by local regulations limiting the duration of foreigners’ stay in the city and by the right of local Jewish authorities to impose taxes on the property of the foreign businessmen found within the city limits. I will also look at the statutes of the foreigners in the laws of Jewish minority, i.e. in Talmudic laws interpreted by the authors of rabbinical responsa and the status attributed to the Christian authorities. It can also be examined to what extent the regulations concerning foreigners in the Christian laws were taken into account by Jewish legal experts. Ultimately the following question needs to be answered as a conclusion: did the Jewish minority constitute a distinctive legal entity within the public legal realm of Catalan cities? Marisa Bueno Sánchez, RELMIN, MSH, University of Nantes, France Title: Urban Space Divided? The Encounters of Religious and Civic Spheres in Medieval Castilian Towns. Abstract: This paper deals with the analysis of the cohabitation of Christians and Jews in Medieval Ages and the origin of physical frontiers and the origin of separate neighborhoods for Christians and Jews in Medieval Hispanic societies. It will be offer some perspectives regarding this situation in some Castilian Cities (Burgos, Toledo, Ciudad Real…), showing the contradiction between official prescriptions and real society, through documents by both the Church and Crown and Archive documents which often shed a different light on the issue that what the specific laws and rules concerning cohabitation and the use of urban space. In fact on the level of everyday life activities, there were numerous contacts and in many cities many groups live together as neighbors and not as religious enemies despite much polemic to the contrary. Emese Kozma, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany Title: Methods for the Study of Parallels in Medieval Ashkenazi Jewish and Latin Christian Penitential Practice Abstract: The lecture will present methods for the study of parallel phenomena in medieval Ashkenazi Jewish and Latin Christian penitential systems within a framework, which models the relation of the two cultures as “competitive cultural attitudes” and “competitive religious values”, given the fact that in this time in Western Europe the Jews not only lived among Christians, but the Christian culture became a challenge for their religious values for the first time in history. As for channels, the possibility of mutual, even literary influences can not be excluded: everyday contact and discussions with each other in the vernacular language between individuals of the two communities may have served as a medium of these influences. The methods within this framework include systematic, comparative phenomenological description of individual, parallel elements in the two systems, the establishment of similar and different motives etc. The methods will be illustrated by examples (e. g. penance for murder, adulterous woman, apostate, private confession etc.). 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session: 003 History of Jewish Law and the Law of the Jews 14.00-­‐15.30 Chair: Jerzy Mazur Tirza Kelman, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: Different Motives Similar Outcomes: R. Joseph Caro's Organization of Knowledge Abstract: For over three decades beginning in 1522, R. Joseph Caro was creating his halakhic magnum opus-­‐ the Beit Yosef. Soon after he finished writing this monumental work, he wrote the well-­‐known shorter Shulkhan Arukh wich he himself described as a summary of the Beit Yosef. It is clearly necessary to examine R. Joseph Caro's project in the light of the important researched developments concerning the organization of knowledge in the early modern period. In doing so, very interesting similarities and significant differences emerge. I shall explain these in the light of my assessment of R. Joseph Caro's work and declared motives. Carsten Wilke, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary Title: Abraham Gomes Silveyra (1656-­‐1741): a Sephardi Theologian at the Crossroads of Religious Modernities Abstract: One of the most elaborate theological defenses ever written in favor of Judaism against Christianity is due to the Amsterdam preacher and poet Abraham Gomes Silveyra (1656-­‐1741), who represents a Jewish facet of early Enlightenment thought. His monumental apology of more than four thousand folio pages, written during the first quarter of the eighteenth century in baroque-­‐age Spanish and named Silveyradas after himself, survives in three manuscripts, respectively in possession of the Ets Haim Seminary of Amsterdam, the Royal Library of The Hague, and an American private collector. Reacting to the missionary advances of an exiled Huguenot pastor, Isaac Jacquelot (1647-­‐1708), Silveyra's first volume gives a translation of the latter's Dissertations sur le Messie, the second imagines a dialogue with the Christian adversary, the third formulates objections, the fourth judges the controversy, the fifth asks counter-­‐
questions, and a final volume adds a reasoned index of theological loci and authorities. Silveyra framed his huge series around 1725 by a seventh, preliminary volume dealing with the rules of interreligious controversy and the ethics of tolerance. Though an article by Henry Méchoulan (1992) has made known this part of the Silveyradas, the bulk of the work has remained unstudied. In the framework of an ongoing research project, my lecture will deal with the cross-­‐cultural effort undertaken by this Spanish-­‐born controversist, who writes with the rhetorics and witticisms of Iberian Golden Age literature, reflects a vast reading in the different dogmatic strands of post-­‐Reformation Christian theology, and is also among the first Jewish authors to discuss the implications of Descartes, Spinoza and Bayle for religious thought. Silveyra used his expertise in various types of non-­‐Jewish discourse in order to propose a defensive alliance of all faiths against the new threat by a common enemy, irreligion. Yoreh Tanhum, York University, Canada Title: Abrahamic Approaches to Wastefulness Abstract: Environmentalism has not yet made significant inroads into religious praxis, due, in part, to the inability to find a common language between environmentalists and religious communities. The prohibition against waste and wanton destruction is well-­‐developed in the Jewish tradition. Studying the evolution of this prohibition provides insight into the historical, cultural and linguistic development of what might be considered one of Western culture's first environmental concepts. The prohibition against wastefulness is not limited to the Jewish tradition, but can be found throughout the Abrahamic traditions. The prevalence of an anti-­‐waste concept in the Hebrew Bible (e.g. Genesis 9:5 and Deuteronomy 20:19), New Testament (e.g. John 6:12) and Quran (e.g. Al-­‐Anaam, verse 141; Al-­‐Araf, verse 31) offers a common point of reference between East and West. There are many such commonalities between the Abrahamic traditions. From an environmental perspective, however, the prohibition against wastefulness is arguably the most important ethic. In this paper I will present narratives from all three major Abrahamic traditions that demonstrate both environmentally positive and environmentally questionable behaviour with regard to wastefulness. This paper argues that one reason that the prohibition against wastefulness has not been fully championed by adherents of these faiths is because of the checkered history of these traditions specifically with regard to this prohibition. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session: 004 History of Jewish Law and the Law of the Jews 16.00-­‐18.00 Chair: Joshua Teplitzky Jay Berkovitz, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA Title: The Social Foundations of Legal Pluralism: Litigation and Jurisprudence in the Pinkas of the Beit Din of Metz, 1771-­‐1789 Abstract: The records of the rabbinic court of Metz (1771-­‐1789) contain the rudiments of a new historical narrative that varies substantially from traditional accounts of the relationship between Jews and the surrounding society. In contrast to prescriptive legal codes, and unlike responsa that advance arguments based on nuanced readings of earlier legal opinions, rabbinic court records provide clear images of law as it was practiced and of life as it was lived. Brimming with details regarding the behavior of litigants and the conduct of the court, the Pinkas of the Metz Beit Din offers an exceptional opportunity to investigate the interrelationship between law and society. This paper seeks to demonstrate the value that these largely neglected records offer both to historians and legal scholars. In remarkable detail, the proceedings of the Metz Beit Din contain conclusive evidence that the engagement of Jews with the legal and economic dimensions of the society around them was far greater than is generally assumed. Examples of economic interaction and commercial collaborations with members of the general non-­‐Jewish population abound. Like their non-­‐Jewish neighbors, Metz Jews were compliant with the encroaching bureaucratic demands imposed by state and municipal authorities. To protect their legal interests, whether in the French courts or in the Beit Din, they often consulted French lawyers. Moreover, Jewish women took an active part in the pursuit of justice through litigation. Approximately twenty-­‐five percent of the suits brought before the Beit Din were initiated by women and roughly forty percent of the cases recorded in the Pinkas involved women either as claimants or defendants. From the standpoint of law, the judicial practices of the Metz Beit Din represent a striking counter-­‐example to the dominant historiographical assessment of Jewish autonomy in the Middle Ages and early modern period. This assessment closely resembled the self-­‐image of the Kehillah, which rested on the illusion of communal self-­‐reliance and self-­‐containment. Although rabbinic courts were never the exclusive forum for the adjudication of civil disputes, communities in early modern Ashkenaz struggled persistently to sustain the myth of judicial exclusivity. The Metz Beit Din, quite remarkably, signified a dramatic turnabout from the paradigm that typified Jewish self-­‐government and adjudication in the preceding decades. In the last third of the eighteenth century, as Metz communal leaders became more attentive to the complex relationship that drew the Jews, the state, and French society together, the rabbinic court proved itself responsive to practical demands and to shifting cultural affinities by adapting to a world of multiple jurisdictions of comparable validity. Implicit in the rabbinic court’s adaptational approach was the acknowledgement that the Jewish population was heavily dependent on the surrounding society not only for its economic well-­‐being but also for the innumerable services that it could not provide for itself. The degree of social, economic, and cultural integration experienced by the Jews of Metz entailed the fostering of a working relationship between the Jewish and French judiciaries. Rachel Furst, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: Unrecorded Justice: The Record-­‐Keeping Practices of Medieval Jewish Courts Abstract: Among historians of pre-­‐modern European Jewry, the past decade has witnessed a renewed interest in the Jewish courts of medieval Germany; however, both new and older scholarship has focused mainly on the formal structure of this parochial court system and far less on what happened inside the courtrooms. This tendency can be attributed primarily to the nature of available sources. The only surviving court records from medieval Ashkenaz are fragments preserved in legal responsa. Jewish courts did issue written documents, from deeds of sale to bills of divorce; but litigants were expected to preserve their own copies, and the court did not maintain an official archive or repository of records. This was not an illiterate society, and the lack of record-­‐keeping raises fascinating questions about the significance of judicial precedent, the importance of oral transmission, and the institutional nature of Jewish courts during this period. In the absence of court records, how did communities remember who had been divorced, or disenfranchised, or declared illegitimate? If the court itself did not remember how it ruled, how did laypeople acquire knowledge of the law, and how helpful was the knowledge they did acquire? How did the lack of records affect a local court’s claims to knowledge and authority? These types of questions have been debated by medievalists since the publication of Michael Clanchy’s From Memory to Written Record in 1979 but have only recently garnered attention in the subfield of medieval Jewish history. The proposed paper is an attempt to consider the implications of judicial record-­‐keeping (or lack thereof) among the Jews of medieval Germany and its significance for our understanding of Jewish communal autonomy, which has often centered on judicial independence. Verena Kasper-­‐Marienberg, University of Graz, Austria Title: Reflections of Jewish Daily Life in Non-­‐Jewish Court Records: Case Studies from the Early Modern Viennese Supreme Court Abstract: Jewish litigation in non-­‐Jewish courts of the early modern period is a highly discussed topic in the current research of Jewish life throughout Europe. Although we are only beginning to gather statistical information regarding this phenomenon, it is already clear that it was a widespread one, involving all social strata of Jewish society. This fact challenges not only the common narratives of the cultural separation of Jewish communities from their Christian surroundings, but also the previously believed ideas about hierarchical structures and mechanisms within Jewish communities. The Imperial Supreme Court in Vienna — like other European local and higher courts— saw a peak of Jewish litigation during the 18th century. This presentation will highlight previously unknown forms and quantities of cases involving Jewish men and women at this court. Furthermore, it will investigate the potential of these records as sources of Jewish daily life and social practice, especially in their communal dimension. Cases from the Jewish community of Frankfurt on the Main will serve as examples for possible internal Jewish conflicts that reached Gentile courts. With them, we can widen our knowledge about the early modern Jewish use of competing judiciary systems within and outside the Jewish world. Evelyne Oliel-­‐Grausz, Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne/EHESS, Paris Title: The Court of the Massari in 18th Century Livorno: Jewish Autonomy, Delegated Justice, and Legal Pluralism Abstract: According to the privileges granted to the Jews by the Livornina in 1593, the Massari (lay leaders of the community) were granted jurisdiction over civil and criminal cases involving Jews. The jurisdiction and the judicial procedure underwent some significant transformations during the 17th century: the prerogatives of the Massari were restricted in criminal cases, an appellate massari court developed, and internal rules were established around 1680 as to which cases should be judged according to Jewish law, and which according to mercantile and local customs. In every respect, the court of the Massari functioned in theory as an exclusive first instance Jewish court on the basis of a delegation of justice granted by the Grand Duke. However, the Massari court records, the supplications addressed to the Grand ducal authority and the records of the local courts show a definite discrepancy between norm and practice. Despite the supposedly autonomous jurisdiction of the Massari, court shopping, law hopping even between Jewish law and mercantile customs, and attempts at evading the judicial authority of the Massari were common. We will argue that legal pluralism offers a more relevant frame of interpretation than the classical concept of autonomy, and that the court of the Massari can only be understood when analyzed within the context of the Tuscan judicial system, of which it is an integral part. Monday 21st July ENS, Salle CAVAILLÈS (Main building, 1st flour, map: 5) Session: 001: Magic 9.00-­‐10.30 Jewish Magic from Antiquity to the Modern World Organizers: Emma Abate and Gideon Bohak Chair: Yuval Harari Avigail Manekin-­‐Bamberger, Tel Aviv University, Israel Title: The Scribes of the Aramaic Incantation Bowls as Legal Magicians Abstract: The Aramaic incantation bowls were usually designated to protect one's household by expelling demons. In order to do so the bowls employed different magical practices such as writing the divine names, curses and incantations. But alongside these anticipated magical practices, the incantation bowls also use legal formulae. Such formulae can be found in oaths and incantations, vows, pronouncements of excommunication and more surprisingly, divorce formulae. These legal formulae are not just allusive of legal discourse but employ specific terms and technicalities that have parallels in the Bible and Second Temple literature, Rabbinic literature and archeological findings. In my paper I shall discuss the nature of these common legal formulae by demonstrating verbal parallels in the divorce formula between the Talmud, archeological findings of divorce documents and the bowls. The study of these parallels will shed light on the nature of the bowl scribes, not just as magicians but as magicians with specific legal disciplinary knowledge, or in other words: legal magicians. James Nathan Ford, Bar Ilan University, Israel Title: 'Jesus the Healer' in the Jewish Magic Bowls Abstract: Appeals to Jesus and his healing powers can occasionally be found in Syriac incantation bowls prepared by Christian practitioners, where they are to be expected. It is well known, however, that magic is eclectic and magicians often draw upon magical and religious traditions other than their own, even from sources actively opposed by their own orthodox coreligionists. A case in point is the Jewish incantation bowl Moussaieff 163, published by Dan Levene (1999), which opens with an appeal to the ancient Mesopotamian deity ‘Šamiš king of the gods’ and closes with a curse of the opponent ‘in the name of Jesus who conquered the height and the depth by his cross and in the name of his exalted father and in the name of his holy spirit’. It has been suggested that since the opponent, Isha son of Ifra Hurmiz, was a Christian, the Jewish practitioner may have invoked the power of Jesus here in order ‘to hit his opponent with the weapon most close to his heart’ (Shaked 1999). Other Jewish bowls occasionally mention Jesus in passing in lists of magic or divine names which the practitioner may or may not have recognized (see Bohak 2005/6 and Müller-­‐Kessler 2005). In this paper I will present a series of new Jewish incantation bowls of a different nature, in which an explicit appeal to ‘Jesus the Healer’ to act on behalf of the client holds a prominent position. Marco Moriggi, Università degli Studi di Catania, Italy Title: Jewish Divorce Formulae in Syriac Incantation Bowls Abstract: In a series of Syriac incantation bowls published between 1913 and the present day a peculiar text is documented. It mentions Rab Joshua bar Perahya sitting in a court of law and performing an exorcism against demons, devils, liliths and other evil beings haunting the house of the client and causing illnesses and misfortunes to the members of his/her family. This spell is well attested in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic bowls and it is now evident that a Jewish Babylonian Aramaic model is at the base of what is found in Syriac bowls. Divorce formulas are frequently used in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic bowls to cast away demons and hateful supernatural beings. The new edition of the Syriac bowls featuring this formula which the present author is going to publish allows for a reconsideration of the theme of the Jewish divorce formula in Syriac incantation bowls, both on the linguistic and cultural points of view. In the light of all its features, including figures of speech referred to a heavenly ascension and a lot drawn, the formula does not seem to have been understood as a simple Syriac transcription of a Jewish Babylonian Aramaic model (or of an oral spell uttered in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic), but as a tool to be effectively employed in a Syriac magic context, where it had been well integrated with other non-­‐Jewish themes. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee break Session: 002 Magic 11.00-­‐13.00 Panel: Jewish Magic from Antiquity to the Modern World Chair: Yuval Harari Alessia Bellusci, Tel Aviv University (TAU); Italian National Council of Research (CNR) Title: The Ritual of Dream Request in the Late Antique Jewish and Graeco-­‐Egyptian Magical Traditions Abstract: In my lecture, I will discuss a specific dream technique of induced divination called “dream request,” which is attested in several cultures from antiquity. Known under diverse names and practiced in slightly different forms, the ritual of “dream request” corresponds in Old Babylonian, Graeco-­‐Roman, Jewish, Christian and Islamic sources to a technique, with which users artificially induce a dream on a certain topic, in order to foretell the future or receive a certain answer to an issue pertaining to their life. Used for a wide range of different purposes, the recipes for “dream request," which reached us, generally prescribe to observe ascetic norms and recite specific formulae, and often present magical features. In my paper, I will focus on the technique of “dream request” within the Jewish tradition. Although of much more ancient origin, this technique – ‫שאלת חלום‬-­‐ is attested to in Jewish sources only from the tenth century C.E. onwards. Later on, the “dream request” became a common practice in Jewish culture and developed in several variants, often corresponding to different cultural and ideological currents. Using late antique and medieval Jewish sources -­‐ chiefly the magical fragments from the Cairo Genizah and Sefer Ha-­‐Razim -­‐ I will attempt to outline some stages of development of the Jewish technique of “dream request.” I will then compare my findings in the Jewish corpora to the recipes for “dream request” -­‐ in “Ὀνειραιτητόν” -­‐ preserved in the corpus of Greek and Demotic Magical Papyri, which exhibit close textual and ritual features. The evaluation of literary and ritualistic similarities, as well as differences, in the development of the Jewish and Graeco-­‐Egyptian traditions on “dream request” will bring us to a better understanding of this specific oneiric technique in both cultures. Furthermore, it will provide a case-­‐study for undertaking a re-­‐thinking of the Jewish and Graeco-­‐Egyptian magical traditions in light of a comparative re-­‐examination of the relevant sources pertaining to these two cultures. Gideon Bohak, Tel-­‐Aviv University, Israel Title: A Late Antique Babylonian Magical Text in Modern Jewish Amulets from Morocco Abstract: The text known as the "Pishra de-­‐Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa" is an anti-­‐witchcraft spell, intended to dissolve all evil magic acts performed against a certain individual. It is written in Babylonian Jewish Aramaic, and displays the direct influence of older Babylonian spells against witches. Moreover, it seems to have enjoyed a great popularity in the Jewish magical tradition, as may be seen from its attestation in at least nine different fragments from the Cairo Genizah. It is also found in medieval Jewish manuscripts from Ashkenaz and from the Orient, and was thus far edited only from one, poorly preserved, Ashkenazi copy. But perhaps its most surprising attestation is on two twentieth century amulets from Morocco, which were beautifully produced by an experienced scribe. In my talk, I shall briefly survey the origins and transmission-­‐
history of the Pishra, but focus especially on the two amulets from Morocco, and on the ancient origins of some Modern Jewish amulets. Joseph E. Sanzo, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: “Jewish” Elements on “Christian” Amulets? Toward a New Taxonomy of Late Antique Ritual Practice Abstract: Scholars have long noted that the language on amulets and other “magical” artifacts from late antiquity often draws upon the sacred texts, liturgies, and other known traditions of Judaism and Christianity. In fact, one can even find specialized studies on “Jewish magic” or “Christian magic.” But the magical record does not always reflect such clear distinctions between these respective traditions. Indeed, traditional “Jewish” elements are sometimes utilized on otherwise “Christian” magical texts (and vice-­‐
versa). The intersections of “Jewish” and “Christian” magical traditions thus raise fundamental questions about the governing taxonomies of scholars. For instance, what is the best way to think about the categories “Christian” and “Jewish” as it relates to late antique ritual practice? In my presentation, I will analyze the use of (allegedly) “Jewish” elements on “Christian” amulets from late antiquity. I will demonstrate that certain official conceptions of “Christianity” (and “Judaism”) have guided scholarly classifications of amuletic language. As a result, elements that fall outside of the traditional definitions of “Christianity” are labeled as “Jewish” (or “pagan”). In contrast to this standard approach, I will establish a new taxonomy of “Christian” ritual practice, which is predominantly orientated around the language found on the late antique amulets themselves. This shift in reference will result in the incorporation of select “Jewish” (and “pagan”) elements into the category “Christian.” This new taxonomy will not only allow amulets to be understood on their own terms, but it will also require scholars to take into consideration a larger (and more diverse) body of amulets when assessing “Christian” ritual practice and will thus provide a more robust framework for comparing “Christian” and “Jewish” magical traditions. Rivka Elitzur-­‐Leiman, Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem, Israel Title: Victim or Assailant? -­‐ A New Understanding of the Ancient Smamit Legend in Light of an Aramaic Amulet from the Bible Lands Museu Abstract: The Aramaic amulet to be discussed in the presentation was created to exorcize a child-­‐killing demon from a pregnant woman. This amulet includes a legend, which is attested in several other magic objects (lamellae and incantation bowls), narrating the story of Smamit, a woman whose 12 children were killed by the demon Sideros. At first glance, the legend on this amulet seems to match its counterparts. However, a careful reading suggests that it offers a rather different version of the story. While in the other magic objects the story tells of three angels coming to Smamit's aid and subduing Sideros, the amulet under discussion describes how Smamit herself, full of sorrow and envy, has turned into a heinous child-­‐
killing demon, a metamorphosis which has caused the three angles to seize and adjure her. This amulet contains many significant features attested in a variety of other traditions and periods. 13.00-­‐13.55: Lunch Break Session: 003 Magic 13.55-­‐15.45 Panel: Jewish Magic from Antiquity to the Modern World Chair: Bill Rebiger Katelyn Mesler, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: Did Medieval European Jews Practice ‘Envoultement’? Abstract: When Christians of Late Medieval Europe discussed sorcery, they often referred to envoultement, which involved sticking pins into a wax effigy in order to cause injury, illness, death, or altered emotional states (such as madness or love). This practice is well attested in treatises of practical magic, condemnations of magic, and trials against sorcerers and witches. Notably, some of these texts also exhibit a tendency to associate envoultement with Jews. For example, there are sorcery trials of the fourteenth century that present Jews as hired professionals in the production and use of wax figurines. But did contemporary Jews actually practice envoultement? In this paper, I will consider the evidence of Hebrew sources to investigate medieval European Jews’ familiarity with the practice and, furthermore, to consider the extent to which envoultement figured in the repertoire of Jewish magic in the Latin West. Ephraim Kanarfogel, Yeshiva University, USA Title: Magical Practices in the Writings of the Tosafists of Northern France during the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries Abstract: Although known primarily as prolific expositors of the Talmud and scholars of Jewish law, it has recently been demonstrated that the Tosafists, not only in Germany but in northern France as well, had ongoing interests in a series of mystical teachings and especially in magical practices and theories. Indeed, Isaac of Dampierre (d. 1189), arguably the leading Tosafist of his day, betrays such interests in a variety of texts and contexts. On the basis of a number of manuscript passages and a concomitant re-­‐reading of printed Tosafist texts, this paper will trace and describe these interests and applications, focusing on three different aspects: curing the sick, catching thieves and contracting marriages. Emma Abate, LabEx-­‐Hastec/IRHT, Paris, France Title: Sefer ha-­‐Shorashim versus Raziel. Lexicography Facing the Magical Heritage. Abstract: The purpose of my communication is to deal with the definition of “magic” and the representation of demons in the Middle Ages taking into account sources other than the traditional genres embodied by the magical heritage. In particular, the way in which different items related to magic (“sorcery”, “witchcraft”, “necromancy” etc.) and demonology (names of demons like Azazel, Samael, Satan, Lilith etc.) are treated in Jewish medieval lexicons and exegetical works will be considered. I will focus notably on the dictionary of biblical roots by David Ben Yosef Qimhi (1160-­‐1235) known as Sefer ha-­‐
Shorashim, the most celebrated and widespread lexicon in the Middle Ages until the Early Modern Period. Sefer ha Shorashim was a source of inspiration of exegetical works by Jewish intellectuals from the Renaissance like Elia Levita (1469-­‐1549), who was author himself of lexicons (such as Meturgeman and Tishbi), and by Christian kabbalists like Johannes Reuchlin (1455-­‐1522), Sante Pagnini (1470-­‐1541), Gilles of Viterbo (1469-­‐1532), who translated it into Latin. Beyond its prestige and influence on the development of the Hebrew linguistic thought and knowledge, Sefer ha-­‐Shorashim requires to be considered as a treasure trove of Jewish traditions, symbols, beliefs and memories, therefore including also the magical imagery. In Sefer ha-­‐Shorashim, each entry provides a chain of biblical references according to different conjugations, grammatical forms and meanings of the Hebrew roots. Notwithstanding his rationalism and lack of interest towards the esoteric exegesis, Qimhi often adds interpretations and commentaries gathering information from rabbinic, philosophical, midrashic and popular sources. This way, he offers an external and outsider insight on different conceptions and approaches to magical themes. By examining a range of entries related to “magic” in comparison with materials taken from magical sources, I intend to present the way by which Qimhi’s definitions and exegesis on the topic developed during the Middle Ages reaching the milieu of the Christian Kabbalist of the Renaissance. Flavia Buzzetta, Officina di Studi Medievali, Palermo, Italy Title: La transformation de la magie juive en cabale chez Jean Pic de la Mirandole Abstract: L’exposé se propose de prendre en examen l’acquisition de la magie juive et sa transformation en cabale chrétienne chez Jean Pic de la Mirandole, à l’aube de la Renaissance. Cette recherche vise à démontrer l’évolution et le passage de l’expression cabala practica en pars practica cabalae ou opus cabalae. La première est utilisée dans le Liber de homine (Vat. Ebr. 189 ff. 398r-­‐509v), traduction latine d’un texte ashkénaze, effectuée par Flavius Mithridate pour Jean Pic de la Mirandole à la fin du ‘400. Compilé à l’origine dans le cercle d’Eleazar de Worms, ce traité considère la cabala practica comme une techniques de magie linguistique. L’identification de la fonction de cette pratique est développée sur la base d’une analyse des différentes typologies de magie qu’on repère dans le Liber. La deuxième expression est utilisée par Jean Pic de la Mirandole dans les Conclusiones cabalisticae secundum opinionem propriam. Dans le système de pensée du Comte la cabala practica constitue le coté pratique de la scientia cabalae et deviendra un savoir totalisant qui pourra être considéré à la fois magie cabalistique ou cabale magique. 15.45-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session: 004 Magic 16.00-­‐18.00 Panel: Jewish Magic from Antiquity to the Modern World Chair: Bill Rebiger Marco Simon Francisco, Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain Title: Solomonic Magic and the Inquisitorial Trials in Aragón. Abstract: This paper aims to analyze several judicial processes that took place in Aragón at the beginning of the 16th century against some people accused of practicing nigromancy. Special interest has the proceeding against the priest Joan Vicente (possibly the best source for the knowledge of witchcraft in the Spain of the Renaissance), that brings to light some rituals transmitted from the Ancient World (such as the performing of magic circles, the uttering of voces magicae and the use of water containers or rings to invoke the demons). The possible ways of transmission of this ancient material are posed (the “Clavicula Salomonis” or the “Book of the Rings” are mentioned belonging to the nigromants), perhaps through the arrival of Byzantine texts from the 13th century, as well as the importance of the Ebro valley in the translation of works from Arabic to Latin, particularly in the first half of the 12th Century. Giuseppe Veltri & Michael Kohs, Martin Luther Universität Halle-­‐Wittenberg, Germany Title: The Interplay of Writing and Images in Mafteah Shelomoh Mafteah Shelomoh, the Hebrew version of the Clavicula Salomonis, the 'Key of Solomon', is a rather heterogeneous handbook of astral magic and necromancy. The very few extant manuscripts of Mafteah Shelomoh show, unlike other Jewish magical handbooks, a remarkably high amount of visual elements, probably because Mafteah Shelomoh is a translation from a Latin or Italian Vorlage and not a »genuine« Jewish text. These visual elements and their interplay with the text have not been addressed by scholarly research up to now. Based on the analysis of MS Gollancz (published by Hermann Gollancz as a facsimile in 1914) and MS British Library Or. 6360/Or. 14,759 we will take a closer look at the visual/graphic dimension of magical writing in Mafteah Shelomoh. We will demonstrate how visual or para-­‐textual means are used to structure the manuscript and how magical and astrological signs, geometric diagrams, figurative images enrich the verbal text and contribute to its very textuality. Furthermore, in comparing the different manuscripts, we will try to elucidate the scribes' different strategies for implementing and, potentially, transforming their Vorlage. The two manuscripts show are different image repertoire and in some cases the process of translating and writing is reflected by the scribe in the text, for instance, when he explicitly admits, not to understand the Vorlage or when he uses explanatory glosses. Finally, we are going to ask whether it is possible to identify specific Jewish visual elements in Mafteah Shelomoh, that might justify calling Mafteah Shelomoh an iconographically Judaized Renaissance handbook of magic. Reimund Leicht, Hebrew University, Israel Title: The Fragmentary Hebrew Translation of the Picatrix and its Sources Abstract: Among the medieval Hebrew translations of the famous magical handbook Picatrix there are fragments of a version which has aroused considerable confusion among modern scholars. Although a colophon declares that it was not translated directly from the Arabic but from a Christian version, the text does not reveal any influence of the Latin Picatrix tradition. This paper will try to solve this riddle and will argue for an old vernacular version as a Vorlage of the Hebrew translation. Tamar Alexander, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: The Prophet Elijah and the Virgin Mary, between Sephardic Incantations and Hispanic Incantations Abstract: This lecture is part of a comprehensive project I am conducting with Dr. Eliezer Papo on Sephardic incantations. The corpus we have found consists of 200 incantations in Ladino, Hebrew, and Aramaic from 8 manuscripts and other printed sources in books such as collections of charms and folk healing. The incantations, just like other components of Sephardic culture, are influenced from the culture of the country of origin, Spain; from the culture of the countries in which the Spanish exiles lived (such as Turkey, Greece, or the former Yugoslavia) and from internal Jewish canonic Hebrew sources, such as the Bible, Midrashim, and the Talmud. The link to the sources is expressed, first of all, in the linguistic design of the incantations written in Ladino, Hebrew, or Aramaic, or in a mixture of languages. We found that the linguistic division is congruent with the gender division. Incantations offered by women are in Ladino; those written by rabbis are in Hebrew mixed with Aramaic, while those that mix Hebrew and Ladino were composed by uneducated men. In this lecture, I wish to look at the cultural links between Jewish incantations and Spanish Christian incantations: (a) parallel or identical incantations that moved easily from one culture to another; (b) incantations that underwent processes of change and adaptation to Jewish culture; and (c) uniquely Jewish incantations. We shall construct the comparison according to parameters of structure, form, and content, such as the figures appearing in the incantations, main motifs, and linguistic formulations, mainly openings and closings. We shall examine the correlation between the gender division and cultural influence and see that women’s incantations cross cultural boundaries more easily than those of men. Monday 21st July ENS, Salle DUSSANE (Main building, ground flour, map: 9) Session: 001: Bible 9.00-­‐10.30 Chair: Yigal Levin Tracy Lemos, Huron University College, University of Western Ontario, Canada Title: Archaeological Evidence for Interethnic Violence in the Iron-­‐II Levant Abstract: The violence that occurred between certain groups in ancient Israel and other parts of the Levantine region is well attested. Between the 9th and 6th centuries BCE, the Neo-­‐Assyrian and Neo-­‐
Babylonian empires mounted several military campaigns in the area that often left clear marks in the archaeological record. But what of violence between the Israelites and other small groups of the ancient Levant? This violence is described or referred to not only in biblical texts but also in such extrabiblical materials as the Mesha Inscription. This paper will examine the difficult question of whether or not it is possible to trace this violence archaeologically. Tziona Grossmark, Tel Hai College, Israel Title: A Neo-­‐Assyrian Cylinder Seal from Omrit and its Contribution to the Study of the Assyrian Military Presence in the Galilee Abstract: During the 2010 season of excavations at Horvat Omrit, a Neo-­‐Assyrian cylinder seal was found in space 4-­‐2. Although found in a much later context (Roman Period), this find, as we will show hereinafter, contributes to both the establishment of the chronology of its glyptic sub-­‐group and to the tracing of the presence of the Neo-­‐Assyrian army in the Galilee. Isaac Kalimi, Johannes Gutenberg-­‐Universität Mainz, Germany Title: The Love of God and Royal Apology: Solomon’s Birth Story in Its Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Context Abstract: The birth story of Solomon (2 Sam 12:24-­‐25) is a unique example of its kind in the ancient Israelite historiography about the kingdom era. Though the birth-­‐name of the new born child was “Solomon,” he received an additional name by the divine messenger, Nathan: “Yedidyah,” stating that “the Lord loved him.” The purpose and meaning of this name and phrase should be understood as two complimentary approaches: within the immediate context (2 Samuel 11–12) as well as within the wider context of the story regarding Solomon’s rising to power (1 Kings 1–2). The purpose of this paper is to show that usurpers and kings out of a royal line of throne attempted to legitimize their kingship by introducing themselves as beloved/preferred of a patronage god(s) and occasionally sometimes taking a new throne-­‐name. This historical and literary phenomenon reflects clearly also from Mesopotamian, Anatolian, and Egyptian writings from different periods. The content and tendency of the text in Samuel is well correlated within the surrounding ancient Near Eastern cultural settings. This comparative-­‐historical discussion also coheres and supports the literary-­‐critical discussion of biblical texts in this and in my other study. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee break Session: 002 Bible 11.00-­‐13.00 Chair: Isaac Kalimi Yisca Zimran, Bar Ilan University, Israel Title: Isaiah the Son of Amoz and the Faith of the Nations. Abstract: The eschatological vision of the “end of days” appears in Isaiah 2:2-­‐5. In this vision, Isaiah foresees that all nations shall stream to the mountain of the Lord’s house, recognize the existence of the God of Israel, and walk in His paths. There are even those who argue that Isaiah actually declares that the nations will abandon their idols and worship only the God of Israel. In this prophecy, the God of Israel is depicted as a universal deity whose sphere of influence includes nations other than Israel, and as a righteous God. There is a measure of innovation in this presentation, as well as in the future that Isaiah foresees for the nations-­‐-­‐ an innovation that is present in several other prophecies in the Book of Isaiah. The idea expressed in Isaiah’s prophecy regarding the nations’ faith is adopted by several other biblical prophets, such as Jeremiah (in 16: 19-­‐20) and Zephaniah (3:9). Others, such as Micah (4:5) and Joel (4:9-­‐17) objected to it. I will begin this lecture by first examining whether Isaiah’s vision does indeed include an account of the future repentance of the nations. I will move from there to consider the connections between this prophecy and the various world views found in the Book of Isaiah, on the one hand, while on the other exploring its linkage to the historical context of the relationship between Israel and the nations during the eighth century BCE. As a part of this discussion, I will analyze how other prophets-­‐-­‐whether contemporaries of Isaiah or subsequent to him—regarded his worldview, and how their attitudes influenced the structure and formulation of their own prophesies dealing with similar issues. Yu Takeuchi, Kumamoto University, Japan Title: Genealogy of the Righteous Foreigners in the Hebrew Bible Abstract: The Hebrew Bible, surprisingly enough to the eyes accustomed to see the Book as the history of the chosen, recounts non-­‐ignorable number of stories of foreigners who behave apparently more righteously than the chosen people. Examples are not abundant, but not insignificantly few: Mechizedeq, Jethro, Naaman, Job, the foreign sailors and the Ninevites in the Book of Jonah, Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth. The paper briefly introduces the curious ‘genealogy’ of these righteous foreigners, and discusses their quite subversive role, in contrast with the general schema that it is the chosen who are invited to know the divine way, then places these curiously righteous foreigners among with two other types of ‘foreigners’ (the enemy or the rejected on one hand, the needy to protect on the other hand) to consider the ethical significance of these extraordinary figures in the Hebrew Bible. Meir Bar Maymon, Sciences Po Paris, France/ Tel Aviv University, Israel Title: Living the Metaphor-­‐ On the Ascription Process of the (Male) Biblical Research Abstract: Biblical research, or any research for this matter, is perceived as objective, thus rendering the scholars as ‘academic’ and essentially non-­‐political. I wish to demonstrate in this lecture how modern Biblical research takes part and ascribes itself to the metaphor of Jerusalem as the adulterous deviant woman in Ezekiel 16 and 23. These two chapters, through rhetoric of pornography, portray Jerusalem as a prostitute and punish her for her acts in a horrific manner of stoning, burning, rape, and cutting of her body. I will elaborate on these chapters by reviewing the meaning of metaphors and by analyzing Ez. 16, 23 as a pornographic literature. Moreover, by promoting meta-­‐reading to different commentaries of the book of Ezekiel, I wish to show how different commentators identify themselves with the rhetoric of these chapters; and to demonstrate how scholars take part in the textual political process of metaphorizing the bad Israel as a deviant woman, and how their reading of the text help constitute their male self. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session: 003 Bible 14.00-­‐15.30 Chair: Arnaud Sérandour Yigal Levin, Bar-­‐Ilan University, Israel Title: Why did the Zerubbabel’s Adversaries Emphasize their Foreign Origins? Abstract: Upon arriving in Jerusalem sometime after 538 BCE, the returnees led by Zerubbabel were approached by a group of people whom Ezra 4:1 refers to as "the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin", who requested, "Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of King Esarhaddon of Assyria who brought us here." Most commentators identify these "adversaries" as the people later known as the Samaritans, although other proposals do exist. An apparently similar group are mentioned in verse 10 as "the nations whom the great and noble Osnappar deported and settled in the cities of Samaria and in the rest of the province Beyond the River". This paper examines the question of their claim to foreign origin: why would they make this claim, rather than claim to be indigenous, YHWH-­‐worshipping, Israelites? Is this claim simply Judean propaganda? Or would the leaders of the "adversaries" have considered it advantageous to be descended from foreign deportees? This question will be examined in light of Assyrian deportation policies and the archaeological record, and we will propose a solution that might shed light on the "ethnogenesis" of the Samaritans during the Persian Period. Renate Egger-­‐Wenzel, University of Salzburg, Austria Title: Identity and Acts of Resistance as Reflected in the Book of Tobit Abstract: The lecture will deal with the political background presupposed by the author, the Jewish reaction to the dominant environment, the maintenance of religious identity, and examples of peaceful co-­‐existence and resistance with regard to the non-­‐Jewish world. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session: 004 16.00-­‐18.00 La lecture juive des Psaumes en interaction Organizer: Matthias Morgenstern Chair: Matthias Morgenstern Giovanni Ibba, Facoltà Teologica dell'Italia Centrale, Italy Title: L’interprétation des Psaumes dans les manuscrits qumrâniens 1Q16, 4Q171 et 4Q173 Abstract: Cette relation est dans la session "Psaumes et leur histoire de reception", organisée par Matthias Morgenstern. La relation se concentre sur les seuls commentaires des Psaumes trouvés dans les grottes de Qumrân. Les manuscrits qui les contiennent sont 1Q16/1Q171/4Q173 et ils sont tous très fragmentaires. Toutefois, en considérant surtout 4Q171, on peut avoir quelques éléments importants de l’idéologie judaïque de ceux qui les ont composés. Christophe Batsch, Université de Lille, France Title: Retour sur les pesharim des Psaumes à Qumrân Abstract: Dans le cadre du panel sur la lecture exégétique des Psaumes, nous ferons le point sur l'état des études sur les inteprétations (pesher) des Psaumes dans les manuscrits de Qumrân. Matthias Morgenstern, Institutum Judaicum, Université de Tübingen, Germany Title: "Sion comme mère de tous les peuples" -­‐ L´exégèse midrachique de Psaume 87 Abstract: L´exégèse de Psaume 87 sera examiné et résumé à partir des textes midrachiques et talmudiques jusqu´aux adaptations modernes de ces dernières interpretations, notamment dans le commentaire du Rabbin Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808 -­‐ 1888). Annie Noblesse-­‐Rocher, Université de Strasbourg, Faculté de théologie Protestante, France Title: Le psaume 87 et son interprétation chez les Réformateurs du 16e s. Abstract: Martin Bucer a conçu un volumineux commentaire du psautier, inspirateur et fonds documentaire pour les autres commentaires des psaumes. L'importance exégétique et herméneutique accordée par Martin Bucer aux sources juives médiévales est ici étudiée à propos de "Sion, mère des nations" ainsi que sa postérité dans les commentaires évangéliques de l’époque moderne Monday 21st July ENS, Salle des RÉSISTANTS (Main building, 1st flour, map: 3) Session: 001: New Testament / Rabbinic Literature 9.00-­‐10.30 Chair: Mireille Hadas-­‐Lebel Peter J. Tomson, FPG Brussels -­‐ KU Leuven, Belgium Title: Les Épîtres de Paul comme sources pour le Phariséisme historique Abstract: Dans les études juives comme dans la théologie chrétienne, tant en ses branches exégétique que historique et systématique, l’Apôtre Paul compte depuis longtemps pour le grand pourfendeur du judaïsme et plus particulièrement de son ancien milieu spirituel, le Phariséïsme. En revanche, depuis l’éclosion de « la nouvelle perspective sur Paul » les exégètes, eux au moins, commencent à apprécier l’enracinement juif de l’Apôtre. La présente communication va explorer six exemples dans Paul, trois fois deux, des trois disciplines-­‐type du judaïsme « proto rabbinique », halakha, midrash et aggada. Dans le domaine de la halakha, on étudiera (1) les lois concernant le divorce et le remariage en 1 Co. 7,39s. et Ro. 7,2-­‐4 et (2) le concept de la συνειδησις (cf. ‫דעת‬, ‫ )מחשבה‬ en 1 Cο. 10,25-­‐29. Dans le domaine du midrash, on va étudier (3) la brève allusion à Hosée en 1 Co. 15,54s. dans laquelle se cache une tradition trouvée aussi dans les targoumim, et (4) l’utilisation diversifiée du terme σπερμα Αβρααμ en Ro. 4,13-­‐18 et Ga. 3,16-­‐19. Dans le domaine de l’aggada, on s’occupera (5) de la tradition de la source voyageant en 1 Co. 10,1-­‐5 et (6) de la parabole du corps en 1 Co. 12,14-­‐27. Finalement, on résumera les conclusions que les épîtres de Paul nous permettent à tirer quant au caractère du Phariséïsme au milieu du premier siècle et à la relation entre la tradition pharisienne et la littérature rabbinique. Eran Shuali, Université de Strasbourg, France Title: « Rabbiniser » le Nouveau Testament : l’usage de la littérature rabbinique dans les traductions du Nouveau Testament en hébreu Abstract: Pour le traducteur du Nouveau Testament en hébreu, la littérature rabbinique ancienne constitue un outil inestimable : il y trouve un grand nombre de mots et d’expressions et même des énoncés entiers qui sont très proches de ceux de son texte source et qui sont formulés directement dans la langue cible vers laquelle il traduit. Dans cette étude, j’examinerai l’usage que les différentes personnes ayant traduit le Nouveau Testament en hébreu au cours des siècles ont en effet fait de cette littérature. Notamment, je tâcherai de montrer en quoi cet usage a pu faciliter la compréhension du Nouveau Testament par les lecteurs juifs visés, et en quoi, en revanche, il risquait de fausser le sens du texte original. Cet examen des pratiques de travail des traducteurs permettra aussi de dégager certaines de leurs conceptions concernant les rapports historiques et théologiques entre christianisme et judaïsme. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee break Session: 002 Jewish / Christian Exegesis 11.00-­‐13.00 Chair: Moshe Blidstein, University of Oxford, UK Title: Deed and Word in Late Ancient Christian and Jewish Biblical Exegesis Abstract: Many Second Temple Period and Rabbinic texts attempt to relate the normative value of the actions of the biblical patriarchs to the law received by Moses at Sinai. Typically they uphold the Sinai law as primary, and seek to demonstrate the coherence of the patriarchs’ action with it. For late ancient Greek and Syriac Christian exegetes, however, the biblical ritual laws were seen as temporary and non-­‐obligatory, even though the Hebrew Bible was an authoritative text. This had repercussions for the relationship between the normative value of the patriarchs’ actions and Moses’ law: At least for the more literally-­‐
minded exegetes, the former could be understood as relating to the actions of God-­‐fearing men and women, worthy of imitation by Christians, while the latter, which bore the brunt of anti-­‐Jewish polemic, were regularly attacked as temporary concessions to the stiff-­‐necked Jews, or worse. Motivated by anti-­‐
Jewish polemic, some Christian exegetes took this further: contradictions between the actions of the patriarchs (even those later than the Sinai revelation, such as Moses or David) and the Sinai law were seen as intentional fissures in the text, which proved the secondary nature, or even essential hollowness, of the Sinai law. This perspective created a paradoxical bifurcation in the derivation of norms from the biblical text: valid laws and customs could be easily derived from implicit patriarchal action, while explicit legal injunctions in the bible lost their normative value. In my paper, I will explore this hermeneutic through a number of case-­‐studies from Syriac exegesis of biblical passages speaking of impurity. I will demonstrate its connections to Jewish-­‐Christian polemic on these issues, and compare it to the hermeneutic deployed by Jewish exegesis on these texts. Koji Osawa, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Japan Title: The Interpretations of the Golden Calf Episode in the Book of Exodus Ch. 32: A Comparative Analysis of Judaism and Christianity Abstract: In this paper, I reveal the background of Jewish and Christian interpretations of the golden calf episode in the Book of Exodus chapter 32 by comparing and analyzing interpretations that existed up to about the fifth century C.E. The golden calf episode involved the Israelites’ worship of a golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai while Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments from God at the top. The episode was used by Christianity to attack Judaism but was also very problematic for Judaism on its own terms. Interestingly, for example, interpretations by both sides tend to defend Aaron, who, according to the account in the Book of Exodus, played a very important part. Their reasons for defending him are completely different, however. To show both perspectives, I draw on the Jewish traditions represented by Tannaim and Amoraim and the Christian traditions represented mainly by the Church Fathers up to Ephrem the Syrian. Andor Kelenhegyi, Central European University, Hungary Title: Learning or born to be a sheep... A survey of the sheep-­‐shepherd metaphor in early Jewish and Christian exegesis Abstract: Perhaps the most influential Biblical metaphor describing governance and political systems is that of the shepherd and his flock. In the metaphor the shepherd guides the flock and protects it from the raids of savage beasts which threaten the well-­‐being of the community. My paper examines the evolution of this metaphor which originates in ancient Near Eastern poetry and mythology and through the medium of Old Testament (OT) literature (e.g. Ezek 34, Ps. 78, 80) has found its way first to the New Testament (NT) (e.g. Mk 6:34, Jn 10:11-­‐16) and then to both Jewish and Christian exegesis. The clarity and compactness of the metaphor enabled it to become the archetypical representation of the relationship between God and His chosen nation. Contrary to usual exegetical polemics, however, Jewish and Christian interpreters not only disagreed about the identity of the characters, but also concerning the nature of shepherding and political leadership as such. A parallel reading of Jewish and Christian interpretations of OT and, to a limited extent, NT loci of the shepherd-­‐metaphor demonstrates that the two interpretational traditions constructed profoundly dissimilar models of political authority. The concurrence of two role-­‐models, that of the messiah-­‐king providing protection and that of the educator providing moral guidance, in the tradition concerning the figure of Jesus resulted in a transformation of the entire shepherd-­‐metaphor. In Christian exegesis, the educational and proselytizing aspect became the primary context of interpreting the activity of leadership. And probably due to the Christian preoccupation with Jesus, the shepherd-­‐educator, rabbis decided to accentuate the opposite model, in which shepherding correspond solely to political and institutional direction. Miriam Ben Zeev, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: Did the Romans Dislike the Jews? – Latin Literature on Jews and Judaism in the Republican Era Abstract: The question to be addressed concerns Roman positions towards the Jews as early as the first century BCE. Cicero's testimony on the Jews and Judaism has been often taken as a sign of anti-­‐Judaism, but it should be evaluated on the background of his political and forensic purposes, comparing it with the attitudes displayed towards other population groups. As for Varro's positive comments on Judaism, which follow a long tradition of Greek Stoic philosophical thought which censured the cult of images; it is doubtful that they attest to special esteem for Judaism. Both Cicero and Varro, it appears, did not have definite personal views regarding the Jews. The same impression we get from Livy's comments concerning the Temple of Jerusalem and from the longest and most detailed piece on the Jews written in the first century BCE, that of Pompeius Trogus, who draws both on Jewish and anti-­‐Jewish sources, displaying no sign of anti-­‐Jewish bias. As for Latin poetry, Horace’s and Ovid’s references to the Jews display not hostility but rather amusement, being kinds of jokes, comic and ironic allusions, passing jibes. In the first century BCE, it appears, the Romans did not relate to the Jews in a way different from how they felt towards other national groups. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session: 003 Tannaitic 14.00-­‐15.30 Chair: Daniel Stoekl Ben Ezra Daniel Stoekl Ben Ezra, EPHE, France Title: Mishna -­‐ towards an Interactive Edition and Translation with a Historical Commentary Abstract: This paper shall present the current state of the CTMishna project, a project dedicated to establishing an editio critica minor of the Mishna with a French translation and a brief historical-­‐philological commentary using digital humanities. On the historical side, special attention will be paid to the relevance of Second Temple and early Christian literature (Aramaic Levi Document, Book of the Watchers, Josephus, Barnabas) in analyzing the historical and the rhetorical elements of mYoma. Comparing our results with previous and contemporary proposals (Cohn, Safrai, Neusner, Instone-­‐Brewer), I shall argue for an origin in the Temple ritual for some traditions and the rhetorical retrojection of other late traditions. On the technological side, demonstrations of the use of the electronic platform shall be made. The project is undertaken with the generous support of the team of the Qumranwörterbuch Göttingen and in collaboration with the digital Mishna project by Hayim Lapin and the German Mishna project by Michael Krupp. Hayim Lapin, University of Maryland/IIAS-­‐Jerusalem, Israel Title: Toward a Digital Critical Edition of the Mishnah Abstract: Despite its great importance, there is no critical edition of the Mishnah. This paper describes a project to create a digital edition. The presentation will describe the project, preview the demonstration version of the project, outline the features that are planned for implementation, and discuss the implications of the project for the study of Judaism and for the digital humanities. The demo version is at www.digitalmishnah.umd.edu. Emmanuel Friedheim, The Israel and Golda Koschitzky Department of Jewish History, Bar Ilan University Title: La perception du non-­‐Juif dans la littérature tannaïtique au regard de la réalité historique des deux premiers siècles de l'ère commune Abstract: L'objectif de cette communication, est de clarifier le rapport des Sages de la littérature mishnique vis-­‐à-­‐vis de la gentilité et de définir la perception du rapport identitaire entre Juifs et non-­‐Juifs aux yeux des Sages. De relations extrêmement difficiles, dues manifestement au contexte historique accablant, relatif au soulèvement contre Rome de 70, motivant haine, suspicion et vigilance, les textes semblent toutefois montrer paradoxalement que le rapport idéologique vis-­‐à-­‐vis de l'étranger, fut globalement respectueux, défendant l'idée de l'humanité du non-­‐Juif voire même celle de fraternité. Les frontières entre les identités religieuses et politiques pointent alors dans le sens de limites peu étanches entre les communautés. En effet, des Sages réputés "nationalistes" et appuyant les insurrections juives notamment celle de Bar-­‐Kokhba feront preuve par ailleurs d'une très large tolérance vis-­‐à-­‐vis de la gentilité, tandis que d'autres, réputés d'ordinaire pour leur modération, pourront partager des positions très critiques envers leurs voisins non-­‐
Juifs et leurs cultures. Les modes de discernement d'une réalité historique en évolution constante, seront susceptibles d'expliquer ces appréciations paradoxales et divergentes à l'encontre de l'environnement non-­‐
Juif de Palestine romaine. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session: 004 Jewish/Christian Calendar 16.00-­‐18.00 Chair: Sasha Stern Israel Sandman, University College London, UK Title: Worthy Rival: Medieval Jewish Fascination with the Easter Calculation Abstract: Most Christian observances are set on fixed dates of the solar calendar, year in year out. In contrast, the date of Easter is variable, being calculated in a way that largely recalls the Jewish roots, in Passover, of this most Christian observance. The Easter date is calculated using a system that synthesizes disparate calendrical phenomena: the season, which is an aspect of the solar calendar; the lunar months; and the days of the week. Part of this system of synthesis entails the intercalating of a 13th lunar month into seven years within a 19-­‐year cycle. By the middle ages, the 19-­‐year cycle was used by both Jews, in fixing the date of Passover, and by Christians, in fixing the date of Easter. Furthermore, both Jews and Christians intercalate according to the same sequence within the 19-­‐year cycle, at years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, & 19. However, Jews and Christians begin the 19-­‐year cycle two years apart. As a result, only five of the seven intercalations are shared by both religions. This mix of correspondence and difference sparked Jewish fascination, giving rise to Jewish analysis of various aspects of Christianity. I have found this recorded in two works that I have been critically editing from manuscript, annotating, and translating from Hebrew into English: the calendrical work by Abraham bar Hayya (or: Hiyya), written in France in 1123; and Yesod Olam, by Isaac Israeli, written in Spain in 1309/10. While each work is on the fixed Jewish calendar, each contains a substantial section on calendars of various nations, and on the Christian Easter calculation and related observances. One can see how the latter author developed the analysis initiated by the former. Aspects of Christianity upon which these Jewish authors dwell include: the Jewishness and humanity of Jesus and Mary; the degree to which Christianity is derivative from Judaism, including historiography of Christian origins and observances; and the balance between, on the one hand, respect for Judaically acceptable Christian exegesis of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian incorporation of Jewish practices, and, on the other hand, scorn for Christian deviance from these. In addition, the first author uses the literary device of citing discussion between him and Christian clergy; and this is deemed important enough to be cited in the latter work. The Jewish attitude is not all negative; both Jewish works combine confutation with respect for that which the Christian rival ‘got right’. Justine Isserles, University College, London, UK The Use of Vernacular and Latin in Julian, Bloodletting and Regimen Calendars in Hebrew Manuscripts from Western Europe (13th-­‐15th c.): Written and Oral Transmission This paper will focus on an intriguing selection of vernacular and Latin words which were recently uncovered during the editing of medieval Hebrew calendrical texts, within the framework of a Leverhulme Trust funded project at University College, London, entitled: Medieval Jewish and Christian Calendars from Franco-­‐Germany and England (12th-­‐15th c.), led by Prof. Sacha Stern. This presentation will unfold as a survey of le’azim (in Judeo-­‐German, Judeo-­‐French and Judeo-­‐Provençal) and Latin words found in newly discovered Julian, bloodletting and regimen calendars in Hebrew manuscripts from Franco-­‐Germany and Southern France dated between the 13th and 15th centuries. Highlights of theses numerous terms will be described within categories relative to calendars (months, feasts, fasts, saint names, technical terms), commerce (markets and fairs), astro-­‐medicine (zodiac signs, planets, humours, Egyptian days) and medicine (herbal remedies and potions). Moreover, particular attention will be drawn to the question of transmission, where examples of spellings of certain words will shed light on an oral and/or written reception of these calendars. Their description will attempt to display the wealth of subjects where vernacular and Latin languages appear in medieval Hebrew calendrical texts for didactic, socio-­‐economic, astro-­‐medical and medical purposes, revealing yet again new perspectives in medieval Judeo-­‐Christian relations in Western Europe. Jean-­‐Jacques Wahl, European Association for Jewish Culture, France Title: The Omer Calendar, Between Jewish and Popular Art Abstract: If the counting of the omer is already recorded in the Bible, the calendar as a Judaica item is relatively new. There is no religious rules linked with its production leaving a large liberty to its producers. We will try through various examples to show how in many cases Jewish and non-­‐Jewish artistic influences meet in its conception Ilana Wartenberg, University College London, UK Title: Non-­‐Jewish Calendars in Medieval Hebrew Treatises on the Jewish Calendar Abstract: We possess textual evidence for a rich calendrical literary tradition in Hebrew. Its roots were consolidated during the Hebrew Renaissance of the 12th century. This tradition was created by a chain of treatises on the Jewish calendar written by prominent Jewish scholars immersed in Arabic science. The leading figures are the Iberian polymaths Abraham bar Hiyya and Abraham Ibn Ezra (12th century) as well as Isaac Israeli (14th century). Some calendrical books encompass many layers, for example: algorithmic (i.e. how to reckon the calendar), scientific (e.g. astronomical theories), philological (discussion of scientific terms that are relevant to the calendar) and theological (e.g. religious elements in the determination of the Jewish calendar). It is extremely interesting to find chapters on non-­‐Jewish calendars in some of these treatises. It is important to try to understand their role in a book on the Jewish calendar and whether their presence sheds any light on the connection between Jews and non-­‐Jews in the Middle Ages. The answers may seem clearer in the case of the Christian and the Muslim calendars, but less so for other calendars. I will present the chapters on non-­‐Jewish calendars in Abraham Bar Hiyya’s Sefer ha-­‐‘Ibbur and Isaac Israeli’s Yesod Olam. I will discuss the Muslim and Christian calendars briefly, and will focus on the Persian Zoroastrian calendar in Sefer ha-­‐‘Ibbur. Monday 21st July ENS, Salle WEIL (Main building, ground flour, map 17) Session: 001: Jewish Languages 9.00-­‐10.30 Panel: Judeo-­‐Neo-­‐Aramaic Organizers: Ofra Tirosh-­‐Becker & Geoffrey Khan Chair: Ofra Tirosh Becker Geoffrey Khan, University of Cambridge, UK Title: The Jewish Neo-­‐Aramaic Dialects Abstract: In this paper I give a survey of the current state of research on the Jewish Neo-­‐Aramaic dialects. These were originally spoken by Jews in northern Iraq and western Iran. They are now highly endangered, since all the Aramaic-­‐speaking Jews have left their original places of residence and have now mostly settled in Israel. The Jewish Neo-­‐Aramaic dialects are distinguished from the Christian dialects in their grammatical structure and their lexicon, which includes a Hebrew component. They can be classified into two broad sub-­‐
groups, the 'lishana deni' group and the 'trans-­‐Zab group'. All dialects exhibit ergativity in their perfective verbal forms, but the typology of this ergativity differs across the two sub-­‐groups. Eran Cohen, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: Genitive Constructions in Neo-­‐Aramaic and the Ezafe Construction in Kurdish Abstract: The Jewish Neo-­‐Aramaic dialect of Zakho shows a unique situation with regard to genitive constructions, compared with all other modern Semitic languages, including former phases of Aramaic. The functional extent of these constructions is analogous to Akkadian, four thousand years ago. This striking similarity between a modern Aramaic dialect and the most ancient phase of Semitic cannot be explained genealogically, since there is no evidence that Aramaic in its various phases has ever shown this dexterity of marking the dependent in its genitive constructions. The solution is to be sought in language contact with Northern Kurdish (Kurmanjî) whose ezafe constructions share some similarities with the dialect of Zakho and thus may account for the current state of affairs in the latter. The paper describes the highlights of the genitive construction in the Jewish dialect of Zakho and the ezafe construction in Kurmanjî, and discusses the possibility that the current state of affairs in Zakho exists mostly thanks to the situation in Kurmanjî.10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break. Lali Guledani & Tamar Kurtanidze, Ilia State University, Tbilisi Georgia Title: Pronouns and Pronominal Suffixes in the Neo-­‐Aramaic of Jews from Salmas Abstract: In this article we would like to discuss structure of Pronouns and pronominal suffixes in the speech of Jews from Salmas. We will try to perform the forms which are used nowadays by native speakers, to discuss particularities of the pronouns and pronominal suffixes in this Neo Aramaic language and also to compare them to the forms existing in the texts recorded by Rubens Duval in the beginning of the 19th C. The texts for our research are recorded from the native speakers, who were born in Georgia or in Iran and mostly are be-­‐ or trilingual. We also will try to find influence of other languages of environment on the structure, formation and function of the pronouns and pronominal suffixes in the Neo Aramaic Dialect of Jews of Salmas. The article is the part of the PhD work, which is supposed to study phonetic, morphology and syntax of this particular dialect. Session: 002 Jewish Languages 11.00-­‐13.00 Panel: Jewish Languages Organizers: Ofra Tirosh-­‐Becker & Geoffrey Khan Chair: Geoffrey Khan Reuven Enoch, Ariel University of Samaria, Israel Title: Passive Forms of Possibility (Potential) and Caution in Judeo-­‐Georgian Abstract: In Georgian language forms of passive voice with a prefix “E”, occasionally with a prefix “I”, can provide different nuances of meaning: possibility -­‐ caution of doing action (“metamasheba bavshvi” – “child is playing with me”, but “kals ar etamasheba chadraki” – “women can’t play chess “), willingness to do action (“emgereba bichs” – boy wants to sing “), position of a person doing action towards this action (“mebevreba mag pasi” – “I think it’s too expensive”) etc. In Judeo-­‐Georgian, the use of such forms is much more widespread than in Georgian. Almost all forms of passive voice with a prefix “E” can have nuances of potential, either permitting or prohibiting action. For example, in the material that I recorded in Kutaisi in 1976 there is such a dialog: ”Abel kal tma geeshleba?” (is the women in mourning allowed to open her hair?) – “ras ambob, arc geeshleba da arc deebarcxneba!” (What are you talking about; she cannot open her hair or brush it). Apparently, this is connected to excessive regulation of life of Georgian Jews – according to religious laws, their customs and prejudices. These factors determine what is allowed and what is prohibited. Ofra Tirosh-­‐Becker, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: A Judeo-­‐Arabic Translation of the Scroll of Antiochus from Ghardaia (Algeria) Abstract: The Scroll of Antiochus, also known as the Scroll of the Hasmoneans, is a popular account of the wars of the Hasmoneans and of the origin of the holiday of Ḥanukkah. The scroll was composed in Aramaic, probably in Ereẓ Israel in the talmudic period. The scroll had been translated into Hebrew and also into Latin, German, Spanish, Arabic and Persian. A North African Judeo-­‐Arabic translation of this scroll was first published in 1926 and re-­‐published in 1953 by ‘Imran Ṣaban of Ghardaia (Algeria), a Jewish community which lies along the Wadi Mzab in the northern Sahara Desert. This community had a unique custom of reading the Judeo-­‐Arabic translation of this Scroll in the synagogue on the Sabbath of Ḥanukkah, immediately after reading the Torah and the Hafṭara. In this paper we will discuss the Judeo-­‐Arabic language of this Judeo-­‐Arabic translation and its characteristic features. Benjamin Hary, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA Title: Loan Translations in Egyptian Judeo-­‐Arabic Abstract: Many Jewish religiolects share a special literary genre, the verbatim translation of sacred religious and liturgical Hebrew/Aramaic texts into the various Jewish religiolects (šarḥ, pl. šurūḥ, in Judeo-­‐Arabic; šarʿ or šarḥ in Judeo-­‐Neo-­‐Aramaic; tavsili in Judeo-­‐Georgian; tefila in Judeo-­‐Italian; tamsir in Jewish Malayalam; ladino in Judeo-­‐Spanish; taytsh in Yiddish; etc.). The translations include the Bible, Midrashic literature, Pirkei Avot (“Ethics of the Patriarchs,” a tractate of moral and religious teachings from the Second Temple period and the first centuries of the Common Era), the Passover Haggadah, the Siddur or prayer book, the Talmud, and more. In these translations the phenomenon of calque translation is evident. Borrowing, or the introduction of linguistic features from one language to another, is common in the texts of the šurūḥ. Borrowing is a gradual process: first a linguistic feature is introduced into the host language through a bilingual community and is not yet adapted phonologically or morphologically. Once it is integrated into the host language and adopted by the monolingual community, it becomes part of the host language (Mahootian 2006: 513). One type of borrowing is the loan, a “linguistic unit (usually a lexical item) which has come to be used in a language or dialect other than the one where it originated” (Crystal 2003: 275). According to Crystal, there are several kinds of loan processes: loan words, loan blends, loan shifts, and loan translations. Loan translations are common in Jewish religiolects; for example, the phrase “may her memory be for a blessing” in Jewish English (Benor) which literally translates the Hebrew /zixrona livraxa/. This paper investigates loan translations, which are also known as “calque translations,” in Egyptian Judeo-­‐
Arabic and especially in 18th-­‐ and 19th-­‐century šurūḥ. Gabriel M. Rosenbaum, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: Shabbat (Saturday) in Modern Egypt: Customs and their Reflection in Spoken Judeo-­‐Arabic Abstract: Egyptian Jews, especially those who lived in popular neighborhoods, spoke a distinctive Arabic dialect differing in a number of respects from the Arabic spoken by their Muslim and Christian neighbors. This paper is based on some sections from my larger study done in recent years on spoken Egyptian Judeo-­‐
Arabic in the twentieth century. The materials for this study were collected from a large number of native speakers, many of whom are no longer alive. The paper describes many lexical items originating in either Hebrew or Arabic that are connected to traditions and customs related to the holy day of Shabbat (Saturday); some of these items are in a mixed style (Hebrew-­‐Arabic). This vocabulary, shared by the Jews of Egypt, was not understood by their non-­‐Muslim neighbors. The paper also refers to some grammatical peculiarities of this unique vocabulary. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session: 003 Jewish Languages 14.00-­‐15.30 Panel: Nouvelles recherches sur la haketía: langue, histoire et littérature Organizer: Line Amselem Chair: Line Amselem Jacob Bentolila, The Ben-­‐Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: Humour et invention dans le lexique de la Haketía Abstract: Ayant préparé un dictionnaire sur l'élément hébraïque dans la Haketía (le Judeo-­‐espagnol de l'Afrique du Nord) j'ai constaté plusieurs cas d'invention ou innovation lexicales où se distingue une intention humoristique. Dans ma communication je vais présenter brièvement la conception de mon dictionnaire en général et, en particulier, un compte rendu de ces cas spécifiques. Line Amselem, Université de Valenciennes et du Hainaut-­‐Cambrésis, France Title: "Yahasrá. Escenas haquetiescas de Solly Lévy (Montréal, E. D. I. J., 1992) : solennité et comique de la première œuvre publiée en haketía." Abstract: La haketía, langue judéo-­‐espagnole du Maroc, est demeurée principalement orale jusqu’au départ de la plupart des juifs du Nord du Maroc dans la seconde moitié du XXe siècle. Le premier auteur à avoir véritablement écrit et publié son œuvre en haketía est Solly Lévy avec son recueil de saynètes comiques Yahasrá (1992). Nous voulons présenter l’origine du projet, son contexte, le caractère fondateur, mémoriel, voire politique de la publication, malgré sa tonalité à dominante comique. Paloma Díaz-­‐Mas, CSIC, Madrid, Spain Title: Attitudes des écrivains et des journalistes espagnols concernant la haketía Abstract: La présence coloniale espagnole en Afrique du Nord depuis le milieu du XIXe siècle a contribué à la connaissance de l'existence des séfarades du Maroc par les Espagnols. Bien qu'il existe des études sur les attitudes des Espagnols vers la haketía après les premiers contacts en 1860, l'attitude vers la haketia à l'époque du Protectorat espagnol du Maroc (1912-­‐1956) a été moins étudiée. Dans cette communication, nous analysons comment la haketía a été traitée dans le oeuvres des écrivains et des journalistes espagnols, avec une attention particulière à l'époque du Protectorat. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session: 004 Jewish Languages 16.00-­‐18.00 Ladino Chair: Katja Smid David Bunis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: Jewish-­‐Turkish Linguistic Encounters in the Ottoman Empire Abstract: From the very establishment of the Sephardic exile communities in the Ottoman Empire at the end of the fifteenth century through the twenty-­‐first century, Judezmo (Ladino) speakers have interacted with speakers of Turkish. That interaction led to incorporation of thousands of Turkish elements in Judezmo. The proposed paper focuses on the earliest period of the Jewish-­‐Turkish linguistic encounter, and the beginnings of the Turkish component in Judezmo. Ora Schwarzwald, Bar Ilan University, Israel Title: Ladino Shulḥan Hapanim and Ḥovat Halevavot: Thessaloniki 1568 and Venice 1713 Abstract: Two important Jewish books were first published in Thessaloniki in 1568: Mesa de el alma (MA; in Hebrew Shulḥan Hapanim), and Ḥovat Halevavot 'Duty of the Hearts' (HL). While MA deals with issues of Halakha, HL is about Jewish moral behavior. Both books were translations from Hebrew into Ladino: MA by Meir Benvenisti from Shulḥan Arukh by Yosef Karo, and HL by Zadiq Formon from Ibn Tibon's Hebrew translation of Bahye Ibn Paquda's book written in (Judeo-­‐)Arabic. Both books were printed again in Venice in 1713, and there are considerable linguistic differences between these and their earlier Thessaloniki versions (letter orthography, vocalization systems, choice of words, choice of biblical verses, and the general setup of the texts). These differences will be described in detail and possible explanations for these differences will be presented: the change in the Judeo-­‐Spanish language between the times of publication; translation principle of explicitation and normalization in the later texts; and source vs. target population of the various Sephardic communities in Thessaloniki and Venice. Katja Smid, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: Ladino Practical Guides for Ritual Slaughter: the Case of Sefer Zoveach Todah (Belgrade, 1860) Abstract: Practical guides of religious observance written from the 16th to the 20th century by Sephardi Rabbis in Judeo-­‐Spanish have been classified within the framework of Ladino rabbinical literature and, despite its importance in Jewish life, have barely been studied until now. One of the oldest fragmentary texts to be preserved in Judeo-­‐Spanish, Hilkhot Shechita uBediqa (Constantinople, circa 1514), concerns ritual slaughter laws for consumption, and the examination of animals according to Jewish dietary laws. The aim of this presentation is to examine Sefer Zoveach Todah, an aljamiado (printed in Hebrew Rashi script) Ladino book (82 pages) dealing in a comprehensive way with animal slaughter laws. The work was originally written in Hebrew by Yosef ben Abraham Molkho, and later translated into Judeo-­‐Spanish by Refael Yosef Ben Sason (Belgrade, 1860). This paper will discuss the halakhic contents of the book, and the specific Hebrew and Judeo-­‐Spanish terminology related to the subject. Ben Sason’s introduction will be commented, in order to disclose some ritual, communal, geographical, and social specificities related to slaughtering in a small community at the periphery of the Ottoman Empire, and the difficulties it involved in the mid-­‐19th-­‐century Sephardi community of Belgrade. Iskra Dobreva, University of Sofia, Bulgaria Title: Judeo-­‐Spanish as a Reference Point to Study Common Balkan Vocabulary Abstract: Unlike other Balkan people, Sephardic Jews were never dominated or conquered by the Turks; on the contrary, they were welcomed to the Ottoman lands and took over quite prestigious positions in terms of their religious and spiritual freedom and autonomy, and also in judicial and economic independence, within the limits of the respective Sephardic community. This led to the positive attitude towards Turkish culture and language and later on in the XIX and XX centuries Turkish vocabulary was reinforced in Ladino, in order to differentiate it from Modern Spanish. Quite the opposite occurred in the other Balkan languages: during the XIX and XX century a common purifying trend is created and aimed to ‘cleaning’ the languages of the newly established national states from the old Turkish words and expressions, although even today many remained at the level of archaisms, stylistically marked vocabulary, etc. and still in the XXI century thousands of words of Turkish and Greek origin exist in the Balkan languages. The Oriental Judeo-­‐
Spanish, as transferred at the end of the XV century by Sephardic Jews escaping from the Inquisition, joined the Balkan Linguistic Area later than the other Balkan languages, about a century after the start of the Turkish linguistic dominance, due to economic, political and social reasons. Simultaneously, this period was the apogee of Ottoman culture and the time of most intense linguistic borrowing from Turkish to the Balkan languages. As one of the languages of the Balkan minorities, side by side with Roma and Armenian, Judeo-­‐Spanish is very prolific and strategic prism to target Common Balkan Vocabulary, as Sephardic communities were present in the town all over the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor. As it is well known, normally, urban language evolves and standardizes much faster than the language in rural areas. Sephardic communities were geographically dispersed across the Balkan Peninsula, Greek islands and Mediterranean coast of Asia Minor. But they were keeping personal, cultural and trade relations between these communities and simultaneously, they were in contact with the languages spoken in the respective area, namely Greek, Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian, etc. The presence of Latin/Romance substrata in the Balkans is very strong and it also contributed to the preservance of the Judeo-­‐Spanish in the Balkans. Latin/Romance substrata existed till the times of Roman Empire, Balkans were part of the Roman Empire for some centuries and Latin, beside Greek was used as the language of scripture and administrative-­‐
military order. Modern Romanian, as the far eastern wing of Romances, as well as Dalmatian which was actively spoken in the Western coast of the Balkan Peninsula until the XVth century and later declined until its final disappearance at the end of the XIXth century, are enough to name some of the Balkan Romance languages. Several toponyms and direct Latin borrowings throughout the Balkan places and languages prove the solid existence of Latin/Romance substrata. Same refers to Greek substrata and direct borrowings, which were hugely spread at the Ibero-­‐Romance varieties at the end of the XVth century, Judeo-­‐Spanish being one of these varieties. When Judeo-­‐Spanish joined the Balkan linguistic Area at the end of the XVth century, it found a fertile soil enriched with Greek and Roman substrata. Unlike the other Balkan languages, which were local or more precisely slowly introduced within the Balkan Linguistic Area, Judeo-­‐Spanish is an imported language. It was transferred by Sephardic migrants in relatively short period from one geographic, political-­‐economic and socio-­‐cultural reality (the Iberian kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, Portugal, Navarre, etc.) to another, namely the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, this event occurred comparatively late, since the end of the XVth century onwards. These are some of the main factors which led me to assume and take the Oriental variety Judeo-­‐Spanish as a reference point to identify and analyze the Common Balkan Vocabulary. Common Balkan Vocabulary includes thousands of items. This vocabulary does not only include words from Turkish and Greek origin, but also from French, Italian and other European origin. Original Sephardic texts from the XIX and XX centuries, as well as bilingual dictionaries are used to illustrate this phenomenon. Monday 21st July ENS, Salle UV (Building RATAUX, 2nd basement, map 19) 9.00-­‐10.30 No Session 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session: 002 Contemporary Jewish History 11.00-­‐13.00 France post 1945 Chair: Anne Grynberg Joël Sebban, Fondation pour la mémoire de la Shoah – Université Paris I, France Title: “Counterhistories” or Common History? Jewish-­‐Christian Dialogue in France during the emancipation era (1806-­‐1940) Abstract: In her work "Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus," the American historian Suzannah Heschel defines the historical analysis of the German theologian on the origins of Christianity as a “counterhistory.” This concept, first introduced into postcolonial historiography, and adapted to Jewish history by Amos Funkenstein and David Biale, refers to a form of polemics in which the sources of the adversary are exploited and turned ‘against the grain,’ in Walter Benjamin’s phrase.” Geiger tries to defend Judaism by writing a counterhistory of Christian counterhistory: in his eyes, Christianity is a mere paganized Judaism in contradiction with the Gospels themselves. Judaism is the authentic source of Western civilization. In the wake of this renowned predecessor, a founder of Jewish studies, Heschel aims at restoring contemporary Jewish studies to their initial function of counterhistory. This work questions this interpretation of Christianity as “counterhistory” by focusing on the French Jewish community in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century -­‐ from the recognition of Judaism as a religion under the Napoleonic Empire to the founding of the first Jewish-­‐Christian associations in the 1930s. As it was the first community to be emancipated in Europe, it provides a unique – and understudied – case for examining Jewish interpretations of Christianity. I argue that the Jewish reflection on Christianity cannot be considered apart from the process of acculturation of a minority within a Christian society. The adoption of the way of life and thought of the majority culture left an indelible mark on the interpretation of Jewish writers regarding Christian doctrine, history, and society. If this is so, should one see Jewish thought on Christianity and, more broadly Jewish-­‐Christian dialogue in the age of Emancipation through the polemics of “counterhistory?” Parallel to this polemical view, I put forth an alternative history which seeks to determine the communal heritage of the two traditions, linked by Biblical sources, against the rise of “new paganisms.” Eliezer Schilt, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: Dialoguer autour de « valeurs communes » ? Un des enjeux du rapprochement judéo-­‐chrétien en France après 1945 Abstract: Le réseau des acteurs qui renouvelle le dialogue judéo-­‐chrétien en France après la Seconde Guerre mondiale est essentiellement issu du milieu intellectuel français (Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Levinas, Paul Claudel, Jean Daniélou, par exemple). Il agit dans le cadre de l’association, "L’Amitié judéo-­‐
chrétienne", fondée en 1948 par l’historien Jules Isaac, et l’écrivain Edmond Fleg. En marge de cette association officielle, des intellectuels comme Jean-­‐Paul Sartre, Albert Camus ou François Mauriac s’expriment aussi sur les liens nouveaux qui se tissent entre Juifs et chrétiens. L’étude des échanges entre ces différents acteurs, de leurs écrits et interventions dans la sphère publique, permet de distinguer les enjeux sociaux et politiques des années 1950 et 1960 qui sont au cœur des relations judéo-­‐chrétiennes d’alors : par exemple, les premières leçons tirées de la Shoah, le combat renouvelé contre l’antisémitisme et le racisme qui rejoignent les enjeux cruciaux soulevés par le colonialisme ou le pacifisme, et les réactions à la création de l’Etat d’Israël et les premières guerres arabo-­‐israéliennes. Je tenterai de montrer dans cette communication qu’autour de ces débats, les contacts entre Juifs et chrétiens après-­‐guerre ont fortement contribué aux réponses, proposées en premier lieu par les intellectuels juifs et chrétiens, puis reprises en partie par leurs autorités religieuses respectives, face aux changements profonds qui secouent les cultures juives et chrétiennes dans le monde d’après 1945. Jane S. Gabin, United Nations International School, USA Title: American Jewish Soldiers and French Jewish Civilians in Liberated Paris Abstract: Inspired by the stories of my own father, who served in the US Army and was stationed in Paris 1944-­‐45, I am studying incidents in which Jewish soldiers reached out to coreligionists in the liberated population. Was this a widespread practice? Did it facilitate increased visibility of the French Jewish postwar scene? How much assistance did American soldiers provide in the punishment of collaborators, or in the reunification of families? This area of research is still ongoing, as much of the assistance rendered was personal and not part of an official military program. Anne Grynberg, INALCO, Paris, France Title: Consensus et dissensus mémoriels sur la question des 'réparations' dans la France d'aujourd'hui Abstract: Les années 1990 ont marqué une étape fondamentale dans la culture mémorielle de plusieurs Etats européens en ce qui concerne la persécution antijuive et les complicités de certains gouvernements avec les dirigeants nazis. Cela a été le cas en France notamment : en 1995, les plus hautes autorités de l’État ont reconnu officiellement les responsabilités du gouvernement de Vichy et à la suite du président de la République, diverses administrations ainsi que des dignitaires des Églises ont exprimé leur repentance. Deux ans plus tard, la Mission Mattéoli a reçu pour mission de mener une recherche approfondie sur les spoliations matérielles subies par les Juifs sur le sol français, lesquelles sont en cours de dédommagement depuis l’instauration de la CIVS en 1999. Les orphelins de parents morts en déportation reçoivent désormais une pension ; la Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah (FMS) a été mise en place en 2000 afin de soutenir la recherche historique et l’enseignement de la Shoah, d’encourager la transmission de la mémoire et de la culture juives et, en outre, de développer des actions de solidarité envers les survivants de la Shoah ; elle contribue de manière permanente au financement du Mémorial de la Shoah dont les archives, la bibliothèque ainsi que les expositions sont extrêmement précieux et qui a récemment ouvert un mémorial à Drancy, face à l’entrée principale de l’ancien camp. Sur la base d’archives inédites et de témoignages recueillis dans le cadre du Comité d’histoire auprès de la CIVS dont je suis la directrice scientifique, je souhaite préciser et approfondir un certain nombre de questions, dont la principale a trait aux consensus et dissensus mémoriels dans la France d’aujourd’hui. La politique publique de « réparation » menée ces dernières années a-­‐t-­‐elle participé à ‘apurer la dette’ de l’État et de la société française vis-­‐à-­‐vis des Juifs, du moins en termes d’indemnisation financière ? Peut-­‐on aller jusqu’à émettre l’hypothèse qu’en reconnaissant officiellement aux Juifs un statut spécifique de victimes, elle a permis à leurs descendants de mener un travail de ‘résilience’ indispensable à la réconciliation et à la (re)construction d’un vivre-­‐ensemble ? Ou bien a-­‐t-­‐elle au contraire réactivé une sorte de « concurrence des mémoires », voire, en réactivant la prétendue collusion entre les Juifs et l’argent, a-­‐t-­‐elle parfois entraîné des effets pervers d’incompréhension voire d’hostilité ? Vingt ans après l’ouverture de cette ère nouvelle, quel bilan — provisoire — peut-­‐on dresser ? Et comment s'inscrivent ces questions dans les contacts interculturels en ce début du XXIe siècle? 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session: 003 Hassidism 14.00-­‐15.30 Chair: Mark Zvi, Bar Ilan University, Israel Title: "Even from the Stories of the Gentiles, God's Glory Cries Out": Influences on Rabbi Nachman of Breslav's Stories Abstract: Rabbi Nachman of Breslav was the most significant creator of the Hasidic story. In his theoretical discourses, Rabbi Nachman discussed the significance of literature-­‐-­‐not only the Jewish genre dealing with the praise of the "tzaddikim" but literature in general, including that of the gentile world. Rabbi Nachman of Breslav viewed the latter as containing elevated spiritual matters, and he taught that the tzaddik must tell these stories in a form that will express those matters. In this lecture, I will address three points: first, the theological world-­‐view of Rabbi Nachman of Breslav in whose framework a positive attitude to gentile literature developed; second, the stories to which he was exposed; and third, how-­‐-­‐ practically speaking-­‐-­‐ this ars-­‐poetic, theological outlook expressed itself in Rabbi Nachman of Breslav's literary creativity. Daniel Reiser, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: Modern Psychology, Halacha and Hasidism in the 19th and 20th Century Abstract: In this lecture I deal with the contact between Western European modern psychology and Hasidic (Eastern European) psychology. This is done through analyzing the rise of psychological practice and hypnosis in Western Europe and its influence on some Jewish and Hasidic figures in Eastern Europe, especially at the turn of the 19th century (1880-­‐1920). Following the theory of Mesmerism (Pre-­‐Hypnosis), founded by The German physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-­‐1815; who established a clinic In Paris), the interest in the "Unconscious" and in the remarkable abilities of mental powers has been elevated. This interest was also a major factor in the development of Dynamic Psychiatry. Several German-­‐Jewish Physicians took part in this development as Oscar Berger (1844-­‐1885) who was a Prof. at the University of Breslau, being the first at that institution to lecture on nervous diseases. In addition we can find several Halachic Responses from the nineteenth century from Germany (as Rabbi Jacob Ettlinger 1798-­‐1871) dealing with the question of whether mesmerism and hypnotism are witchcraft (and thus are defined idolatrous) or is it permitted to be treated by these methods. The change in the character of the Ba'al Shem (‘master of the name’), which occurred in the eighteenth century, from a physical-­‐illness curer to a mental-­‐
illness curer, a change which appears for example in the image of the Ba'al Shem of Michelstadt, and the Ba'al Shem Tov can be better understood in the light of the development of western psychology and psychiatric practices. In the Austro-­‐Hungarian Empire in the late 19th century Hebrew Books have been published on Mesmerism and Hypnosis (especially in Vienna which was a main meeting point between German culture and Jewish Culture), which enabled the exposure of these methods to Hasidic figures in East Europe (Galicia) as Rabbi Shlomo Aryeh Leib Vinshlboim (1847-­‐1927) of Tyczyn and Rabbi Menachem Ekstein of Rzeszów (a Dzików Hasid 1884-­‐1943). These Hasidic figures who represent traditional Jewish culture have succeeded, in a very surprising way, to adapt new German-­‐Psychiatric practices into their Jewish religion culture and inner life. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session: 004 Christian Hebraism: Jewish Mysticism and Hebraica Veritas 16.00-­‐18.00 Chair: Saverio Campanini Brian Ogren, Rice University, USA Title: Jewish-­‐Christian Discourse on Creation: Yohanan Alemanno and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola Abstract: This paper will examine the uses of kabbalistic ideas of creation by the famed fifteenth century Italian Humanist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and the possible influence on these ideas by Pico's Jewish interlocutor, Yohanan Alemanno. Both of these thinkers, who were known to be in contact, wrote important commentaries on the first chapters of Genesis during the last decade of the fifteenth century. This paper will explore some of the commonalities of their respectively innovative ideas on biblical creation, in order to offer a new perspective on Jewish-­‐Christian intellectual contact and the cross-­‐
fertilization of ideas. Marci Freedman, University of Manchester, UK Title: A Professor Controversiarum Judaicarum: Constantijn L'Empereur and the Jews Abstract: Seventeenth-­‐century Europe was a golden age of Christian Hebraism when Christian scholars both studied and translated many of Judaism’s religious tracts to achieve a deeper theological understanding of the Bible. Alongside the study of Jewish texts, many Hebraists wrote treatises, and spoke out, against Jews and Judaism. One such Hebraist was Constantijn L’Empereur who exemplifies this dual relationship to Jewish literature and the Jews themselves. L’Empereur was a Dutch theologian at the University of Leiden who styled himself as a Professor Controversarium judaicorum. A devout Calvinist, L’Empereur published a number of works many of which theologically attacked Judaism. He also made translations of Hebrew texts for a Latin-­‐reading audience, such as Benjamin of Tudela’s Book of Travels printed in 1633, passages of which were used, in conjunction with Genesis 49:10, by L’Empereur to refute Judaism. And yet, L’Empereur had frequent contact with the Amsterdam Jewish community to perfect his knowledge of Hebrew and purchase Hebrew texts. This paper will thus explore how Hebraists navigated the tension between their theological stance against Judaism and their more practical dealings with the Jews. Eveline Van Staalduine-­‐Sulman, VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands Title: Translating a Jewish Bible Translation into the Christian Scholarly World Abstract: In the sixteenth century Christian Biblical scholars were interested in the ancient sources, including the Hebrew Bible and its (Jewish) Aramaic translations (= Targums). In order to study these translations scholars began to translate Targums into Latin and edit both the Targums and their Latin translations in polyglot Bibles and separate books. The Jewish culture of Bible interpretation thus became a part of the Christian culture of Biblical Studies. This lecture will (1) give a short overview of the editions and the Latin translations; (2) answer the question how the Targums were evaluated by Christian scholars during the sixteenth century; and (3) present a new line of investigation into the effect of these editions-­‐
cum-­‐translations on other fields of Christian Biblical Studies, especially the rapid rise of Biblical commentaries. Isaac Gottlieb, Bar Ilan University, Israel Title: Rupert of Deutz and Jewish Bible Exegesis Abstract: Rupert of Deutz has several explanations that seem to rely on previous Jewish commentary, notably Rashi. On the other hand, certain twelfth century northern French exegetes might have been responding to his work. Are these cases evidence for contacts between Christians and Jews? Monday 21st July SORBONNE, Salle Marc BLOCH (Stairs C, 2nd flour) Session: 001: Visual Arts 9.00-­‐10.30 Chair: Dinah Stillman Carl S. Ehrlich, Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies, Toronto, Canada Title: Shooting Esther Abstract: Since the dawn of cinema as a narrative art-­‐form, the biblical story of Esther has served as the source material for a number of dramatic film treatments. While the reason for this may be found in the book's paradigmatic juxtaposition of good and evil and its liberal dose of sex and violence, this paper will concentrate on the dialogue between the biblical source and its interpretative treatments on the silver screen as examples of the midrashic tradition. Particular attention will be paid to Raoul Walsh and Mario Bava's "Esther and the King" (1960), Amos Gitai's "Esther" (1986), Michael Sajbel’s “One Night with the King” (2006), and David White's "The Book of Esther" (2013). In what manner are these reworkings of the story faithful to their source material? In what manner do they deviate from it? May one distinguish Jewish from Christian retellings? These are some of the questions that will be addressed in this presentation. Jon Solomon, University of Illinois at Urbana-­‐Champaign, USA Title: Judah Ben-­‐Hur, the Proto-­‐Christian Jewish Hero, and Secular Commerce Abstract: From its earliest conception Lew Wallace’s best-­‐selling novel Ben-­‐Hur (1880) depended on political, cultural, and theological conflicts between ancient Judaism and its Roman overlords. Wallace himself claimed that he conceived of the novel only after an 1876 encounter with Robert Ingersoll, “The Great Agnostic,” and primarily to explore the divinity of the Christ. However, my recent research has demonstrated that already by December, 1873, Wallace was researching ancient Judaism at the Library of Congress, and in November, 1874, he mentioned in his correspondence “a Jewish boy that I have got into terrible trouble and must get out of it as best I can.” Focusing on “Old Testament vengeance,” the Indiana lawyer had not yet inserted the Christian element into his novel. After the Ingersoll encounter, Wallace reconceived the novel to incorporate the passion of Christ, to which his protagonist Jewish hero is an eyewitness. At the novel’s climax and denouement, the formerly anti-­‐Roman Jew has become a philanthropic proto-­‐Christian hero but maintains his Jewish family structure. The novel sold millions of copies among the Anglo-­‐American reading public and then, after being translated into many languages, most of Europe. For two decades a dramatic adaptation toured the U.S. and Canada as well as England and Australia, and then MGM’s 1925 film adaptation played in most of the European urban centers. As a result of its unparalleled popularity, dozens of companies, brands, and products were named “Ben-­‐Hur.” My recent research in ephemera and other non-­‐tradition scholarly resources has uncovered this long-­‐forgotten aspect of the book’s reception and has accounted for why most of these commercial applications ignored Judah Ben-­‐Hur’s Jewish origins and culture. Charlotte Klink, Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design, Germany Title: "Missed Encounters: Repetition and Re-­‐Narration in the Works of Yael Bartana and Keren Cytter" Abstract: “She came back. But I don’t mean in my head. I went back in time. And I didn’t have to need to keep moving on forward. The future could keep on waiting. Only the past, beautiful past. She was my past. And she is the present. And I was her. And she was with me. And when I looked at her and she looked at me, time stopped. Stopped. And if she would have stopped looking at me for a moment, I would have gone back in time, and she would look at me again.” (Keren Cytter, "Time", 2005, video, 19:20 min). In my paper, I discuss the video works of the two Isreali artists Keren Cytter and Yael Bartana and ask about their relation to the notion of repetition. Video art already manifests this repetition in its materiality: in the museum or the gallery, video art is usually presented in a loop. Video art thus presents a basic phenomenon within contemporary art that offers the opportunity to explore the concept of repetition in its relation to a new. Yet in the work of those two artists, it is possible to see another form of repetition that is not only based in the material condition of video art. In their works, Yael Bartana and Keren Cytter create, in very different manners, figures of re-­‐narration. Keren Cytter’s famous trilogy And Europe will be Stunned re-­‐narrates history by quoting the aesthetic of Nazi propaganda films and Zionist films by creating a fictional movement that demands the return of 3 million Jews to Poland and claims: “We need the other, and there’s no closer other for us than you! Come! The same but changed.” (Yael Bartana, Mary Kazmary (Nightmare), 2007, video, 10:50 min) Keren Cytter approaches repetition in her work from a different perspective, by fragmenting the loop and the narration in her videos. Cytter shows states of transition that are most of the time linked to a transition of countries, namely from Israel to European countries such as the Netherlands and Germany. Moreover, her works expose transitions in the love stories of their protagonists. In her works, the spectator is left alone in a position where he has to create a new narration from the fragments and shattered images he or she gets to see. What is the status of these re-­‐narrations, what new is addressed by this demand “the same but changed”? Is this way of re-­‐narrating, and, effectively, creating a new position to think, speak and act from, a result of working though repetition? How can this question be linked to the relation and encounter of Jewish and Non-­‐Jewish after the Shoah? Following Jacques Lacan’s famous dictum that “what has been rejected from the symbolic reappears in the real,” (Jacques Lacan, Seminar III: The Psychoses, p.46) I’d like to ask in what way it is necessary for Keren Cytter and Yael Bartana to start from a repetition in order to be able to create a new narration and therefore a new reality that is precisely not a return of the real. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session: 002: Jewish Art and Heritage 11.00-­‐13.00 Jewish Museums at the Intersection of Jewish and non-­‐Jewish Cultures Organizer: Kathrin Pieren Kathrin Pieren, University of Southampton, UK Title: From Roots to Routes, Nation to Migration -­‐ Interpretations of Collections in British Jewish Museums in the 20th and 21st Century Abstract: ‘The Ben Uri – The London Jewish Museum of Art’ and the Jewish Museum London have both operated through most of the 20th century and into the 21st. The former was founded in 1915 as an art society by middle class migrants from Eastern Europe to develop a Jewish style in art, promote Jewish artists often of immigrant background, and to form a collection of art by Jewish artists of all times and styles. The latter was also initiated by art connoisseurs, this time (1932) from among the British Jewish establishment, and by the first academically trained historian of Anglo-­‐Jewish history, with the aim to rescue Jewish collections before they could be sold abroad and to display objects of beauty mostly for the religious education of British Jews in order to strengthen the community. Ever since, both organisations have made important changes in their acquisition policies and in the interpretation of their collections through display and programming. Many of these are related to changes in Jewish-­‐non Jewish relations in the wider society and in the targeted and actual audiences. My presentation will draw both on my recent research about the early history of these institutions and my current project about their history in the last 60 years. I will identify to what extent changes in Jewish-­‐non Jewish relations were responsible for this development and how these have interacted with changes in museology and historiography over the course of a century. Otto Lohr, Bavarian State Office for Museums, Dep. of Jewish Museums, Germany Title: Jewish Museums in Bavaria Created by non-­‐Jews for a non-­‐Jewish Audience Abstract: There are around 20 Jewish museums in Bavaria which are run by cities, villages, a private association and a foundation. Only one belongs to a Jewish community. The conceptions are mostly done by non-­‐Jews for a mostly non-­‐Jewish audience. In my paper I will talk about how non-­‐Jewish museum professionals are dealing with Jewish heritage, especially with the re-­‐use of former synagogues as museums, showing the whole range of preservation from a complete restoration to the preservation of a status quo appearance, in which former synagogues become a testimony of local history. A second point will be a short analysis of the conceptions of the Jewish museums in Bavaria. They all focus on similar topics, dealing mostly with Bavarian-­‐Jewish history, particularly from the 18th to 21st century. The permanent exhibitions talk about the peaceful coexistence of the diverse religious communities and the tensions between them. They focus on locally well-­‐known Jewish persons or families and generally end with the transportation of the last Jew to one of the concentration camps. Some give an introduction into religious rituals and customs and document the festivals of the Jewish year. An issue that will be addressed is what the permanent exhibitions say about being Jewish today and how contemporary Jewish life is represented. A third point will be the question whether there are differences in conception and presentation to the only Jewish museum in Bavaria which belongs to a Jewish community. Julia Roos, Network "Jewish life Erfurt", Germany, & Rebekka Schubert, Topf and Sons -­‐ Place of Remembrance Title: Jewish-­‐German History and Presence in Erfurt" -­‐ A Collaborative Project between the Network "Jewish Life in Erfurt" and the Topf Abstract: In our lecture we will introduce the educational programme „Jewish-­‐German history and presence in Erfurt“, which was conceived two years ago and since then has attracted some very diverse visitor groups. Our presentation highlights the relationship between unique elements of Jewish history and presence in Erfurt and shows how they are interpreted for the public. Various buildings, monuments and locations reflect Jewish history and presence in Erfurt. The Old Synagogue tells the story of the beginnings of Jewish settlement in Erfurt in the late 11th century when Jews and Christians lived next door to each other in the city center, but also gives an account of the devastating pogrom in 1349 when the whole Jewish community was killed by non-­‐Jewish inhabitants. The Small Synagogue is a monument to the restart of Jewish life in the early 19th century. Built in 1840, by 1880 this synagogue was already too small and the Great Synagogue was built. In November 1938 the National Socialists burned down the Great Synagogue, but on its site was built the New Synagogue where Jewish life takes place today. In our project, we not only want to link these places to throw light on the particular history of the Erfurt Jewish community from the Middle Ages until today, but also to relate the history and presence of these monuments to the city’s non-­‐
Jewish history. For that purpose cooperation was established with ‘Topf & Sons – Place of Remembrance’ also situated in Erfurt. Their exhibition discusses the former J. A. Topf & Sons company’s complicity in the genocide of the European Jews, Sinti and Romany. As “the builder of the Auschwitz ovens” the company played a key role in the construction of the crematoria of several Nazi concentration camps and the ventilation system for the gas chambers in Auschwitz. Based on these historical sites we want to discuss three topics relevant to the present: (a) the history of the Old Synagogue – relating to “Jewish life in medieval Erfurt” -­‐ serves to highlight problems of integration and exclusion. (b) The Small Synagogue – illustrating Erfurt’s Jewish history in the 19th century -­‐ helps to ask questions about identity building. And (c) the example of Topf & Sons raises the issue of personal responsibility: here the lecture asks how a perfectly ordinary firm was involved in the Nazi mass murder in the concentration camps. The disturbing point highlighted by this example is that the involved persons were neither Anti-­‐Semitic nor radical National Socialists and also the business with the SS represented no more than 2.5 percent of the company’s total sales. Based on these observations we reflect on responsibility in everyday working life and how we can transfer that learning into educational programs. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session: 003: Jewish Archives 14.00-­‐15.30 New Perspectives on Jewish and non-­‐Jewish Relations in Modern European Culture Based on Judaica Europeana Digital Collections Organizer: Lena Stanley-­‐Clamp Frank Mecklenburg, Leo Baeck Institute, New York, USA Title: When German Jews were Germans: family relations, business and political involvement from 1871-­‐
1933 in the light of the Leo Baeck Institute Archives' collections. Abstract: The sixty odd years prior to 1933 were a uniquely flourishing period for Central European Jews. Until 1933, and in strictly legal terms until the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, German Jews were Germans like all other citizens, equal before the law, increasingly involved and successful in business, in the professions, in education and in politics. Jewish communities in large cities were engaging in major projects right up into the 1930s, such as the Jewish adult education program of the Frankfurt Lehrhaus, in publishing at Schocken Verlag, or the Welt Verlag, or the construction of the Prinzregentenstrasse synagogue and the Berkaer Strasse old age home in Berlin. The emergence of modern Jewish social, cultural and religious institutions took place in a gradually more secular society with increasing contacts between Jews and non-­‐Jews, most notable and significant in family relations. I will talk about the development of Jewish – non-­‐Jewish relations in Germany during the period of 1871 until 1933 in light of the collections of the Leo Baeck Institute Archives. On the one hand looking at the different categories of documents donated to the LBI, collected and preserved in the archives, and what is currently still being donated; on the other hand, how did family relations, business contacts and cooperation, and political involvement develop during those six decades. I want to take a particular look, how does this appear from the perspective of 1933. Since the collections in the LBI Archives are largely based on the papers of individuals and families, they provide more of a citizen’s perspective. Rachel Heuberger, Frankfurt University Library, Germany Title: Jewish patronage in non-­‐Jewish society. The history of the Rothschild Library in Frankfurt on Main from paper to online. Abstract: In the 19th century many Jews were among the leading philanthropists of Frankfurt on Main and played an outstanding role in fostering culture and arts in the city. The Rothschild family exceeded them all, financing the largest number of social, cultural and scientific institutions. In focus here is the " Freiherrlich Carl von Rothschild'sche Bibliothek” (Rothschild Collection), founded by Hannah Louise von Rothschild in 1897 in memory of her father Mayer Carl von Rothschild. It was established after the model of the English Free Public Library and offered academic literature and modern fiction free to all. The library symbolizes not only the Rothschilds’ commitment to public education and culture, the important role of the Rothschild women and their joint action in this process, but points also to their modern approach and innovative actions. Starting with Mayer Carl's private collection of 3,500 titles, the library grew to 130,000 books in 1945, specializing in Art, Music and Modern Fiction in various European languages. It is part of the Frankfurt University Library, where it serves today as the indispensable historic resources for university disciplines such as German and English Literature, Philology, Linguistics, Art History and Music Studies. Under National Socialism the name of the philanthropist Rothschild family was erased, however the valuable collection remained undamaged. More than 20,000 press-­‐clippings from newspapers all over the world about the Rothschild family and their business from 1886-­‐1916 have been preserved, a unique resource of the family’s history. These clippings have been digitized and processed with optical character recognition and are accessible at http://sammlungen.ub.uni-­‐frankfurt.de/rothschild/nav/index/all. A virtual exhibition tells the story of the library and the Rothschild family, see: http://www.ub.uni-­‐frankfurt.de/judaica/vjv_01.html Lyudmila Sholokhova, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York, USA Title: Evolving Yiddish audience’s interest in theater in Europe in the 19th -­‐ 1st half of the 20th centuries: Yiddish plays in the YIVO Library digital collections. Abstract: The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, the first Yiddish academic institution in the world, was established in Vilna, Poland (now-­‐ Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1925. It emerged in the midst of blossoming of Yiddish culture, literature and social movements in Europe. The YIVO Library and Archives consequently reflected on major interests, activities and tastes of Yiddish speaking population that mostly resided or originated in Eastern Europe. Theater was among the most admired pastimes available at that time for the Yiddish-­‐speaking Jews. Rich and vivid vocabulary of Yiddish language was able to bring out colorful humor in the simple shund-­‐style Yiddish plays; but it would reach much higher levels in communicating sophisticated ideas of the Yiddish classical and contemporary drama works of Abraham Goldfaden, Sholem Aleichem, Isaac Leib Peretz, Mendele Moykher Sforim, Jacob Dinezon and many others. Theater was also a powerful vehicle for introducing Yiddish audience to the treasures of the world-­‐class theater dramas. Yiddish translations and adaptations of European plays significantly extended repertoire of the Yiddish theater in general, played important role in educating the audience while simultaneously setting up new opportunities and challenges for the talented Yiddish actors. Among the famous authors whose masterpieces were made available in Yiddish translation were William Shakespeare, Alexandre Dumas, Henrik Ibsen, Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Gogol, Anton Chekhov, Emile Zola etc. The Library of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is proud to possess one of the world’s largest collections of Yiddish theater works from 1850 to 1950, the period that coincided with the flourishing of Jewish theater in Europe and the United States. Materials from the YIVO collections include many European editions often not available anywhere else in the world. Microfilms of the Yiddish theater works have been recently digitized and are now available online through the YIVO Library online catalog and Internet Archive’s website. This presentation is based on the YIVO digital collection of Yiddish theater masterpieces and aims at exploring the range Yiddish theater works’ editions in Europe and their influence on developing literary and artistic tastes of Yiddish-­‐speaking population in European countries. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session: 004: Jewish Archives 16.00-­‐18.00 Panel: “Yerusha” Endangered Archives Chair Robin Nobel Efim Melamed, Project Judaica -­‐ Jewish Theological Seminary, Ukraine Title: Jewish Archives in Ukraine: challenges of access to them in the Soviet period and now Abstract: The paper will discuss various aspects of threat to which Jewish records were and are exposed in Ukraine and that’s why didn't survive or for many years remained in oblivion. In particular, in the Soviet Union when most of them were either destroyed or inaccessible to researchers because of unofficial taboo imposed on Jewish studies, and later because of acute shortage of specialists, lack of information about them etc. Gabor Kadar, Yerusha Project RFE Title: Endangered Jewish Archives in Europe Abstract: The panel will explore the problem of endangered Jewish archives that are at risk of both decay in non-­‐institutional settings and oblivion in massive state and regional archives. Ivan Ceresnjes, Center for Jewish Art, Jerusalem, Israel Title: Situation of Jewish Archives in Central Asia and the former Yugoslavia Abstract: Since I have done some research in the National Library of Uzbekistan in Tashkent my knowledge about the content is limited to the part that is in Russian language, and only referring to the subject I am dealing with, the material remnants of the built Jewish heritage – a minor part covering 19. and 20. century. The majority of the content is in Uzbek and local Turan vernaculars so it was not accessible for my work without (limited) local assistance. Nevertheless, the accessibility to the material has largely improved in the last 15 years. In countries of former Yugoslavia I would like to talk about the Croatian Historical Archive in Dubrovnik that exist since early 15c, has been institutionalized in 18c, and is working till today. It consists of over 3000 volumes (each volume contains approx. 200-­‐400 folios or 400-­‐600 pages) or 8500 linear meters (120396 boxes). The mayor languages are the Dubrovnik’s Croatian vernacular from 17 18c, Italian and some Latin. In that Archive I am researching data’s about the everyday life of Jews living in the Ghetto in Dubrovnik until year 1808 – abolishing of the Free Republic of Dubrovnik. Aside of that, since the consequences of transitional period after the dissolution of former Yugoslavia are still affecting all fields of research and in many parts of new countries, especially in small provincial archives the access is often limited and difficult. Jean-­‐Claude Kuperminc, Alliance Israélite Universelle, Paris, France Title: French Jewish Archives in Yerusha: a New Development Abstract: Since 1965, the Commission française des archives juives has tried to preserve and give a better access to the archives related to the Jews in France. In 2014, within the Yerusha Project managed by the Rothschild Foundation Europe, CFAJ is assembling data to create a large mapping of French archive repositories dealing with Jewish subjects. The presentation will show the methods and state of advancement of the work. Monday 21st July SORBONNE, Salle PICARD (Stairs C, 3rd flour) Session: 001: Anthropology and Folklore 9.00-­‐10.30 Sharing the Rituals Chair: Harvey Goldberg & Hagar Salamon, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: Jews and Muslims listen to the Ten Commandments in the Synagogue Abstract: Historical Ethnography and Preliminary Analysis by Hagar Salamon and Harvey E. Goldberg. Ethno-­‐historical interviews with former residents of small towns in southern Tunisia and Libya, currently living in Israel, reveal an unusual case of Muslim participation in Jewish synagogue liturgy. During the two days of Shavuot, it was customary to read aloud a Judeo-­‐Arabic translation-­‐commentary of the Decalogue at the time of afternoon (minḥa) prayer, and we received descriptions of Muslim notables coming to listen to the chanting of this piyyut. While there were some differences in the details describing these events, all interviewees stressed the intense attentiveness of the Muslim listeners who in many instances gathered together with the Jews within the synagogue itself. Together with a presentation of the main ethnographic features, we shall present initial lines of analysis regarding the significance of the occasion to the Muslim audience along with indications of how the local Jews viewed and interpreted the Muslim attachment to this liturgical event. Lionel Obadia, Université Lyon 2, France Title: Metamorphosis and Reinventions of Judaism in Contact with Buddhism Asian religions, and more specifically Buddhism and Hinduism, are barely (if ever) considered as interlocutors of Judaism in the course of History, neither they logically range among the agents of transformations of the antique monotheism. In the last century, however, in different context (in the chronological order: Europe, North America and Israel) Buddhism (after Hinduism) has been appealing for thousands of Jews. Many of them have otherwise returned to Judaism and have injected elements of the Asian polytheism tradition in the ancient semitic monotheism. As a consequence, these "jubus" (Jewish-­‐
Buddhists) have partaken on a discreet yet significant changes. Corinna R. Kaiser, Heinrich Heine University of Dusseldorf, Germany Title: Buddha and Eliyahu HaNavi Meet at the Seder Table: Contemporary Religious Ritual as an Interfaith and Transcultural Contact Zone Abstract: Contact zones, as defined by Pratt (1992), are spaces where different cultures meet and interact – and not necessarily in a friendly, egalitarian way. In my paper, which is part of a larger study of contemporary Passover rituals, I analyze the politics and power structures of the Passover Seder as one such space where people of different religions, cultures, ethnic groups, and individual and cultural memories meet in a religious ritual. Throughout most of medieval and modern times, encounters between Jews and non-­‐Jews on or around Passover were characterized by hostility against the Jews that found its deadly expression in the blood libel; a bloody line of tradition that has not yet dried up (cf. blood libels in the FSU and the Middle East in the 21st century). Conversely, the traditional Haggadah with the Shfoch Chamatcha paragraph did also not develop with amicable interfaith encounters in mind. These obstacles have been overridden after WWII, and in particular in the US, by Passover’s universalistic theme of oppression and liberation that offers a common ground for transcultural and interfaith Seders. Inspired by an increasing Jewish interest in Eastern religions, philosophies, and spiritual practices as well as by the solidarity movement with Tibet, these ritual experiments may include non-­‐Jewish cultural, ritual, and religious elements by way of cultural appropriation, but they also bring non-­‐Jews themselves to the Seder table. Exemplified on Jewish-­‐Buddhist Seders and Jewish-­‐Buddhist encounters that are modeled after the Seder, the paper examines the historical and political conditions that made this shift from hostility to hospitability (Derrida, Lévinas) possible and attractive after WWII. Sources are not only the ‘Haggadah for Jews & Buddhist’ (2006) but also related writings by JuBus (Jewish Buddhists) and other leaders and attendants of these new Seders. I argue that, in spite of the historical and theological barriers, these contemporary religious rituals of the Passover Seder carefully balance the protective order of a ritual and the inherent ritual flexibility and may thus become a contact zone in which power relations have been inverted. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session: 002 Anthropology and Folklore 11.00-­‐13.00 Crossing traditions Chair: Sylvie-­‐Anne Goldberg Maite Ojeda Mata, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain Title: Relations between Jews and Muslims in the Cult of the Saints under European Colonialism in Morocco Abstract: Issachar Ben Ami has collected and analyzed splendidly belief and worship of the Jewish saints in Morocco, as well as relations between Jews and Muslims in the symbolic universe of beliefs. But, those beliefs, those practices and those relationships between different socio-­‐religious communities in Morocco have always been so? By studying the impact of the European colonialism in Morocco I propose to address these practices from a social economic perspective, to approach its fluidly, that is, how beliefs and practices change, adapt, evolve, in order to explore, in this changing context that meant the landing of European colonialism in the country, its impact on relations between Jews and Muslims around the practice of Hilloulah or pilgrimage to the tombs of Jewish saints. Noam Sienna, University of Toronto, Canada Title: Henna’s A Jewish Thing? Jews, Non-­‐Jews, and Henna Traditions in North Africa Abstract: At a henna party hosted by a Muslim student group at an American college, upon learning of the author’s research on Jewish henna traditions, one participant said with surprise: “henna’s a Jewish thing?” A year later, in Jerusalem, at a henna ceremony for a Moroccan-­‐Israeli couple, an elderly participant remarked in response to a question about non-­‐Jewish henna ceremonies: “Do non-­‐Jews do henna? No, no, I’ve never heard of such a thing. Henna is only a Jewish thing.” These contrasting episodes illustrate how particular rituals and practices are claimed simultaneously by both Jews and Muslims, and point to the cultural contact embedded invisibly in the genealogy of those shared practices. This paper investigates the development of henna ceremonies among Jewish communities in North Africa; it challenges simplistic binaries of defining ‘Jewish’ or ‘non-­‐Jewish’ ritual, exploring both the similarities between Jewish and non-­‐
Jewish henna practices, and how Jewish henna ceremonies hold uniquely Jewish meanings and applications. Jewish henna ceremonies are often described using the language of ‘borrowing’ or ‘adoption,’ but this model does not do justice to the ways in which religious practices come into being at the meeting-­‐
point between communities. Rejecting a static and essentialized model of culture, where a homogeneous Jewish community absorbs pre-­‐existing forms from its homogeneous surroundings, this paper explores how henna ceremonies among Jewish and non-­‐Jewish communities each represent innovations formed out of the continual intermingling of diverse populations. Using examples drawn from fieldwork and historical records of henna traditions among Jewish communities of the Maghreb, this presentation pushes towards a consideration of the pluralism and dynamism of religious communities and their ritual creativity. Maria Haralambakis, University of Manchester, UK Title: Moses Gaster as a Collector and Translator of Romanian and Slavonic Folklore Abstract: Moses Gaster (1856–1939) was an intellectual, bibliophile, rabbi, and activist for Jewish rights. As a scholar he was engaged in diverse fields of study, such as Romanian language and literature, folklore, Apocrypha, magic and mysticism, and Samaritan studies. Before his expulsion from Romania in 1885, he had published Literatura Populara Română (1883) and signed the contract for Chrestomatie Română, which eventually appeared in 1891. Soon after his arrival in England he was invited to present the Illchester lectures at the University of Oxford. They were published in 1887 as Illchester Lectures on Greeko (sic)-­‐
Slavonic Literature and its Relation to the Folklore of Europe during the Middle Ages. It includes paraphrases of a large number of stories (including apocryphal narratives around biblical characters), many of which also feature in Literatura Populara Română. The publications mentioned show Gaster as a collector, who brought together a wide range of material, often without providing exact references to his sources. Besides presenting his material, a prominent aspect of the publications is Gaster’s theory on the origin and development of folklore. These two aspects also feature in his work Romanian Bird and Beast Stories (1915). It consists of a very long introduction in which Gaster presented his views on folklore, followed by his translations of 119 numbered Romanian stories about animals, and three appendices with other material. Gaster continued his work of translating animal stories during the rest of his life. This is evidenced by his own copy of this work, now in the Rylands Library in Manchester. It contains handwritten notes, a copy of a letter from Queen Elisabeth/Carmen Sylva, reviews of the book from newspapers, and inserted leaves with additional stories. Gaster found the stories in publications of different Romanian folklorists, including Pauline Schullerus, Otescu, Vasiliu and various contributions to the journals Ion Creanga and Sezatoarea. An edition and analysis of the additional stories is in preparation. Based on a study of all four publications mentioned, and especially illustrated by Romanian Bird and Beast Stories, this paper will provide insight into how Gaster worked as a collector and translator of Romanian and Slavonic folklore. It will become clear that on the whole Gaster’s collecting took place not in the field, but in the study. He did not collect oral stories from ‘the people’, but gathered them from publications and manuscripts. Several of Gaster’s sources have been traced in the course of the research. Gaster’s methods of collecting will be compared with those of some of his colleagues on whose work he draws. The evaluation of Gaster’s work as a translator is based on a careful comparison of some of the original stories with Gaster’s versions. It will be demonstrated that, rather than providing a literal translation, he usually paraphrased the stories, contextualizing them for their new audience. This paper is part of my project which evaluates Gaster as a scholar and a collector. Marina Shcherbakova, Russian Museum of Ethnography (St. Petersburg) Title: Insights into S. An-­‐sky’s Political Shift based on his Writings between 1915-­‐1917 Abstract: The legacy of the wartime writings of the Jewish Russian intellectual and ethnographer Semyon An-­‐sky (1863 – 1920) incorporates his private correspondence and an unpublished diary he has kept between January – March and September – October 1915. The first part of the diary refers to An-­‐sky’s wartime travel around the Polish Galicia, where he acted on behalf of the Jewish Committee to Help War Victims (EKOPO) willing to bring relief to the Jews caught between the Russian and Austrian armies. In the diary and in the correspondence with the Russian writer Fyodor Sologub and his friend Rosa Monoszon An-­‐
sky reflects the war’s brutality in general and the unrelenting violence of the Russian army towards the Jewish people in the battle zone in particular. The second part of the diary is written in Petrograd, it brings out the growing distance between An-­‐sky and his fellow Jewish intellectual and political leaders. An-­‐sky returns from Galicia with the realistic concept of helping operations that could improve the condition of the Jews, who fall victim during the war. However his views do not entirely fit into the armchair discussions and Jewish Political Committee meetings he attends in Petrograd. In his private writings An-­‐sky expresses critics towards the activity of the Jewish Historical and Ethnographic society, the EKOPO and other organizations he has cooperated with in the 1910-­‐s. At the same time An-­‐sky supports Vladimir Jabotinsky’s idea of the Jewish Legion and develops enthusiasm about the Zionist movement, which has never appealed to him as a member of the Russian autonomist party “Folkspartei” before. In 1915 An-­‐sky cooperates with the Society of the Jewish Legion in Petrograd, and it seems to meet his wish to see the Jew as unbowed and brave self-­‐
defender -­‐ this concept can be found in an appeal to the Galician Jews (1914-­‐1915, draft). Simultaneously An-­‐sky reworks Chassidic apocalyptic legends that he collected in Galicia into an article (1915-­‐1916, draft) and a book “Ten signs of the Messiah” (1916), where he reflects the crisis of the traditional Jewry. An-­‐sky’s political shift seems to have grown from his wartime experience in Galicia, that revealed new threats to the existence of the Jews in the East-­‐European diaspora and the need of confrontation on a new level. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session: 003 Modern Hebrew Literature 14.00-­‐15.30 Agnon's œuvre Chair: Glenda Abramson Omri Ben-­‐Yehuda, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: Agnon's Muselmann Abstract: I am aiming in this lecture at bridging the gap between holocaust literature and Agnon's oeuvre. I am also aiming at a careful investigation of Agnon's greatest achievement, an immense book that was published only posthumously and never got a broad presence by the critics-­‐ A City and the Fullness of Thereof. This book is also the venue in which Agnon dealt at length with the destruction of the Jewish community in his hometown in Galicia. Recently there were many attempts to reread the scope of holocaust literature not only as an aftermath but also with a presence before Auschwitz (if using diversely Adorno's famous remark). I will read Agnon's chronic while focusing especially on the story (the missing-­‐
one) from three main theoretical aspects: the discourse of "before" and "after" (John Hillis-­‐Miller, Michel Rothberg), testimony theory (Andrea Frisch, Shoshana Felman) and bio-­‐politics (Foucault, Agamben). Dan, the missing-­‐one (and the protagonist of the story), is always reshaped by society's mechanism of defining and shaping one's body, and at the end he becomes a muselmann, as this concept is depicted by Agamben. Brigitte Caland, INALCO, France Title: Midlife Crisis and the Sadomasochistic Dynamic in SY Agnon’s Shira Abstract: Through a psychoanalytical approach of SY Agnon’s Shira, the talk would investigate the material of Manfred Herbst midlife crisis and his “in-­‐between” situation to see how it affects not only the structure of the story but also the sadomasochistic dynamic that determines his relationship to the other protagonists of the novel mainly his wife Henrietta and the two opposite characters: Shira, a free spirit, and Elizabeth Neu, an observant Jew, both “Objects of Desire”. Manfred Herbst, a Lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the main character of the novel Shira, is an Ashkenazi emigrant, who arrives in Palestine between the two world wars. The story takes place in the holy city, during the 30s where the outside struggle reflects the inner one Herbst is suffering through, trapped in between two women: his wife, Henrietta with whom he has built a family but who rejects him physically, and nurse Shira, who welcomes him but except for a few intimate moments, only flirts with him. This “In between” situation is the core of the novel: two languages, two cultures, a native country and the adopted one, the notion of foreigner and autochthone, life and death impulses, the explicit and the latent, the masculine and the feminine, fidelity and temptation, love and hate, disgust and tenderness, instinct and rational, attraction and repulsion, glory and servitude, religiosity and secularism, the academic world and the family, creating tensions, instabilities, vulnerabilities and frustrations within the couple as Herbst chooses to resist his impulses and stay with his wife. Couple deprived of sexual intimacy tied by years of shared memories that quarrels without altering the foundation of their solid marriage bound by moments of happiness and overcoming obstacles, ties a midlife crisis does not succeed to undo. But maintaining the couple creates a sadomasochistic dynamic in this uprooted generation that has lived through wars, carrying fears and daily uncertainties, matter that the presentation will analyze. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session: 004 Hebrew Literature 16.00-­‐18.00 Jewish and non Jewish Elements in Hebrew Poetry Chair: Masha Itzhaki Dvora Bregman, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: On Hebrew Baroque Poetry Abstract: Hebrew poetry acquired the baroque style merging Gongorism, Marinism, Kabala and Hebrew poetic traditions. Hebrew Baroque main poets are Moses Zacuto and the brothers Jacob and Immanuel Frances, but others also took an impressive part in it. All represent various streams within a common perception of the style, expressing its various conventions in a variety of individual ways. Alexandra Polyan, Moscow State University, Russia Title: Cross-­‐Cultural Interactions as Reflected in Formal Structure of East European Mascilic Poetry Abstract: It is widely known that till the very end of the XIX century Hebrew was considered the most natural vehicle for writing poetry. The metrical structure of the poetry in non-­‐spoken Hebrew changed several times. The word-­‐counting system (piyyut) gave place to quantitative prosody of Jewish poetry of the Golden Age in Spain, the latter yielded to syllabic prosody of Italian poetry. Its rules were formalized as late as in the XVIII century, by the first generation of Jewish Enlightenment in Germany. More than a hundred years later, it was replaced by syllabo-­‐tonic prosody. All the metrical transitions listed were inspired by change of dominant high-­‐status non-­‐Jewish culture (Arabic -­‐ Italian -­‐ German -­‐ Russian), and occurred with retardation. The fact that made these metrical changes possible was the assumption (which was not shared by all the poets writing non-­‐spoken Hebrew) that there was no metrical structure inherent in Hebrew, and structure of any high-­‐status poetic tradition could be adjusted to the language. In my paper, I will focus on the poetry of East-­‐European Haskalah (I. Erter, I.B. Levinzon, A.D. Lebensohn, M.J. Lebensohn, Y.L. Gordon, A.B. Gotlober et al.). I will analyze its metrical structure, its language, and the poets' meta-­‐linguistic reflection, and will trace in it the influence of polyglossia, of formal structure of German and Russian poetry, of the image of Hebrew as formed in the German Enlightenment. Dorit Lemberger, Bar-­‐Ilan University, Israel Title: Quasi-­‐metaphor as Interaction between Jewish and Non-­‐Jewish Culture in the Poetry of Yehuda Amichai Abstract: In the poetry of Yehuda Amichai we find many expressions of original figurative language employing the language of classical Jewish sources, inspired by them to form a pluralistic position. This varied use also includes references to non-­‐Jewish cultures, directly and indirectly as well. In some cases, this use expresses a dual position: on one level, the linguistic expression refers to the Jewish context; on the other, the expression constitutes a multicultural position of personal experience. The lecture will demonstrate how Amichai' poetic language operates at two levels: a dialogue between Jewish and non-­‐
Jewish sources and an event in the speaker's life, and an emblematic pluralistic dimension constituting a universal speaker. Several examples will be examined, drawing upon the concept of quasi-­‐metaphor suggested by Frank Sibley (1959), as a methodical concept for demonstrating dual use of language [followed by Sam Glucksberg (2001) and Malcolm Budd (2008)]. The quasi-­‐metaphor involves figurative forms which preserve the original meaning of their components and, at the same time, create new meanings, thereby reflecting semantic and grammatical clarity. The main claim is that the quasi-­‐metaphor refers to a common denominator shared by speaker and readers, while the original use now shapes a personal experience emphasizing the significant difference between speaker and the original contexts. Michèle Tauber, MCF Paris 3, France Title: Hebrew Poetry, Arabic Poetry: a recovered Relationship? Abstract: As a faraway echoing of the Hebrew poetry Golden Age in Muslim Spain, we recently assist to more and more frequent contacts between Hebrew poetry and Arabic poetry. As a matter of fact, several Hebrew and Arabic poets are sharing a mutual poetic experience in their publications and translations. Ronny Somek, an Israeli Hebrew-­‐writing poet born in Bagdad has published two compilations of tri-­‐lingual poetry (Hebrew-­‐Arabic-­‐French) that he shared with two Iraki Arabic-­‐writing poets: Born in Bagdad, with Abdulkader El Janabi in 1998, and Bagdad-­‐Jerusalem, on the Border of Fire, with Salah ‘Al Hamdani in 2012. The poets Miron Izakson and Naim Araidi (who is an Israeli Druze) also published together a trilingual compilation (Hebrew-­‐Arabic, French): Born in Israel (2003). Besides Naim Araidi writes poetry both in Arabic and in Hebrew. Salman Masalha is also a bilingual author and translated Hebrew poets such as Hayim Guri, Yehuda Amihai and Aharon Shabtai into Arabic, and a compilation of Mahmud Darwich into Hebrew. Last year the poetess Hamutal Bar Yosef has published a tri-­‐lingual compilation (Hebrew-­‐Arabic-­‐
French): Painful Place. The translators into Arabic being themselves famous poets and writers : Naim Araidi, Nida’a Khuri – a Palestinian poetss who wrote eleven compilations translated into manu languages – and Mahmud Abassi who writes both Arabic and Hebrew, and wrote many short stories and children literature, a great part of which translated into Hebrew. Thus I will try to show in which way and around which themes contemporary Hebrew and Arabic poets create fertile poetic dialogues through which their cultures can converse, exchange ideas, meet and feed each other mutually. Monday 21st July SORBONNE, Salle HALBWACHS (Stairs C, 1st flour) Session: 001: Contemporary Jewish History 9.00-­‐10.30 Shifting Paradigms Changing tradition Chair: Ido Harari, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: Re-­‐Orienting Jews: conversion, orientalism and the struggle to disjoin Europe Abstract: In my paper I would like to examine some of the ways in which the move of Jews from secular, assimilated environments towards orthodox religious observance has served as a political form of rejection and subversion vis-­‐à-­‐vis the idea of Europe during the first half of the 20th century. This examination will take place through the conversion narratives of four people, all raised in Jewish families during the second half of the 19th century; all held, at some point in their early lives, non-­‐observant identities while based in western-­‐central Europe; and all embraced, sometime in their later life, orthodox religion in faith, practice and visibility – an embrace that was in all cases accompanied by a certain "turn eastward" and by writing positioning them in opposition to the European values underlying their previous lives. Three of these people became Haredi (Ultra-­‐Orthodox) Jews: Nathan Birnbaum (1864-­‐1937), born in Vienna to immigrants from Polish Galicia; Jiří (Mordechai Gerogo) Langer (1894-­‐1943), born in Prague to an assimilated family; and Jacob Israël de Haan (1881-­‐1924), born in northern Holland to an observant family. The fourth became a Muslim: Muhammad Asad (1900-­‐1992), born as Leopold Weiss in Galician Lvov and moving to Vienna in his late teens. In the proposed paper I would like to offer the above-­‐mentioned narratives a reading which sees them as occupying a position of both expressions of emergent subaltern thought and subjects to analysis through the prism of later postcolonial theory. This reading is based on explicit anti-­‐European sentiments expressed in their texts, accompanied by erudite critique of what they saw as western/European values – thus deliberately placing their writers in different locations "outside the fold" of early 20th century mainstream West-­‐European Jewry – just as it recognizes substantial elements of conventional European modes of thought directing various aspects of their reflection about their religious and cultural re-­‐orientation. However, in my paper I hope to show that despite the undeniable (and understandable) "western" strands in their writings and worldviews (worldviews which were also very different from one another in ways I cannot begin to discuss here), they all offer radical reformulations of the relationship between Jews and Europe, between Jews and the east (Asian and European), and of the positioning of Jews and Judaism between these worlds. These reformulations, I believe, are at least as relevant today as they were when first put to print and paper. Eliyahu Stern, Yale University, USA Title: Catholic Judaism: The Eastern European Reception of Jacques-­‐Bénigne Bossuet's Theory of Tradition Abstract: Much has been written about the influence exerted upon nineteenth-­‐century German and Western European Jewish thinkers by Protestant ideas. Scholars have described how German Jews reinterpreted Judaism as a “religion” based on universally held beliefs and ethics. Judaism’s national and political elements were ignored or dismissed with the hope of Jews being deemed worthy of being granted citizenship and civil rights in their respective locales. Studies on modern Jewish thought have focused on German Jewish thinkers’—such as Moses Mendelssohn, Abraham Geiger and Hermann Cohen—intellectual debts to Protestant theories proffered by the likes of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Immanuel Kant. Though the overwhelming majority of Jews lived in Eastern European lands largely comprised of Catholic and Orthodox adherents, only a few studies have charted the intellectual relationship between Jewish and Catholic thought in the modern period. This talk addresses this lacuna by exploring the influence exerted by Catholic and Russian Orthodox ideas on eastern European Jewry in the first half of the nineteenth-­‐century. Specifically, it will bring to light new archival documents describing the way the enlighteners Isaac Ber Levensohn (1788-­‐1860) and Shmuel Yosef Fuenn (1819-­‐1891) appropriated the Catholic idea of “Tradition” as articulated by the French Bishop Jacques-­‐Bénigne Bossuet (1627 –1704). This act of intellectual borrowing allowed Judaism to be understood in terms congenial to Polish and Russian audiences. It also provided Jews with a theory for the development and transformation of Judaism in modernity and perhaps most provocatively an acceptable mouthpiece for criticizing Protestantism. Yosef Salmon, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: The Attitude of Orthodoxy to Christianity Abstract: In the middle ages the general attitude of Judaism to Christianity was negative, where they were considered as idolatrous. Some changes in this stance is being introduced in the Halakhic literature in case of practical issue, which had to do with practical matters, connected to making a living. Radical changes in this principle can be found in the rabbinical literature since the late 17th century and more so during the 18th century. This trend stopped in the years 1815-­‐1816. The attitude to Christianity became again full of animosity in the rabbinical Pesiqa, more so in middle Europe. The purpose of this paper is to follow that trend and to try explaining the motives and the historical circumstances that played a role in those movements. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session: 002 Contemporary Jewish History 11.00-­‐13.00 German Perceptions of Jewish "Otherness" in post-­‐Emancipation Era Chair: Aya Elyada Aya Elyada, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: Jewish Culture and the German Volkskunde at the Turn of the Century Abstract: Already before the official establishment of Jewish Volkskunde in Germany at the end of the nineteenth century, various aspects of both ancient and contemporary Jewish culture were discussed and debated in the works of German scholars of folklore and ethnology, Jews and non-­‐Jews alike. My paper will examine one aspect of Jewish culture that gained attention in several works of the German Volkskunde during the nineteenth and early twentieth century: the Yiddish language and literature, which served as the foundation for the cultural world of the broad masses of Ashkenazi Jewry for almost a millennium. By analyzing this topic in the writings of leading German folklorists such as Richard Andree (1835-­‐1912) and others, the paper aims to advance our knowledge and understanding of the scholarly discourse on Yiddish in turn-­‐of-­‐the-­‐century Germany. Moreover, by discussing a hitherto largely neglected aspect in the work of German Volkskundler, the paper aims to shed new light on their broader understanding and perceptions of the Jews, their culture, and their place in European society. Ofer Ashkenazi, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: 'The Jew Has no Shame!': Jews and 'Jews' in the Popular German Film-­‐Comedies of the 1920s Abstract: Comedies with stereotypical "Jewish" characters constituted one of the most popular film genres of the Weimar Republic. Noting the clumsy, lazy and deceitful protagonists of these films (who exhibited “typical” Jewish gestures and physiognomy), scholars have read them mostly as an indication for the popularity of anti-­‐Semitic sentiments in pre-­‐Hitler Germany. The many Jewish directors, scriptwriters and actors among the filmmakers of this genre have been commonly depicted as “self-­‐hating” Jews or mere opportunists. Contrary to this view, I will argue that this genre provided a useful arena for the contemplation of Jewish identity and its integration into the educated middle-­‐class in modern Germany. In fact, most filmmakers of this genre appropriated anti-­‐Jewish stereotypes in order to portray the experience of acculturation from the perspective of the assimilation-­‐seeking “outsider.” My talk will suggest an alternative analysis of the films Family Day at the Prellsteins (Steinhoff, 1927), Hercules Maier (Schünzel, 1927) and Meyer from Berlin (Lubitsch, 1920). My analysis will demonstrate how, while comically exaggerating Jewish stereotypes, Weimar filmmakers introduced Jewish hopes and fears into the mainstream culture of modern Germany. Tuvia Singer, Hebrew University, Israel Title: From Detachment to Mobility – the Anti-­‐Semitic Discourse on Jewish Nomadism in Germany and Austria at the Fin de Siècle Abstract: The legend of the Wandering Jew, which crystallized at the beginning of the seventeenth century in Protestant circles and was based on a (mis)reading of the Gospels, featured a Jew named Ahasuerus who refused to let Jesus, on his way to being crucified, rest against the walls of his house, and was therefore doomed to eternal wandering. In the following centuries, the legend spread quickly all over Europe in dozens of languages and adaptations. However, the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries (fin de siècle), particularly in Austria and Germany, was unique in the multiplicity and diversity of works that centered on this legend. Above all, the discourse on the Wandering Jew greatly increased among ideologies and movements that were opposed to one another, such as anti-­‐Semitic and Zionist discourses. I will compare the interpretation of the figure of the Wandering Jew at the turn of 19th and 20th centuries with the interpretation of the figure in previous periods. The anti-­‐Semitic discourse at the turn of the centuries focused on the act of wandering, while the discourse of previous periods had concentrated on the result of the wandering – i.e. detachment. I would like to engage with the reason to this interpretative transformation from detachment to eternal mobility and its significance to the connection between "the Jewish spirit" to modernity, according to the anti-­‐Semitic discourse. Valentina Wiedner, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-­‐University Frankfurt/Main, Germany Title: Labeling and Self-­‐definition of the German-­‐Jewish Orthodoxy in ‘Der Israelit’ (1860-­‐1880) Abstract: The term “neo-­‐orthodox” was – and partly still is – common in the scientific secondary literature to describe the small orthodox part of the German-­‐Jewish society in especially the second half of the 19th century. In the contemporary period however it was interestingly used by the Reform Jews, as well as the term “hyperorthodox”, to define the German-­‐Jewish Orthodoxy in a negative and pejorative way. Naturally it was vehemently refused in the considered time-­‐frame by the orthodox Jews as self-­‐description. The presentation will show how one of the most popular German–Jewish orthodox newspaper (“Der Israelit”) in the period 1860 to 1880 explained the denial concerning the term “neo-­‐orthodox” and will as well point out why the Jewish Orthodoxy for the most part insisted upon the self-­‐definition as “law-­‐abiding” as one of the central themes in their demarcation toward the Reform Jews. The paper will analyze the arguments used by the German-­‐Jewish Orthodoxy to justify the preservation of the “religion of their fathers” in contrast to the development of the Reform Movement and the proceeding diminishment of faith. The talk is part of my dissertation project „Break-­‐up and preservation: the German-­‐Jewish (Neo-­‐)Orthodoxy and its relationship to Tradition, State and Patriotism”, which will be finished in 2015. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session: 003 Contemporary Jewish History 14.00-­‐15.30 Panel: Constructions of Jewish Identity at the Dawn of Globalization: Georgia and Germany Organizer: Elisabeth Hollender Chair: Elisabeth Hollender Nino Pirtskhalava, Ilia State University Tbilisi, Georgia Title: Georgian Jews between State and Homeland during the 19th and 20th Centuries Abstract: With regard to the investigation of the historical experience and the question of a linguistic-­‐
cultural search of identity of the Jews in Georgia it is of extreme importance to take into consideration the issue of the political status of Georgia where Georgian-­‐speaking Jewry is one of the oldest communities (with an approximately 2,600-­‐year history in the region). The emphasizing of the importance of the last two centuries (the 19th and 20th) should enable a more systematic approach and the focus on the essential issues of Jewish identity in Georgia as a country that lost twice its independence, once after Georgian annexation by the Russian Empire in 1801 and later by the modernized Tsarist Empire as Soviet Empire. The research will concentrate on finding out the formation of the identity narrative of the Jews in Georgia as “Georgian Jews” within the Russian Empire as state including its whole oppressive system on the one hand and within Georgia as the homeland or fatherland on the other hand, where despite their attempts, the authorities could not completely annihilate the practice of Judaism and, even in the late 1960s and 70s, most Georgian Jews managed to observe their traditions. The Jewish population of Georgia has steadily decreased over the years during the last two centuries due to aliya. In the second half of the 19th century (1863), groups of Jews began the return to the Holy Land, mostly for religious reasons. Later, after the Russian Revolution the Red Army invaded Georgia in February 1921, prompting a mass exodus from the region. Approximately 1,500–2,000 Jews left Georgia. In the middle of the20th century huge numbers of Georgian Jews applied for exit visas in order to immigrate to Israel. In 1969, several families wrote to the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations demanding permission to make aliya. This was the first public insistence by Soviet Jews for immigration to Israel. In July 1971, a group of Georgian Jews went on a hunger strike outside a Moscow post office. As a result, the determination of the Jews of Georgia led the Soviets to lessen their harsh anti-­‐Jewish policies. During the 1970s, about 30,000 Georgian Jews have moved to Israel and thousands of others left for other countries. Approximately 17 percent of the Soviet Jewish population emigrated at this time. In this context one could argue that Georgian Jews left not their fatherland, but the Soviet state, the modernized version of the Russian Tsarist Empire or the so-­‐called “jail of the nations” (de Custine). The Georgian Jews perceived this state from the perspective of a double or even triple detachment. It is precisely the detachment obtained through this triple alienating experience that an acuity was gained that made the lack of intimacy with the state bearable. Because unlike Georgia as a fatherland, the Russian Empire could only be a state thanks to the chimeric functioning of the state machinery, but never become a homeland. Irakli Chkhaidze, Iv. Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, Georgia Title: The Issue of Georgian Jews in the Periodicals at the turn of 20th Century Abstract: Beyond the well-­‐described phenomenon of the Georgian Jewish community, the Georgian Jewish identity forming narrative and its peculiarities still remain poorly researched realm of study. History and culture of the diminishing Georgian Jewish community are less familiar for the world scientific circles as they are not placed in the wider context of the World Jewish Diaspora.The paper aims at analyzing the issue of Georgian Jews in the periodicals at the turn of 20th Century. The Georgian Jewish identity forming narrative is originated in parallel to the process of Georgian nation-­‐building in the period of time. It’s important and interesting to explore how the process was reflected in the newly formed Georgian press. My PhD dissertation deals with the formation of multiethnic Georgian nation in the post-­‐Soviet period. Origins of the process we have to search for late 19th and early 20th centuries. Jewish minority played important role in the process at the dawn of Globalization. Thus the issue is closely related to my PhD thesis in terms of methodological background as well as empirical research. Nino Chikovani, Iv. Javakhishvili, Tbilisi State University, Georgia Title: Historical and Historiographical Context of the Jewish Identity Forming Narrative in Georgia (Beginning of the 20th Century) Abstract: The paper aims to present the historical and historiographical context of formation of the Jewish identity narrative in Georgia at the turn of the 20th century. This was a period when the process of formation of this narrative started in Georgia. The Georgian intellectuals – founder fathers of the Georgian nationalism – were the first who tried to comprehend the history of the Georgian Jewry. Their articles and essays on the Jewish Question were actively published in the Georgian periodicals. At the beginning of the 20th century, the idea of awaking of the Jewish consciousness was born among the portion of the Georgian Jews as well. Historical context of the above mentioned processes was defined by the developments of the second half of the 19th century. Under the Russian imperial rule, Georgia was reunited, first politically and then economically. Concentration of the growing number of Georgians in the towns, where the people with different faith and culture lived, forged a growing sense of the distinction between Georgians and other peoples, definition and re-­‐definition of the ethnic boundaries. Contrary to his aims, the Russian Empire strengthened the national consent among the Georgian intellectuals. The end of the 19th century was the time of formation of the Georgian scientific historiography. As in other similar cases where the professional historiography was formed as a response to the imperial challenge, the Georgian historical master-­‐
narrative was aimed at strengthening of the identity of Georgians; therefore, history should depict their difference from “others” – inside of the country as well as outside of it. As different from the wider intellectual discourse, this narrative was mostly concentrated on the history of ethnic Georgians, although placing it in the wider context of the Caucasus and the Middle East. Different ethnic groups residing in Georgia were mentioned casually. The model of identity set by the Georgian historical master-­‐narrative determined the framework for the formation of the Jewish identity narrative in Georgia. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session: 004 Contemporary Israel 16.00-­‐18.00 Israel, Islam and Jewish-­‐Arab Conflict Chair Nesya Shemer, Bar Ilan University, Israel Title: Bible, Quran and Anti-­‐Judaism: Sheikh Yusuf al-­‐Qaradawi on the Theological Roots of the Israeli-­‐ Palestinian Conflict Abstract: Sheikh Dr. Yusuf al-­‐Qaradawi is considered as the most influential Islamic religious figure today. Born in 1926, Qaradawi graduated Al-­‐Azhar University in Cairo and received his Ph.D. in 1973. He is acknowledged as the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and serves as a member of the board of prominent international Islamic organizations. Sheikh Qardawi is one of the greatest enemies of Israel in Sunni Islam. He sees the Israeli -­‐ Palestinian conflict as a political conflict, since the Jews have occupied a Muslim territory, but not only politics are involved here. In Qaradawi’s view the conflict has long theological roots that reach through the complicated relations between Abraham and his two wives Hagar and Sarah. A straight line connects, in Qaradawi’s opinion, from the succession struggles of Genesis and the Israeli -­‐ Palestinian conflict. This lecture will discuss Qaradawi’s interpretation to Genesis stories such as, the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael, the Binding of Ishmael and the buying of the tomb of the Patriarchs. In this lecture we will see how these Bible Stories went to a process of Islamization and Palestinization in favor the Palestinian struggle. Elad Ben-­‐Dror, Bar-­‐Ilan University, Israel Title: The Jewish-­‐Arab Conflict and the Demise of the Musta‘arib Communities in the Arab Villages in the Galilee Abstract: Musta‘arib Jewish communities existed in the Galilee for centuries. The Jews spoke Arabic and looked much like the local Arabs, but were meticulous in their religious observance. Itzhak Ben-­‐Zvi counted around 30 such communities during the centuries between the Crusades and the start of Ottoman rule. Persecution by local rulers, heavy taxes, and other hardships left only three Musta‘arib communities in the Galilee in the late Ottoman period: Kafr Yassif, Shefar‘am, and Peqi‘in. Muslims, Christians, and Druze lived there as neighbors; the intercommunal conflicts meant that the tensions were not focused on the Jews. Ultimately even these Jewish communities collapsed, one after another—precisely during the period of the Zionist settlement in Palestine. My lecture deals with the destruction of the last three Musta‘arib Galilean communities, especially Peqi‘in. The main thesis is that the intensifying Jewish-­‐Arab conflict made survival of the centuries-­‐long coexistence in these villages nearly impossible. The history of Peqi‘in illustrates this well. In the 1920s, the ancient Jewish community became a symbol for the Zionist Yishuv and was enthusiastically adopted by Ben-­‐Zvi. Money was raised and JNF officials attempted to purchase land in the village for the Peqi‘in Jews. The Zionist efforts led to a steep rise in land prices and poisoned the atmosphere between the Jews and their non-­‐Jewish neighbors. Later, especially after the 1929 Arab riots, the Zionists viewed the protection of the community as a test of the loyalty of the Druze, who were a majority in Peqi‘in. Senior Zionist officials pressured the Galilee Druze leadership to guarantee the Jewish villagers’ safety. On the other side, the local Arabs assaulted the Peqi‘in Jews and depicted the Druze as traitors to Arab interests. The Peqi‘in Jews were caught in the middle; in 1938 they were forced to abandon the village after a nearly fatal Arab attack. Centuries of coexistence in the Galilee and the Musta‘arib community came to an end precisely when new Jewish settlements were established in Palestine and the Zionist enterprise became entrenched. Monday 21st July SORBONNE, Salle LALANDE (Stairs C, 1st flour) Session: 001: Modern Jewish Thought 9.00-­‐10.30 Thinkers of Messianism Chair: Myriam Bienenstock M.A. Rosa Reicher, University of Heidelberg, Germany Title: The Ethos of ‘Bildung’: Gershom Scholem on the Periphery of German-­‐Jewish ‘Bildung’” Abstract: ‘Bildung’ is a key concept in the German tradition of educational theory. Originally meant to indicate a specific state of mind and ideal of perfection, it now serves as a symbol of the unity of whatever refers to the field of education, particularly to its organisational and functional aspects. The aura of ‘Bildung’ is bestowed on its counterpart in the form of preparation for the needs of the day. However wrongheaded or deplorable that may appear in the light of traditional values and ideas, this alienated use of the concept of ‘Bildung’ may be a blessing in disguise: it keeps alive the memory of autonomous learning as opposed to regular training under the imperatives of the day. The paradigm of ‘Bildung’ survives in title if not in substance as a paradigm to regain. For Hegel, ‘Bildung is a crucial concept that unifies issues of development, education, and form, including logical, aesthetic, and ethical forms. The idea of Bildung expresses the emergent formative development of the natural biological individual by the institutions and practices of culture, including, but not limited to, explicitly educational institutions and their agents (e.g., professors), along with the development of culture by individuals. In this connection Amos Elon explains: "Their true home, we now know, was not 'Germany,' but German culture and language. Their true religion was the bourgeois, Goethean ideal of Bildung (high culture)." One of the main concepts that influenced the Jewish self-­‐perception in the 19th century was ‘Bildung’ – the idea of self-­‐cultivation and education. This cultural and philosophical "movement" focused on an ideal individual: enlighten, humanist and free; a man of the world, whose culture is not rooted in any specific religion or nation, he is the European par-­‐
excellence. Because of ‘Bildung's’ emphasis on the individual, many of the Jews in Germany perceived it as an ideal tool for full assimilation. According to ‘Bildung’ it doesn’t matter where one comes from, it only matters where one is headed, and therefore it is no wonder many Jews adopted ‘Bildung’ enthusiastically. The overall acceptance of ‘Bildung’ in the minds of German-­‐Jewish intellectuals changed the content of both Judaism and Germanism for them. The very term ‘Bildung’ became part of their Jewishness; cultural artifacts that in the past were considered German and foreign, were now perceived as the very essence of their culture. In this presentation I will discuss the rise of a German-­‐Jewish intellectual culture following the example of Scholems biography; this was a culture that prized ‘Bildung’ as an integral part of German ‘Bürgertum’ and which soon elevated ‘Bildung’ to a noticeably Jewish value, as well. I will explore the role of Gershom Scholem as a German-­‐Jewish intellectual in relation to the larger culture focussing on what German-­‐Jewish intellectuals shared with their non-­‐Jewish counterparts and in what ways the differed, as never fully integrated individuals and groups. The educational system of the German Jewish society around the turn of the century was aligned with the conveying of humanistic ideals in language, scientific, technical and literary contents. Hans Georg Gadamer regarded Scholem as a “pupil of a great historical school of German and romantic heritage,” and George L. Mosse described Scholem and his concept of ‘Bildung’ as self-­‐cultivation in the sense of Goethe and Humbold. In addition I would like to describe Gershom Scholem as a theorist of ‘Bildung’. Aspects of his conception of ‘Bildung’ shall be worked out. The examination goes consequently essentially by three main emphases: 1. Scholem’s biography in the shade of the German-­‐Jewish ‘Bildungsbürgertum’; 2. Theoretical reflection and dissociation of conceptualities to ‘Bildung’ and Zionism; 3. Scholem’s contributions and merits for the development of the science of the Judaism [Wissenschaft des Judentums] until today's time. A basic thesis of this examination is: Scholem requires a change of the German-­‐Jewish paradigm of ‘Bildung’. Here, paradigm is understood as a pattern of thought which influenced the world view of the time then. Zionism, tradition and Jewish identity are included and examined as paradigms of ‘Bildung’. One main part of a successful Zionist education was for Scholem the Hebrew education. Learning Hebrew was a significant part of a successful Zionist education which influences the Jewish Identity. The paradigm change of ‘Bildung’ goes: ─ from the German to the Zionist orientation, ─ from the national/linear to the Zionist/associate thought, ─ from the partial-­‐German (single factors) to the structural orientation to Eretz Israel, ─ from German language to Hebrew language as a symbol of Zionist identity, ─ from German to the German-­‐Jewish and finally to the Zionist identity. Aim of the research of my dissertation is to recognize Zionism as a concept of ‘Bildung’ and furthermore to define this concept as a new idea particularly from the view of Gershom Scholem. Following thesis is put forward to this: In the understanding of ‘Bildung’ of the Judaism Scholem sees the defining question of the Zionism and articulates an adequate criterion of its conception. The following questions arise from this coherence: Which function should fulfil a Zionist paradigm of ‘Bildung’? Does Scholem develop the theory of ‘Bildung’ as a political concept? How does Scholem discuss the various aspects of the concept of ‘Bildung’ and its function for the Zionism? Which role plays the conveying of Hebrew in a meaningfully frame of ‘Bildung’, Zionism and Jewish of Zionist identity? And finally according to Scholem what should be the essential component of a Zionist-­‐‘Bildung’? Rony Klein, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: Des différents usages de la figure du Juif dans la pensée contemporaine: le cas de Derrida Abstract: La pensée contemporaine, surtout française, a redécouvert la figure du Juif depuis une cinquantaine d'années. On a vu ainsi divers usages très divers de cette "figure". Le cas de Derrida, dans les années 60, est particulièrement intéressant en ce qu'il se sert du Juif pour articuler sa pensée de l'écriture, et ce dès son texte sur Jabès de 1964. Ce texte permet de mieux cerner certaines des grandes questions posées par la pensée juive, comme la question du lieu, de l'exil et de la terre, ou encore celle de l'écrit et de l'oralité. Enfin, il soulève le problème plus général de l'usage d'un certain judaïsme de l'extérieur de la tradition juive. Vivian Liska, University of Antwerp, Netherlands Title: A Same Other, Another Same: Maurice Blanchot and Walter Benjamin Abstract: Even though Walter Benjamin and Maurice Blanchot are considered two of the most important theorists and literary critics of the last century – the two who grant literature the most radical and decisive role in critical thought – their affinity is not obvious and has rarely been examined. An analysis of their respective theories of language and translation reveals how Blanchot approaches and transforms the Jewish dimension of Benjamin's thought and what is at stake in this encounter. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session 002: Modern Jewish Thought 11.00-­‐13.00 Panel: Orietta Ombrosi Judaism in “Gender Difference”. Different Paths of Women's Judaism Chair: Orietta Ombrosi Irene Kajon, “La Sapienza” University of Rome, Italy Title: Margarete Susman as an Interpreter of the Bible Abstract: Margarete Susman is a very interesting figure from different points of view: for her staying between 'Deutschtum' and 'Judentum'; because she at the same time was a poet and a profound thinker; for her work as a defender of women's emancipation and of Jewish people's culture and values. The paper will deal with her exegesis of the Jewish Bible, especially the Book of Job, in the context of the events of her times and in dialogue with other Jewish and non-­‐Jewish interpreters (Maimonides, Kant, Buber). Annabel Herzog, University of Haifa, Israel Title: A Loveless Daughter of the Jewish People: Hannah Arendt and Jewishness as Pre-­‐political Factuality Abstract: In her entire work Hannah Arendt emphasized her Jewishness and her interest in the fate of the Jewish people. For her, being Jewish was a fact, as was being a woman. As she argued in her political philosophy, however, such facts were not enough for the constitution of a meaningful life. This paper will focus on Arendt's recently published "Jewish Writings" as well as on her well-­‐known study Rahel Varnhagen to discuss her understanding of Jewishness in the context of her theory of political action. Orietta Ombrosi, “La Sapienza” University of Rome, Italy Title: Sarah Kofman: a Smothered Word Abstract: In my speech, I would like to think about the question of femininity and of Judaism after Shoah, starting from French philosopher Sarah Kofman (1934-­‐1994), a forgotten figure, for who the writing, and in particular the «writing of the disaster» (Blanchot), was essential. Essential was, for her, writing, Essential was the word. A smothered word. But a word as memory, as a duty of memory of deaths. Foremost, the aim is to question this female Jewish thinker who posed philosophical conundrums – even if not exclusively by means of philosophical conceptuality – on Judaism after Auschwitz. What happened to Judaism after this event? How did she see Israel’s role and that of the Jewish people take shape? On the other hand, what happened to philosophy, to its “structures”, and to its “language”? Finally, why did a certain feminine sensitivity push this intellectual towards these questions in particular? Marina Arbib, Interdisciplinary Centre Herzliya, Israel Title: "Flora Randegger : Patriotisme juif et littérature italienne" Abstract: Ma présentation est axée sur une patriote juive de Trieste, Flora Randegger (1824-­‐1910), qui, en brisant les limites imposées à la femme par la société du XIXème siècle, se distinguait par ses initiatives en Terre d'Israël et par ses écrits qui encourageaient l'esprit national juif dans la Diaspora juive. Le but de ma présentation est de montrer comment Flora Randegger a encouragé le patriotisme juif en prenant comme modèle la littérature non juive du romantisme et du "Risorgimento" italien. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session 003: Modern Jewish Thought 14.00-­‐14.30 Panel: Orietta Ombrosi Judaism in “Gender Difference”. Different Paths of Women's Judaism Chair: Orietta Ombrosi Chiara Adorisio, “La Sapienza” University of Rome, Italy Title: “Without Regard to Gender”: Regina Jonas' reflections on the Halakha and on the History of Jewish Women. Abstract: Regina Jonas, was the first woman who, after several denials, was ordained as a rabbi in 1935 in Berlin. In 1930 she had concluded her studies at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums with a thesis titled “Can a woman be a rabbi according to Halakhic sources?”. Deported to Theresienstadt in 1942, she met Leo Baeck and the philosopher and psychologist Viktor Frankl and held lectures in the camp. She died in Auschwitz in 1944. Regina Jonas' work has been only recently rediscovered, after a long period of oblivion. Using recently published studies about her life and her work, and some of her still unexamined lectures about the history of Jewish women, Talmudic topics, Biblical themes, and about Jewish beliefs and ethics, my paper intends to reconstruct Regina Jonas' reflections on women and Judaism. Ancient Yiddish 14.30-­‐15.30 Old Yiddish Literature Chair: Jean Baumgarten Hilde Pach, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands Title: Arranging Reality. Editing Mechanisms of the Dutch Yiddish Kurant Abstract: The Kurant (Amsterdam 1686-­‐1687) is the world's oldest known Yiddish newspaper. Its main sources are Dutch newspapers. Did the makers of the Kurant use the selection and editing of the material from the sources as tools for defining the identity of the Kurant and for creating an imagined community of readers? Claudia Rosenzweig, Bar-­‐Ilan University, Israel Title: Elye hanovi and the Vampire in a Yiddish Manuscript from the 16th century. Abstract: One of the oldest attested genres in Yiddish Literature is the Zauberspruch or refues, a collection of short recipes and folk-­‐medicine, sometimes corresponding to the Italian libri di segreti, with the sporadic presence of narrative elements. In this paper I wish to present some first remarkes on a recently discovered manuscript dating from the 16th century. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session 004: Ancient Yiddish 16.00-­‐18.00 Old Yiddish Literature Chair: Jean Baumgarten Oren Roman, Haifa University, Israel Title: The Narrator in old-­‐Yiddish Biblical Epics: Between Spielmann and Darshn Abstract: Bearing in mind the Yiddish "Shpilman Teorye" and its rejection by Khone Shmeruk, I will look into the literary figure of the narrator of various old-­‐Yiddish biblical epics, and offer a close reading of his speech. I will trace the literary sources and models for his function as narrator, and show that these include elements from both German and Jewish literary traditions. The influence of German epic literature is evident at first sight, especially through the use of formulas originating from the language used in works like Heldenbuch, Jüngeres Hildebarndslied, etc. Still there are some differences in the use of these German phrases in Jewish works that I would like to touch upon, first and foremost the narrative of religions, as well as other aspects and tendencies. On the other hand we see that the narrator is also deeply embedded in Jewish Ashkenazi oral traditions, such as those of the Darshn and the Melamed. The Darshn, or preacher at the synoagogue, spoke mainly in Yiddish in order to address the entire public present (including women, children, unlearned men, etc.). In the rather rare cases when his sermons were written down, they were translated to Hebrew and most likely edited, so that no sermon reached us in its original "popular" form. Similarly, there are no direct records of the melamed's methods of teaching children at the traditional learning Kheyder, only indirect evidence such as various Torah translations, historical sources dealing with education within the Jewish community, and modern recordings of traditional Kheyder settings. That being said, it appears that the narrator of old-­‐Yiddish epics was not only influenced by Yiddish oral traditions, but in fact also recorded and preserved some of the authentic rhetorical tools of the Darshn and Melamed in the late Middle Ages and early modern period. The dual nature of the narrator in these old-­‐Yiddish works, between German-­‐Christian and traditional Jewish cultures and literatures, reflects the cultural duality of Ashkenazi Jewry in general. I will try to map in my paper the relationship between these two backgrounds of the narrator, and point on places where the two complement each other, and where they conflict. Elisabeth Singer-­‐Brehm, Jüdisches Kulturmuseum Veitshöchheim, Germany Title: Yiddish Versions of the German Volksbuch in Franconian Genizoth Abstract: In the genizoth of Franconia (Germany, Bavaria) there was found a large number of secular, not originally Jewish literature written or printed in Yiddish like adaptations of famous chapbooks (Volksbuch) or other popular literature. Although editions of famous works of fiction like “Herzog Ernst”, “Prinz Eugen” oder “Geschichten aus 1001 Nacht” (One Thousand and One Nights) were liked very much, only a few fragments are preserved until now. The genizoth now provide new fragments of this kind of literature. These texts belong to known, but also unknown editions, some of them are not listed in bibliographical catalogues and or are new proves of lost or forgotten editions. Some of the literature has been completely unknown up to the moment, when they were identified in a Franconian genizah. The paper will give an overview of these finds and of the relevance for different aspects of research. Arnaud Bikard, Paris 4-­‐Sorbonne, France Title: Le "Seder Noshim" est-­‐il une œuvre d'Elia Lévita? Abstract: En 1927, dans ses "Bilder fun der yidisher literaturgeshikhte" (p. 145-­‐148), Max Weinreich décrivait le manuscrit Cambridge add. 547 et précisait déjà que sa partie centrale dont il citait d'importants fragments présentait des particularités étonnantes, notamment un humour remarquable dans un texte qui commence comme un guide rituel de pureté pour les femmes ashkénazes. J. C. Frakes a édité en 2004 dans "Early Yiddish Texts 1100-­‐1750", p. 115-­‐119, une partie du début du manuscrit. Il apparaissait alors déjà clairement que le manuscrit constitue une collection de trois textes différents, dont le premier est un guide traditionnel à l'intention des femmes juives et le troisième une série de réflexions sur la mort d'un poète connu par ailleurs, Menakhem Oldendorf. En 2011, H. Fox et J.J. Lewis éditaient la partie centrale du manuscrit sous le titre "Many pious women": un poème dont près de 1200 vers ont été conservés et qui présente des caractéristiques littéraires remarquables dans le cadre de la littérature yiddish ancienne. Les éditeurs ne tranchent pas la question de l'auteur du poème, qui reste donc anonyme. Dans le cadre de nos recherches de doctorat, nous sommes parvenus à la conviction que ce texte pouvait être attribué, avec une grande probabilité, au poète yiddish le plus important de la période: Elia Lévita. Notre intervention vise à présenter les arguments principaux qui permettent de conforter cette attribution. Karolina Szymaniak, Jewish Historical Institute, Krakow, Poland Title: Prophets, Messiahs, and National Redemption. Polish Romantic Phantasms and the Modern Yiddish Literary Criticism Abstract: In the paper, I would like to analyze different responses to Polish Romantic literature found in the Yiddish literary criticism prior to the Second World War and the Holocaust, with a special emphasis on the interwar period. This literature, influenced by diaspora experience and Messianism, played a central role in the formation of Polish national repertoires. These in turn, as recent scholarship has shown (mainly, however, with regard to Zionism only), were appropriated in different ways by the Jewish national discourses. Romantic imagery and phantasms seem thus a particularly important and fruitful area for explorations of patterns of multidirectional influence and Polish-­‐Jewish cultural exchange. The responses to Polish Romantic literature, approving or critical, consist an important group in the corpus of Yiddish literary criticism dealing with Polish literature in general. That many of them appeared in the period immediately following First World War and the establishment of the Second Polish Republic, bears only witness to the importance literary criticism and the Romantic tradition had in renegotiating new terms of the Polish-­‐
Jewish coexistence in the changed political and cultural situation. Yiddish literature in Poland had to redefine itself under the new political realities in relation to the new political state organization with its developing network of cultural institutions. Literary criticism with its different agendas became one of the arenas used by Yiddish literature to negotiate and define its role with respect to the Polish literary establishment. The texts in question form a varied group. They consider the role Romantic literature played in forming modern Polish literature and culture and shaping Polish Jewish relations, as well as analyze the Messianic motifs and Diaspora experience expressed in this literature and their relation to Judaism and Jewish literary tradition. Some of the critics reveal a true fascination with Polish Romantic tradition, treating it as a model for the Yiddish/Jewish literature, while others reject it on different grounds – as one of the factors provincializing Polish literature or as a tradition shaping the oppressive Polish nationalism. The paper will include analysis of such authors as A. Tseytlin, S. Asch, Y.Y. Singer, L. Finkelshteyn, Y. Viltshinsky, and others. The close reading of critical texts and their cultural and political contexts, will help me examine the ways in which Yiddish culture, as a minority culture, strived to establish and negotiate its own position and independence in relation to Polish literature, responded to different forms of oppression, and resisted the hegemony of Polish culture, not denying, however, its cultural interrelations with it, but rather trying to redefine them on its own terms. The paper is part of a larger project concerning the multifaceted Polish-­‐Yiddish cultural contacts seen through the lens of literary discourses. Monday 21st July SORBONNE, Salle Gaston PARIS (Stairs E, 1st flour, on the right) Session: 001: Musicology 9.00-­‐10.30 Chair: Hervé Roten Hervé Roten, Institut Européen des Musiques Juives, Paris, France Title: Conservation and Valorization of Jewish Musical Archives at the Numerical Era: The Example of the European Institute for Jewish Music (Paris) Abstract: Transmitted only by oral tradition until now, Jewish musics constitute a complex and plural heritage characterized by Diaspora. Consequently, we have to speak about Jewish Musics, and not Jewish Music, each of them having a specific geocultural context. So, the study of Jewish Music is related to many other fields, as history, sociology, symbolism…To preserve Jewish Musical Traditions, to make them available to everybody, this is the goal of the European Institute for Jewish Musics, created in 2009, which owns today the most important collection of numerical documents online: about 50.000 audio and video recordings and more than 150.000 pages of scores, books and miscellaneous archives. This presentation will introduce to the different tasks of gathering, digitalizing and uploading of the archives of the European Institute for Jewish Musics. Title: Préservation et valorisation des archives musicales juive à l’ère du numérique. L’exemple de l’Institut Européen des Musiques Juives (Paris) Longtemps véhiculée par la seule tradition orale, les musiques juives forment un patrimoine complexe et pluriel caractérisé par le champ de la diaspora. Ainsi n’existe-­‐t-­‐il pas une musique juive, mais des musiques juives, chacune d’entre elles relevant d’un contexte géoculturel spécifique. L’étude des musiques juives est par conséquent riche d’enseignements dans un grand nombre de domaines : musical, mais aussi historique, sociologique, symbolique, etc. Préserver les traditions musicales juives, les mettre à la portée de tous, tel est l'objectif de l'Institut Européen des Musiques Juives (IEMJ) créé en 2009, et qui recèle, à ce jour, la plus importante collection de documents numériques accessibles en ligne, soit près de 50.000 enregistrements audio, vidéo et plus de 150.000 pages de partitions, livres, revues et archives diverses. Cette communication aura pour objectif de présenter le travail de collecte, de numérisation et de mise à disposition des archives numériques de l'Institut Européen des Musiques Juives. Andreas Schmitges, University of Halle-­‐Wittenberg, Germany Title: Funem (sh)eynem vortsl aroys?!– Approaches to the Study of Parallel Eastern Yiddish and German Folksongs Abstract: A considerable amount of folksongs in the Yiddish and German tradition share common roots in texts, motifs and melodies. This paper presents first results of a broader study and will give insight into the history of the research done so far by researchers of the twentieth century as well as outlining first results of the analysis of these parallels. At first sight, the existence of a parallel repertoire of Eastern Yiddish and German Folksongs is not surprising. It is rather astonishing that not much scholarly attention has been given to the topic in the twentieth century. This study hopes to gain scientific insight into the following themes: 1. Adding another layer to the research of Yiddish Folksong. 2. Development of a historically informed performance style for Yiddish Folk Song through intercultural comparison. 3. Intersections of the Yiddish-­‐German parallels with a universal European repertoire. 4. New socio-­‐musical perspectives concerning the European perception of Yiddish music 1. Adding another layer to the research of Yiddish Folksong Scholars like Y.L. Cahan have – in early twentieth century research – stressed the meaning of a parallel Yiddish-­‐German Folksong repertoire. Beginning with the Ashkenaz I period, where many melodies were shared by the Jewish and the gentile population, the process continues in Ashkenaz II where many texts are still shared but the music develops its own Jewish identity. First answers to the question of how this repertoire developed historically, socially and geographically will be given. 2. Development of a historically informed performance style for Yiddish Folk Song through intercultural comparison The revival of Yiddish music has among musician-­‐protagonists of this movement started a discussion on questions of style and expression. Very often this debate hasn’t been mirrored by scholarly research. The comparison of Yiddish and German Folksongs offers the unique possibility of gaining insight into stylistic and philological matters, as very often it allows a deeper understanding of the history of Yiddish Songs. This historical trace leads back to their earliest sources and helps understanding their development into important elements of Jewish identity and Jewish and Yiddish expression. To analyze these expressions on the basis of their early history and their German (and European) parallels will enhance a scholarly discussion on historically informed performance style. 3. Intersections of the Yiddish-­‐German parallels with a universal European repertoire Some of the Yiddish-­‐German parallels are part of a pan-­‐European parallel song repertoire that has not been studied in full yet. In this field, the role of Yiddish culture as a transnational European culture is not to be underestimated as many musical elements may have been preserved over long periods and geographical changes. 4. New socio-­‐musical perspectives concerning the pan-­‐European perception of Yiddish music. The success of Yiddish Folk Music in the USA and Europe since the 1980s has started -­‐ within and outside the Jewish Community -­‐ a discussion on its authenticity, role and meaning. The fact that some of the musical and textual repertoire of this music is actually shared by many European cultures will add a new layer to the discussion as well as help to improve the understanding of the character of Yiddish versus other European Folk Music. Alexandre Cerveux, Université Paris-­‐Sorbonne & EPHE, France Title: "Muzikologye" or sketches of Musicology in Yiddish: a Glimpse at A. Z. Idelsohn's Archives (1882-­‐
1938) Abstract: The pioneering contribution of hazzan and scholar Abraham Zvi Idelsohn to the field of Jewish musicology is well known. His major works, Oẓar Neginot Israel (10 vol., 1914-­‐1932) and Jewish Music In Its Historical Development (1929) are part of the original core of musicological writings concerning Jewish music. Thanks to his priceless efforts, through which we obtain a sense of the urgency he felt to record and save the traditional music of the Jewish people, we have the opportunity to rediscover the traditional music of the eastern European Jews. By taking a closer look at Idelsohn’s archive, now housed in the National Library of Israel, one notes valuable paper cuttings and journal articles in Yiddish. Most of them originated from the USA or Canada, some from South Africa, mainly appearing in journals published in the late 1920s to the 1940s. This preliminary study aims to determine whether Yiddish has been used as a scientific language in the field of musicology. Alongside the efforts achieved by scholars in linguistics, Yiddish history or history itself, others contributed to the Yiddish press by submitting articles in Yiddish. A technical jargon is employed, mixing both neologisms and Hebraisms. Further attempts to use Yiddish in subsequent music writings in the USA, from the 1940s onwards, should also be mentioned. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session: 002 Musicology 11.00-­‐13.00 Chair: Hervé Roten Rachel Adelstein, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University, UK Title: Feminine Overtures: Jewish Women Musicians Encountering Non-­‐Jewish Society Abstract: In encounters between Jewish communities and their host cultures, women have often played a key role as mediators. Historian Deborah Hertz has observed that the relative fluidity of women’s social status gave them much greater opportunities to cross European social borders, and they and their families took advantage of this mobility. Wealthy Jewish society hostesses in eighteenth-­‐ and nineteenth-­‐century Berlin negotiated and blurred the boundaries between German and Jew, Jew and Christian, Orthodoxy and Reform, and public and private spaces. Similarly, in the United States in the twentieth century, Jewish immigrant women’s relative familiarity with business practice helped them to make a place for their communities in American society. One highly public setting for such encounters has been the musical stage. In this paper, I explore the cases of two female Jewish musicians whose public musical lives allowed them not only to facilitate connections between themselves and their non-­‐Jewish audiences, but also to provoke new questions about the changing position of Jews in their host cultures. I draw first on the case of Sara Levy (1761 – 1854), a maternal great-­‐aunt of Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, a harpsichord performer, and musical hostess, whose devotion to the music of the Bach family helped to bring about the nineteenth-­‐century Bach revival. Next, I examine Sophie Tucker (1887 – 1966), the American entertainer whose rejection of blackface helped to complicate American ideas of race, Jewishness, and the public presentation of women. I argue that, for both Levy and Tucker, their status as socially fluid outsiders allowed them both the freedom to undertake important projects that were outside the norms of their host cultures, and also to draw attention to the question of what place Jews should have in those host cultures. Merav Rosenfeld, Institute of Musical Research, University of London, UK Title: Rabbi ‘Ovadyah Yosef and His Halakhic Rulings on Arabic Music in Jewish Worship Abstract: Rabbi ‘Ovadyah Yosef, who was born in Baghdad in 1920 and immigrated to Israel at the age of four, grew up to be one of the most influential rabbinic figures in the political, religious and cultural life of the new state. He died only recently in October 2013, and according to press reports several hundred thousand people, from all walks of life and diverse political and cultural backgrounds, attended his funeral. In 1984, Yosef became the spiritual leader of the ultra-­‐orthodox party Shas which aspired to restore the shattered identity of Arab-­‐Jews. He brought to the public attention the phrase lehaḥzir ‘atarah leyoshnah [renewing the crown’s glory], which was understood by Shas’s voters as its agenda to revive their Judaeo-­‐
Arabic tradition as lived in their Arabo-­‐Islamic diasporas. However, Rabbi Yosef’s aspiration seems to be quite different. Recent studies on Yosef’s halakhic rulings show that for him, lehaḥzir ‘atarah leyoshnah means to renew the nation’s life in the Land of Israel, cleared of any diasporic traditions, and united under the halakhic rulings established by the sixteenth century Rabbi Qaro of Safed. Yosef regard Qaro as Mara D‘atra, namely, the higher halakhic authority for Jews living in the Land of Israel. This paper examines Yosef’s view of music’s role in Jewish worship, as reflected in his monumental halakhic work Yeḥaveh Da‘at [Present an Opinion]. It presents him both as a gifted poet and cantor as well as a great admirer of Arabic music, and suggests that in matters of music, Yosef was a great supporter of diasporic traditions, and particularly of those inherent to Middle-­‐Easter Judaism. The paper shows that Yosef appreciates that Arabic music is central to the Judaeo-­‐Arabic tradition and hence should be preserved. He refers to Arab-­‐Jews, both inside and outside Israel, discusses with great sympathy their beloved music, and analyses its varied aspects in the context of the Judaeo-­‐Arabic heritage, both in the diaspora and in Israel. Furthermore, Yosef encourages using music in all types of worship, describing its benefit in worshipping God with joy and love. Judith Cohen, York University, Toronto, Canada Title: Singing together again: Performing Sephardic and Sufi women's Songs in Larache, Morocco Abstract: The Judeo-­‐Spanish speaking Jews of the former Spanish Protectorate in northern Morocco have all but disappeared: only a few dozen still live there. In April 2013 I had the unexpected opportunity of spending two weeks living in a Muslim household in the town of Larache (El Araïsh) and working with local young women Muslim singers who perform Sufi hadrá. Through the medium of old Sephardic wedding and hilulá songs, we worked through religion, language, age, cultural differences to present a joint concert of Sephardic and Muslim songs, given in the town's remaining Catholic church. Not only did this echo the (oft-­‐
contested) concept of "medieval three religions conviviality", it provided a new model of understanding and cooperation through traditional songs and traditional singing styles. In the summer of 2013, I returned briefly, during a research trip to Spain, to establish contact with traditional older women wedding and henna singers and explore further research possibilities. Because my own repertoire and performance style were based on my years of direct fieldwork and participant observation, as well as bibliographical research, while preparing my doctoral dissertation in the 1980s, at a time when many women were still alive who remembered the old songs and practices, I was able to relate to both these young singers who did not remember the Jewish presence in their town, and to older people, who did remember them vividly. On the musical level, I explored wedding song themes and performance practice, and parallels between Muslim and Sephardic Jewish customs, again referring to my years of fieldwork in Moroccan Sephardic communities in Canada and elsewhere. In this paper, I explore the possibilities afforded by combining scholarly inquiry as a trained ethnomusicologist with active education and performance activities, as a veteran singer and workshop leader, to further, as much as possible, both scholarly knowledge and human understanding. Note 1. The possible topics do not include Folklore/Anthropology/Ethnography, where I feel this fits better than musicology. Note 2. Although I have been informed that one or more concerts is/are already planned, I would like to offer an informal concert of music related to this topic. An alternate possibility is to offer this as, instead of a paper, a longer (40-­‐45 minutes at least) combined performance-­‐
lecture, which would include both live (by myself) and videotaped (in Morocco) excerpts of the music which forms the basis of this proposal. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session: 003 Jewish History: Middle Ages 14.00-­‐15.30 Jewish and Muslim Cultures Chair: Sarah Fargeon Elisha Russ-­‐Fishbane, Wesleyan University, USA Title: Jews and Other Infidels in Sufi Literature Abstract: Recent scholarship has explored the attitude toward Sufism in medieval Jewish literature and has called attention to a movement of Jewish-­‐Sufism that flourished in thirteenth-­‐century Egypt. Scholarship examining the image of Jews and Judaism in Sufi literature, by contrast, is a major desideratum, one which the present paper aims to address. A number of Sufi poems, from Nizami to Rumi to ibn Arabi, famously promote a universalism transcending confessional boundaries. A careful reading of classical Sufi literature, both in Arabic and Persian (including the above-­‐mentioned authors), reveals the need for a more systematic and nuanced study of the question. In each of the different genres of Sufi literature (hagiographical, poetic, exegetical, and systematic), the Jew is depicted in typological fashion either as archetypal infidel, diabolical deceiver, or as ultimate symbol of humiliation and servility. Somewhat paradoxically, the image of Jewish humiliation was occasionally utilized as a model of ultimate humility to which the Sufi devotee must aspire. This paper proposes a fresh approach to the representation of Jews and Judaism in the Sufi religious imagination, adding a new dimension to the study of Jewish-­‐Islamic engagement in the medieval Islamic world. Renee Levine Melammed, The Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, Israel Title: Jewish Women in Mediterranean Society and the Influence of Islamic Culture (950-­‐1250) Abstract: In what is known as Genizah society, the lives of Jewish women were influenced by Islamic law and culture in numerous ways, many of which have been examined by S.D. Goitein, Mordechai Akiva Friedman as well as by myself. Jewish men were imitating the surrounding culture when they wed more than one wife, had concubines or sexual relations with maidservants. Temporary marriage arrangements (iftida) occasionally took place. Yet there were additional ways in which their lives were affected by the Islamic surroundings: When and why would a woman go to or threaten to go to a Muslim court? Does the language they used, the less formal Judeo-­‐Arabic noted by Joel Kraemer, reflect aspects of Muslim culture? Did they come into contact with Muslim women or men on a daily basis? Can any differences be discerned from these sources between women's lives in medieval Cairo and those in other Mediterranean Jewish communities? This paper will attempt to answer these questions while looking at Jewish women's lives as reflected in legal and epistolary documents found in the Cairo Genizah (950-­‐1250). Roni Shweka, Friedberg Genizah Project, Jerusalem, Israel Title: "And every day they are doing a quarrel, even in the synagogue": Disturbing Episodes From Jerusalem at the Beginning of the 13th century Abstract: Almost one hundred years ago Jacob Mann published in his classic work "The Jews in Egypt and in Palestine Under the Fatimid Caliphs" (vol. 1, pg 241; vol. 2, pp. 304-­‐305) a Genizah fragment (T-­‐S 8J33.4) that contains the end of an epistle written by Yehiel b. Isaac from Jerusalem, around the turn of the 12th and the 13th centuries. The writer inquires a rabbi in Egypt what to do with the money the rabbi sent him for building a ritual bath. Yehiel argues they don't need to build another one, as the community has already one in his own house. With the use of the FGP module for joining fragments I succeeded to find more fragments from this epistle and from other writings of Yehiel which reveals a harsh controversy in the little Jewish community of Jerusalem at that time concerning the building of the ritual bath and other issues. It turns out that someone already started to build a bath in his yard, and Yehiel was willing to pay him all the expenses he had so far but to stop him from continue building the bath. Yehiel describes some other severe accidents in the community of Jerusalem in these unpublished fragments, altogether portraying an unpleasant picture of a community in a quarrel. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session: 004 Visual Arts 16.00-­‐18.00 Panel: Absence and Presence of Jews in the Making of Visual Culture Organizer: Michael Berkowitz Chair: Joachim Schlör Michael Berkowitz, UCL, UK Title: European Jews and Photography: Autobiography, Evasion, and Integrity Abstract: The presentation, based on archival research and little-­‐examined literary texts, might be described as "between realism and fictions: retouching and the quest for honesty among Jewish photographers in Eastern Europe and beyond." It will concentrate on the autobiographical work of I. J. Singer (interwar Warsaw) and Bernard Gotfryd (Radom ghetto), and also draw on writings of Hans Keilson, Giselle Freund, Lotte Jacobi, Alfred Stieglitz, and H. W. Barnett. Special attention will be paid to articulated and unarticulated reflections on relations between Jews and non-­‐Jews in the photographic realm. Peter Leese, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Title: Ruminative Memory: the Late films of Robert Vas Abstract: Born in Budapest, Robert Vas (1931-­‐78) was thirteen at the time of the German occupation in 1944. He escaped the fate of many other Hungarian Jews when his family obtained ‘Schutz-­‐Passes’ and moved into what he called a ‘privileged’ ghetto near the Danube. Shortly after the war his mother died and his father fled to Australia. He then became part of the postwar communist youth movement and later on, in the defining moment of his life, an active participant in the Hungarian Uprising in 1956. After the failure of 1956 he escaped to London and established himself as a highly original documentary film-­‐maker whose work developed from the techniques of Humphrey Jennings. Vas’s films are at once subjective and ethnographic; edited with a brilliant eye for metaphor and surrealist juxtaposition. Today he is barely known except for his first film, Refuge England (1959), a semi-­‐autobiographical short which follows a Hungarian refugee’s first day in London. This paper explores some of the themes in Vas’s late work, by which time he was a freelance director producing films for the BBC. Stalin (1973), Nine Days in ’26 (1974), My Homeland (1976) consider respectively the career of the Soviet leader, the General Strike of 1926, and Vas’s memory of Hungary and 1956. Despite their disparate subjects these films are held together by a particular mode of recollection. The director understood his art as political, and he saw imagination and self-­‐expression as the most profound of human acts. Yet these judgments were also bound up with his past, and with his critical need to recall and testify. Vas’s later films are, then, about the techniques he finds to transform his own focused attention on bad feelings and experiences (ruminative memory) into artistic reflection. Shelley Hornstein, York University, Canada Title: The World in a Picture: Albert Kahn, Architectural Tourism and the Archives of the Planet Abstract: On the heels of the Dreyfus affair and an intense period of nation building, the Jewish French banker, Albert Kahn, established the Archives of the Planet, an ambitious project funding photographers to tour and photograph the world between 1908-­‐1931. The collection (72,000 color photographs) demonstrates Kahn’s desire to capture the memory of places and disappearing sites in architectural photography and promote universal tolerance of other cultures primarily to his fellow compatriots. This transnational project – avant la lettre – made its way to French students and communities through slide-­‐
lectures by geographers, architects and photographers that he financed, thereby promoting human rights and cosmopolitanism through identity politics and outside of Jewish circles in particular. He spearheaded the use of the 1907 invention by the Lumière Brothers’ color “autochrome” photography on glass plates, the first industrially-­‐produced color process in the world, yet only suitable as projections. His lifelong mission was to mobilize shifts in thinking about the “planet” through stunning images about architecture and indigenous cultures. Kahn was deeply influenced by his friend, Henri Bergson, whose ideas about memory and “spatialized” time shaped first, his travel scholarships, Autour du Monde (Around the World), 1898, then, the Archives project. This paper argues that Kahn’s vision of humanitarian ideals of people and places, internationalization and national identities across borders in a time of cultural modernity – well before the internet – was borne from his grounding in Jewish education. The ideas of this little-­‐known revolutionary traveller, who also established a pioneering research institute (Centre de Documentation Sociale), 1920 at the Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris, demonstrates his unwavering commitment to higher education and the evolution of mutual respect across cultures, races and religions through a grand photographic project. Monday 21st July SORBONNE, Salle DELAMARRE (Stairs E, 1st flour, on the right) Session: 001: Modern Hebrew Literature 9.00-­‐10.30 Panel: Foreign Writers in Paris: Avraham Shlonsky, Zalman Shneour and Blaise Cendrars Organizer: Lilach Nethanel Chair: Lilach Nethanel Lilach Nethanel, Bar-­‐Ilan University, Israel Title: The Poetic Difference The Problem of the Site in Two Poems by Zalman Shneour Abstract: This paper addresses the literary representation of the urban site in two Hebrew poems by Zalman Shneour: 'On the Seine' (Al Hof Ha'Seine) [1907], and 'Vilna' (Vilnius) [1917]. These poems, framing the second decade of Shneour's poetry, were written in a changing biographical and ideological context. The restless mobility of Shneour himself, as of the generation of early 20th century modernist Hebrew writers, was pointed out in Shimon Halkin's critical writings [Halkin, 1980] as well as in Shachar Pinsker's recent book [Pinsker, 2011]. This mobility is also inscribed in the thematic outlines of Shneour's literary writings. The second decade of his poetry is introduced and concluded by the description of two urban sites, Paris and Vilna. The poem 'On the Seine' was written during Shneour's first stay in Paris, and it was included in the collection of poetry which he published in 1923 Berlin, under the title Gesharim [Bridges]. The poem 'Vilna' was probably written during World War I. It was first published in a special edition in post-­‐
war Berlin, and was later on included in a second poetry collection entitled Hezionot [Visions] from 1923. The reading of these 'local' poems describing Vilnius and Paris should refer to the context of the Hebrew publishing initiatives in Berlin, where they were edited and printed. Shneour's poems express what I shall call a 'poetic difference' regarding the actual presence in the represented site, its local language and the described historical time. His 1907 Hebrew poem on Paris is to be read by its linguistic difference from the proper names of the monuments mentioned in it; the 1917 poem on Vilna is to be shifted from Pre-­‐war Jewish Vilna and be replaced in post-­‐War Berlin, with the immigration wave of Eastern European Jews. This reading of the poetic difference is an introductive chapter to a future monographic study on Zalman Shneour's early years, as it evokes the fundamental problem of the mimetic representation in early 20th century Hebrew literature. Roy Greenwald, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: Shlonsky in Paris: From Post-­‐Symbolism to Neo-­‐Symbolism Abstract: In 1930 the poet Avraham Shlonsky traveled to Paris to raise funds and increase subscriptions for Ketuvim, the literary magazine of which he was a leading member. His trip would become highly significant for the direction of Hebrew poetry in Eretz Yisrael. While in Paris, Shlonsky wrote the “Karchiel” poems, in which feverish trade is a defining feature of the urban landscape. The great metropolis in these poems becomes the site of a rampant inflation, which depletes the value not only of material assets but of the spiritual ones of Western culture at large. The “Karchiel” poems were included four years later in Shlonsky’s book Avnei Bohu, a book that became a founding text for the neo-­‐symbolist school in Eretz Yisrael. The rise of this school has always been – and largely remains – one of the great questions for the research of the history of new Hebrew poetry. My paper focuses on Shlonsky’s poetry in order to explain the rise of the neo-­‐Symbolist school. It seeks to trace the influence of French Symbolism on Shlonsky’s poetics as well as to explore the way that the political and economic conditions in Europe at the time found expression in his poetry. Amotz Giladi, Strasburg University, France Title: Transnationalism and Nationalism in the Parisian Literary Field of the Early 20th Century: the Trajectory of Blaise Cendrars Abstract: The poet and writer Blaise Cendrars (1887-­‐1961), born in Switzerland, arrived in France in 1912 and became intensely active in the Parisian avant-­‐garde circles. Highly internationalized, these circles included many foreign creators and maintained multiple relations with avant-­‐garde groups across Europe. Cendrars’s double culture, both French and German, made of him a particularly adapted actor of the transnational avant-­‐garde network. Jewish creators, mainly from Eastern Europe, were highly present in the Parisian avant-­‐garde circles, which became an arena of cooperation between Jewish and non-­‐Jewish artists. Let us mention, for example, the friendship between Cendrars and Marc Chagall, to whom the former dedicated a poem in prose, as well as one of his "Nineteen Elastic Poems". As for Chagall, he painted a portrait of Cendrars which is unfortunately lost. Yet, foreign avant-­‐garde writers, who occupied marginal positions in the Parisian society and literary field, were subjected to the increasing French nationalism and xenophobia, which attained their paroxysm during World War I. In these circumstances, it was difficult for foreigners to stay in France without joining the French army. Cendrars did so at the very beginning of the war, after signing a manifesto inciting all foreigners living in France to join the French army as well. The war, from which Cendrars returned after loosing his right arm, was a major trauma for himself and for his generation of avant-­‐garde creators, whose transnational vision was put to the test. During the 1920s, Cendrars drifted away from the avant-­‐garde circles, passed from poetry to novel writing and started working as a reporter for major French newspapers. Thus, he left the margins of the literary field and moved towards a more central position. Moreover, having been naturalized, he tended hence forth to repress his foreign origins. He even adopted French nationalism and xenophobia, and during the 1930s, in the context of the Front Populaire’s government led by Léon Blum, he took anti-­‐Semitic, far-­‐right positions. Through Cendrars’s trajectory, I propose to deal with early 20th century Paris as an intercultural melting pot, but also as an example of increased cultural nationalization processes. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session: 002 Modern Hebrew Literature 11.00-­‐13.00 Jewish National Renewal Chair: Yoav Ronel, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: Berdyczewski and the European Love: Hybrid Subjectivity and Identity in Miriam Abstract: The writings of the 19th century Jewish author Micha Yosef Berdyczewski's were canonically defined by many (including Berdyczewski himself), as a project to found a modern Jewish identity and subjectivity. Berdyczewski famously claimed that the Jewish national revival should start not from the collective people, but from the subject, by founding a new Jewish subject, one that, unlike Orthodox Judaism, is not alienated from his body. This Berdyczewskyan reunion of body and spirit, as Hanan Hever states, will come through an opening up of theseparatist Jewish culture to non-­‐Jewish modernity and thought in general, and to the fertile forces of erotic, romantic European love in particular. The modern Jewish national identity depends on the revival of the subject through romantic love. In my lecture I will offer a reading of Berdyczewski's Jewish adaptation and his interpretation of romantic European love, as portrayed in his final novel Miriam, a bildungsroman seemingly focused on the life of a young Jewish girl in a 19th Jewish community in Ukraine. As Zipora Kagan has shown, this novel serves as a monument or testament of a heterogeneous Jewish culture. I will claim that the novel offers an examination of romantic-­‐
erotic European love, as it clashes and integrates with a Jewish culture. Besides references to Flaubert Madam Bovary and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, the novel uses classic tropes and scenes from the European love arsenal: the structuring of the new, loving Jewish subject/identity. Thus, a non-­‐Jewish essence flows into the formation of the Jewish subject. My reading of Miriam will deal with its unique and destructive love-­‐discourse: I will try to show that Berdyczewski's reading of European love reveals the inherent destructive potential of the romantic love-­‐discourse, what Zahi Zamir (following Denis de-­‐Rougemont) refers to as a "tormenting love model"; furthermore, that this love serves as a volatile and problematic base for a national identity or modern subject. Through a reading of Freud’s Moses and Monotheism I will claim that this novel, written in the author's dying days, should be read as a will; one that will undermine the stable concepts of Jewish identity attributed to his earlier works. I will present Miriam as a destabilizing text: while the early Berdyczewski used romantic love as the vessel of the becoming of the modern Jewish identity, this novel presents love as a disaster, thus questioning the possibility of a stable national/subjective identity; as a text which deals with the impossibility of a stable, homogenous identity. Finally, I will claim that following this disaster, the novel’s finale and its heroine’s cultural choice, a hybrid one, opens up a possibility of a hybrid (following Homy Bhabha), Jewish/non-­‐Jewish identity. An identity that isn't constructed upon an erotic and utopian homogenous concept of love and identity, but upon a culturally mobile and responsible, heterogeneous selfhood. Shira Stav, Ben-­‐Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: Food, Incest and Auto-­‐Anti-­‐Semitism in UN Gnessin's Short Stories Abstract: This talk discusses two short stories by the great early 20th century Hebrew writer, UN Gnessin: "Pre-­‐fast meal" ("Seuda Mafseket", 1905) and "In the gardens" ("Ba-­‐ganim", 1910). I propose that the former, less-­‐known story, contains a certain implicit structure that is fully developed in the latter, well-­‐
known story. In both stories Gnessin weaves ties between food and incestuous seduction and between sexuality and the self-­‐perception of the Jews. "Pre-­‐fast meal" depicts the relationship between a father and his teenage daughter. The time frame is the first Yom-­‐Kippur's eve following the death of the mother. The main conflict in the story consists in the mourning father's request of his daughter to join him in eating meat at the Pre-­‐fast meal, whereas she practices vegetarianism and holds secular views. "In the Gardens" tells the story of a young educated Jew who has just returned from many years of travelling and goes out to stroll in the countryside, where he has not been for years. There he encounters a vulgar Jewish vassal farmer, who provides fish and other foods to the local urban community. The young lad experiences the silence and the blooming nature around him as a powerful attack on his being. At the climax of the story he secretly witnesses a brutal ritual, when the farmer has sex with his retarded daughter and lashes her. Incestuous desire in these stories is a theme that sharpens the tensions between urbanity and country-­‐life, between seclusion inside definite borders and their transgression, between Anti-­‐Semitism and Jewish self-­‐
perception. Following theoretical accounts of incest in Levi-­‐Strauss, Kristeva, David Bakan, Sander Gilman and others, I will show how the non-­‐obvious connection between the two stories is revealed through the incest theme, which expresses an anxiety of stagnation. Gnessin portrays incest as a disease: the disease of closed spaces and degeneration, 'the disease of the Jews'. Reading both stories together shows that Gnessin considered it an incurable disease. On this reading, in Gnessin's stories the tensions between tradition and secularization, between segregation and assimilation, and between disintegration and renewal overlay real and symbolic incestuous affairs. As opposed to the traditional view that incest is an obvious tool of creating psychological drama, the present proposal takes it to play diverse roles in literary structures: ideological, social, national political and gender roles. The juxtaposition of these stories highlights incest as a focal point where the main concerns and worries of Hebrew literature at the turn of the 20th century converge. Rhona Burns, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: "Jews do not ride Horses!": On the method of symbols in Sussati by Mendele Mocher Sforim Abstract: In modern western imagination, it seems that the image of the horse always carried with it some meanings of status. More than anything, when coupled to Man, from Napoleon on horseback to the Hollywood cowboys, the horse is associated, in western modern thought, with power and control. It seems then, that we shouldn’t be very surprised to find the image of a horse standing at the center of a literary piece (Sussati), which was regarded by Fichmann as "the greatest national poetry in the new Hebrew literature". For what would be more fitting than "national poetry", using this ancient image as a symbol? But how is the horse portrayed in the "Jewish Imagination"? "Jews do not ride horses!", states resolutely the Melamed in the Hebrew story Don Kishot Me'astropoley by Bucki Ben yagli. Avot Yeshurun expressed a similar notion when warning his listeners, in a recorded interview, that "it is shameful for a horse to be ridden by a Jew!". The biblical warning for the Israelite kings-­‐ warning them against obtaining too many horses-­‐ also comes to mind in this context. And indeed, as a loyal member of the "Jewish Imagination", Mendele's horse is no heroic horse-­‐ rather it's a tortured and beaten up mare, which her owner (Israel by name) prefers walking beside her instead of riding her. This mare is presented to us as an "eternal mare" (‫)סוסה עולמית‬, with no hope for change. Werses has already analyzed the piece as consisting of a "serial structure", an anti-­‐linear structure, which clearly doesn't lead us to a "solution". How then does this fit with the national aim which stood behind the making of this piece? In this discussion I will examine the symbolic method in this novel. Following Amir Banbaji, I also will use the term Allegory as understood by Adorno-­‐ but unlike Banbaji I will argue that precisely from this allegorical understanding of the piece, the Zionist meaning of the piece is sharpened rather than weakened. I will base my argument further on Dan Meron, and on his definition of Susassti as part of a project he called "The madmen's library". I will contend that the so called "unintelligible" narrative, with which Banbaji tries to save Mendele from what he calls "Mevak'rei dor ha'me'dinah", actually strengthens the national context and importance of the piece, and indeed serves to create a complex national image, loyal to the historical, political and cultural understanding of Abramovitch. I will suggest that its fragmentary character, which resists in many ways to any direct "symbolic" meaning, in fact contributes to the very understanding of this piece as a "national" one. Riki Traum-­‐Avidan, Fairleigh Dickinson University, FDU, USA Title: A Non-­‐Jewish Jew: The Case of Yoram Kaniuk Abstract: The works of Yoram Kaniuk (1930-­‐2013) are interwoven with the Zionist ethos and the history of the State of Israel. His narratives are imbued with references to the national, political and religious failure of the state to live up to the dream of Kaniuk and his generation. This failure had reached its radical manifestation in 2011, two years before his death, when Kaniuk petitioned the Interior Ministry to change his stated religion from “Jewish” to “No Religion.” For Kaniuk, the Jewish question is trapped in and inseparable from the national question. This presentation traces Kaniuk’s gradual separation from his Jewish identity, as expressed in “The Last Jew” (1982) and his last novella “An Old Man” (2012). I explore these two seminal works and the different forms of disappointment they present, in addition to prominent metonymies of despair that comprise the two novels. Kaniuk’s final novella, “An Old Man” presents the art of painting as a form of reclamation that repositions Kaniuk on a different level of belonging, where religion and nationality have no meaning. I discuss the transformation from “The Last Jew” to “An Old Man” as one that captures the conversion from an absurd, disintegrated identity that struggles with historical, national and religious bonds, to an old, failed rootless being who redefines his existence by means of art. The art of painting becomes a metonym of rebirth and recreation and it concretizes Kaniuk’s declaration of having “No Religion.” I attempt to place Kaniuk in a literary tradition of Jewish thinkers and writers who adopt a radical ethical position of reflective individualism, which is explored in Judith Butler’s “Parting Ways.” This ethical position denies the right of any collective to monopolize national, religious, or sexual categories, and instead demands individual autonomy. In a way, Kaniuk’s works present radical ethics as a literary manifestation of this demand for personal autonomy. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session: 003 Modern Hebrew Literature 14.00-­‐15.30 From Exile to the Statehood Generation Chair: Adi Orian, The Hadassah College, Israel Title: Jerusalem as a Symbolic Nation – national discourse in the 19th century as reflected in Byron's Hebrew Melodies and its translation Abstract: A significant part in the hold translations possess is in the "immersion, so far as we may experience it, in another language being as close as we can come to a second self, to breaking free of the habitual skin or tortoise-­‐shell of our consciousness." Indeed the translators into Hebrew in the 19th century channeled and encouraged the wish of the Jewish people to change and to heal the Jewish soul and condition, returning them to their former Biblically-­‐inspired pride and glory, as they viewed it. The unique situation of Hebrew literature in the 19th century cannot go unnoticed. The translations and their influence in a period in which Jews had no land and no spoken language of their own, became the only source of unity, replacing theological concerns with sociological and national ones. Hebrew literature in this period became the means for an internal immigration to a spiritual Jerusalem awakening the nationalistic Jewish spirit, which ultimately led to a physical, external immigration to the land of Israel and later even to statehood. Lord Byron's Hebrew Melodies (1815) encompasses everything the Jewish society of the day tended towards: it is Biblically-­‐based; focused on Jewish themes and concerns; dealing with the issue of crime and punishment and the possibility of a realistic-­‐ Edenic hope based in a metaphoric and eventually a physical Jerusalem. These concerns supported the Jewish dissatisfaction with the weak, faulty, exilic, Jewish condition, a view which was paradoxically also based on anti-­‐Semitic models. In this period, translators became the modern prophets of the day conveying a sociological rather than a religious voice. Translation became the way to decolonize and liberate the Hebrew Bible, the Hebrew language and through them the Hebrew people. Most of the melodies deal directly or otherwise with the themes of exile, suffering and a wish for a return to an Edenic state. Whether Byron wrote about physical exile (which he also experienced) or regarded it as a metaphor for a spiritual, emotional exile from one's soul and self, his Jewish readers found their then budding urgent desire for change in the Jewish spirit, society and condition in these poems. The translators to these poems emphasized greatly this approach to the point of transforming even the 'neutral' love poems (such as "She Walks in Beauty" as a prime example) into poems about exile and the Jewish relationship with God through His Shechina. Byron's work served as mediator between mythology and Jewish Biblical pride and the modern age causing Joseph Klausner, for instance, to declare that no other European poet has enriched the new Hebrew poetry as Byron. It may be equally added that, since Hebrew culture was a central source of inspiration for the Jewish people, that Jewish nationality and possibly nationhood also owe Byron a great debt. Several translations into Hebrew for this work will be presented comparatively, emphasizing the Jerusalem trope, in order to show the ideological source and force of translations in the building of a culture, a people and a nation. Dina Berdichevsky, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: Y.H. Brenner, Modernist Aesthetics, and the Exilic Genre Abstract: In keeping with the conference's keynote theme "Jewish and Non-­‐Jewish Cultures in Contact" I propose a paper that addresses the unique relationship between a European modernist aesthetics, which saw a diasporic existence as the ultimate state of being, and the Jewish historical chaotic experience on the eve of First World War. My lecture demonstrates how the Hebrew writer Y.H. Brenner approached this confluence of ideas through what I will describe as his exilic genre. Brenner's typical hero is an eternal wanderer, living in a continuous state of homelessness and constant transition between cities and continents, never reaching his destination. But this diasporic state is as true to Brenner's concept of literature as it is to his heroes. Brenner constantly represents the published text itself as the "other" who comes from afar. Furthermore, I argue that Brenner's generic style, namely a preference for the unfinished and fragmentary qualities of the text, as opposed to the idea of the complete work of art, advocates for the exile of literature. When literature is doomed to the everlasting wandering of the nomad, it can no longer provide the experience of home and becomes instead the vehicle for fundamental alterity. Chen Strass, Ben-­‐Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: Political Metonymies: Hierarchy and Representations of Space in Israeli Fiction Abstract: One of the most utilized figurative devices in prose, and particularly in the representation of space, is Metonymy. According to one definition, metonymy is an expression of an abstract or metaphysical state by means of a tangible and concrete state, or a reduction of a higher order of being to a lower one. For instance, a representation of a house, a factory or alternatively a natural landscape, is conditioned by a higher order of meaning – the human subject. Metonymy is therefore not a “neutral” figurative device merely based on contiguity, but it also serves a hierarchic structure: the metonymic representation of a given element (space) presupposes the existence of a higher human order, and stipulates instrumental subject/object relations. In this lecture I will discuss the ways in which this supposedly self-­‐evident hierarchy, which characterizes most uses of the metonymic representation in modern literature, falls apart and is reversed in the fiction of Israeli author Yeshayahu Koren, a member of the “statehood generation” (a group of writers mostly born during the British Mandate, who published their first works in the years following Israel's independence). A primary characteristic of Koren’s prose is the construction of a space that deviates from representation schemes which are common in realistic literature and Israeli prose in particular. One expression of this deviation is the naturalization of socialized space (such as the representation of an army base and a desert factory as natural spaces). This rewriting of space dictates a representation scheme which undermines modern conceptions of human-­‐space relations, as presupposed by the Zionist spatial ideology. In this context, I will discuss the ways in which Koren's usage of metonymic representation is a poetic expression of his deconstruction of humanistic hierarchies; this leads, among other things, to an equivalence of the human subject and space. Koren undermines the subject whose consciousness and identity stem from modernist-­‐nationalist conceptions, and whose efforts, accordingly, are aimed at conquering space and subjugating it. I would like to argue that Koren proposes an alternative conception of space as fashioned by non-­‐Jewish, Palestinian notions of space. In this way he offers an intertwining of two differing conceptions of space. Accordingly, I will examine the ways in which Koren’s deconstruction of the metonymic hierarchy reflects a problematization of ownership and power relations in the Israeli-­‐Palestinian space. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session: 004 Modern Hebrew Literature 16.00-­‐17.00 Feeling of Strangeness Chair: Tamar Wolf-­‐Monzon, Bar Ilan University, Israel Title: The Boundaries of Attraction to an Other -­‐ A Discussion of Ya’acov Orland’s Unpublished Poem “Hannale from Dorohoi” Abstract: “Hannale from Dorohoi” is a lengthy poem written by the poet Ya’acov Orland in the mid-­‐1940s. At the center of the poem’s plot, the greater part of which is still in manuscript form and has yet to be published, is the story of the abduction of Hannale, the baby daughter and only child of R. Mendel Melamed and his wife Gendel, by a band of gypsies who swooped down on the town of Dorohoi, Hannaleh’s life among the band of gypsies and the circumstances of her return to her family after many years of being cut off from it. However, the subplot raises various cultural and spiritual questions, such as the boundaries of the attraction to the gypsy other, fear of and aversion to the gypsy culture, especially on the background of the charm exerted by its sensuality, and on the other hand – emotional affinity and a sense of shared fate between the Jews and gypsies on the background of World War II. The lecture will explore the place of the poem in the context of a broader poetical project, one that may be called the “project of the otherness” in Orland’s oeuvre, which also includes his dramatic works, both his original plays, as well as those that he translated into Hebrew. In these works, Orland undermined the accepted definitions of the concepts of belonging and otherness, filling them with new content, which emanated from his own complex inner world as a Jew and a product of cosmopolitan culture. Smadar Shiffman, Tel Aviv University, Israel Title: The Pain and Joy of Two Homelands Abstract: This paper presents Lea Goldberg's dual attitude toward the issue of Europe as a homeland. Perhaps the most often quoted line by Goldberg is the line from her poem "Pine Tree": "This pain of two homelands". I wish to use Goldberg's most "Zionist" play, "Lady of the Castle", to show that being planted in two soils, having two homelands, is, in Goldberg's view, a source of richness and joy as well as of constant conflict and pain. This play, which seems to present the triumph of Zionism over the choice of diaspora, also foregrounds the lost riches of European culture. Even the staunchest believer in the Zionist solution, Dora, who claims to miss the heat and sweat of Israel, also fears the lure of her original, European homeland. I would like to show, using this play as well as a few of Goldberg's poems, that Europe is the core and origin of everything worth preserving and cherishing, even when Israel is associated with life and Europe with death. Israel, just like the new world established on European ruins, is here presented as shallow and even vulgar when compared with the depth and history of European culture. Eastern European Jewry, whose national concepts were based upon European ideas, cannot but be torn in two between the new, "healthy", Jew, working the land of Israel, and the old books, Hebrew or Christian, Talmudic or philosophic, which give meaning to life. 17.00-­‐18.00 Women in Literature Chair: Yonit Naaman, Ben-­‐Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: Shiksappeal – The Gentile Woman as the Jewish Playground Abstract: A bastard, a witch, an ominous vampire, a magnificent object of lust, a perfect lady and a whore, are among the many designations ascribed to the non-­‐Jewish female discussed in this work. The presence of the shiksa (derived from the Hebrew ‫שקצה‬, the most accurate translation of which is abomination), is pivotal in literary works written by male Jewish writers from the end of nineteenth century to the early decades of the twentieth century (marked as the Tchiya generation). This study aims to characterize this cultural-­‐historical-­‐religious encounter through an analysis of several short stories, by H.N Bialik, Isaac Leib Peretz, Jacob Steinberg, S.Y Agnon and Shalom Aleichem. These writers were all born in Eastern Europe, lived among Christians and provided us with fascinating portraits of non-­‐Jewish females that reflect the spectrum of conventions and perceptions of the shiksa in Jewish society. The power relations between the Jewish male and the Christian female inevitably place the latter in a weaker position, subjected to male scrutiny, objectified and sexually exploited. On the other hand, she also emblematizes the threat to the purity of the Jewish blood and signifies a fiat for complete segregation between the two faith communities. In the literary works discussed in this study, the shiksa plays a double role, embodying both an outlet for aggression as well as resistance to what is perceived as Christian oppression. Each of the stories in this study depicts a shiksa which reflects some of the prevalent conceptions pertaining to the points of intersection between Jewishness and masculinity on the one hand, and femininity and Christianity on the other. In the stories I examined, the shiksa falls under the category of the “other,” at times even placed in an animalistic sphere, which takes two marked and even contradictory directions: she is (1) subject to dehumanization and alienation; and (2) a signifier for the exalted and unattainable, perhaps in light of the failure of Jewish assimilation. Helena Rimon, Ariel University of Samaria, Israel Title: "Eshet Hayil" and the Woman that "Will Stop a Galloping Horse": Images of the Russian-­‐speaking Female Immigrants in the Multilingual Israeli Literature Abstract: In this presentation we suggest to apply the Post-­‐Colonial approach in Women's Studies to the group of texts that has been investigated in this context: the Russian and the Hebrew prose writings depicting the Russian-­‐speaking female immigrants in Israel. Delving into the writings of Daniel Dotan, Alona Kimchi, Miri Litvak, Marina Grosslender, Dina Rubina, Lina Gorodetzky, Elena Minkina, Sofia Ron-­‐Moriah, Anna Fain shows that descriptions of the same historical situation in different languages bring out and preserve entirely different cultural stereotypes which can be traced to different cultural traditions. In Israeli works written in Hebrew, the Russian woman immigrant usually is depicted as a poor creature, an object of lust, a victim of alienation, as well as – often – a victim of sexual aggression, that is, a total object. On the contrary, the Russian Israeli women writers depict the Russian women immigrants – that is, themselves – as strong and active, endowed with charisma and authority. At issue in the two cases is one and the same social-­‐cultural group, the same group which in Western feminist discourse of the 1970-­‐80s would have been defined as doubly marginal, disclosed, and adapted for suffering: both as women and as immigrants. This is precisely how Russian women are represented in Israeli literature written in Hebrew. As for Israeli women’s literature composed in the Russian language, it carries on an entirely different tradition which took shape in 19th-­‐century Russian culture. This is a tradition of portraying the strong woman, the heroine who, in the words of the poet Nikolai Nekrasov, “will not be timid in the face of disaster but will come to the rescue, will stop a galloping horse, will walk into a burning house.” The Russian Israeli women writings contaminate the Russian national myth with the Israeli reality. In the writings of the religious women immigrants, Sofia Ron-­‐Moria (who writes in Hebrew) and Anna Fain (who writes in Russian), the two national traditions – the Russian and the Jewish ones – come as close as possible. The image of "Woman of Valor" "("Eshet Chayil") from the Proverbs (31) and the woman that "will stop a galloping horse" turn to be the same ideal for the female protagonists in their search for identity. Tuesday 22nd July ENS, Salle CÉLAN (Main building, ground flour, map: 14) Session: 001: Medieval Jewish Philosophy 9.00-­‐10.30 Under the Cross Chair: Gad Freudenthal Julia Schwartzmann, Western Galilee College, Israel Title: Medieval Jewish Philosophers on Women Prophets: Smooth Talk Instead of Confrontation Abstract: Medieval Jewish philosophers' infamous misogyny had little to do with their own personal experiences; in fact, they inherited their low views of women from a millennia-­‐old philosophical tradition. This stereotypic negative attitude made sense to them when they dealt with femininity as an abstract concept, but it became burdensome when positive female characters of the bible were at stake. To make matters worse, the bible seemed to deliberately challenge philosophical doctrines by claiming that three of its heroines (Miriam, Deborah, and Huldah) had risen to the exalted rank of the prophets. Jewish Medieval philosophy is famous for having developed a sophisticated theoretical discourse regarding prophecy. The central doctrine of this discourse holds that intellectual perfection is a necessary precondition for achieving prophecy. The presence of women prophets in the bible constituted an obvious and profound challenge to the Jewish philosophical world-­‐view: how could women, with their inherently inferior intellects, achieve the intellectual perfection required of prophets? Both Maimonides and Gersonides must have been aware of this paradox, but neither addressed it. Instead, they praised these women prophets without explaining how their achievements could be possible in philosophical terms. Our disappointment with this philosophical lacuna may be partially soothed by Isaac Abravanel's surprising change of heart. Abravanel has been known as a women-­‐hater as well as a sharp critic of Maimonides' prophetology. However, the biblical Deborah inspired him to temporarily abandon both his misogyny and anti-­‐rationalism in order to praise her exceptional intellectual and political qualities. Renate Smithuis, University of Manchester, UK Title: The Sermon as a Conduit for Philosophy: Jacob Anatoli's Goad for Students (Malmad ha-­‐talmidim) Abstract: Jacob Anatoli (c. 1194-­‐1256) appears to be a relatively underexposed thinker of the intellectually turbulent period of the thirteenth century. Yet he played a substantial role in the Maimonidean controversy. Originally a student of Samuel ibn Tibbon in the Provence, he was invited to the illustrious court of Frederick II in Sicily, where he joined the company of a fellow admirer of the Guide for the Perplexed, Michael Scot (c. 1175-­‐1232). Anatoli’s lasting fame rests on his collection of philosophical sermons, known as the Goad for Students (Malmad ha-­‐talmidim). Israel Bettan’s verdict that “(...) Anatoli will always rank high, not for his contributions to philosophy, if such there be in his work, but for his homiletical powers and the significant role he played as a preacher (...)” (HUCA 9 [1936] 393-­‐4) does not seem to have been challenged fundamentally. Thus Martin Gordon in The Rationalism of Jacob Anatoli, having observed the “subtle inconsistencies in his argumentation,” ultimately characterized him as “typical of the mainstream Maimonideans” (1974: 374-­‐6). Anatoli’s endeavour to popularize Maimonides’ philosophy via the pulpit brought him into conflict with synagogue goers and rabbis alike. This is perhaps unsurprising due to the traditional ban on offering philosophical insights to the uneducated. In this paper I will concentrate on the question of the purpose of Anatoli’s sermons, both as spoken and as written down in the Malmad ha-­‐talmidim. Who were his most likely target audience and how did he try to reach it? Jana Horáková, University of Ostrava, Czech Republic Title: Meir ben Todros Ha-­‐Levi Abulafia’s letters to scholars of Lunel Abstract: This paper in general deals with problem of philosophy within Judaism. In particular case of Spain scholar Meir ben Todros Ha-­‐Levi Abulafia shows possible discrepancies which philosophy can brings, when interprets religious teaching. Meir, more precisely his letters to scholars of Lunel, was the cause for rise of so-­‐called Maimonidean controversies, the main dispute over philosophy and rationalism in the Middle Ages. In his letters Meir inquires question of resurrection of the dead and interprets this question in term of traditional Judaism. He is concern mainly about influence and impact of this conception on “common believers”, hence he argues against philosophical interpretation of resurrection which ejects the bodily resurrection. Meir is convinced that interpretation of resurrection if pure spiritual terms and denial of bodily resurrection is dangerous not only for belief of believers who are not educated in philosophy, but even for this religious doctrine itself. Because of this we can read his letters and subsequent reactions as an expression of dispute between two different traditions which challenge each other, and ultimately as an expression of dispute between two different identities. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session 002: Abraham ibn Ezra: Thought and Exegesis 11.00-­‐13.00 Chair: Tamás Visi Ayelet Seidler, Bar-­‐Ilan University, Israel Title: Biblical Psalms in the Light of Medieval Spanish Poetry – The Case of Avraham Ibn Ezra Abstract: Arabic poetry has influenced and shaped the poetry of medieval Spanish Jewry. In this respect, Biblical poetry in general and the Psalms in particular challenged the Jewish poets of Spain. As the Psalms did not correlate with the laws of writing poetry as formulated by both Arab and Jewish poets, Spanish Jewish poets were pressed hard to mediate between the two poetic traditions. It is often claimed that poets of Spanish Jewry accepted the literary shortcomings of biblical poetry and argued that the virtue of the Hebrew hymns lay in there meaning (substance). Some studies claim that the prominent medieval poet and commentator Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra (ca.1089 -­‐ 1164) was part of this approach. In my lecture I would like to demonstrate that, contrary to this opinion, in his commentary on Psalms, Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra identified many different literary means and extensively referred to their usage. Ibn Ezra uses the code words "versus" ("keneged") and "contrary" ("hefech") to point to linguistic affinities that in his eyes bear literary value. I will compare the literary methods used by Ibn Ezra to those used in medieval Spanish poetry. I will argue that Ibn Ezra's exposure of these methods, especially in his commentary on Psalms, expresses his intent to stress the literary virtue of this ancient Hebrew poetry. In some cases it even appears that his attempts at defining and identifying literary methods in the Psalms anticipate the findings of modern literary research. Mariano Gomez-­‐Aranda, CSIC, Madrid, Spain Title: Abraham ibn Ezra’s Commentary on Isaiah in the Context of Judeo-­‐Christian Controversies Abstract: In the history of Jewish exegesis, many chapters of the book of Isaiah were interpreted either as referred to events that had already passed in biblical times, such as the consolations from the threat of the Assyrians that took place at Hezekiah’s time, or to future events, such as the consolations for the future Messianic time. Abraham ibn Ezra (1089-­‐1165) collects several of the Jewish interpretations in his commentary on Isaiah. In my paper I intend to prove that Ibn Ezra’s interpretations on the book of Isaiah must be understood in the context of Judeo-­‐Christian controversies in which this book was used to prove that it refers either to Messianic times or to historical events that have already passed in biblical times. Howard (Haim) Kreisel, Ben-­‐Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: Some Comments on the Earliest Supercommentaries on Abraham Ibn Ezra's Torah Commentary Abstract: The paper will briefly summarize the state of research regarding the earliest supercommentaries on the Torah Commentary by Ibn Ezra based on my project (now in an advanced stage) to publish five of these supercommentaries, written in the second half of the thirteenth century and the first half of the fourteenth -­‐ those by Elazar ben Mattiyah, Joseph Kaspi, Moshe Nagari, Ibn Yaish, and the author of Avvat Nephesh (two of them written in Provence, one in Italy, one in Byzantium and one in Spain). The paper will focus on the purpose of these commentaries, their salient characteristics, and the use the commentators made of Maimonides Guide of the Perplexed and Hebrew translations of Averroes' commentaries. Special attention will be paid to the commentary Avvat Nephesh. Chaim (Harold R.) Cohen, Ben-­‐Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: Abraham ibn Ezra's Commentary on the Book of Genesis and Modern Biblical Hebrew Philology Abstract: The present lecture attempts to demonstrate the most significant contribution made by the medieval commentator R. Abraham ibn Ezra to modern Biblical Hebrew philology by detailing some of his most innovative philological comments with respect to several specific textual problems in the Book of Genesis. In many cases, Ibn Ezra was the only medieval commentator who contributed philologically towards the solution of these specific textual problems, and overall, his philological contribution was surely the most significant of any commentator of the medieval period. When Ibn Ezra’s philological interpretation is in need of further evidence, modern Biblical Hebrew philology itself may often be used to provide the missing evidence (especially from ancient Near Eastern sources which of course were unavailable to Ibn Ezra). The following five cases from Ibn Ezra’s commentary to Genesis will be discussed in detail: 1. Gen 4:10 (‫ קול‬ “hark!”); 2. Gen 4:13 (‫ עוני‬ “my punishment”); 3. Gen 14:10 (‫ ויפלו שמה‬ “they threw themselves down therein”); 4. Gen 37:2 (‫ נער‬ “assistant, trainee, servant”); 5. Gen 49:11 (‫ סותה‬ “his garment”). For example, Gen 4:10 reads as follows: ‫דָָה‬
‫הָמ‬
ֲ‫אֵַי מִן א‬
‫עִֹים ל‬
ֲ‫אִָיָך צק‬
‫דְֵּי ח‬
‫שׂתִָי קוֹל מ‬
ָ ‫אֶר מֶה ע‬
ֹ‫ ו ַיּמ‬: “Then he said, ‘What have you done? ‫ !קוֹל‬ The blood of your brother cries out to Me from the ground’.” Since the plural verb ‫עִֹים‬
ֲ‫ צק‬ “cries out” requires a plural subject, namely ‫אִָיָך‬
‫דְֵּי ח‬
‫ מ‬ “the blood of (pl.) your brother”, the term ‫ קוֹל‬ cannot be the regular noun meaning “voice” here understood as a singular construct form. Ibn Ezra comments here as follows: ‫אֵַי‬
‫עִֹים ל‬
ֲ‫ צק‬ cannot be connected to ‫קוֹל‬. A similar case is Cant 2:8: ‫ ‘! קוֹל‬:‫הַבָעוֹת‬
ְ‫גּ‬
‫קֵַץ עַל‬
‫הִֶים מְפּ‬
ָ‫דֵַג עַל הר‬
‫דּוִֹי הִנֵּה זֶה בָּא מְלּ‬
‫ קוֹל ד‬ My beloved! Here he comes, leaping over mountains, bounding over hills’. [The verb ‫ בָּא‬ ‘comes’] refers to ‫דּוִֹי‬
‫ ד‬ ‘My beloved’ [not to ‫ ]קוֹל‬ as I have commented in my Canticles commentary. The meaning [of Gen 4:10] is that [God] heard the crying out of his [brother’s] blood that had been spilt out on the ground.” Thus in these two passages, ‫ קוֹל‬ should be understood as an interjection “hark!”, which is syntactically independent of both subject and verb. Other passages in which ‫ קוֹל‬ must be so interpreted for similar grammatical or semantic reasons are Isa 52:8; Jer 10:22; Cant 5:2. Etymologically, this interjection is best derived from the Akkadian verb qâlu “to pay attention, listen” (as first suggested to me by the late Prof. Avigdor Hurowitz ‫)ז"ל‬. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session 003: Jewish Philosophy 14.00-­‐15.30 Medieval and Modern Jewish Philosophy in Contact Chair: Alessandro Guetta Michela Torbidoni, Martin Luther Universität, Halle Saale, Germany Title: The Usage of Classical Sources in Simone Luzzatto’s "Socrate" Abstract: Simone Luzzatto’s philosophical work "Socrate overo dell’humano sapere" (1651) has been somehow neglected by recent and past researchers. This paper intends to enlighten the usage of classical sources, focusing more attentively on the many quotes from Lucretius’ poem "De rerum natura" and on the issue of Greek atomism. While presenting this classical issue, reintroduced in the XVII century intellectual debate by Pierre Gassendi, special attention will be paid to the possible connections with Luzzatto’s penchant towards Skepticism. Luzzatto uses these classical sources in order to support his philosophical argumentation, revealing the aspects of skepticism he shared and borrowed from that philosophical tradition. Inquiring the way the Venetian Rabbi deals with skeptical main themes is both useful and interesting in order to investigate Luzzatto’s evaluation of religious controversies and his role in the intellectual fights against pseudo-­‐sciences, as well as in the antagonism between Aristotelian knowledge and “new philosophy”, which represented the main topics debated by skeptics during 16th-­‐17th centuries. Cristiana Facchini, University of Bologna, Italy Title: Early Modern Jewish Responses to Blood Libel Allegations. Patterns and Models Abstract: My paper aims to offer some new insights to the problem of blood libel in Europe, focusing on Jewish responses from the 17th century to the 19th century, claiming that these defenses provided a multi-­‐
layered model for defenses against other accusations as well, which comprises historical modes of thought and legal practices. Moises Orfali, Bar-­‐Ilan University, Israel Title: Les différents emplois de la Logique parmi les auteurs judeo-­‐espagnols médiévaux Abstract: A partir de conceptions communes parmi les auteurs judéo-­‐espagnols médiévaux concernant l'essence et l'efficience de la logique aristotélienne, sont apparues diverses tendances ayant permis a ces auteurs un emploi soutenu de la logique. Je voudrais durant cette intervention traiter de ces tendances. Il sera donc question par exemple des exégètes rabbiniques qui utilisèrent la logique; des grammairiennes à fin d’établir leurs règles grammaticales; des polémistes qui eurent recours à la logique afin de mettre en forme leur argumentaire; des scientifiques – principalement des médecins – qui employèrent des textes de logique du fait de l’expansion de cette discipline en monde scolastique parmi les juifs afin, d'exercer la médicine. Des médecins juifs de la péninsule soulignèrent la nécessité d'étudier la méthode scolastique fondée sur la quaestio et la disputatio et le recours au raisonnement dialectique pour garantir nécessairement des conclusions vrai. Bien plus, pour obtenir leur licence, ces médecins, en Provance et en Aragon, devait passer un examen devant un jury mixte juif et chrétien, qui sélectionnait généralement les candidats au moyen du rituel scolastique de questiones et responsiones, disputationes, rationes et argumentationes. En plus d'attester l'acculturation des candidats juifs, cet examen leur garantissait la reconnaissance professionnelle de la part des autorités chrétiennes. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session 004: Jewish Philosophy 16.00-­‐18.00 Panel: Jewish Thought in Vernacular Language in the Early Modern Period Organizers: Giuseppe Veltri and Alessandro Guetta Chair: Giuseppe Veltri and Alessandro Guetta Giuseppe Veltri, University of Halle, Germany Title: The language of Skepticism in Luzzatto's Socrates Abstract: How stupid human intelligence can be, when it is not led by divine revelation is the declared subject of the “serious-­‐playful exercise” of Simone Luzzatto, Venetian Jew”, titled “Socrates or on human knowledge.” It is much more, a little encyclopedia of modern thought nourished by the arsenal of skeptical treatises, books and essays flourished above all in his time. The lecture focuses on the language of skepticism in the Socrates and the main ideas he was dealing with. Alessandro Guetta, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris, France Title: Italian Translation of Philosophical and Ethical Jewish Literature in the Early Modern Period Abstract: The translations of Hebrew Literature into Italian in the Late Renaissance are less known than the parallel phenomenon in Castilian and Yiddish, in spite of their quality and abundance. I will describe the translations of philosophical and ethical Jewish works, asking the question of the potential public of these texts: Jews not enough familiar with Hebrew? Christians, in order to show the treasures of Jewish wisdom? Both Jews and Christians, in a cultural enterprise implying the attempts to connect between two intellectual and linguistic worlds? Sina Rauschenbach, University of Potsdam, Germany Title: On Free Choice of the Will – Christian Controversy and Sephardic Translation in the Early Modern Dutch World Abstract: Early Modern Amsterdam was a prominent place for Sephardic publications "On free choice of the will" – "Del livre alvedrio". Not only Menasseh ben Israel, but also Abraham Pereyra, Daniel Levi de Barrios (Miguel de Barrios) and others devoted books, book chapters, poems or theater plays to such or similar discussions. Their interest, however, was mainly inspired by heated controversies about Original Sin, Divine grace, and human destination in Dutch Calvinist circles or in the Spanish world of the Catholic Reform. In my paper I make use of those controversies to analyse cross cultural adaptions of early modern theological thought as well as strategies of translation from Christian texts into their Sephardic, Spanish counterparts. Asher Salah, Bezalel Academy of Arts, Israel Title: Imaginary Libraries of Italian Maskilim Abstract: The concept of “library awareness” has been elaborated by Avriel Bar Levav to express the gap existing between the books that were physically available to an author and those that were only mentioned in a specific text. The relationship between the imaginary libraries and the real ones changes over the course of time, depending on different local contexts and varying considerably from author to author. While most of the works dedicated to the reading habits of the Jews rely on what is known about their libraries, through books inventories, inquisitorial lists, private catalogues, much remains to be done concerning the textual references that appear in the works by Jewish authors. What is at stake in the reconstruction of the imaginary libraries of the Jews, through the overall analysis of the quotations and the sources used in their works, is not only our understanding of the intertextuality strategies enacted by the Jews in different cultural and historical contexts, but first and foremost our knowledge of their intellectual horizons and their interaction with surrounding societies. The interest of such a demarche is particularly high for the early modern and the Haskalah, when the traditional medieval literary canons were increasingly under attack, when the number of acceptable “auctoritates” exponentially expanded and when new techniques of standardized textual references made their appearance. My lecture is focused on the readership of gentile sources through the works of four main figures of Italian Haskalah Marco Navarra, Lettere Orientali, Venezia, 1771, Elia Morpurgo, Discorso, Gorizia, 1782, Benedetto Frizzi, Difesa contro gli attacchi fatti alla nazione ebrea, Pavia, 1784, Samuel Romanelli, Masa Be-­‐Arav, Berlin, 1792 raising the following questions: in which contexts, how and why Christian authors were quoted by Italian Jews? In order to confront these questions it is necessary to preliminarily establish a phenomenology of quotation that distinguishes first hand from second hand readings, forbidden from permitted references, citations in the original language from those in translation, trying to identify hidden and explicit sources and to quantify all the extra-­‐textual evidence provided in a single work. Keynote Lectures 18.30-­‐19.30: Geoffrey Khan & Ben Outhwaite, The Reception of Biblical Hebrew in the Middle Ages 19.30-­‐20.30: Anthony T. Grafton & Joanna Weinberg, Compilation and Observation in Johann Buxtorf's Synagogue of the Jews Tuesday 22nd July ENS, THÉÂTRE (Main building, basement, Stairs C) Session: 001: Jewish Literature 9.00-­‐10.30 Chair: Sarit Cofman-­‐Simhon, Kibbutzim College, Tel-­‐Aviv / Emunah College, Jerusalem Title: Avraham Goldfaden and Vasile Alecsandri: Two Theatre Entrepeneurs in Iaşi (Romania) in the Nineteenth Century Abstract: An innocent remark, reiterated in a number of sources regarding Goldfaden’s initial impetus to stage plays, has caught my attention and constitutes the basis for this presentation: "Goldfadn [sic] was staying at [Librescu’s] house, having just arrived in Jassy, and one day, all dressed up, walking stick in hand, he was on his way out to start making contacts for the newspaper, when the friend’s wife blurted out, “What do you need a newspaper for? There’s already a Yiddish newspaper in Rumania, and the editor starves to death seven times a day. [...] Listen to me: the Jews need a theater” (Nahma Sandrow, Vagabond Stars. A World History of Yiddish Theater, Harper & Row, New York, 1977, p. 42). I would like to propose that the idea which Madame Librescu mentioned in passing did not appear in a vacuum. Instead, it had everything to do with the cultural atmosphere of her surroundings. She lived in Iaşi at a time of a nascent theatrical activity, led by Vasile Alecsandri. This may have formed the background for her suggestion that an equivalent Yiddish theatre would be warmly welcomed. Alecsandri was to the Romanian theatre what Goldfaden was to the Jewish theatre: the founder of a new national tradition. The two remarkable men have in common theatrical endeavours in close temporal and spatial proximity to each other, and both were active in Europe’s geographic and cultural periphery, near the gate to the Orient, in languages which lacked Western theatre tradition. Vasile Alecsandri – journalist, poet, and prolific playwright – was the manager of the National Theatre of Iaşi from 1840 to 1842, and continued to write plays that were staged there much later. Avraham Goldfaden – also a journalist, poet, prolific playwright, lyricist and composer – launched the Yiddish theatre in 1876 in Iaşi, at Grădina Pomul Verde, next to the National Theatre where Alecsandri’s plays were performed. I find some poetic justice in the fact that, almost a century and a half later, each man’s statue stands in Iaşi just a few hundred meters from the other. Rachel Burdin Steindel, The Ohio State University, USA Title: List Intonation in Jewish English Abstract: Jewish speech has been stereotyped as being “sing-­‐songy” compared non-­‐Jewish speech, pointing to a potential difference in intonation. In American Jewish English, Yiddish has been identified as a likely source of this difference; one contour in particular, a rise-­‐fall contour, has been identified as distinctive as far back as 1956 by U. Weinreich. However, this distinctiveness, for this contour, and for others, likely lies in the details of the production of this contour and in its use, rather than in the shape of the contour itself, as a phonologically equivalent rise-­‐fall contour does exist in Standard American English (SAE). This paper concentrates on the use of this rise-­‐fall contour, and others, in the production of lists by American Jewish women. Yiddish speakers from the Archives of Historical and Ethnographic Yiddish Memories used both falling and rise-­‐fall contours on lists, while descriptions of SAE intonation indicate that a flat plateau is used on lists. This provides a possible point of differentiation in speakers whose first language is Yiddish, who may carry over their native patterns of intonation into their English. Lists were extracted from interviews with Jewish women from the New York City metropolitan area, who were divided into three groups: Yiddish/English bilinguals, monolinguals with some exposure to Yiddish prosody, and “pure” monolinguals. The list items were then prosodically annotated using Tone and Break Indices (ToBI) guidelines. While there were no significant differences between the three groups in the use of the rise-­‐fall contour noted by Weinreich (ToBI transcribed as L+H* !H-­‐L%), the bilinguals were more likely to use another rise-­‐fall contour (L+H* L-­‐L%) than the other two groups, and less likely to use the contour that had been previously noted for standard American English lists (H* H-­‐L%). Michaela Mudure, Babes-­‐Bolyai University, Romania Title: Adriana Bittel: Writing Jewish, Writing Woman Abstract: According to Radu Cosaşu, Adriana Bittel (born 31 mai 1946, Bucharest) is one of the few Jewish fiction authors still active in Romania. Extremely discreet about her Jewish origins – one of the few proofs in this respect – is the obituary she wrote for Amelia Pavel, the mother of the Romania born literary theorists Toma Pavel, Bittel is one of the best short story authors in contemporary Romanian literature. The present paper analyzes her best collections of short stories Întâlnire la Paris (Meeting in Paris), which was published in Bucharest, in 2001. The short stories focus on women’s lives during the Communist regimes. Ethnic indications relating the stories to the author’s Jewishness are rare but eloquent. They point to the survival of a minority group that suffered the imposition of totalitarianism and victimization as the “favourite” Other of the Romanian xenophobes. Bittel focuses on women and the way they are devoured in a petty domestic inferno created by the needs, the cares, and the claims of their family. Woman sacrifices herself both for her household and for her job. Without any exaggeration, woman is a martyr of a world (the Communist one) which pretends to have emancipated woman. Working hard from morning till evening she makes the domestic ship sail onwards and onwards. Bittel focuses on those everyday sacrifices that make life possible, the anonymity of female heroism, the few and petty joys of a life without any perspective in spite of ideological pretense that this is the best possible world. Still, we must not valorize Bittel’s fiction only as a sociological document about life under the Communist regime. On the contrary, in her short stories the grey of everyday life gets the irisations of rich psychological life. Without any exaggeration, Adrian Bittel belongs to that great family of women writers that includes Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Alice Munro, Elizabeth Strout and who are able to express the superb incompleteness of life and enjoy life in spite of everything. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session: 002: Jewish Literature 11.00-­‐13.00 Panel: Recovering Eastern Europe in Modern Jewish Literature Chair: Justin Cammy Organizer: Justin Cammy Justin Cammy, Smith College, Northampton, MA, USA Title: Between Languages: Régine Robin’s La Québecoite Abstract: In Régine Robin’s La Québecoite (1983; trans. The Wanderer) language -­‐-­‐ or existing between languages -­‐-­‐ simultaneously performs and interrogates contemporary Quebec identity through the destabilizing presence of the immigrant, Jewish presence. Robin’s interest in the possibility of existing both “dedans et dehors” (inside and outside) helps to explain her hyperconscious employment of postmodern metafictions to interrogate fixed categories of national and ethnic identity, and Yiddish (functioning as both language and as Jew) as the agent and embodiment of this challenge. My paper argues that Robin inscribes texts by Yiddish writers (Hoftshteyn, Bergelson, Kulbak, Glatshteiyn, folktales, not to mention the neo-­‐
Yiddish Babel) alongside lists of French-­‐Québecois words and expressions that her protagonist encounters as a new immigrant in order to explore a more hybrid, cosmopolitan, multilingual Québecois identity that puts to rest the traditional binary of the “two solitudes” of English and French Canada. The conspicuous presence of Yiddish inter-­‐texts (more than just a Yiddish trace) in the heart of a Québecois novel suggests that collective memory is never really remembered (despite nativist arguments) and is always up for renegotiation and expansion. Yiddish performs not only the possibility of transnational escape, but also serves as the haunting golem of messianic narratives. Kata Gellen, Duke University, USA Title: Telling Jewish Stories in German? Mixed Temporalities and Literary Tradition in Edgar Hilsenrath’s Shtetl Novel Abstract: Jossel Wassermanns Heimkehr (1993), by the controversial German-­‐Jewish writer Edgar Hilsenrath (b. 1926), is a novel that depicts traditional early 20th-­‐century East European Jewish life. Its narrator is a rich Jew, Jossel Wassermann, dying in Switzerland in 1939, who recalls a visit to his Galician homeland in 1932, which inspires him to tell the story of his ancestors and childhood. At the same time, Jossel’s nephew Jankl is in a train being deported to a concentration camp in the East, though he has just received notice of his impending inheritance from his rich uncle. I propose to read Jossel Wassermanns Heimkehr as a novel that is “passing” for a 1930s-­‐40s East European German-­‐Jewish Shtetlroman – in the vein of Joseph Roth, Soma Morgenstern, and H. W. Katz – at the same time that it adapts itself thoroughly to a non-­‐Jewish contemporary German readership. Hilsenrath taps into what was already, in the novels of Roth, Morgenstern, and Katz, a complex belatedness: this includes nostalgia for the monarchy and traditional Jewish life, as well as depictions of Jewish suffering in pogroms and WWI filtered through the experience of the Nazi seizure of power. Hilsenrath thus reproduces what was already, 60 years prior, a mixed temporality, but at the same time thoroughly revises it so as to make this experience – and this literary tradition – accessible to a non-­‐Jewish German-­‐speaking audience in the 1990s. He achieves this through a narrative conceit: Jossel Wassermann is not telling his story directly to the reader, but dictating his testament to a lawyer and notary, the latter of whom is not Jewish. Consequently, each use of a Hebrew or Yiddish word or mention of a Jewish holiday or custom requires a clear explanation for the benefit of the notary, and non-­‐Jewish readers. There is a further narrative complication, which is that the person charged with writing Jossel Wassermann’s life story – as a narrative, not simply as a legal record – is the Torah scribe Eisik from Galicia, who we know will perish in the impending war, meaning he will never in fact write it. What are we to do with the knowledge that Hilsenrath, a Jew, writes it instead of Eisik? To what extent can we understand the presence of a Jewish author as a redemptive strike against the silencing of the German-­‐
Jewish literary voice? Hilsenrath employs complex narrative temporalities and recycles rich traditions of German-­‐Jewish writing in order to reveal the tragic irony of his own uncommon literary identity: the only people left to read German-­‐Jewish stories are non-­‐Jewish Germans, but who exactly can still tell them? Hilsenrath’s novel bears witness to the struggle to produce literature that is authentically Jewish and at the same time legible to non-­‐Jewish readers. More than merely an autobiographical reflection of Hilsenrath’s own Jewish childhood in the East, Jossel Wasssermanns Heimkehr is a subtle and painful reckoning with the limits and possibilities of Jewish writing in postwar Germany. Marc Caplan, The Johns Hopkins University, USA Title: “A Disenchanted Elijah: Language, Voice, and the Dissimulation of Self in S. Ansky’s Destruction of Galicia” Abstract: Among the many achievements in the career of S. Ansky (Shloyme-­‐Zaynvl Rapoport, 1863-­‐1920), his 1920 account of the anti-­‐Jewish pogroms at the border of the Russian and Austrian empires during World War I, Khurbn galitsye (“The Destruction of Galicia,” translated in English as The Enemy at His Pleasure, 2003), stands as one of his most complex publications. While focusing on the physical destruction of Jewish communities and the variety of duplicitous, hostile, or ineffectual responses from non-­‐Jews in both official and informal capacities toward this violence, Ansky’s first-­‐person narrative deploys numerous literary strategies and embedded narratives that trespass the borders separating conventions of journalism, political propaganda, or fiction. Though written in Yiddish, the welter of languages out of which it is constructed further contributes to the book’s unstable narrative voice. The author’s unsteady position within the contradictory social networks through which he moves conveys the extent to which his witnessing of anti-­‐Semitic violence undermines his ability to locate himself as a political representative, a writer, and a Jew. The strangeness of this work is understandable, given its origins: as a political radical and official representative of Russian relief agencies, the author technically served as an officer in the government he wished to overthrow, in territories caught in a struggle among four warring powers—the old Austrian and Czarist empires, as well as the emerging Soviet and independent Polish regimes—none of which he identified with. Strategically, the narrator in Khurbn galitsye presents himself to his interlocutors alternately as a non-­‐Jewish Russian, an observant Jew, a military officer, an aid worker, or a neutral observer. Like the rumors he records of mythical Jewish treachery and magical gadgets causing Russia’s defeat—both of which provide pretexts for pogroms in town after town—the narrator functions as a cipher for the intersection of mobility, technology, and stealth that constitute the new dislocations of modern warfare. In his earlier ethnographic work, Ansky recorded legends about the prophet Elijah, performing inscrutable deeds of kindness for pious Jews in the guise of a non-­‐Jew. In Khurbn galitsye, Ansky presents himself as a disenchanted Elijah, whose presence signifies not the coming redemption of the Jewish people, but its imminent dissolution. Rachel Seelig, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: Relocating the Center: The Berlin Literary Journal 'Die Freistatt: Alljüdische Revue' (1912-­‐1914) Abstract: In April 1913 Fritz Mordechai Kaufmann inaugurated his Berlin-­‐based journal, Die Freistatt: Alljüdische Revue (Sanctuary: Pan-­‐Jewish Revue), with an essay proclaiming the desire to “blaze new paths for western Jewry to a stronger Jewishness that encompasses the entire nation.” The only way to attain this goal, he maintained, was to “establish unmediated contact between the western periphery and the central national components.” Kaufmann’s mission statement was predicated on a new conception of Jewish geography according to which the center of European Jewish culture was located not in Germany, long held as the hub of reform and enlightenment, but in Eastern Europe. Appearing between 1912 and 1914, Die Freistatt reflected a serious reevaluation of the image of the so-­‐called “Ostjuden” (Eastern Jews) on the eve of World War I. Long maligned as primitive and parochial, East European Jews were now lionized as the torchbearers of a pristine tradition that had been threatened and suppressed by ongoing secularization and assimilation in Germany. The only periodical of its kind to feature German, Hebrew, and Yiddish writing within a single forum, Die Freistatt promoted the vision of a unified Alljudentum (pan-­‐
Judaism) unobstructed by barriers between East and West. This paper traces the origins, goals, and achievements of this robust yet short-­‐lived enterprise, and considers the ways in which the concept of Alljudentum contended with the existing German discourse on the language of the Jews. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session: 003: Jewish Literature 14.00-­‐15.30 Panel: Jewish and Non-­‐Jewish Cultures in Eastern Europe in the Age of (Post-­‐) Modernity Organizers: Klavdia Smola & Sabine Koller Chair: Klavdia Smola & Sabine Koller Olaf Terpitz, University of Wien, Austria Title: Russian as Jewish Language. Cultural Transformations and Transgressions in (Post-­‐)Imperial Times Abstract: Literature produced by Jews in the Russian Empire is often (until today) described and analysed along notions and concepts such as assimilation, acculturation, change of generations etc. Those categories are usually historically and result orientated. But how to explain in this vein e.g. that the later Zionist Jabotinsky still wrote in Russian, that the Russian poetry of Semen Frug sounded to contemporaries as Hebrew, that Dubnov, finally, developed his ideas on history and historiography in dealing with ideas developed by German Jewish historiography, mainly Heinrich Graetz. The concept of „language culture“ attempts to cover the dynamics of interaction among various groups, literature and society. Culturally and process orientated it allows for a more nuanced view on the position of writers and their texts, on encounters that encompass processes of reception, perception and translation. Complying with demands of the Haskalah a central issue in Jewish Modernity was the canonisation (or re-­‐conceptualisation) of knowledge, historical and literary likewise, based on a professionalisation of literary criticism and literary history. In my talk I will analyse various literary volumes, edited by the Zionist Leib Iaffe and the poet Vladislav Khodasevich, which represent metaphorically speaking a hub of cultural exchange. They include Hebrew poetry and prose in Russian translation, a task undertaken by renowned and less known Jewish and non-­‐Jewish writers, but also texts of Russian contemporaries and of European literature. They thus form a meeting space for various spheres of Jewish and non-­‐Jewish cultural production. In its semantic and aesthetic scope Russian had become a Jewish language. Sabine Koller, Regensburg University, Germany Title: The Death of King Lir: Salomon Michoels and Stalin Abstract: In January 1948, the Jewish actor, stage director and leading figure of Soviet Jewry Salomon Michoels was killed on Stalin’s personal order. Because of his support of Yury Erenburg’s and Vasily Grossman’s Black Book about Hitler’s genocide in the area of the Soviet Union and his permanent commitment to the Jewish cause, he had to be eliminated. As a result of his death, bemoaned by thousands of Jews at his funeral in Moscow, a couple of texts in Russian and Yiddish were composed. They function as dirge and, partly, as inofficial testimony of his murder which was disguised as a car accident. Along with Perets Markish’s famous A ner tomed bayn orn (An Eternal Flame at the Coffin), the Yiddish author Mendl Man wrote the short story „Der toyt fun King Lir“ (The Death of King Lear), published in 1957. In my close reading of the text, I will examine the aesthetic devices Mendl Man makes use of in „Der toyt fun King Lir“ to fictionalize Michoels’ last days before his murder. Techniques of montages, polyphony, rhythmization, and combinations of sobre descriptions and streams of consciousness give a close-­‐up of the actor who has become a pawn in the hands of the powerful. A complex intertextual net with Shakespeare and Chekhov at its center shows the enormous aspirations of participating in Russian and world culture, and in shaping Yiddish culture. At the same time, it gradually reveals the semantic shift in Soviet culture from interaction and inclusion of Jewishness to ideological exclusion. The line between reality and (theatrical) fiction gets blurred – with Stalin as the stage director of Michoel’s final act. Klavdia Smola, University Greifswald, Department of Slavic Studies, Germany Title: Russian, Jewish, (anti-­‐)Soviet: Jewish Underground Literature in the Late Soviet Union Abstract: In the Soviet Union the beginning of the Jewish national renaissance coincided with Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six-­‐Day War. This rebirth was inspired by the broadening struggle of Soviet Jews for the Aliyah. The emergence of a Jewish underground subculture resulted from this new Exodus movement. In the self-­‐concept of the highly assimilated, ethnically de-­‐rooted, nonconformist Jewish intelligentsia of the 1970s and 80s, this led to the gradual reintegration of the Jewish cultural heritage. The return to Judaism and the eastern Jewish tradition in the late-­‐communist era led however inevitably to the reinvention of Jewish culture, which, after decades of uprooting and almost complete Russification – or Sovietisation, had to be created from almost nothing. The focus of my lecture will be on Jewish literature written in Russian which appeared in the late-­‐
communist period in the Soviet Union and after emigration to Israel (David Markish, Efrem Bauch, Eli Luxemburg, Efraim Sevela). I will examine the link between the Russian (or Soviet) dualistic, mythological patterns of thought and the new meaning of Jewishness in the situation of political, ideological and cultural conflict. My thesis is that the new Zionist literature created a mirror-­‐inverted concept/ structure of the Socialist Realism literary canon. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session 004: Jewish Literature and art 16.00-­‐18.00 Chair: Luis Krausz, Universidade de São Paulo, Brasil Title: David Vogel and Austrian Novels: a Comparative Approach Abstract: Just like Robert Musil’s Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften; Joseph Roth’s Zipper und sein Vater or Die Flucht ohne Ende, and many of Arthur Schnitzler´s novellas, David Vogel’s Viennese Romance addresses the issue of what Carl Shorske calls „the amoral Gefühlskultur“ of fin-­‐de-­‐siècle Vienna. And yet this novel has been written by an author who received a traditional Jewish education in his native Satanov, in Russia, in a very delicate and refined Hebrew that points towards a deep knowledge of traditional texts. The theme of a young man being lost in the sensuous and decadent Austrian capital during the final years of the Habsburg Empire or during the early days of the First Republic is ubiquitous and already appears in several novels pertaining to the genre of Ghettoliteratur, which flourished during the 19th and early 20th. Centuries. As a matter of fact, Ghettoliteratur mostly deals with the theme of the decline of traditional moral values as a consequence of the passage from the Ghetto to the metropolis, and with the moral bankrupcy of those who are caught in a limbo between two worlds. My aim with this presentation is to confront Vogel’s novel with some of those written by the authors mentioned above as well as with exponents of the later Ghettoliteratur such as Jakob Julius David, Leopold Kompert and Leopold von Sacher-­‐Masoch, in order to situate his work within the context of Austrian-­‐Jewish literature, to which I claim it belongs in spite of the fact it that it has been written in Hebrew. Furthermore, I intend to investigate how the Freudian concept of moral masochism plays a key-­‐role not only in this novel by David Vogel, but in the turn-­‐of-­‐the century Austrian novel in general. I argue that the Austrian idea of virtue imbedded in those novels involves a deeply engrained notion of duty and submission, of which the amorality and aestheticism of social life are a counterpoint. In David Vogel’s Married Life this contradiction appears in the disturbed relationship between the baroness Thea von Takow and Gurdweill; in Viennese Romance it appears in the abject realtionship between Rost and a woman and her daughter. These same contradictions between sense of duty and perverse sexual impulses still seems to appear, in another guise, in works of contemporary Austrian literature, such as those by Elfriede Jelinek, author of Die Klavierspielerin and Lust. Natascha Drubek, U.S Holocaust Museum (Wash. DC) Title: Schooling Jewish Actors for "Ethnic" Leads in 1930 and 1940s Hollywood Films Abstract: In my talk I am aiming to reassess the significance of Eastern Europe theatre tradition for the Manhattan Yiddish theatre district, and the presence of its actors on Hollywood pictures of the 1930s and 1940s. An important aspect is the influence of the Russian MKHAT emigration onto Method Acting (Russia -­‐ NY – USSR) and its Jewish representatives. I shall present questions of masking Jewishness and Jewish masks in the classical Hollywood film, mainly by the Warner Bros. studio. This is also the story of the development of roles played by Jewish actors moving from the Golden Boychiks to Prestige Picture character actors with an “ethnic” touch – mostly playing Europeans. Alexander Shapiro, Institute of Psychological and Educational Problems of Childhood, Russian Academy of Education Title: The Yiddish Language: Psychological Aspects of its Modern Revitalization. Abstract: The Yiddish language today is usually referred to in negative, even depressive ways, or alternatively with superficial optimism and sentimentality. I propose in this paper that modern psychological knowledge, theories and practices can provide a deep analysis of the interactions of Yiddish with other languages and cultures (Jewish and non-­‐Jewish). Recent developments in the various sections of modern psychology, in particular “trauma psychology”, “family psychology”, “personality psychology” were a significant help to my research. The first psychological dimension of the intercultural position of Yiddish is its deep connections with the Holocaust as the most people who died in the Holocaust spoke Yiddish, which leads us to the memories being consciously or unconsciously connected with considerable grief, ambivalence and guilt among survivors and their descendants. I believe that Yiddish revival is not the task of a particular country (U.S., Israel or Russia), and may not even be a task for the Worldwide Jewish community. Rather, perhaps a problem for humanity. However, my researcher focus must be my own experience, i.e. Russian-­‐speaking individuals, families and communities and they were as such in my study of the psychological potential of modern Yiddish including psychological factors favoring its positive functioning and development. The preliminary results of this study I am going to present at the EAJS Congress. During my presentations I will try to answer the question whether Yiddish can help to establish a positive bridge between generations in families and communities and what are the limitations in this? Marcin Wołk, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun, Poland Title: The structuring of Jewish-­‐Polish Identity in Autobiographical Fiction by Artur Sandauer, Ida Fink, and Hanna Krall Abstract: Artur Sandauer (1913–1989), Ida Fink (1921–2011) and Hanna Krall (born 1935) represent three literary generations of modern Polish-­‐Jewish authors, three different paths of life and three various attitudes to writing. Nevertheless, their autobiographical fiction shares an important common feature: they alternate the first-­‐ and third-­‐person narration in the process of creating the author’s self-­‐portrait. These changes of perspective seem to constitute a textual representation of the complex Jewish-­‐Polish (or Polish-­‐
Jewish) cultural and ethnic identities of the writers. In Artur Sandauer’s writings they also reflect the author’s tendency to look at himself from without, the tendency stemming both from his situation of a Jew assimilated into Polish culture and of his critical approach towards what he considered the “inauthentic” identity of a Jew-­‐Pole. In Ida Fink’s autobiographical novel The Journey (1990) extensive use of the third-­‐
person narration (interchanging with the first-­‐person one) reflects the situation of someone hiding their identity during the Holocaust, forcing alien, non-­‐Jewish identities on themselves as the only chance to survive. Finally, in the autobiographical novel by Hanna Krall The Subtenant (1985) the identity of the main character, who had lived through the Holocaust as a child, remains split into two conflicting personalities, thus showing far-­‐reaching aftermath of the Shoah. Here, the alternation of the first-­‐, third-­‐, and occasionally also second-­‐person narration is a textual representation of the psychical trauma as well as a metaphor of the ambivalent attitude towards Jews and the Holocaust in the post-­‐war Polish culture. Tuesday 22nd July ENS, AMPHITHÉÂTRE RATAUD (Building NIR, basement, map: 24) Session: 001: Jewish History 9.00-­‐10.30 Assimilation, Acculturation and Conceptualizing the Jewish 19th Century Chair: Mordechai Zalkin Tadas Janusauskas, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary Title: “Filled with statehood awareness and love for the fatherland”: Jewish Veterans in Bridging Jews and Lithuanians in the 1930s Abstract: Willful Jewish participation in the Lithuanian Independence Wars in 1919-­‐1923 is usually depicted as the perfect example of cooperation between Lithuanians and Jews. Idealization of that cooperation was established by The Jewish Soldiers Union (1933-­‐1940) and carried on into today's historiography. In my presentation I would firstly like to question this narrative as there is ample evidence to doubt the willingness of the Jews to join the newly established Lithuanian army after 1918. Such doubt can open possibilities to speculate on what were the reasons behind this conscious choice of the Union to propose this narrative; in fact, the proclamations of Jewish willingness to fight for the newly established and still very unstable state is only one of many ways in which the Union propoted its agenda. This organization became the most prominent in "bridging the two communities", the objective that was declared as the main one by the organization in the 1930s. I would venture to explain the not at all obvious reasons behind the choice of the Union to promote the "Lithuanianness", or in other words, acculturation among the Jews. Elena Keidosiute, Vilnius University, Lithuania Title: Lithuanian Jewish Converts in the Interwar Period: Inherited and Transformed Patterns of Belonging Abstract: The issue of the radical transformation of identity of a convert and the ambivalence of the act of conversion has always been framed within broader questions of identity politics, issues of social integration and assimilation. Employing previously unexamined baptism files from Lithuanian Catholic Curias of the interwar period this paper will consider what were the specificities of Jewish conversions to Catholicism in the interwar Lithuania. One’s involvement in the process of religious conversion, positioning when dealing with the Church representatives and means employed to bring the newly created self-­‐image across will be as assessed by scrutinizing catechumens’ statements and ontological narratives. Simplistic at first sight they tend to reflect a more complex origin, unveiling a complicated relation between a Jew and his or her presupposed “Jewishness” which was revoked or transformed in the rhetoric employed. The paper will address such questions as what social entity did converts want to be a part of and how (or whether) radical religious conversion actually was? By the beginning of the 20th century the local Jewish community ended up in new nation states and thus the trends of their sociocultural orientation acquired entirely new elements defined by escalated modernization, nationalism and greater knowability of the Christian surroundings. Nonetheless, at the same time some of the conversional patterns where inherited from the century long existence under the rule of the Russian empire and modes of integration maintained in the end of the 19th century, defined by a more traditional background. Anika Reichwald, ETH Zurich, Switzerland Title: “Overcoming Jewishness” – Assimilation and its Representation in German Literature Abstract: While in France and England the emancipation of the Jews was accomplished without further legal restrictions, in the German countries the process of Emancipation proceeded differently. Opponents as well as some supporters of Jewish Emancipation claimed that the Jews themselves had to earn the right to become citizens. Therefore, they had to assimilate themselves with German culture, namely language, behaviour and common habits. Although in various German states at the beginning of the 19th century Jews received the full rights as citizens and were emancipated, the period of Restoration withdrew existing legislations that confirmed political equality for the Jews. Since the political decisions suggest that the task of modernity was to claim national unity and uniformity, it was the political ideal to integrate Jews into the major society. Literature in the first half of the 19th century, as a presentation of the common perception, points out the gap in policy. German Romantic authors, such as Achim von Arnim or Wilhelm Hauff, use anti-­‐Jewish stereotypes in their works to describe the inherent difference between ›Germans‹ and ›Jews‹. Especially in taking up the question of Jewish assimilation their texts demonstrate the persisting ›otherness‹ of the Jews. By way of example, Achim von Arnim’s Über die Kennzeichen des Judentums (1811) illustrates the idea of a backwards proceeding assimilation by revealing the true characteristics of the assimilated Jew. The paper reveals this process of assimilation and retraces how the text discloses German characteristics adopted by the Jews as their act of mimicry; still, concealed by the masquerade of assimilation the ›real nature‹ of the Jew is more than evident and manifest. Arnim clearly makes reference to the inherent ambivalence of assimilation, namely the challenge of assimilation can neither overcome Jewish identity nor Jewish›otherness‹. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session: 002: Jewish History 11.00-­‐13.00 Converts, Missionaries and Jewish-­‐Christian Relations Chair: Agnieszka Jagodzińska, Department of Jewish Studies, The University of Wrocław, Poland Title: Missionary Reports: Genre and Context Abstract: The London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews was established in 1809 in London. It was the oldest and the largest society in field of nineteenth-­‐century British “Jewish missions.” Seeking Jewish conversion, it operated not only among Jews in British colonial spaces but also beyond them. The Society expected its missionaries to write detailed reports concerning their activity among the Jews. These reports were sent to the Society’s headquarter in London where they were first edited and then published in the missionary press. In this paper I wish to discuss the missionary reports as a genre, determining its general characteristics, its function and style. The analysis will be based on the reports written by missionaries working among Polish Jews in the 19th and early 20th century. Apart from defining the genre, I will also attempt to answer more particular questions, for example: how did a missionary journal become a printed report?, how were reports changed in this process?, how many “authors” did one missionary report have?, is there a difference between reports prepared by missionaries who were “Christians from birth” and those by Jewish converts?, how did reports written by male and female missionaries differ? The paper will be accompanied by a ppt presentation. Ekaterina Norkina, Petersburg Institute of Jewish Studies, Russia Title: Jews and non-­‐Jews in the Caucasus in the XIX – the beginning of the XXth centuries. Abstract: From the prism of the individual relations between Jews and local bureaucrats/non-­‐Jewish population we research the machanisms of socio-­‐cultural adaptation of the Jews of the Caucasus in the XIX-­‐
beginning XXth. The Caucasus was the region of the Russian Empire ruled by governor. It was also one of the multinational outskirts of the Russian Empire on level with West outskirts of the state. Specific feature of the Caucasian region was poly-­‐confessional population. Before the Caucasus became a part of the Russian Empire, the most of the population was Moslems. After the Caucasus was included in the Russian Empire as special region, the Christian population began settling. The Russian government formulated different directions of the national policy towards the local population which changed because of some socio-­‐economical and political situations and other problems. By the middle of the XIX century some groups of the Jewish population lived in the Caucasian region. The first group was Mountain Jews (they appeared a long before Russians). The second one was Jews in Dagestan – special province of the Caucasus. The third one was Ashkenazi Jews (most of them Jews from the Russian Empire). The fourth is the Georgian Jews. We search the mechanisms of the socio-­‐cultural adaptation of all groups of the Jewish population of the Caucasus. Paola Ferruta, Université Paris-­‐Sorbonne, France Title: Thinking by Cases. Conversions to Christianity and reversion to Judaism in Trieste between the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Abstract: The paper explores how in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-­‐century Trieste the “interstices” (Homi Bhabha) between Jewish and Christian society overlapped with heterogeneous spaces of “semi-­‐
neutral society”, as Jacob Katz defined it. Within this context, the dialogue between the Jewish world and the majority society can be considered an infinitesimally small segment which belonged to the sphere of everyday life, outside the control of state institutions and religious establishments. By way of the historical anthropological analysis, the female presence of converts “out of control”, which shaped daily life, becomes relevant. It is about case studies of failed conversion to the Christian fold as well as about attempts to revert to Judaism by women who belonged to the multitude of the “ordinary people”. Men take the step of conversion to Christianity in a more indifferent way or at least their conversion tends to create less problems of responsibility within the Jewish community and the larger society, as a less disturbing circumstance. The conflict and the dramatic tension would increase in the case of male conversions if a woman intervened. It seems that the difficulties created by the Laws of Tolerance (1781/1782) and in some cases by the Jewish law would become particularly acute in relation to the fate of women who entered such “semi-­‐neutral society”. These women's destinies, which remained in the shade for a long time, have been at present uncovered by historical circumstances, becoming truly complicated. Drawing upon State archive files, the paper aims to bring out the negative impact of the ambiguity inherent to tolerance – as to emancipation – on female cases. Rumyana Marinova-­‐Christidi, Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski", Faculty of History, Bulgaria Title: Bulgarians and Jews through the Ages -­‐ an Example of Tolerance Abstract: Bulgarians and Jews live side by side for centuries providing a model of ethnic and religious tolerance. Looking for the roots of such tolerance, historical retrospection takes us back to the establishment of the Bulgarian state in the 7th century AD, when we already have reports of Jewish communities – initially Romaniotes Jews from Byzantium. Later and more important migrations of Jews in present-­‐day Bulgarian lands, begins following their expulsion from Spain and Portugal at the end of the 15th century. Jews found tolerance in the Ottoman Empire and the exchange of cultural and trade relations between them and the Bulgarians began to intensify. In the newly liberated Bulgarian state (1878) the rights and political equality of religious minorities was guaranteed by the state, and the Jews actively participated in the social, economic, political and cultural life of the country. Bulgarian Jews became famous world-­‐wide, like the painter Jules Pascin, the Nobel laureate Elias Canetti and many other representatives of the Bulgarian intelligence. Since 1880, the Jewish community has its own Chief Rabbi, while in 1909 the Bulgarian Tsar participated in the opening celebrations of the new, impressive synagogue in Sofia -­‐ the third largest and one of the most beautiful ones in Europe. While the Bulgarian state was tolerant towards them, Bulgarian Jews proved to be loyal citizens, fighting side by side with the Bulgarians in all the wars of national liberation. The centuries-­‐old co-­‐existence and lack of animosity between Bulgarians and Jews manifested itself in the most dramatic way during the Holocaust. Although an ally of Germany, Bulgaria did not surrender its Jews to the Nazis, as Bulgarian society rose in defense of its Jewish compatriots, and as a result not even one Jew from the territories of the “old-­‐Bulgarian Kingdom” was sent to the death camps. This noble example of compassion and solidarity made the salvation of the Bulgarian Jews a European exception. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session: 003: Jewish History 14.00-­‐15.30 Revolutionaries, Activists and Fighters Chair: Magdalena Kozłowska, Jagiellonian University, Poland Title: Troubled Future? Bundist Youth Movement in the Late Thirties Abstract: Second-­‐republic Poland witnessed a veritable flourishing of youth movements, with social, political, and confessional goals and agendas. While most scholarship has focused on the Bund, communists or the zionists — and how these movements could or could not have had an effect on government — my research centers on Tsukunft, the main Bundist youth organization in interwar Poland. Tsukunft grew into one of the most active and dynamic organizations within the Bundist movement. Its members (“Tsukunftistn”) were grouped in “circles” (krayzn). After age 18, participants were expected to join the Bund. Thus, not only did Tsukunft help the Polish Bund in its political campaigns, in particular during elections, but it also provided a constant source of new members for the party. In my presentation I will elucidate the approach of Tsukunft towards political and social landscape of Jewish and non-­‐Jewish Poland in the late 30's. By placing Tsukunft in the greater context of the Bund, Jewish tradition, and other political youth movements of the period, I will show how political youth movements — and Tsukunft in particular — wanted to shape the social and political life of Poland in the 30's. My paper shows the benefit in focusing on "smaller" organizations to present the varied and chaotic Polish political landscape. Most Jewish history is occupied with the notion of Jewish modernity and the specific Jewish experience. Polish history, however, shows how we cannot examine the Jewish experience apart from the Polish experience, writ large. Tsukunft offers a unique lens on this problem of intertwined history because its activists and youth were themselves struggling with Jewish identity, with Polish identity, and with the possibilities and limitations of activist politics in a multi-­‐ethnic state. I will mainly focus on the press and brochures published by the organization in the late 30's (in different languages) to argue about the role of youth organizations in the search for Jewish modernity in the troubled reality. Mariusz Kałczewiak, Tel-­‐Aviv University, Israel / University of Giessen, Germany Title: Jewish Travelers in Argentina – Exploring the Unknown, Presenting it to Jewish Masses Abstract: At the very beginning of 20th century Perets Hirschebein and Hersh Dovid Nomberg, two Eastern European Jewish writers, set out across Atlantic to explore Jewish life of rapidly growing Argentinean diaspora. They boarded the same steamships as did thousands of their fellow Jews in search of economic opportunities and freedom. They traveled to Buenos Aires and visited Jewish farming colonies, carefully observing local society, nature and culture. Their travelogues, published respectively in 1916 and 1924, have circulated among Eastern European Yiddish speaking Jews, being at the moment one of few comprehensive accounts on Jewish life in Argentina. Their travelogues (along Jewish press personal correspondence) have been possibly influencing their image of Argentina and discouraging against / encouraging to immigration. In my paper I examine the picture of Argentina presented in the travelogues of Nomberg and Hirschbeyn, critically looking at their narration about various aspects of Jewish life in Argentina: immigration, prostitution, farming colonies, and relations with non-­‐Jews and with Argentinean state. I portray how European Jewish intellectuals describe “exotic” Argentina and the emergence of the largest Jewish Diasporas. I analyze what picture of Argentina Nomberg and Hirschbein present to the Eastern European Jewish readers. I embed my paper in the broader discussion on travelling and Jewish migration. Gerben Zaagsma, Georg-­‐August-­‐Universität Göttingen, Germany Title: In Search of the Jewish Freedom Fighter: Jewish Volunteers in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War & the Myth of Jewish Cowardice Abstract: During the Spanish Civil War (1936-­‐1939) around 35000 volunteers from many countries fought in the so-­‐called International Brigades that were created and organised by the Communist International. Roughly 5000 of these volunteers were of Jewish descent. In December 1937 the Jewish Naftali Botwin Company was created within the 13th Polish Dombrowski Brigade creating an explicitly Jewish military symbol on the Spanish battlefields. In much post-­‐war historiography the participation of Jewish-­‐born volunteers in the International Brigades, often symbolised by the Botwin Company, is inscribed in a broader narrative of Jewish resistance that aims to counter the myth of Jewish non-­‐resistance in the face of the Nazi onslaught. To put it bluntly: ‘Spain’ serves to prove that Jews did not go like “sheep to the slaughter” but already resisted Hitler in Spain (the German government, after all, actively supported Franco). Yet to what extent do post-­‐war representations of Jewish volunteers as Jewish resistance fighters correspond to the intentions with which the Jewish Left engaged itself with Spain in the period of the SCW itself? And how do such post-­‐war commemorations relate to representations of Jewish volunteers that were forwarded during the Spanish Civil War? The aim of this paper is to put the history of Jewish volunteers, particularly the Botwin Company, back in the context of the history of Jews in the Left. The Botwin Company was created after lobbying of Polish-­‐Jewish migrant communists in Paris. In their newspaper, the Yiddish daily Naye Prese, its existence became an important part of the propaganda battle they waged on the‚ Jewish street’ in support of the Communist International’s post-­‐1935 Popular Front tactic. But while the propaganda was unmistakably communist, the subtext became increasingly Jewish in the course of the war: the editors and journalists of Naye Prese consistently emphasised that the fight of Jewish volunteers in Spain, symbolised by the Botwin Company, disproved age old allegations of Jewish cowardice. Linked to growing Jewish communist concerns about the position of Jewish immigrants in late 1930s France, the discursive construction of Jewish volunteers as Jewish freedom fighters in Naye Prese also served to propose and legitimize a model of Jewish action and thus provide an emancipatory example for Jewish migrants. This paper will thus argue that Spain might not have been the site where Jewish volunteers fought a battle against the future murderers of their people, yet it became the site where Polish-­‐Jewish communists confronted a classic anti-­‐Semitic stereotype: that of the Jew as a coward, dodging the fight and shying away from action when called upon. This micro-­‐study ultimately problematises the often-­‐heard contention that Jewish communists forsook Jewish for political concerns and instead underscores the complex and multifaceted history of Jews in the Left in the interwar period. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session 004: Jewish History 16.00-­‐18.00 East European Soviet and ex-­‐Soviet Contemporary Jewry Chair: Elena Nosenko-­‐Stein Audrey Kichelewski, University of Strasbourg, Austria Title: Last of the Mohicans ou New Marranos? Being a Jew in Catholic and Communist Poland, 1945-­‐1989 Abstract: In the aftermath of the Second World War, the non-­‐Roman Catholic religious minorities had dropped from more than one third in 1939 to a mere 2 percent of the overall population in Poland’s new borders. Within the Jewish community, 90 percent of which had been annihilated, the religious people were the less likely to survive. In 1945, the revival of Jewish life, including the religious life, could hence only stem from thoroughly new foundations. Structurally, the Jewish population was not the same sociologically, physically and mentally while socio-­‐political landscape had profoundly changed due to the forced imposition of a communist regime in a country that had become predominantly Roman Catholic. Circumstantially, the Jewish survivors were faced with the dilemma of staying in the cemetery of their beloved ones or leave a country that had welcomed them with open hostility. While a majority of the approximately 200,000 Polish Jews chose emigration, how did the "last of the Mohicans" adapted themselves in a community life firmly state controlled, yet while living in an essentially Catholic nation? Why did the strategy often adopted of living like a "Marrano" fail to protect those Polish citizens of Jewish descent from being scapegoated each time the "Jewish question" emerged in every political crisis of the regime, from its establishment until its fall in 1989? Zsofia Kata Vincze, Institution: ELTE University Budapest, Hungary Title: Socio Political Changes in the Self-­‐Definition of the Jewish Communities in Post Socialist Hungary Abstract: After the fall of communism the Hungarian religious and secular Jewish communities got re-­‐
established and reorganised with the help of Israeli and American institutional support. My presentation will analyse in an anthropological and sociological framework how this communities, and individual Jews reacted to the outreach in the last two decades. My paper will present the major trend shifts in changing concepts of what "real Jewishness" meant at different stages in post socialist Hungary. (After an intellectual discovery of one’s own Jewish identity, a trend of religious return happened until the mid-­‐1990, what was followed by an ethnic/cultural self-­‐definition of Jewish identity until approximately 2000, resulting slowly in a symbolic ethnic representations or festivalisation of Jewishness in the era of social media. Today -­‐ in the midst of the raise of the openly political anti-­‐Semitism -­‐ we can witness a slightly more defined socio-­‐
political Jewish behavior. As I will build a theory of social dynamics and tendencies of collective self-­‐
definition of Hungarian Jews, I will also present illustrative case studies of people who went through the baal teshuva or born again Jewish identity and later on they discovered that there are secular ways to be Jewish and after they grew out of the hip, fun Jewish underground and "alternative" festival crowd they construct a left liberal politically Jewish identity to themselves. Elena Nosenko-­‐Stein, Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences Title: Social and Cultural Portrait of Reform Jew in Contemporary Russia: Identity, Memory, Non-­‐Jewish Environment Abstract: Reform Judaism has a relatively short history in Russia. It spread in the Russian Empire from abroad in late 19th c.; it did not practically exist in the USSR; it is newly built in today’s Russian. Drawing on both qualitative (texts of in-­‐depth and expert interviews as well as on participant observation) and qualitative (data of a survey) approaches I explore various aspects of constructing a new – new – for Russia – Jewish identity and cultural memory in Russian Reform community. I briefly examine its sociodemographic profile (age, gender, education, and ethnic origins, social and professional statuses) as well as reasons of its members’ attachment to Reform Judaism. Analyzing patterns of constructing Jewish identity among Russian Reform Jews I also investigate the impact of their involvement into Reform Jewish life on Jewish cultural memory -­‐ events, persons, dates, texts, etc., which Reform Jews in Russia prefer either to remember or to forget. I also suppose to examine contacts of Reform Jews with their cultural non-­‐
Jewish (Russian) environment in terms of their attitudes towards Russian culture. Ildikó Barna, Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary Title: Jewish Identity in Transition: Changing Strength and Content Abstract: This talk analyses the differences of Jewish identity among the generations of Holocaust survivors. It focuses on the dissimilarities and changes not only in its strength but also in the content of it. The last representative survey on Hungarian Jewry was conducted in 1999. It embraced three generations of Holocaust survivors. Hungarian Jewry went through sweeping changes in the lifetimes of these groups. The socialization of the first generation started before the Second World War and Judaism played an important role: in their early life Jewish identity was taken for granted. Then they experienced the Holocaust and this itself elicited a desire to be freed from the burden of Jewish identity. In Hungary, however, such a desire was strengthened by the social and political milieu. Among the second generation, in many cases, parents concealed their Jewishness and many members of this age-­‐group were raised without any Jewish identity whatsoever. Additionally, many Jews from these two generations found themselves in a paradoxical situation: although they had lost their feeling of belonging to the Jewish people, nevertheless other Hungarians continued to view them as “a separate group,” as Jews. Thus, for many of them, Jewish identity took on a certain reactive nature. That is to say, many felt that it was the reaction of the majority that was forcing them to regard themselves as Jews. The main identity-­‐forming element of these Jews' identity became the awareness of wartime persecution, i.e. the Holocaust. This was not the case for many members of the third generation. After the transition in 1990 among many of these third generation Holocaust survivors the reactive nature of Jewish identity weakened and it started to be filled with positive feelings. This phenomenon was often described as Jewish Renaissance, but the focus remained mainly on the changing strength of Jewish identity. My hypothesis is that according to the different socio-­‐historical context also the content of Jewish identity has changed. However with ordinary quantitative methodology these differences could not be explored. Using structural equation modelling, a complex multidimensional statistical technique, these differences in the content could also be analysed. This was measured by three dimensions: religious, ethno-­‐cultural and affective. The results show that there are major differences in the content of identity among the three generations of Holocaust survivors, i.e. the mixture of the above dimensions is different. This can be seen mainly in the relative weight of the religious and affective aspects. The analysis also revealed that in the case of the second generation two subgroups should be distinguished: those having reactive and those with some kind of positive Jewish identity. The aim of this talk is to show the detailed results of these analyses. Tuesday 22nd July ENS, Salle des ACTES (Main building, 1st flour, Stairs A) Session: 001: Jewish History Antisemitism 9.00-­‐10.30 Panel: Coming to Terms with Postwar Antisemitism: Changing Patterns and Changing Jewish Responses 1 Organizer: Susan Glenn Chair: Susan Glenn Susan Glenn, University of Washington, USA Title: “American Jews, the ‘Swastika Epidemic,’ and Politics of Interpretation” Abstract: This paper examines the responses of the major American Jewish defense groups to the upsurge in antisemitism in the 1950s and early 1960s. It focuses in particular on the pivotal events of 1959-­‐1960, when the so-­‐called “Swastika Epidemic”-­‐-­‐a worldwide cycle of vandalism targeting Jewish cemeteries, synagogues, and public buildings at more than 2,000 sites in over 400 cities and towns, mainly in West Germany and the United States-­‐-­‐provoked a crisis on both sides of the Atlantic. In West Germany, the “epidemic” became a Cold War story played out against the backdrop of Eastern bloc tensions and the Adenauer government’s efforts to convince American Jewish defense groups that it was committed to eliminating the vestiges of National Socialism. In the United States, where the major Jewish defense organizations had already embarked upon an attempt to normalize the image and status of Jews though new strategic efforts in intergroup relations, media campaigns, social scientific investigations, and legal challenges to discriminatory practices, the “Swastika Epidemic,” coming on the heels of synagogue bombings in the American south and a nationwide upsurge in antisemitic and neo-­‐Nazi activity, contributed new sources of anxiety about the problem of Jewish security. The various stakeholders—the press, the politicians, Jewish defense groups, and even antisemitic ideologues in the U.S—produced competing interpretations that reflected and mobilized Cold War era political anxieties, prevailing theoretical assumptions, contemporary preoccupations with the problem of juvenile delinquency, and postwar efforts to fit Jews into a narrative of democratic inclusion and tolerance that did not comport with facts on the ground. Evelien Gans, Netherlands Institute for War-­‐ Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Niod) & University of Amsterdam, Dpt. of History Title: Giving Antisemitism the Cold-­‐shoulder or Fighting it till the Bitter End. Shifts in Postwar Dutch-­‐Jewish Attitudes. Abstract: During Christmas Eve 1959 the newly opened synagogue in Cologne (Germany) was plastered by German neo-­‐Nazi’s with swastika’s and the like. A wave of similar incidents – referred to as Schmierwelle -­‐ spread throughout Western Germany. From there the antisemitic aggression fanned out all over the world. To Austria, Italy, Australia, England, Belgium, Denmark, South-­‐Africa, Belgium -­‐ to Sweden and the United States. And also to Germanys’ neighbor country the Netherlands where, among others, an old Jewish cemetery was destroyed. Then, in 1962, one year after the proceedings against Adolf Eichmann had confronted the world with many details of the Holocaust, the ragging in the Amsterdam Student’s Union developed into a national scandal. The so-­‐called freshmen had been, as usual, herded into one room, stripped to the waist, and heads shaved. One member of the ragging commission had told them: ‘We are going to play Dachau’. When one of the freshmen protested, he was snapped at: ‘Keep your mouth shut, you fucking Jew.’ The incident was made public, there were reports and letters to the editor all over the press, it came to questions in Parliament and some (modest) disciplinary measures were taken. In my paper I will elaborate on the question how Dutch Jews dealt with post-­‐war antisemitism, and what changes occurred in their attitude. Because of an accumulation of incidents in 1962 of which ‘playing Dachau’ was the most serious the Jewish weekly Nieuw Israelietisch Weekblad (NIW) organised a debate. The participants ranged from 49 to 69 of age. Their discussion provides a fascinating insight into how those very self-­‐conscious Jews dealt with antisemitism. They agreed at least on one big issue: antisemitism was a ‘problem of civilisation’ of Gentiles. To preoccupy oneself with it as a Jew was below Jewish dignity. If one couldn’t stand it: go and live in Israel. After the Six Day War in 1967 and the Jom Kippur War of 1973 – when the Netherlands were struck by an Arab oil boycott because of its pro-­‐Israel stance -­‐ things gradually started to change. The Dutch government decided to follow a more balanced policy in the Middle East; the position and aspirations of the Palestinians became a political issue. From a Jewish perspective the fact that Israel had proved strong enough to survive, meant a boost to Jewish self-­‐confidence. At the same time, however, there was cause for concern: Israel became more controversial. This led to the foundation of several pro-­‐Israel committees. All of them were confronted with the question when criticism of Israel and antizionism turn into antisemitism – for some it was all one and the same -­‐ and more generally: how to deal with antisemitism. New established organizations came with widely divergent approaches, varying from explicitly militant, violent action to publications, campaigns and legal proceedings. All of them took the position that ‘Jews cán, máy and shóúld take action against antisemitism’. And then there were still those Jews who thought one shouldn’t make a mountain out of a molehill. One could say that, while antisemitism is a flexible phenomenon which grafts novel stereotypes onto old ones, and finds new points of attachment in changing historical contexts, it is per definition accompanied by differing approaches to its character and how to handle or combat it. Helga Embacher, Fachbereich Geschichte, Germany Title: Promoting the Ideal Jew (Idealtypischen Juden): Jewish Reactions to Antisemitism in Austria Abstract: In this paper, I will analyze how the Israelitische Kultursgemeinde (Jewish Community, IKG) as the official representative of the approximately 10,000 Austrian Jews reacted to Antisemitism and Antizionism after the Holocaust. How were Antisemitism and Antizionism defined and did discussions take place within the Jewish community about the character and dimensions of Austrian Antisemitism? Another question I will deal with is how the Austrian Erinnerungskultur (culture of commemoration of Austria’s Nazi past) influenced Jewish reactions. Since reactions by international Jewish organizations and Israeli politicians to Austrian Antisemitism frequently led to outbreaks of new waves of Antisemitism, I will further analyze which international Jewish organizations (e.g. WJC, Simon Wiesenthal Center, the State of Israel) supported—and also instrumentalized—the IKG in its fight against Antisemitism. The final question I will address is the extent to which Antisemitism and Antizionism influenced the process of forming a postwar Austrian-­‐Jewish identity. In going about this, I will concentrate on three phases of the history of postwar Austrian Antisemitism: 1) the immediate postwar period, when Antisemitism was discussed in connection with restitution negotiations that, in contrast to the BRD, lasted until the early 1960s. I will argue that, especially in the postwar period, Jewish representatives created the “ideal Jew”—a Jewish stereotype they assumed would be accepted by Austrians. 2) The so-­‐called Waldheim Affair, when Austrian Jews were not only among the most vocal opponents of Waldheim but also staunch defenders of Austria at home and abroad, especially when the country was being criticized by the WJC. 3) Reactions of the IKG during the Intifada (2000-­‐02) and after 9/11, when representatives of the IKG frequently accused Austrian politicians and newspapers of Antisemitism in light of their statements concerning the Intifada and reporting about it. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session: 002: Jewish History Antisemitism 11.00-­‐13.00 Panel: Coming to Terms with Postwar Antisemitism: Changing Patterns and Changing Jewish Responses 1 Organizer: Susan Glenn Chair: Susan Glenn Eva Maria Ziege, Universität Bayreuth, Germany Title: Public Intellectuals and Antisemitism in the Federal Republic of Germany Abstract: In the course of the 1950s, an uneasy cooperation existed between the public intellectuals and scholars of the Federal Republic of Germany. While some of them had been in exile and returned, others had been part of national socialist society. Particularly in the social sciences, in political philosophy and sociology these matters were kept more or less latent, with prominent Jewish thinkers preferring not to address the rift too directly. Ex-­‐Nazis were teaching at the same universities as the few Jews who had been expropriated, persecuted, forced out of the country and had yet returned to West Germany. With the eruption of violence against Jews and Jewish institutions in 1959/1960, this reality became hard to ignore. This paper looks at the interaction of Jewish and non-­‐Jewish intellectuals in the public as well as the scholarly field in the context of the exile’s allegiance to the United States in the context of the Cold War and the debates emerging since. François Guesnet, University College London, UK Title: Comparing Antisemitism in Post-­‐communist Poland and Hungary -­‐ Theoretical Implications Abstract: This paper will discuss the potential benefits of a comparative approach to the study of antisemitism, based on a collaborative research project investigating antisemitic attitudes in post-­‐
communist Hungary and Poland. The project combined an assessment of the 'longue durée' of antisemitic movements and their constituencies in these two cases, and compared the different trajectories of antisemitic organisations after the fall of communism. It will be argued that differences in political culture and economic development have a greater impact on the attraction of antisemitic attitudes and ideologies than possible responses from the Jewish communities confronted with hostility and rejection. Robert Fine, University of Warwick, UK Title: The Two Faces of Universalism: Emancipation and the Jewish Question Abstract: Universalism shows two faces to Jews: an emancipatory face manifest in movements for legal recognition of Jews as equal citizens and for social recognition of Jews as equal human beings; a repressive face manifest in a reading of the ‘Jewish question’ as the question of what is to be done about the harm Jews do to humanity at large. While the former declares that human beings count as such, regardless of whether they are Jewish or not, and demands that all exclusions be contested, the latter turns ‘the Jews’ into a unitary category incapable of meeting the universal standards of humankind. This paper explores the intimate relation between Jewish emancipation and the Jewish question at three historical moments: 18th century Enlightenment, 19th century revolutionary thought, and 20th century cosmopolitanism. It addresses in particular the difficulties that the ambivalence of universalism has posed for Jewish radicals through a focus on the Jewish writings of Hannah Arendt. Wassilis Kassis, University of Osnabrueck, Germany Title: The Grey Zone of Antisemitism: An Empirical and Theoretical Analysis for Considering a Zero Tolerance Approach on Antisemitism Abstract: To date, most quantitative field studies examining antisemitism in the EU and in North America identify antisemitic attitudes within narrowly confined survey categories, e.g. “agree somewhat,” “agree fully”. By contrast, the huge amount of participants’ answers on antisemitism which are not fully contradicting as, e.g. “disagree somewhat” or “somewhat unfavorable” are hastily summarized to a non-­‐
antisemitic attitudes pattern together with the distinctive “totally disagree” answers. The aim of this presentation is to test by two empirical studies if the “gray answer area” of participants’ answers which are not fully antisemitic have to be considered as non-­‐antisemitic attitudes or more as a proliferation ingredient of the still wide-­‐spread acceptance of antisemitism. The first study is “Formation of non-­‐violent behaviour in school and during leisure time among young adults from violent families”, the STAMINA-­‐
project, funded from 2009-­‐2011 by the European Commission Daphne III Program. The data were collected in the spring of 2009 from a random sample of N=5’149 8th grade students in four EU-­‐countries (Austria, Germany, Slovenia and Spain) who completed a questionnaire anonymously. The data for the second study, “Public Opinions and Attitudes in Post-­‐Secondary Institutions in Germany and Canada”, were collected in 2013 in Canada and Germany (n = 796 Canadian; n = 1,004 German). This is one of the largest studies with university students on antisemitism to date (N = 1,800). The core purpose of this survey was to examine how undergraduate students respond to the perceived offensiveness of social, cultural, and religious prejudice. We examined different forms and expressions of prejudice among post-­‐secondary students within an intercultural cross-­‐disciplinary framework. By both quantitative studies, even if samples and students’ ages differed, we’re able to show by multinomial regression analysis that even a vaguer acceptance of antisemitism (e.g. “disagree somewhat” or “somewhat unfavorable”) is highly increasing (from 5x to 20x) the odds of approving additional group-­‐focused enmities as e.g. xenophobia, violence acceptance against minorities, gender role stereotypes. Due to that we state that only a zero tolerance of antisemitism should be accepted and this not just because of the prediction strength of antisemitism for a bright variety of additional group-­‐focused enmities but also due to the proliferation of antisemitic prejudice and stereotypes among secondary and post-­‐secondary students in the EU and in North America. Especially the noticed “gray area” on antisemitism was used in the past and will doubtlessly be used in the future as a misanthropic fishpond for the very active antisemitic demagogues, and not just in the EU. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session: 003: Jewish History 14.00-­‐15.30 Memory and Remembrance Chair: Carolyn Dean Martina Steer, University of Vienna, Austria Title: The Memory of Moses Mendelsohn in Poland and Germany in 1929 and 1936 Abstract: This paper seeks to compare and examine the entanglements between the commemoration of Moses Mendelssohn in Poland and Germany in 1929 and 1936 and hence sheds light on the commonalities, differences and interdependence of modern Jewish collective memories shortly before the Shoah. The destruction of European Jewry irreversibly changed the very basics of Jewish and non-­‐Jewish collective memory. In order to conceive the dimension of that profound transformation it is necessary to examine the collective memory of communities which were – albeit under severe siege – still unaware of and unaffected by the catastrophe which befell them shortly later. In this context a comparative case study with regards to cultural transfers on the memory of Mendelssohn can be viewed as paradigmatic, since the Jewish communities of Poland and Germany differed significantly in sheer numbers, socially, religiously and culturally. The commemoration of Mendelsohn in both countries was the result of reciprocal processes of communication, acculturation, demarcation and migration between these two countries. The Jewish enlightenment philosopher was among the first intellectuals who were commemorated in such an intensive and variegated way. Since its emergence at the end of the 18th century, the commemoration of Mendelssohn did not only reflect the grade of secularization of Jewish identities, but was also an indicator for the relationship between Jews and non-­‐Jews. It became a cultural instrument by which Jews and non-­‐
Jews postulated and established their fundamental principles and values concerning their relationship, and inscribed them permanently in the collective memory of following generations. Mendelssohn can also be regarded as a parameter for conflicts within various strands of Judaism (orthodox vs. liberal, western vs. eastern etc., Bundist vs. Zionist), and for contested attempts of Jews and non-­‐Jews for emancipation and assimilation. Therefore, a comparative analysis of the lieu de mémoire Mendelssohn in Poland and Germany, its images and instrumentalization with an emphasis on entanglements can contribute to the conceptualization of a modern transnational Jewish collective memory which emerged before the Shoah. Małgorzata (Gosia) Włoszycka, University of Southampton, UK Title: Remembering the Jews of Mszana Dolna: memory of the dead or the memory of the living? Abstract: A case study of a small town in Southern Poland, Mszana Dolna, shows how people from the town deal with the memory of its Jewish neighbours. In 1942 around 900 Jews were led through the town by German soldiers and shot in a meadow on the outskirts of Mszana. This traumatic event raises a question of whether the Jews are remembered by the inhabitants of Mszana and whether the physical absence of Jews has been compensated by the memory of them. The paper argues that although the memory of Jews is present among the inhabitants of Mszana, it is dominated by the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, not the memory of the people who once were members of the community. This is represented in the physical space of Mszana, in the stories remembered by people from town, as well as the forms of commemorations the Jews by contemporary population of the town. An attempt will be made to show that the memory of Jews is not incorporated into the history of Mszana, but exists as a parallel one. Agnieszka Alston, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland Title: Looting and Devastation of Jewish Private and Communal Assets in Krakow during the German Occupation Abstract: The presented paper confines to the time frame of 1867-­‐1918, as the year of the December Constitution that brought political and social changes to Jews of Krakow and Galicja. This new period of great and rapid changes created a new stature to Krakow society -­‐ Jewish plutocracy and intelligentsia. The end of the Great War, 1918, gave even more opportunities to Galician Jewry, especially to the rapidly growing Jewish intelligentsia, their involvement in new county politics, economy and culture. The years after the World War I brought an overwhelming bloom of this social group, whose patronage in culture was different due to advanced political and social modifications, but also to changes within the artistic scene in Krakow. While it was not likely to hear in Krakow about great collectors of the caliber of the Rothschilds or of benefactors as existed among the Warsaw or Lodz Jewish bourgeoisie (L. Kronenberg, J. Nathanson, J. Bloch, I. Poznański), Krakow was not lacking for there was a small but growing group of Jewish plutocracy and intelligentsia who took significant part in patronizing the local culture. Additionally, Krakowian cultural institutions were benefited by Jewry from Warsaw (M. Bersohn, F. Gebethner), Lvov (M. Goldstein), and elsewhere. The wide autonomy of the Grossherzgtum Krakau during the changes within the Austro-­‐
Hungarian Empire with the proclamation of equality of all citizens of Galicja and thus gave the opportunity to Jews to enter actively into the cultural scene of Krakow. The Krakow Jewish plutocracy: bankers, financiers, capitalists (rich members of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry) and Jewish intelligentsia (medical doctors, architects, and scholars) modeled their cultural patronage on the old aristocratic tradition. In other words they ordered family portraits (St. Feintuch, J. Oettinger, H. Rozenzwieg, J. Sare, A. Schwartz, H. Szarski, and others) from the renowned establish painters’ ateliers of T. Axentowicz, J. Fałat, J. Marczewski, L. Wyczółkowski, St. Wyspiański. Furtherer they created collections of fine arts that reflected accumulated wealth and which was also a financial investment (E. Beres, Blumenfeld, Z. Ehrenpreis, W. Fränkel, L. Holzer, S. Tiles). Having a distinguished collection it was highly regarded to be seen to loan or to donate art pieces or collections to the museum (F. Gebethner, M. Berson, Glicenstein, A. Sternschuss, J. Judkiewicz and others). In Kraków, artistic patronage was centered on the Society of Friends of Fine Arts (1854) and the National Museum (1879). Members of Krakow Jewry were chosen as distinguished members of exhibitions’ committees. They were frequent purchasers of exhibited works of talented students of the Krakow Fine Art Academy. In Krakow, unlike in Warsaw, there were not so many residential art salons belonging to Jewish collectors whose goals were to improve the prestige via presence of artists and cultural elite, again activity based on the Polish aristocracy. However, there was one such salon that was led by Henryk Frist (1875 Salon of Polish Painters). Additionally, a new to Krakow phenomena were art dealers like: Adolf Schwartz and Marcus Szwarc, who were active in cultural patronage. It must be mentioned that Jewish collectors not only focused on Polish artists, firstly they cherished Jewish artists such as M. Gottlieb, or Samuel Hirszenberg (E. Beres, M. Feldman). Most of all they paid homage to their heritage in preserving and collecting precious Jewish ritual objects, which often were on loan to the Krakow National Museum. Most of all they paid homage to their heritage in preserving and collecting precious Jewish ritual objects, which often were on loan to the Krakow National Museum (J. Judkiewicz, M. Szwarc). 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session 004: Jewish History Antisemitism and Jewish/non-­‐Jewish Relations throughout the Ages 16.00-­‐18.00 Panel: The Parkes Institute's approach to Jewish/non-­‐Jewish relations, models for the future? Organizers: Tony Kushner & James Jordan Chair: Tony Kushner James Jordan, Parkes Institute, University of Southampton, UK Title: Dr Who and Jewish/non-­‐Jewish Relations on British Television Abstract: In a recent article for Tabletmag.com, Liel Leibovitz has suggested that the central character of the BBC's long-­‐running television series Doctor Who is in fact ‘the most compelling Jewish character in the history of television.’ In his article Leibovitz situates the character of the Doctor as Jewish through an argument which is partly historical, partly interpretative, through, that is, both the off-­‐screen story of the Doctor’s creation and his on-­‐screen appearance, attitudes and enemies. This paper will look more closely at the show’s origins and content, arguing that the Doctor’s position and articulation of Jewishness is both more rooted and more ambivalent than Leibovitz suggests, and that the relationship between the Doctor and his Jewishness -­‐ and indeed that between the Daleks and the Master and their Jewishness -­‐ is revealing in terms of Jewish/non-­‐Jewish relations more generally. Tony Kushner, Parkes Institute, University of Southampton, UK Title: The British in Auschwitz Abstract: 1500 British prisoners of war were held in a sub-­‐camp of the Auschwitz complex from 1943 to 1945. Until recently their experiences have been forgotten, but in the past few years their stories have been rediscovered and reinterpreted. Once placed within a prisoner of war narrative, they are now placed within the context of the Holocaust. Indeed, they are increasingly regarded as 'Heroes of the Holocaust' This paper will explore the implications when melding the British war effort with the plight of the Jews, especially with regard to the key categories that have been developed to explain the Holocaust: perpetrator, victim, bystander. The Holocaust becoming increasingly the most important morality story of modern times. This paper will ask whether the Reverened Dr James Parkes' (the pioneer of the study of Jewish/non-­‐Jewish relations) concern over the development of Holocaust studies was justified. Using this case study, it will ask whether the attention given to the Holocaust is leading to dangerous simplifications in our understanding of the broader field of Jewish/non-­‐Jewish relations. Claire Le Foll, Parkes Institute, University of Southampton, UK Title: Jews and Small Nations in Eastern Europe Abstract: The relations between Jews and the other national minorities among which they lived in Eastern Europe have not yet been extensively researched, being overshadowed by works on the relations between Jews and Russians or Poles. In the framework of a panel discussion on relations between Jews and non-­‐
Jews, I would like to present my research project focused on relations between Jews and other national groups (Belorussian, Ukrainian and Lithuanian mostly) before and after the creation of the Belorussian, Ukrainian and Lithuanian republics (1905-­‐1939), with a comparative analysis of the implementation of cultural national autonomy in the new states (Soviet and non-­‐Soviet). Using more specifically the Belorussian case, I will argue that the cultural transfers, social interactions and political cooperation between Jews and these 'small nations' had no less impact, if not more, on the Jewish collective identity and history than the well-­‐studied strategy of integration into the dominant society. Helen Spurling, Parkes Institute, University of Southampton, UK Title: Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic Traditions in Late Antiquity Abstract: This paper will examine contacts between rabbinic and patristic writings in Late Antiquity through the medium of biblical exegesis and the concept of 'exegetical encounter' (Spurling and Grypeou 2009, 2013). The importance of apocalyptic and eschatological traditions within both Jewish and Christian literature as a response to historical events and a means of revealing attitudes to events is widely accepted (Alexander 1978, Reeves 2006, Bockmuehl and Carleton Paget 2009). By focusing on apocalyptic and eschatological traditions from select midrashic and patristic sources from Late Antiquity, the possibilities of contact and conflict over the interpretation of biblical motifs will be examined. The paper will investigate any possible theological relationship between different traditions, and highlight the development of eschatological thought in Late Antiquity in the context of Jewish-­‐Christian relations. This contribution is part of a panel from the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-­‐Jewish Relations, which will highlight the work of the Institute and its interdisciplinary approaches as a model for future research on Jewish/non-­‐
Jewish relations. Tuesday 22nd July ENS, Salle BECKETT (Main building, ground flour, map: 13) Session: 001: Kabala 9.00-­‐10.30 Panel: Ronit Meroz / Tzahi Weiss Sefer Yetsirah: Content, Context, Interpretation Chair: Ronith Meroz Ronit Meroz, Tel Aviv University, Israel Title: Abraham in the Bosom of God Abstract: Sefer Yezira ends with a poetic, though perplexing, description of God's love to Abraham, how He put him in His bosom and kissed him on his head. In this lecture I will discuss the possible sources of this image and their implication for a new understanding of the book's message. Tzahi Weiss, The Open University, Israel Title: Some New Observations Concerning the Context of Sefer Yetsirah Abstract: The lecture will investigate the nature of the attitudes toward alphabetical letters in Syrian-­‐
Aramaic texts which were written between the 4th and the 8th century C.E. by Syrian church fathers. Following previous research which discussed the emergence of linguistic schools in Nisibis as well as the attitude of the Syrian church fathers to the holiness of the Aramaic language, the lecture will point to parallels existing between Sefer Yetsirah and the atmosphere which existed in this unique cultural area. During the lecture I will also present a new possible attitude towards the complicated way in which the three main versions of Sefer Yetsirah were edited. Klaus Herrmann, Free University of Berlin, Germany Title: How is the Text of Sefer Yezirah Connected with the Lost Commentary by Isaac Israeli? Some Speculations on a Highly Speculative Treatise Abstract: There is no question about it: the text tradition of the Sefer Yezirah (SY) is downright complex and difficult. Nevertheless, in view of the oldest extant manuscript text-­‐witnesses, it appears to be far less dramatic than scholars usually assume. Therefore the task of the present paper lies in reflecting on this oldest available text tradition of the SY and confronting it with the medieval commentaries. The no longer extant commentary by Isaac Israeli, Dunash ibn Tamim’s teacher, seems to play an important role in answering these questions. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session 002: Kabala 11.00-­‐13.00 Mysticism, Sabbatai Tzvi Chair: Giacomo Corazzol Annelies Kuyt, Goethe-­‐University, Frankfurt, Germany Title: Unravelling the Divine Message: Shlomo Almoli on Dreams and their Interpreters Abstract: In his sixteenth-­‐century Pitron Halomot, Almoli tries to establish the criteria for a correct interpretation of dreams, the dream comprising a small prophecy. He does so by means of his sources: Jewish -­‐ ranging from the Hebrew Bible to his contemporaries, incorporating halakhic, philosophical and kabbalistic genres -­‐ as well as non-­‐Jewish sources. José Alberto Rodrigues da Silva Tavim, Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical, Lisboa; CIDEHUS, Universidade de Évora; CITCEM, Universidade do Porto, Portugal Title: Sabbatai Zvi in motion Abstract: The famous Sabbatai Zvi, the Mystical Messiah as his greatest scholar Gershom Scholem called him, was born in Smyrna in 1626. Scholem and other more recent scholars, who continue to keep an interest in this character and on his followers, see the unfolding of his movement as the typical produce Smyrna, a town where European commercial investment and the market dynamics implemented by Jews of Iberian origin helped to shape its cosmopolitan outlook. This multifaceted cosmopolitanism is perhaps one of the great dimensions of the mystical movement around Sabbatai Zvi, which make this the major episode of Jewish mysticism in the Modern Age. However, this movement spread beyond the narrowly defined but permeable Jewish universe into the European "Republic of Letters", influencing, for example, certain English millenarian millieu and absorbing elements of the Iberian millenarianism. Even in Islamic contexts, particularly in Morocco, this movement of the "Mystical Messiah" would be "integrated" and "interpreted" in the context of the local Jewish environment, but evolved into other dimensions transcending the real Sabbatai, though much of this information was spread via the Netherlands. We are primarily concerned to consider this movement around the "Mystical Messiah" as a major moment in the encounter between Islam and Christian Europe (to which the Jewish communities of Iberian origin were part), whose messianic dimension transcends the Jewish world, though the Jews are its leadings characters. In this context several questions arise: 1 -­‐ How to understand the development of Sabbatai’s movement in the Islamic context, more specifically in the Ottoman Empire (Sabbatai eventually converted to Islam keeping his messianic proposals)? 2 -­‐ How does the West understands this Islamic context? 3 -­‐ How is regarded or absorbed in the West (by its supporters and detractors) the development of a movement which initially occurs in an Islamic context (Ottoman and North African)? 4 -­‐ How is reflected in Sabbatai’s movement the Messianic queries of the West (as exemplified in the case of the English millenarians and the Iberian messianism)? The answers to these questions will attempt to unravel the veil hanging over a huge volume of beliefs, riddles and emotions that characterized this movement that spread from the Mediterranean to Northern Europe in the Modern Age. Shinichi Yamamoto, Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Japan Title: Turban and Tefillin in an Anonimous Sabbatean Text Abstract: Turban, a symbolic term in Sabbateanism, signifies the sacred conversion to Islam. As the well-­‐
known portrat of Sabbatai Tzevi shows, he as well as some of his followers apostatized and actually put on the turbans on their heads. However it does not mean their unconditional adoption of Islam. They changed a couple of Jewish mourning days such as the 17th of Tammuz and the 9th of Av into feast-­‐days and created an idiosyncratic calendar to commemorate the messianic events. Forming some clandestine groups with such unique customs resulted in so-­‐called Dönme sects, the members of which intermarried within the believers’ descendants. Their identity gradually turned into the indigenous ethnicity, which is different both from Judaism and from Islam. The origin of Dönme obviously has their root in the trial of 1666, where Sabbatai Tzevi put on the turban and became a cross-­‐boundary redeemer. On the other hand, some testimonies have it that Sabbatai Tzevi put on tallith and tefillin even after his conversion to Islam. Considering his antinomistic inclination, his observance of the Jewish commandments seemingly deviates from the anticipated heretical behavior. It is noteworthy that at the early stage the number of the Sabbatean converts who took the same path as their messiah was relatively small. The main disciples of Sabbatai Tzevi such as Nathan of Gaza, Samuel Primo and Abraham Cardozo remained Jewish and kept away from the apostate followers. For instance, the group of Nathan lived a devotional life in accordance with kabbalistic customs. What is obvious is that there was also a conventional aspect in Sabbateanism. And from this vantage point it is possible to know why Sabbatai Tzevi still put on tallith and tefillin after the conversion. In my paper, an impressive Sabbatean interpretation of turban and tefillin will be focused on in order to clarify the twofold meaning. The anonimous text appears in Torat ha-­‐Qenaot, an anti-­‐Sabbatean book, which R. Jacob Emden published in 1752. According to the text, even the messeiah, putting on tefillin, were supposed to observe the Jewish commandments on weekdays. They play a redemptive role to purify the demonic elements before the holiest phase of Sabbath. On Sabbath, receiving the heavenly radiance, tefillin in turn envelop his head as Muslim’s turban. The text, referring to a rabbinical phrase “the Holy One blessed be He put tefillin”, lays an emphasis on observing the commandments as a preparatory stage for the true redemption, though it avoids giving a clear determination about the nature of the status quo. I will analyze the perspective the text shows by comparing it with two other Sabbatean sources. First, as the most eloquent source about putting on turban, the commentary of Psalms Israel Hazan wrote in 1678 or 1679 is to be examined. Israel Hazan belonged to quite a radical group which seems to have been close to Dönme in the messianic discipline. His focal point is on the mystery of turban possibly open to the followers of Sabbatai Tzevi. The second source is Sefer ha-­‐Beriah, which was written by Nathan of Gaza in 1670 to explain the substance of the messianic frustration. He elucidates the inevitable nexus between the messiah and tefillin, and his core belief seems more or less similar to that of the anonymous text in question. There is no asserting that it was based on Nathan’s theory, but this comparison might shed light on the binary function of turban and tefillin in Sabbateanism. Georges Koutzakiotis, Institut de Recherches Historiques / Fondation Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique, Grèce. Title: La kabbale et l’érudition grecque (XVIIe-­‐XIXe siècles) Abstract: Alors que l’intérêt porté à la kabbale par les érudits catholiques et protestants d’Europe au cours de l’époque moderne a été étudié exhaustivement, la relation des érudits chrétiens orthodoxes avec cette tradition ésotérique du judaïsme demeure terra incognita. En examinant pour les besoins de mon étude intitulée "Attendre la fin du monde au XVIIe siècle. Le messie juif et le grand interprète" (Athènes 2011 en grec, publication française en cours) la perception du mouvement messianique de Sabbataï Tsevi par les érudits grecs du XVIIe siècle, j’ai également été amené à me pencher sur l’attention qu’ils portaient à la kabbale. La présente communication a donc pour objet d’explorer la perception de la kabbale par l’érudition grecque au cours d’une période plus longue, s’étendant du XVIIe au XIXe siècle, afin de distinguer l’existence de continuités ou de discontinuations dans la longue durée. Parallèlement, elle vise à retracer les limites des connaissances kabbalistiques des érudits grecs de cette période et le cadre dans lequel s’inscrit cet intérêt. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session 003: Kabala 14.00-­‐15.30 Panel: Emergence of Medieval Kabbalah in Intercultural Contexts Organizer: Sandra Valabregue Chair: Elke Morlok Sandra Valabregue, Ben Gurion University of Negev, Israel Title: Faith and Philosophical Heresy in early Kabbalah Abstract: In this paper I propose to present some aspect of Kabbalah's theological renewal; that renewal, which I will present as counter-­‐theology, was the result of the acceptance, struggle and rewriting of philosophical ideas. This counter-­‐theology adopts philosophical models, albeit with major amendments, and molds them into a theosophical theology. Different test cases of heresy exemplify this ambivalence of Kabbalah toward philosophy. In this paper I will discuss mainly the categories of faith and heresy in Kabbalah and philosophy and more specifically the status of philosophical heresy in Kabbalah. This will help to exemplify that the tremendous influence of philosophy on Kabbalah was not merely in the reception of philosophical ideas, but philosophy also served as a catalyst for Kabbalah’s own theological renewal. Adam Afterman, Tel Aviv University, Israel Title: Maimonides and the Emergence of Kabbalah Abstract: The paper will address the impact of Moses Maimonides on the emergence of early kabbalah in Provence and Catalonia (up until 1270). The extent of the impact of Maimonides on the development and the emergence of early kabbalah has been at the focus of several studies in recent years. In my talk I will reexamine the textual evidence of such impact in the writings of several of the key kabbalist writing up until 1270. My examination will address in addition the broader impact of Twelve century Jewish philosophy on the emergence of kabbalah and its significance in the articulation of key ideas and practices. Yisraeli Oded, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: The Myths on the Origin of the Kabbalah in the Middle Ages – From Particular to Universal Stance Abstract: The Questions where the Kabbalah came from, how does it appear and under what circumstances, bothered the scholars of the Kabbalah , but no less the Kabbalists in the Middle Ages themselves . In this paper I would like to signify three types of traditions in the thirteenth century Kabbalah, each of which reflects a unique stance concerning this topic. The first stance attributes the emergence of the Kabbalah to mystical revelation of Elijah to the ancestors of the first Kabbalistic circles in Provence. The other sees the Kabbalistic truths as part of the Torah of Moses and therefore as a national heritage. A third tradition however attributes the Kabbalah to Adam, the first person and the ancestor of mankind at whole. In this paper I would like to point out the self-­‐consciousness behind each myth, the differences between them and the hidden discourse between these traditions regarding the notion of the Kabbalah as universal wisdom and its cultural context in general. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session 004: Kabbalah 16.00-­‐18.00 Panel: Emergence of Medieval Kabbalah in Intercultural Contexts Organizer: Sandra Valabregue Chair: Elke Morlok Uri Safrai, Ben-­‐Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: 'Metaphors we pray by' -­‐ Images of Prayer in Early Modern Kabbalah Abstract: The sixteenth century is known for the emergence of Kabalistic prayer intentions literature (Sifrut Ha'kavanot). Many books were written in order to explain the technique in which prayer activates God. Research regarding these writings faces a challenge since they are written in great detail, and are very difficult to understand. In this paper, I wish to offer a new method to approach this unique issue which explores the metaphors the kabbalists used in order to describe the way prayer works upon divine worlds. Focusing on these metaphors reveals the cultural, philosophical and scientific background from which they emerged and shows that despite the esoteric impression of the Kabbalist literature it corresponded to the evolving environment in which the Kabbalist lived. Mor Altshuler, Kibbutzim College, Israel Title: The Messianic Image of the Ottoman Emperor Sultan Suleiman in the Writings of R. Joseph Karo Abstract: Sixteenth century Ottoman emperor Sultan Suleiman I (1494-­‐1566) was known as "The Magnificent" in the West and “El Kanuni” (The Lawgiver) in the East. The most successful military commander of his time, Sultan Suleiman's army conquered the Balkans and threatened the Christian coalition led by Charles V, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Suleiman was also a patron of fine arts and grandiose architecture. His canonical law, The Kanuns, was perceived as a divine law and a testimony of God's support of his realm. As Cornell Fleischer pointed out, Sultan Suleiman's "legislative persona constituted an apocalyptic gesture intended to show that his age… was in fact the Millennium and to suggest that he himself was the messianic ruler who would fill the world with justice as it had been filled with injustice." (Cornell Fleischer, The Lawgiver as Messiah, p. 164). The proposed lecture will discuss the influence of Sultan Suleiman's messianic image on the views of R. Joseph Karo (1488-­‐1575). The author of Shulchan Aruch and the most prominent Hallachic legislator after Mainonides, Karo was educated in Sephardic Yeshivot that had been reestablished in the Ottoman Empire after the expulsion from Spain. His view of Sultan Suleiman reveals his generation's interpretation of their situation in the midst of an ongoing power struggle between the Muslim Ottomans and the European Christian realms. The lecture will begin with a presentation of Sultan Suleiman's influence on Joseph Karo's Hallachic perceptions. The Kanuns affect on Karo's motivation to compose an obligatory canonical law, which would function as the ultimate authorized codex will be examined. Similarly, the influence of Suleiman's "legislative persona" on Karo's self-­‐image as a divine legislator will be presented. The second part of the lecture will delve into Sultan Suleiman's messianic image in Joseph Karo's mystical diary, Maggid Mesharim. In particular, the image of Suleiman, "The King of Tugar", as the contemporary "Ishmael" – the embodiment of God's Rage that had been sent to eliminate the satanic power of Christian "Edom" – will be analyzed. The apocalyptic drama continues with the image of the Ottoman triumphant army as the army of the Ten Tribes, whose temporary occupation of Jerusalem was a stage in the divine messianic plan that would dialectically enable the appearance of the Messiah Son of David. The lecture will conclude with a reflection on Joseph Karo and his contemporary Sephardic intellectuals' re-­‐evaluation of the antagonism between Christians and Muslims. Their interpretation of the profound hostility as an apocalyptic struggle between mythical entities "Ishmael" and "Edom," which would clear the way for the true redeemer to appear will be clarified. James Diamond, University of Waterloo, Canada Title: Kabbalistic Reinventions of Maimonides' Apples of Gold Esotericism Abstract: Many subsequent Jewish thinkers were compelled, due to the power of Maimonides’ reputation to forge their own direction through some type of engagement with him. This includes most prominently those drawn to the kabbalistic tradition who were particularly threatened by Maimonides' philosophical esotericism. Never again could they cite the biblical apothegm, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in silver filigree” (Prov. 25:11), without Maimonides’ hermeneutical use of it as a metaphor for the multilayered messaging of biblical writing hovering somewhere in the background. Its connotations of the external silver, the internal gold, the size of the filigree’s apertures that allow the internal meaning to peek through the external filter, and the intellectual distance between the reader and the text, all continue to inhere in kabbalistic, or really any, post-­‐Maimonidean referencing of it. As such it could be examined in its role as a new intertext for later thinkers. What particularly irked kabbalists was that Maimonides’ hermeneutical “apples of gold” strategy of reading the bible and the rabbis raised the specter of their redundancy once their philosophical kernel was retrieved. Thus, what empowered the text and the reader with the interpretive latitude to survive the challenges posed by historical evolution, and philosophical and scientific progress, also endangered its authority and integrity. At the heart of the kabbalistic appropriations and engagements with Maimonides is this danger, which can be viewed as an interpretive irritant inspiring the recasting and reconfiguring of new apples of gold. This paper will trace these engagements with the very “apples of gold” metaphor itself beginning with the Zohar and on to modern Jewish thinkers such as R. Abraham Isaac Kook. Maimonides is either adopted, opposed, reread, or subverted, but never ignored. Tuesday 22nd July ENS, Salle CAVAILLÈS (Main building, 1st flour, map: 5) Session: 001: Qumran 9.00-­‐10.30 Chair: Daniel Stoekl Ben Ezra Steven Fraade, Yale University, USA Title: “If a Case is Too Baffling for You to Decide...” (Deuteronomy 17: 8-­‐13): Between Constraining and Expanding Judicial Autonomy Abstract: An analysis of the law of the high court of Deuteronomy 17:8-­‐13, as inner-­‐scriptural interpretation and as interpreted by the Temple Scroll from Qumran and the early rabbinic commentary Sifre to Deuteronomy. The TS and Sifre are strikingly different in their understandings of the high court, especially with respect to the truthfulness of its decisions. Previous scholars have viewed this difference in terms of a polemic between the Temple Scroll and the Pharisees, as the latter are understood to be represented by the Sifre and other rabbinic texts. The present paper presents a more hermeneutical explanation for the differences and seeks to uncover the implications for conflicting views of judicial authority. Antony Perrot, EPHE, Paris, France Title: « La mise en page des titres des Psaumes dans les manuscrits de la Mer Morte » Abstract: Le but de cette contribution serait de donner une vue d’ensemble de la mise en page des titres des Psaumes dans les manuscrits de la Mer Morte et d’en comprendre le sens. Nous chercherons tout d’abord à repérer des différences de mise en page au sein des manuscrits contenant des titres de Psaumes : 2QPs, 4QPs, 11Q5, 5/6Ḥev. En effet, on constate plusieurs schémas dans la mise en page des titres, définis par trois paramètres : la position du titre lui-­‐même (gauche, droite ou centré), sa démarcation du reste du contenu des Psaumes (simple retour à la ligne, vacat en début de ligne, etc.) et sa typographie (l’usage d’encre de couleur différente). Nous tenterons de comprendre ces divergences dans l’histoire de la tradition manuscrite des différents témoins de la Mer Morte et les mettrons en perspective avec les méthodes anciennes de mise en page utilisées dans le monde gréco-­‐égyptien (y compris les mss anciens chrétiens). Nous effectuerons un survol rapide des différents procédés attestés au sein des manuscrits hébraïques médiévaux (manuscrits de la Genizah du Caire, le codex d’Alep, etc.). Finalement, nous confrontons nos résultats avec l’histoire de la recherche et, plus précisément, avec les thèses d’Emmanuel TOV sur le sujet. Roman Schuetz, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Germany Title: Analytical study of the Temple Scroll Abstract: Some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, mostly written on treated animal skins, reached us in relatively good conditions, others were -­‐ or meanwhile are -­‐ badly damaged. No doubt, the most important source of the message that was transferred to us by the scrolls over centuries is the textual content. However, another very important source of knowledge is still hidden in the physical material itself that will probably be more accessible and implementable for the generations after us. It belongs to our responsibilities today to prepare the way in “reading the information from the material” and on the other hand to preserve the treasure that was entrusted to us for the generations coming after us. The majority of the scrolls has a darkish brown hue and is written on the hair side of the skins. Not so the Temple scroll (11Q19) called so by Yigael Yadin since its text is dedicated to the Temple. The longest of all the scrolls it has white to yellowish hew; it is written on the flesh side of the very thin parchment. Moreover, the writing surface was specially prepared. In this work we addressed two issues concerning the Temple Scroll: reconstruction of the preparation technique and assessment of the preservation state. For the reconstruction of the layered structure of the parchment we studied the elemental distributions using complementary techniques such as microXRF and EDX-­‐mapping accompanied by FT-­‐ and confocal Raman spectroscopy. Additionally, we developed a quantitative assessment for damage monitoring of collagen fibers on molecular scale by means of polarized Raman Spectroscopy. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session 002: Second Temple 11.00-­‐13.00 The Books of the Maccabees and the Seleucid-­‐Hasmonean Encounter Chair: Sylvie Honigman Jan Willem Van Henten, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands Title: Space, Body and Meaning in 2 Maccabees Abstract: Many scholars have studied the first two Maccabean books as a primary source for reconstructing the history of the Jews before and during the Antiochean persecution as well as the Maccabean revolt and its aftermath. Few scholars focus on how the history of the Jews during this period is told in these books. This contribution is an attempt to explore this second avenue by reading 2 Maccabees from a narratological perspective. I will discuss especially how the narrator of 2 Maccabees has used space as a narratorial tool to articulate his story. Because space foregrounds the body of the protagonists of the story, I will also discuss sections of the narrative that highlight bodies as a focal point of space within the story. Following the observation of Jonathan Smith that the relationship to the human body confers meaning to place, I also intend to analyze how the nexus of body and space contributes to meaning, i.e., the message of the story. Katell Berthelot, CNRS, Université d’Aix Marseille, France Title: Judas Maccabeus’ Wars against Judaea’s Neighbours in 1 Maccabees 5: A Reassessment of the Evidence Abstract: The 5th chapter of the First Book of Maccabees recounts a whole range of wars waged by Judas Maccabeus against Judaea’s neighbours, who are depicted as threatening the lives of the Jews living in their midst. The account of these punitive expeditions contains the only explicit reference found in the book to an anathema (herem) against a foreign people, a reference which has led some scholars to see Judas as re-­‐
enacting the biblical prescription of the herem against the Canaanites. In contrast with this interpretation, I shall argue that the description in 1 Maccabees 5 is highly literary and rhetorical, that it is part of a strategy which aims at presenting Judas as the heir of the first kings of Israel, especially Saul, and that the historicity of these wars should therefore be re-­‐assessed. Kenneth Atkinson, University of Northern Iowa, USA Title: The Hasmonean State and the Seleucid Empire: Jewish and Non-­‐Jewish Cultures in Contact During the Second-­‐First Centuries B.C.E. Abstract: The Hasmonean family was a dynasty of Jewish kings whose ancestors, the famed Maccabees, fought to liberate Judea from Seleucid rule and create an independent state. What is not widely recognized is the extent to which the Seleucid monarchs of present-­‐day Syria and Lebanon shaped Jewish religion, culture, and politics following the creation of the Hasmonean state. This presentation explores the encounters between the Jewish and non-­‐Jewish cultures of the Hasmonean state and the Seleucid Empire, and how the Seleucids affected Judaism as reflected in the Qumran texts. It suggests that the Qumran writings show that contacts between the Hasmoneans and the Seleucids contributed to the rise of Jewish sectarianism, a period of messianic expectations during the reigns of John Hyrcanus and Alexander Jannaeus, and resulted in the creation of apocalyptic literature. The first section of this presentation examines relevant historical evidence to suggest that the Hasmoneans never achieved full political and cultural independence from the Seleucid Empire. The second portion explores how encounters between the Hasmoneans and the Seleucids contributed to the rise of Jewish sectarianism, messianism, and apocalyptic beliefs. It examines the pesharim and 4QApocryphon of Jeremiah Ce (4Q390), which either refer or allude to contacts between the Hasmoneans and the Seleucids, and which contain unique theological interpretations of these encounters. It suggests that the Qumran texts show that contacts between the Seleucids and the Hasmoneans contributed to Jewish sectarianism, and encouraged the development of messianic and apocalyptic literature that sought to determine the final days of Hasmonean and Seleucid rule. This presentation proposes that the historical and theological development of Second Temple Judaism cannot be understood without studying the unique encounters between the Jewish and non-­‐Jewish cultures of the Hasmonean state and the Seleucid Empire, and that the Qumran writings remain a primary witness to these encounters. Linda Zollschan Title: First Impressions of Roman Politics from I Macc. 8.15-­‐16 Abstract: The “Eulogy to the Romans” is generally considered to be riddled with errors and verses 15-­‐16 have not escaped this criticism. In this passage four errors appear so grave and so contrary to what we know about Roman politics in the mid second century BCE. We are told that the senate met each day, that it consisted of 320 members, that the Romans had one man who ruled over them for a year whom they obeyed without envy or jealousy. All these errors strike a discordant note and at first glance seem patently wrong. This paper proposes to show how these errors are in fact an accurate reflection of unusual circumstances in Rome that can only refer to events in the year 162 BCE. The information in verses 15-­‐16 bears all the hallmarks of a report by a witness to the tumultuous politics of that year. The only error the writer made was in failing to understand that what he saw was not typical of the way Roman politics was usually conducted. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session 003: Second Temple 14.00-­‐15.30 Panel: The Causes of the Maccabean Revolt: New Perspectives from the Seleukid Imperial Centre, Babylonia and Egypt Organizer: Sylvie Honigman Chair: Katell Berthelot Sylvie Honigman, Tel Aviv University, Israel Title: The Causes of the Maccabean Revolt: New Perspective from Ptolemaic Egypt Abstract: The paper draws a comparison between administrative and fiscal reforms that were carried on by the Ptolemies, and which included changes in the priestly personnel of Egyptian temples, and the circumstances that led to the deposition of Onias III, the high priest of Jerusalem, under and at the initiative of Antiochos IV. Philippe Clancier, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-­‐Sorbonne, Paris Title: A new Seleukid Policy? How Babylon and Uruk became Poleis Abstract: It is well known that Babylon became a “polis” during the very first part of the second century BC. There are some clues that Uruk followed the same way. Before that, the two main cities of Babylonia were lead by their local notability working for the main Assyro-­‐Babylonian sanctuaries: the Esagil at Babylon and the Resh Temple at Uruk. When, how and why Babylon and Uruk were funded as poleis are important Historiographical questions which received many answers: from a violent royal act showing ethnic tensions between “Greeks” and “Non Greeks”; to a complete local will. In the panel organized by Sylvie Honigman, this paper will focus on the first part of the second century BC (at the exact time of the Maccabean revolt) in Babylonia. We will have a first look on the different theories concerning the “poliadisations” of Babylon and Uruk, and then we will propose a new chronology of the events and try to see what happened, afterwards, for the old Babylonian and Urukean notabilities. For that purpose, we will especially insist on the evolutions of the political, judicial and religious responsibilities of the sanctuaries and try to see the different local actors of those evolutions. Hannah Cotton & Avner Ecker, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: The Causes of the Maccabean Revolt: New Perspectives from the Seleukid Imperial Centre, Babylonia and Egypt Abstract: Aspects of Seleucid Administration in the Light of the So-­‐called Heliodoros Stele. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session 004: Hellenistic Judaism 16.00-­‐18.00 Chair: Jan Willem Van Henten René Bloch, University of Bern, Switzerland Title: Mythical Footprints in Jewish-­‐Hellenistic Literature Abstract: In the Greco-­‐Roman period, both Jews and pagans had their showcases where objects from mythical times could be observed and visited: in Hebron bones of the Biblical giants were shown (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 5.125), and the emperor Augustus placed the weapons of ancient heroes on display in his villa on the island of Capri (Suetonius, Augustus 72). On Crete locals showed visitors the cave where Zeus was born, and ashes from the destroyed city of Sodom provided Jews with vivid evidence of the biblical narrative. In this paper I will discuss a number of such “show and tell” passages in Jewish-­‐Hellenistic literature. A particularly telling example is the myth of Andromeda which lent itself to displays in Rome as well as in Palestine: The Romans recovered what they took to be the bones of the monster killed by Perseus and brought them home. Other visual traces of the myth, however, remained in situ in Joppe and were shown to the public there. Already in the Bible, there are a few hints of visual evidence for miraculous events, but we usually do not read about traces of key events being exhibited on location. Why do Jewish-­‐
Hellenistic authors show a conspicuous interest in the visual remnants of Israel’s mythical past? What might be at stake when remains of wondrous stories are showcased? And how does this concur with the often fierce denial of myth in Jewish-­‐Hellenistic literature? I would like to argue that mythical footprints constituted contact zones where the past and the present, the real and the imagined convened. Pieter B. Hartog, KU Leuven, Belgium Title: Commentaries as Cultural Contacts? The Pesharim and Hypomnemata on Homer Abstract: The relationship between the Pesharim from Qumran and commentary writing in the Greek world has only recently been subjected to scholarly investigation. Up to now, only a few scholars have examined the similarities and differences between in these two traditions of commentary writing and attempted to explain them. A definite answer to how these traditions are related, is still lacking. In an attempt to proceed in the discussion and shed further light on the extent and the nature of the cultural contacts between these two traditions, this paper compares the Qumran commentaries with Alexandrian hypomnemata on Homer. Three features of these corpora are taken into account in this comparison, namely: (1) their scribal ‘construction’ and transmission (that is, their materiality); (2) their form and structure; (3) their hermeneutics and exegesis. In this paper, the similarities and differences between these two corpora are discussed and categorized. The three-­‐fold investigation enables an exact pinpointing of both the areas in which these corpora are similar to and those in which they are different from one another. This comparison, in turn, leads to a discussion of the connections and cultural contacts between these two corpora and their composers. Ashley Bacchi, Graduate Theological Union, USA Title: Jewish Appropriation of Pagan Authority: The Case of the Sibylline Oracles Abstract: The pseudepigrapha consist of texts that were attributed to famous figures from the distant past, but were written by anonymous Jewish and later Christian authors dating from the second century BCE to the second century CE. This paper demonstrates the unique nature of the Sibylline Oracles within Jewish pseudepigrapha as not only deriving authority from a pagan corpus, but also choosing a female voice as a conduit for prophecy. The Sibylline Oracles are a masterful appropriation of Greek style in service to a monotheistic expression of the writer’s political views on contemporary power structures. Sibylline literature was written in epic Greek hexameter verse and the use of this genre reveals a writer with a mastery of Greek language, style, and cultural allusions that is not a superficial masking of biblical motifs. The resulting work is a strong message with an authoritative voice rooted in both Hellenistic and Jewish traditions. By establishing how the Jewish authors utilized the Greek oracular form, it is possible to question the elusive nature of identity constructions and what primary sources reveal about boundary formations and the complex spectrum between cultural acceptance and rejection. Tuesday 22nd July ENS, Salle DUSSANE (Main building, ground flour, map: 9) Session: 001: Talmudic and Rabbinic Literature 9.00-­‐10.30 Chair: Stefan Goltzberg, University of Cambridge, UK Title: Literal Meaning in Talmud Literature Abstract: The literal meaning is a central notion in any legal system. This is why many scholars, from the Middle Ages up to now, perceived a need to develop a distinctive theory of literal meaning. My purpose is to examine that notion in Jewish law (from the Mishna to late Medieval materials), as well as in the various legal systems that had an influence on it, namely Roman law and Muslim law. Although the notion of peshat has been examined by at least two important authors (Weiss Halivni and Cohen), its history is yet to be comprehensively addressed. In this paper, I plan to suggest that the various theories of literal meaning, dependent upon the differents meaning of the concept of peshat sit easily with modern theories of literal meaning (Searle, Recanati, Bach). Robert Gleave has analyzed the status of literal meaning in Islamic legal thought in the light of these modern theories. I would like to analyze the status of literal meaning in the light of both Muslim hermeneutics of literal meaning as well as through more modern concepts in linguistic pragmatics. Farina Marx, Institute for Jewish Studies, Germany Title: The “Compilation” of Yalkut Shimoni on the Minor Prophets Abstract: The “Yalkut Shimoni“compiles important annotations from rabbinic literature to each book of the Hebrew Bible. The voluminous commentary cites more than 50 traditional rabbinic texts including sources which have been lost. Most academic research on the Yalkut Shimoni has focused on reconstructing these lost sources such as “Midrash Jelamdenu”, other research issues about Yalkut Shimoni have been neglected. In my paper I will focus on the Yalkut Shimoni on the Minor Prophets. The author of the Yalkut Shimoni was not able to rely on consecutively commentaries on the Minor Prophets such as for example the commentaries on the book of Numbers. In my paper I will therefore focus on the question of compilation techniques. Consequently, the author had to use pieces of commentaries on the Torah or other biblical books where Minor Prophets are cited and then he compiles them to a new commentary. Furthermore, he puts these fragments together without naming the sources or introducing them to the text. The question is: Which sources does the author use? Is it a mainly Palestinian or Babylonian embossed commentary? Which key notes does the author employ for his new commentaries? Which association techniques does the author use and why does he sometimes just list rabbinic techniques of exegesis? In my paper I will analyze the techniques the author uses to compile these sources. By the help of selected examples I will point out how the author writes his own commentary which can be read independently from the commentary of the used source. Consequently, the Yalkut text cannot be seen as a „just / mere“compiled text. Part of the discussion is if and how sources were changed to fit the exegesis. I will put the question up for discussion how the composed text functions in general and as how it functions as independent commentary. Dagmar Boerner-­‐Klein, Jewish Studies, Heinrich Heine University, Germany Title: Israel are those who observe Tora: Yalkut Shim´oni Numbers on Proselytes Abstract: Yalkut Shim´oni is a commentary on every book of the Hebrew bible based on quotes of the Talmudim and Midrashim. The anonymous redactor is on the one hand interested in solving grammatical inconsistencies of the Hebrew bible. On the other hand, he focuses on theological problems which he embeds into his commentary like a musician who composes a melody (solving textual problems) with a counterpoint (solving theological problems). In Yalkut Shim´oni’s commentary on the book of Numbers, the anonymous compiler included several annotations on how to deal with proselytes. On the one hand, he quotes from Sifre on Numbers that God loves Israel -­‐ “and whenever he renames Israel he calls them priests”. On the other hand, he points to the fact that after the destruction of the temple, priests do not longer perform their services. These services are replaced by the study of the Tora. Hence, everybody who studies Tora can be considered to be a priest, even a person who is not a member of Israel. In my paper I will present the commentaries of Yalkut Shim´oni Numbers on proselytes in order to show how the Yalkut Shim´oni deals with the reassessment of persons who study Tora and do not belong to the group of “native Israel”. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session 002: Talmudic and Rabbinic Literature 11.00-­‐13.00 Chair: Mireille Hadas Lebel, Université Paris 4, France Title: Mashiah Ben Joseph. A Reconsideration Abstract : L'apparition dans la tradition juive d'un Messie fils de Joseph dont la venue doit précéder celle du Messie fils de David a donné lieu à diverses hypothèses. La plus fréquemment retenue rattache ce personnage à la figure de Bar Kokhba car il est censé mourir au combat au cours de la guerre eschatologique qui sera suivie de l'ère messianique. Un examen de la première mention du Messie fils de Joseph dans le Talmud (Sukka 52 a) et des citations bibliques qui lui sont associées (sans rapport avec un quelconque combat) nous font totalement remettre en question les explications proposées jusqu'ici. Avigail Ohali, Université Paris 3, France Title: Les rabbins et les autres : à propos de l’humour dans les anecdotes tannaïtiques Abstract: Depuis les années 1970, différentes sociétés savantes se sont consacrées à l’étude de l’humour. Les recherches pluridisciplinaires qui relèvent de ce vaste domaine ont tendance à englober dans la notion d’humour toutes les nuances des expressions qui relèvent du non-­‐sérieux. J’adopte cette définition très large du terme humour. Les théories anciennes et plus récentes (voir Arie Sover, Humor, the Pathway to human laughter, 2009) qui expliquent les origines, les mécanismes et les fonctions du phénomène du rire et de l’humour s'accordent sur un point essentiel : l’humour est révélateur de vérité. En ce qui concerne les écrits rabbiniques anciens, ce domaine reste encore aujourd’hui peu exploré. Les écrits rabbiniques sont des ouvrages sérieux. L’objectif des rabbins n’est pas de faire rire, cette idée semble faire l’unanimité. Cependant, plusieurs savants ont déjà repéré et étudié les expressions de l’humour dans la littérature rabbinique classique (à commencer par A. Kohut en 1886). Les rabbins avaient bel et bien le sens de l’humour, comme le montrent D. Lifshitz (articles divers, 2000-­‐2002) et B. Engelman («Humor in the Babylonian Talmud », 1998), en soulignant leurs moqueries, jeux de mots et autres mots d’esprit. En tant que rédacteurs, l’humour était pour eux un outil littéraire comme le montre Rella Kushelevsky (« Humor and it’s functions in the stories of R. Yehushua ben Levi», 1998) ou encore un vecteur idéologique dans leurs diverses polémiques externes et internes et un moyen d’interrogation épistémologique comme le montrent les études de D. Boyarin (Socrates and the Fat Rabbis, 2009), H. Zellentin (Rabbinic Parodies …, 2011) et A. Kovelman (« Farce in the Talmud », 2002). Ces études, pour certaines très intéressantes du point de vue de la méthode, restent peu nombreuses et n’ont aucun caractère exhaustif. Le champ couvert par le sujet est actuellement en plein renouvellement, mais aucun des auteurs ne met vraiment au centre de ses préoccupations l’humour rabbinique en tant que tel, dans son unité mais aussi dans la pluralité de ses manifestations. Aussi, les corpus tannaïtiques n’ont jamais été explorés dans ce sens, et à tort. Dans cette communication J’examinerai une sélection de récits tirés des recueils tannaïtiques, à la lumière des théories élaborées notamment par R. Kushelevsky, H. Zellentin et D. Boyarin. Je montrerai d’abord que malgré l’austérité apparente des textes tannaïtiques, l’humour n’y est pas moins présent, et que si l’humour était pour les amora'im de Palestine et de Babylonie, à la fois un moyen de s’affirmer et de douter de soi, c’était également le cas pour les tanna'im. Shai Wozner, Tel-­‐Aviv University, Faculty of Law, Israel Title: Theology and Law: on Providence and Talmudic Law Abstract: The aim of modern criminal law is to prevent harmful consequences that may result from forbidden activities. Almost all felonies are perpetrated against a victim and the primary aim of the legislator is to protect the victim. However, rabbinic literature assumes that Divine Providence controls all events occurring to a person even if the occurrence depended on the choice of another person. This assumption limits the freedom of choice in the behavior of one person to another. A could not possible kill or rob B if B was not destined to be killed or lose his property in any case. Hence, A has the choice to kill or rob B only if the harm to B was predestined. This concept appears in various sources in Talmudic and medieval literature. I would like to mention here only the well-­‐known exegesis on the law of building a parapet: The School of R. Ishmael taught: "If any man (lit. faller) fall from thence" – this man was predestined to fall since the six days of Creation, for he has not yet fallen, and Scripture calls him a faller. However, reward is brought through a person of merit, and punishment through a person of-­‐ guilt. (BT Sabbath 32a) So, the obligation to fence in one's roof was not intended to protect the would be faller, who would fall one way or another in any case, but to protect the morality of the roof's owner, and to redeem him from the responsibility of causing harm. So the focus moves from outcome-­‐orientated morality to deontological morality, stressing individual's responsibility for his choices, even though they had no real influence on the outcome. I would like to examine how this move affects the aims of the law and the concept of legal responsibility of felons in the criminal and civil spheres. The aim of the law is no longer to protect 'victims', since it is assumed that the Divinity, who takes care of the whole world, protects these interests. Hence, the focal point of the law is to offer guidance for moral conduct. The emphasis is on the action rather than the outcome. The deterrence of punishment is not for the protection of victims but for the benefit of felons – to prevent them from immoral conduct. Similarly, the law of the pursuer (i.e., if one was about to kill another person, he may be forcible prevented by anyone) was intended to save the pursuer from sinning and not to protect the pursued (Rashi. Sanhedrin. 73a) so, the role of law is limited to enforce personal morality. Yoel Kretzmer-­‐Raziel, Ben-­‐Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: The Imperialism of Purity Laws in Amoraic Legal Discourse Abstract: The centrality of purity laws in Tannaitic literature is self-­‐evident. The Tannaitic discussions of purity laws exceed discussions of other fields of law both in the quantity and the level of conceptual development. It is widely accepted that the Amoraic period saw a reduction in the attention given to purity law, leading to the absence of the Order of Purities from both the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds. Although numerous Amoraic discussions are devoted to the purity laws, Talmudic scholarship has shown that for the most part these discussions are the fruit of the early Amoraic period. This paper wishes to demonstrate that concurrently with the decline of purity laws another phenomenon arose in the Amoraic discourse, namely the influence of purity laws on other fields of rabbinic law. The textual legacy of the Tannaitic purity laws, it shall be argued, played a pivotal role in the development of other fields of Amoraic law. The intertextual character of Amoraic hermeneutics and legal reasoning allowed for the utilization of the highly developed and detailed purity laws in the expansion of other, less developed, fields of law. The influence of purity laws shall be demonstrated three-­‐fold, through the laws of muqṣe – the rulings pertaining to the usage and handling of various objects on the Sabbath. Firstly, I shall show that quite often the subject matter tested in these discussions are borrowed from the Tannaitic corpus of purity laws. For example, the Amoraic rulings regarding handling of a pile of beams (s’var shel korot – PT Sab. 4:2; BT Sab. 125a) can be textually traced to the discussion regarding the same object in M Oh. 3:7. Secondly, I shall describe various Amoraic legal concepts in the field of the Sabbath laws as stemming from linguistically similar concepts in the Tanaitic realm of purity laws. Thus, the roots of the antonymic concepts (1) “Base for a forbidden object” (basis le’davar ha’asur) and (2) “Forget” (shoche’aḥ) can be traced to similar distinctions in the Tannaitic system of purity. Thirdly, I shall claim that novel legal principles in Amoraic Sabbatical laws were based on similar principles in the Tanaitic purity laws. A striking example is the appearance of “thought” (maḥashava) – active human conscience – as a determining factor in the laws of muqṣe in both Talmuds. Textual and linguistic evidence can be provided to link this innovation to similar principles in Tanaitic laws of purity. In conclusion, the paper shall suggest hermeneutic and cultural explanations for the above mentioned process. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session 003: Comparative Halakha 14.00-­‐15.30 Chair: Arkady Kovelman Marton Ribary, The University of Manchester, UK Title: Imposing Order on the World in Rabbinic and Roman Legal Thought Abstract: Imposing order on the world: A study of classifying “damages” (neziqin) and “obligations” (obligationes) in Rabbinic and Roman legal thought. Based on a parallel reading of passages relating to the taxonomy of legal obligations, my paper offers an insight into the development of abstract thinking in Roman and Rabbinic law in Late Antiquity. The paper’s case-­‐study analyses the classification of “damages” (neziqin) in the opening passage of tractate Bava Qama in the Talmud Yerushalmi (ca. 425 CE) which is juxtaposed by the exposition of “obligations” (obligationes) in Book 3 of Justinian’s Institutes (533 CE). This case-­‐study investigates whether taxonomic thinking was present in these legal cultures of antiquity and if so, to what extent it contributed to the systematic exposition of law. With reference to the relevant passages in the Mishnah-­‐Tosefta (early 3rd century CE), the Institutes of Gaius (ca. 165 CE) and the juristic commentaries collected in Justinian’s Digest (533 CE), the paper investigates how preceding materials have been adapted to the logical, rhetorical and legal patterns peculiar to the Yerushalmi and Justinian’s Institutes. Reconstructing the literary-­‐legal evolution of the classification of neziqin and obligationes will allow a preliminary comparison concerning developmental models of Roman and Rabbinic legal abstraction. The paper seeks to highlight common features as well as significant differences of conceptualisation in Rabbinic and Roman law, and explores whether these can be explained solely by differences in the social, institutional and political settings (relativist approach) or whether they reveal some inherent characteristics of the Roman and Rabbinic mind (essentialist approach). Barak Cohen, Bar-­‐Ilan University, Israel Title: R. Nahman and Sasanian Law: Some Further Observations Abstract: Rav Nahman b. Yaakov is a late third and early fourth century Amora and one of the most dominant halakhic figures among Babylonian amoraim. R. Nahman is closely associated with Mahoza, the Jewish and Christian suburb near the Persian capitol of Ctesiphon. In a series of papers, Yaakov Elman has shown R. Naman's high degree of acculturation in Persian culture. Elman characterized R. Nahman as the most "Persianized" of Babylonian Rabbis, and demonstrated how external factors such as the Manichaean polemics in Mahoza in the fourth century, and the religious atmosphere of the surrounding culture permeated the statements of R. Nahman and his pupil – Rava. My aim in this lecture is to continue this line of inquiry from a different standpoint. I will argue the following: (a) A systematic analysis of Rav Nahman's halakhic rulings and legal interpretation leads to the conclusion that this is part of a broader phenomenon which characterizes his personality and legal methodology in the Talmudim. R. Nahman tends to rule against the tannaitic halakha found in the Mishna and Baraita, on the basis of Sasanian Law. This legal methodology proves to be unique in comparison with and late Nehardean sages in the Sasanian period. (b) Occasionally scholars have been so stunned by Rav Nahman’s forced interpretation and Legal rulings that they have discounted these interpretations as actually being those of Rav Nahman and have ascribed them to the literary interpolations of later editors, conventionally called “stammaim” — the anonymous voice in the Talmud. In my opinion, the large number of such interpretations which are ascribed to Rav Nahman in comparison to the sages of his generation -­‐ do indicate something about his unique methodology. I will demonstrate how R. Nahman's statements based on Sasanian law transforms tannaitic halakha in Sasanian Babylonia. Our study into amoraic interpretation, halakhah and discourse reveals that the tendency of an amora to offer a strained interpretation to a tannaitic text, or a tendency to rule in opposition to tannaitic tradition, is an individual matter, and does not characterize all Babylonian amoraim or the entire Babylonian Talmud. Monika Amsler, University of Zurich, Switzerland Title: "What Can I Do to You?" Rabbis and Non-­‐Rabbis Competing with Knowledge. Abstract: It is within fictitious encounters between rabbis and non-­‐rabbis that we learn about the competitive situation between proponents of rabbinic vs. such of non-­‐rabbinic traditional knowledge. It seems that the rabbis were as much impressed by and attracted to the age-­‐old wisdom of others as they may have been threatened by it. Focusing on the Bavli, the paper will examine some of these cross-­‐cultural encounters and ask for possible ways of classifying the knowledge at stake. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session 004: Late Midrash 16.00-­‐18.00 Chair: Yehudah Cohn Gilad Shapira, Haifa University, Israel Title: Midrash in Yemen: between Aesthetic and Struggle Abstract: We can look Midrash Hagadol and Meor Haafela as a paradigm of Contrasts concerning the context of living under a Muslim authority. Although these two Midrashim Organized according to the Torah portions, we can identify basic differences between theirs prefaces in some Aspects: structure, texture, styles and themes. The Comparison between them may characterize the double rule of poetic in Midrash literature looking inside and outside. Yehudah Cohn, EPHE Paris, France, and Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York, USA Title: Divine Inspiration as a Source for Rashi's Cosmogony Abstract: In his books The Anxiety of Influence and A Map of Misreading, the literary critic Harold Bloom introduced the idea of creative misreading, which is perhaps most simply summed up in his statement that “great writing is always at work. misreading previous writing”. He described a swerve by writers away from the work of their precursors as “a corrective movement which implies that the precursor went accurately up to a certain point, but then should have swerved, precisely in the direction that the new poem moves”. According to this conception – which has proven to be useful far beyond Bloom’s original context of poetry criticism – a successful misreading of great predecessors allows the voice of later writers to be heard, and to surpass what came before. My research proposal entails using this lens to investigate Rashi’s commentary on the Pentateuch, as it relates to his late-­‐Antique sources. As such it reassesses literary entanglements and processes of canonization between Europe and the Middle East. Rashi of Troyes (Rabbi Salomon Yitshaqi, 1040-­‐1105) is the towering figure of medieval French Jewry, and is best known for two works – his commentaries to the Pentateuch and the Babylonian Talmud – both of which assumed unique importance for Jews in Europe and beyond. Christian exegetes, from the school of St. Victor in Paris (founded by Pierre Abélard’s teacher Guillaume de Champeaux) were already using his interpretation of the Pentateuch in the twelfth century, and the great Nicolas de Lyre drew on it extensively in the thirteenth century. Rashi’s was the first Hebrew Bible commentary to be written in the Ashkenazi (Franco-­‐German) Jewish center, and his comments on the Pentateuch were largely based on several discrete Midrashic texts that originated in Roman Palestine, as well as on Midrashic elements found in the Babylonian Talmud. (Loosely speaking, Midrash is a process that elaborates on the Hebrew Bible, and refashions it into the canonical source for rabbinic legend and law). Taken together with the Palestinian Talmud – to which Rashi had only incomplete access – these late-­‐Antique works constituted classical rabbinic literature, which represents a significant element of the literary record of the Roman and Sassanian empires. Rashi’s work has played an unparalleled role in the reception history of this literature, and during the course of my research I will try to demonstrate the pervasive extent of Rashi’s creative misreadings, and provide a typology for them. In light of the considerable interest in appropriation / détournement in contemporary culture, such an analysis of one of its great past masters seems particularly timely. I would like to bring to the fore the frequent unspoken disagreements with his precursors that are embedded in Rashi’s commentary, as well as other ways in which he may be creatively improving if not subverting the above sources, while seemingly incorporating their content, if not their precise language. To a far greater extent than has been realized, it seems to me that Rashi’s commentary consists of such quiet engagement with these sources, rather than merely the selective transmittal of their substance in a succinct and stylized form (merged, as is universally acknowledged, with a measure of explicit disagreement). Given that some three-­‐
quarters of the commentary consists of material that has been viewed in this latter light, both by traditional and modern scholars, the proposed approach is designed to provide a new perspective for Rashi studies. Shana Strauch Schick, University of Haifa, Israel Title: Images of Pregnancy in Rabbinic Literature: The Innovation of Midrash Reishit ha-­‐Parshiyot, a Geniza Fragment Abstract: This paper examines how pregnancy and childbirth have been represented in rabbinic literature, and how these depictions reflect the wider cultural and intellectual contexts in which these texts developed. While pregnancy and childbirth have been subject to lengthy discussions in terms of the halakhic ramifications for the laws of purity as well as for the theological and philosophical issues which they generate, the rabbis of late antique literature generally subscribed to the prevailing Greco-­‐Roman scientific understandings of pregnancy and childbirth and in turn described them in both objective and scientific terms. Not surprisingly, there is no attempt to depict the subjective experience of what a laboring woman might feel. An exception to this picture can be found in a Medieval midrashic compilation discovered at the Cairo Geniza termed “Midrash Reishit HaParshiyot (MRhP) in the section on parshat Toldot. MRhP on parshat Toldot is of particular importance because of its state of preservation as well as the thematic and literary unity which it displays. More significantly, almost all of the midrashim presented therein are consistently female-­‐centric-­‐ a true novelty in rabbinic literature. While most of these traditions may be found in other collections, only in MRhP have they been collated together in one passage, with the redactor of MRhP amending some of the sources so that they all convey this consistent message. Among these traditions is a midrash of unknown origin, which uses vivid imagery to describe the contractions felt by Rebecca in the biblical account of her unborn babies fighting inside her. What is truly fascinating about this passage is that not only does it feign to describe the sensations that women experience and feel, but it is accurate as well. We will explore what may account for this shift, considering whether it may be located within the time and culture that this late midrash developed. MRhP thus offers a refreshing depiction of labor as actually experienced by women, and underscores the suppressed voices of women in rabbinic literature writ large in describing the distinctly female experiences of pregnancy and labor. Lennart Lehmhaus, Free University of Berlin, Germany Title: Late Midrashic Texts as Terra Incognita? – A Second Look on Literary Strategies and Developments in Jewish Traditions in in the Geonic Period Abstract: In early scholarship the late midrashic traditions were often presented as governed solely by their anthological interest in as well as eclectic and narrative usage of older rabbinic traditions of all sort. While these observations hold true for parts of those midrashic texts, one also has to consider other complex strategies of literary transmission, adaptation, and innovation in order to grasp their transformative function as link between late antique and early medieval times. I would like to study such developments in late Midrash with a special focus on the texts of Pirqe de rabbi Eliezer (PRE), Seder Eliyahu Rabba (SER) and Zuta (SEZ). Those multifarious works, most probably to be dated in early geonic times, are mainly concerned with questions of ethical lifestyle and righteous conduct. Seder Eliyahu Zuta (SEZ), as well as its fellow-­‐text called Seder Eliyahu Rabba (SER) combines with literary skilfulness different genres, literary structures and strategies which could have make the texts function for different audiences. The text integrates ethical and religious concepts with a complex discourses on Jewish or rabbinic identity and culture, against the backdrop of an emerging rabbinic Judaism within a context of Karaite, Roman-­‐
Byzantine, Christian, Persian and Islamic influences. The paper will address complex interactions with and modification of biblical and rabbinic traditions, hermeneutics and rhetoric in later midrashic texts in order to convey particular messages or pursue specific goals. Which intertextual references to religious narratives and figures are actualized? How were literary structures (genres) as well as hermeneutic and exegetical methods adopted and adapted to the thematic frame of the text? The answer to these questions will help to deepen our understanding of the similarities and differences vis à vis other rabbinic discourses (e.g. Mishnah, Talmud, Midrash) and to allocate these traditions within the framework of ancient Jewish literature. Tuesday 22nd July ENS, Salle des RÉSISTANTS (Main building, 1st flour, map: 3) Session: 001: Early Modern History 9.00-­‐10.30 Panel: Travel and Cultural Interchange in Pre-­‐Modern Jewry Organizer: David Malkiel Chair: Shlomo Berger David Malkiel, Bar-­‐Ilan University, Israel Title: The Rabbi and the Crocodile: Nature, Empiricism and the Hermeneutics of Observation in the Age of Discoveries. Abstract: Rabbi Ovadia of Bertinoro's journey to the Holy Land brought him to Egypt, where as he sailed down the Nile, he observed a crocodile. Reflecting upon this experience, the rabbi referred to the crocodile's relationship with the "trochilus," the bird which according to an age-­‐old tradition eats detritus from the crocodile's mouth. Ovadia also cited the rabbinic tradition that identifies the crocodile as the "zepharde'a" of the Second Plague. This paper will trace the history of these two traditions from Antiquity to the 15th century. The discussion will present Ovadia's encounter with the crocodile as a classic example of the confluence of rabbinic tradition with the Italian Renaissance and the Age of Discoveries. Ilaria Sabbatini, Ex-­‐SUM, Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane, Italy Title: In terram quam mostrabo. L’itinérance de dévotion dans les religions d’Abraham. Abstract: Le voyage est le mouvement d’un point à un autre de tout sujet. En tant que tel, ce mouvement comporte l’implication des dimensions de l’espace et du temps. Le voyage est la métaphore par excellence de l’existence qui se manifeste sous une durée et sous un parcours. Le vivant vit en mouvement et pour le mouvement de sorte que rien plus que le voyage dans toutes ses formes peut exprimer la condition de l’être humain. La question du pèlerinage est fortement ancrée dans la tradition biblique bien avant que dans les rituels coutumiers respectifs pour les religions du Livre. Il est possible de repérer les modèles du pèlerinage dans les personnages d’Abraham et de Caïn. Le premier, le père de la foi, en quittant Ur de Chaldée pour gagner la terre qui lui est indiquée, s’élève au rang d’exemple du parfait croyant. Le dernier, renié et sans paix, est éloigné de l’Eden et destiné à une vaine errance qui n’est que perte de soi-­‐même. Les deux personnages sont deux prototypes de voyage irréconciliables qui représentent deux parcours, l’un étant l’opposé de l’autre. Abraham part d’un lieu sur Terre et se dirige vers une destination qui préfigure la promesse eschatologique. Caïn quitte l’Eden pour s’égarer au milieu de la Terre des hommes. D’une part, Abraham quitte sa terre d’origine avec une bénédiction. D’autre part, Caïn est exilé avec une malédiction (Gen XII, 1 ; IV, 12). Cette tension se manifeste non seulement dans les histoires des protagonistes bibliques mais aussi dans les différentes attitudes à l’égard de la pratique du pèlerinage. Dès le VIIIe siècle av. J.-­‐C., les prophètes Amos et Osée réprimandent durement cette pratique qu’ils estiment comme inutile (Am 5, 4-­‐
5 ; Os 12, 12). Les premières destinations sont corrélées avec les figures des patriarches et des chefs des Israélites: mémoires d’Abraham, de Jacob et de Josué. Le pèlerinage juif qui est à l’origine du pèlerinage chrétien, sera réglementé par la suite et codifié entre le Ve et le VIe siècle av. J.-­‐C. Cette codification est à repérer dans l’Exode et dans le Deutéronome (Ex 23, 14-­‐17 ; 34, 23-­‐24 et Dt 16, 16). Pour finir, la réforme de Josias a tenté de supprimer tous les sanctuaires locaux et de diriger les pèlerinages vers le seul lieu de culte : Jérusalem (1Rois 23, 23 ; Dt 12). À travers les siècles, cette centralisation a fait ainsi que Jérusalem devienne la ville trois fois sainte. Le judaïsme, le christianisme et l’islam, tous vénèrent Jérusalem car ils reconnaissent leur racine commune dans la souche d’Abraham, le plus grand voyageur, pèlerin et déraciné de la tradition biblique. Quel est donc le lien que ces religions entretiennent entre elles en ce qui concerne la pratique du voyage de dévotion ? Quelles sont les différences et quelles les similitudes ? De façon différente par rapport au judaïsme et à l’islam, le christianisme ne reconnaît pas au pèlerinage une valeur fondamentale dans la vie spirituelle des fidèles. Le pèlerinage acquiert un caractère sacré contraignant dans l’Islam qui n’est pas propre au christianisme, alors qu’elle prend un sens totalement différent dans le judaïsme. Pour le premier, le hajj islamique adopte et modernise les pratiques existantes d’un peuple nomade pour les réglementer à la lumière du Livre. En revanche, l’aliyah juive est la traduction métaphorique d’une perspective de sédentarisation qui implique la dimension nationale. Tant le hajj que l’aliyah jouent un rôle identitaire que le pèlerinage chrétien ignore. Né au sein d’une société sédentarisée et enraciné dans un monde romain axé sur l’institution de la ville, le christianisme reflète plutôt une nature urbaine qui influe profondément sa relation avec la mobilité. Le rapport entre l’expérience religieuse et la valeur sociale du pèlerinage est donc le même dans le judaïsme, le christianisme et l’islam ? Quel rapport ont ces différentes cultures religieuses avec la dimension du voyage ? C’est à ces questions de recherche que je vais essayer de répondre dans mon étude. Nils Roemer, University of Texas at Dallas, USA Title: Jewish Travelers and Christian Interlocutors During the Early Modern Period in Ashkenaz Abstract: My paper aims to analyze the interaction between Jewish travelers and Christian scholars and authors of travelogues. During the early modern period, Jews visited various local communities both as pious travelers making pilgrimages to revered graves before the High Holidays and also as curious travelers. Although less visited than Italy and France, German cities in the Rhineland attracted numerous Christian travelers, who inspected and debated Jewish historical sites and their meaning. Jewish and non-­‐Jewish travelers interacted in varied ways that ultimately shaped their respective traveling cultures as I will argue in my paper. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session 002: Yiddish Literature 11.00-­‐13.00 Panel: Yiddish, the Language of Love: Isaac Wetzlar's "Libes Briv" in the Context of Pietism, Enlightenment and Ethical Literature Orgnaizer: Avraham Siluk Chair: Shmuel Fiener Rebekka Voß, Goethe University, Frankfurt Main, Germany Title: A Carrot in Lieu of the Stick: A Yiddish Love Letter in the Context of Pietist Missionizing Abstract: Isaac Wetzlar's only authored book, the ‘Libes Briv’ (Love Letter 1748/49) is a religious-­‐ethical work that sharply criticizes contemporary Jewish society and offers ideas for social improvement and ethical-­‐religious renewal. While Libes briv has to date been placed between the traditional genre of ethical Mussar literature and the early Haskalah, our project will focus on its relationship to German Pietism that deserves further investigation. This paper will in particular introduce a new aspect into the discussion about the relationship of Wetzlar's Libes briv to Pietism: that is, the Pietist missionizing of the Jews. It seems to have served as a framework for Wetzlar's involvement with the Christian movement and its ideals. Wetzlar's Libes briv in fact seems to have been influenced in form and content by the Pietist “love letter,” that Pietist missionaries addressed – often in Yiddish – to the Jews of Europe they wished to win over with a carrot in lieu of the stick. Avraham Siluk, Goethe University, Frankfurt Main, Germany Title: Isaac Wetzlar's Pietist Surrounding Abstract: The author of the ‘Libes Briv’, Isaac Wetzlar, not only claims to have met with and to have had discussions with Pietist, to whom he refers to as Christian Chassidim, but he also asserts his readers that he has read some of their works. Furthermore, he seems to adopt Pietist critics, ideas and concepts of social reform in his work (in detail on this subject see the paper of Mrs. Voss). What brought the Jewish merchant to deal so extensively with this particular Christian religious movement? What could he have known about it, and wherefrom? The paper will illuminate the Pietist surrounding of Isaac Wetzlar and the possible encounter points and sources of information, he might have had, as he was sitting to write his “Love Letter”. By doing so, the paper would present an approach to the examination of Jewish-­‐Christian interaction, which focuses on reciprocal impulses, rather than on immediate interreligious contacts. Marion Aptroot, Heinrich-­‐Heine-­‐Universität Düsseldorf, Germany Title: The Manuscripts of Isaac Wetzlar’s Libes Briv Abstract: There are nine extant manuscripts of (parts of) Isaac Wetzlar’s Libes briv. In this paper I will discuss the different manuscripts, their form and their language. Not only the number manuscripts that have come down to us is significant: from their physical format, the changes the scribes made in spelling, vocabulary and content, and dedications in two of the manuscripts information about the reception of Libes briv by those who had the text copied and those who made the copies can be gleaned. This information can be useful – to a certain extent – in answering the following questions: What motivated the changes which were made to the text and what do they tell us? For whom were the individual copies intended? How were these copies used? To which extent are they related to the Christian genre of religious ethical ‘love letters’? Noa Sophie Kohler & Ephraim Sicher, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: “The Jew’s Daughter in Germany in the Early Modern Period: Between Jews and Christians, History and Imagination” Abstract: The 13th century Caesarius von Heisterbach, the Christian chronicler from Cologne, tells the story of a Jewish daughter who was seduced by a Christian man. The punch line of the story is that the Christian man convinces her parents that she is pregnant with the future Messiah, while in the end she gives birth to a daughter. Thus the Jewish community is being ridiculed and punished for its stubbornness. Later, in early modern German literature, we find a series of tales, adventure stories or farces, dramatizing the love between a beautiful Jewess and a Christian man, ending oftentimes in the conversion and subsequent marriage of the Jewess. Not only is this literary motif of the daughter of the Jew connected to the more general motif of the beautiful Jewess, but the pairing of the Jewish father, representing the Jewish Law and Jewish refusal to accept the Christian messiah, with his beautiful Jewish daughter who can be converted to Christianity, allegorizes the tension between Old and New Testaments, law and dispensation, obedience and rebellion, but alas, in problematic way, Christian morality and erotic desire. Yet, in fact, this motif, repeated in a number of medieval exempla and oral tales, hardly represents the reality of social relations between Jews and Christians. Interestingly, the actual number of conversions in German lands in the early modern period was very low (D.S. Hertz estimates from 1600-­‐1650, there were two cases of conversion to Protestantism per year, from 1671-­‐1708 approx. four, and from 1700-­‐1750 around six). Additionally one has to take into account that it was common practice to offer Jewish delinquents conversion to Christianity to escape capital punishment, and that also the several cases of insincere conversions must be considered, where Jews later returned to Judaism without approbation. Only in the late 18th century, several of the Jewish “Salon Women” seemingly lived the literary motif of being beautiful Jewish daughters of observant Jewish men, who emancipate themselves from their fathers by converting and marrying Christian men. Against the backdrop of the development of the beautiful Jewish daughter in German literature, the paper will ask to what extent Jewish “Salon Women” used their conversion in order to emancipate themselves from their fathers and their former religious beliefs. We will argue that their disengagement from Judaism was less sensational than reflected by the literary motif, even considering their parents’ reservations and hurt feelings. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session 003: Early Modern History 14.00-­‐15.30 Panel: Crossing Cultural Borders in Early Modern Europe Organizer: Shlomo Berger Chair: Shlomo Berger Irene Zwiep, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands Title: On Culture, Borders and Crossings in Early Modern Judaism Abstract: In my contribution I would like to contribute to the panel by addressing two methodological aspects of studying early modern Jewish-­‐non-­‐Jewish cultural transfer. Firstly, we should ask ourselves precisely what is the significance of the metaphor of 'border crossing'? What basic conception of culture does it imply, and what does this mean for our evaluation of early modern Jewish culture in particular? Secondly, we should explore how the very idea of cultural transfer (and related categories such as brokerage and entangled history) affect our interpretations of historical processes and the dynamic that shaped them. Both issues will be illustrated by examples from early modern Jewish biblical literacy in its complex Jewish-­‐gentile context. How much (or how little) 'transfer' should we allow into our analyses of Jewish biblical culture, and on what grounds? Shmuel Feiner, Bar Ilan University, Israel Title: A Fire in the Theater and the Anxiety of the “New World” in 1772 Amsterdam Abstract: On May 11, 1772, a fire broke out during a theater performance in Amsterdam, killing a few, including Jews. That disaster encouraged Israel ben Issachar Baer to compose one of the most critical essays against Jewish acculturation. His Hebrew manuscript, Olam Chadash (“New World”), parodic in style and full of anger, was written by a member of the Ashkenazi religious elite, who came to Holland from Poland and regarded himself as a guardian of the norms of Judaism. It is a rare document that describes the encounters between Jews and non-­‐Jews, particularly wherever the city’s residents attended cultural events and spent their leisure time: the theater, the opera and the coffee house. Baer emphasizes the profound involvement of Jewish women in these practices (“they read books in French and other foreign languages and never set their eyes on Tze’ena ure’enai) and describes the open nature of the relations between the sexes and the power of Eros. If one listens attentively to Baer’s voice, the existence of an unprecedented cultural and religious conflict is revealed. “New World” not only identifies the temptations of the modern city, but also finds that the individual’s self-­‐confidence is a major cause of the collapse of traditional authority. It is the individualistic ethos that enables Jews to rebel against religion, Jewish solidarity and the collective memory, and to relegate the religious elite to the sidelines even before the emergence of the Haskalah and without the direct influence of its values. Zohar Shavit, Tel Aviv University, Israel Title: Jewish Networking in the European Enlightenment: The Case of Shimon ben Zcharia Abstract: This paper discusses the extent of Jewish networking – mainly of members of the Haskala movement – in the European Enlightenment. This networking included acquaintance with several Enlightenment texts, with the common methods of publications and publishing houses that brought out Enlightenment writings, and even with a few key Enlightenment figures. The paper analyzes the uses Jews made of this networking to introduce and disseminate Enlightenment values and ideas in Central European Jewish society. The paper also deals with the strategies they employed for that purpose. I maintain that the members of the Haskala movement were much more versed in European Enlightenment writings than is generally assumed. True, texts written in languages other than German were very often not accessible to them in the original language. They read them with the help of intermediate translations, mainly into German; the use of German intermediate translations entailed adopting the German Enlightenment’s interpretation of enlightened French or English texts. In several cases, however, members of the Haskala movement did have full or partial access to texts in English or French. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session 004: Early Modern History 16.00-­‐18.00 Panel: Crossing Cultural Borders in Early Modern Europe Organizer: Shlomo Berger Chair: Shlomo Berger Natalie Naimark-­‐Goldberg, Bar Ilan University, Israel Title: Crossing Cultural Borders in Breslau: Interreligious Sociability in the Late Eighteenth Century Abstract: In an oft-­‐quoted letter, written during a trip to Silesia in1794, Rahel Levin (later Varnhagen) describes the cultural shock of a young, acculturated Jewish woman upon her encounter with the "backward", unrefined sights of Breslau. True, the Silesian relatives of this young Jewish woman lived in a more traditional environment than her own family in Berlin. But how accurate is the image conveyed by Levin, that when travelling to the Silesian capital, a German Jew – particularly from Berlin – would be moving into a totally different world? This lecture will examine this question by focusing on one central aspect: the social and intellectual encounters between Jews and non-­‐Jews that took place in Breslau. This phenomenon will be analyzed based on data collected from various sources, which points at an unexpected scope of interfaith sociability and makes one wonder how exceptional the case of Berlin – and especially the Jewish salons in this city – really was. This evidence will be contrasted with a different type of source – an anti-­‐Jewish farce written by a Breslau physician and premiered there in in1813: Unser Verkehr. This mocking depiction of Jewish attempts at integration and acculturation – which came to symbolize the futility of Jewish hopes of integration – precludes an idyllic interpretation of Jewish-­‐non-­‐Jewish encounters and compels us to reassess the extent and the prospects of interfaith sociability. Avriel Bar-­‐Levav, The Open University of Israel Title: Crossing Bibliographic Borders: Shabtai Meshorer Bas and European Bibliographic Tradition Abstract: It is known that Shabtai Meshorer Bas, author of the first Hebrew biblography, Siftei Yeshenim (Amsterdam 1680), used previous Christian bibliographies and was also influenced by them. Yet, the cultural meaning of this relationship was not yet studied. In my lecture I will examine the structure of the bibliography as well as some of its categories, in order to present the text as an attempt to build a unique Jewish literary identity. Bart Wallet, VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands Title: ‘Our Whole Nation is in Favour of the Prince’: Ashkenazim, Sephardim and Dutch Politics in the Eighteenth Century Abstract: The two ‘Jewish Nations’ in the Dutch Republic had their own, autonomous position in society. In the course of the eighteenth century, however, they increasingly became involved in the internal political tensions that eventually resulted in a civil war in 1787. This paper will trace Dutch Jewry’s changing attitude towards (local and national) politics and explain why Sephardim and Ashkenazim overwhelmingly started to participate in one of the rivaling political factions, namely the orangists. This early ‘politicization’ of Dutch Jewry will, finally, be linked to Dutch Jews’ attitudes after the 1791 French invasion, the start of the Batavian Republic and the formal 1796 emancipation. Joshua Teplitsky, University of Oxford, UK Title: Scribes, Scholars, and Social Ties: David Oppenheim and the library of the eighteenth century Abstract: Over the course of the eighteenth century, traditional Jewish study underwent subtle but significant changes, as previously un-­‐studied medieval books (especially Sefardic works) penetrated the Ashkenazic yeshiva. Whereas scholars have dedicated attention to the impact of these works and their reshaping the curriculum of the study house, the means by which they began to circulate is no less significant, but often overlooked. This paper examines that circulation and its hub in the formidable book and manuscript collection of David Oppenheim (1664-­‐1736) of Prague. More than a private collector, Oppenheim operated as a facilitator and patron of the book trade. With his sights set on the acquisition of new material, Oppenheim stood astride multiple Jewish worlds of the eighteenth century: the opulence of the Court Jews, the controversies of rabbinic courts, approbata and copyright, the threats and allure of crypto-­‐Sabbatianism, and charity to the Holy Land. Situating Oppenheim against these wider currents, this paper examines his activities in these networks of exchange, and uncovers his crucial role in reshaping the Jewish canon both for the traditional yeshiva and later for the Haskalah. Tuesday 22nd July ENS, Salle WEIL (Main building, ground flour, map 17) Session: 001: Jewish Literature 9.00-­‐10.30 Panel: Modern Jewish Spaces Organizer: Murray Baumgarten Chair: Murray Baumgarten Murray Baumgarten, University of California, Santa Cruz Title: Israel Zangwill and the Afterlife of the Ghetto Abstract: Almost a century after the dissolution of the Ghetto, and just about 30 years after the unification of Italy into a modern nation state and the Jewish Emancipation that included the Jews among its citizens — Israel Zangwill published a novel about the Jewish immigrants flooding into London’s East End. Children of the Ghetto: a study of a peculiar people (1892), was at once fiction, social critique, and ethnography. In its title Zangwill underlined the relationship of the experience of these new inhabitants of England to their Italian ancestors, who in 1516 had been segregated in a Venetian campo that had once served as the city’s foundry. As we read this novel today, we can see Zangwill at the end of the nineteenth century using the Ghetto’s history to help him think through the spaces in which Jews live. As he traces the lives of this “peculiar people,” in his fiction, he brings the question of what constitutes Modern Jewish Spaces to the forefront. Children of the Ghetto: Zangwill’s title announced his intention to explore how the Ghetto experience had shaped these new English residents, who came from Eastern Europe and Russia. Instead of “Pale of Settlement,” the term for the residence of the Jews in Eastern Europe and Russia, he turned to Venetian Jewish history and the Venetian/Italian language to designate what the Jews had become in their long European exile. In Zangwill’s view, the Ghetto — the defining space of Modern Jewish life and the psychological power to dream it generated -­‐-­‐ was the key to the possibilities of modern Jewish experience. “People who have been living in a Ghetto for a couple of centuries,” Zangwill points out, “are not able to step outside merely because the gates are thrown down, nor to efface the brands on their souls by putting off the yellow badges. The isolation imposed from without will have come to seem the law of their being.” (Proem, Children of the Ghetto, p. x.) The Jews have been made other by the Ghetto: the consequences of the Venice Ghetto, devised in 1516 and mostly still in force till the unification of Italy in 1870 (and even after in Rome) continue to define them. Lee Jaffe, University of California at Santa Cruz, USA Title: The Jewish Anthology As A Jewish Place: Creating a Forum for Negotiating Jewish Identity Abstract: Based on a comprehensive study of the contents of more than 300 anthologies of Jewish literature in English, this presentation will explore the role of literary collections in the process of identity formation, with a focus on how the genre has evolved in response to historical developments and the needs of the community. Starting with the earliest appearance of Jewish literary anthologies in English at the turn of the 20th century, this paper will highlight milestones in the development of the genre and share findings about their correspondence to the historical moments that shaped them. The presentation will discuss the different functions anthology fills – rescue and revival, pedagogic and archival, canonical and existential – and, finally, will draw conclusions about the special role the Jewish anthology plays in creating a forum for the contemporary Jewish discourse about identity. Dianne Harris, University of Illinois at Urbana-­‐Champaign, USA Title: Little White Houses: Displaying Jewish Identity in the Postwar American Home Abstract: In 1959, the sociologist and rabbi Albert I. Gordon published Jews In Suburbia, a book that endeavored to help readers understand the nature of Jewish life in the postwar United States. Gordon investigated the lives his subjects increasingly led outside of the cities that had been home to previous generations of U. S. Jews. In shifting his focus to the metropolitan fringes, Gordon was not alone. Many sociologists of the period focused their studies on examinations of the newly built suburbs that seemed to appear almost overnight in locations across the United States after 1945. What did it mean, they all asked, to leave behind extended families living in inner-­‐city brownstones and apartment buildings for a life lived without in-­‐laws in a house of one’s own? What did it mean to leave ethnically-­‐identified neighborhoods in favor of suburbs that were often restricted—through a variety of practices—to whites alone? In this paper, as in my recently published book, Little White Houses: How the Postwar Home Constructed Race in America, I study the relationships that existed between various forms of whiteness—including that formulated in connection to Jews—and ordinary houses. Following Stuart Hall’s assertion that racism is a “structure of knowledge and representations” that are based on ideas about and that are used to generate understandings of a fixed ‘us’ in opposition to and in a separate space from ‘them,” I examine the ways textual and visual representations of ordinary postwar houses continuously and reflexively created, re-­‐
created, and reinforced midcentury notions about racial, ethnic, and class identities—specifically, the rightness of associating white identities with homeownership and citizenship. By looking carefully at house form, the material culture of postwar domesticity, and at representations of house form, I examine the ways in which postwar domestic environments became powerful ciphers for whiteness, affluence, belonging, and a sense of permanent stability in the years between 1945 and 1960. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session: 002: Jewish Literature 11.00-­‐13.00 Panel: Modern Jewish Spaces 2 Organizer: Murray Baumgarten Chair: Murray Baumgarten Lisa Silverman, University of Wisconsin-­‐Milwaukee, USA Title: Vienna’s Jewish Geography: Imagining the Leopoldstadt Abstract: The Jewish population was never evenly distributed throughout Vienna, but by 1934, when Jews inhabited nearly every one of interwar Vienna’s 21 districts, nearly half of the city’s Jewish population still resided in only three of them. In the Leopoldstadt, however, they formed almost 30% of the population before 1938 – and the persistence of the Leopoldstadt as Vienna’s “Jewish space” served a purpose for both Jews and non-­‐Jews, then as now. Through analysis of the oral and written testimony of Austrian Jewish émigrés, this paper explores Jews’ affective responses to the city in response to their historical – and personal – exclusion from it. Recognizing their deep investment not only in the city’s history, but also its geography, can help us draw a map of Jewish Vienna that includes not only where Jews lived, but also points to its “Jewish-­‐coded” physical spaces and how these shaped its legibility to both Jewish and non-­‐
Jewish Austrians. Focusing on how Jews remember past experiences in relationship to the city’s geography renders visible the contours of the Jewish and other social codings that ordered the city’s districts, the exclusionary practices that shaped Vienna’s urban landscape, and the power relationships involved in the development of Vienna’s built environment. As this presentation will demonstrate, it was not only Vienna’s cultural heritage that formed the basis of Jews’ attachment to the city, but also its geography. Peter Kenez, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA Title: Jewish Budapest, 1900 Abstract: Visitors to Budapest are sometimes surprised that the city that has probably fewer than 80,000 Jews also contains the largest synagogue in Europe and one of the largest in the world. The explanation can be found in history. This building, constructed in the middle of the 19th century, and seats 3000 people, is a memorial to the enormously successful and optimistic Jewry of 19th century Hungary. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries Budapest was the fastest growing city in Europe and one quarter of the population was Jewish. Jews lived in distinct parts of the city: the richest among them in the 5th district, the middle classes around the largest boulevard in the 7th district and the poorest, mostly Orthodox around Sip, utca, Dob utca and Weselenyi utca. The Budapest Jewry was unique; its history was full of paradoxes and contradictions. Nowhere did Jews come closer to dominating the economy and cultural life of a nation, nowhere did Jews play a more crucial role in the leadership of Marxist socialism and nowhere was the gap wider between the assimilated and the Orthodox. It is precisely this uniqueness that makes the Budapest Jewry an excellent case study, for here in a particularly clear form we can see the different sources of resurgent 20th century antisemitism. The explanation for the uniqueness of the Budapest Jewry must be sought at the peculiarities of 19th century Hungarian society. The country, a part of the Habsburg Monarchy, was dominated by Hungarian feudal nobility, ruling over a multinational peasantry. The nobles, unwilling and unable to take the building of industry and commerce in their own hands but interested in modernization, were glad to leave to the Jews that task. Since the Jews were happy to use the opportunities offered, they came to be enthusiastic Hungarians Nationalists, unlike anywhere in the world, were glad to have the Jews as allies. The Budapest Jewry, highly acculturated, was different from their Western European coreligionists. In Western Europe the native middle classes were quite able to carry out the various tasks that we associate with modernization. The Jews nowhere in Western Europe dominated the economy. Those who came to be acculturated thought of themselves as belonging to the sizeable middle classes. In Hungary there was no native middle class. The Jews came to think of themselves as Jewish Hungarians rather than Hungarian Jews. Yet, they remained distinct. The opportunity to join the feudal aristocracy did not exist, and to assimilate to the peasantry was not an option. Jews thought of themselves as patriotic Hungarians, and yet they remained distict. Michael Shapiro, Loyola University of Chicago, USA Title: Shylock's House: Theatrical Representations of Jewish Space Abstract: In Shakespeare's time, before the introduction of scenic design, interior spaces were usually indicated by portable properties, language, activity, and perhaps music. Even after the heyday of scenic design, the two short scenes in the Merchant of Venice which are set inside Shylock's house were not enough to justify elaborate scenic, although the exterior of his house could be so represented. More recently, in filmed and televised productions, the inside of Shylock's house is seen, and thus needs to be marked in some way as Jewish space, as can be seen in several recent productions, such as those starring Pacino, Olivier and Goodman. Noam Gil, Tel Aviv University, Israel Title: The Burden of Identity -­‐ On Holocaust Survivors in the City Abstract: In my paper I intend to discuss the cultural significance of the Jewish Holocaust survivor in the reshaping of postmodern identity in post Holocaust urban America. By discussing two novels by two European emigrants, Isaac Bashevis Singer's "Enemies, a Love Story" (1966) and Edgar Hilsenrath's "Fuck America" (1980), I will examine the survivor’s gradual subversion of his per-­‐determined national, religious and communal identities. In each one of the texts the city and the urban environment have a double and seemingly contradictory effect on the survivors’ lives: as an obstacle and an opportunity at the same time. The multiplying sounds, languages, faces and architectures seem at first to be a threat to the protagonist’s existence but later on provide the means for the survivor’s radical liberation. As an eternal outsider, the survivor's past experiences correlate to the current urban life as these two periods and surroundings are constantly juxtaposed. This juxtaposition creates a conscious desire in the protagonist’s psyche for anonymity, as an immediate reaction to the unavoidable identity which was forced upon him during the war in Europe, identity which was tattooed on Jewish arms, marked on Jewish clothes, painted on Jewish shops and embedded on Jewish lives. In reading the two narratives in relation to the writings of urban theorists such as Edward Soja and Richard Sennet, I will examine the American city in correlation to the Jewish survivor. My main claim is that the protagonists I am writing about, Singer's Herman Broder and Hilsenrath's Jakob Bronsky, are literary models that offer, in their life stories, a new set of human relationships, personal behavioral characteristics and private day to day procedures that are emblematic to the deviant city’s schizoid features. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session: 003: Book History: Post-­‐Medieval Manuscripts and Printing 14.00-­‐15.30 Chair: Colette Sirat Gila Prebor, Bar Ilan University, Israel Title: Post-­‐Medieval Hebrew Manuscripts – A Case Study: The Manuscript Collection of the Séminaire Israélite de France Abstract: It is noteworthy that most of the research into Hebrew manuscripts has focused on manuscripts written until 1540. The Hebrew Palaeography Project, which has been active for approximately 50 years, has produced a typology of Hebrew manuscripts. This immense project has only dealt with manuscripts written until 1540. It is difficult to give a precise figure of the number of surviving Hebrew manuscripts, but it is estimated to be between seventy and eighty thousand volumes. Approximately half of these manuscripts were written in the Middle Ages, while the remainder date from the 17th to the 20th centuries. Research into post-­‐medieval manuscripts could open a new world of manuscripts that has hitherto not been systematically researched as a corpus, with only individual manuscripts having been examined on a limited basis. How many works were composed in this period? Are these original works or copies of older works from other manuscripts or even from printed books? What types of works were hand-­‐written in this period and for what purpose? To these questions and others we do not yet have answers. The manuscript collection of the Séminaire Israélite de France includes a number of manuscripts from the Middle Ages but most of the collection consists of relatively later manuscripts from the 17th, 18th, 19th, and even 20th centuries. This collection can be used as a case study to demonstrate the importance of post-­‐medieval manuscripts and stress the need to continue the work of the Hebrew Palaeography Project. Vered Tohar, Bar-­‐Ilan University, Israel Title: The Contribution of the Portuguese Printer, Avraham Usque, to the Production and Distribution of Hebrew Books in the 16th Century Abstract: Although the printing shop of Avraham Usque in Ferrara, Italy operated for only five years, 1553-­‐
1558, his workshop published important works that had a major impact on the Jewish world and left a literary mark on later collections. Usque came to Ferrara from Portugal, and according to scholars’ assumptions, he was a converso who fled the horrors of the Inquisition, and like many other Anusim in his day, managed to build a new life in Italy. Usque’s most important publishing venture, the one that brought him fame, was the translation of the Bible into Spanish for the use of Spanish speakers, Jews and non-­‐Jews alike. Ironically, although he saw himself as serving both Jews and Gentiles, his printing shop was closed down when someone informed on him for printing an elegy composed by Jacob of Fano to commemorate the tragic burning of the twenty-­‐four Anusim of Ancona in 1555. The purpose of the lecture is to present Usque's achievements and his contribution to the world of the Hebrew book in light of the fact that he was a multicultural person who travelled between the Christian and the Jewish worlds, and Between the Ashkenazi and the Sephardi Jewish Cultures. His literary works, especially his well-­‐known Hebrew story anthology called 'Hibbur ha-­‐Ma'asiot' demonstrate the contacts between the Jewish and non-­‐Jewish cultures and present Usque's influence on the conservation and dissemination of the Hebrew story. Chanan Yitzchaki, Efrata Academic College for Teacher Training Title: Printing Jewish Books during the Printing Decree in Russia Abstract: One of the most famous commentaries on the "Shulchan Aruch" is 'Pitchey Teshuva' by Rabbi Avraham Tzvi Eisenstat (Lithuania, 1815-­‐1868). The second part of the book (Even Ha'ezer) was printed without mentioning the publisher's name, printing place or printing date. At the first part of the lecture we will try to find out who the publisher was, and when and where the book was published. The second part will deal with more important question: What was the part of the Russian censor on the fact that the publisher had to hide his name, address and the date of printing. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session 004: The Arab in Israeli Literature 16.00-­‐18.00 Chair: Geula Elimelekh, Bar Ilan University, Israel Title: Exile in the Works of a Muslim Writer and a Jewish One: 'Abd Al-­‐Rahman Munif and Samir Naqqash Abstract: "Exile" is an ancient word evoking harsh connotations of suffering, anxiety, uprootedness, alienation, dislocation, etc. Human history shows that exile – voluntary or imposed – is not limited to individuals from particular national or religious communities, but is a fate that can befall all humans, for various reasons – social, political, cultural or economic. Exiles from all backgrounds undergo similar experiences and suffer similar anguish. This lecture will deal with the theme of exile in the works of the Saudi writer 'Abd Al-­‐Rahman Munif (1933-­‐2004) and the Iraqi-­‐born Jewish writer Samir Naqqash (1938-­‐
2004), both of whom wrote in Arabic. I will show that exile has similar meanings and implications in the works of both these writers. Naqqash, who immigrated to Israel in 1951, describes the trauma experienced by himself, his family and many other Iraqi Jews who emigrated from Iraq to the state of Israel shortly after its establishment. These Jews left Iraq and gave up their Iraqi citizenship in order to realize the dream shared by every Diaspora Jew for almost 2,000 years, namely to live in the Promised Land. Tragically, however, many of them discovered that assimilating into Israeli society meant giving up their language, culture and their traditional Jewish way of life. Torn from their roots, they found life in Israel to be nothing but a new form of exile, much worse than their "exile" in Iraq. Naqqash's decision to write in Arabic, rather than Hebrew, indicates how deeply connected he was to the Arab and Iraqi culture, and reflects the alienation he felt in his new homeland. Naqqash, then, describes a situation of exile within exile, namely a situation of complete hopelessness, with no way out. I focus on Naqqash's stories from the anthologies “I” and “They” and “Ambivalence” and “The Day the World Became Pregnant“ and “Miscarried”. 'Abd Al-­‐
Rahman Munif was also an exiled intellectual, and many of his protagonists are exiles as well. His works present the theme of exile from a somewhat different perspective than those of Naqqash: he focuses on the persecution, oppression and lack of freedom in the Arab world, which drive his protagonists to leave their homeland. (It should be mentioned that the Iraqi Jews suffered persecution and oppression as well in the years preceding their emigration to Israel, especially in the 1940s; however, that is not the focus of Naqqash's works). Like Naqqash's protagonists, many of Munif's characters try to settle in other countries, but often fail to assimilate, because the host society refuses to accept them and/or because they themselves feel a constant sense of alienation. I focus on three of Munif's novels: The Trees and the Murder of Marzouq, East of the Mediterranean, and Here and Now or East of the Mediterranean Revisited. Like Munif himself, the protagonists of these novels are all exiles in some sense: all of them are on the run, either from their homeland or within it, and they are constantly on the move, whether by choice or out of coercion. Their sense of dislocation and homelessness is accompanied by feelings of fear and alienation, estrangement and isolation, which afflict them even within the confines of their community, their family and their own souls. They suffer from a lack of inner calm, since dislocation and homelessness are the antithesis of wholeness and harmony. This sense of dislocation is a universal condition that characterizes not only Munif's and Naqqash's characters but modern man at large. Heidy-­‐Margrit Müller, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Brussels, Belgium Title: Re-­‐Interpreting Trauma in Literary Memoirs Written by Jewish Authors from Egypt Abstract: Decennia after leaving Egypt, Jewish writers started to write down their memoirs about their childhood and youth. Though each author has his or her own stylistic and topical preferences, there are a few central problems that are dealt with in all of these autobiographical novels: Alterity, Loneliness, Fear, Forced Exile, Deprivation, Pain and Trauma. A comparative approach can unveil, what mental strategies and ideological constructions help the fictional storytellers to cope with their multi-­‐layered traumatic experience of uprooting, displacement or exile. Èlia Romo-­‐Terol, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain Title: Shlomo Alkurdi: Samir Naqqash's Struggle with Identity in a Convergence of Cultures Abstract: Samir Naqqash was an interesting author from the perspective of the cultural studies and also an example of how initially confronted elements can conform an identity. In his last novel he presented the life of Shlomo Alkurdi, a Jewish Kurd, throughout the political and historical developments of the twentieth century in the Asia Minor region. The novel, although it is not autobiographical, expresses Naqqash own struggles and the main subjects of identity he had to deal with in a personal and a professional way. In his work, both the form and the content are telling us about these political struggles, for he made the choice of writing in Arabic language, a choice that would lead to his own alienation in Israel. The transformation and tagging of a person through the constant changes of the surrounding political power is the lead of this novel that does not only shows us the construction of the identity of the main character but what concerns Samir Naqqash, that is the idea of losing the identity. In this paper we will focus our analysis on how Samir Naqqash expresses the elements of the loss of the identity throughout complex political scenarios, nations fighting against nations, different languages, the identification with the others and the distinction from them. Jordi Casals, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain Title: Aharon Almog: Oriental Aspects of the Literary Production of a Third-­‐Generation Israeli Abstract: Our author, Aharon Almog, a third-­‐generation Israeli from a Yemeni family, saw a great world changes and he hadn't the perception of identification to that modern society. Through his literary talent, the author turns into a tool that adapts his cultural world to his literary necessities. He took part in the movement of young Yemenite Hebrew poetry in Israel and the way to write his protest writings against the injusticies was the poetry. However, at the end of his career he left it aside because it lost its efficacy. The objective of this session is to know how Almog reflects the social group of the "mizrahim" in his literary production, if their presence is implicit or explicit in his work and what the vision of the author was towards his own group of oriental Jews in Israel. Tuesday 22nd July SORBONNE, Salle Marc BLOCH (Stairs C, 2nd flour) Session: 001: Panel: The Cairo Geniza Organizers: Sarah Fargeon, Wissem Gueddich and Ben Outhwaite 9.00-­‐10.30 Contacts in Practice: Law in the Genizah Society Chair: Sarah Fargeon & Wissem Gueddich Philip Ackerman-­‐Lieberman, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA Title: Are Jewish Court Decisions Bounded by Those of Muslim Courts? Abstract: The judicial environment in Egypt during the Fatimid period gave Jewish merchants the option of forum-­‐shopping—choosing their legal venue based on the expected outcome. Well-­‐aware of the opportunities their constituents had for forum-­‐shopping, Jewish courts were careful not to make rulings which would be reversed on “appeal” to a Muslim court. This care took at least two forms: (i) relying on techniques of mediation, which required agreement of all parties concerned, rather than arbitration, which required the court to make a determination which may or may not have been accepted by the litigants; and (ii) allowing for outcomes in the Jewish court which ran counter to codified Jewish law in order to approximate the expected “competitive” ruling in the Islamic court. These strategies were successful in insuring that Jews often made recourse to the Jewish court. Yet are the rulings of the Jewish court “bounded” by the competitive rulings their litigants could expect to receive in Muslim courts? If not, just how far were Jewish courts willing to stray from Jewish law? What, if anything, shaped the boundaries of Jewish law in practice? Amir Ashur, Ben Gurion University, Israel Title: Protecting the Wife: Stipulations in Jewish Marriage Documents from the Cairo Geniza and Parallel Arabic Sources and their Social Background Abstract: In this paper I will analyze some stipulations commonly found in Jewish Marriage documents from the Cairo Geniza and in parallel Arabic sources. I will concentrate on the 'residence' stipulation that is: choosing the Place of Residence; travel restrictions and stipulations regarding the freedom of movement of the husband and stipulations aimed at supporting the wife financially during her husband's absence. I will try to suggest that these stipulations are found in both societies -­‐ Jewish and Muslim -­‐ due to their common social background. Gregor Schwarb, Research Unit Intellectual History of the Islamicate World, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany Title: Jewish adaptations of Islamic Legal Hermeneutics (uṣūl al-­‐fiqh) Abstract: The paper consists of two parts: 1) Uṣūl al-­‐fiqh compositions by Muslim authors i) preserved in Jewish Genizah collections, ii) recorded in Jewish book&library inventories and/or iii) cited in works by Jewish authors: Historical and doctrinal contexts. 2) Two case studies: a) The reception of ʿAbd al-­‐Jabbār b. Aḥmad al-­‐Hamadhānī's (d. 415/1025) K. al-­‐ʿUmad fī uṣūl al-­‐fiqh in Yeshuʿah ben Yehudah's K. al-­‐Tawriya; b) K. al-­‐Mulakhkhaṣ fī uṣūl al-­‐fiqh: an anonymous Jewish adaptation of Fakhr al-­‐Dīn al-­‐Rāzī’s (d. 606/1210) K. al-­‐Maʿālim fī uṣūl al-­‐fiqh. I shall conclude with a brief reflection on the "guiding thread" of the Genizah panel: To what extent do the documents/texts mentioned in my paper "reflect society as a whole" and to what extent is it sensible to ask such a question’. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session 002: Panel: The Cairo Geniza Organizers: Sarah Fargeon, Wissem Gueddich and Ben Outhwaite 11.00-­‐13.00 Challenging the Notion of Contact between Jews and non-­‐Jews Chair: Norman Stillman Elinoar Bareket, Achva Academic College, Israel Title: Nuances in Social Involvement among Jewish and Muslim Societies according to Genizah Documents Abstract: Pluralism and Heterogeneity were embedded in Muslim society since its beginning. A variety of Muslim ethnical groups lived side by side alongside Jewish groups. The Jews were not the only religious minority in Islamic territories. Islamic social discrimination was aimed toward the Dhimmis in general rather than Jews in particular. We can conclude from this that the low social status of the Jews did not usually affect them badly. The Muslim society relied on informal connections of loyalty and identification. The Jews in the Muslim world also adopted, on their side, an appeasing attitude towards Islam, especially due to its being a religion dedicated to an immaculate God. This tolerant perception of Islam by the Jews also reflected the respectful attitude of the Muslim society towards the Jewish "People of the Book". All these aspects resulted in a wide interaction between the two societies in economic and social matters, an interaction that blurred the lines between Jewish and Muslim. Many Genizah documents testify on wide Jewish involvement among Muslim society and the other way around. This blurring of lines is especially evident during the Fatimid period, but even during the Ayubids days, despite of the attitude being hardened, it is still difficult to identify in certain documented cases, who is a Muslim and who is a Jew. Mordechai Akiva Friedman, Tel Aviv University, Israel Title: Contact with non-­‐Jews in the India Book Documents Abstract: An examination of data from the India Book on the circle of traders, Jews and trusted non-­‐Jews. Information in documents significant for study of general, non-­‐Jewish culture. Stefan Reif, St John's College Cambridge, UK Title: Attitudes to non-­‐Jews reflected in Liturgical Texts from the Genizah and from other Manuscript Codices Abstract: Was there a systematic approach to non-­‐Jews in the medieval texts of Jewish liturgy? Or did composers of the prayers respond to political, religious and historical circumstances? Some Genizah texts will be closely examined in order to ascertain the degree to which these questions can be clarified by the historian and the extent to which such texts differ from other evidence. Sylvie Denise García de la Calle, Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, Granada University, Spain Title: Christianity and Judaism in the Life of Obadiah, the Norman Proselyte, through the Prophecy of Joel Abstract: In the Cairo Genizah there were manuscripts with Gregorian notation and Hebrew script. There also appeared documents that point to author of the scores at Giovanni-­‐Obadiah, a twelfth century Christian monk, born in southern Italy, who converted to Judaism. Until now, the study of this personage has been realized almost exclusively from the Jewish point of view. Nevertheless, like Obadiah synthesizes the traditions Christian and Jewish in its notation when copying Hebrew melodies with Christian notation, also it does in his texts. Obadiah transcribed a Latin appointment of Joel to Hebrew characters. I pretend to oppose his conversion to Judaism with his ordination as a Christian monk through the prophecy of Joel, which implies an intense dialogue between the two traditions. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session 003: Panel: The Cairo Geniza Organizers: Sarah Fargeon, Wissem Gueddich and Ben Outhwaite 14.00-­‐15.30 New Perspectives on an Old Problem: Transmitting, Editing and Identifying Genizah Texts Chair: Mordechai A. Friedman Rebecca Sebbagh, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-­‐Universität Frankfurt, Germany Title: Reworked She’iltot in the Cairo Genizah Abstract: The textual transmission of the She’iltot of Rav Aḥa of Shabḥa shows that this literature was open to alterations for a long time. Israel Ta-­‐Shma stated in his paper „The ‘Open’ Book in Medieval Hebrew Literature: The Problem of Authorized Editions”, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 75, 3 (1993), p. 18, that the She’iltot were by their very nature prone to the assimilation of additional halakhic material of a similar kind and to an ongoing process of editing. This editing process was often limited to only the addition or the erasing of – mainly halakhic -­‐ textual blocks while the structure of the she’ilta was retained. In a few cases the texts were rewritten and reworked completely, including structural changes. Among the more than hundred fragments containing She’iltot texts from the Cairo Genizah, there are some texts which show a complete revision of the text and its structure. The examination of these reworked texts shows that the editors were mainly interested in certain parts of the text and completely ignored other parts. An analysis of their choices may help to understand how the She’iltot were read and received during the Middle Ages. In my presentation I wish to present an example of an altered and reworked she’ilta which was transmitted in the Cairo Genizah. The comparison of the reworked text with the standard (printed) text of the she’ilta will demonstrate how the functions of the structural parts of the she’ilta formular were changed by the editors and how they adapted the different parts into a new context. The presentation is based on one of the main chapters of my doctoral thesis which contains editions and analyses of the Genizah fragments of the She’iltot, to be presented at the Goethe-­‐University, Frankfurt/Main, in 2015. Moshe Lavee, The University of Haifa, Israel Title: Geo-­‐cultural Insights based on Applying Computational Tools in the Study of Midrash Fragments Abstract: Recent advancements of computational tools enable us to apply edit distance and network research methodologies to the study of Midrashic texts in Genizah fragments. In this lecture I will present the outcomes of an examination of the texts of Leviticus Rabbah, that strengthen our understanding of the strong connection between early eastern rabbinic traditions persevered in the Genizah and the tradition documented in the cultural heritage of North West European communities. It is suggested that the use of this advanced technologies should not only be taken as a philological aid, aimed at establishing a stemma of the Midrash and reconstructing its most possible authentic version; they should also be considered as contributing to the understanding of historical process of cultural (and human?) immigration, probably at the turn of the millennium. The "European connection" of early genziah midrashic traditions is also evident when considering network research methodologies for the study of rabbinic enumerations, and when examined specific case studies that were recently found in unnoticed midrashic fragments. Both reveal strong examples for Genizah midrashic traditions (in lost works and in Judeo-­‐Arabic adaptations!) that only has parallels and equivalent sources in European anthologies and scholastic deliberations. Ariel Neri, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: Towards Identification Methodology of Genizah Manuscripts Abstract: During the late Geonic period, commentaries appeared in Judeo-­‐Arabic on halakhic topics concerning formal and informal duties of the judges. This genre of monographs deals not only with court procedures but rather also with the jurisprudential proper behavior, or, the ethical code of Beit Din. In my research I challenge the attribution of relevant Genizah fragments made by prominent modern scholars and contend that the inaccuracy of their conclusions stems from inadequate standards and lack of clear-­‐cut criteria in modern research. I analyze the aforementioned fragments in light of a methodological framework which has been developed for this purpose, but which can be applied to the comparative study of Medieval Judeo-­‐Arabic halakhic literature written in Muslim environments in general. It is far from my intention to claim that this study has made it possible to attribute henceforth every single fragment to a specific author or commentary, or even to identify it as belonging to the genre of "Judges’ Duties", which itself is not yet very well defined. Rather, it points to a need for a fundamental inquiry and puts forward a number of guidelines upon which such an inquiry should be based. Yet, through this methodological paradigm I have endeavored to identify several fragments which belong either to known or anonymous books from the late geonic period. The text which I would like to present and discuss through my lecture includes the end of the monograph ‫אלָצ'א‬
‫ כתאב אדב ק‬ of rav Hai Ibn Shrira gaon. The Genizah contribution in the current case is clear as it enables the identification of four pages of Oxford manuscript (Ox. Bodl. Ms. Marsh Or. 509 (cat. Neub. 581.2) as a single copy in the world of this book which survived unfortunately solely in a very partial manner. This fascinating identification is confirmed furthermore by additional quotations from the Rishonim literature, including the text of Rav Hai Gaon in translation into medival Hebrew, mainly through the writings of Rabbi Yehuda Albarzeloni The contribution of the present work to this field of knowledge far exceeds the analysis of the texts under discussion, in that the theoretical model proposed in it has ramifications for future research. The identificatory system has crucial contribution to our understanding of the diverse scientific methodologies and perspectives of the geonic period research. As a result, the comprehension of the establishment of the Halakha and its development in general benefit as well from the extension and deepening of the medieval literacy outlines. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session 004: Panel: The Cairo Geniza Organizers: Sarah Fargeon, Wissem Gueddich and Ben Outhwaite 16.00-­‐18.00 Widening the Boundaries of Genizah Research: the Cairo Collection and Genizot Chair: Ben Outhwaite Ronny Vollandt, Free University of Berlin, Germany Title: On the Jewish Fragments of the Genizah of the Umayyad Mosque, Damascus Abstract: On his visit to the Holy Land, Kaiser Wilhelm II was shown the qubba al-­‐khazna, the Treasure Dome, of the Umayyad Mosque at Damascus and told of manuscripts it contained, shrouded in mystery and venerated by the locals to that time. By diplomatic means he negotiated with the Sublime Port that the dome should be opened and a German scholar be dispatched to sift through the material. Bruno Violet was chosen for that purpose. He spent about a year in Damascus and separated from the large bulk of fragments all texts of a non-­‐muslim Muslim provenance. His selection, consisting mainly Jewish and Christian texts, was sent to Berlin in order to be photographed and supposedly got lost on the way back. For a long time it was believed that also the photographs got lost during the war, but luckily resurfaced again at the Staatsbibliothek a couple of years ago. They are kept today in two folders, Or. Sim. 5 and 6, The former contain a Syriac translation of Theodore of Mopsuestia’s commentary on Qoheleth and the latter texts in contains various Semitic languages, Arabic (biblical and scientific texts), Syriac, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Hebrew, Samaritan (Bible), but also Coptic (Bible), Latin and Old French (a chanson de geste). In my contribution I will present the history of the collection. In particular, I will focus on the fragments in Hebrew script, including also Judaeo-­‐Arabic texts, and their place in the study of Hebrew manuscripts. Efraim Lev, University of Haifa, Israel Title: ‘Exporting’ Genizah Studies beyond the Realm of Jewish Studies -­‐ the Case of History of Medicine Abstract: Identifying and studying Genizah manuscripts creates a window into the practical and theoretical medicine and pharmacology of the Jewish community. The resulting synthesis forms a unique reflection of the wider "Mediterranean Society" and the Arab world of the time. Given the strong multidisciplinary nature of the field, a decade ago we created a research team aiming to better understand practical medicine and pharmacology in the Mediterranean society. The initial main projects were: A. The reconstruction of the medieval inventory of the practical materia medica of the Genizah community (shedding new light on other issues such as theory vs. practice, linguistics and the commercial aspects); B. Study of original medieval prescriptions and list of drugs from the Cairo Genizah; C. Study of medical notebooks, new genre of medical writing, presenting the way in which medical knowledge was recorded, accumulated and transferred by Jewish practitioners. The results of these projects were published in more than a dozen articles in a wide variety of journals and in two books; they were was also presented in many scientific conferences and in various prestigious institutes around the world. At present, there are two more projects in progress (Prosopography of Medieval Jewish Practitioners in Islamic Lands, and Reconstruction of the Medical Library of the Jewish Practitioners), under the new “Interdisciplinary Centre for the Broader Application of Genizah Research”, that was established at the University of Haifa. Micha J. Perry, University of Haifa, Israel Title: 11th Century Hebrew, Arabic and Latin Letter Formularies from around the Mediterranean Abstract: In this paper I wish to compare six Hebrew letters–all originating from Europe, but found in the Cairo Genizah–for their material; uses; style; structure; and word framing, in order to examine cultural exchange around the Mediterranean basin in the 11th century. This comparison will be accompanied by another comparison, to the art of letter writing among Christians (Ars Dictaminis) and Muslims (Inshâ?) – going back to its Classical roots – and to the practice of scribes to use Formularies. It will eventually lead to a new understanding of the mechanics behind the rise of Hebrew as a shared, unified, lingua franca among Jews in the medieval world. Edna Engel, The Hebrew Palaeography Project, Israel Title: The "Afgan Geniza" and the Cairo Geniza Documents: a Comparative Study of Diplomatic Characteristics Abstract: Discovered in caves in the Smangan region of north Afganistan, the Afgan Genizah includes fragments dated to the 11th century, carrying texts in Judeo-­‐Persian or Persian in Arabic letters. Among those is founde a lot of documentary material including commercial documents; personal and commercial correspondence. Its importance lies in enriching our knowledge of medieval Jewery in Afganistan. As such, the comparison of diplomatic characteristics of the documents with those of contemporary Cairo Geniza documents may contribute to the research of Judeo-­‐Persian culture, concerning its affinity with Mediterranean Jewish culture as well. In this presentation, I will discuss the Hebrew script of the Afgan documents, juxtaposing it with the script of the Jewish-­‐Persian manuscripts in the Cairo Geniza on the one hand, and with stone inscriptions of the same region, on the other. I will also analize the codicology of the Afgan documents according to codicological parameters (such as layout of the text and folds) of the Cairo Geniza documents. Tuesday 22nd July SORBONNE, Salle PICARD (Stairs C, 3rd flour) Session: 001: Medieval Hebrew Poetry 9.00-­‐10.30 Studies in Medieval Hebrew Poetry in Memoriam Professor Ezra Fleischer Chair: Tova Beeri Yosef Tobi, University of Haifa, Israel Title: Rav Sa'adia Gaon's Verse in the Scholarly Work of Professor Ezra Fleischer Abstract: It may be unknown, but my research on Rav Saadya Gaon as a poet had been initiated by the late Prof. Ezra Fleischer, by choosing this subject for me, as his first doctoral student in 1975. Moreover, he provided me with a detailed and well thought-­‐out program for the research. By that, I believe, he expressed his conception about Saadya the poet as an intermediary link in the long chain of Hebrew poetry, from the Eastern paytanic school to Spain. This was explicitly shown in his seminal paper about Saadya’s place in the history of the Hebrew poetry. It should be admitted that Prof. Fleischer published only a few studies whose main subject was Saadya’s verse. However, a quick glance at the entry Saadya in the indices of both magnificent collections of his articles made by Prof. Shulamit Elitzur and Prof. Tova Beeri will easily prove that Saadya’s verse was an important and frequent referential material in his research. The paper is intended, then, to sum up Prof. Fleischer’s conception in regard to Saadya’s verse as a mark stone in the history of medieval Hebrew poetry. Elisabeth Hollender, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany Title: Italian and Ashkenazic Ofanim: Forms and Content Models Abstract: The study of poetic forms and their development was one of the important fields of Prof. Ezra Fleischer's work. Among the genres he studied in depth were all parts of the Yotser composition. Focusing on the early development of the genre, he also analyzed the later developments of the forms in Sepharad, Italy, and Ashkenaz. The paper will investigate the medieval developments of one part of the Yotser composition for which the European authors had only a limited selection of classical models: Ofanim. Medieval Italian and Ashkenazic authors composed many Ofanim, developing models for form and contents that expressed their high regard for this liturgical position. Based on the selection of Ofanim for (special) shabbatot transmitted in medieval Ashkenazic liturgical manuscripts, preferences for the different poetic forms and the content models will be traced, showing the interdependences between payyetanim from different times and different places within the Italo-­‐Ashkenazic school of liturgical poetry. Avi Shmidman, Bar-­‐Ilan University, Israel Title: Identifying Joins of Cairo Genizah Fragments: Traditional Methods versus Artificial Intelligence (A Tribute to Ezra Fleischer) Abstract: One of Prof. Fleischer’s primary research accomplishments was the foundation of the Institute for the Research of Hebrew Poetry in the Genizah and the comprehensive cataloging of Cairo Genizah fragments containing piyyut material. Although the Institute itself does not pursue the identification of fragment joins per se, the raw data that it provides forms a basis from which scholars can quickly and efficiently identify relevant joins. In contrast, a completely different approach is suggested by Nachum Dershowitz and Leor Wolf, two computer science researchers from Tel Aviv University who have devised a method to identify Cairo Genizah joins by the use of artificial intelligence. In this lecture I shall compare and contrast these two approaches towards the identification of Genizah joins. My comparison of the two methods will demonstrate, on the one hand, that in a number of cases the mechanism provided by Dershowitz and Wolf succeeds in identifying joins that would have been impossible to identify using the Institute’s data alone. On the other hand, however, I will demonstrate that in many additional cases, it is only by appealing to the databases of the Institute that we are able to identify the relevant joins. Thus, far from being obsoleted by the new technology, Fleischer’s uniquely comprehensive database continues to remain essential in the field. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session 002: Medieval Hebrew Poetry 11.00-­‐13.00 Medieval Hebrew Poetry, Parody, and Parable in Provence Chair: Tova Rosen Uriah Kfir, Ben-­‐Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: The Construction of Space in Isaac HaGorni's Poetry Abstract: The thirteenth century Hebrew poet Isaac HaGorni is considered to be the most gifted Hebrew poet of Medieval Provence. This lecture is based on my forthcoming critical edition of his poetry and the poems he received from his counterparts in Provence. Not much is known about HaGorni. He himself stated that he wrote hundreds of poems; however, only 19 have been preserved in manuscripts. These poems tell of his travels between the cities of Provence and his encounters – for the good or more often for the bad – with Provençal Jewish communities and fellow poets. Wandering, landscape and space are major themes in the poetry of this roaming poet. However I will show that these themes are not used solely as a window onto HaGorni's life; rather they are also poetic constructions in which HaGorni carefully shapes and presents his self-­‐perception as THE Hebrew poet of Provence as a whole. Aurora Salvatierra, University of Granada, Spain Title: Oheb Nashim by Yedayah ha-­‐Penini: A Debate about Women? Abstract: Since it was edited by Adolf Neubauer in 1884, this text, preserved in only two manuscripts, has received little attention. The work has been considered a continuation of the debate on women (and marriage) that began with Minhat Yehudah Soné ha-­‐Nashim by Yehudah Ibn Shabbetay in the thirteenth century. However, in my opinion, this text is not merely one more example of the development of a literary modality structured around the attack on and defence of women in the Middle Ages. It also includes valuable considerations regarding the conception of poetic discourse, especially in the words that ha-­‐Penini (13th-­‐15th c.) dedicates at the beginning and the end of In Defense of Women to the work by his predecessor Ibn Shabbetay. The analysis of this discourse contributes to a better understanding of the poetics of the period and the evolution of the debate in medieval Hebrew literature. Nili Shalev, Tel Aviv University, Israel Title: "To Understand a Proverb and a Parable": R. Joseph Qimhi's Poems in His Commentaries on Proverbs Abstract: R. Yosef Qimhi was one of the Jewish scholars of Muslim Spain who immigrated to Provence in the twelfth century and brought about an impressive transformation in the spiritual life of the Jewish community there. In his new place of residence Qimhi engaged in a variety of activities, including biblical exegesis. He was undoubtedly a distinguished representative of the unique Jewish biblical exegesis that developed in Provence. In his commentary on Proverbs he made use of Jewish and non-­‐Jewish maxims and epigrams in the manner of the adab style. Thus he also included, anonymously, rhymed moral epigrams from his Sheqel HaQodesh, which was also composed in Provence. Almost forty poems from Sheqel HaQodesh were inserted by Qimhi into his commentaries in order to enrich the text, put its message in greater focus, and provide help in understanding it. Conversely, the insertion of epigrams from Sheqel HaQodesh into the commentaries can also be helpful in the opposite direction: It makes it possible in some cases to clarify certain obscure passages in the epigrams in light of the associated biblical verse, and in others to illuminate a certain perspective in the epigrams' interpretation. In this lecture I would like to demonstrate Qimhi's unique method for integrating his gnomic rhymed epigrams into his explanations of the verses in Proverbs. At the same time, I will try to illuminate the interrelationship between the biblical verses and the poems, while attempting to expose the message at their core. Peter Sh. Lehnardt, Ben-­‐Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: Literary Historical Reconsiderations to the Emergence of Hebrew Parody Abstract: Reading Medieval Parody is a unique kind of challenge for modern readers. On the one hand similar to allegory as an extended metaphor parody is an extended event of intertextuality which has to be carefully expounded, on the other hand parody breaks off the boundaries of the autonomy of the text as its depends on the assumption of intention by the author to exclude an accidently mishap of intertextuality. The paper is intended to offer a model of reading, understanding and interpretation of literary parodies in the pre-­‐romantic age with the help of examples from the cradle of Hebrew parody in 13th century Catalunya and Provence: Medieval parody was not intended to scrape off and overwrite the parodied text, to ridicule and exchange it with a 'new' one, but to live with a text identified with cultural or social authority from now on contaminated by the perspective offered by the author of the medieval parody. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session 003: Medieval Hebrew Poetry 14.00-­‐15.30 Studies in Medieval Arabic and Hebrew Panegyric Poetry Chair: Aurora Salvatierra Jonathan Decter, Brandeis University, USA Title: In Praise of God, In Praise of Man: a Problem of “Political Theology” in Medieval Hebrew Poetry Abstract: In both medieval Hebrew and Arabic poetry, panegyrics directed toward men sometimes draw on scriptural formulae originally found within praises for God. The inter-­‐textual technique is a variety of what was called “al-­‐iqtibas” (kindling one flame with another) in Arabic literary criticism, a variety that was sometimes critiqued as theologically reprehensible. In this paper, I will consider many examples from the medieval Hebrew corpus alongside examples from the Arabic corpus and discussions from Arabic literary criticism. I will also discuss the literary phenomenon as a problem of “political-­‐theology” by considering the ways in which human subjects are made to mimic, or intermingle, with the divine. Uri Melammed, Academy of the Hebrew Language, Israel Title: The Genre of Hallel in the Diwan Poetry of the Jews of Yemen Abstract: Yemenite Poetry throughout the generations distinguishes between six kinds of genres of songs and poems: Nashid, Shira, Hallel, Hidduya, Zaffah and Qatsid. All of them are included in manuscripts of the oldest diwans and printed editions. One of the oldest types of this poetry, that survived only in the Yemenite Jewish community, is the Hallel; it can be found in every Yemenite diwan in separate called Halleloth. This term was chosen because each Hallel starts and ends with the word Wehaleluya ["and praise God"]. Here one encounters a set structure non-­‐metred rhymed verses (pizmonim or hymns). They have very short and rather few hemistitches and have a fixed melody, in contrast to the other genres like the Nashid and Shira. These hymns are recited and sung as choral poetry. Their purpose is to praise and laud God, the people of Israel, or various other participants in any given occasion for celebration: the host of the event, the bride and the groom, the circumciszed newborn son, the ransomed son, etc. The Hallel can be written in one of three Semitic languages: Hebrew, Aramaic or Arabic. During my presentation, I will elaborate upon the traditional-­‐historical structure of the Hallel; its use and transfer from a liturgical into para-­‐liturgical framework; the way it has developed since the 17th century; and its use today in Yemenite Jewish singing. I will present a few of the Halleloth as eamples for analysis as well as compare this genre toan ancient Hebrew Palestinian type of piyyut in order to emphasize my conclusions. Joachim Yeshaya, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany Title: Hebrew Poems in Praise of Moses and the Arabic Genre of al-­‐mada’ih al-­‐nabawiyya (Prophetic Eulogies) Abstract: This paper will examine the Hebrew poems which the Karaite poet Moses Dar‘i composed in mid-­‐
twelfth-­‐century Egypt in praise of Moses, and which recall the Arabic genre of al-­‐mada’ih al-­‐nabawiyya (“Prophetic Eulogies”), i.e., qasidas in praise of Muhammad that became popular in his time. In this paper, I will give an overview of the literary history of the genre of Arabic poems in praise of Muhammad, with the aim of attempting to determine to what extent Moses Dar‘i may have been familiar with this genre, even though he chose to write Hebrew poems in praise of Moses. I will primarily consider examples from manuscript NLR Evr. I 802 (fol. 69a-­‐71a) devoted to the praise of Moses (and Aaron in the case of nr. 231; nrs. 232-­‐233 are devoted entirely to Moses) but also call attention to other examples from manuscript NLR Evr. I 803. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session 004: Medieval Hebrew Poetry 16.00-­‐18.00 Arabic and Romance Models in Medieval Hebrew Poetry in Memoriam Professor Angel Sáenz-­‐Badillos Chair: Masha Itzhaki Haviva Ishay, Ben-­‐Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: Abraham Ibn Ezra and the Classic Qasida—War or Peace? Abstract: Abraham Ibn Ezra was the first to produce in Hebrew poetry a poem with a formal mannerist structure. He introduced arrangement of meters that were unknown in the poetry of his predecessors. He displayed virtuosity in designing complex Muwashat. On the one hand, he challenged the classical tradition that was based on the model of the prestigious qasida, while on the other, he yielded to the authority of that ancient model when he sought to introduce new topics to Hebrew poetry. The lecture will treat the debate Abraham Ibn Ezra waged with the model of the qasida as an individual case of his debate with the Andalusian poetic tradition. Arie Schippers, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands Title: Jewish literature as a Link between Arabic and Romance Poetry and Narrative: The case of Immanuel of Rome and his Mahbarot (Cantos) Abstract: Immanuel of Rome (1261-­‐1328), a poet contemporary of the famous Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-­‐1321), was an Italian poet as well as a poet in the Hebrew poetic tradition. This Hebrew secular poetic tradition originated from Muslim Spain under the influence of Arabic prosody and grammar in the tenth century, due to the results of the study of the Hebrew language in Muslim Spain and North Africa. In the sixth Mahberet (Canto) Immanuel of Rome alluded to the different Hebrew poetic schools which he supposed to have existed since then, leading to the production of rivaling Spanish, Provençal and Italian Hebrew poetry parallel to the development of the different Romance poetry schools in Occitan, Italian and French. Immanuel's other Cantos contain narratives in rhymed prose with many poems inserted. These poems can be sometimes metrically read according to the Arabic and Hebrew metrical system as well as according to the rules of Romance genres as for instance the sonnet. We will especially concentrate upon the introductory passages of Immanuel's Cantos, in which the narrator, in the company of his Prince or Maecenas, often refers to the beginning of an event in the days of his youth which is a motif known in Eastern Arabic Maqamah literature and Hebrew Andalusian rhymed prose narratives. Tsuji Yoshiaki, Doshisha University, Graduate School of Theology Title: The "Jawab" in Jewish Yemenite Poertry -­‐ its character and technic Abstract: The "Jawab" (in Arabic) or in Hebrew "Shir ha-­‐maaneh", both mean "an answer", is a genre of Jewish Yemenite Poetry through ages. Usually those who make a poem in this genre, for example 16 century's Rabbi Zacharia al-­‐Dahri, combine original verses with a well-­‐known poem which already had been made before, and create new one, changing original meanings the antecedent poem had. Yemenite Jewish poets, who loved this technic, had made many poems in this genre, most of the cases using poems of The Golden Age of Spain, like Yehuda Ha-­‐Levi and so on. However this interesting phenomenon hasn't attracted scholars' attention, and has been neglected so far except for some small but important studies. In this paper I exhibit some instances and analyze how the technic works, in other words how the new poem changes the meaning of the original poem. Amina Boukail, Université de Jijel-­‐Algérie Title: La représentation de l’Autre dans les Maqamat de Judah AlHarizi (Tehkimoni) Abstract: Les textes de Judah AlHarizi présente un champ riche d’étude et qui reflète bien la situation des Juifs dans le monde arabe médiéval et leur rôle culturel entre de différentes cultures. Notre propos est de mettre d’approfondir l’appréhension de l’altérité dans la littérature hébraïque médiévale à travers les textes narratifs de Judah Alharizi. Nous envisagerons l’« Autre » qui est surtout l’arabe ou l’islam par trois axes : 1-­‐ Les référents de l’Autre dans la littérature hébraïque médiévale 2-­‐ Les personnages arabes dans les Maqamat de Alharizi 3-­‐ L’image de la littérature arabe dans les Maqamat de Judah AlHarizi. Tuesday 22nd July SORBONNE, Salle HALBWACHS (Stairs C, 1st flour) Session: 001: Hebrew Language and Linguistics 9.00-­‐10.30 Chair:Geoffrey Khan Samuel Blapp, University of Cambridge, UK Title: The Diversity of the So-­‐called Non-­‐standard Tiberian Vocalisation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew Abstract: The paper will make a contribution to the study of the medieval reading traditions of Biblical Hebrew. I shall present samples of vocalisation and accentuation that can be found in manuscripts, which have been classified by Davis as belonging to the non-­‐standard Tiberian vocalisation tradition of Biblical Hebrew. This data will be compared to the Codex Leningradensis B19a (L) and the Aleppo Codex in order to highlight the differences. Furthermore, I shall attempt to organize them to show the diversity of features occurring within this tradition. Thus, I will subsequently suggest that there is a multitude of traditions rather than only just one. Although, they share some features, they also show important differences, which make it impossible to claim only one category. For instance, one can find evidence for the standard Tiberian vocalisation in these non-­‐standard manuscripts but one can also find differences in vocalisation in L that deviate from the standard Tiberian tradition. Hence, the terminology used to describe the different vocalisation traditions and the diversity of these traditions should be reconsidered. David Prebor, The Academy of the Hebrew Language, Israel Title: Singular and Plural Hebrew Forms in the Commentary of Hizkuni to Genesis Abstract: The northern French school of Jewish biblical exegesis is one of the most celebrated that developed during the medieval period. Rashi, the great scholar of Troyes, is the best known of this school. His biblical commentaries were even studied by Christian scholars. A few generations later Hezekiah ben Manoah (fl. 13th century in northern France) wrote his commentary to the Pentateuch, known as Hizquni. The publication of Chavel's edition of Hizquni (1981) contributed to the increased popularity of this commentary. However, the commentary of Hizquni has not received sufficient attention by scholars. One of the areas not yet studied is the many linguistic comments in Hizquni. In addition to his comments on the Hebrew and Aramaic languages, he brings many leazim (Old French glosses), distinguishes between French and Latin (see Chavel's edition page 521) and even brings a Greek term (comment to Genesis 40:1). In this paper I will examine the use of singular and plural Hebrew grammatical forms in the book of Genesis and analyze Hizquni's explanations of them. There are eight comments in Hizquni to Genesis dealing with singular and plural forms. Sometimes his comments reflect well known usage such as pluralis majestatis and pluralis tantum. Other comments are quite original. All of these linguistic comments will be presented, explained and examined in light of other commentaries and in light of modern day knowledge of linguistics. Adel Shakour, Al-­‐Qasemi Academic College of Education and Bar Ilan University, Israel Title: The Use of Arabic Words in the Hebrew of Arab Authors Writing in Israel Abstract: The main subject of my lecture is to examine the impact of Arabic on the Arab authors writing in Hebrew. Specifically it examines their use of words and phrases borrowed from Arabic in literary works that they wrote in Hebrew and their literary translation from Arabic into Hebrew. These words and phrases, which are mostly from spoken Arabic, serve to increase the authentic sense of the Arab culture that the text depicts. Two methods are used to convey the flavor of Arabic culture in Hebrew texts: one involves using Arabic words and phrases without quotation mark, the other technique is less subtle and involves placing quotation marks around the Arabic words and phrases. I will report also on the phenomenon of Arab authors in Israel writing in Hebrew. "Writing in Hebrew" refers to literary works originally written in Hebrew or translated from Arabic to Hebrew, the scale of the phenomenon of writing in Hebrew, the bilingual literary works of Arab authors in Israel, and Israeli society's acceptance of Arab authors writing in Hebrew. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session 002: Hebrew linguistics 11.00-­‐13.00 Panel: Covert Hybridity in the Language of Israel Organizers: Nurit Dekel and Gil’ad Zuckermann Chair: Nurit Dekel and Gil’ad Zuckermann Ghil'ad Zuckermann, University of Adelaide, Australia Title: Universal Constraints in Language Revival: Lessons from Israeli and Other Hybrid Tongues Resulting from Reclamation Abstract: After a brief analysis of the ethical, aesthetic and utilitarian benefits of language revival, this trailblazing paper will propose the establishment of Revivalistics, a new trans-­‐disciplinary field of inquiry studying systematically and comparatively the universal constraints and global mechanisms on the one hand, and local peculiarities and cultural relative idiosyncracies on the other hand, apparent in linguistic revitalizations across various sociological backgrounds. With coca-­‐colonization and homogenization there will be more and more groups added to the forlorn club of the lost-­‐heritage peoples. Language reclamation will become increasingly relevant as people seek to recover their cultural autonomy, empower their spiritual and intellectual sovereignty, and improve their wellbeing. There is an urgent need to offer perspicacious comparative insights, eviscerated of ideological bias, e.g. from the so far most famous language reclamation movement: the Hebrew revival in Israel, which resulted in the hybridic Israeli language. This paper will also provide perspicacious insights from the Barngarla, Kaurna and Ngarrindjeri revivals in South Australia, and from many other revival cases such as Maori in New Zealand and Hawai’i in the United States. Nurit Dekel, NSC -­‐ Natural Speech Communication, Israel Title: The European Elements of the Israeli Verbal System Abstract: The verbal system of spoken Israeli Hebrew (Israeli hereafter; see Zuckermann 2006) is perceived as a Semitic root-­‐pattern formation system. In this lecture I will show that this core system in Israeli is a hybrid system that contains both Semitic and European elements; I will concentrate in many European-­‐like elements that are the basis of this system. I will review the following fundamentals of the Israeli verbal system: 1. the verbal system internal morpho-­‐semantic interface. The morpho-­‐semantic structure of the Israeli verbal system is based on aspectual (and minor modal) properties, similarly to European languages: aspect and modality are grammaticalized and correspond to constant morphological forms. The Israeli verbal system is commonly perceived as tense-­‐based (Coffin & Bolozky 2005); in this lecture I will show that time is not grammaticalized in the verb system, but is expressed by independent lexemes, as in European languages. 2. The formation of new verbs, having Israeli origins I will bring examples of a new strategy for the formation of verbs that is used by the speakers, which is based on a noun + a verbal suffix, and not on a root-­‐pattern formation. 3. The formation of new verbs, having foreign origin I will show that new verbs, originating in foreign words, preserve their original phonological distribution when becoming an Israeli verb; they are not automatically adjusted to a common pattern selected by the speakers. All these features of the Israeli verbal system make this system uniquely hybrid, having both European and Semitic properties. References: Coffin-­‐Amir, E. and S. Bolozky. 2005. A Reference Grammar of Modern Hebrew. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Zuckermann, G. 2006. A New Vision for "Israeli Hebrew": Theoretical and Practical Implications of Analysing Israel's Main Language as a Semi-­‐Engineered Semito-­‐
European Hybrid Language. Journal of Modern Jewish Studies Vol 5, No. 1. 57-­‐71. Gitit Holzman, Levinsky College of Education, Tel Aviv, Israel Title: Monotheism versus Hybridity: Clandestine Religious Mythology as Infrastructure for Allegedly Scientific & Impartial Linguistic Studies Abstract: Jewish religion is characterized by unique monotheistic faith as well as by peculiar set of commandments, aiming at distinguishing its adherents from other people and defining them as Jews. Many of these commandments deal with creating strict borders between different categories, such as between sacred and profane, pure and impure, allowed and forbidden, human and divine. In addition, large portion of the Jewish law is dedicated to defying mixture or hybridity as such -­‐ these are the famous Shaatnez laws. Judaism thus admires purity, regarding its concept of deity and its adherents' daily conduct alike. It may very well be that this influential Jewish tradition resulted in typically perceiving 'hybridity' as being by and large an inferior quality, while 'purity' is a desirable one. The end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth witnessed the foundation of modern Jewish community in the land of Israel. The new settlers invested much time and effort not only in working the land and in its corporeal construction, but they also labored on creating Modern Hebrew culture. Eliezer Ben-­‐Yehuda and other political activists, writers and intellectuals, insisted that this new culture would be Hebrew speaking, striving to transform Biblical Hebrew into a modern vernacular. This heroic effort seemed to be miraculously successful as the Israeli Jewish community deserted diverse Diasporic tongues and adopted what is believed to be Hebrew. However, Ghil’ad Zuckermann’s recent studies demonstrate that this ‘Modern Hebrew’ is in reality a Semito-­‐European hybrid. Its grammar relies on Hebrew, as well on Yiddish, the revivalists’ mother tongue, and on a plethora of other languages spoken by its founders, e.g. Polish, Russian, German, Arabic and Ladino. Despite hard evidence proving the hybrid nature of ‘Modern Hebrew’, Israelis believe they use revived Biblical Hebrew. This paper will claim that this stance is not objective & scientific one, but rather a religious myth in disguise. The seemingly secular modern Israeli culture has allegedly detached itself from the ancient monotheistic belief. However, religious monotheism is alive and kicking within this culture, preventing scholars and laymen alike to acknowledge the Semito-­‐European hybrid character of modern Israeli language. The Zionist secular, anti-­‐religious movement has actually shifted from worship of one God to worshiping the concept of one language, professing the unity of biblical Hebrew and modern Israeli. Malka Muchnik, Bar-­‐Ilan Universiry, Israel Title: Did Gender Change from Classical to Modern Hebrew? Abstract: Over the course of the long history of Hebrew, there have been many significant changes in the language. However, the grammatical structure, including gender restrictions, has survived virtually unchanged since the classical periods. Even the fact that Hebrew was not spoken for close to 1700 years did not cause radical changes in its morphology. In recent decades, some changes have been introduced in Hebrew, reflecting a more egalitarian attitude concerning gender. Nonetheless, despite the efforts made, the change achieved with respect to sexist language has been insufficient, as many attempts at change were rejected or at least ignored (Muchnik 2013, in pressa, b). The fact that Hebrew presents a very rigid grammatical structure could be viewed as a positive characteristic. The speakers are aware of the large number of gender markers in the language, and therefore, any change, and particularly grammatical changes, cannot go unnoticed. While this awareness frequently leads to negative reactions, it may also lead to a better understanding of the problem and to selection of a method for solving it. Although some gender differentiations have almost disappeared, and original masculine and feminine forms for the second and third person were unified, they did not develop into gender neutrality. The clear direction is for masculine forms to assume the feminine meaning as well, but not the inverse. This change leads towards a wider use of generic forms, which in reality presents an androcentric bias, and makes women less visible. As Cameron (1996) and Romaine (1999) asserted, nonsexist language cannot evolve naturally without social changes and commitment to equality. Linguistic reforms can only succeed if they are accepted by the public and officially published by authorities and institutions, but this is not the case with Hebrew. Of course, gender changes in the language are only one element of a more general social and ideological change. Eckert & McConnel-­‐Ginet (2003) show that changes occur as an interruption of patterns set down over generations and throughout our own development. However, such sorts of interruptions do not come suddenly, but rather as small intentional or unintentional events. The lexicon is the part of the language that is the most likely to be changed, and this is important for the introduction of new ideas. In contrast, grammatical items are more stable, and although they may change, this occurs very slowly. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session 003: Hebrew Book History 14.00-­‐15.30 Chair: Ilana Tahan Annett Martini, Institut für Judaistik, Free University Berlin, Germany Title: The Work of Heaven: Transcultural Oscillations within Ritual Writing in Judaism Abstract: Looking at the material features of Torah scrolls and the small pieces of written parchment within the Mezuzot and Tefillin one immediately becomes aware of the serious endeavour of the scribes to avoid any kind of modifications. The quality of the parchment, the colour of the ink, the layout and the forms of letters remained unchanged during more than two thousand years except for slight variations. Apparently, the different cultural environments of the Jewish communities in the diaspora did not touch the world of Soferim STaM who were entrusted with passing on the holy scrolls within very tight halachic boundaries. However, the multifaceted scribal literature behind the written artefacts shows a different picture. Here we find reflections not only of internal Jewish tensions, halachical and philosophical trends, or mystical movements, but also of the cultural surrounding in terms of social, political, ritual, and aesthetical issues. The objective of this paper is to outline the most important facets of these reflections by means of almost unexplored sources of scribal literature written in Christian and Muslim contexts. It will be argued that, on the one hand, the engagement of Jewish halachists and scribes in their cultural environment resulted from the necessity to exclude non-­‐Jewish influences from a religious realm that plays such a crucial role for preserving Jewish identity. On the other hand one can determine remarkable shifts with respect to ritual or performative aspects of the process of writing, to the reputation of the scribe in society, and to the circumstances of life of the scribes, which in some regions are reminiscent of Christian and Muslim scriptoriums and thus can be read as transcultural oscillations between Jewish and non-­‐Jewish cultures. Rahel Fronda, The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, UK Title: Contacts between Jewish and Non-­‐Jewish Cultures to do with Medieval Ashkenazi Bibles with Micrography Abstract: The many ways in which non-­‐Jewish culture has influenced the production of medieval illuminated Hebrew manuscripts are known and have also been studied recently. These include iconographical appropriations of non-­‐Jewish models and involvement of Gentile artists. On the other hand, the relation of manuscripts with Hebrew micrography — that is a uniquely Jewish art form — to non-­‐Jewish environment in 13th century Ashkenaz has not been dealt with. Hebrew manuscripts are known to reflect the practices of the places where they have been produced and so, even in the case of Hebrew micrography it is perhaps not surprising that 13th century Ashkenazi Bibles with micrography are in many ways closer to their local Latin manuscripts than to Sephardi Bibles with micrography. Talking about the making of medieval Hebrew manuscripts, it is crucial not to underestimate the role of their surrounding non-­‐Jewish milieu. In my paper I shall describe a variety of contacts between Jewish and non-­‐Jewish cultures to do with medieval Ashkenazi Bibles with micrography. These include their formats, codicology, contents and also contemporary historical events. As an example, the layout of Latin manuscripts has had an important influence on the legibility and arrangement of early 13th century micrographed Hebrew Bible manuscripts that were produced in Germany. New codicological practices and innovative methods to do with treating parchment that the producers of Hebrew manuscripts had borrowed from their non-­‐Jewish colleagues are witnessed by an important dated manuscript of 1264 with micrographic decorations. Apart from these technical details, some 13th century Ashkenazi Bibles with micrography contain linguistic clues that reveal not only sporadic or professional contact with the non-­‐Jewish culture but prove how well some patrons and scribes-­‐artists were culturally integrated in their non-­‐Jewish environment. Besides the progressive developments in the making of the medieval Hebrew book that are a result of direct contact between Jewish and non-­‐Jewish cultures, some manuscripts bear historical events of hostility and persecution. Such an extraordinary chronicle is codex Hebr. 16 in Vienna — a 13th century micrographed Hebrew Bible — where the masorete Abraham tells the story of Rintfleisch massacre of 1298 in Franconia by writing it in large letters formed by micrography. Ilana Tahan, The British Library, UK Title: Matters of provenance: Hebrew manuscripts from the library of a distinguished French Archbishop Abstract: In 1946 the British Museum acquired six important Hebrew manuscripts which are now part of the British Library's manuscript collection. All six manuscripts were copied in the 15th century most probably in Italy. Among them are found: Ibn Pakudah's philosophical work 'Hovot ha-­‐Levavot' (Duties of the heart) and Joseph Gikatilla's kabbalistic treatise 'Sh'are orah' (The gates of light). This paper will explore: a) the manuscripts and the background to their acquisition; b) their fascinating provenance and their illustrious former non-­‐Jewish owners. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session 004: Masora/Bible 16.00-­‐18.00 Chair: Elodie Attia Elvira Martín-­‐Contreras, CSIC, Madrid, Spain Title: The Image to the Service of the Text: Ornamental Masorah in the Manuscript 118-­‐Z-­‐42 (M1) from the Complutense University Library Abstract: The codex M1 consists of 340 unpaged folios and contains the whole Hebrew Bible except for the folios which contained Exod. IX 33b-­‐ XXIV 7b. According to its colophon it was bought by R. Yishaq and R. Abraham, doctors, in Toledo in 1280. This manuscript has been considered by Ch. Ginsburg as “a magnificent codex” and one of the codices which served as a model for the Hebrew text of the Complutensian Polyglot edited by Ximenez de Cisneros in the 16th century. The Mm is given in three lines in the upper margin and in four lines in the lower margin of each folio, and the Mp occupies the outer margins and the margins between the columns. Besides the Mm, a number of lengthy Massoretic Rubrics are given as Appendices at the end of the Pentateuch, Former Prophets, Latter Prophets and Chronicles. The upper Mm is mainly written in straight lines, sometimes combined with geometric patterns; and the lower Mm can be written in straight lines or in waves or in circles or in zigzag lines. In some cases, the Mm can continue on the left or right margins of the page in ornamental shape. This paper offers the localization and description of all the masorot in ornamental shape and those written in geometric patterns. The study of all of them allows me to formulate the following hypothesis: the form of the masorot is determined by their content. Yosef Ofer, Bar Ilan University, Israel Title: Acrostics in Masoretic Notes Abstract: Acrostics are common in medieval literature, where they usually serve to highlight the name of the poet or his patron, or to offer a prayer to a saint. The use of an acrostic to indicate authorship of a work is widespread in many cultures and in different languages. In Hebrew, the practice of creating an acrostic to spell out the name of the author of a liturgical poem started in the classical period (5th or 6th century), and the earliest poets to do so were Yanai and Hadwata. The liturgical acrostic served to assert the poet's ownership of his work and protect his rights. The integration of his name as part of the work itself offered far better durability than an external notation of his authorship. An acrostic may sometimes indicate the name of the scribe who copied the manuscript: the highlighting of certain words in the text might allude to his name, or the structure of the copied text might be planned in such a way that the first letters of each line form an acrostic of his name. In recent years some examples of such acrostics have been discovered in the Masoretic notes accompanying ancient manuscripts of the Bible. (The Masora is a system of comments and rules established by the Masoretes to determine and preserve the precise text of the Hebrew Bible.) Dr. David Lyons exposed three acrostic signatures in MS British Library Or. 4445, which is a manuscript of the Pentateuch. I have discovered two further acrostics: one in a biblical manuscript, the other on a page of a Masoretic work. The lecture will address the ways in which the Masoretes create their acrostic signatures, and what we may deduce from these acrostics concerning the location of the manuscripts in time and place. All of this will be compared with acrostic signatures of liturgical poets and scribes. Viktor Golinets, Hoschule für Jüdische Studien Heidelberg, Germany Title: Editing the Text of the Leningrad Codex of the Hebrew Bible Abstract: The text of the Leningrad Codex of the Hebrew Bible has been printed in several scholarly editions. A new edition, the Biblia Hebraica Quinta, is under way. There are many features of the hand written text that complicate making a diplomatic text edition. On many pages of the codex, the original text is worn out, and it has been re-­‐inked sometime later. Because of this feature, the first hand of the manuscript is sometimes difficult to decipher, and the whole idea of a diplomatic text edition comes into question. In many places there are omissions of text signs due to the negligence of a scribe. These omissions often occur at the end of a word, and there are many cases of omissions of the same kind. The question arises, if it is useful to mention all such cases in the textual apparatus. There are also many morphological forms in the Leningrad codex that “contradict” some rules of the Masoretic grammar. However, contrary to the judgments of modern text editions, such forms are no mistakes but conditioned realizations. This lecture attempts to classify difficulties of editing the Leningrad Codex and to suggest new solutions. Elodie Attia, Heidelberg University, Germany Title: Masorah and Micrography in the ms. Vat. Ebr. 14 (Northern France, 13th century) Abstract: This lecture presents the results of a critical edition prepared at the University of Heidelberg, CRC 933 Project Material Textculture. It deals with all the Figurative Masorah from Exodus’book of the manuscript Vat. Ebr. 14, a Northern -­‐
French biblical manuscripts copied during the first half of the 13th century by Elijah ben Berakhiah ha-­‐
Naqdan. It evaluates the accuracy of the masoretic notes preserved in the manuscripts of Elijah ha-­‐Naqdan (Vat. Ebr. 14, Ber. Or. Qu. 9) and in oldest ashkenazic Bibles (Valmadonna 1, Vat. Ebr. 482) vis à vis the ancient oriental masoretic traditions (represented in this work by Leningrad Codex, BL Or. 4445, Damascus Pentateuch and M1 of the Complutensian of Madrid). Tuesday 22nd July SORBONNE, Salle LALANDE (Stairs C, 1st flour) Session: 001: Jewish Languages 9.00-­‐10.30 Chair: Jean Baumgarten Alexia Duchowny, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brasil Title: The Judeo-­‐Portuguese Lexicon of Magia (Ms. Laud Or. 282, Bodleian Library) Abstract: This is a presentation of the lexicon from Duchowny (2007) edition of De magia (Ms. Laud Or. 282, Bodleian Library), a Jewish manuscript of Portuguese origin, dating from the fifteenth century. It was elaborated at the College of Language and Literature at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil. The format of the resulting product will be on line, on the Internet, to make the access easier, and it should be published by the end of 2014. The target audience of this lexicon is mainly diachronic linguists interested in the History and characterization of Iberian languages, especially Judeo-­‐Portuguese. Nonetheless, it is also very useful for linguists and other scholars from other fields of knowledge: History, Sociology, Anthropology, Physics, Astronomy and Astrology. To analyze the lexicon of De magia, the words were collected and organized in alphabetical order by WordSmith Tools (Oxford University Press), and then classified and characterized. The theoretical and methodological basis of this research is Lexicography and Terminology. The development of this lexicon is an important contribution to better understanding not only of Medieval Judeo-­‐Portuguese, but also of the components of other languages -­‐ such as Portuguese, Catalan, Spanish and Galician. It also provides a reliable corpus for authors of historical dictionaries. Valentina Fedchenko, State University of Saint-­‐Petersburg, Russia Title: Periphrastic Constructions with the Verb "ton" in Yiddish Abstract: Periphrastic “do”-­‐constructions is a quite widespread phenomenon in the languages of the world. Yiddish presents an interesting linguistic material in this field. In comparison with its host-­‐language (German) the Yiddish verb system has been exposed to certain general changes as, from one side, the reduction of the grammatical forms of the host-­‐language and, from the other side, the emergence of new grammaticalized constructions and new grammatical meanings due to language contacts. A diachronic development of a number of models with the Yiddish periphrastic “ton” auxiliary will be studied in the present paper. The constructions to be studied are the following: 1) ton + INF. di levone tut shajnen “The moon shines” 2) hobn + ton + INF. in lejen shrajbn hat er tun shtudirn “he has learnt to read and to write” 3) ton + INDEF.ART. + SUB. ix tu a kuk “I look” These constructions will be analyzed as tense and aspect markers, their emphatic functions will be presented as well. Different grammaticalization paths of the verb “ton” in Yiddish will be revealed and compared with similar cases in Germanic languages with special attention to contact-­‐induced grammaticalization phenomena. Ori Shachmon, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: Non-­‐Jews writing in Hebrew characters: Christian Minorities in Israel on the seam-­‐line between language and culture Abstract: The offered lecture will explore the linguistic hybridity which characterizes some of the Palestinian-­‐Christian communities, which prefer to send their children to Jewish-­‐Israeli schools where they are taught in Hebrew. As an outcome, these Christian Arab children speak and write Hebrew fluently, but -­‐ while Arabic is their mother tongue, some of them are completely incapable of reading and writing it. When they need to write in Arabic (names, notes, text-­‐messages -­‐ but also religious prayers!) they transliterate the Arabic words using Hebrew characters. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session 002: Jewish Languages Medieval Europe 11.00-­‐13.00 Chair: Jean Baumgarten Uličná Lenka, Charles University Prague, Czech Republic Title: Judeo-­‐Czech Abstract: In the paper I will present the findings of the three-­‐year project Canaanite Glosses in Medieval Hebrew Manuscripts with a Bond to the Czech Lands which ended last year. The research in manuscripts helped to correct some errors of the editions (ʿArugat ha-­‐Bośem, Or zaruaʿ) and clarify the overall view of the so-­‐called Knaanic language or medieval Judeo-­‐Czech. Ilil Baum, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: Judeo-­‐Catalan or Catalan of Jewish Use? Linguistic Integration vs. Differentiation of Catalonian Medieval Jewry Abstract: Much has been written about Judeo-­‐Spanish, but research of the other dialects spoken by Jews of the Iberian Peninsula is very limited. In fact, there is no comprehensive research describing the language of the Jews of Catalonia. The Catalonian Jewish community had yielded during its Golden Age some of the greatest Jewish sages, such as Ramba"n (or Nachmanides). It gradually declined during the Middle Ages until its final destruction in the Expulsion of 1492. After the expulsion, the Jews of Catalonia were assimilated among the Sephardi Jews and traces of their language can only be found in the Judeo-­‐Spanish within the Ottoman Empire. Precisely because of that, it is of great importance to examine texts that reflect the distinctive Catalan characteristics of these Jewish communities based a on a less familiar and not-­‐well-­‐
researched corpus. "Judeo-­‐Catalan"? Whether the Jews of medieval Catalonia had their own language or dialect, or did "Judeo-­‐Catalan" ever exist, is a question that requires a discussion on the term "Jewish languages" in general and "Judeo-­‐Catalan" in particular. Researchers have argued that the Jews of medieval Catalonia spoke the same language as their Christian neighbors, but, in fact, so far Jewish-­‐Catalan, hasn't been described. This paper will demonstrate some of the parameters that may distinguish between the language of the Jews from that of the Christians. Such as: the sophisticated use of the Hebrew component when in contact with the La’az (or Jewish Romance) of Medieval Catalonia; the use of Hebrew characters; the existence of unique phonetic, morphological, and lexical variants that are not or are rarely documented in Medieval Catalan. These would be demonstrated on examples from five rare wedding songs written in Hebrew characters from the XIV-­‐XV century. These examples can attest to the degree of linguistic integration or differentiation of Catalonian Jews in the Middle Ages, serving as a great contribution to the research of Catalonian-­‐Jewish community and its language. Michael Ryzhik, Bar-­‐Ilan University, Israel Title: Basilisk, Deaf Aspid (Aspido Sordo) and Dragon: the Reptile Names in the Judeo-­‐Italian Biblical Translations Abstract: There are six (or five) snake species that are named in the Bible and some other reptiles, such as crocodiles and varans. These names seem to be names of concrete really existing species living in the Land of Israel. The Judeo-­‐Italian translations of the Bible have clear tendency to translate them with the names of fantastic creatures, taken probably from the medieval Bestiaries. This tendency exists already in the Vulgate (and may be in the Septuaginta, it will be shortly discussed in the paper), but it is much enforced in the Judeo-­‐Italian medieval and early Renaissance translations even when compared with the Italian Christian biblical translations, such as Bibbia Volgare or Diodati. The same tendency we see in the Jewish Hebrew-­‐Italian dictionaries of the Biblical Hebrew, such as Maqre Dardeqe or Semah David. It may reflect some more general linguistic approaches in the culture of the Jews of Italy. Julia Krivoruchko, University of Cambridge, UK Title: Hebrew/Aramaic Component in Secret Languages: the Case of Greek Abstract: The use of Hebrew/Aramaic loanwords in argotic language varieties is a well-­‐known phenomenon that has been sufficiently studied for many European languages. Recently, the use of the Hebrew/Aramaic component was highlighted in the articles of the ‘Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics’ (Brill, 2013). However, Greek material was not included in EHLL and remains largely unknown to scholars. The paper examines selected examples of Hebrew loanwords in the sociolect of Greek underworld. It is envisaged that these loanwords have been adopted into the argot varieties from the Judeo-­‐Greek sociolect(s). The data are sourced from the records of anthropologists researching Greek underworld, the author’s own field work, and internet. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session 003: Medieval Rabbinic Literature 14.00-­‐15.30 Exegesis in Northern France Chair: Judith Kogel Léa Himmelfarb, Bar Ilan University, Israel Title: The Ethical-­‐Religious Perspective for Miracle Performance in Rashbam`s Biblical Commentary Abstract: This lecture is devoted to Rashbam`s attitude towards miracles. I present examples from Rashbam’s commentary which illustrate his tendency to the theological perspective for G-­‐d’s miraculous intervention. Each example is preceded by the narrative background necessary to understand it and Rashbam’s commentary in each case is delineated, with emphasis placed upon the philosophical principle he introduces. Nava Cohen, Bar Ilan University, Israel Title: Rashbam's View of the Worldly Good in Qoheleth Abstract: The "calls to hedonism" in the Book of Qoheleth (2:24-­‐26; 3:12-­‐13; 5:17-­‐19; 8:15; 9:7-­‐10; 11:7-­‐
10), in which the author encourages man to "live the moment", to eat, drink, rejoice in his labor, and make the most of what the present has to offer, caused discomfort and presented considerable difficulty to Medieval Jewish and Christian commentators. These scholars wondered how the "good" that Qoheleth endorses could be such a material, bodily, hedonistic good. The conventional religious view is that a material focus draws a person to regions from which the spirit is excluded, and that an emphasis on the value of material life may become an obstacle to proper conduct. My lecture will analyze the unique exegetical approach to these calls to hedonism adopted by Rashbam (Samuel ben Meir), and show how he integrates them within his overall literary perception of Qoheleth and its messages. In contrast to those commentators who reject these calls or express their reservations, Rashbam does not shun these recommendations, nor does he discount the pleasures that they entail, and he seeks no interpretation of them that avoids their plain sense. On the contrary, he views these calls as expressing a person's obligation to enjoy and rejoice in life in this world. His comments here are a good example of his unique approach in which the plain meaning of the text, as arrived at through linguistic and textual analysis, merges with the biblical world-­‐view. Rashbam's position is that not only are these two spheres not mutually exclusive, but they nourish and complement one another. Ingeborg Lederer-­‐Brüchner, Hochschule für Jüdische Studien Heidelberg, Germany Title: R. Josef Kara's Commentary Versions on the Book of Ruth Abstract: At least three versions of commentaries on the Book or Ruth are attributed to R. Josef ben Shim'on Kara (ca. 1055-­‐1125) in medieval Hebrew manuscripts. All of them convey features that are exemplary for the exegesis of the Northern French School in the footsteps of Rashi. Like the latter, Kara is known for interpreting biblical texts according to their literal meaning and peshaṭ exegesis. However, at least one commentary on the Book of Ruth ascribed to Kara presents a broad usage of midrashic literature. As this is quite unusual for Kara's approach to biblical analysis, the phenomenon of citing various traditional literature is the main topic of my remarks. In addition to that, a choice of Kara's illustrations on the Book of Ruth by comparing his different commentary versions shall be discussed. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session 004: Shorashim 16.00-­‐18.00 Panel: Roots on the Net: Towards a Digital Edition of Kimhi's Sefer ha-­‐Shorashim and its Latin Translation(s) Organizer: Judith Kogel Chair: Judith Kogel Judith Kogel, Institut de recherche et d'historie des textes/CNRS, France Title: How is Qimḥī’s Shorashim different from the other? Abstract: Less than forty years after Judah ibn Tibbon translated Ibn Janāḥ’s Kitāb al-­‐Uṣūl into Hebrew, David Qimḥī availed himself to write a new dictionary of Hebrew roots, known as Sefer ha-­‐Shorashim. This book achieved great success and consequently overshadowed the work of his predecessor which nevertheless served as a model to Qimḥī. A preliminary research based on the roots starting by the letter ṭeth seems to constitute a representative sample for the history of the text. First of all, it allows to better grasp Qimḥī’s motivation for writing a new dictionary. Further, the analysis of this relatively small corpus gives us clues to understand Qimḥī’s lexicological approach to the Hebrew root and his strategy in the organization of each entry. This corpus also includes genealogical variants allowing us to divide the manuscripts into two major families in the prospect of establishing a stemma codicum and therefore, contributes to understand better the methods of dissemination of this work in the medieval Jewish communities. Saverio Campanini, Institut de recherche et d'historie des textes/CNRS, France Title: “Thou bearest not the root, but the root thee”. On the reception of the Sefer ha-­‐Shorashim in Latin Abstract: Within the panel presenting the research project dedicated to the digital edition of David Kimchi’s Sefer ha-­‐Shorashim, its transmission and translation, my communication will be concerned with the main chapters of its reception within the Christian world during the Renaissance: from Johannes Reuchlin adaptation of the lexicon in the books II and III of his De rudimentis hebraicis (1506) through the various adaptations of Sebastian Münster (1523, 1525; 1535; 1539) to the complete, largely augmented, version offered in print by Sante Pagnini in his Thesaurus linguae sanctae (1529), the Biblical dictionary had been the object of an intense confrontation, on the grammatical no less than on the exegetical and theological level, from the leading figures of Christian Hebraism in the first half of the XVI century. A less known testimony of this interest, blending critical examination and appropriation is the integral Latin translation made by, or rather for, Cardinal Giles of Viterbo preserved in two mss. (at the Biblioteca Angelica in Rome and at the University Library of St. Andrews in Scotland), probably during the second decade of the XVI century. The paper will offer, beside a rapid presentation of the situation of Hebrew lexicography in Latin at the beginning of the Renaissance and its deep change through the contested adoption of Kimchi’s model, a synthetic view of the principal features of the various approaches to Kimchi’s dictionary, from simple adaptation to the rather complex moulding of a bilingual dictionary of Biblical Hebrew, to the paradoxical phenomenon of the translation of a monolingual lexicon (with the notable exception of its numerous Provencal glosses) in a different language. In the latter case, represented by Giles’ of Viterbo’s Liber radicum, the semantic loss is evident: what remains worth investigating is the expected exegetical gain for the Humanistic understanding of the Bible in an age of upheavals. Sonia Fellous, Institut de recherche et d'historie des textes/CNRS, France Title: Kimhian Elements in Arragel's Bible Abstract: The Biblia de Alba is an illuminated manuscript containing a translation of the Old Testament in romance from the Hebrew and Latin. The biblical text and its very rich iconography are enriched by many rabbinic commentaries sometimes followed by Christian glosses. Rabbi Moses Arragel Guadalajara is the author of this huge compilation. He works for the Grand Master of the Order of Calatrava, Don Luys de Guzman which imposes the control of two Christian supervisors Brother Enzinas Arias, a Franciscan, and Don Vasco de Guzman, a Dominican. Identification of the literary sources presented by the Rabbi is made difficult by the fact that they are often anonymous. However Moses Arragel mentions the name of the most famous authors; some are Christians, but the others are mostly Iberian Jews. Among them he quotes "Rabbi Joseph el Camhy", Rabbi Joseph Kimhi, but also Rabbi David Kimhi, although he does not mention his name. Nevertheless, David Kimhi‘s biblical comments and Sefer ha-­‐ Shorashim are often used in polemics passages and enlighten Moses Arragel’s choices both in the field of translation and of iconography. Naomi Grunhaus, Yeshiva University, Israel Title: Radak’s Lexical Shorashim and his Biblical Commentaries: A Comparison of his Biblical Interpretations between the Two Works Abstract: Radak’s lexical Shorashim and his later biblical commentaries belong to distinct, yet overlapping genres. It would be expected that in writing his commentaries, he would refer at times to his earlier linguistic work. While it is true that in the commentaries he does often rely on or even reiterate interpretations he had presented earlier, in many cases he actually contradicts explanations he had offered previously. This paper assesses the relationship between Radak’s approaches in the two works, by analyzing differences in actual interpretations of individual verses between the linguistic Shorashim and the commentaries. Some of the contradictions in interpretation can be attributed to the difference in genres. However, in a considerable number of cases the most plausible explanation for the rejection of his earlier interpretation would appear to be a change in his own views. The paper confirms that when writing his commentaries, Radak did not feel constrained by the biblical interpretations he had offered previously in his linguistic Shorashim. These self-­‐contradictions demonstrate his development over time as an exegete, as well as his flexibility and adaptability in being open to new interpretations—a tendency that may well have fostered his success as an exegete. Tuesday 22nd July SORBONNE, Salle Gaston PARIS (Stairs E, 1st flour, on the right) Session: 001: Jewish History: Middle Ages 9.00-­‐10.30 Panel: From the Synagogue to the Market Place: Aspects of Medieval Jewish Piety in Christian Europe Organizer: Judah Galinsky Chair: Susan Einbinder Judah Galinsky, Bar-­‐Ilan University, Israel Title: Between the Shma and the Credo: Understanding Jewish Religious Practice in Medieval Ashkenaz Abstract: One of the more difficult tasks of the historian studying earlier societies is trying to understand the basic beliefs and ideals that inspired the religious devotion of the people. Much of the surviving materials from medieval times reflect the belief systems of the elite but rarely those of the common person, man and woman. One possible avenue to explore in attempting to get at the central beliefs is to examine the basic prayers of the religion. It was the liturgy, especially those prayers that were formulated in a straightforward manner, which bound the learned and unlearned together and created a common religious language. In my paper I will suggest that the three sections of the Shma, as understood by the medieval commentators, allow us to better understand the medieval religious world view of French Jews and help us to identify the ideological roots of their piety. Sarit Shalev-­‐Eyni, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: Between Synagogue and Church: The Aural-­‐Visual Prayer Experience in Medieval Ashkenaz Abstract: The general construction boom in the Rhine valley and other German areas led to the erection of stone synagogues .These were built in close proximity to local churches in the town centers, where Jews habitually lived at that time. Although these structures were always modest in size and shape compared with the magnificent contemporary cathedrals and churches, they shared similar architectonic values. And yet, as we shall see, their inner design was based on an ancient Jewish tradition, which was foreign to local schemes and befitted a different aural-­‐visual prayer experience, rooted in a non-­‐Western worldview. The contrast between the plans of the interiors of Christian and Jewish worship spaces reflects an essential difference in the nature of the prayer service and its vocal results, though the diffusion of attitude prevalent in the general society had also an effect. This paper strives to combine some sparse testimonies left in written and visual sources, together with a few remnants of synagogue architecture of the time, into a mosaic of spoken words, voices, and sights that will enable us to suggest a partial reconstruction of the aural-­‐visual experience that comprised the ritual domain of medieval Ashkenaz between the twelfth and mid-­‐fourteenth centuries Adam Davis, Denison University, USA Title: Comparing the Charitable Impulse of Medieval Jews and Christians in Northern Europe Abstract: During the 12th and 13th centuries, Latin Christendom experienced a charitable revolution, as new charitable religious orders were established and hundreds of leprosaria and hospitals were founded to house the sick and poor. There remains a need to examine how medieval Jews experienced and responded to this new charitable activity among the Christian laity and flowering of Christian charitable institutions. This paper will explore the religious and cultural meaning of charitable giving for medieval Jews and Christians in 12th and 13th-­‐century northern Europe. How familiar were Jews and Christians with each other’s' charitable practices, and how did these two religious cultures of charity compare with one another? In particular, this paper will address Jewish and Christian perspectives on coerced charity, on the categories of the "deserving and undeserving poor," and on the relative importance of a giver's reward (including the role of the giver's intentions) versus a gift's impact on its recipient. This comparative analysis will be based on a close reading of medieval rabbinic responsa and the writings of Christian theologians and canon lawyers, as well as Christian and Jewish exempla (Jacques de Vitry, Caesarius of Heisterbach, and material from Sefer Hasidim). 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session: 002: Jewish History: Middle Ages 11.00-­‐13.00 Panel: Jews in the City, Three Case Studies from Late Medieval Regensburg Organizer: Eva Haverkamp Chair: Eva Haverkamp Eva Haverkamp, Ludwig-­‐Maximilians-­‐University Munich, Germany Title: Introduction into the Panel "Jews in the City, Three Case Studies from Late Medieval Regensburg" Abstract: The introduction into the panel "Jews in the City, three case studies from late medieval Regensburg" will provide the questions about the different realms of communications between Jews and Christians in the city of Regensburg, and in their larger contexts in medieval Bavaria and the Empire. M.A. Astrid Riedler-­‐Pohlers, Ludwig-­‐Maximilians-­‐University Munich, Germany Title: Jewish and Christian Physicians in Late Medieval Regensburg Abstract: The relationship between Jewish and Christian physicians will be discussed regarding central questions as for instance the knowledge each group had about the other. How was this knowledge used and applied to in everyday life? Are there topics both groups had in common, did they differ in treating them? Other aspects which sources reveal concern medical fees, patients, medical qualifications, patients and treatments. Sophia Schmitt, Ludwig-­‐Maximilians-­‐University Munich, Germany Title: Networks in Regensburg around 1476 Abstract: Evoked by the ritual murder trial in Trent in 1475 the city council of Regensburg tried to press similar charges against their Jewish community in 1476 which led to years of trial involving different local powers such as the bishop, the city council and the duke of Bavaria as well as the emperor. The events following the accusations reveal the complex relationships between and among Jews and Christians on different levels and intensity also in wider geographic dimensions. These formal and informal networks will be analysed, their connection will be emphasized and evaluated with regard to the ritual murder accusations. Conclusions can be drawn concerning these networks in general and regarding the integration of Jews in these structures. Veronika Nickel, Ludwig-­‐Maximilians-­‐University Munich, Germany Title: The expulsion of the Jews from Regensburg in 1519 Abstract: The expulsion of the Jews from Regensburg -­‐ starting on February the 21st 1519 and accomplished within a few days -­‐ marked the end of one of the oldest medieval kehillot in Germany. In contrast to most other communities, the Regensburg kehilla had never experienced any eviction from the city before. The decision of the Regensburg city council to expel the Jews was in a way abrupt. Nevertheless, over several years the town councils had undertaken various efforts to diminish the Jewish community or force them to leave. Most of these efforts were carried out on a judicial basis, more precisely before the imperial courts which at the end of 1519 declared the expulsion illegal. This long-­‐winded process opens not only a deep insight into the relations between Jews and Christians in Regensburg but also in to the ways of juridical interaction between city council, Jews and the emperor. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Session: 003: Jewish History: Middle Ages 14.00-­‐15.30 Panel: Rethinking the Boundaries of the Jewish Neighborhood: Medieval and Early Modern Times Organizer: Simha Goldin, The Goldstein-­‐Goren Diaspora Research Center, Tel Aviv University Chair: john Tolan Simha Goldin, The Goldstein-­‐Goren Diaspora Research Center, Tel Aviv University, Israel Title: The Boundaries of the Jewish Community: Jewish Perceptions of their Environment Abstract: My lecture will focus on the question of the manner in which Jews perceived the Christian cities in which they lived. A traditional view is that Jews of the Diaspora longed for the Land of Israel, saw their sojourn in exile as a decree from Heaven, and of a temporary nature, and therefore may not have established a deep connection with the city and its space. In reality, the Jews of medieval Europe were very firmly rooted in the physical and social fabric of the Christian towns in which they lived. While I am by no means trying to claim that the Jews identified only with their physical surroundings and forgot their yearnings for the Land of Israel, there are nevertheless many expressions of propinquity between the Jews and their physical surroundings, and my lecture will explore and analyze them. Merav Schnitzer, Tel Aviv University, Israel Title: The Jewelry Connection: Tracing Jewish Women in the Medieval City. Abstract: Jewish women's practices of adornments in Medieval Ashkenaz were debated by the Halachic sages of the period; these debates provide us a new perspective on women's daily life in the medieval cities. In my lecture I will follow these new perspectives: the role of jewelry and ornaments in Jewish women's life, the influence of their Christian neighbors and the conflicts between the role of Fashion and the role of Halacha. Naomi Feuchtwanger-­‐Sarig, Tel Aviv University, Israel Title: Wedding Rites and Customs in Ashkenaz: The Christian Perspective Abstract: Jewish life in the urban setting in Europe offered daily interaction between Jews and Christians on every level, resulting in mutual exposure to rites and customs. This paper will examine these interactions as seen from the Christian prism through the Middle Ages and Early Modern period, taking the Jewish wedding as a point-­‐in-­‐case. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session 004: Jewish History: Middle Ages 16.00-­‐18.00 Panel: Rethinking the Boundaries of the Jewish Neighborhood: Medieval and Early Modern Times 2 Organizer: Simha Goldin, The Goldstein-­‐Goren Diaspora Research Center, Tel Aviv University Chair: john Tolan Joseph Isaac Lifshitz, Tel Aviv University and the Shalem College, Israel Title: The Church and Laws of Jewish Ritual in the Development of the Jewish Street: A Symbiotic Relationship Abstract: The symbiotic relationship between Jews and the German society is evident, though we do not know the extent of that interdependence. Regardless of difference of lifestyle and religion, the mundane and the necessities of life created friendships. But as Yaakov Katz has claimed, difference of religion was not always strictly an obstacle between the two groups. Laws of the Sabbath were also an influence on the relationship. In my paper I will show how laws of Mezuzah (a piece of parchment inscribed with a verse from the Torah and placed on the side of the door), and laws of Eruvin (a ritual enclosure that Jewish communities construct as a way to permit the carrying of objects outside the house during the Sabbath and holy days), serve as a catalyst of symbiosis between the Jews and the non-­‐Jews. The Jewish street was actually property of the bishop, a fact that was used for leniencies regarding laws of Mezuzah and Eruvin. Ephraim Shoham-­‐Steiner, Ben Gurion University, Israel Title: Reevaluating the Role of Cologne in Medieval Ashkenaz Abstract: Most of the textbooks and most of the scholars that have discussed medieval Ashkenaz tended to focus on the SHUM communities of Speyer Worms and Mainz. With a textual legacy in the forefront, and in the case of Worms and Speyer with actual buildings and tangible remains like the famous "heilige sand" cemetery in Worms and the remains of the synagogue and mikvah accompanying the impressive and ancient literary legacy this scholarly and popular tradition was, and still is, followed by many. Cologne however is another matter altogether. Although it is almost always referred to as the older community, the one with an impressive Roman legacy "the oldest Jewish community north of the Alps" it is nevertheless in the shadow of the SHUM communities especially due to the absence of positive evidence to suggest a vibrant intellectual network the like of which we find with regard to Mainz Worms and subsequently Speyer. Even once Cologne eventually does "catch up" in the thirteenth century it is quite clear that it is an orbiter around the heavier and more powerful center in the SHUM communities. In the proposed lecture, reflecting work in progress based on a collaboration between Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Hollender of the Goethe University in Frankfurt and Dr.Ephraim Shoham-­‐Steiner of Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheva, some preliminary results and some questions based on textual research will be made. These finds suggests that the Cologne Jewish community is indeed more ancient than the SHUM communities and is probably of a different nature as well. Recent archeological finds have brought these questions to the forefront of a scholarly debate. Without making a clear statement at this point about the controversial "question of continuity" of Jewish life in Cologne from late antiquity and into the middle ages it seems however that the new findings may indeed shed new light on texts that have been on scholar's desktops from the early days of the Wissenschaft das Judentums and who may now be read differently. Can it be that when the SHUM communities were first settled there was already a Jewish community in Cologne? Is it possible that this community was different in nature, less scholarly and more layman in its orientation? Did it follow a more northern French-­‐Lotharingen tradition rather than a middle Rhine SHUM based tradition. These are some of the questions raised and the suggestions that will be made in the lecture. Christoph Cluse, Universität Trier, Arye Maimon-­‐Institut für Geschichte der Juden, Germany Title: Arithmetics and the Image of 'Jewish Usury' in Late Medieval Germany Abstract: The paper will take a fresh look at the tables of compound interest, spread in south-­‐western Germany since about the 1460s both in manuscript and print, in which the adverse effects of taking out a loan from a Jewish moneylender are displayed in a drastic imagery of exponentially growing amounts of interest. Its particular concern will be about their relation to the spread of numeracy and practical mathematics in this period. The paper will present some of these tables and explain their imagery as well as the arithmetic behind them. In a second step, I will look at various primers of reckoning that appeared in print during the late-­‐15th through mid-­‐16th centuries and describe the way in which they taught about compound interest. Finally, I will consider whether these arithmetic exempla were in any way related to the social reality of the Jewish loan business in late-­‐medieval Germany (and propose that in fact they were). Rella Kushelevsky, Bar Ilan University, Israel Title: Sefer ha-­‐Ma'asim and the Medieval Renaissance: The Case of 'R. Meir and Yehuda of Anatot' Abstract: 'R. Meir and Yehuda of Anatot' is one of 66 tales in Sefer ha Ma'asim, an impressive and unique story collection from 13th c. France, still unpublished. (A critical edition is now being prepared by me for publication.) While many of its tales are known from Earlier Jewish sources in the Talmud and Midrash, this one was probably composed or at least re-­‐worked in Medieval Europe. Inter-­‐textual clues suggest an influence of Marie de France's fables, specifically the tale of the 'Goat and the Wolf' (no. 89/90), which was probably mediated to the Jews through the Hebrew fables of her contemporary, Berekhyah ha-­‐Naqdan (the Punctuator). 'Beware' warns mamma goat her kid. 'Don't dare to open the door for any one while I am away to fetch some food'. Her warning was tested soon enough, as the wolf hurried to the house, trying to tempt the kid to let him in. This episode of Marie de France and of Berekhyah was reworked as a Jewish narrative in 'R. Meir and Yehuda of Anatot' of Sefer ha-­‐ Ma'asim, carrying a different moral. In my talk I will deal with these inter-­‐textuality affinities from the broader perspectives of the story compilation as a whole and its cultural dialogue with the surrounding vernacular literature in France. I claim that sefer ha-­‐ma'asim takes part in the medieval renaissance in Western Europe, by appropriating this literature, responding to and negotiating with it through two main techniques which I intend to elaborate on and exemplify. Tuesday 22nd July SORBONNE, Salle DELAMARRE (Stairs E, 1st flour, on the right) Session: 001: Byzantine Jewish Life 9.00-­‐10.30 Panel: Jewish Life in Early Byzantium Organizer: Nicholas de Lange Chair: Nicholas de Lange Anastasia Loudarou, The Jewish Museum of Greece, Title: Jews, Christians and Pagans in Early Byzantine Greece: Exploring the Interrelations through Inscriptions: The Current State of Research and New Perspectives Abstract: Inscriptions are an important – if not the only – available source of information for the study of the Jewish communities of Greece in the early Byzantine period (4th – 6th c.), revealing significant data as to the everyday use of the Greek language among Jews, their nomenclature and their religious and social concepts, reflecting to a greater or lesser extent the impact of the external environment. This presentation examines and highlights briefly the available archaeological data, sets them in relation with the legal documents of the period and makes a first attempt to draw some general conclusions on the interaction between Jews and their external environment, while also raising new research questions. Alexander Panayotov, Independent researcher Title: Jewish Everyday Life in Early Byzantine Asia Minor and the Balkans Abstract: My paper will investigate the social, economic and political developments in the early Byzantine Empire that influenced the structure of everyday life of the Jewish communities in Byzantine Asia Minor and the Balkans. The scope of the paper is defined temporally and spatially. It is proposed to begin in the fourth century CE and end in the eighth century CE. This will allow the inclusion of the widest possible selection of epigraphical, literary and archaeological sources. I aim to clarify the place the Jewish community occupied within the social structures of Byzantine society and will focus my investigation on several aspects of Jewish everyday life such as communal organisation and leadership of the Jewish community, the social status, occupation and cultural concerns of its members. Evidence for everyday contacts between Jews, Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities in the areas concerned will also be presented. I plan to go beyond the published record and investigate unpublished sources with particular focus on the epigraphical and archaeological evidence. A number of unpublished inscriptions and archaeological data from Heraklion, Priene, Thessalonica, Corinth, Argos, Sparta, Stobi and Chios will be analysed. Data from the recently excavated synagogues in Andriake, the ancient port of Myra (Demre, Turkey), and possibly Limyra (near Turunçova, Turkey), Saranda (Albania) and Chios (Greece) will also be included. Nicholas de Lange, University of Cambridge, UK Title: The Greek Bible in the Early Byzantine Synagogue: Justinian's Novella 146 Reconsidered Abstract: Novella 146 of Justinian (553 CE) is a key document for studying various aspects of Jewish belief and practice in the early Byzantine period. However many problems persist. This paper focuses on the vexed issue of the language of scriptural readings in the synagogue. We shall analyse the very different interpretations that have been proposed, and offer an interpretation based on the wider history of the Kulturkampf between Greek and Hebrew in the Byzantine synagogue. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session: 002: Byzantine Jewish Life 11.00-­‐13.00, 14.00-­‐14.30 Panel: Byzantine Karaite Culture Organizer: Nicholas de Lange Chair: Nicholas de Lange Julia Krivoruchko, University of Cambridge, UK Title: Studying Hebrew Bible in the Fourteenth-­‐Century Byzantium: New manuscript Evidence Abstract: The paper aims to introduce to the scholarly public a little known manuscript containing an anonymous Hebrew-­‐Greek glossary to Prophets. The manuscript is severely damaged and contains no explicit data about the provenance of the text or its author(s). The analysis shows that the glosses originate from a number of sources, from traditional Hebrew biblical commentaries to highly individualized reflections on local historical context. The Greek glosses are equally inhomogeneous, with some continuing\inspired by Aquila and others reflecting contemporaneous Greek. On the basis of the palaeography and codicology of the manuscript, the reconstruction of the dialect and analysis of its content it is argued that the work, to all probability, has been compiled by a Byzantine Karaite that lived in the Northern part of Asia Minor. Thus, it provides valuable data about the lower-­‐level Biblical study in the region. Ofer Elior, University of Geneva, Switzerland Title: Attitudes towards the Study of Science in the Fifteenth-­‐Century Jewish Constantinopolitan School: The Testimony of Joseph Baghi's Keter Kehuna Abstract: In the course of history, Jewish cultures have evinced contrasting attitudes towards non-­‐Jewish cultures: some advocated openness, while others insisted on maximal closure. The alternations of Jewish cultural centers between these two basic attitudes are arguably one of the most significant aspects in understanding Jewish cultural dynamics. The primary aim of this paper is to shed light on attitudes towards a non-­‐Jewish body of knowledge, namely science, in the Jewish community of Constantinople during the fifteenth century. As shown in several studies, in this geo-­‐cultural environment developed and flourished a school of learned men, both Rabbanite and Karaite, who read, penned, and taught scientific texts. The proposed paper will uncover some of the ideological stances on which this scientific activity was founded. It will examine several passages in Keter Kehuna, a treatise co-­‐authored by a scholar who was a product of the Jewish Constantinopolitan school, the Karaite Joseph ben Moses Baghi (born ca. 1490). In these passages Baghi, relying on Rabbanite and Karaite authorities, emphasized the necessity and explained the benefits of learning science. The main part of the paper will be devoted to an examination of Baghi's arguments. Additionally, I will discuss Baghi’s motivations for advancing these arguments. I will point to statements where Baghi confronts unnamed adversaries who allegedly opposed to teaching and learning sciences. I will suggest that these statements constitute an evidence for disagreements, hitherto unknown, on the legitimacy and proper place of the study of science, among contemporary Karaite and perhaps also Rabbanite scholars. Golda Akhiezer, Ariel University of Samaria, Israel Title: The Historiography and Historical Consciousness of Byzantine Karaites Abstract: Karaites settled in Byzantine in the 10th century and were a minority among numerous rabbinic communities. Rabbanite leaders characterized Karaites as strangers who came from Muslim lands, studied from Muslims, and introduced innovations in Jewish tradition in an arbitrary way. These Rabbinic accusations served as a catalyst for the development of Karaite historiography. Byzantine Karaite historiographical literature tried to demonstrate the continuity and authenticity of their tradition by means of historical arguments, although these arguments were mostly of ahistorical nature. The paper focuses on two Byzantine Karaite treatises of different genres: The Cluster of Henna by Judah Hadassi (12th century) and especially on The Schism between Karaites and Rabbanites by Elijah ben Abraham (the late 11th to early 12th century). Both scholars tried in completely different ways to define Karaism, outline its tradition, and interpret the schism between Karaites and Rabbanites. Their historical and ahistorical arguments reflect certain tendencies of their historical thought and self-­‐perception. 13.00-­‐14.00: Lunch Break Bertram Schwarzbach, Independent scholar, France Title: The Exegesis of Dr Aharon ben Yosef the Karaite Abstract: As a medical man, R. Aharon had many difficulties with the Biblical texts, some of which he was able to resolve by recognizing the rhetorical elements in the texts. He was nearly a man of the Enlightenment centuries before Richard Simon and Mendelssohn. Session: 003: Byzantine Jewish Life 14.30-­‐15.30 Panel: Crete Organizer: Nicholas de Lange Chair: Nicholas de Lange Martin Borysek, University of Cambridge, UK Title: Jewish Self-­‐Government and Mechanisms of Power of the Jewish Authorities in Venetian Crete as Documented in Takkanot Kandiyah Abstract: Takkanot Kandiyah is a collection of legislative texts regarding the leadership of the Jewish community in Candia, the capital of the Venetian colony of Crete in early 13th to mid-­‐17th century. The documents, most of which belong to the “para-­‐halakhic” genre of takkanot kahal (communal statutes), were written by the successive generations of the leaders of the Jewish community and edited in a comprehensive collection in the 16th century by the prominent Jewish historian and Candiot communal leader Elijah Capsali (ca. 1485-­‐ca. 1550). Communal statutes of the takkanot kahal genre are not an integral part of the canon of the halakhic law. Its specificity consists in the fact that the authority of the statutes is not derived from the Bible or the basic canonical text of Rabbinic Judaism (especially Mishnah and Talmud), but rather from the authority of the elected communal leaders themselves. As such, the statutes were legally binding only for the members of the community for which they were issued. In the pre-­‐
Enlightenment Jewish society, the takkanot kahal texts serve as an instrument of legal control both in respect to the principles of halakhic rules and the laws enforced by the non-­‐Jewish ruling power. The statutes and ordinances collected in Takkanot Kandiyah regulate activities relating to all areas of Jewish life in Medieval and Early Modern Crete, covering halakhic topics as well as more general problems of economic and inter-­‐personal relations within the community and between the Jews and non-­‐Jews of Candia. Some of the texts address also the administrative questions and organisation of the communal politics. Thus, Takkanot Kandiyah provides a uniquely detailed insight in to the history of Jewish everyday life in Venetian Crete. As well as an historical source, Takkanot Kandiyah is also an important testimony on the functioning of Jewish communal administration and self-­‐government in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period. This paper will address those passages of the collection in which the authors present themselves, directly or indirectly, as the rightful leaders of their community and defend the system of inner Jewish autonomy which gradually evolved in the Candia community, as the ideal way of life under the rule of law, properly interpreted and wisely enforced by the communal elders. It will be argued that Takkanot Kandiyah can be read as coherent “communal constitution”, a legal code with a unifying argument and an important moral dimension. This argument consists in the double role of the collection: its task was to be both a practical source of communal rules valid for the needs of the present day, and a reminder of former glory of the past times, with the potential to inspire and lead the future generations. Giacomo Corazzol, University of Bologna, Italy Title: The Judeo-­‐Greek Translation of the Book of Jonah: A Custom from Medieval Candia Abstract: In 1885 Adolf Neubauer announced a surprising discovery: the presence, within a «Corfu Mahazor», of what in his opinion was to be considered as «the earliest modern Greek text we possess in prose». Neubauer referred to the well-­‐known Judeo-­‐Greek translation of the Book of Jonah contained in ms. Add. oct. 19 (Neubauer 1144) of the Bodleian Library, another version of which is found in ms. Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, 3574 A, which was produced in Candia (Crete). The two texts are slightly different versions of a calque-­‐translation of the Book of Jonah of the type used in classrooms (and usually transmitted in oral form) for the education of children. In the following years, partly through Neubauer’s personal efforts, the news of the finding speedily spread. One hundred years later Malachi bet-­‐Arié (immediately followed by Nicholas de Lange) pointed out that Neubauer’s assumption concerning the ancientness of this translation was based on a misinterpretation of a date found in a deed of sale at the end of the manuscript possessed by the Bodleian Library. Still, despite the doubts already expressed by Lazaros Belleli and Dirk C. Hesseling in the years 1901-­‐1904, the assumption according to which this translation was read on the afternoon-­‐prayer of Yom Kippur in the synagogues not only of Candia, as can be safely stated on the basis of a responsum by Me’ir Katzenellenbogen of Padua to Rabbi Eliyyahu Capsali of Candia (who had turned to his colleague for an opinion as to the lawfulness of the custom), but also of Corfu and throughout the Byzantine world at large has developed into a common-­‐place in Judeo-­‐Greek studies. The paper shows that Neubauer never produced any evidence demonstrating the Corfiote origins of the translation and its use on Yom Kippur in the Greek Synagogue of Corfu and that this notion, handed down and repeated uncritically, has risen to the status of an accepted truth despite all evidence point to the fact that the custom of reciting this translation of the Book of Jonah on Yom Kippur was limited to Candia alone, where, according to the testimony of Katzenellenbogen, it was an “ancient custom”. Only in a place where the use of such a translation had become integral part of the rite, could its text leap out of the classroom, as it were, and find its way into prayer-­‐books. The only element that may have driven Neubauer to convince himself that the translation originated in Corfu is that he knew that the manuscript had been bought in Corfu: he did not consider that after the loss of Crete by the Venetians (1669), many members of the Jewish population had left the island and settled in Corfu and Zante. To conclude with, the paper explores the cultural and political reasons that may have led a Romaniote Jew like Capsali to promote the abolition of a peculiarly Romaniote custom. 15.30-­‐16.00: Coffee Break Session 004: Byzantine Jewish Life 16.00-­‐18.00 Panel: Judah Hadassi's "Eshkol ha-­‐kofer" in its Karaite and Byzantine Contexts Organizer: Chair: Daniel Lasker Daniel J. Lasker, Ben-­‐Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Title: The Karaite Context of Judah Hadassi's Eshkol ha-­‐Kofer Abstract: The most prominent literary remain of Byzantine Karaism in the twelfth century is Judah ben Elijah Hadassi’s Eshkol ha-­‐kofer (“Cluster of Henna”; cf. Canticles 1:14), a Hebrew repository of Karaite learning, law and lore which marks the end of the classical period of Karaism of the Golden Age of the tenth and eleventh centuries and the beginning of new Byzantine directions for the sectarian group. The German-­‐
Israel Fund is sponsoring a project which will produce a new partial edition (based on uncensored manuscripts) and studies describing the book's Karaite and Byzantine contexts. This lecture will discuss the Karaite context. Saskia Doenitz & Sandra Goergen, Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany Title: Greek in Eshkol ha-­‐Kofer: How to deal with Greek in Hebrew Letters? Abstract: The intention of our lecture is to show a work in progress: We will show how we deal with the Greek that appears in the Hebrew manuscripts of Eshkol ha-­‐Kofer. Our main task is to transcribe and translate the Greek words. But there is more than meets the eye: How to deal with different language Levels and difficult readings in the framework of the History of the Greek language? How does the Greek fit into the Hebrew context? What can be learnt from vocalization about the pronounciation of the Greek words? We will give an insight into our work in the joint project between the Byzantine Institute at the Freie Universitaet Berlin and the Ben Gurion University of the Negev. Jannis Niehoff-­‐Panagiotidis, Free University of Berlin, Germany Title: Hokhma mi-­‐Yavan: Access to Greek Education for Byzantine Jews Abstract: It is evident that Yehuda Hadassi had access to Greek philosophical teaching, and this in the original language. Since his Eshkol ha -­‐ Kofer is dated to 1148 Constantinople, it should be investigated which were the possibilities of learning philosophy there, and which kind of philosophy. Since our sources are, as the Byzantine part is concerned, quite good, a tentative sketch for a public consisting of specialists in Jewish studies will be presented -­‐ in Byzantium, the teaching of philosophy was quite different from the Latin West. But the main question to be investigated is: How could a Jew, and a Karaite, have access to this learning? Were there not restrictions for non -­‐Christians to do so? Far from being conclusive, a kind of preliminary result will be presented. Wednesday 23rd July ENS, Salle CÉLAN (Main building, ground flour, map: 14) Session: 001: Modern Genizot 9.00-­‐10.30 Panel: Genisa – Genizah Organizer: Martina Edelman Chair: Martina Edelman Martina Edelman, Jüdisches Kulturmuseum Veitshöchheim, Germany Title: The Genisaprojekt Veitshöchheim: Providing Access to New Sources of Jewish History in Franconia Abstract: In 1998 the Genisaprojekt Veitshöchheim was founded to establish a database for Genizah fragments of Bavaria (mostly Franconia). About 40 places of remaining genizoth in the Northern Bavarian region are known, one of them the large genizah of Veitshöchheim. After finishing the inventory of 15 genizoth the database now provides accessible information about authentic Jewish historic sources of live and culture. The lecture will give an impression of the functioning of the Genisaprojekt Veitshöchheim and will point out conclusions concerning the inventory of a genizah. Linda Wiesner, University for Jewish Studies Heidelberg, Germany Title: Textile Stories -­‐ The Textiles of the Genizah of Niederzissen Abstract: In 2010, while examining the former synagogue of Niederzissen, (Rhineland-­‐Palatinate) amateur historians found an extraordinary and well preserved Genizah. Besides numerous scripts, the Genizah contained nearly 300 textiles. The textiles are dated from the 17th to early 20th century, with most findings originating in the 19th century. With pieces for personal use (Tallith katan, bag for the Tefillin) and also pieces for synagogical use (Torah curtain, Torah mantle, Torah binder), the textiles allows us an insight to the way of life of a rural community in the Rhinelande. In my talk I would like to focus on the textiles, an otherwise little considered field of research. With using only a small subset of the found objects I will demonstrate how textiles can be used to show specific aspects (exchange with the non-­‐Jewish society, social standing of the Jewish community and other aspects) of everyday life of this rural Rhinelande community and I will expose the limits of research in the context of material culture. Claire Decomps, Région Lorraine / Service de l'Inventaire général du patrimoine culturel, France Title: La genizah de Dambach-­‐la-­‐Ville, une découverte inestimable pour la connaissance de la vie juive dans communauté rurale alsacienne Abstract: Présentation de l'opération de sauvetage et analyse des éléments découverts fin 16e-­‐1894 (250 mappot, livres, parchemins, objets. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session 002: Jewish Heritage 11.00-­‐13.00 Creating and Using Collections Chair: Anna Lebet-­‐Minakowska Anna Lebet-­‐Minakowska, National Museum, The Czartoryski Museum Kraków, Poland Title: Not only the Lady Abstract: The Princes Czartoryski Museum in Krakow is usually known as the home of Leonardo da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine. However, the collection contains also numerous precious Jewish objects. Judaica from the Czartoryskis Collection were acquired in 19th century, when the collection was managed by Prince Władysław Czartosyki, grandson of the foundress, Princess Izabella Czartoryski, née Fleming. Some of them took a long way from Poland to France and back. After the 1830-­‐31 Polish-­‐Russian War, the collection was evacuated from Puławy (then Russian Poland) to Sieniawa (then Austrian Poland) and settled in Hotel Lambert, Paris. Traces of the voyage can still be seen on the sephardic amulet case, Megilat Ester bound or besamin -­‐ they still bore French import stamps from the years 1864-­‐93. The Jewish museum objects are already mentioned in the first catallogue of Czartoryski Collection (written in 1869). A silver, gold-­‐plated filigree binding for Megilat Esther was purchased on the brink of 18th and 19th century, we can assume therefore that it was Izabella Czartoryska herself who done it. The binding is made with great precision and it is an example of supreme goldsmith craftsmanship. Austrian tax stamps from 1806/7 point that it was made before that date. Another judaica went to collections in subsequent years: bonnets and "załóżkas" (women's clothing accessories) in 1882, the Jewish woman dress in 1888, and embroidered collars for Yom Kippur kittel in 1892 . It is therefore the oldest recorded collection of Judaica in Poland. John Champagne, Penn State Erie, the Behrend College, USA Title: Explaining Judaism to the Goyim: The Jewish Museum of Rome Abstract: In 2005, the Jewish Museum of Rome specifically undertook a project of renovation and reorganization, the goals of which were, as the museum's website suggests, to “interpret” the works displayed, “translating them into effective experiences from an educational, intellectual, cultural and aesthetic point of view for an audience as wide as possible.” This paper will examine the ways in which the museum explains Italian/Roman Judaism to non-­‐Jews in particular. It will argue that, caught between at least three competing agendas – the preservation of the Community's artifacts; the education of non-­‐Jews in the religious practices of Orthodox Judaism and the history of Jewish Rome; a specifically twenty-­‐first century museological agenda of inviting commentary and controversy – the museum is necessarily marked by contradictions that constitute its very conditions of possibility. Agnieszka Alston, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland Title: Jewish Cultural Patronage and Collections in Krakow at the Turn of the 19th and the 20th Centuries Abstract: The presented paper confines to the time frame of 1867-­‐1918, as the year of the December Constitution that brought political and social changes to Jews of Krakow and Galicja. This new period of great and rapid changes created a new stature to Krakow society -­‐ Jewish plutocracy and intelligentsia. The end of the Great War, 1918, gave even more opportunities to Galician Jewry, especially to the rapidly growing Jewish intelligentsia, their involvement in new county politics, economy and culture. The years after the World War I brought an overwhelming bloom of this social group, whose patronage in culture was different due to advanced political and social modifications, but also to changes within the artistic scene in Krakow. While it was not likely to hear in Krakow about great collectors of the caliber of the Rothschilds or of benefactors as existed among the Warsaw or Lodz Jewish bourgeoisie (L. Kronenberg, J. Nathanson, J. Bloch, I. Poznański), Krakow was not lacking for there was a small but growing group of Jewish plutocracy and intelligentsia who took significant part in patronizing the local culture. Additionally, Krakowian cultural institutions were benefited by Jewry from Warsaw (M. Bersohn, F. Gebethner), Lvov (M. Goldstein), and elsewhere. The wide autonomy of the Grossherzgtum Krakau during the changes within the Austro-­‐
Hungarian Empire with the proclamation of equality of all citizens of Galicja and thus gave the opportunity to Jews to enter actively into the cultural scene of Krakow. The Krakow Jewish plutocracy: bankers, financiers, capitalists (rich members of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry) and Jewish intelligentsia (medical doctors, architects, and scholars) modeled their cultural patronage on the old aristocratic tradition. In other words they ordered family portraits (St. Feintuch, J. Oettinger, H. Rozenzwieg, J. Sare, A. Schwartz, H. Szarski, and others) from the renowned establish painters’ ateliers of T. Axentowicz, J. Fałat, J. Marczewski, L. Wyczółkowski, St. Wyspiański. Furtherer they created collections of fine arts that reflected accumulated wealth and which was also a financial investment (E. Beres, Blumenfeld, Z. Ehrenpreis, W. Fränkel, L. Holzer, S. Tiles). Having a distinguished collection it was highly regarded to be seen to loan or to donate art pieces or collections to the museum (F. Gebethner, M. Berson, Glicenstein, A. Sternschuss, J. Judkiewicz and others). In Kraków, artistic patronage was centered on the Society of Friends of Fine Arts (1854) and the National Museum (1879). Members of Krakow Jewry were chosen as distinguished members of exhibitions’ committees. They were frequent purchasers of exhibited works of talented students of the Krakow Fine Art Academy. In Krakow, unlike in Warsaw, there were not so many residential art salons belonging to Jewish collectors whose goals were to improve the prestige via presence of artists and cultural elite, again activity based on the Polish aristocracy. However, there was one such salon that was led by Henryk Frist (1875 Salon of Polish Painters). Additionally, a new to Krakow phenomena were art dealers like: Adolf Schwartz and Marcus Szwarc, who were active in cultural patronage. It must be mentioned that Jewish collectors not only focused on Polish artists, firstly they cherished Jewish artists such as M. Gottlieb, or Samuel Hirszenberg (E. Beres, M. Feldman). Most of all they paid homage to their heritage in preserving and collecting precious Jewish ritual objects, which often were on loan to the Krakow National Museum. Most of all they paid homage to their heritage in preserving and collecting precious Jewish ritual objects, which often were on loan to the Krakow National Museum (J. Judkiewicz, M. Szwarc). Max Polonovski, Ministry of Culture, France Title: Artistes juifs en France au 19e siècle, entre assimilation et revendication communautaire. Abstract: La revue Archives Israélites, fondée en 1840, instaura, à partir de la seconde moitié du 19e siècle, une chronique artistique lors des salons de peintures annuels, prétexte à évaluer le succès de l’intégration des juifs dans la société française. A la fois signe de la volonté de s’assimiler, dans la droite ligne de la régénération opérée lors de la Révolution française, mais aussi témoignage de la contribution bénéfique des Juifs à la société, tant sur le plan de la participation des artistes à la création, que par les thèmes juifs et surtout bibliques. L’ethnicité des artistes ainsi mise en avant et différenciée dans un but positif semble contenir une contradiction interne avec le principe même de l’intégration. Cette ambigüité a perduré, tout au long du 19e siècle, puis du siècle suivant, lorsque la distinction des artistes juifs par rapport aux autres a changé de point de vue, pour tendre vers une revendication identitaire ou une stigmatisation. Une appropriation parfois abusive amoindrit la portée du discours. La volonté d’identifier l’apport des Juifs comme un phénomène lié à une appartenance ou une origine communautaire et non comme une expression individuelle fausse les tentatives de définir un art juif. L’origine des artistes par rapport à leur œuvre pose la question du point de vue auquel se place l’observateur. Elle interroge aussi sur la représentativité des artistes dans les musées d’art juif. 13.00-­‐13.30: Lunch Break Wednesday 23rd July ENS, THÉÂTRE (Main building, basement, Stairs C) Session: 001: Medieval Hebrew Poetry 9.00-­‐10.30 Continuity and Creative Response in an Age of Upheaval: The New Edition of the Liturgical Poetry of Samuel the Third Chair: Peter Lehnardt Naoya Katsumata, Kyoto University, Japan Title: The Research History of Samuel the Third’s Poetry Abstract: Some of the poems and writings actually belonging to our poet were published during the first half of the 20th century by Jacob Mann, Meir Zvi Weiss, Israel Davidson, and Menachem Zulay. It was Zulay, however, who figured out in 1949 that the different names found in the above publications (shemuel yizke, shemuel he-­‐haver, shemuel ha-­‐revi‘i, and shemuel ha-­‐shelishi) actually referred to a single individual. Zulay and others also understood the high literary quality of Samuel’s poetry. Ezra Fleischer, for example, was surprised by the extraordinary beauty of some of Samuel’s poems and claimed that Samuel the Third reaches heights which few Hebrew poets in the Middle Ages ever reached. Over thirty years ago, Joseph Yahalom first took upon himself the task of preparing a critical edition of Samuel’s poetry. In this lecture, I will describe how Yahalom and I carried out the making of this edition. We are dedicating this book to the blessed memory of Zulay, who, had he been able, would have published all of Samuel’s poems in a deluxe edition. Joseph Yahalom, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Title: Eastern Predecessors of the Great Andalusian School Abstract: The paper deals with liturgical poetry located in the Genizah and written by leading figures such as Shmu'el ben Hosha"na from Jerusalem and Yosef Ibn Abitur which were active at the turn of the tenth century amongst Eastern communities. Questions of poetic style and figurative language form the main points of comparison between these poets and their Spanish Contemporaries. Wout Van Bekkum, Center of Middle East Studies, Groningen University, Netherlands Title: Lyrical Aspects of Samuel the Thirds' Poetry Abstract: Samuel the Third is an outstanding and important poet whose entire oeuvre has now been collected and edited by Joseph Yahalom and Naoya Katsumata, reclaiming a tradition of synagogue poetry which for a major part had lapsed into the obscurities of medieval Jewish literary history. The reintroduction of Samuel the Third by Yahalom and Katsumata enables researchers of Piyyut to read Samuel's hymns anew and to (re-­‐)discover their richness and diversity. This contribution will focus on lyrical aspects representative of Samuel's personal creativity by which he brings Jewish religious themes into visibility. A study of Samuel's lyrical potential will demonstrate that he views Piyyut as an innovated prestige medium rather than a number of conventional synagogue repertoires. 10.30-­‐11.00: Coffee Break Session 002: Medieval Hebrew Poetry 11.00-­‐13.00 Medieval Hebrew Poetry on the Move: From the Cairo Genizah to Eastern Europe Chair: Wout Van Bekkum Sarah J. Pearce, New York University, USA Title: Remembering the Handsome Doe’s Beloved: Rethinking Dunash’s Wife in Light of Documentary Sources in the Genizah Abstract: This paper will offer a reconsideration of the Hebrew poem attributed to the wife of Dunash ben Labrat in light of documentary evidence in the Cairo Genizah pertaining to the lives of women abandoned by or living separately from their husbands. Rather than representing a solely sentimental farewell between husband and wife, the exchange of personal adornments and cloaks between the male and female figures in the poem, often read as the literary avatars of Dunash and his wife, in fact represents a concrete economic transaction that would have been readily recognizable to the medieval readers of the poem. The specific details of the items exchanged in the poem — a wife’s silver bracelet for her husband’s signet ring and the cloak of each spouse for the other’s — are evocative of the description of the economic value and practical usage of those same types of objects documented in in personal and business-­‐related epistolary found in the Genizah cache. This proposed reading of the poem, then, seeks both to contextualize the poem in its historical setting and to draw down the gulfs between literature and history and between practical and sentimental interpretations of objects and acts represented in literary texts. Riikka Tuori, University of Helsinki, Finland Title: The Ten Principles of Karaite Faith in East European Karaite poetry Abstract: The Karaite scholar Yehuda Hadassi (12th c., Constantinople) elaborated ten principles of Karaite faith a century before the more famous thirteen ones of Moshe Maimonides. The Byzantine Karaite scholars Elijah Bashyachi and Kaleb Afendopolo (15th c.) issued their version of the principles (in Bashyachi’s Adderet eliyahu (1532: 25a–30a). These principles became a major them