BAJS Bulletin 2015: Contents Jewish Studies at the University of Manchester Jewish Studies at Manchester University 1 Parkes Institute celebrates Golden Jubilee 4 This year’s BAJS conference will be held in Jewish Studies News: Edinburgh 5 Manchester, a university with has a long-established Jewish Studies News: Nottingham 7 interest in Biblical and Jewish Studies. This article Jewish Studies News: UCL 8 Jewish Studies News: Oxford 8 describes its history and the current activities at Journal of Semitic Studies is 60 11 Manchester. European Association for Jewish Studies 11 Fellowship at Edinburgh: Report 12 History BAJS Prize 2014: Report 14 New BAJS conference proceedings 15 i BAJS Conference 2016: Call for Papers 16 The University of Manchester has a distinguished BAJS Conference 2015: Programme 17 record in the research and teaching of Jewish and Woolf Institute Scholarship 20 Biblical Studies, beginning with the Talmudic BAJS Committee 21 scholar Tobias Theodores who taught Biblical New appointments, promotions, honours 23 Hebrew from 1866.ii Other prominent individuals Current research projects 23 include the biblical scholar James Barr and the Ongoing doctoral research 25 historian and scholar of Semitic languages, Edward Members’ recent publications 30 Ullendorff. Modern Hebrew has featured Book Reviews 35 prominently, with language and literature

The British Association for Jewish Studies (BAJS) was specialists such as Meir Wallenstein, who chaired founded in 1975 as a learned society and professional the city’s Tarbut Society, and, more recently, Leon organization on a non-profit-making basis. Its aims are to Yudkin. In fact, Manchester was amongst the nurture, cultivate and advance the teaching and research earliest to teach modern Hebrew from the 1930s in Jewish culture and history in all its aspects within and was the first UK university to offer a BA degree Higher Education in the British Isles. in modern Hebrew (one of the two first graduates was David Patterson in 1949); it published the Contact: modern Hebrew language journal of Jewish Studies, BAJS Secretary Melilah from 1944 to 1955. Helen Spurling ([email protected]) History, Faculty of Humanities University of Southampton The University has long-established links with the Southampton local Jewish community, which dates back to the S017 1BF 1780s and remains the largest in the UK outside London. Over the years many Jewish scholars have Bulletin editor: taught at the University, a number of whom were Maria Diemling closely involved with the Zionist movement.iii Chaim ([email protected]) Weizmann lectured on chemistry and Weizmann’s

contemporary, the eminent philosopher Samuel

Alexander, introduced him to Balfour. The modern historian, Sir Lewis Namier, was also active in assisting Weizmann. Philip Hartog, a fervent anti- If you have not already done so, please sign up to Zionist, was lecturer in Chemistry (leaving to the BAJS website! become academic registrar of London University, http://britishjewishstudies.org just before Weizmann arrived). There were very strong connections to the Manchester Reform congregation; in addition to Theodores and Hartog,

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 1

Gustav Gottheil, who was rabbi of the synagogue library, and the Orthodox rabbi and historian, 1860-1873, taught German, and Laurence Mark Alexander Altmann, who established in 1941 the non-affiliated Institution for Higher Jewish Tobias Theodores: The Founding Education.v Figure of Jewish Studies at Manchester The Centre for Jewish Studies Tobias Theodores (1808-1886) was born in Margulin in the Prussian province of The present Centre for Jewish Studies was Posen, he had grown up in Berlin at the established in 1996 when the existing provision time of the radical reform movement led was strengthened by the creation of the Alliance by Israel Jacobson, and had come to Chair in Modern Jewish Studies. It connects staff England as a youth. After an early career located in the subject areas of Middle Eastern as an itinerant language teacher, was Studies,vi Religions and Theology,vii German, appointed in 1851 to a teaching post in History, Linguistics, and East European Studies.viii German at Owens College, which had Currently, there are five postgraduate fellows,ix and been established the same year. From recent visiting fellows from abroad have included 1866 he was Professor of German (until the Talmudic scholar Natalie Polzer (Louiseville, 1871), of French (until 1880), and of USA) and the historian of Anglo-Jewry Wang Benli Hebrew (until 1884). Among his (Suzhou, China). The most recent addition to the list publications were an Introductory of honorary fellows is Rabbi David Rue, chief justice Lecture on the Study of Arabic and of the Beit Din of Los Angeles, who is working with Hebrew (1860) and a lecture on ‘The the Centre on the topic of the Agunah problem. Talmud’ in Essays and Addresses by There are currently 14 doctoral students in the area Professors and Lecturers of the Owens of Jewish Studies.x College (1873). He was a frequent contributor of essays and translations The Centre is largely reliant on external funding for relating to various aspects of halakhah to many of its research projects; in the year 2013-14 it the journal Hebrew Review and Magazine managed c.£930,000 in grants, excluding RCUK of Rabbinical Literature which was postdoctoral fellowships. The areas in which the published 1834-1836; among other Centre has research strength include Classical things he addressed such subjects as Judaism, Medieval Judaism and Jewish/Non-Jewish ‘Morality of the Talmud’ (1834), which relations, Modern Jewish history, culture and was in large part of a translation of literature, Modern Jewish/Non-Jewish relations, Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, and ‘On the Holocaust, Modern Israeli society, history and Administration of Justice in the Hebrew political thought, and Modern Jewish thought Commonweath’ (1836). Theodores was a (Britain, France, Germany, Israel). A selection of polemicist who was keen to use current externally-funded research projects include scholarship to good social effect, Corpses of Mass Violence (in collaboration with publishing critiques of the blood libel in Ecole des Hautes Etudes des Sciences Sociales, the Jewish press in the aftermath of the Paris; European Research Council, 2012-16); Damascus Affair, and attacking Darwin’s Jews (Leverhulme, 2013-15); Catalogue of suggestions in the mainstream press that Codices, Scrolls, and Other Texts in Hebrew Script Jews were not fit to sit in Parliament. As a in the University of Manchester Library key figure of the Manchester Reform (anonymous Jewish foundation, 2015-18); Synagogue, established in 1856, Translation of Abulafia’s Secrets of the Torah in the Theodores was instrumental in having Kabbalistic Library of Pico della Mirandola (British the Hungarian rabbi Solomon Schiller- Academy, 2014-15); Anti-Semitism and Szinessy appointed as its first minister, Articulations of National Identity in Hungarian Film, and was a close associate of the German- 1931-44 (Leverhulme, 2012-15); Moses Gaster: American Reform rabbi Gustav Gottheil Eclectic Scholar (British Academy, 2013-16); (1827-1903). Reading the Bible in the Ottoman Empire (Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, 2014-17); Conversion to Judaism in Contemporary Poland conducted (anonymous Jewish Foundation, 2014- Simmons, who was rabbi 1878-1900, taught 15). Centre members edit or co-edit Journal of oriental languages.iv Two other important scholars Semitic Studies, Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, Studia resident in the city were the Sephardi hacham and Judaica monograph series, and Melilah: Journal of Zionist leader Moses Gaster, much of whose Jewish Studies. collection of manuscripts is now held the University

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 2

In terms of teaching, the Centre has tended to focus and Israel Studies, and a number of course units, on integrating Jewish Studies course options into a including undergraduate Modern Hebrew, were wide variety of degree programmes in the withdrawn and/or phased out. Support for the humanities, such as religious studies, history and Manchester academics who argued in favour of Middle Eastern studies. For last year (2013-14), the continuing the provision of undergraduate Hebrew total number of enrolments in around 20 language teaching was received from a wide variety undergraduate Jewish Studies classes was more of individuals, learned societies, and subject than 400, while the total number of enrolments in 5 associations, with the BAJS online petition receiving masters-level classes was 26. over 1000 signatures from 45 countries within 10 days. It is therefore with great pleasure that the With regard to outreach and wider engagement, the Centre can now report that management has agreed Centre offers two annual public lecture series, recently that the credit-bearing undergraduate namely, the Sherman Lectures in Jewish Studies and teaching of Modern Hebrew at all levels will the Bogdanow Lectures in Holocaust Studies,xi and a continue (albeit in a reduced capacity), on condition research seminar series open to the public that for that it be partly paid for by external funding. As a the last three years has focused on Israel Studies. It result, among other things, the Centre is currently maintains close relations with the Manchester developing an innovative hybrid approach to Jewish Museum as a venue for academic talks and language learning that will facilitate the virtual as a partner for collaborative doctoral studentships participation of individuals from around the using its extensive oral history collection, and, in country in regular classes in Modern Hebrew at cooperation with the Imperial War Museum North, Manchester. While disappointed that the withdrawn it organises an annual Holocaust workshop day, degrees will not be restored, the Centre is extremely catering for teacher training and a general audience. grateful for the assistance that BAJS (and in The Centre remains closely associated with the local particular its Secretary, Helen Spurling) and others Jewish Community and is a constitutive member of provided, especially considering the inauspicious the Jewish Representative Council of Greater economic circumstances and the practical and Manchester. ideological challenges that face university language teaching in the UK more generally. Judaica and Hebraica Daniel Langton and Alex Samely The John Rylands Library is one of the largest Co-directors of the Centre for Jewish Studies academic libraries in the UK and some highlights for www.manchesterjewishstudies.org Jewish Studies include: the Hebrew Manuscripts Collection comprising 10,600 fragments from the Genizah of the Synagogue of Elijah in Old Cairo Notes: together with 400 codices; the Haskalah Collection, i The Victoria University of Manchester was established in a unique collection of around 900 volumes in 1880, its forerunner being Owens College, established in Hebrew and other languages from the East 1851. ii For an overview of the history of Jewish Studies in the European Jewish Enlightenment movement; the UK, and Manchester’s place in the story, see Daniel R. Teltscher Collection which contains some 650 items Langton, ‘Wandering Jews in England’s Green and in English, Hebrew, Latin, German and Czech, Pleasant Land: Wissenschaft des Judentums in an Anglo- ranging in date from the 1550s to the late twentieth Jewish Context’ in Wissenschaft des Judentums in Europe: century; the Marmorstein Collection which is Comparative and Transnational Perspectives, eds. especially rich in classical rabbinic texts and in East Christian Wiese and Mirjam Thulin (Berlin: de Gruyter, European responsa printed in Hebrew, English, 2015), forthcoming. Hungarian and other languages; and the Gaster iii For Manchester’s contribution to the history of Zionism, Collection of a wide variety of manuscripts, see the online exhibition Manchester and Zionism: www.manchesterjewishstudies.org/manchester-and- including Samaritan materials. In addition to such zionism/. holdings in the JRL, there is the Bill Williams iv Inexplicably, the University did not employ Solomon Library of Modern Jewish history comprising Schiller-Szinessy, who was the Manchester Reform around 4500 volumes. synagogue’s first rabbi from 1856-1860 and who went on to become Reader of Talmud and Rabbinical Literature at News on Modern Hebrew Studies Cambridge, or Abraham Wolf, the congregation’s rabbi from 1901-1907, an expert in Spinoza who went on to become professor of Logic and Scientific Method at UCL. In 2014-15, the University found itself at the centre v This became the Institute for Jewish Studies in 1953, of an international protest when a number of which was relocated to UCL when Altmann moved to degree programmes in the subject area of Middle Brandeis University in 1959. Eastern Studies, including a BA(Hons) in Hebrew vi Moshe Behar (Israeli and Middle Eastern Studies), Sophie Garside (Hebrew and Israel Studies), John Healy

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 3

FBA (emeritus, Semitic Studies), Malka Hodgson (tutor in Community, and Memory among Israeli Jewish and Hebrew) and Alex Samely (Jewish Thought). Palestinian Youth; Julianne Burnett, Was Moses a vii Philip Alexander FBA (emeritus, Post-Biblical Magician? Edmund Chapman, Afterlives: Benjamin, Literature), George Brooke (Biblical Criticism and Derrida and Literature in Translation; Peter Choi, The Exegesis), Adrian Curtis (ret, Biblical Hebrew), Dan Reception of Leviticus in Second Temple Jewish Garner (Jewish Studies), Bernard Jackson (emeritus, Law Literature; Eyal Clyne, Orientalism in Israeli Academia; and Modern Jewish Studies), Daniel Langton (History of Marci Freedman, The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela; Jewish-Christian Relations), Renate Smithuis (Medieval Izabella Goldstein, Songs of the Jewish Underworld in Pre- Jewish Studies), and Bill Williams (ret, Local Jewish World War Two Warsaw; Jan Gryta, The Politics of History). Memory and Jewish Heritage: Warsaw - Krakow - Lodz viii Cathy Gelbin (German Studies), Jean-Marc Dreyfus after 1989; Jarod Jacobs, The Hebrew Language of the (Holocaust Studies), Yaron Matras (Linguistics) and Ewa ‘Biblical’ Dead Sea Scrolls; Jessica Keady, Purity and the Ochman (East European Studies). Community of the Dead Sea Scroll; Michelle Magin, The ix Currently these include: Maria Cioată (British Academy: Three Faces of Germany: Secondary School Holocaust Moses Gaster’s Collections, Biography and Archives), Education Programs in Pre- and Post-unification Gábor Gergely (Leverhulme: Anti-Semitism and Germany; Marton Ribary, Legal abstraction in Roman and Articulations of National Identity in Hungarian film 1931– Rabbinic law; Tereza Ward, Social and Religious Jewish 44), Jan Lorenz (anonymous Jewish foundation: Non-conformity: Representations of the Anglo-Jewish Conversions to Judaism in Contemporary Poland), Experience in the Oral Testimony Archive of the Katharina Keim (British Academy: Samaritan Manchester Jewish Museum. Correspondence of Moses Gaster), Ben Williams xi In 2014-15, the Shermans were given by Amy-Jill Levine (Leverhulme: Sixteenth Century Jewish Bible (Vanderbilt University) and the Bogdanows by Interpretation). Christopher Browning (North Carolina at Chapel Hill). x These currently include: Kyung Baek, The Gospel of Matthew and Rewritten Bible; Victoria Biggs, Storytelling, studies and postcolonial studies, and Jews in ‘small nations’ in Eastern Europe. The Parkes Institute Golden Jubilee Outreach was central to the vision of James Parkes who believed that modern universities should be Celebrations very much part of the world around them. The Jubilee Celebration reflects the richness and In 1965, the Parkes Library opened to the public, diversity of our outreach programme, coordinated having been transferred to the University of by Dr Helen Spurling. It has included amongst many Southampton the year before from James Parkes’ other activities the commemoration of own house. Alongside the Library, the Parkes Southampton’s Holocaust and Genocide Memorial Centre also started a new life in the University, Day in both 2014 and 2015; a summer school on ‘A maintaining its unique focus of the study of Clash of Civilisations?’ for local sixth forms and Jewish/non-Jewish relations across the ages. The colleges; and cultural days and evenings on topics hope of James Parkes was that within a university ranging from Jewish-Christian relations to setting, his Centre would become an international discussion of Nazism and the Second World War, hub, helping to stimulate intellectual and practical seventy years on. work to focus on the key issues of religious and Our regular seminar and lecture programme has racial prejudice, working to combat intolerance and been further enhanced for the Jubilee. It has to promote respect between people of different featured speakers from many different countries faiths and backgrounds. from Australia to Israel and from South Africa to Fifty years on we believe that what is now the Russia. They have focused on topics ranging from Parkes Institute has realised the ambitions of its antiquity through to the present day, and with founder. In 2014 and 2015 we have been both approaches from and across many different celebrating the achievements made so far, but also academic disciplines, reflecting the innovative promoting fresh agendas in scholarship and wider interdisciplinary work of James Parkes himself. outreach work. The Celebration has consisted of These all attracted large audiences, especially the fifty individual events, varying from a musical vigil annual Parkes, Karten and Montefiore Lectures. for peace to a study of Dr Who and the changing The Parkes Library itself has more than quadrupled face of Jewish identity. There have been ten in size since 1965, running to well over 20,000 workshops and conferences held not only at the items and it is now supplemented by one of the University of Southampton but also in with our largest Jewish archive collections in Europe. The partners in Cape Town, Jerusalem, London, Paris wealth of these collections will be displayed in a and elsewhere. These have covered many different major exhibition from the University’s Hartley themes, including the relationship between Jewish Library Special Collections team in September 2015. It reflects the life, library and legacy of James Parkes

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 4

and will feature photographs, documents and books Jewish Lives, Scottish Spaces: Jewish from the Parkes Library and Jewish archives. Migration to Scotland, 1880-1950 The Jubilee Celebrations will come to a climax in the late summer and early autumn with two major Dr Hannah Holtschneider (University of events. The first, running alongside the Special Edinburgh, Principal Investigator) and Dr Mia Collections exhibition in September 2015, is a three Spiro (University of Glasgow, Co-Investigator) have day International symposium devoted to won an AHRC award of £495,418 for a three-year Jewish/non-Jewish relations across the ages, the research project on Jewish migration to Scotland, field which James Parkes pioneered and beginning September 2015. Project Partner is the championed. It will examine the history of research Scottish Jewish Archives Centre (SJAC, over the past 50 years, presenting the latest http://www.sjac.org.uk/), whose holdings will be approaches and determining future directions. Key extensively researched and part-digitised. The note speakers include Professor Martin Goodman of project team will be completed by a post-doctoral the University of Oxford, Professor Miri Rubin of researcher. An extensive programme of public Queen Mary College, University of London, activities is planned to disseminate key findings of Professor Greg Walker, University of Edinburgh, the project and make them accessible to a wider Professor Todd Endelman, University of Michigan, audience, including educational resources for Professor Sander Gilman, Queen Mary College, teachers and undergraduate students. University of London, and Professor Tony Kushner Harvey Kaplan, Director of the Scottish Jewish of the Parkes Institute itself. Archives Centre, said: The second is a public debate to be held in West

London Synagogue in October 2015. Following the ‘We look forward to working with this exciting inspirational work of James Parkes, it will examine new project over the next three years. The wide- the challenges facing interfaith dialogue in the ranging collections of the Scottish Jewish twenty-first century. It brings together leading Archives Centre, brought together over the last representatives of Judaism (Baroness Neuberger), 30 years, constitute a unique national resource, Christianity (Lord Richard Harries) and Islam unparalleled in any other immigrant group in (Imam Monawar Hussain). In tribute to James Scotland. We are looking forward to seeing our Parkes, they will explore the progress made but also collections underpinning this AHRC-funded the remaining challenges in these troubling times. project and being utilised to interpret Jewish history in Scotland.’ To conclude: the Vice Chancellor, Professor Don

Nutbeam, has described the Parkes Institute as ‘one The SJAC's collections on the history of the Jewish of the University of Southampton’s most treasured religious communities in Scotland since the late achievements’. He adds that its world class Jubillee nineteenth century, particularly the written records programme of scholarly and community events and material objects surviving the closures of ‘celebrates and embraces the vision of James Parkes synagogues across all Scottish regions will form the to create a society free of ignorance and prejudice. primary source material. Material evidence from We look forward to the Parkes Institute’s next fifty surviving synagogue libraries and prayer book years with great anticipation and pride in what has collections will provide further materials. By already been achieved.’ mapping and examining the SJAC's extensive collection of memoirs, biographies, and recorded Prof Tony Kushner oral histories of survivors and refugees, the project University of Southampton will uncover the impact of World War II and the Holocaust on Scottish-Jewish collective identity, and how Jewish refugees yet again transformed the Scottish landscape in the post-war period.

How do Jews construct social, political and cultural ‘spaces’ in Scotland?

Jewish Lives, Scottish Spaces traces and evaluates for the first time Jewish ‘spaces’ in Scotland 1880-1950 to uncover how the religious and cultural contributions Jews made complicate ideas of ‘Scottishness’ and of ‘Jewishness’. ‘Jewish spaces’ are understood as the construction of ethnic, religious, and cultural environments, as opposed to real, mappable places. The conventional impression is that Jewish migrant communities in Scotland

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 5

exist in a pattern of transition and acculturation Jewish Studies in Scotland that lies outside of major Scottish or Jewish historical narratives of belonging. Studies on larger Jewish Studies in Scotland is a developing field of populations, such as London’s East End or New research. While a good number of scholars at York’s East Side have, in many ways, obfuscated the Scottish universities work in areas which relate to manner in which Scottish Jewish religious and the study of Jewish lives, histories and cultures, cultural history is distinct, and how important there are only two posts which are primarily in contributions of the Jewish community intersected Jewish Studies, one at the University of Edinburgh, with ideas of Scottish belonging. Jewish Lives, the other at the University of Glasgow. Little Scottish Spaces will draw out the important research has focused explicitly on Jewish history distinctions of Scottish Jewish history to uncover its Scotland, the monographs in this field at present do critical role in understanding migration in both not reach double figures. This is set to change with Jewish and Scottish contexts. Jewish Lives, Scottish Spaces. Determined to improve the visibility and standing of Jewish Studies in Dr Hannah Holt- Scotland, Drs Holtschneider and Spiro are looking schneider is Senior forward to enhancing both, the field of Jewish Lecturer in Jewish history in Scotland and the wider field of Jewish Studies at the Studies. A day conference planned for summer 2016 University of is set to focus on Jewish history in the ‘Celtic Fringe’ Edinburgh, UK. She is and bring together researchers of adjacent fields the author of The such as migration studies, urban studies and Holocaust and Scottish, Irish and Welsh Studies. In the summer of Representations of 2017 Edinburgh will host the annual BAJS Jews: History and Conference and for the first time bring this Identity in the gathering of scholars in all fields of Jewish Studies Museum (Routledge to Scotland. As usual the theme of the conference 2011) and German Protestants Remember the will be one to which all disciplines and historical Holocaust: Theology and the Construction of periods of Jewish Studies can contribute to: ‘Jews Collective Memory (2000), as well as numerous and Migration’. As 2017 marks the half-way point in articles on Jewish/non-Jewish relations. [For more the AHRC project Jewish Lives, Scottish Spaces, BAJS information see: http://edin.ac/16eQ8CF] 2017 will host a panel dedicated to Jewish history in Scotland at which project findings are presented. Dr Mia Spiro is BAJS 2017 will also showcase other important Lecturer in Jewish contributions to the study of Jewish history, religion Studies (Theology and and culture from Biblical times to today which are Religious Studies) at being researched at Scottish universities. the School of Critical Studies, University of If you are interested in following the project Jewish Glasgow. She is the Lives, Scottish Spaces, please sign up on the project author of Anti-Nazi website to receive updates via email or RSS: Modernism: The https://jewishmigrationtoscotland.wordpress.com. Challenges of Project news and information about public events Resistance in 1930s will be posted regularly on the website from Fiction (Northwestern September 2015. University Press, 2013) and has published work on Virginia Woolf, Jewish representation in the interwar period, and on the Jewish Golem myth in modern and contemporary film and literature. Her forthcoming monograph, Modern Monsters: Golems, Vampires, and the Ghosts of War, examines how elements of the supernatural have been used by modern Jewish writers and artists to grapple with oppression, migration, and antisemitism in the first half of the twentieth-century. [For Dr Spiro’s profile see: http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/critical/staff/miaspi ro/]

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 6

Leverhulme Prize and British Academy exegetical and legal traditions, the Qur’an is witness Mid-Career Fellowship for Holger to a non-rabbinic tradition that sees Judaism and Christianity as two distinct yet equally valid ways of Zellentin attaining salvation. This ‘Judaeo-Christian’ line of thought, attested throughout late Antiquity, A 2014 Philip maintained a clear separation of Jewish and non- Leverhulme Prize for Jewish ethnic identity, and may never have been “Qur’anic Studies and embodied in a community separate from those of Jewish Studies” and a mainstream Jews and Christians. Regardless, the 2016 British Academy Qur’an’s recasting of this Judaeo-Christian discourse Mid-Career Fellowship (and especially of its legal traditions) in decidedly entitled ‘The Qur’an gentile ways turns the Muslim Scripture into one of between Judaism and the key witnesses to the vitality of a distinct Jewish Christianity’ have been intellectual tradition long believed to have subsided awarded to Dr Holger before the coming of Islam. Zellentin from the Dr. Zellentin’s research projects will seek to present Department of Theology a unified approach that places the Qur’an as a and Religious Studies at crossroads between Judaism, Christianity and the the University of Nottingham. later Muslim tradition. Trained in Late Antique and What does the Qur’an have to do with Judaism? Talmudic Judaism, he has long branched out into Quite a lot, as Holger Zellentin will seek to point out Qur’anic studies and finds himself in the middle of a in the two research projects which he will pursue true paradigm shift in this budding field, which from 2015 until 2018. In his view, the Qur’an has understands the Qur’an ever more fully in been wrongfully neglected as one of the major continuity as well as in critical dialogue with the sources on rabbinic and non-rabbinic Judaism Jews and Christians of Arabia. The projects will towards the end of the Talmudic era. In effect, the draw on a wide web of interdisciplinary research Qur’an is one of the earliest non-Jewish witnesses to bringing together experts in Islamic, Jewish, and various Palestinian and Babylonian rabbinic Christian studies, and includes a series of lectures, traditions. In contrast Muslim historiography, workshops and conferences in Nottingham and whose onset has to be dated to the early Abassid or abroad. More information will be made available at the earliest the late Umayyad period, the Qur’an this autumn; for more information on this project, offers a vivid glimpse into the nascent Muslim please contact Dr Zellentin at community’s dynamic encounter of Arabian Jews in [email protected]. the early seventh century. In addition to revealing a wealth of information on Arabian rabbinic Judaism and especially on specific

Calendars in Late Antiquity and the The project is based in the Department of Hebrew Middle Ages: Standardization and and Jewish Studies, with Fixation Professor Sacha Stern as Principal Investigator and A major research project funded by an Advanced five Research Associates Grant of the European Research Council (ERC) working in several areas including the seven-day Principal Investigator: Prof. Sacha Stern week, late antique hemerologia, medieval This research project studies the evolution of Jewish calendar disputes, calendars in late antique and medieval societies, and medieval Arabic and with a special focus on Roman, Christian, Jewish, Hebrew monographs on and Islamic calendars. The complex evolution of astronomy and calendars. It is funded by an ERC these calendars was closely related to politics, Advanced Grant to the value of €2,499,000, the science, and religion, and contributed more widely largest ever achieved in the Faculty of Arts and to the standardization of culture in the ancient and Humanities at UCL. medieval worlds. The study of calendars has been neglected by historians as a merely technical curiosity; but in fact, the calendar was at the heart of ancient and

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 7

medieval culture, as a structured perception of time, Manor, 4 miles to the north of the city centre. The and as an organizing principle of social life. Our move was warmly welcomed by the University, study of calendars covers a wide range of historical which recognized the opportunities for synergy periods and cultural traditions, and employs a wide between the Centre and the University in the wider range of disciplines: social history, ancient and promotion of Hebrew and Jewish studies. The medieval astronomy and mathematics, the study of goodwill across the University ensured that OCHJS religions, literature, epigraphy, and codicology. We was able to secure an appropriate new home for the are interested to discover how Roman, Christian, Centre within the Clarendon Institute building in Jewish, and Islamic calendars evolved, in late Walton Street, close to the Oriental Institute in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, towards ever Pusey Lane and even closer to the Oxford Jewish increasing standardization and fixation. Congregation in Richmond Road. Thus the Centre’s To this end, we are focusing on five specific activities in teaching and research that were manifestations of this process: previously divided between Yarnton and the 1. the diffusion and standardization of the Oriental Institute have been brought together under seven-day week in the Roman Empire; one roof. Students and staff of the University now 2. 'hemerologia' (comparative calendar tables) find it much easier to attend classes and events, and and their production in late Antiquity; to use the library. For those coming from further 3. the Jewish calendar dispute, between afield, we are just ten minutes on foot from the Palestinians and Babylonians, of 921-2 CE; railway station, and five minutes from Gloucester 4. Jewish calendar fixed cycles in medieval Green bus station. manuscripts; 5. monographs on the calendar by medieval The move to central Oxford has also enhanced the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish scholars, continuing programme of the residential Oxford especially al-Biruni’s 'Chronology of the Seminars in Advanced Jewish Studies hosted by the Ancient Nations' and Isaac Israeli’s 'Yesod Centre and supported by the Polonsky and Dorset Olam'. Foundations. Visiting scholars can live within the Study of these five research areas will enable us to city, and are now able to access easily not only the formulate a general interpretation and explanation holdings of the Leopold Muller Memorial Library of how and why calendars became increasingly which have been fully incorporated into the standardized and fixed. Our Research Associates Bodleian system and located in the Clarendon and their main research areas are: Institute itself, but also the various other collections § Dr Ilaria Bultrighini (the week in the Roman of the Bodleian Library. The Muller Library’s special Empire; the 'hemerologia') collections material is now housed in the newly § Dr Nadia Vidro (Jewish calendar cycles) refurbished Weston Library alongside the § Dr François de Blois (Biruni’s 'Chronology') Bodleian’s own Hebraica and Judaica. § Dr Ilana Wartenberg § Dr Israel Sandman (Israeli’s 'Yesod Olam') In addition to our existing teaching in Hebrew and § Professor Sacha Stern is working in all areas, Jewish Studies, our new location has meant that we and especially on the dispute of 921-2 CE. have been able to add to the existing weekly Ulpan § Our project administrator is Georgia Panteli. classes in Beginners and Advanced Yiddish for the general public (taught by Dr Khayke Beruriah Workshops on project-related themes are Wiegand) an Ulpan in Biblical Hebrew (Dr Steve organized on a regular basis, with the participation Herring) and one for Modern Hebrew (Daniel of international experts and open access to the Herskowitz). Also under the auspices of the Hebrew public. Please see https://www.ucl.ac.uk/hebrew- Centre, Dr Herring is organising a two week jewish/research/research-pro/calendars-antiquity- intensive course in Biblical Hebrew, which will take middle-ages for more information. place in early September 2015 at the Clarendon Institute. The weekly David Patterson Lectures are currently held on a Monday evening, for a mixed academic and lay audience. Relocation of the Oxford Centre for Teaching staff in Jewish studies Hebrew and Jewish Studies to Oxford city centre Much to our regret, Prof. Hugh Williamson retired from his post as Regius Professor of Classical 2014 was an historic year for the Oxford Centre for Hebrew at the end of last year, though we have Hebrew and Jewish Studies. In September the warmly welcomed his successor, Prof. Jan Joosten, Centre relocated in central Oxford all the activities who comes to Oxford from Strasbourg. The which for many years had been based in Yarnton University also bestowed the title of Professor on

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 8

Joanna Weinberg (Rabbinics and Medieval Hebrew) rendering, known as Josippon, circulated in various and David Rechter (Modern Jewish History), versions in medieval rabbinic circles, and remained reflecting the international impact of their for many centuries the prime source for Jews on the scholarship. destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. By the time of Rashi, in the later eleventh century, Josippon was Oxford Seminars in Advanced Jewish Studies commonly ascribed to Josephus himself, thus acquiring a spurious authority which encouraged its ‘On the Word of a Jew’ translation into other languages, including Arabic. The first OSAJS seminar of the academic year took The real Josephus became known to Jews from the place October 2013 – March 2014. The overall fifteenth century, but it was the sixteenth-century theme of the Seminar, led by Nina Caputo and Azariah de’ Rossi who rediscovered the significance Mitchell Hart (both of the University of Florida), of Hellenistic Jewish writers for Judaism, and who together with David Rechter, was ‘On the Word of a used Josephus as a fundamental source for Jew: Oaths, Testimonies and the Nature of Trust’. analysing the authenticity of rabbinic tradition. The research examined when and how Jews came to From the early modern period the works of be seen as reliable or trustworthy in the realm of Josephus, in different forms, became a vital resource the law—as witnesses, but also as lawyers and for Jews as much as Christians of all denominations judges– and in a host of other realms, including in reconstructing their own histories. medicine, politics, academia, culture (particularly the art world), and business and finance. AHRC Workshops on the Jewish Reception of Participants focused on traditionally Christian Josephus in the Twentieth and Twenty-first countries or empires, but also on the status of Jews Centuries under Muslim rule. The seminar provided an opportunity to explore how ‘the Jew’ serves as a The third of four workshops on the reception of spur or impulse to large-scale changes in Josephus in Jewish culture from the eighteenth mentalities and practices, and to explain how this century to the present, led by Professor Martin occurred within specific institutional settings. Goodman together with co-investigators Professor The Visiting Fellows assigned to this project, which Tessa Rajak and Dr Andrea Schatz, took place over was made possible through the generous support of two days in January 2014. The workshop was the Dorset Foundation and the Polonsky devoted to the Jewish reception of Josephus in Foundation, met twice weekly in term time to Central and Eastern Europe between about 1800– conduct public seminars and to discuss their 1914. Participants were invited to examine the uses research. The concluding conference, to which of Josephus in a wide range of rabbinic, maskilic and additional speakers were invited, included a early Zionist contexts, raising questions such as keynote public lecture by Professor George how Josephus figured in debates on the renewal of Rousseau. Jewish religious, cultural and political life in Central and Eastern Europe, how was he cited in ‘Josephus in the Early Modern Period’ controversies over assimilation, and the implications of educational and popular uses of The third OSAJS seminar, entitled ‘The Reception of Josephus. Josephus in the Early Modern Period’, was The fourth and final two-day workshop covered the convened jointly by Dr Joanna Weinberg and Jewish reception of Josephus in the twentieth and Professor Martin Goodman. It ran from January – twenty-first centuries. Participants examined the June 2014 and set out to investigate the varied uses role of Josephus in a wide spectrum of Jewish of the writings of Flavius Josephus in Jewish and politics, culture, religious life, scholarship and Christian literature in the early modern period. The education from the early twentieth century, through survival of Josephus’ writings from the first century the foundation of the State of Israel to the present. CE to the early modern period was entirely due to Matters under consideration included how Josephus the use of these texts by Christians. It is possible figures in Zionist thought, how Liberals, Orthodox that Josephus’ writings were known to the rabbis of Jews and Bundists used his works and image in late antiquity, but the surviving late-antique debates about Jewish nationalism, and how rabbinic texts in Hebrew and Aramaic make no Josephus’ work has been re-evaluated in the late explicit reference to him or to his work. The re- twentieth century and today in debates about post- entry of Josephus into the Jewish cultural milieu Zionist reassessments of the foundation and came about through a Hebrew reworking of a Latin ideologies of the State of Israel. translation of the first sixteen books of the Antiquities and a Hebrew paraphrase of the Latin The Catherine Lewis Lectures version of The Jewish War attributed to Hegesippus. Produced in the tenth century CE, this Hebrew Dr Joshua Teplitsky gave a series of lectures entitled

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 9

‘A Universal Jewish Library? The Early Modern in Hebrew and Jewish Studies to present their work, Origins of the Bodleian Oppenheim Collection’, in and with Prof. Joosten and Dr Adriana Jacobs she Trinity Term 2014 at the Radcliffe Science Library, runs a weekly graduate seminar on Hebrew arranged by the Centre’s Librarian, Dr César exegesis. Merchán-Hamann. The series was dedicated to an exploration of the Oppenheim Judaica collection of Dr Alison Salvesen the Bodleian Library. This was assembled by the Oxford University rabbi and bibliophile David Oppenheim (1664– 1736), the Chief Rabbi of Prague, who over his Journal of Semitic Studies is 60 lifetime acquired some 4500 books and 1000 manuscripts. This collection was purchased by the This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Bodleian Library in 1829 and remains the crown Journal of Semitic Studies, and there will be a wine jewel of its Judaica holdings as it contains the sole reception at the BAJS 2015 conference in existing copies of many Hebrew and Yiddish books. Manchester in celebration. Participants were given unique access to the treasures of the collection, and the opportunity to JSS, which was founded in Manchester in 1955/6 enter into the material and mental space of this thanks to the support of Isaac Wolfson (later Sir unparalleled collection and the man who assembled Isaac), is owned by the University of Manchester it. and published by Oxford University Press (print and electronic versions, and all earlier volumes Performing Traditions conference available online). It is edited mainly by Manchester academic staff in Middle Eastern Studies and In January 2015 Dr Zehavit Stern organised a highly Religions and Theology and is now acknowledged successful two-day conference, ‘The Art of Cultural as the leading journal in its field, publishing articles Translation: Performing Jewish Traditions in on the Semitic languages and editing and Modern Times’. This was followed by a wonderful commenting upon texts written in these languages, performance at the Oxford Jewish Congregation of ancient and modern. Though the focus has always the Unternationale, ‘a post-dialectic Klezmer been on texts and language rather than religious cabaret’ by Psoy Korolenko and Daniel Kahn. ideas or theology, the Journal has been closely associated with the Jewish Studies interests of the Oxford Summer Institute in Modern and University of Manchester, with several Fellows of Contemporary Judaism the Centre for Jewish Studies among its editors.

In summer 2014 Dr Miri Freud-Kandel collaborated Because of the high standing of JSS, scholars set with Dr Adam Ferziger to run the inaugural Oxford great store by getting their articles accepted by it. Summer Institute in Modern and Contemporary As a result the Journal receives many high-quality Judaism, on the subject of “Modern Orthodoxy and submissions and can afford to be very selective in the Road Not Taken: A Critical Exploration of what it accepts for publication. Questions Arising from the Thought of Rabbi Dr Irving ‘Yitz’ Greenberg”. The topic for this coming JSS appears twice each year and the editors try to summer’s Oxford Summer Institute is "State and ensure that there is a balance of articles which will Spirit: The Impact of Sovereignty on Contemporary interest specialists in the two most important Judaism". languages, Hebrew and Arabic. It also frequently publishes articles concerned with texts in such Seminars within the University of Oxford languages as Akkadian, Ethiopic and Syriac. A similar policy applies to its supplement series, Members of the Hebrew and Jewish Studies Unit of which provides a publication outlet for longer the University of Oxford convene several regular technical works in this field and for collections of seminars series within the University each year. conference papers. These are the Seminar on Jewish History and Literature in the Graeco-Roman Period (Professor On 24 November the editors held a reception in the Martin Goodman); the Seminar in Modern European University to mark the publication of two new JSS Jewish History (Dr David Rechter, Dr Abigail Green, Supplements. The event was sponsored by Mr Joe and Dr Zoë Waxman); the Seminar in Modern Israel Dwek and the Centre for Jewish Studies. Studies (Professor Derek Penslar); the Seminar on The two new supplements were typical in many Abrahamic Religions (Professor Martin Goodman, ways of the Journal’s commitment to a wide range Dr Mark Edwards and Dr Nicolai Sinai). This year of Semitic Studies. The first was The Egyptian Prof. Joanna Weinberg is also convening a Historian 'Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti by Shmuel fortnightly lunchtime seminar for doctoral students Moreh, Emeritus Professor in the Hebrew

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 10

University of Jerusalem. Professor Moreh (who and her indefatigable team - the organizing team came to Manchester for the launch of the book) has received a stunning eleven hundred paper a worldwide reputation as an Arabist and has proposals, of which around three quarter were published in addition to this supplement a accepted - took place in July 2014. The Congress translation of al-Jabarti’s description and history of had nine hundred active participants, by far the Egypt. Al-Jabarti died in 1825, having witnessed the largest held by EAJS. Napoleonic invasion of the country. The second was Since the Congress, EAJS has successfully applied The Palmyrene Tax Tariff by the Soviet-era scholar for support for a programme supporting Ilia Sholeimovich Shifman (translated from Russian networking and early career researchers. The Berlin and originally published in 1980). His book is the based 'Stiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung, Zukunft' only monograph on a long Aramaic and Greek awarded EAJS € 50,000 for a three year 'EAJS inscription (dated 137 CE) dealing with taxation in Programme in European Jewish Studies', allowing Roman Syria. Other recent supplements have been to fund two academic events per year for the next devoted to Semitic three academic years. Congratulations to Prof. linguistics, medieval Michael Berkowitz (UCL) for his successful bid to Hebrew medical hold the EAJS Roundtable in London in December terminology and the 2015. It will focus on the founding of the YIVO history of printing in Institute in 1925 and is entitled YIVO's Histories, the Middle East. Contexts, Tensions. Congratulations are also due to Fortunately JSS is Dr Élodie Attia-Kay for her and her co-applicants' unaffected by recent successful bid for the EAJS Laboratory. They will reorganization of devote the meeting, to be held in Aix-en-Provence in Middle Eastern June 2016, to Research Approaches in Hebrew Bible Studies within the Manuscript Studies. EAJS Laboratories are intended University of to support early career researchers by inviting them Manchester and its to present their expertise at these events focused on next major birthday discussion and exchange between senior and junior will be its seventy- colleagues. fifth! Most recently, an even more important grant has been made to EAJS allowing to fund two more For further information on the Journal see its formats of academic events, namely conferences Oxford University Press website: and summer schools. Awards in the framework of http://jss.oxfordjournals.org this EAJS Conference Grant Programme will be announced in the second half of July 2015. More John F. Healey information will be available on the Association's Professor Emeritus of Semitic Studies website: Fellow of the Centre for Jewish Studies http://eurojewishstudies.org/ University of Manchester But if this weren't enough already, more is happening. EAJS and AJS (the Association for Jewish Studies with membership overall in Canada and the European Association for Jewish Studies US) have now formally announced a partnership, (EAJS) offering reduced membership fees, the sharing of electronic resources, and the joint organization of

academic events. The Association now boasts of almost eight hundred full, associate and student members. This significant Dr François Guesnet surge in membership has not in the least to do with Secretary, European Association for Jewish Studies the lure of Paris, locum of the Tenth Congress of the European Association for Jewish Studies. Splendidly organized by Professor Judith Olszowy-Schlanger

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 11

Looking at Jerusalem through a Scottish stretch a little, but an interdisciplinary framework Lens: On Being the Edgar Astaire Fellow such as a School of Divinity will get you talking about ritual in the Second Temple and today’s in Jewish Studies at the University of political machinations of ultranationalist Israelis Edinburgh hoping for the Third Temple to be rebuilt, to name but one example. Additionally, presumably because We all know that Scotland is not central geographically, there seems situation when to be a lively conversation within the country and someone asks you with Jewish Studies people in Northern England – a about your community from which I benefitted by hearing research, you give about the development of Kahanism from Sarah them the elevator Marsden (St. Andrews), about the Bnei Ephraim speech, and even communities from Yulia Egorova (Durham), and though every more. As a researcher and project manager of the academic will former ‘History + Memory’ research group at the respond with a University of Konstanz, interdisciplinary version of ‘oh, environments – where I am the only one primarily that’s so inte- working on Jewish subjects – are not unusual, but resting,’ you see what came as a real surprise to me was teaching a their eyes glazing class in the MSc programme in Religious Studies. In over and feel their Germany’s rather well-off south, my classes – attention waning. But come to Edinburgh, tell whether they covered the Holocaust, Jewish someone that you are working on Muriel Spark, and literature, or the Middle East – are primarily all of a sudden, the unexpected happens: Everyone, attended by white Germans of Christian no matter whether it is your colleagues at the background, but reading Jerusalem poetry with university, the archivist, people on the street, and, students from across the globe and from different more than anyone else, members of the local Jewish religious and cultural origins also made me hear community, perk up and not only listen, they Yehuda Amichai and Mahmoud Darwish’s voices in actually have to say something about what you are a different way. doing. Now, add to that a larger book project on But I was not only talking while on my Jerusalem, which, as a central site of memory of fellowship: As I was working my way through many Jews, Christians, and Muslims and the heart of the meters of boxes – the current campaign at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has a similar effect and National Library of Scotland to acquire more of as it turns out, scholarly work is suddenly not a Muriel Spark’s papers does not call her a hoarder lonely venture anymore. for nothing – and rereading her novel The Having spent the past year with the Mandelbaum Gate (1965), which is set in the Program in Cultural Studies at the Hebrew divided Jerusalem of 1961, a certain consistent University (and previously, several at Tel Aviv theme both in her life story and her novel became University), surrounded by people knowledgeable evident: There is never ‘just one’ story or truth for about all aspects of Judaism, I had expected much the Scottish writer who throughout her life insisted less of that at my time on the Edgar Astaire on calling herself ‘half-Jewish’, even if it ultimately Fellowship for Jewish Studies with the School of cost her her relationship with her only son Robin in Divinity and the Institute of Advanced Studies at the a public struggle over him asking her to University of Edinburgh but, as it turned out, every acknowledge the Jewishness of her maternal conversation I had about either Spark or Jerusalem grandmother. In my reading, I therefore propose – and, unsurprisingly, there were many – added a that Spark makes a case for refusing any singular little something to my thinking. While Edinburgh truth when it comes to the Jerusalem setting of her might not be the most central location on the British novel as well: Only those protagonists who see that Jewish Studies map, I found it to be a goldmine of they themselves and the city they are written into scholars with wide-ranging interests, even if some has not one but many narratives of past and were only tangentially related. For me, however, present, get to see all of Jerusalem, even at a time with a PhD in Holocaust Studies and now working when an urban border between Jordan and Israel on a cultural history of Jerusalem through literature was running through it. and films exploring the many imaginations of the Thinkers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ‘Holy City,’ colleagues working on translations of highlight that we are in a situation in which both Holocaust testimonies, Jerusalem architecture, or sides intentionally foreground their narrative. Jewish migration to Scotland, demonstrated the Social psychologist Dan Bar-Tal and others have diversity and breath of the field across departments shown that peacemaking needs the and schools. Obviously, one sometimes has to acknowledgment of the other side’s differing story

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 12

(Bar-Tal, Halperin, 2009; Bar-Tal, Oren, Nets- Edgar Astaire Fellow in 2015/16 Zehngut, 2014). Muriel Spark’s The Mandelbaum Gate, even though written at a time when Dr Kenneth Collins (Honorary Senior Research Jerusalem’s situation was different – if no less Fellow at the University of Glasgow and Visiting contested – asks us to think along the lines of the Professor in the History of Medicine at the Hebrew multiplicity that comes from division. Highlighting University in Jerusalem) will be the Edgar Astaire Jerusalem’s many stories which exist alongside each Fellow in 2015/16. During the tenure of the other – it is David’s city, the Israeli capital, the place Fellowship he will focus on material relating to from where Mohammad took his night journey, the Jewish participation in the Polish School of home for German Templers and refugees from Medicine at Edinburgh University which operated Hitler’s Berlin, a site of the Nakba and the hoped-for during the 1940s, while also examining the capital of Palestine, a part of the British Empire, it contribution by Jewish refugee psychiatrists and saw Jesus on a donkey and gave Mark Twain the psychoanalysts to the development of their impression that ‘all the races and colors and speciality in Edinburgh. Dr Collins has pioneered tongues of the earth must be represented among research on Jewish history in Scotland. His the fourteen thousand souls that dwell in Jerusalem’ publications include Go and Learn: The International (Twain 2014:375) – is also the aim for my book. Story of Jews and Medicine in Scotland (1988), Currently entitled ‘Jerusalem of Memory and Lived Second City Jewry: The Jews of Glasgow in the Age of Experience: Cultural Explorations of a Contested Expansion, 1790-1919 (1990), and Be Well! Jewish City’, I suggest in this project that we need to open Immigrant Health and Welfare in Glasgow, 1860- our eyes to multiplicity, if we aim at a better future 1914 (2001). and cultural products drawn from across the faiths and ethnicities helps us to widen our perspective, News about Jewish Studies in Edinburgh can be just as in Muriel Spark’s thought exercise of a found here: http://jewishstudies.div.ed.ac.uk/ Jerusalem kaleidoscope of protagonists. Turns out that one can learn a lot about Jerusalem in Scotland, or maybe it is all that talking you get to do there that makes it so productive.

Dr Nina Fischer

BAJS Student Essay Prize 2014 In my dissertation I explore the treatment and care of children at the leading Jewish charity, Norwood, Many congratulations to Louise Pederson for in the period 1841-1914. Norwood, formerly winning the BAJS Student Essay Prize 2014 for her known as the Jews’ Hospital and Orphan Asylum dissertation on a Jewish charity, which was submitted (JHOA), was one of the earliest residential children’s to the University of Nottingham and supervised by Dr charities established in Britain in the nineteenth Karen Adler. century. Founded in 1807 to ‘uplift the morals and occupations of the young [Jewish] poor’, it preceded Barnardo’s and other comparable institutions of different denominations by over half a century. Yet despite this remarkably early initiative, the JHOA has been given little recognition for its contribution to Victorian childcare in current literature, and even less has been done to evaluate the institution’s achievements in a wider historical context. I endeavoured to address this oversight by critically assessing the JHOA, with the principal objective of establishing a fresh narrative of the institution through an evaluation of the orphans’ experiences.

I began by examining the institution’s rigorous admissions process, in order to build a profile of the JHOA’s ‘ideal’ candidate. Although successful applicants did not always match these requirements, the process reveals a great deal about contemporary attitudes to the poorer classes.

One overarching condition stipulated by the charity

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 13

was that the children had to be ‘deserving’ of relief. and these are a testament to the excellent care that It was believed that by accepting illegitimate, was taken of the children, and they demonstrate abandoned or destitute children, the JHOA would that the institution was fulfilling its objectives only encourage desertion and immorality, and laudably. ‘lower the tone of the institution’. This was a concept the Anglo-Jewish elite had adopted from Finally, I tracked the children as they left the their Gentile peers, and it typifies middle-class institution to enter domestic service or Victorian attitudes towards the pauper classes for apprenticeships, I evaluated their quality of life and most of the period. The children were required to assessed how successfully the institution met its pass examinations with tests in English, arithmetic objectives. The majority of girls left the institution and Hebrew. Furthermore, they also had to pass a for paid domestic work as the JHOA deemed it the medical examination, and one boy was rejected on most suitable occupation for girls. Only a minority account of his stutter. Evidently, this process did of the girls found jobs in occupations such as dress not always support those most in need, as the JHOA making, nursing and cap making. Occupational was more concerned with the intellectual capacity records for the boys indicate that very few directly and social backgrounds of their future wards, than entered middle-class occupations – the vast with the actual needs of the children. I argued that majority were placed in working-class trades, despite the institution’s stringent criteria, the final earning wages that enabled them to afford little composition of successful candidates was in fact more than sustenance and board. Evidently the more diverse than the policy suggests. The charity JHOA’s contribution to upward social mobility was also received orphans under the Pauper Removal limited, however, its expressed purpose of Act and children who had lost both their parents ‘maintaining, educating, clothing and apprenticing bypassed many of the requirements. to industrial employments poor children of the Jewish religion’ was admirably fulfilled. While investigating the day-to-day lives of the orphans, I discovered that by the end of the period I established that although the policy adopted for the children’s lives had improved markedly as the the care of the children was not innovative, the institution began to introduce a number of JHOA nevertheless fulfilled its purpose during the progressive reforms. In the early years, the period 1841-1914. By the time the boys and girls children’s experiences had been characterised by left at the ages of fourteen and fifteen, they had the dull repetitiveness of the institutions ‘barrack’ been Anglicised, but at the same time, the structure. However, as new social reforms were institution ensured that the children retained part introduced across Britain, the JHOA managed to of their Jewish identities through a traditional adopt a policy that, although not innovative, religious observance, and it also prepared them for managed to encourage the children’s individuality employment after they left the institution. while still fulfilling its purpose. This balancing of Admittedly, the JHOA was as much self-serving as it interests reflected the need for the JHOA to deal was philanthropic. It sought to imbue middle-class with specifically Jewish concerns, and explains why ideas and attitudes in the children that would the institution diverged from the new forms of perpetuate the class and gender roles in Victorian childcare that were enthusiastically adopted by society, which protected the position of the Anglo- other private and state-run establishments from the Jewish elite in the community. Nevertheless, this 1870s onwards. The institution followed a strict does not detract from the institution’s Anglicisation programme in an attempt to engender achievements. The orphans were well cared for, as middle-class British values into the children and the visitor’s book and countless letters of gratitude ensure their smooth transition into society. sent to the headmaster testify. Until government However, this did not mean that the children were legislation raised the school leaving age, the allowed to neglect their religious duties. The JHOA children at the JHOA were receiving substantially did its best to infuse a traditional religious more schooling than their contemporaries at Poor observance, and took its cue from the guidelines set Law institutions or the children of poor families. by the Chief Rabbi and the United Synagogue. I Furthermore, once the orphans left the found that the gendered treatment of the boys and establishment, they were placed in respectable girls influenced the children’s perceptions of their occupations, often with significantly better future roles in society. Girls were taught skills such prospects than children whose parents could not as laundry and needlework, which promoted afford to pay apprenticeship premiums. middle-class ideas of female domesticity. Boys took lessons in woodwork and bookkeeping in It is an honour receiving this prize, and I am preparation for entering skilled trades after leaving extremely grateful to the BAJS. I would like to thank the institution. Many of the children wrote letters of the history department at the University of gratitude to the headmaster after leaving the JHOA, Nottingham, and in particular my personal tutor

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 14

Karen Adler, as without her support and guidance Judaism Through the Ages Hannah Ewence and Helen this achievement would not have been possible. Spurling Part I: Divinity, Divine Actions and Their Louise Pederson Interpretation: The Management of Theological Images Louise has just completed the Graduate Diploma in 1. The Idea of Creation out of Nothing: From Qumran Law (GDL) in London and will commence with the to Genesis Rabbah. Markus Bockmuehl Legal Practice Course (LPC) in August. 2. The Image of God in Late Antique Apocalyptic Literature: The Holy One as Teacher in Pirqe Mashiah. Helen Spurling New Books: 3. Approaching the Divine by Imitatio Dei: Tzelemand Demut in R. Moshe Cordovero’s Tomer Devorah. Patrick Benjamin Koch The following edited volumes originated in two 4. The Image of Torah Min Ha-Shamayim in the Thought BAJS conferences, Southampton 2010 (The Image of Louis Jacobs Miri Freud-Kandel and the Prohibition of the Image in Judaism) and 5. Nothing and the Jews Devorah Baum Canterbury 2013 (Memory, Identity and Boundaries Part II: Contested Images of Judaism and Jewishness: of Jewishness). Jewish Perspectives on Identity and Image Management 6. Iconism and Aniconism in the Period of the Monarchy: Visualizing Jews Through the Ages: Literary and Was There an Image of the Deity in the Jerusalem Material Representations of Jewishness and Temple? Garth Gilmour Judaism, ed. by Hannah Ewence and Helen Spurling. 7. The Wissenschaft des Judentums and the Visual Irene New York-London: Routledge 2015 (Routledge Zwiep Studies in Cultural History). 8. Aestheticism and the Flight from Jewishness Todd M. Endelman 9. The Jew in the Eruv, the Jew in the Suburb: Contesting Published March 2015. the Public Face and the Private Space of British Jewry Hannah Ewence Visualizing Jews through Part III: Interaction and Conflict with the "Other": The the Ages is a major Management of Images in Jewish/Non-Jewish multidisciplinary study Relations exploring literary and 10. Beyond the Generic: Contextual Interpretations of material representations of Mediaeval Jewish Female Iconography Israel M. Sandman Jews, Jewishness and 11. Navigating Christian Space: Jewish Responses to Judaism from antiquity to Christian Imagery in Early Modern German Lands Maria Diemling the twenty-first century. In 12. Translating Modernity: On Aniconism and Negative bringing together leading Aesthetics in German-Jewish Thought Leena Petersen scholars from within the 13. Confronting the Military Image: The Jewish Soldier field of Jewish Studies, it and the British Army in the First World War Anne Lloyd investigates how the Part IV: Communication and Representation: The debates surrounding Management of Jewish Images in Cultural Media literary and material images within Judaism and in 14. The Image of the Jews in Belorussian Soviet Cinema, Jewish life are part of an on-going strategy of image 1924–1936 Claire Le Foll management. It is a strategy, this volume suggests, 15. Another Man’s Faith?: The Image of Judaism in the BBC Television Series Men Seeking God. James Jordan both consciously and unconsciously undertaken 16. The Absent, the Partial and the Iconic in Archival within multifarious arenas of Jewish life from early Photographs of the Holocaust Isabel Wollaston modern German lands to late twentieth century 17. Adorno and the Prohibition of the Image: The Case of North London, Late Antique Byzantium to the Music Lars Fischer curation of contemporary Holocaust exhibitions. 18. Ari Folman’s Other War: Animating and Erasing the Jews throughout the world and across the ages have Holocaust in Waltz with Bashir. Giulia Miller repeatedly used images whether literary or material to mediate and disseminate individual and Boundaries, Identity and Belonging in Modern collective Jewish identity to the non-Jewish world. Judaism, ed. Maria Diemling and Larry Ray. New York- This volume suggests that Jewish encounters with London: Routledge 2016 (Routledge Jewish Studies images and imagery in their various forms across Series). the ages reflect the on-going project to shape and define what it means to be Jewish. Due for publication in September 2015.

Contents: The drawing of boundaries has always been a key part of the Jewish tradition and has served to Introduction: Visualising Jews: An Introduction to maintain a distinctive Jewish identity. At the same Literary and Material Representations of Jewishness and

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 15

time, these boundaries have consistently been 11. ‘I always felt on the edge of things and not really part subject to negotiation, transgression and of it’: Fuzzy Boundaries in an extended Scottish Jewish contestation. The increasing fragmentation of Family. Fiona Frank Judaism into competing claims to membership, 12. Probing the Boundaries of Jewishnes and Iraeli Identity – the situation of non-Jewish partners and from Orthodox adherence to secular identities, has spouses of Israeli Jews. Dani Kranz brought striking new dimensions to this complex 13. Pushing the Boundaries: Contemporary Jewish Critics interplay of boundaries and modes of identity and of Israel and Zionism. Dashiel Lawrence belonging in contemporary Judaism. 14. Conjuring Crypto-Jews in New Mexico: Violating Boundaries, Identity and Belonging in Modern Ethnic, Scholarly and Ethical Boundaries. Judith Judaism addresses these new dimensions, bringing Neulander. together experts in the field to explore the various and fluid modes of expressing and defining Jewish identity in the modern world. Its interdisciplinary BAJS CONFERENCE 2016 scholarship opens new perspectives on the prominent questions challenging scholars in Jewish 11 – 12 July 2016 at the University of Studies. Beyond simply being born Jewish, Birmingham observance of Judaism has become a lifestyle choice and active assertion. Addressing the demographic Call for Papers changes brought by population mobility and ‘marrying out,’ as well as the complex relationships between Israel and the Diaspora, this bookreveals how these shifting boundaries play out in a global The Texture of Jewish Tradition: context, where Orthodoxy meets innovative ways of Investigations in Textuality defining and acquiring Jewish identity. The written word as manifest in a spectrum Contents: ranging from classical Jewish texts to contemporary literature alongside texts Introduction. Larry Ray and Maria Diemling 1. Homeland, Exile and the Boundaries of Jewish Identity. unearthed in locations including desert caves, David Biale an island in the Nile, a Cairo synagogue to the 2. Varities of Jewish Political Identity: Notes on Hannah Warsaw ghetto is the lifeblood of a great deal Arendt’s Jewish Writings. Robert Fine of research in Jewish Studies. This conference 3. Identity and Negotiation of Boundaries among young invites reflection on exploring textuality from a Polish Jews. Joanna Cukras-Stelągowska 4. Shades of Closeness, Belonging and Becoming in a variety of perspectives ranging from the contemporary Polish Jewish Community. Jan Lorenz material aspects of texts including the growing 5. Mimicry, Translation and Boundaries of Jewishness in role of digital humanities in the field, scribal the Soviet Union. Klavdia Smola culture and consciousness, textual plurality, 6. ‘Which Self?’ Jewish Identity in the child-centred Holocaust Novel. Lia Deromedi composition, reworking, form and genre, 7. Reality Gaps: Negotiating the Boundaries of British reception, classification and inter-relationships Jewish Identities in Contemporary Fiction. Ruth Gilbert between textual worlds and corpora. In 8. Deviance, Polyvalence and Musical ‘Third Space’: addition, speakers may wish to investigate the Negotiating Boundaries of Jewishness at Palestinian Hip oral and social aspects of texts and textuality Hop Performances in the Tel Aviv-Yafo Underground. Miranda Crowdus such as performance, memory, and power. 9. ‘Don’t be a stranger’: Giyur as a Theologisation of the Boundaries of (Jewish) Identities. Nechama Hadari For initial enquiries please contact the BAJS 10. ‘Hands across the Tea’: Re-negotiating Jewish Identity President Elect for 2016 Dr Charlotte Hempel and Belonging in Post-War Suburban Britain. Hannah Ewence at [email protected]

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 16

BAJS Conference 2015

Atheism, Scepticism, and Challenges to Annual Conference 2015 Monotheism Atheism, Scepticism and 5-7 July 2015, Manchester Meeting Place, The University of Challenges to Monotheism Manchester

Organised by Professor Daniel Langton (BAJS President 2015)

The Ethica of Spinoza © 2007 Shoshannah Brombacher, PhD. [email protected] PhD. Ethica ofThe Spinoza © 2007 Shoshannah Brombacher, 5-7 July 2015 The University of Manchester

In cooperation with the Centre for Jewish Studies and the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures at The University of Manchester, and the Institut für Jüdische Philosophie und Religion, Universität Hamburg www.britishjewishstudies.org

Programme:

SUNDAY 5 JULY

4.00-6.30pm Registration at The Pendulum Hotel (note: daily registration also at conference venue from 8.30am)

5.00-6.30pm Rylands Library Judaica collection presentation and Journal of Semitic Studies reception (optional)

6.30pm Dinner at Eastzeast restaurant (optional)

MONDAY 6 JULY

Room 1 Room 2 Room 3

9.00am, A. Bible, Ancient, Classical C. Modern and Contemporary D. Philosophy and Theology session 1 Satire, Monotheism, and Challenges to monotheism in a Idoloclasm: The First Task of Second Skepticism. Joshua L. Moss, post-secular age: an analysis of Wave Jewish Feminist Theology. American Hebrew Academy, USA religious-identity narratives of Melissa Orthodox and previously Raphael, University of Gloucestershire What Shall We Do with Devout Orthodox Israelis. Ari Engelberg, Idolaters? Jeremiah 44 Hebrew University, Israel Textualism and Skepticism Post- Reconsidered. Ruth Fidler, The modern Philosophy and the Theology University of Haifa, Israel When Rabbis Lose Faith: Twelve of Text. rabbis tell their stories about Federico Dal Bo, Berlin Institute for their loss of belief in God. Paul Cultural Inquiry, Germany Shrell-Fox, The Schechter Institute for Jewish Studies, Israel

Rejecting the Path but Grappling with the God: The Resistance to Atheism in Women’s “Off-the- Derech” Memoirs. Karen E.H. Skinazi, University of Birmingham

10.30am, coffee break in The Hub

11.00am, A. Bible, Ancient, Classical F. Jewish Studies: Communicating D. Philosophy and Theology

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 17

session 2 knowledge Atheism in Jewish antiquity. Sarah From Monotheism To Scepticism. Pearce, University of Southampton Irish newspapers, journals and other Kenneth Seeskin, Northwestern popular press’ opinions on the 1948 University, USA Sun and Angels Worship in eastern Palestine War. Stephen Oliver Murray, Jewish Communities of the Roman Trinity College Dublin, Ireland The Attenuation of God in Modern Empire: from Monotheism to Jewish Thought. Norman Henotheism? Maureen Attali, Paris The Common English Bible (2011) and the Solomon, Oxford Centre for IV, La Sorbonne University, France Limits of Modern Bible Translation. Hebrew and Jewish Studies Jonathan G. Campbell, University of Bristol Jewish Scepticism: The Status The Judaica Project: For a Laboratory Quaestionis. Giuseppe Veltri, Ethics (Dance). Ben Spatz, University of Hamburg University, Germany Huddersfield

12.30, lunch in The Mumford Restaurant

1.30pm, B. Medieval and Early Modern C. Modern and Contemporary E. Literature and Film session 3 "I command you, Do not engage Secular and Humanistic Sedarim: Jewish “Why the Geese Shrieked” - Isaac yourself with Logic": Reevaluation Ritual between Atheism and Universalism. Bashevis Singer’s Work between of Rabbi Hayya Gaon's attitude Corinna R. Kaiser, Heinrich Heine Mysticism and Scepticism. Khayke toward Greek philosophy. Zvi University Duesseldorf, Germany Beruriah Wiegand, Oxford Centre Stampfer, University of Cambridge for Hebrew and Jewish Studies Ritual, spirituality and secularization. Kate "Too Grand a Scene to be Denied" - Miriam Loewenthal, Royal Holloway, Atheism and Skepticism in the Jacob Anatoli (c. 1194-1256) on University of London Poetry of Paul Celan. Dorit Truth, Doubt and Certainty in his Lemberger, Bar-Ilan University, Sermon on the Ten Beit Shirah: Atheists and song in the Israel Commandments. Renate Smithuis, contemporary progressive Jewish University of Manchester synagogue services. Barbara Borts, Rabbi Stanley Kubrick's 'agnostic of Darlington Hebrew Congregation prayer': 2001: A Space Odyssey. Doubting Abraham doubting God - Nathan Abrams, Bangor The Call of Abraham in the Or ha- University Sekhel. Benjamin Williams, JRRI, University of Manchester

3.00pm, coffee break in The Hub

3.30pm, Plenary session: Keynote Lecture by David Ruderman: Plenary room 4/5

5.15pm, AGM: Plenary room 4/5

6.30pm, Conference dinner in The Mumford Restaurant (optional)

TUESDAY 7 JULY

Room 1 Room 2 Room 3

9.00am, B. Medieval and Early Modern D. Philosophy and Theology F. Jewish Studies: Panel on session 4 Antisemitism and the Constitution The Jews and their Doubts. Anti- Spinoza, Jewish Studies, and the Theology of Sociology. Jewish Polemics and Christian of Reading. Alex Samely, University of Apologetics in the Fascicolo delle Manchester Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodern vanità giudaiche (1583) by Sociology, and the Ambivalence of Antonino Stabili. Martina The Anti-Christ and the Anti-Moses: Anti-Semitism. Jonathan Judaken, Mampieri, University of “Roma Nietzsche, Spinoza and the Possibility of Rhodes College, USA Tre”, Italy Sacrilegious Beatitude. Jeremy Fogel, Tel Aviv University, Israel Émile Durkheim’s Sociology and Metatron Revisited: Binitarian French Antisemitism. Chad Alan Overtones in the Kabbalah of Kaplan and Wittgenstein: atheism, Goldberg, University of Nathan Neta Shapira of Krakow. phenomenology and the use of language. Wisconsin, USA Agata Paluch, The British Library Michael T. Miller, University of Nottingham Why the positivist attempt to save Scepticism and Politics in Simone modernity from itself can mean

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 18

Luzzatto’s Discourse on the State bad news for the Jews. Marcel of the Jews (Venice, 1638). Anna Stoetzler, Bangor University Lissa, University of Hamburg, Germany

10.30am, coffee break in The Hub

11.00am, B. Medieval and Early Modern Postgraduate masterclass F. Jewish Studies: Jewish Law session 5 with David Ruderman Shim'i the Skeptical: Skeptical Breaking the Commandments of attitudes in early modern Jewish God for the Sake of Our Tradition: Anti-Christian polemical writings. The Rabbinic ‘Supremacy Clause’ Karoly Daniel Dobos, Pazmany in Historical Perspective. Holger Peter Catholic University, Hungary Zellentin, University of Nottingham The “If” of doubt, the “Maybe”: On some expressions of epistemic The Golden Rule(s) of Love: the uncertainty in Hebrew poetry of Two or the One? Alex Tal, the Baroque era. Yehoshua Granat, University of Haifa, Israel Hebrew University, Israel Challenges to Jewish Law in Polytheism, syncretism and Times of Transition: Rethinking Judaism of the Jews at Parenthood Concepts. Avishalom Elephantine: Ashim and Kherem Westreich, College of Law and Betel as secondary deities. Eulàlia Business, Ramat Gan, Israel Vernet, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain

12.30pm, lunch in the Mumford Restaurant

1.30pm, C. Modern and Contemporary D. Philosophy and Theology F. Jewish Studies: Interfaith session 6 Unveiling the Christianity of Is Apophatic Theology the same as Representations of Jews and European Secularism; or, is a Atheism? An Answer from Judaism. Philip Judaism in the Works of the Jewish Secularism Possible? Alexander, University of Manchester Methodist theologian Adam Lucien Wolf, Sylvain Lévi and Leon Clarke (1762-1832). Simon Trotsky. James Renton, Edge Hill Gershom Scholem: Scholar between Mayers, University of Manchester University Atheism and Secularism. Rosa Reicher, University of Heidelberg, Germany A comparison of recent Jewish "This is the time, not for psalms, critiques of the state of Israel and but for arms". Atheism, Secular theology as a challenge for Jewish Christian anti-Jewish polemic and messianism, and revolution in the Atheists. Avner Dinur, Sapir College, Israel its implications for Jewish Pale. Piotr Laskowski, University identity. William Evans, of Warsaw, Poland University of Birmingham

Global conflict, local peace? Jewish-Muslim relations in the UK. Yulia Egorova, Durham University

3.00pm, coffee break in The Hub

3.30pm, C. Modern and Contemporary E. Literature and Film D. Philosophy, Theology, and Law session 7 .L Judah Agnosticism’: ‘Religious Israeli modern in Kippur Yom :ועל דעת הקהל Secularism Science, Philosophy, and Hasidism: the Tzemah Hebrew literature. Tamar S. Drukker, Magnes between Bertrand Russell Tzedek’s Sefer HaHakirah and its SOAS and William James. David Barak- later echoes in Habad. Naftali Gorodetsky, University of Haifa, Loewenthal, UCL Judaism and Atheism in the work of the Israel Czech 20th century novelist Ivan Olbracht. Reflections of an Atheist Jew. Martin Borýsek, University of Cambridge The Desirable Lenient Policy Leonard Mars, Swansea University Concerning Conversion to Judaism: The Relationship Creation as coincidence? Religion between Acceptance of the Jewish versus science in Yiddish anarchist Commandments and Religious reasoning. Lilian Türk, University and Philosophical Scepticism. of Hamburg Yehiel Kaplan, Haifa Uniiversity

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 19

Woolf Institute Cambridge Scholarship

The Woolf Institute, in partnership with the Cambridge Commonwealth, European and International Trust, offers the Woolf Institute Cambridge Scholarships. These scholarships are intended to support outstanding research students at the University of Cambridge who have the potential to become exceptional leaders of the future. Scholars will be selected from amongst applicants in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Their research must be relevant to the focus of the Woolf Institute - the multi-disciplinary study of relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims. The Woolf Institute and the Cambridge Commonwealth, European and International Trust will co- fund the successful candidates. Each scholarship will cover the full cost of studying for a PhD at the University of Cambridge, and will be tenable at any of the thirty-one Cambridge Colleges.

Further details: http://www.woolf.cam.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/phd.asp.

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 20

BAJS Committee

PRESIDENT and CONFERENCE 2015 ORGANISER: Prof. Daniel Langton (until 2016): Centre for Jewish Studies, Department of Religions & Theology, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL. Email: [email protected]

TREASURER: Dr Holger Zellentin: Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Room C11 Humanities Building, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD. Email: [email protected]

SECRETARY: Dr Helen Spurling: Department of History, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ. Email: [email protected]

BULLETIN EDITOR: Dr Maria Diemling: School of Humanities, Canterbury Christ Church, University, North Holmes Road, Canterbury CT1 1QU. Email: [email protected]

WEB OFFICER: Dr Hannah Holtschneider: School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh, New College, Mound Place, Edinburgh EH1 2LX. Email: [email protected]

Prof. Nathan Abrams (until 2016): School of Creative Studies and Media, Bangor University, Gwynedd LL57 2DG. Email: [email protected]

Dr François Guesnet (until 2015): Department of Hebrew & Jewish Studies, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT. Email: [email protected]

Dr Charlotte Hempel (until 2017, president-elect 2016): School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT. Email: [email protected]

Prof. Larry Ray (until 2015): School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NZ. Email: [email protected]

Dr James Renton (until 2016), Department of English and History, Edge Hill University, St Helens Road, Ormskirk, Lancashire L39 4QP. Email: [email protected]

Dr Zuleika Rodgers (until 2016): School of Religions and Theology, Arts Building, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland. Email: [email protected]

Dr Andrea Schatz (until 2017): Department of Theology & Religious Studies, King’s College London, 22 Kingsway, London WC2B 2LE. E-mail: [email protected]

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 21

Jewish Studies in the British Isles

The British Association for Jewish Studies was founded in 1975. In the fourty years of its existence, the Jewish Studies scene in the British Isles has changed dramatically and, as the following surveys demonstrate, is more productive, creative and innovative than ever. In the past year, BAJS members have been promoted to prestigious positions, secured highly competitive grants and won prizes, pursued original research projects, supervised postgraduate students from all areas of Jewish students and published widely. Please keep sharing your Jewish Studies news with BAJS. We are keen to highlight and celebrate the manifold activities and successes in Jewish Studies by our members.

New appointments and promotions David Rechter was promoted to a Chair in Modern History at the University of Oxford. BAJS warmly congratulates the following members for their achievements: Joanna Weinberg was appointed to a Chair in Rabbinics and Medieval Hebrew at the Anna Sapir Abulafia, formerly of Lucy University of Oxford. Cavendish College, Vered Weiss has completed her PhD at the Cambridge, was University of Kent and has secured a appointed to the postdoctoral research associate position at the Chair of the University of Illinois from September 2015. Study of the Abrahamic Honours and Distinctions: religions in the Faculty of Professor Nicholas de Lange (Cambridge) Theology and deliverd the Grinfield Lectures on the Religion at Septuagint, University of Oxford, 2013--2015 Oxford. She was (six lectures on Jewish use of Greek Bible an Affiliated translations in the Middle Ages) with the title College Lecturer ‘Japheth in the tents of Shem: Greek Bible and Director of translations in medieval Judaism’. He also Studies in currently holds a Leverhulme Emeritus History in Newnham Coll-ege, Cambridge 2013- Fellowship. During his tenure he is writing a 15 and Fel-low, College Lecturer and Di-rector of book about Jewish use of Greek Bible Studies in History at Lucy Cavendish College translations in the Middle Ages. Cambridge since 1990, where she served as Vice-President from 2002 – 2010. Dr Daniel Wildmann (Queen Mary University of London / Leo Baeck Institute London) has Former BAJS committee member and Reader in secured a Lady Davis Visiting Professorship at New Testament and Ancient Judaism at Durham The Hebrew University of Jerusalem where he University, Lutz Doering, has been appointed to will spend spring 2016. a Chair in Theology at the Institutum Judaicum Delitzschianum, University of Münster, Dr Holger Zellentin (University of Nottingham) Germany. was awarded a 2014 Philip Leverhulme Prize for “Qur’anic Studies and Jewish Studies” and a Jan Joosten was appointed Regius Professor of 2016 British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship Classical Hebrew at Oxford University following entitled “The Qur’an between Judaism and Professor Hugh Williamson’s retirement. He Christianity” (see entry on p. 7). studied Theology and Semitic languages in Belgium, the US and Israel (with a PhD from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem). He taught biblical languages and Old Testament exegesis at the University of Strasbourg (France) for 20 years before coming to Oxford in 2014.

Current Research Projects:

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 22

Anna Sapir Abulafia, Oxford: A selection of over 25 objects will be displayed Gratian and Jews and Muslims, in particular a in the Jewish Museum’s Welcome Gallery study of the role of Jews and Muslims in the alongside treasures from itsJudaica collection, in unique late twelfth-century Anglo-Norman Gloss this project in partnership with the Cultural in Gonville and Caius, Cambridge MS 283/676. Institute at King’s College London. The objects tell stories from around the globe, Catherine Hezser, SOAS: including South Africa, Yemen, Ethiopia and the Editing with Uzi Leibner, Jewish Art in its Late Ukraine, and across many cultures and religions. Antique Context, forthcoming: Mohr Siebeck For more information please see: winter 2015/spring 2016 http://www.jewishmuseum.org.uk/journeys. Work on a new monograph project: Speaking With Their Bodies: The Representation of Non- Andrea Schatz, KLC: Verbal Communication in Palestinian Rabbinic The Reception of Josephus in Jewish Culture from Literature of Late Antiquity. the Eighteenth Century to the Present (AHRC- funded, Co-Investigator). Hannah Holtschneider, Edinburgh: AHRC Award: Jewish Lives, Scottish Spaces Renate Smithius, Manchester: (please see separate entry on page 5). The John Rylands Research Institute has Dr Holtschneider also runs the Jewish Studies received an award of £120,000 from an Network (http://jewishstudies.div.ed.ac.uk/) anonymous private Foundation for the and is co-editor of the online teaching resource production of a catalogue of the Hebrew Jewish/non-Jewish relations manuscripts collection at the Rylands Library. (http://jnjr.div.ed.ac.uk/). When completed, the catalogue, which builds upon the unpublished catalogue of Hebrew Daniel Langton, Manchester: manuscripts produced by Alexander Samely in Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship 2013- the early 1990s, will be made available online. 15: Darwin's Jews: Evolutionary Theory, Jewish Thought and Interfaith Relations (£95,122). Sacha Stern, UCL: PI: Daniel Langton. Calendars in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: John Rylands Research Institute 2015: Standardization and Fixation: Representations of Jews and Judaism in the Works ERC project, 2013-2014, £1,874,254.50, of the Methodist theologian Adam Clarke (1762- For more information, please see 1832). (£5,000). https://www.ucl.ac.uk/hebrew- PI: Daniel Langton. Researcher: Simon Mayers. jewish/research/research-pro/calendars- antiquity-middle-ages and separate entry on Guido Mensching, FU Berlin: page 7). An XML-based Information System for Old Occitan Medical Terminology (including Judaeo- Daniel Wildmann (Queen Mary University of Occitan), together with Gerrit Bos (Cologne), London / Leo Baeck Institute London): Maria Sofia Corradini (Pisa), Andrea Bozzi A History of Visual Expressions of Antisemitism, (Pisa). This project is funded by the German Emotions and Morality Research Foundation (DFG). In Late Imperial Germany postcards were Work on a critical edition of the Kitāb at-Talḫīṣ apopular means of communication. In 1900, the by Marwān ibn Ǧanāḥ, together with Gerrit BOS Berlin bookseller «Antisemitic Bookshop Emil (Cologne). This project is also funded by the Keil» produced a postcard entitled «Jewish German Research Foundation (DFG). Prowess», showing a Jewish man in his prime, of

stocky build, hiding behind his corpulent wife Aaron Rosen, KLC: after an encounter with a bear in the mountains. Aaron Rosen organized a series of three crowd- He bends down and uses his wife as a shield sourced exhibitions at the Jewish Musem in from the animal, displaying what is typically London. The exhibition on show from 26 May to considered ‹female› behaviour – taking shelter 4 September 2015 is on Journeys - how do we behind a (male) body – and indicating an trace, interpret and represent them? inversion of gender roles. The exhbition will feature personal mementoes, historic artefacts and fine art, all on the theme of The ugliness and shapelessness of the Jewish journeys. Members of the public have submitted body on this postcard is striking. Not only does it objects alongside moving testimonies of the show unattractive bodies, the postcard also journeys undertaken – physical, spiritual and speaks of correlated moral inadequacies, such as emotional. cowardice, dishonesty, lecherousness. Such

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 23

postcards were eagerly collected and posted – they met with approval, inspired positive emotions and feelings. But what was it that aroused those feelings? What kind of feeling is generated? How do these feelings interact with these antisemitic visual signals? Looking back at the history of antisemitism, it is obvious that visual sources are vital to the formulation of antisemitic narratives, shared emotions and shared common values. The postcard is a case in point. What is still missing in present-day research is an approach that combines emotion, morality, visual language and antisemitism. This project, using Germany as an example, is intended to clarify how these connections work. The project will cover the late Imperial Germany, the Weimar Republic, the Nazi era and post-1945 Germany (East and West), and investigate films and TV productions. By positioning films – from the silent movie era to today´s TV productions – in their historical, political and cultural context, I will point out the continuities and discontinuities of emotions and moral values linked to the visual presentation of Jews and Judaism.

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 24

Ongoing doctoral research at British 2. J.G. Davidson, Theological Significance of Nouns and Irish Universities referring to God in Deutero-Isaiah. 3. C. Thomson, The Removal of Sin in Zechariah. 4. N. A. Wormley, Law and Stories in Numbers: The The following survey was compiled and updated Curriculum for Foundation Learning in Israel. from members’ communications and last year’s overview. Please update us on changes and Supervisor: Nicholas de Lange completions. 1. Martin Borysek, The Taqqanot Candia. 2. Kim Phillips, David Kimhi’s exegesis. University of Aberdeen Supervisor: William Horbury Supervisor: Jutta Leonhardt-Balzer 1. N. Hilton, Biblical Interpretation in III Baruch. 1. Yang Kyu Park, The Zealots and Early Christianity 2. Y. M. Chan, Jerusalem Tradition in Zechariah 1–8. 2. Stefan Bosman, The Jewish background of motifs, 3. K. Conway, Epangelia in Paul in its Jewish Setting. arguments and hermeneutical methods in Paul 4. D. Pevarello, The Sentences of Sextus and Jewish 3. Erlend MacGillivray, Evidence for missionary and Christian Asceticism. activity in ancient philosophical schools and Philo 5. D. Hakala, The Decalogue in Ancient Catechesis.

Supervisor: Steve Mason Supervisor: Geoffrey Kahn 1. John Lowery, Luke 2.41-51a: A Strange 1. Elizabeth Robar, Short and long prefix Anticlimax. conjugation forms in Biblical Hebrew. 2. Joseph Lear, Ethics and Eschatology in Luke-Acts. 2. Melonie Schmierer, The historical development of Eastern Aramaic. Bangor University 3. Illan Gonen, The Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect of Zakho . Supervisor: Nathan Abrams 4. Lidia Napiorkowska, The Jewish and Christian 1. Jennifer Krase, The Jews of Bangor and Neo-Aramaic dialects of Urmi. Landudno. 5. Ronny Vollandt, Medieval Christian Arabic Bible 2. Gerwyn Owen, Jews in Italian Cinema. Translations. 3. Cai Parry-Jones, The Jewish Diaspora in Wales. Supervisor: Daniel Weiss University of Birmingham 1. Jonathan Gilmour, Joseph B. Soloveitchik on Interfaith Dialogue. Supervisor: Charlotte Hempel 1. Helen Freeman, A Jungian Approach to the Dead Canterbury Christ Church Sea Scrolls. 2. Reuven Geller, Beyond the Yahad – The Supervisor: Maria Diemling Foundational Triangle of 1QSa, CD and 1QM / Dead 1. Gifford Rhamie (co-supervised with Robert Sea Scrolls. Beckford), Image, Text & Agency: The Ethiopian 3. Hanne Kirchheiner, The Remnant of Israel. Eunuch (Acts 8.26-40) and Conceptuality in the Qumran Social Identity in the Light of Exegesis and Imperial Imagination of Biblical Studies. Anthropology.

4. Drew Longacre, The Significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls for Understanding the History of the Textual Durham University Transmission of the Hebrew Bible. 5. Nick Woods, The Qumran Wisdom Texts and the Supervisor: Lucille Cairns Gospel of John (co-supervision with Dr Karen 1. Caroline Tucker, Female-authored diaries and Wenell). memoirs of Occupied France (including the ‘journal’ of Hélène Berr). University of Cambridge 2. Richard Lawri, Narratives of collaboration in Occupied France.

Supervisor: Anna Sapir Abulafia Supervisor: Robert Hayward 1. Linda Stone, The Perception of Jews in twelfth- century Christian exegesis in the Glosses on the 1. Lawrence Ko, The Cosmic Significance of the Service of the Levitical Singers in the Books of Psalms. Chronicles.

Supervisor: Graham Davies 1. A. Gray, Metaphor in Psalm 18.

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 25

2. Tyson Puthoff (co-supervised with John 2. Joanne Pettitt, Characterising Evil: The Ontology Barclay), Human Mutability and Mystical Change: of Culpability and the Figure of the Perpetrator in Explorations in Ancient Jewish Onto-Anthropology. Representations of the Shoah 3. Vasile Condrea, The Syntax of the Aramaic Verb 3. Vered Weiss, Oh Other Where Art Thou?: The in Targum Jonatan of the Prophets. Location of the Other in Hebrew and English Literature of the Nineteeth and Twentieth Centuries Supervisor: Yulia Egerova (completed 2015). 1. Graham Panico, Traditions, modernities and the semiosis of style: A reading of diversity in Jewish- University of Leeds Gentile relations in the religious architecture of the Moorish Revival. Supervisor: Johanna Stiebert 1. Nyampa Kwabe, The Imprecatory Psalms from a University of Edinburgh Kamwe Perspective (Inculturation Hermeneutics).

Supervisor: Hannah Holtschneider Liverpool Hope University 1. Katarina Ockova, Marriage practices among Jews in contemporary Slovakia (joint supervision with Supervisor: Bernard Jackson Professor Janet Carsten, Social Anthropology). 1. Antonia Richards, Law and Narrative in the Book 2. Lizzie Robinson-Self, Concentration camp poetry of Esther: Jewish Identity in the Diaspora. (joint supervision with German Studies). 2. Rachel Levy, How Jewish Orthodoxy positioned 3. Louise Gramstrup, Women’s identity formation in itself in the wake of modernity and the an interfaith book group of Jewish, Christian and emancipation of the Jews, with particukar reference Muslim women. to food and dietary laws in the Netherlands. 4. Ryan Tafilowski, Paul Althaus and the ‘Jewish Question. King’s College London

Supervisor: Timothy Lim Supervisor: Paul Joyce John M. Starr, A Quantitative Analysis of the 1. Steffan Mathias, Paternity, Progeny, and Aramaic Qumran Texts. Perpetuation: Creating Lives after Death in the Hebrew Bible (completed June 2014). Heythrop College, University of London Supervisor: Aaron Rosen Supervisor: A. Achtar 1. Maeve Thompson-Starkey, Representations of 1. Hakime Reyyan Yasar: Contemporary Islamic and the Abrahamic Religions in Graphic Novels. Jewish approaches to inequities in religious divorce 2. Tahnia Ahmed, Ethnic and Religious Difference in law. Modern British Political Cartoons.

Supervisor: Martin Poulsom Supervisor: Andrea Schatz 1. John Gravett: The work of David Tracy as a model 1. Wendy Filer, In Pursuit of a Remedy: The for understanding Jewish and Christian Holocaust Interrelationship Between Sephardi Courts and the Theology. English Secular Legal System, 1655-1869. 2. Débora Marques de Matos, Mobility and Supervisor: Ann Jeffers Adaptability of Sephardic Scribes in the Late 1. Andrezej Toczyski: The Story of Rahab: A Fifteenth Century (co-supervised in the Narrative-Critical Analysis of Joshua 2. Department of Digital Humanities).

University of Kent Supervisor: Jonathan Stökl 1. Eliza Allen, Studies on Abraham in Genesis 14-18. Supervisor: Larry Ray 2. Cristina de Venegas, Beyond Gender Paradigms: 1. Rachel Kay Burns, Sequestration of concentration The Behavior of Women in Love. A Comparison camps in Nazi Germany: Knowing about, and Between The Song of Songs And Romeo and Juliet. attitudes towards the camps in three case studies. Kingston University Supervisor: Axel Stähler 1. Catherine Bartlett, Representations of the Jew in Supervisor: Philip Spencer the Nineteenth-Century Novel in France, Germany 1. Ian Rich, Perpetrator motivation and the question and England. of Imperialism (Shoah/comp. genocide research).

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 26

University of Manchester in imperial Rome. 5. Kim Czajkowski, Living under different laws: the Supervisor: George Brooke Babatha and Salome Komaise archives (completed 1. Kyung Baek, The Use of Jewish Scripture in the 2014). Scrolls and the Gospel of Matthew. 2. Jarod Jacobs, The Linguistic Character of the Supervisor: Abigail Green Biblical Dead Sea Scrolls. 1. Milena Zeidler: Transnational Jewish Relief 3. Jessica Keady, Gender and Purity in the Sectarian Networks and the Emergence of Jewish Inter- Dead Sea Scrolls4. nationalism in Congress Poland. 4. Marvin Miller, Second Temple Epistolography 2. Myrna Martin: From Pariah to Person: Jewish and the Genre of MMT. encouters with Italian Catholics 1800-1870. 5. Dohnson Chang, Covenant and Priesthood in 2 Maccabees, the Sectarian Scrolls, and Hebrews. Supervisor: Jan Joosten 1. Matt Albanese: Septuagint Isaiah. Supervisor: Adrian Curtis 1. Jennifer Williams, Approaches to Childlessness Supervisor: Derek Penslar in the Hebrew Bible. 1. Heatala Taha, Living the Israeli Dream? The Econmic Choices of Palestinians in Israel. Supervisor: Cathy Gelbin 2. Peter Bergamin, An Intellectual Biography of 1. Heather Hilton, Holocaust and 9/11 Narratives. Abba Achimeir.

Supervisor: Daniel Langton Supervisor: Alison Salvesen 1. Tereza Ward, Social and Religious Jewish Non- 1. Bradley J. Marsh, The Samaritan Pentateuch in conformity: Representations of the Anglo-Jewish Christan textual tradition. Experience in the Oral Testimony Archive of the 2. Katharine Perry (co-supervisor Chris Tuckett), Manchester Jewish Museum. The Role of the Septuagint in the Development of 2. Ros Livshin, Political Nonconformity in Minority Hellenstic Jewish and New Testament Demonology. Communities: Representations of the Anglo-Jewish Experience in the Oral Testimony Archive of the Supervisor: Joanna Weinberg Manchester Jewish Museum (completed). 1. Sabine Arndt (co-supervisor Emilie Savage- Smith): Judah Hacohen and the Emperor’s Supervisor: Alex Samely philosopher: Dyamics of transmission at cultural 1. Hedva Rosen, Aspects of the literary structure crossroads. of the Mekhilta 2. Symon Foren: Ovadiah Sforno as exegete and 2. Andrew Wilshire, Rights and Responsibility: philosopher. Emmanuel Levinas’s Critique of Liberalism. 3. Kirsten MacFarlane (co-supervisor Peter Maculloch): Hugh Broughton and chronology. Supervisor: Renate Smithuis 1. Katharina Keim: Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer Supervisor: Hugh Williamson (completed December 2014). 1. Sonja Noll, An analysis of the semantic field of 2. Marci Freedman: The Itinerary of Benjamin of words for ‘silence’ in the Hebrew Bible. Tudela 2. Seth Cole, The Meaning, Function and Significance of Sheol in Ancient Israel. Newcastle University 3. Abigail Zammit, The Lachish letters: a new investigation. Supervisor: Beate Müller 4. Jongkyung Lee, ‘They will attach themselves to 1. Gary Jenkins, Representations of the Holocaust in the house of Jacob’: A Redactional Study of Isaiah post-1990 Hollywood, Israeli, and German films. 13–23. 5. Anna Khanina, The Use of earlier Scripture in University of Oxford Speeches in Chronicles.

Supervisor: Martin Goodman Queen Mary, University of London 1. David Friedman, Josephus on the servile origins of the Jews in Egypt. Supervisor: Miri Rubin (History) 2. Anthony Rabin, The Adiabene narrative in the 1. Milan Zonca, Authority and Deviance in Medieval Jewsh Antiquities of Josephus. Western Jewry. 3. Andrea De Marinis, A study of Philo, Quod omnis prous liber. 4. Jonathan Davies, Josephus and literary censorship

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 27

Supervisor: Daniel Wildmann Supervisor: Devorah Baum 1. Joseph Cronin: Integrating Jews from the former 1. Michael Witcombe, Sex and Sexuality in Philip Soviet Union into Germany’s Jewish communities: Roth. 1990–2005. 2. Eva Van Loenen, Representations of Hasidim and 2. Rodney Resnek: The Changing Nature of Hasidism in Post-War American Literature. Antisemitism in South Africa as expressed through Attitudes Towards Immigration. Supervisor: Andrea Reiter 3. Dana Smith: The “Jüdischer Kulturbund”: Jewish 1. Bettina Koehler, Contemporary German-Jewish Cultural Life and Identity under Nazism Literature (esp. Maxim Biller) as a Counter 4. Tabea Maja Judith Richardson: Divisive voices- Discourse. deliberate vocations: 3 female protagonists and 2. Diana Popescu, The contribution of post-Holocaust their take on the Christian-Jewish dialogue after the visual art to the shaping of Jewish and Israeli identities. Holocaust; Gertrud Luckner, the activist, Eleonore 3. Meike Reintjes, German Jewish Women Poets in Sterling, the historian Jeanette Wolff, the politician British Exile. 5. Florence Largillière: Nationalist Jews in France, 4. Mike Witcombe, Philip Roth. Germany, and Italy Faced with Anti-Semitism: 1914- 5. Silke Schwaiger, Edition Exil, Vienna and Migrant 1940. Authors. 6. Georg Burgstaller, The world of the early University of Reading twentieth-century Austrian music theorist Heinrich Schenker. Supervisor: David Brauner 1. Clare Reed, Crises of Identity in Jewish-American Supervisor: Joachim Schlör Lesbian Fiction, 1980–2010. 1. Hannah Farmer, An Act of Charity: Philanthrophy and Jewish Women’s Identity in 1890s Chicago. University of Roehampton Trinity College Dublin Supervisor: Eric Jacobson 1. Katie Meltzer, National Identity in Sacher- Supervisor: Zuleika Rodgers Masoch’s Historical Fiction. 1. Stephen Murray, Irish Responses to Zionism, 2. Chris Horner, Hannah Arendt and the Fate 1948-1973. of Judgment. 2. Emily Parker, The figure of Joseph in the writings 3. Ariel Kahn, Kabbalah as Narrative Technique Philo of Alexandria (completed 2014). in I. B. Singer, Kafka and Agnon. 3. Natalie Wynn, Jewish Activism and intercommunal relations, 1840–1913 (completed SOAS 2014) 4. Barbara De Bergin, Herod the Great and the Supervisor: Catherine Hezser Hasmoneans. 1. David Elieser Cohen, Don Isaac Abrabanel's Biblical Exegesis (submitted). Supervisor: Anne Fitzpatrick 1. Philip Crowe, The Temple Economy in the Second University of Southampton Temple Period. 2. Magdalene Szklarz, The Book of Job. Supervisor: Tony Kushner 3, Heidi O'Rourke, Amun and Yahweh: An 1. Jan Lanicek, The Czech Government in exile and Examination of the Jewish Temple of Elephantine the Holocaust. during the Persian Period. 2. Agnese Pavule, Elite Female Jewish Philanthropy and Jewish identity in Victorian England. University College Dublin 3. Lawrence Cohen, The Norwood Jewish Orphanage. Supervisor: Lindsey Earner-Byrne 4. Micheline Stevens, Childhood and Jewish 1. Trish Kessler, 'Protectionism and Serving the Philanthropy in late Victorian Philanthropy. Nation: Jewish Refugee Industries, Identity and 5. Tom Plant, Anglo-Jewish Identity and Youth Clubs Modernity in Twentieth-Century Provincial Ireland. in the Twentieth Century. 6. Malgorzata Wloszycka, Debates about the University College London Holocaust in Postwar Poland at the local level. Supervisor: Helen Beer Supervisor: Shirli Gilbert 1. Sima Beeri, “Literarishe bleter" and Nachman 1. Laura Musker, Italian Jewish Communities and Mayzel. the Catholic Church during the Fascist Era.

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 28

2. Zosia Sochanska, The Cultural and Literary 7. Julian Sinclair, Rav Kook’s mysticism. Contexts of the Work of Dvora Vogel. 8. Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz, The religious lives of 3. Ester Whine, Leo Koenig’s Contribution to Yiddish Orthodox Jewish women in London, with a focus on Culture. folk practices. 9. Wojciech Tworek, The issue of time in the Supervisor: Michael Berkowitz doctrine of R. Shneur Zalman of Lyadi. 1. Angela Debnath, International Interventions in Genocide and Systematic Violence. Supervisor: Sacha Stern 2. Frank Dabba Smith, Ernst Leitz and the Leica 1. Kineret Sittig, A critical edition with translation Company during the Second World War. and commentary of Iggeret haShabbat by Abraham 3. Ian Harker, Ernst Biberstein: Lutheran Pastor ibn Ezra (completion expected September 2015). and SS-man. 4. Felicity Griffiths, Ethnicity and Minority Groups in the Colleges of London University. 5. Lida Barner, Intellectual Property under the . Nazis: Jews and Patents.

Supervisor: François Guesnet 1. Noemie Duhaut, The Europeanisation of French Jews. French-Jewish Perceptions of Jews in South- East Europe, 1860-1900. 2. Zuzanna Krzemien: Salomon Dubno (1738-1813) - Eastern European Jewish Learning and German Jewish Haskalah. 3. Jamie Sisson: Charity and Insularity: A Critical Analysis of the Foundations and Leverage of American Philanthropy for the Welfare of Modern Polish-Jewish Life.

Supervisor: Lily Kahn 1. Paul Moore: A Syntactic Analysis of Targum Canticles (second supervisor, with Willem Smelik)

Supervisor: Neill Lochery 1. Azriel Bermant, Britain’s Policy towards the Arab-Israeli Conflict under the Thatcher Government. 2. Toby Greene, The impact of Islamist terrorism on UK policy towards the State of Israel. 3. Mohammed Hussein, Hamas and the Islamification of the Palestinian Authority Areas. 4. John Lipman, The Suez Crisis 1956 and the British Press. 5. Thomas Wilson, Israeli Settlers and Israel’s Religious Right since the Peace Process.

Supervisor: Ada Rapoport-Albert 1. Yaffa Aranoff, The Portrayal of Biblical Women in Hasidic Literature. 2. Nathaniel Berman, ‘Improper Twins’: The Ambivalent ‘Other Side’ in the Zohar and Kabbalistic Tradition. 3. Sara Hall, Towards a New Cultural History of Czernowitz: The Yiddish and Ukrainian Press. 4. Ariel Klein, The Sifra di-Tseni’uta of the Zohar. 5. Agata Paluch, R. Nathan Neta Shapira of Krakow (1585–1633) and the Ashkenazi Kabbalah. 6. Gillian Rosen, The Institution of 'hadlakat ha-Ner' (Sabbath Candle Lighting) by Women.

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 29

Members’ recent langue syriaque’, in Villey E., ed., Les Eadem, ‘Navigating Christian space: sciences en syriaque. Paris: Geuthner, Jewish responses to Christian publications 2014, 285-318. imagery in Early Modern German Idem (with J. Wilkins), ‘The Greek lands’, in Hannah Ewence and Helen The following entries are based on and Syriac traditions of Galen de Spurling, eds., Visualizing Jews communications received from BAJS alimentorum facultatibus’, Galenos 7 through the Ages: Literary and members. (2013), 95-114 Material Representations of Jewishness and Judaism. Routledge Glenda Abramson, ‘”Oh My Land, Lucille Cairns, ‘Righteous Realism 2015, 181-198. My Birthplace”: Lebanon War and Versus Postmodern Play: The Eadem, ‘Petrus Nigri: A Dominican Intifada in Israeli Fiction and Poetry’, Israeli–Palestinian Conflict in Hebraist’, in Elias H. Füllenbach and in Rachel S Harris and Ranen Omer- Female-Authored French Gianfranco Miletto, eds., Dominikaner Sherma, eds., 'War in Contemporary Fiction’, Modern and Contemporary und Juden Berlin, Akademie Verlag, Israeli Arts and Culture. Narratives of France 22: 1 (February 2014), 71-84. 2015, 299-317. Dissent. Detroit: Wayne State Eadem, ‘Jewish Childrens Homes in Eadem, ‘Engel im Judentum’, in Maria University Press, 2013, 221-241. Post-Holocaust France. Personal Theisen, ed. Engel: Himmlische Boten Eadem, ‘David Vogel: Married Life Témoignage’s, in Sean Hand and in alten Handschriften. Lambert 1929’, in Hasia R Diner and Gennady Steven T. Katz, eds., Post-Holocaust Schneider 2014, 18-33. Estraikh, eds., 1929: Mapping the France and the Jews, 1945-1955. New Jewish World. New York and London: York and London: New York Lars Fischer, ‘Antisemitism’, in New York University Press, 2013, University Press, 2015, 139-55. Matthew Jefferies, ed. Ashgate 185-201. Eadem, Francophone Jewish Writers: Research Companion to Imperial Eadem, ‘Hebrew Literature of World Imagining Israel. Liverpool: Germany. Ashgate, 2015, 143–158. War 1 in Palestine’, in Eran Dolev, Liverpool University Press, 2015 Idem, ‘Adorno and the prohibition of Yigal Sheffy and Haim Goren, eds., (forthcoming). the image: the case of music’, in Palestine and World War 1. Grand Hannah Ewence and Helen Spurling, Strategy, Military Tactics and Culture Nina L. Collins, Jesus, the Sabbath eds., Visualizing Jews Through the in War. London: I B Taurus, 2014, and the Jewish Debate: Healing on the Ages: Literary and Material 293-315. Sabbath in the 1st and 2nd Centuries Representations of Jewishness and Eadem, ‘The Return of the Soldier. CE. Bloomsbury/T &T Clarke: Judaism. Routledge, 2015, 294–307. Agnon’s Novels of the First World London, 2014. Idem, ‚Selbstverleugnender War’, Simon Dubnow Institute Deutschenfresser? Anmerkungen zu Yearbook 2014. Göttingen: Vanden- Nicholas De Lange (ed. with John Gershom Scholems Einstellung zu hoeck & Ruprecht, 2014, 263-284. Tolan, Laurence Foschia and Deutschland und den Deutschen’, Eadem, Editor, Sites of Jewish Capucine Nemo-Pekelman), Jews in sans phrase 5 (2014), 232–240. Memory. Jews in and From Islamic Early Christian Law (Byzantium and Idem, ‘A Pearl in the Levite Crown: Lands in Modern Times. Abingdon- the Latin West, 6th-11th Fred Wanders The Seventh Well’, New York: Routledge, 2015. centuries). Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. Zutot 11 (2014), 3–5. Eadem, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal Idem, ‘Byzantium and the Judaic of Modern Jewish Studies published Tradition’, in Dean Sakel, Miri Freud-Kandel, ‘In Defence of by Routledge. Latest published issue: ed., Byzantine Culture. Papers from Synthesis’, Journal of Modern Jewish Vol 14, no 1, March 2015. the Conference Byzantine days of Studies, 13:2 (2014), 284-291. Istanbul, May 21–23 2010. Istanbul Eadem, Guest co-editor, special issue Anna Sapir Abulafia, Christians and 2014, 29–35. of Journal of Modern Jewish Studies: Jews in the Twelfth-century Idem (ed. with Judith Olszowy- ‘Orthodoxy, Theological Debate and Renaissance. London: Routledge Schlanger), Manuscrits hébreux et Contemporary Judaism’, 14:1 (2015). 1995, Paperback edition, 20142. arabes. Mélanges en lhonneur de Eadem, ‘Many Questions, Few Eadem, ‘Moyses in service of Petrus Colette Sirat (=Bibliologia, 38). Answers: The Holocaust in the in Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogus’, in Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. Theology of Louis Jacobs’, Journal of Carmen Cardelle de Hartmann and Idem, ‘Hebrew inscriptions of the Modern Jewish Studies, 14:1 (2015), Philipp Roelli, eds., Petrus Alfonsi and Byzantine empire’, in N. de Lange 40-57. his Dialogus. Background, Context, and J. Olszowy-Schlanger, eds., Eadem, ‘The British Chief Rabbinate: Reception. Florence, 2014 111-28. Manuscrits hébreux et arabes. A Model for Leadership or Decline?’, Mélanges en lhonneur de Colette Sirat. Modern Judaism, 35:2 (2015), 119- Siam Bhayro, ‘’Remarks on the Turnhout: Brepols, 2014, 415–24. 133. Genizah Judaeo-Syriac Fragment, Idem (with Natalie Tchernetska), Aramaic Studies, vol. 12, 2014, 143- ‘Glosses in Greek script and language Garth Gilmour, Gezer VI: The Objects 153. in medieval Hebrew from Phase I and Phase II. Annual of Idem, ‘The Jewish Babylonian manuscripts’, Scriptorium 68 (2014), the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical . X Vol. Jerusalem, Archaeology, 253–64. light in פליסא פלסא authority Aramaic of Geez falasa and Epigraphic South Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2014 Arabian fls3’, Semitica et Classica, vol. Maria Diemling (ed. with Larry Idem, ‘A Late Iron Age Cult Stand 7, 2014, 233-236. Ray), Memory, Identity and from Gezer’, In John R. Spencer, Idem (with R. Hawley), ‘La littérature Boundaries of Jewishness. Routledge Robert A. Mullins and Aaron J. Brody, botanique et pharmaceutique en 2015 (forthcoming). eds., Material Culture Matters: Essays

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 30

on the Archaeology of the Southern in Polish Jewry, vol. 27: Jews in the Eadem, Review of Ronald L. Levant in Honor of Seymour Gitin. Kingdom of Poland, 1815-1918. Eisenberg, Essential Figures in the Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2014, 81- Oxford, Portland, Oregon: Littman Bible (vol. 1), Essential Figures in the 93. Library of Jewish Civilization, 2015, Talmud (vol. 2), Essential Figures in Idem, ‘Iconism and Aniconism in the 117-151. Jewish Scholarship (vol. 3), Jason Period of the Israelite Monarchy. Aronson, 2013, Journal of Modern Was there an Image of the Deity in Stephen Herring, Divine Jewish Studies 14:1 (2015) 176-7. the Jerusalem Temple?’, In H. Ewence Substitution. Humanity as the Eadem, Review of Christian C. and H. Spurling, eds., Visualizing Jews Manifestation of Deity in the Hebrew Sahner, Among the Ruins: Syria Past through the Ages: Literary and Bible and the Ancient Near East. and Present, London: Hurst & Material Representations of Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014. Company, 2014, LSE Review of Books Jewishness and Judaism. London and (published online 13/1/2015). New York: Routledge, 2015, 91-103. Catherine Hezser, ‘Crossing Enemy Eadem, Review of David Kaposi, Lines: Network Connections between Violence and Understanding in Gaza. Martin Goodman, ‘Jews and Palestinian and Babylonian Sages in The British Broadsheets Coverage of Christians in the first Centuries’, Late Antiquity’, Journal for the Study the War, London: Palgrave Gesher 4:4 (November 2013) 22–25. of Judaism 46:2 (2015) 224-50. Macmillan, 2014, LSE Review of Eadem, ‘Between Public and Private: Books. Abigail Green, ‘Humanitarianism in The Significance of the Neutral Eadem, Review of Jenny Labendz, nineteenth-century context: Domain (Carmelit) in Late Antique Socratic Torah: Non-Jews in Rabbinic religious, gendered, national’, The Rabbinic Literature’, in Clifford Ando Intellectual Culture, Oxford and New Historical Journal 57:4 (2014) 1157- and Jörg Rüpke, eds., Public and York: Oxford University Press, 2013", 1175. Private in Ancient Mediterranean Law Journal of Jewish Studies 65:2 (2014) Eadem, ‘Spirituality, tradition and and Religion. Berlin: de Gruyter, 425-7. gender: Judith Montefiore, the very 2015, 217-36. Eadem, Review of Alexander Samely model of modern Jewish Eadem, ‘Geldbussen, Peitschenhiebe et al., Profiling Jewish Literature in womanhood’, History of European und goettliche Vernichtung: Antiquity: An Inventory, from Second Ideas 40 (2014) 747-760. Rabbinische Strafdrohungen in der Temple Texts to the Talmud, Oxford: Eadem, ‘The limits of intervention: Mischna’, in Zeitschrift für Oxford University Press, 2013, coercive diplomacy and the Jewish Altorientalische und Biblische Journal of Jewish Studies 65:2 (2014) question in the 19th century’, Rechtsgeschichte 20 (2014) 201-14. 423-5. International History Review, 36:3 Eadem, ‘Der Loskauf von Sklaven und Eadem, Review of Moshe Simon- (2014) 473-492. Kriegsgefangenen im antiken Shoshan, Stories of the Law: Judentum’, in Heike Grieser and Narrative Discourse and the François Guesnet (ed. with Glenn Nicole Priesching, eds. Construction of Authority in the Dynner), Warsaw. The Jewish Gefangenenloskauf im Mishnah, New York: Oxford Metropolis. Studies in Honor of the Mittelmeerraum: Ein interreligiöser University Press, 2012, Journal of 70th Birthday of Professor Antony Vergleich. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Semitic Studies 59:2 (2014) 459-60. Polonsky. Boston, Leiden: Brill Verlag, 2015, 3-23. Eadem, Review of Alan Appelbaum, Academic Publishers 2015. Eadem, ‘Paul’s Fools Speech (2 Cor. The Dynasty of the Jewish Patriarchs, Idem, ‘From Community to 11:16-32) in the Context of Ancient Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013, Metropolis: The Jews of Warsaw, Jewish and Graeco-Roman Culture’, Theologische Literaturzeitung 139: 1850-1880’, in Glenn Dynner and in Peter Tomson, ed., Second 7/8 (2014) 859-61. François Guesnet , eds., Warsaw. The Corinthians in the Perspective of Late Eadem, Review of Shai Secunda, The Jewish Metropolis. Studies in Honor of Second Temple Judaism (=CRINT 14). Iranian Talmud. Reading the Bavli in the 70th Birthday of Professor Antony Leiden: Brill, 2014, 221-44. its Sasanian Context, Philadelphia: Polonsky. Boston, Leiden: Brill Book Reviews: University of Pennsylvania Press, Academic Publishers 2015, 128-154. Eadem, Review of Ronit Nikolsky/Tal 2013", Theologische Literaturzeitung Idem (ed. with Cécile Laborde and Ilan (eds), Rabbinic Traditions 139: 7/8 (2014) 867-69. Lois Lee), Negotiating Religion: Between Palestine and Babylonia. Eadem, Review of Margaret H. Cross-disciplinary Perspectives. Leiden: Brill, 2014, Journal of Jewish Williams, Jews in a Graeco-Roman Farnham: Ashgate 2015 Studies 66:1 (2015) 217-219. Environment, Tübingen: Mohr (forthcoming). Eadem, Review of Moulie Vidas, Siebeck, 2013, Theologische Idem, ‘Negotiating under Duress: The Tradition and Formation of the Literaturzeitung 139 (2014) 561-63. Expulsion of Salzburg Protestants Talmud. Princeton: Princeton Eadem, Review of Rachel Neis, The (1732) and the Jews of Prague University Press, 2014, Journal of Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture. (1744)’, in François Guesnet, Cécile Jewish Studies 66:1 (2015) 219-222. Jewish Ways of Seeing in Late Laborde and Lois Lee, eds., Eadem, Review of David Weiss Antiquity, Cambridge: Cambridge Negotiating Religion: Cross- Halivni, The Formation of the University Press, 2013, Theologische disciplinary Perspectives. Farnham: Babylonian Talmud. Introduced, Literaturzeitung 139 (2014) 557- Ashgate 2015 (forthcoming). translated, and annotated by Jeffrey 559. Idem, ‘”Languishing from a Distance”. L. Rubenstein, Oxford and New York: Eadem, Review of Katrin Pietzner, Louis Meyer and the Demise of the Oxford University Press, 2013. Bildung, Elite und Konkurrenz. Heiden German-Jewish Ideal’, in Glenn Journal of Jewish Studies 66:1 (2015) und Christen vor der Zeit Constantins, Dynner, Antony Polonsky, and 215-217. STAC 77, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, Marcin Wodziński, eds., Polin. Studies

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 31

2013, Theologische Literaturzeitung Eadem, Review of E. Eshel and Y. Archaeology and Archaeometry 14: 3 139:1 (2014) 79-80. Levin, eds., See, I Will Bring a Scroll (2014), 67-81. Recounting What Befell Me (Ps 40:8) Eadem, ‘Noah’s Flood Calendar (Gen Sara Hirschhorn, ‘Meeting the Epigraphy and Daily Life from the 7:10-8:19) in the Septuagint’, Henoch Crown Jewel of Jewish History: Bible to the Talmud Dedicated to the 36:2 (2014): 293-306. American Jews and Jerusalem after Memory of Professor Hanan Eshel, Eadem, Review of H. Drawnel, The the Six Day War’, Shma Journal Journal of Ancient Judaism Aramaic Astronomical Book of Enoch (October 2013). Supplements 12. Göttingen: (4Q208-4Q211) from Qumran, Eadem, ‘Operation 1000 for the Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Oxford: OUP, 2011, Journal of Semitic Settlement of Jewish-American 2014), Strata: The Bulletin of the Studies 59:1 (2014): 221-222. Immigrants in the Occupied AIAS (2014): 131-133. Territories: A Case Study in Eadem, Review of N. Postgate, Bronze Daniel Langton, ‘Wandering Jews in Government Incentivization of Age Bureaucracy: Writing and the England’s Green and Pleasant Land: Ethnic Return Migration’, Israel Practice of Government in Assyria, Wissenschaft des Judentums in an Studies 19:3 (Fall 2014). Cambridge University Press, Anglo-Jewish Context’, in Christian Eadem, ‘The Origins of the 2013, Strata: The Bulletin of the Wiese and Mirjam Thulin, eds., Redemption in Occupied Suburbia?: AIAS (2014): 134-136. Wissenschaft des Judentums in The Jewish-American Makings of the Eadem, Review of M.A. Europe: Comparative and West Bank Settlement of Efrat, 1973- Sweeney, Tanak: A Theological and Transnational Perspectives. Berlin: de 87’, Middle Eastern Studies 51:2 Critical Introduction to the Jewish Gruyter, 2015. (Winter 2015). Bible, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, Idem with Renate Smithuis. eds., 2012, Hebrew Studies 55 (2014): Melilah, volume 11: Jewish Studies Hannah Holtschneider, ‘Salis 101-103. and the New Testament. 2014. Daiches -Towards a Portrait of a Eadem, Review of D.J.A. Clines, K.H. Idem, ‘Isaac Mayer Wise, Cosmic Scottish Rabbi’, Jewish Culture and Richards and J.L. Wright eds. Making Evolution, and the Problem of Evil’, History (forthcming 2015). a Difference: Essays on the Bible and in Louise Hickman, ed., Chance or Judaism in Honor of Tamara Cohn Providence: Religious Perspectives on Adriana X. Jacobs, ‘The Go- Eskenazi, Hebrew Bible Monographs, Divine Action, Cambridge: Cambridge Betweens: Leah Goldberg, Yehuda 49; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Scholars Publishing, 2014, 79-94. Amichai and the Figure of the Poet Press, 2012, SOTS Book List (2014): Idem, ‘Jewish Evolutionary Translator’, in Sandra Bermann and 8-9. Perspectives on Judaism, Anti- Catherine Porter, eds., The Blackwell Eadem, Review of B.M. Levinson, A Semitism, and Race Science in Late Companion to Translation Studies. More Perfect Torah: At the 19th Century England: A Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2014, 479– Intersection of Philology and Comparative Study of Lucien Wolf 91. Hermeneutics in Deuteronomy and and Joseph Jacobs’, Jewish Historical Eadem, ‘Where You Are From: The the Temple Scroll, Critical Studies in Studies 46 (2014): 37-73. Poetry of Vaan Nguyen’, Shofar: An the Hebrew Bible, 1; Winona Lake, Idem, ‘Speaking Truth after the Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2013, SOTS Shoah: Jewish Post-Holocaust Studies 33:4: Contemporary Israeli Book List (2014): 194. Theologies and Multireligious Literature (Summer 2015): 83-110. Eadem, Review of S. Talmon, Literary Conversation’, Journal of Inter- Eadem, ‘Hebrew on a Desert Island: Motifs and Patterns in the Hebrew Religious Studies 14 (2014): 42-55. The Case of Annabelle Bible: Collected Studies By Farmelant’, Studies in American Shemaryahu Talmon, Eisenbrauns, Kevin McCarthy, ‘An Introduction to Jewish Literature 34: 1, Special Issue, with the Mandel Institute of Jewish Robert Briscoes Extraordinary eds. Kathryn Hellerstein and Maeera Studies, Hebrew University of Immigration Initiative, 1933-1938’, Shreiber (Spring 2015): 154-174. Jerusalem, 2013, SOTS Book in Gisela Holfter, ed., The Irish Eadem (co-authored with Adam List (2014): 29-30. Context of Kristallnacht: Refugees and Rovner and Jessica Cohen), ‘Hebrew Helpers. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Literature’, World Literature Helen R. Jacobus, Zodiac Calendars Verlag Trier, 2014, 80-90. Today 89: 3 (May 2015): 61-63. in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Their Idem, ‘Éamon de Valera’s Eadem, Review of Khirbet Khizeh by Reception: Ancient Astronomy and relationship with Robert Briscoe: A S. Yizhar, trans. Nicholas De Lange Astrology in Early Judaism. Leiden- reappraisal’, Irish Studies in and Yaacob Dweck, Music Boston: Brill, 2014. International Affairs 25 (November & Literature (17 March 2015) Eadem, ‘The Story of Leonard Cohens 2014), 165-186. [available online]. “Who By Fire,” a prayer in the Cairo Idem, Robert Briscoe, Sinn Féin Eadem, Review of Ilana Szobel, A Genizah, Babylonian astrology and Revolutionary, Fianna Fáil Nationalist Poetics of Trauma: The Work of related rabbinical texts’, in E. and Revisionist Zionist: A Political Dahlia Ravikovitch, Hebrew Studies, England and W.J. Lyons, eds., Biography. Oxford: Peter Lang 55 (2014): 476-479. Reception History and Biblical (forthcoming). Studies: Theory and Practice, London: Idem, ‘The Aliyah Bet & Israels Sandra Jacobs, ‘The Body Inscribed: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2015, 201- Military’ and ‘Merchant Navies’, A Priestly Initiative?’, in J.E. Taylor, 217. in The Sea in World History: ed., The Body in Biblical, Christian Eadem, ‘Greco-Roman Sundials and Exploration, Travel, and Trade. ABC- and Jewish Texts. New York: Their Links to a Qumran Calendar CLIO, Santa Barbara CA (forth- Bloomsbury Press, 2014, 1-16. (4Q208-4Q209)’, Mediterranean coming).

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 32

Guido Mensching (with Julia Individual in the Religions of the Proof-texts’, in W. Kras and S. Zwink), ‘L’ancien occitan en tant que Ancient Mediterranean. Oxford: Kreuzer, eds., Die Septuaginta –Text, langage scientifique de la médecine. Oxford University Press, 2013, 298- Wirkung, Rezeption. 4. Internationale Termes vernaculaires dans la 314. Fachtagung veranstaltet von traduction hébraïque du Zād al- Eadem, ‘The Maccabaean Martyrs Septuaginta Deutsch (LXX.D), musāfir wa-qūt al-ḥādir (XIIIe)’, in C. between Pagans, Jews and Wuppertal 19.–22. Juli 2012. WUNT Alén Garbato, C. Torreille and M.-J. Christians’, in C. Harrison et al. eds., 325; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014, Verny, eds., Los que fan viure e BeingChristian in Late Antiquity. A 154–68. treslusir loccitan. Actes du Xe congrès Festschrift for Gillian Clark. Oxford: de lAIEO (Béziers, 12-19 juin 2011), Oxford University Press, 2014, 9-56. Andrea Schatz, ‘An Interpretive Limoges, Lambert-Lucas, 2014, 226- Eadem, ‘Philo’s Knowledge of Tradition: Connecting Europe and the 236. . Hebrew: The Meaning of the ‘East’ in the Eighteenth Century’, in Idem (with Gerrit Bos), ‘A Medico- Etymologies,’ in J.K. Aitken and J. Richard I. Cohen, Natalie B. Botanical Glossary in Hebrew Carleton Paget, eds., The Jewish- Dohrmann, Adam Shear, and Characters of Italian Origin’, Iberia Greek Tradition in Antiquity and the Elchanan Reiner, eds., Jewish Culture Judaica 6 (2014), 11-21. Byzantine Empire. Cambridge: in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Idem (with Gerrit Bos, Fabian Käs, Cambridge University Press, 2014, Honor of David B. Ruderman,. Mailyn Lübke), ‘Ibn Ǧanāḥ on the 173-187. Cincinnati and Pittsburgh: HUC Press Nomenclature of Medicinal Drugs: Eadem, ‘Josephus in Rome: The – University of Pittsburgh Press, The Rediscovered Kitāb at-Talḫīṣ and Outsider’s Insider and the Insider’s 2014, 260–270. Its Significance for the History of Outsider’, Scripta Classica Israelica Arabic Pharmacognosy’, Iberia 33, 2014: Rome Judaea and Its Renate Smithius (ed. with Daniel Judaica 7 (2014), 95-110. Neighbours. Special Issue in Honor of Langton), Melilah, volume 11: Jewish Idem (with Gerrit Bos), ‘Arabic- Hannah M. Cotton. 191-28. Studies and the New Testament. 2014. Romance Medico-Botanical Glossaries in Hebrew Manuscripts David Rechter, ‘Staat, Gesellschaft, Helen Spurling (ed. with Hannah from the Iberian Peninsula and Minderheit: Die Judenfrage im Ewence), Visualizing Jews through Italyä’, Aleph 15.1 (2015), 9-61. österreichischen Habsburg’, in the Ages: Literary and Material Manfred Hettling, Michael G. Müller Representations of Jewishness and Laurent Mignon, Hüzünlü Özgürlük: and Guido Hausmann, eds., Die Judaism (=Studies in Cultural Yahudi Edebiyatı ve Düşüncesi Judenfrage – ein europäisches History). New York, Routledge, 2015. Üzerine Yazılar ([in Turkish]: A Sad Phänomen? Berlin: Metropol, 2013, Eadem, ‘The image of God in late State of Freedm: Writings on Jewish 205–27. antique apocalyptic literature: the literature and thought). Gozlem Idem, ‘Die große Katastrophe: die Holy One as teacher in Pirqe Gazetecilik Basin ve Yayin A.S. österreichischen Juden und der Mashiah’, in Helen Spurling and (2014). Krieg’, in Marcus Patka, ed., Hannah Ewence, eds., Visualizing Weltuntergang: Jüdisches Leben und Jews through the Ages: Literary and Michael T. Miller, The Name of God Sterben im Ersten Weltkrieg. Vienna: Material Representations of in Jewish Thought: A Philosophical Styria Premium 2014, 12–25. Jewishness and Judaism. New York, Investigation of Mystical Traditions Idem, ‘The Education of a People: The Routledge, 2015, 32-47. from Apocalyptic to Kabbalah. Case of Bukovina Jewry’, in Markus Routledge, 2015. Winkler, ed., Literatur – Kultur– Sacha Stern, ‘Babylonian Talmud, Zivilgesellschaft: Zur Habsburger Avodah Zarah 16a: Jews and pagan Tessa Rajak, ‘The Synagogue Prägung des Bildungswesens in der cults in third-century Sepphoris’, in Paintings of Dura-Europos: Bukowina und Nachbarregionen, S. Fine, A. Koller, eds., Talmuda de- Triumphalism and Competition’, in 1840-1940. Regensburg, Verlag eretz Israel: archaeology and the Sarah J. Pearce, ed., The Image and its Friedrich Pustet (forthcoming). rabbis in late antique Palestine. Prohibition in Jewish Antiquity, JJS Idem, ‘Habsburg Bukovina: Jews at Boston-Berlin: De Gruyter 2014, Supplement Series 2. Oxford: 2013, the Edge of Empire’, Jüdischer 205-224. 89-109. Almanach des LBI 23 (forthoming). Idem, ‘Biblical calendars’, in A. Berlin, Eadem, ‘Investment In/Of the M. Z. Brettler, eds., The Jewish Study Priesthood in Second Temple James Renton, 'The West's war Bible. New York: Oxford University Judaism and Beyond’, in B. Dignas et against Palestinian 'Extremism' is Press USA, 2014, 2021-2025. al, Priest and Prophets among Pagans, Doomed to Fail', The Conversation, 3 Idem, ‘The Babylonian Calendar and Jews and Christians. Leuven: Peeters, August 2014 (available online). the Bible’, 2014 (available online). 2013, 29-51. Idem (ed. with Ben Gidley), Eadem, ‘The Maccabean Martyrs in Antisemitism and Islamophobia: A Zehavit Stern, ‘The Purim-shpiler Jewish Memory: Jerusalem and Shared Story? Palgrave Macmillan, and the Melancholy Clown: Folk Antioch’, in R. S. Boustan et al, eds., 2015 (forthcoming). Performance between Tradition and Envisioning Judaism: Studies in Honor Modernism in the Work of Avraham of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of his Aaron Rosen, Art and Religion in the Shlonsky and Moyshe Broderzon’, Seventieth Birthday, vol.1. Tübingen: 21st Century. Thames and Hudson, Journal of Jewish Identities, 7:1 Mohr-Siebeck, 2013, 63-79. 2015. (January 2014). Eadem, ‘The Individual and the Word in Hellenistic Judaism: Cases in Philo Alison Salvesen, ‘Aquila, Jonathan Stökl (ed. with Alan and Josephus’, in J. Rüpke, ed., The Symmachus and the Translation of Lenzi), Divination, Politics and

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 33

Ancient Near Eastern Series 2. Oxford: JJS, 2013, 28–37. Introduction’, Patterns of Prejudice Empires (=Ancient Near Eastern Idem, ‘An Overlooked Suggestion at 48:5 (2014): 437-441. Monographs 7). Atlanta: Society for Proverbs 1:10’, in D. A. Baer and R. P. Idem, ‚Der Film Jud Süß (Film von Biblical Literature, 2014. Gordon (eds) Leshon Limmudim: Veit Harlan, 1940)’, in Wolfgang Idem, ‘Prophecy and the State in the Essays on the Language and Benz, ed. Handbuch des Ancient Near East’, Religion Literature of the Hebrew Bible in Antisemitismus. Berlin: De Gruyter, Compass 9:3 (2015), 55-65. Honour of A. A. Macintosh. Library of 2015, 194-197. Idem, ‘Divination as Warfare: The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies Idem, ‚Jud Süß im deutschen Film Use of Divination Across Borders’, in 593. London: Bloomsbury (2013) nach 1945’, in Wolfgang Benz, ed. J. Stökl and A. Lenzi, eds., Divination, 218–26. Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Berlin: Politics and Ancient Near Eastern Idem, ‘Deuteronomy and Isaiah’, in J. De Gruyter, 2015, 197-201. Empires. Atlanta: Society for Biblical S. DeRouche, J. Gile, and K. J. Turner, Literature, 2014, 49-63. eds., For Our Good Always: Studies on Idem, ‘Religious Leaders: Ancient the Message and Influence of Near Eastern Prophecy’, in J. OBrien, Deuteronomy in Honor of Daniel I. ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Block. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, Bible and Gender Studies. Oxford: 2013, 251–68. Oxford University Press, 2014, 166- Idem, ‘Jacob in Isaiah 40–66’, in L.-S. 67. Tiemeyer and H. M. Barstad, eds., Continuity and Discontinuity: Joshua Teplitsky, ‘Jews’, in Oxford Chronological and Thematic Bibliographies Online: Renaissance Development in Isaiah 40–66 and Reformation (2013) (Available (=FRLANT 255). Göttingen: online). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014, Idem, ‘The Networked Quality of 219–29. Jewish Life in Early Modern Europe’, Idem, ‘“An Initial Problem”: The in Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek and Setting and Purpose of Isaiah 10:1– Michaela Feirstein-Prasser, eds., The 4’, in R. J. Bautch and J. T. Hibbard, First Europeans: Habsburg and Other eds., The Book of Isaiah: Enduring Jews-- A World Before 1914 (Catalog Questions Answered Anew. Essays of the exhibition of the Jewish Museum Honoring Joseph Blenkinsopp and His Hohenems). Vienna: Mandelbaum Contribution to the Study of Isaiah. Verlag 2014, 31–9. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014, 11– Idem, ‘Jewish Money, Jesuit Censors, 20. and the Habsburg Monarchy: Politics Idem, ‘The Sons of Joseph in 1 and Polemics in Early Modern Chronicles 5.1–2 and in Early Prague’, Jewish Social Studies 19:3 Samaritan Tradition’, in R. Timothy (Summer 2014). McLay, ed., The Temple in Text and Tradition: A Festschrift in Honour of Joanna Weinberg, ‘Midrash in a Robert Hayward (=LSTS 83). London: lexical key: The Arukh of Nathan ben Bloomsbury, 2015, 278–97 Yehiel of Rome’, in M.J. Fishbane and Idem, ‘gll /galal/’, in H. Gzella, ed., J. Weinberg, eds., Midrash Unbound. Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Alten Transformations and Innovations, Testament: Aramäisches Wörterbuch. Oxford, 2013, 213–32. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2015, ix/2, 173–75. Vered Weiss, ‘A Spatial Identity Crisis: Exploring Tensions between Daniel Wildmann, ‘Desire, Excess, Space and Identities in Nir Baram’s and Integration: Orientalist fantasies, Novels’, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary moral sentiments and the place of Journal of Jewish Studies 33:4: Jews in German society’, in Ulrike Contemporary Israeli Literature Brunotte, Anna-Dorothea Ludewig (Summer 2015) (forthcoming). and Axel Stähler, eds., Orientalism, Gender, and the Jews. Literary and Hugh Williamson, ‘Isaiah: Prophet Artistic Transformations of European of Weal or Woe?’, in R. P. Gordon and National Discourses. Berlin: De H. M. Barstad (eds) Thus Speak Gruyter, 2014, 137-155. Ishtar of Arbela: Prophecy in Israel, Idem (ed. with Damir Skenderovic Assyria, and Egypt in the Neo- and Christina Späti), ‘Imaginaries of Assyrian Period. Winona Lake: the Other: Past and Present Eisenbrauns, 2013, 273–300. Expressions of Islamophobia’, Special Idem, ‘Was There an Image of the Issue Patterns of Prejudice 48:5 Deity in the First Temple?’, in S. (2014). Pearce, ed., The Image and its Idem (with Damir Skenderovic and Prohibition in Jewish Antiquity. Christina Späti), ‘Past and Present Journal of Jewish Studies Supplement Expressions of Islamophobia: An

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 34

Book Reviews its arcs and turns across the vast Christian exegetical writings in breadth of Jewish literature, this formative period. through close studies of its Part Two is on ‘Later Midrashic Midrash as a fundamental varieties and transformations’ Forms’ and assesses material form of Jewish culture (p1). Thus, the overall approach from the end of Late Antiquity in this volume is to illustrate the through to the early Medieval evolution and reception of the period (fifth to eleventh midrashic genre, which is centuries). The first of the explored primarily in literature chapters in this section covers of the Medieval and Early the use and application of Modern periods. Given the vast Midrash in piyyutim (Fishbane, range of potential choices of ch.6), Pesikta Rabbati on the source material, the editors have concept of the suffering messiah selected for investigation what (Alexander, ch.7) and the they consider to be ‘typical cases’ polemical Toledot Yeshu as (p1). representative of a narrative The volume is presented in four midrashic approach (Horbury, parts, with twenty contributions ch.8). The analysis of narrative from eighteen scholars of Midrash is continued in the international reputation, along chapter on ‘Storytelling as with the introduction to the Midrashic Discourse in the volume by the editors. The four Middle Ages’ (Yassif, ch.9), which parts are intended to represent provides a compelling discussion key phases in the development of on the shift towards literary Midrash. independence in this period and Fishbane, Michael and Joanna Part One is on ‘Origins and the development of midrashic Weinberg, eds, Midrash Subsurface Traditions’, and creativity as a means of Unbound: Transformations and focuses on the period of Late addressing cultural questions. Innovations. Oxford; Portland: Antiquity in Jewish and Christian The final chapter discusses The Littman Library of Jewish literature (noted by the editors ‘performative Midrash’ and Civilization, 2013. as first to fifth centuries). It examines how midrashic begins with a chapter on traditions influence or stimulate Midrash Unbound is a significant ‘Midrash and the Meaning of action as recorded especially in and substantial contribution to Scripture’ (Fishbane, ch.1), which narratives of martyrdom the study of midrashic literature, draws attention to the form, (Marcus, ch.10). This section method and process as construction and features of contains a particularly well- manifested in diverse Jewish midrashic traditions. This chosen range of material, and sources, and select non-Jewish provides an excellent persuasively highlights a writings, from Late Antiquity to introduction and foundation for transition in the nature of the Modern age. Fishbane and questions on the nature of Midrash of this period through Weinberg have brought together Midrash in the rest of the volume. increasingly rich innovation and an impressive array of scholars The second chapter provides a adaptation in literary production. to explore the nature of Midrash comparison of classical Part Three is entitled ‘Medieval in varied historical and midrashic and targumic sources Transformations’ and analyses geographical contexts, pointing on Exodus 17:14-16 (Hayward, material from the later Medieval out, as the aptly chosen title ch.2), and the remainder of Part period (twelfth and thirteenth suggests, transformations and One consists of three chapters on centuries). This includes innovations in the development the reception and/or process of assessment of the work of of the genre. Midrash in Christian literature: Nathan ben Yehiel (Weinberg, The editors outline their aims in the New Testament (van Boxel, ch.11), Rashi (Marcus, ch.12), an incisive introduction, which ch.3); Jerome (Salvesen, ch.4); Tosafist commentators not only describes the individual and Syriac traditions (Brock, (Kanarfogel, ch.14) and the Zohar contributions but draws ch.5). The consideration of the (Wolfson, ch. 15). This section important connections between role of Midrash in non-Jewish also includes a chapter on ‘The them. The opening statement of and, specifically, Christian Pendulum of Exegetical the volume highlights the literature is elaborated in most Methodology: From Peshat to purpose in producing this detail in this section of the Derash and Back’ (Japhet, ch.13), collection: ‘to enlarge the volume, and highlights the which provides an insightful perspective on Midrash and relationship between Jewish and investigation of the relationship midrashic creativity – marking

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 35

between peshat and derash literature they are investigating. I would highly recommend this methodologies in Jewish In this way, the editors have collection to those interested in literature up to the Medieval allowed for a diverse range of the concept of Midrash, both as a period. This part of the volume perspectives on what is literary genre and an exegetical effectively illustrates the significant about Midrash in any process, and the reception, importance of Midrash as a given period, whether this is the indeed transformation, of the scholastic enterprise. production of a midrashic text or medium through history. It is a The final part of the volume is on compilation, analysis of the volume that enriches and ‘Early Modern and Modern application of midrashic methods meaningfully extends discussion Traditions’ (sixteenth to or examination of the reception on how we can understand twentieth centuries), with Early of midrashic traditions. Each Midrash and its development in Modern material as the focus of chapter carefully draws out how diverse literary forms and discussion in four out of the five Midrash has been used, historical contexts. chapters. The section begins with transformed and creatively a chapter on ‘The Ingathering of developed in the particular Dr Helen Spurling Midrash Rabbah: A Moment of historical context under University of Southampton Creativity and Innovation’ consideration, thus allowing for a (Williams, ch.16), which provides broader assessment of trends Placing Judaism at the Heart a clear overview of the and diversity in different periods. of Western Thought compilation of this anthology in As a result, the editors have the sixteenth century, and produced a collection that responses to and use of Midrash successfully emphasises the Rabbah by contemporary importance of Midrash across commentators such as Meir diverse contexts and types of Benveniste and Judah Gedaliah. writings from classical midrashic This is followed by chapters on and targumic compilations to Midrash in Medieval and Early later commentaries, dictionaries, Modern Jewish sermons narrative tales, poetry, sermons (Saperstein, ch.17), a case study and kabbalistic literature. on the work of R. Judah Loew of The questions raised and Prague (Elbaum, ch. 18) and explored provide a stimulating analysis of a collection of basis for new thinking about the traditions on the destruction of field. The volume certainly fulfils the Temple in a Yiddish booklet Fishbane and Weinberg’s (Elbaum and Turniansky, ch.19). intention to highlight the role The section closes with a chapter that Midrash has played in the on Midrash in Habad Hasidism creation and formation of Jewish

(Loewenthal, ch.20), which identity and culture through the brings the volume into the ages. The collection supports David Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: Modern period. This section their assertion that ‘Midrash is a The Western Tradition. New presents another shift with a fundamental form of Jewish York and London: W.W. ‘gradual return of Midrash to its culture’ (p1), and represents Norton, 2013. popular base in the community’ ‘cultural pedagogy’ (p2) through (p2), affected in large part by the the transmission of values, Historians and social scientists emergence of printing. beliefs and ideas. The editors also fell out of love many years ago Key questions are raised and maintain that there is ‘an with the view that ideas can explored by this collection such identifiable coherence and persist across epochs, centuries, as: how are we to understand integrity in all its expressions or even generations. The 1970s and define ‘Midrash’? What is its over the course of two millennia’ witnessed the beginning of a influence and legacy? What (p1). This is clearly illustrated by ferocious pre-occupation among transformations and innovations the centrality and authority of scholars with uncovering the has the genre experienced, both Scripture at the heart of the novelty of ideas that had as a literary product and a genre, as also emphasised in the previously been thought to be process of interpretation? The introduction (p2) and by integral parts of Western culture. definition of ‘Midrash’ is left open Fishbane in ch.1., but the The convention now is that by Fishbane and Weinberg to transformations of Midrash in modernity was/is the age of allow each contributor to explain the various contexts discussed is ideational as well as their own understanding of the what stands out in this volume. technological invention— not term, and what it means for the just innovation. Indeed, many see

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 36

invention and unceasing change of thinking, or the shells of beginnings of Christianity as the hallmarks of post- categories of conceptualisation, renders a familiar story: Judaism medieval thought—if not the rather than their content. He as the law, the letter, and the human story in general. argues that through centuries the flesh versus Christianity as the Traditions of thought, as much as figure of the Jew has been, and spirit; and Jews as the wretched traditions of social practice, continues to be, an object used outcasts needed to testify to the are— the argument runs— a within societies to work wrongs of rejecting Christ. What human self-deceit, which results through—to articulate and figure is different about his analysis is from the need for fixity in the out—challenges wrought by why these Christian midst of constant flux. The study significant social, political and understandings of Jews and of antisemitism is no exception: economic change. For this Judaism remained persistently the dominant view for many reason, representations and significant across time, including years has been that prejudice discussions of Judaism and Jews the era of secularism. Nirenberg against Jews cannot be changes in fundamental ways argues that Jews and Judaism understood as operating over time, dependent upon the became a principal means for consistently across time and problems that they are being how Western thought space. used to understand or challenge. functioned— a major vehicle More recently, however, several Nirenberg is keen to show that through which Christian societies scholars have begun to ‘anti-Judaism’ was not a product negotiated change, from the complicate this picture. Susannah of Christianity alone and cannot vicissitudes of early Christian Heschel, for example, has be limited to Europe. He theology and medieval conflict emphasised the Christian provocatively starts his story, over sovereignty to the French theological substance of Nazi therefore, with a chapter on revolution and modern economic antisemitism, which most have ancient Egypt, concerned and political thought. Hence, as seen as the culmination of a principally with Hellenistic Nirenberg makes clear, anti- modern, secular, scientific Egypt, and focuses his attention Judaism was as significant in racism.1 Gil Anidjar has gone in chapter 4 on attitudes towards societies from which Jews had further, and rubbed out the lines Judaism in early Islam. been expelled, as those where between medieval and modern in Why did Judaism play this role in Jews actually lived. his history of Christian thought, these and other societies? In There are significant problems which, he contends, shapes what ancient Egypt, where we have with aspects of Nirenberg’s many describe as the secular little evidence to go on, the analysis. His separation of ‘anti- West. Anidjar has argued that principal causes might have been Judaism’ as a field of thought Western understandings of Jews, the significant Jewish minority from racism in general and along with other aspects of presence, Judaism’s direct antisemitism in particular is social, political and even challenge to Egyptian belief, and based on narrow definitions of economic thought, are the anomalous position of a these two phenomena (pp. 214, determined by a Christian self- Greek elite that was stuck 406). The abstract figures of the understanding focused on blood.2 between Roman overlords and Jew and Judaism, and theology David Nirenberg’s hugely indigenous society. When we and culture in general, have a important book, Anti-Judaism: move to the main focus of complex inter-relationship with The Western Tradition, should be Nirenberg’s analysis— conceptions of the real world. seen as part of this profound Christendom—the cause is much Moreover, European challenge to the historical and clearer: Christian theology. As understandings of Jews and intellectual framework of secular Christianity claimed to supersede Judaism belonged to, and modernity. His book is very Judaism, it had a special affected, wider frames of different, however, to the recent relationship with that religion prejudice and racialization, as scholarship of those who are that was more intimate and Hannah Arendt made clear in her interested in the travel and necessarily more hostile than any classic The Origins of influence of ideas across time. other in the history of ‘anti- Totalitarianism—a text that His interest is, rather, in the Judaism’ (for all of the early interests Nirenberg, though for persistence and power of frames Islamic concern with Jews as other reasons.3 Nirenberg’s ‘anti- figures of hypocrisy and Judaism’ misses, among other falsification, Judaism was simply thought zones of racial/religious 1 Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: not as important in Islamic difference, the important Christian Theologians and the Bible in thought as it was in Christianity relationship between how Nazi Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton and Christendom). University Press, 2008). 2 Gil Anidjar, Blood: A Critique of Nirenberg’s explanation of how 3 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Christianity (New York: Columbia Jews were conceived from the Totalitarianism (San Diego: Harcourt, University Press, 2014). 1985 edn), Part II.

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 37

Christian societies conceived modern Jews negotiated the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Jews and Muslims from the challenges of an ever-changing is a well-known expert on Crusades until the early ‘host society’ in the centuries Christian Hebraism. His book on twentieth century.4 Finally, his before legal emancipation. Some the Hebraist Johannes Buxtorf5 is model of ‘anti-Judaism’ does not of the most exciting scholarship the definite work on the Swiss sufficiently account for the praise that has appeared in the past scholar’s contribution to for, and indeed obsession with, decades has also firmly put the Christian Heraismb. The current ancient Israel (see especially focus of attention on early volume, meticulously researched chapter 9) that was particularly modern Jews as agents of their and lucidly written, is the culmi- prevalent in the seventeenth destiny who actively and nation of years of scholarship in century, but was also important resourcefully shaped their own the field of Hebrew printing. The long after this moment. lives, despite the legal, book traces the development of These questions do not detract, occupational, social and religious Hebrew as a language nearly however, from the general thrust limitations in place. These exclusively associated with the of Nirenberg’s argument, which insights have also nuanced our Jews at the beginning of the is as original as it is convincing: understanding of the relationship sixteenth century to a powerful a he takes Judaism from the between Jews and non-Jews. The tool of the Protestant reformers margins of Western thought and focus of scholarly attention has who used it to attack the places it firmly at the very centre. shifted from no longer regarding authority of the Catholic This book, therefore, lays down a Jews exclusively as victims of doctrine. This led not only to the great challenge to students of the Gentile aggression, discrimi- expansion of teaching Hebrew at West and its genealogies. If nation and persecution but as universities but also to Nirenberg is right, why have the players in their own right who flourishing of the Hebrew book figures of the Jew and Judaism responded in manifold ways to market. Burnett points out that been so neglected in the new their non-Jewish neighbours. ‘[t]he Reformation turned intellectual history of recent The following works are Christian Hebraism from the years—in studies of European important new contributions to pastime of a few hobbyists and Empire, transnational modernity, the growing body of scholarship theologians into a broad based political economy? And now that on early modern Jewish history intellectual movement that he has made his case, will and Jewish-non-Jewish relations involved students and scholars outside of Jewish in Europe. professors, printers, patrons of Studies take note? I very much many kinds living throughout hope so. Stephen G. Burnett, Christian Europe,’ [3] with Christian Hebraism in the Reformation Hebraists playing a leading role Dr James Renton Era (1500-1660): Authors, in establishing the academic Edge Hill University Books, and the Transmission of engagement with Hebrew and Jewish Learning. Leiden- Jewish texts within Christian New publications in early Boston: Brill, 2012. scholarship. modern Jewish history How did this remarkable development happen? Burnett The early modern period is a successfully contextualises the period of transition that has work of leading Christian shaped European history Hebraists by analysing Christian profoundly. In Jewish Hebrew books and their authors. historiography the awareness of Burnett argues that Christian this era as a distinctive period – Hebrew books – books that and not just the continuation of contain a substantial amount of the Middle Ages - is a relatively Hebrew type – are an ‘intellectual recent development, shaped by bridge between the Jewish and historians such as Elisheva Christian world of scholarship’ Carlebach, Elliott Horowitz, Bob that ‘mediate Jewish learning’ [5]. Liberles, Benjamin Ravid and While Christian Hebrew books David Ruderman, among others, may be of relatively minor whose works have highlighted importance in the Hebrew the complex ways in which early 5 Stephen G. Burnett, From Christian 4 Ben Gidley and James Renton (eds), Hebraism to Jewish Studies: Johannes Antisemitism and Islamophobia: A Shared Stephen Burnett, a professor of Buxtorf (1564-1629) and Hebrew learning Story (Basingstoke and New York: Religious Studies at the in the seventeenth century (Leiden: Brill, Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming). 1996).

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 38

printing industry as a whole, they Jewish tutors, purchasing agents, Rachel Greenblatt’s sophisticated flourished in the Reformation copyists and translators. While study, that began as a PhD at the era. About 2,000 such books Burnett notes that these personal Hebrew University of Jerusalem, were printed between 1501 and contacts were ‘marked all too examines the communal memory 1660. The bibliographical often by misunderstandings that of the largest Jewish community information they provide allows arose from cultural differences in early modern Europe, Prague. mapping out the intellectual and from dissimilar approaches In the timeframe discussed in the world of Christian Hebraism, its to Hebrew learning as well as book, the Jewish population centres, main players and which from religious friction’, he also increased from several thousand aspects of Jewish learning they argues that the common interest members by the end of the found relevant for Christian in the Hebrew book ‘made sixteenth century to about purposes. possible a new kind of encounter 10,000 in the eighteenth century, The book is divided into six with Judaism, embodied in numbering a quarter of the city’s chapters. The first examines Christian Hebrew books’. [9] inhabitants Between 1583, when what motivated Christians to Burnett’s book is undoubtedly a Prague became under Emperor learn Hebrew and how this was major contribution to the study Rudolf II the cultural capital of made possible by the of Christian Hebraism that the Holy Roman Empire, to the introduction of Hebrew teaching combines a highly readable pre-enlightenment in the early at European universities. The discussion of the intellectual eighteenth century, when David following chapter studies the endeavours with very practical Oppenheimer, a bibliophile authors, the confessionalisation information on the realities of collector was chief rabbi, the city of Hebrew studies and the producing, advertising and and its Jewish community patronage system that made selling books in Hebrew. The changed considerably. Set against these works possible. Chapter book provides a wealth of the background of Habsburg three explores which Jewish texts detailed information on history and particularly the were of particular interest to individual scholars, Christian events of the Thirty Years War, Christian scholars. Burnett shows printing presses, publishers and Greenblatt analyses the internal that these were mostly related to specific works published and the dynamics of an intellectually rich Hebrew language and biblical technical challenges of type- and vibrant Jewish community in studies. In chapter four the setting Hebrew type. The work that period. access to Jewish learning and the enhances our understanding of Stimulated by the influential ‘birth of Jewish bibliography’ is the role of printing in the works of Maurice Halbwachs6 studied. This is an interesting Reformation era and con- and Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi,7 chapter reconstructing the textualises a fascinating aspect of memory has become a frequently personal and public Judaica the intellectual and commercial studied topic in Jewish collections and noble libraries encounters between Jewish and historiography but Greenfeld that contained Jewish works. The Christians in the sixteenth and takes these debates further. She last two chapters examine the seventeenth centuries. focuses on a richly documented production and distribution of case study and utilizes an Christian Hebrew books. How Rachel L. Greenblatt, To Tell impressive range of sources to and where were they printed, Their Children: Jewish examine how the Jews of Prague who were the printers and Communal Memory in Early understood, recorded and booksellers, how did they reach Modern Prague. Stanford: preserved their history. their buyers? Chapter five Stanford University Press, This history was always an answers these questions but, as 2014. alternative version to Christian demonstrated in chapter six, readings of historical events. As press control in Catholic Spain Greenblatt argues, Jewish and Italy limited the discourse in affirmation that God continued these countries, despite the providence over the Jews and flourishing trade in Hebrew vindicated them was a refutation books. of Christian claims that God had A particular interesting aspect of rejected the Jews, as the book is the exploration of the role that Jews and converts from Judaism played in the growth of 6 Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Christian Hebraism. Christians Memory. Ed., translated and introduced were not only interested in by Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992). Jewish texts but often engaged 7 Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish closely and personally with History and Jewish Memory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982).

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 39

demonstrated by their prolonged to remember the rescue from Constructions of Race During exile. Grief and mourning over past threats. Greenfeld notes the the Long Eighteenth Century. calamities that had befallen them political aspects of these events, Philadelphia: University of and the need to preserve the arguing that outside pressure Pennsylvania Press, 2014. memory of these for future and internal conflicts shaped the generation also inspired memory form of local commemorations. strategies. She also explores another genre, David Gans’ chronicle Zemah historical songs in Yiddish whose David is well known as the major main purpose was to disseminate historical chronicle of Ashkenazic news among Jewish Judaism at that time but it is also communities. The Chief Rabbi exceptional. Greenblatt demon- Oppenheim’s keen interest in strates the variety of forms the collecting rare manuscripts and creation of memory took in early ephemera resulted in a unique modern Prague. These were collection of printed booklets, influenced by cultural and now preserved at the Bodleian8 material conditions, gender roles and skilfully analysed in the and their transformations, the book. socioeconomic status, print The six chapters of the book technology, increasing literacy of explore the urban geography of men and women and linguistic Prague and the role of calendars, considerations. The city’s the memorial space of cemetery evocative Jewish cemetery has and synagogue, autobiographical become a major site for mass writing and commemorations Iris Idelson-Shein, a former tourism today but Greenblatt within a family setting, the link student of Shulamit Volkov and reads it as a crucial site of between authorship, communal communal and individual authority and local traditions, the currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Martin- memory. She draws out forms of memory in writing, Buber-Professur für Jüdische beautifully how memory can telling and singing and finally Religionsphilosophie in Frank- serve as ‘a bridge between the studying print versus furt, has written an original and living and the dead’ by using manuscript, vernacular versus engaging study that makes an gravestones, ritual objects and a sacred and women versus men in important contribution to the weekly liturgy for the dead to chapter six. A particular study of Jewish identity, self- ‘keep the dead actively involved interesting and moving example definition and attitudes towards in the daily activities of the living’ that highlights not only the non-Jews. Set in the contextual [6]. The timeframe chosen for the increasing importance of Yiddish framework of the study of the book allows tracing the changes as a written language but also the history of race in general and in in the aesthetics of memory and contribution of women to the the eighteenth century in in the role of the individual. As expansion of printing is a text particular, the author analyses the latter becomes more commemorating the seven dead how the ‘other’ in European important in commemoration, children of Baer and Beila society, the Jews, in turn live stories of family members Perlhefter. Beila wrote the internalised and engaged with were more commonly included in introduction to an ethical treatise the emerging discourse on racial introductions to books or in Yiddish that the couple difference. handwritten familial rescue tales published in memory of their The author argues that (such as a scroll, written by R. children. Yomtov Lipmann Heller, This is meticulously researched ‘otherness’ in the early modern was not defined by skin colour or describing his 1629 and original book that enhances other biological markers but by imprisonment for alleged anti- our understanding of the world cultural and religious differences. imperial and anti-Christian of early modern Jews and makes Only in the late eighteenth writings and his subsequent an important contribution to the century, more essentialist release) that established a study of communal memory as a notions of difference, came to the special commemoration day with form of identity. fore. Idelson-Shein is interested fasting and a ‘Purim’ celebration, in the radical change ‘in which that as a tale of deliverance Iris Idelson-Shein, Difference of Ashkenazi Jews understood evoked the biblical Purim story. a Different Kind: Jewish difference’ during the early In the larger context within the modern period and poses the community, liturgies for annual 8 For more information on this important following questions: How did this commemorations were created collection, see the section ‘The Catherine Lewis Lectures’ on p. 9 of this Bulletin. change come about, how did it

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 40

affect the Jewish discourse on business woman Glikl bas Leib, the 19th century. The focus of race and how does it relate to the where she describes an erotic both chapters is Hebrew and bigger non-Jewish context? encounter between a pious Jew Yiddish translations of German The book is divided into four and an East Indian woman, based books aimed at children, chronologically and thematically on a folktale. The focus of the highlighting the important role of organised chapters that follow chapter is on representations of translators ‘as agent of internal the same method: a carefully the savage woman and cultural-colonization’. selected key test provides the particularly on the savage The book traces the changes that initial focus of the discussion that mother. occurred in Jewish perceptions of is then expanded to include a The following chapter discusses a race in the long 18th century. discussion of other relevant texts philosophical text by the Focusing on well-chosen authors from the same period. While Lithuanian physician and and texts, Idelson-Shein notes a rabbinical texts are not entirely prototypical early maskil development from a sense of ignored, the focus of the book is Yehudah ben Mordecai ha-Levi superiority through a quest for on secular conceptions in the Horowitz that was published in equality to feelings of inferiority Ashkenazic cultural and social Amsterdam in 1766. Here that highlights both the Jewish context. The selected texts are Idelson-Shein is particularly sense of self and of the other. from four different literary interested in the seeming This is a stimulating and creative genres, representing the most contradiction that non- book that makes for enjoyable dominant modes of writing about Europeans can be portrayed as reading. race in that period. both noble and ignoble. Chapter 1 analyses an intriguing Chapters 3 and 4 explore on the Dr Maria Diemling passage from the only extant image of the savage in the very Canterbury Christ Chuch memoirs of an early modern first Hebrew books written for University woman, the German-Jewish children from the beginning of

BAJS Bulletin 2015 · 41