Bajs Bulletin 2011

BAJS Bulletin 2011 The Collection of Aramaic Incantations in the Pergamon Museum (Berlin) Contents British Academy Small Research Grant for Siam News 1 Bhayro (Exeter) and Dan Levene (Southampton) BAJS Conference 2011 6 BAJS Committee 9 Survey of Jewish Studies (and related) courses 10 Ongoing doctoral research 53 Members’ recent publications 56 Reviews 60 The British Association for Jewish Studies (BAJS) was founded in 1975 as a learned society and professional organization on a non-profit-making basis. Its aims are to nurture, cultivate and ad- vance the teaching and research in Jewish culture A British Academy Small Research Grant, valuing and history in all its aspects within Higher Educa- £6,240, has just been granted to Dan Levene tion in the British Isles. (University of Southampton) and Siam Bhayro (University of Exeter) to initiate a project on the Contact: collection of Aramaic incantation bowls housed in BAJS Secretariat the Pergamon Museum (Berlin), in collaboration Lars Fischer with James Nathan Ford (Bar Ilan University) and CJCR Matthew Morgenstern (University of Haifa) who Wesley House are Aramaic specialists, Naama Vilozny (Hebrew Jesus Lane University) who is an expert in the images that Cambridge CB5 8BJ occur in these texts and Ortal-Paz Saar (Tel-Aviv University) who is a specialist in late antique to [email protected] medieval Jewish magic. This initial grant funds the production of a catalogue of the Berlin collection If you have not already done so, please sign up to that will form the basis of a full scientific edition. the BAJS website! http://britishjewishstudies.org Medieval Jewish Calendars Appeal for information: Sacha Stern (UCL) is currently directing three concurrent research projects on medieval To help us make the case for Jewish Studies in the Jewish calendars face of the current and looming massive cuts in, and radical restructuring of, higher education and research funding, it is imperative that you keep us informed of relevant developments. We need to know about looming cuts or closures, the pending loss of Jewish Studies positions through retire- ment, success rates in securing research council grants, the number of students taking Jewish Studies courses etc. Please provide us with relevant information as and when it becomes available to you. News The Calendar was an important part of medieval Astrolabes in medieval Jewish society Jewish culture, which is why it is described in detail in so many medieval manuscripts. Sacha A three-year AHRC research grant has been Stern is currently directing three funded research awarded to Charles Burnett (Warburg Institute) to projects on medieval Jewish Calendars. work on astrolabes in medieval Jewish society in collaboration with Silke Ackermann of the British The AHRC-funded project, Medieval Monographs Museum. The focus will be on the astrolabe, the on the Jewish Calendar, has been running since most sophisticated scientific instrument made October 2008 and employs two postdoctoral before the invention of the modern computer, as researchers who are working on critical editions, well as on the surviving Hebrew texts. The re- with translation and commentary, of three Hebrew search will contribute to studies of astronomical monographs from the early twelfth century. The instruments and will shed light on Jewish science project continues until 2013 and will culminate in and society in the Middle Ages and their cultural a conference that will take place immediately context. before, and partly overlap with, the 2013 BAJS Conference. Jewish-non-Jewish relations: The social and cultural importance of calendars between exclusion and embrace – was recognized by all faiths in the Middle Ages, an online teaching resource and this explains why medieval scholars became interested in the calendars of faiths other than Important new online resource compiled their own. Islamic scientists and chronographers by Maria Diemling (Canterbury Christ Church) from the ninth to eleventh centuries wrote exten- and Hannah Holtschneider (Edinburgh) sively about the Jewish calendar, and their works to be launched during BAJS Conference in Oxford are an invaluable source of evidence on the rabbinic calendar in this early period. The Lever- hulme Trust is funding a two-year postdoctoral research fellowship (2010–12) to facilitate the production of a critical edition of the colossal monograph of Abu Rayhan al-Biruni which con- tains substantial sections on the Jewish calendar and its historical origins. We have been teaching various aspects of Jewish-non-Jewish relations as part of lecturing in Jewish Studies at several British universities for more than a decade. Discussing our own experien- ces, sharing good practice and reflecting on the importance of the study of the complex relation- ship between members of different religious and cultural traditions, we identified the importance of primary sources for undergraduate teaching. While there are a number of excellent collections of primary sources available for various periods of Sacha Stern with his fellow researchers Jewish history, we perceived a lack of appropriate, stimulating and challenging annotated primary A third, smaller project, Jewish calendar contro- sources that address specifically the complexity of versies in the tenth to eleventh-centuries Near East: interfaith and intercultural relations between Jews a historical and codicological analysis, is being and non-Jews. undertaken jointly with Marina Rustow of Johns Hopkins University and funded by the British Aca- The main target group for this project are practi- demy. Running from March 2011 until July 2012, tioners in tertiary education. We wanted to make the project is designed to survey and analyze the these resources easily accessible to lecturers and manuscript evidence with a view to shedding fur- students wherever they are and whatever limited ther light on Jewish calendar controversies in the financial resources their institutions may have, and tenth and eleventh centuries. decided on a web-based application. Funding for BAJS Bulletin 2011· 2 News setting up the website and for copy-editing was educators and social workers to focus on the secured from The Spalding Trust and a Knowledge ethnic factor in search for an explanation for Transfer Grant from Canterbury Christ Church mental and physical illnesses amongst German University. Jews as well as other outsiders in German-Jewish society, such as wayward youth, “psychopaths”, prostitutes, unwed mothers, and children born out of wedlock. They became the target of welfare policy also in an effort to combat antisemitism and to integrate marginalized groups for the purpose of population policy. The aims of social policy also We commissioned a number of contributions testify to how German Jews negotiated their spanning all periods of Jewish history from experts complex identities between acculturation and dis- in the field (in this first stage, largely from scholars similation. Whilst scholarly research has examined active at British institutions) and are very pleased individual aspects, Prestel’s research focuses on with the variety and breadth discussed in the the institutions involved and the construction of source material we received. We can now offer madness, waywardness and psychopathy while original and lively discussions of rabbis encoun- taking gender and ethnicity into consideration. tering Pagan statues in ancient spas, observations on the sexual tension between Jews and Gentiles in American film, the figure of Jesus in modern Jewish art and in Jewish scholarship, the role of Klezmer Liberal Theology and “the Jews” music in memory work or Jewish-Christian coope- ration in attempting to fight the moral decline of a British Academy Small Research Grant secular society, to name just a few contributions. for Lars Fischer (CJCR, Cambridge) The study of Jewish-non-Jewish relations can offer valuable insights into the workings both of prejudice and persecution and of peaceful co- existence and successful dialogue across the centuries. Our project is a small contribution to this important field of inquiry. If successful, the project will expand and seek additional funding to broa- den its scope. Initially, however, the focus will be on Jewish-Christian relations. The online teaching resource will be officially launched at a reception held on 20 July 2011 during the BAJS conference in Oxford. The CJCR’s Academic Director, Lars Fischer, has We are confident that there is a lot of potential been awarded a Small Research Grant (£7,285) by for future growth and would welcome contribu- the British Academy to lay the groundwork for a tions from BAJS members and suggestions for major research project on Liberal Theology and further primary sources to be included. We would “the Jews”. Picking up the agenda presented in also be grateful for feedback from people who have Fischer’s inaugural lecture in December 2009, the used the site for teaching at tertiary level, from project will focus on forms of theology, from the students and other scholars. The site can be seventeenth to the twenty-first century, that have accessed at www.jnjr.div.ed.ac.uk. challenged established theological orthodoxies by claiming to be more enlightened, reasonable, Jewish welfare policy and outsiders humane and/or emancipatory and explore two in German-Jewish society from the end core questions. To what extent, firstly, have the of the 19th century until 1933 approaches of such theologies to Judaism and “the Jews” differed from those of their orthodox British Academy Small Research Grant counterparts and why, secondly have they for Claudia Prestel (Leicester) repeatedly set themselves apart by denouncing their orthodox counterparts as (too) “Jewish”? A British Academy Small Research Grant of £4,963 has been awarded to Claudia Prestel for the period While these issues have been touched upon in from July 2011 to June 2013, to proceed with work individual contexts, little effort has been made to on Jewish welfare policy and outsiders in late explore systematically the extent to which struc- nineteenth and early twentieth-century German- tural factors may predispose such theologies to Jewish society.

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