EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2021/22

Report

Medicine, Illness, and the Body: Jewish Healing and Healers from the Middle Ages to Early Modernity

International conference, Free University in Berlin, 27-28 July 2022

The Rationale for the Conference

Where do we draw the line between the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim cultures of healing? Should historians draw it at all? After all, medicine has often been portrayed as a shared cultural space. Christian, Muslim, and Jewish medical practitioners across Europe and the wider Mediterranean engaged in similar theories and practices to diagnose and heal their patients. These healers ostensibly inherited earlier medical and scientific paradigms from Antiquity, such as Galenic medicine, mediated to Jewish medical practitioners first through Arabic and later in Latin translations in the Middle Ages. As Carmen Caballero–Navas notes, philosophical and medical theories attributed to Galen written originally in Arabic became accessible to Jewish readers who deftly adapted them through Hebrew translations. Over the course of the fifteenth century, Jewish physicians became students at the universities, receiving direct access to theoretical innovation concerning academic medical thinking. This continual evolution of medical expertise, in conversation with the institutions of medical oversight, enabled Jews to ascend to positions of respect and even power in Europe and beyond. As Efraim Lev has emphatically underlined, based on his recent study of letters, commercial documents, court orders, donor lists, and other documents from the Cairo Geniza, that Jewish practitioners were integral to the larger society they lived in, and assumed positions in hospitals, as community leaders, and even in the courts of the Muslim rulers. This dynamic informs the liminality of Jewish healers. In spite of their embeddedness in wider society and its cultures of healing, Jewish healing and medicine retained certain idiosyncratic aspects that set it apart from the surrounding culture. The body became a marker of cultural shared and distinct space.

The Goals Reached

This conference sought to address the complexities of Jewish pre-modern care for the body. The conference brought together an expert community from the U.S., Europe, and Israel who specialize in the issues of health, ill-health, medicine, and embodiment across various geographies and chronologies crucial to understanding pre-modern Jewish historical experience. It thus created an initial platform that will serve for researchers interested in the embodiment and healing, medicine, magic, and technology as a network to access the expertise of its other participants.

The eighteenth papers delivered over the course of two days brought together a variety of topics proved in a methodologically diverse manner. From the cultural construction of the female Jewish body to the responses to epidemic crises, the issues exemplified the historiographic diversity of the current research into healing, the body, and medicine. Reflecting on state of the art, the conference aimed to (1) create a collaborative space to exchange required skills and expertise needed to narrate the history of Jewish embodiment in more general terms. (2) The participants, moreover, reflected on the issues of constructing narratives concerning minorities and the location of Jewish history in connection to “general” history.

Overview of the Papers

The conference was divided into six panels and one keynote lecture. The panels were dedicated to (1) the interplay between mystical and medical thought; (2) the scientific expertise and its male rabbinic formulation and embrace; (3) responses to plagues; (4) the interplay between the body, materiality of healing, and the medical genres encoding the realities of the body and practical aspects of healing; (4) gendering of healing and the female body; and (5) the intersectional approach towards magical, devotional, and healing practices. The keynote speech, delivered by Dr. Eve Krakowski, an associate professor at Princeton, examined the sources for the social construction of mourning in the medieval Islamicate Middle East and its embodied nature imprinted on the sources from the Cairo Genizah.

The first panel was dedicated to the interaction of mystical and medical thought. Dr. Biti Roi (Shechter Institute, Israel) examined the description and deployment of the external and internal anatomy od the human body in mystical literature. Through chronologically diverse body of texts, from Tikkunei ha-Zohar to Hasidic materials, she traced the interaction of these materials with contemporary medical knowledge and its reception in the kabbalistic corpora. She put the emphasis on the inherent moralization of this hybrid discourse that, in parallel juxtaposed holy and impure along with good and evil. The control over one’s purity, therefore, enabled one’s control over evil. On the other hand, it bolstered the perception that evil is not accidental.

Dr. Assaf Tamari (Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, Israel) asked about the location of medical knowledge and practices in the kabbalah and in the Lurianic kabbalah in particular. How medical were “the healers of the soul”? He argued that the Lurianic mysticism represents the maximalist approach in medicalizing the mystical thinking. The internalization of medical thinking was not only theoretical, although theoretical concepts are abundantly present in the writings of Lurianic thinkers. Medicine also gave an interpretative framework to the mystical practices, as many of its teachers—Vital in particular—were practising physicians.

In the discussion, Tamari especially highlighted the influence of the Muslim prophetic medicine on the Ottoman Jewish mystical practices, pointing out the need to understand the social context of such encounters. He stressed the need to establish more precise boundaries in the study of medical and bodily in mystical concepts. He argued that although medical content is always present in other streams and branches of esoteric schools, the extent and uses of medical practices and theory to ground them as bodily explicitly makes Lurianic kabbalah a unique case than a methodological example to be applied in further studies.

Prof. Ma’oz Kahana (Tel Aviv University) revisited his study of alchemy in the context of the Western Ashkenazi rabbinic culture of the eighteenth century. In his earlier work, he had shown how alchemical thinking about nature and transmutation was present in the works of eighteenth-century Ashkenazic rabbis. In the presentation delivered in Berlin, Prof. Kahana further explored the influence of alchemy on the more scholarly and bookish work of Altona-based Rabbi Jacob Emden.

Prof. Francois Guesnet (UCL) discussed the medical discourse in the work of Tobias Katz Cohen, an Ashkenazi learned physician, and his framing of Plica Polonica. Examining the ways in which physicians discussed this particular disease, Guesnet argued that Cohen, well-versed in Latin literature and lived experiences in various countries across Europe and Anatolia, manifested his medical authority by writing about Plica Polonica as the first physician in Hebrew. Guesnet, moreover, examined the shifting gender and social construction of this disease and its association with the Jews.

Dr. Leore Sachs-Shmueli (Bar Ilan University) examined the role of Hasidic rabbis as leaders in times of hardship. She analyzed the ways plagues were used to generate feelings of fear and hope in the writings of a Hasidic leader and the first Rebbe of the Munkacs dynasty, Tzvi Elimelech Shapira of Dynov (d. 1841). Through the prism of the epidemic crisis, Sachs-Shmueli debunked the romanticized image of the Hasidic leaders. Instead, she portrayed Dynov as homo politicus who purposefully—and akin to other preachers—used the cholera epidemic to advance his religious and political goals, such as modifying and centralizing his power of the communal oversight over shechita.

Daniella Mauer (University of Amsterdam) examined the prolonged circulation of a recipe against plague, one containing spider in the walnut, from Dioscorides to the remedy book of Tzvi Hirsh ben Yerahmiel Chotsch (Amsterdam, 1703). She traced the shifting meaning and interpretations of such recipes that are medical and then magical but continuously read in the context of physical healing. Mauer also showed how paratext changes how Yiddish readers publish and read medical content.

Dr. Iryna Klymenko (Ludwig-Maximilians Universität, München) gave an example of how the body and embodied practices can become our methodological guideline in building new historiographies and historical narratives. She interrogated how early modern Polish Jews used non-kosher substances, lard, in everyday life and healing practices and practices framing nourishment. She showed that the use of lard—as the token non-kosher substance—was far more varied. It included remedies for external use (not internal!), encouraging contact with skin. As the central primary source, she selected a Yiddish regimen of the health of East European provenience published in 1613.

Prof. Efraim Lev (University of Haifa, Israel) gave participants an overview of materia medica found in the collection known as the Cairo Genizah. He thus probed the sources of pharmacological knowledge to examine the genre-related conventions framing the transmission of pharmacological sources. Prof. Lev therefore placed Jewish medical practitioners on the map of the Mediterranean medical map and sketched the need for future projects, in digital humanities in particular, that will further enhance the ability of researchers to identify and analyze fragmental materials.

Dr. Magdaléna Jánošíková (Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, Israel) analyzed the practices of scholarly medical writing—in and outside of academia—to show how early modern medical practitioners composed their Hebrew and Yiddish medical works. She focused on the inclusion of the experiential and empirical content to examine the changing ways in which theoretical and passively received knowledge was linked and textualized in relationship to practice. Jánošíková presented this change as manifested in the Jewish culture of translation. She argued that the particular way early modern medical practitioners worked with books generated content that highlighted the applicability of medical knowledge. She claimed that although many writings of early modern Jewish doctors were bookish in content, they went beyond this bookish framework to connect the received knowledge with the author’s practice.

Prof. Carmen Caballero-Navas (University of Granada, Spain) explored the hitherto unpublished sections on women’s diseases in two medical books written in Hebrew in the second half of the 13th century. Ṣori ha-guf (Balm of the Body), written by Nathan ben Yo᾿el Falaquera, and anonymous Sefer ha-yosher (The Book of Perfection) served her to show how writers with practical medical experience strove to conceptual women’s diseases in a manner that accommodates their practice. Prof. Caballero-Navas provided a glimpse into the Hebrew medical literature to show how physicians attempted to assert their authority over the female body, which was already increasingly regulated by Jewish customs and traditions. She addressed how these authors constructed the sexual difference and gained knowledge about women’s medical practice.

Dr. Jordan Katz (the University of Massachusetts at Amherst) presented extent eighteenth-century records of births by Jewish midwives from Western Ashkenaz. Dr. Katz examined the capacity of these records to decentre the record-keeping as an exclusively male matter. To do so, she presented these records as a part of larger Western culture of record-keeping and emerging administrative practices. Dr. Katz then situated their content on the nexus of personal and communal life. This positioning allowed her to reframe how historians usually analyze record-keeping and other administrative male and institution-driven practices to propose the revision from the gendered perspective.

Dr. Andrea Gondos (Freie Universität, Berlin) addressed the repositories of vernacular medical and household knowledge through recipes from East-Central European manuscripts. She proposed a heuristic device to categorize and analyze recipes to probe the modalities of magical matter and material magic that frequently shared porous semantic boundaries in treating the female body. Looking into the materiality of healing the female body, Dr. Gondos examined a wide variety of material objects and natural substances interplay with the gendering of healing practices.

Dr. Alessia Bellusci (Ca’ Foscari University, Venice) addressed the porous boundaries between Christian and Jewish magical practices connected to childbirth. Dr. Bellusci probed a challenging set of sources, inquisitorial records, and polemical anti-Jewish literature as a potential source to reconstruct lived religion and the magical practices to protect the mother and the child during the delivery. After reviewing various material sources concerning the magical and devotional practices during the delivery, Dr. Bellusci focused on one motif in particular—the figure of the mother and the child, Mary and baby Jesus, and its use in the Jewish context in the form of a coin that was then tossed out.

Dr. Sivan Gottlieb (Harvard University) examined the fifteenth-century illuminated manuscripts of medical nature and analyzed the tradition of diagrammatic encryption of prognosing. Dr. Gottlieb reviewed the tradition of circular diagrams to think about the medical content and healing dynamically. She, furthermore, showed that diagrams can serve historians as guidelines that show us what type of information the physician has to know in order to diagnose the patients. In this way, the diagram served as an epistemic image bearing an imprint of the knowledge collection and its processing.

Gal Sofer (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel) called to reassess the study of demonological and exorcistic materials to see them as magical practices that integrated medical thinking. He presented exorcistic recipes and formulas found in demonic texts that were later recast along medical categories of diagnosing, prognosis, and treating the sick.

Dr. Eve Krakowski (Princeton) delivered the keynote lecture, putting her skills of conjuring up the complex lives and lived experiences of medieval Jews of Egypt into practice. Her project aims to reconstruct the culture of dying and mourning in the medieval Islamicate Middle East. Carefully reconstructing sources from the Cairo Geniza, Dr. Krakowski highlighted the contrast between the advice for mourners and their lived reality. The moral ideal among Muslim, Christian, and Jewish jurists and thinkers alike emphasized endurance as a desired expression of grief. The materials from the Cairo Geniza, family and business letters nonetheless suggest a different reality on the ground. Grief and mourning were physical, overpowering the senses, and worrisome for other family members. In her paper, Dr. Krakowski carefully located the tradition of writing consolation letters into the ecology of knowledge exchange in the Middle East to probe their contents for further information on the practices of mourning—those that were halakhically regulated—as well as the expression of grief and its depiction in private setting. Dr. Krakowski thus revealed the contours of the shared reality where a loss was omnipresent and threatening the cohesion of the family.

Significant Conversations

There were several significant discussions whose topics were recurringly invoked in the delivered papers and the following debates that push the boundaries of current research:

(1) Magical vs medical

“One man’s ‘magic’ is another man’s engineering.” With these words, Dr. Gondos opened her paper, borrowing the words of Robert Heinlein. This quote indeed encapsulates the interchangeable ways in which historians read into materials that are ‘medical’ and ‘magical’ at the same time, struggling to ascertain which of the two was more prevalent. These struggles continuously echo the blind spots of historiographic making, which pitted science against magic, rational against irrational, and physicians against rabbis. For over half a decade, historians have been unmaking this divide primary via tools of social history. By reconstructing the stories of Jewish individuals and collectives, historians from Dr. David Ruderman to Dr. Maoz Kahana have shown how Jewish lived experience and intellectual thought resisted the divisions into these modern binary categories.

In the case of healing, the historiography still offers unsatisfactory contextualization of the practices of healing viewed through the binaries of medicine as science and magic as kabbalah. This view is imposed on the sources on account of the institutionalization of the history of science and the prominence of kabbalah in the field of Jewish thought that made the two fields less mutually inclusive. These divides have been raised in particular by the paper by Dr. Assaf Tamari and the subsequent discussion, which strove to make an argument based on the intellectual history of Jewish thought.

This conference also provided an alternative path to reassess such binaries and to capture the mentalité of healing as medical, magical, and technical at the same time, through the prism of practice. In the papers of Daniella Mauer, Dr. Andrea Gondos, and others, the recipe-based analysis allowed re-reading the magical and medical from a non-divisive, non-binary perspective that required further social setting.

The methodological turn towards the body as a centre of praxis was the most clearly articulated in the work of Dr. Iryna Klymenko, who, by the reconstruction of the ways in which lard was used and applied on the body, achieved a more nuanced narration of difference and othering in the context of confessionalising eastern Europe.

(2) Gendering the body and healing

The paper by Dr. Klymenko has also revealed the recurring problem in the history of healing and medicine—namely, our inability to capture the role of women in the social landscape that gave healing its societal and communal meaning. This issue was explicitly raised in the debate with Prof. Carmen Caballero-Navas, who urged historians to think about the social setting of healing. Although historians have been showing that the domestic nature of healing was essentially women’s domain, the Jewish sources (may they be Hebrew or Yiddish) obscure this gendered reality of healing. They offer little insight into how healing in Jewish families and communities was also a women-led initiative.

The contribution of Dr. Jordan Katz, who presented materials produced by women, has a specific significance. Yet it was clear that this rare evidence is not available to all historians working on different geographical regions and periods. There, nevertheless, are ways to compensate for the lack of women-made sources. We are still awaiting new social histories of the family and the community in Central and Eastern Europe and its expansion to the countries that became subjects to colonial conquest. These studies must closely consider the labour of women and their role in local and family economies in connection to their domestic and public roles as carers and healers. Secondly, historians have to pay more attention to the way in which male figures—healers, rabbis, patriarchs—aimed to gain authority over the female body and control over the content of healing knowledge circulating among networks of women. These aspects were well addressed and represented in the conference and brought to display more innovative uses of secondary sources.

(3) Re-evaluating the sources and their use

Finally, the discussions generated debates about various primary sources and their ability to grasp, articulate, but also disarticulate or erase pots of knowledge that had their social, cultural, and gendered setting. For instance, Dr. Alessia Bellusci considered the role of orality in the transmission of healing practices and their surprising emergences in external sources, such as anti-Jewish polemics and inquisitorial documents. Here the sources that framed Jewish practice as flawed offer a rare glimpse into practices that internal writings (naturally, omitting the everyday realities as self-evident) stay silent. In a careful contextualization, including the thorough understanding of pre-modern birthing practices and the material culture it generated, Dr. Bellusci thus reconstructed the use of an essentially Christian symbol on a coin as a reappropriated magical object for particular Jewish healing practice.

The differing content of Jewish and non-Jewish sources raises the question concerning the method of composing medical books. This problem was tackled by Dr. Magdalena Janosikova, who showed that the composition relied more on non-Jewish (Latin and German) works, but how their writings were composed invited the incorporation of one’s own experience. Dr. Janosikova argued that the reproduction of texts happened hand in hand with reconsidering their practical applicability. The debate with Prof. Francois Guesnet further revealed the need to consider the consequences of such writing and its place in reconstructing the histories of health and medicine. As Dr. Janosikova clarified, this type of writing did not only articulate the expansion of medical knowledge into vernacular cultures (the inclusion of Slavic names of plants into Latin, Greek, German, etc., repositories). It equally generated erasure of the vernacular practice, as the re-reading of medical issues took place in the universalising framework of the Latin scholarship. This is further reinforced by the fact that although these “translations” invited individualized content and re-evaluation of the practice, they generated responses that were positive, supportive, or open-ended. It never generated disagreement or a debate beyond the patronizing admonitions of the author—the medical practitioner who claimed the rhetoric authority (not factual) over the practices of his co-religionists. This debate thus showed that the materials produced by the learned physicians represent a type of source not suitable for capturing the practices on the ground, though bearing their valuable imprints and articulating the political power that came into fruition a century later.

Planned Outcomes

Conference presentations will be invited for submission to an edited volume. We have received an invitation from Prof. Elliot Wolfson the academic editor of Journal of Jewish Though and Philosophy to create a special issue based on the conference presentations and its topic, medicine, healing, and bodily care among Jews from the medieval to the early modern period. Another option would be to do a special issue of the journal, Jewish History. The convenors of the conference, Dr. Andrea Gondos and Dr. Magdalena Janosikova, will co-edit this special issue. We will collect submissions in February 2023. The collection of essays should be submitted to the journal in July 2023.

EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2021/22

Report

BIAJS Conference 2022: Unfolding Time: Texts – Practices – Politics

King’s College London, 11-13 July 2022

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/events/british-and-irish-association-of-jewish-studies-annual-conference

Abstract

The Annual Conference of the British and Irish Association for Jewish Studies (BIAJS) invited scholars to explore how Jews have shaped and shape their individual, familial and communal commitments, cultural and social lives, historical understandings and political projects by engaging imaginatively with time and ‘time-like’ matters. At the same time, the conference offered a forum for the discussion of current research in many further areas, highlighted the work of PhD students and Early Career Scholars, and addressed urgent questions of the present moment. With more than 150 participants from 15 countries, the conference created a space for lively encounters and exchange that will inspire new research, collaborations and publications. Planned outcomes include publicly available recordings of online sessions, follow-up workshops, and a special journal issue.

Report

The BIAJS conference topic ‘Unfolding Time: Texts – Practices – Politics’ was inspired by the multi-faceted and thought-provoking research of recent decades on narratives, practices and politics that engage with time and temporalities to shape Jewish individual, familial and communal life. The study of time, time-keeping and temporalities is flourishing in particular in the fields of early rabbinic, mystical and apocalyptic literature. Investigations of time and temporalities in medieval Jewish philosophy and early modern Jewish culture, critical interrogations of the sharp distinction between history and memory in modern times, and current ethnographic research on time in a pandemic are just a few further examples for the renewed interest in Jewish temporalities across various fields. The conference offered the opportunity to bring together a wide range of approaches and insights from diverse periods and regions to nourish new interdisciplinary conversations on Jewish temporalities.

Two keynote lectures showed impressively how attention to questions of time and time-keeping can lead to important new insights. Vivian Liska (University of Antwerp/The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) spoke about ‘“The End or the Beginning”: The Interval Between Past and Future in German-Jewish Modernism’. Reflecting on Franz Kafka, Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt, Liska showed how these authors drew on specific aspects of the Jewish tradition and reconfigured them, while simultaneously insisting on the rupture of tradition itself, as they looked for critical ways of conceptualizing the present moment and living in it. Liska’s emphasis on the resistance in the work of these authors to the fascination with the “decisive moment” that pervaded political thought in the first decades of the twentieth century resonated strongly in the discussions following the lecture, as conference participants reflected on the implications of such resistance for evolving responses to the crises of our own moment.

In his keynote lecture on ‘Living in Multiple Time-Frames in Ancient and Medieval Jewish Society’, Sacha Stern (University College London) took the audience on an intriguing journey from Qumran to early modern Ashkenaz. He showed how Jews had managed to live with diverse time-frames already in the ancient world, how they integrated the Christian liturgical calendar in their daily experience of time in the Middle Ages, and how they adopted contemporary visualizations of calendars in the early modern world. Stern pointed to previous scholarly assumptions that took it for granted that societies can only function with a single time-frame, and that multiple time-frames inevitably cause confusion and division. By contrast, Stern made a strong case for recognizing multiple time-frames as an inherent feature of the Jewish experience through the ages that deserves to be better understood in cognitive, social and historical terms.

Further plenary sessions accentuated additional dimensions of the conference topic. A round-table ‘Time in the Plural: Why Time Studies Matter in Jewish Studies’, held online in the pre-conference week, brought together three leading scholars whose recent books explore the times and temporalities of rabbinic culture. Lynn Kaye (Brandeis University),  Sarit Kattan Gribetz (Fordham University) and Max Strassfeld (University of Arizona) discussed why “Time Studies” matter in Jewish Studies now: What can the rabbis’ legal reasoning and stories tell us about how they thought about time, and what could their insights mean for today? How do conceptions and organizations of time seek to establish identity and difference? How can time function to regulate embodiment in rabbinic literature? How is the division between modern/non-modern been racialized and gendered when it marks certain practices as outmoded? And finally, how can the interdisciplinary study of “time in the plural” enrich Jewish Studies, and vice versa?

For the concluding round-table ‘After Progress? Temporalities and Counter-Temporalities in Jewish Studies’, it was possible to bring together expertise regarding Jewish worlds in both Islamic and Christian contexts. Fred Astren (San Francisco State University), Andrea Schatz (King’s College London), Irene Zwiep (University of Amsterdam) and, chairing the session, Julian Weiss (King’s College London) explored medieval, early modern and modern Jewish historical practices to ask how current inquiries in the complexities of Jewish approaches to historical time, periodization and power in Christian, Islamic and secular contexts might inform new perspectives on ‘Wissenschaft’ and Jewish Studies today. Shared reflections on Astren’s question ‘What is an era?’ and on the Christian and colonial underpinnings of periodization led to a lively discussion that also explored timely questions of teaching in the classroom. Thus, participants fruitfully shared their diverse practices and experiences when introducing students to changing paradigms and unfamiliar concepts.

While it is impossible to report on all individual conference sessions in detail, a few key themes may be highlighted here. First, it was intriguing to see how ‘trans-temporal enactments’ were explored jointly by junior and senior scholars in lively inter-disciplinary conversations. Drawing on philology, philosophy, anthropology and the arts, they discussed the complex temporalities created in the space where modern individual and communal reading practices and performances interact with biblical and rabbinical texts. A further key topic were the intra-communal and inter-communal interactions that shaped medieval and early modern astronomical and calendrical research and practices. Finally, it became obvious that attention to the role of ‘narrating nation time’ continues to be highly productive for understanding the complexities of modern Jewish engagements with the national movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

A key event of the conference was the round-table on Jewish Heritage in Ukraine, organised by Eva Frojmovic, that took place in a hybrid format. Researchers, teachers and library/museum professionals working in Ukraine joined the panel remotely, and as the event was free and open to all, 120 additional audience members registered for it. Eugeny Kotlyar (Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts), Sofia Dyak (Center for Urban History, Lviv), Vitaly Chernoivanenko (Judaica Department, Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, and President of the Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies) and Nadia Ufimtseva (National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy) offered introductions to the rich field of Jewish material heritage in Ukraine: buildings, monuments, museums, artefacts, and library treasures. It was impressive to hear about the research and preservation activities of recent years and the ongoing work under conditions of war to safeguard and document Jewish heritage. The round-table was the first conference panel jointly offered and supported by BIAJS and the Jewish Historical Society of England (JHSE), whose president, Miri Rubin, welcomed panellists and participants, and we look forward to many more such joint events in the future.

Initiated by conference participants, further thematic strands developed as important parts of the programme. Panels were dedicated to Jewish Heritage in the UK, to new research on the history of Jewish liberalism, and to Jewish-Muslim relations in Europe. Research on historical and current forms of antisemitism and discussions on responses to them, including at an open meeting of the BIAJS Antisemitism Working Group, led by James Renton, formed an important part of the conference. In methodological terms, a panel on ‘Digital Mapping and Analysis in Jewish History’, organised by Oleksii Chebotarov on behalf of the EAJS Digital Forum, showed how digital approaches supports research in intellectual and social history, with themes ranging from Enlightenment translation practices via Jewish migration history to the social history of Hungarian yeshivot.

The conference theme was chosen before the pandemic began, but could now also be taken as an invitation to reflect on the last couple of years and the questions that have become particularly urgent during this period for individual academics and the field of Jewish Studies: How may we find recognition for the time needed for both families and work? And how can we talk successfully to our institutions about the time that matters in our field? We need time to learn and teach languages, time to gain and transmit the skills and expertise to study ancient texts that remain obstinately fresh and stimulating, and time to develop multi-focal approaches that look at Jewish communities and individuals while also considering the larger societies and cultures in which they lived and live. The conference offered space to consider, among other things, how to make our time as academics and the time-frames of Jewish Studies matter, now and in future years.

The conference was attended by more than 150 participants from 15 countries, and more than half of them were PhD students and Early Career scholars. A ‘New Scholars reception’ on the first conference day and a round-table on developing academic careers, both organised by Wendy Filer and Susannah Rees, highlighted the achievements and prospects of PhD students and Early Career scholars, who have often been harshly affected by the pandemic and have pursued their work with admirable resilience. The panel addressed topics such as thesis completion, grant applications, the publication of one’s first monograph, applications for teaching fellowships, and tenure-track positions. In the discussion, it became clear that finding funding opportunities and designing post-doctoral projects were of particular relevance to participants. These are themes that BIAJS will take up and address in further events, ideally also in cooperation with the EAJS. The encounters at the panel and lively discussions supported further networking that will continue beyond the conference.

The conference offered various opportunities to explore the conference topic and other themes beyond the conference venue: Nadia Valman arranged a visit of the ‘House of Life’/Willesden Cemetery; Ilana Tahan led a ‘Show & Tell’ at the British Library, Vivi Lachs and Nadia Valman took conference participants on a ‘Literature Walk through London’s Jewish East End’, and David Newman offered a guided visit of St John’s Wood Synagogue with David Hillman’s stained glass windows.

The conference was the result of many collaborative and individual initiatives and contributions. The conference organizers would like to thank the Department of Theology & Religious Studies and the Faculty of Arts & Humanities at King’s for early and enthusiastic support; the BIAJS committee and the conference committee at King’s for many brilliant ideas and excellent solutions; and the Faculty’s Professional Services team, the teams at King’s Venues, AV Services, Central Timetabling and Campus Operations for expert guidance and support. Brill generously sponsored the main conference reception. For a generous grant in support of PhD students and Early Career Scholars, who contributed so decisively to the fresh and stimulating research and lively conversations that characterized the conference, we would like to thank the European Association for Jewish Studies.

EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2021/22

Report

Rabbinization and Diversity: Methods, Models, and Manifestations between 400 and 1000 CE

A virtual international conference

March 14–15 and 23–24, 2022

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Event rationale

This conference builds on and continues the conversations begun almost seven years ago in Paris at the conference “Diversity and Rabbinization: Jewish Texts and Society between 400 and 1000 CE” (June 2015). The terms “diversity” and “rabbinization” continue to be the two primary categories that guide our efforts to conceptualize Jewish history during Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. We believe that, alongside ongoing investigation of the various bodies of empirical evidence, it is also important to develop new historical models and methods for examining both the persistent heterogeneity of Jewish social and cultural life in this period and the emergent dominance of rabbinic discourses across Jewish society.

It is our aim to challenge earlier approaches that viewed rabbinization as a linear process in which more and more Jews gradually became more and more “rabbinized” over time. Instead, due consideration should be given to the differences across regions, social strata, and institutional settings in the nature and pace of this process. It is our hope that a refinement of the methods and models that are brought to bear on this problem will bring us closer to a more nuanced historical account of what we might call the “dialectics of rabbinization.”

Evaluating models of diversity is one part of this task. Building on the many historical, archeological, literary, and methodological advances in the study of ancient Judaism over the past decades, we take as a given that the textual and material records attest a certain degree of heterogeneity in Jewish culture and society throughout the first millennium CE. But scholars have not arrived at a consensus about when source materials that differ in form, language, medium, mode of transmission, etc., represent sociologically or ideologically distinct and even competing groups or movements. Nor is there agreement on how we should conceptualize the relationships among the religious and cultural expressions produced within the architectural spaces of Jewish life (e.g., household, workshop, street, market, city, study house, synagogue, and cemetery). Incantation bowl with an Aramaic inscription around a demon. Nippur. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Source: Wikimedia Commons

If the diversity within the textual or material record does indeed point to sites of Jewish cultural production and reception that were differentiated by profession, class, gender, region, and other such factors, were there nonetheless social or institutional networks that connected or mediated among them? We encourage presenters to consider the different levels or types of diversity with which we need to reckon when considering the range of evidence for Jewish culture and society in this period.

A second, but closely related, question is which models and methods are most appropriate for conceptualizing the extension of rabbinic norms, authority, and prestige beyond the rabbis’ immediate familial and communal circles, and what was the impact of this process on the wider Jewish society. What terms are most heuristically productive for describing and analyzing the range of Jewish textual and material sources that circulate(d) at or outside the boundaries of the corpus of rabbinic literature? Should scholars avoid applying such terms as “non-” or “para-” rabbinic to these sources so that they might be studied in their own right? Or are such terms appropriate or useful in light of the definitive impact of rabbinic literature and piety on the production, transmission, and reception of these sources, both by earlier generations and by modern scholars?

Did rabbinization lead to the homogenization of Jewish culture and the standardization of Jewish social and institutional structures? Or perhaps the rabbinic tradition provided generic categories (e.g., mishnah or midrash), social types (e.g., the rabbinic sage), or discursive practices (e.g., halakhic debate) that could be deployed quite differentially as building-blocks within both long-standing and novel Jewish expressive forms. Are the hybrid forms of Jewish literary and religious practice that are particularly characteristic of the period between the fifth and ninth centuries (e.g., Hekhalot literature or certain strands of late midrash) evidence for continuity with “pre- or non- rabbinic” forms of Judaism? Or, alternatively, are they evidence for the “domestication” of Jewish diversity by an increasingly hegemonic rabbinism? Or perhaps some other explanation better accounts for the data.

In addition to addressing particular themes, topics, or bodies of evidence, papers will also apply or even propose models, methods, or approaches that address the theoretical and historiographic problems outlined above.

Detailed Overview of all Talks

Keynote lecturers

Rabbinization, Localization, and the Dynamics of Syncretism

David Frankfurter, Boston University

Developing religious institutions, whether Christianity, Rabbinic Judaism, Islam, or Buddhism, are ultimately products of local environments despite their every effort to appear trans-regional and eternal. The production of Christian (etc.) religion on the ground will always involve a negotiation between local traditions, habitūs, and immediate landscapes (on the one hand), and new idioms of authority and charisma, including textuality (on the other hand)—a negotiation played out across multiple social sites that I have called syncretism. Syncretism, in this sense, is neither teleological (resulting in a complete “Judaism” or “Christianity”) nor dependent on pure ingredients (as critics have condemned the term). My paper is thus a challenge to the study of rabbinization to consider this model, but I will offer experimental illustrations from the corpus of Babylonian incantation bowls.

‘Babylonian Rabbinic Hegemony’ revisited

Marina Rustow, Princeton University

In this talk I will revisit the question of how and when the Babylonian-Iraqi construction of rabbinic Judaism established firm footing outside Iraq in the tenth and eleventh centuries and whether it matters when considering the larger question of ‘rabbinization’. My hope is to reframe the question: instead of what I described in 2008 as ‘Babylonian rabbinic hegemony’, I’ll discuss Iraqi constructions of Judaism in the plural. I’ll also temper the geographic marker by asking whether, given that those constructions were mobile and portable, they were Iraqi at all. While in a pair of articles in 2010 and 2014 I explained the mobility of Iraqi Judaism(s) through factors such as taxation, migration to cities, imperial collapse and migration westward, those explanations now strike me as a little vague, or even as a sleight of hand masking an absence of hard information about Jewish communities outside Egypt and Syria with seemingly objective but ambient data about everyone else. My reconsiderations here will be more pointillistic than grandly explanatory, but also more geographically far-reaching; my hope is to avoid the analytical impasse of ‘Babylonian rabbinic hegemony’ by considering additional documentary sources from the geniza and elsewhere.

The Two Late Antiquities of the Jews of Asia Minor

Seth Schwartz, Columbia University

Jews in the best-attested regions of Asia—Ionia, Caria and the areas near the great central river valleys of Anatolia—show few signs of “rabbinization” at any point before the middle Byzantine period (c.750–c.1200). I wish to argue that there were two modes of late antiquity, the first beginning surprisingly early in the third century and ending around 410, and the second extending from 410 to 700. The first late antiquity features heightened integrative pressure from the Roman state—even in the throes of its later-third-century crisis—whose landmarks are the Constitutio Antoniniana (212), the great Christian persecutions (249-311), the “Edict of Toleration” (313) and the Edict of Thessalonica (380). This is the period too (I will argue, as a consequence of integrative pressure) of the first profusion of identifiably Asian Jewish material culture whose surprising characteristics include intense localism, reemergence but also enduring weakness of “normative” communal structures and institutions (and, conversely, Jewish identification mediated through non-Jewish institutions like trade and neighborhood associations, devotion to theatrical performance, etc.), and ambivalence about integration in municipal structures and practices (e.g., euergetism) that were weakening but still viable. The second late antiquity shows signs of “standardization”: an iconography is shared trans-locally, Jewish onomastics is transformed and standardized, there are communities, synagogues and officials. Unlike in other areas, e.g., Egypt or Italy, there is as yet no trace of rabbis.

What Made Rabbanites “Rabbinic”?

Sacha Stern, University College London

The study of Rabbinization in the first millennium CE is often predicated on a notion of rabbinic Judaism that is actually far from straightforward. The term “rabbinic” (rabbani) is not attested, as a qualifier of Judaism or anything else, before the ninth century, whilst there is little sense in the Mishnah, Talmud, and Midrashim that their authors saw themselves as expounding a “Judaism” that was “rabbinic.” By the late Geonic period, what identified many Jews as “Rabbanites” was their allegiance to the Mishnah and Talmud (or what we call rabbinic literature), but this allegiance was sometimes illusory. Thus, in the case of the calendar—one of the most public expressions of disagreement between Rabbanites and Qaraites—the Rabbanites used a calculated calendar that had no foundation in the Talmud, whereas the Qaraites observed the new moon crescent and intercalated the year on the basis of aviv, both of which can be traced back directly to tannaitic sources. The alleged continuity of Rabbanite Judaism with the Mishnah and Talmud has underpinned modern scholarly accounts of the Rabbinization of Judaism in the early medieval Near East, but attention needs to be given to the internal ruptures in the transmission and diffusion of early rabbinic traditions, and the apparent absence of an explicitly “rabbinic” identity until its invention in response to Qaraite polemics.

Conference papers

“It does not befit al-Raḥmān to take a son …”: Late-Antique Arabia and the Qurʾanic Polemic against Divine Sonship

Sean Anthony, Ohio State University

The rejection of divine sonship is a major theological motif of the Qurʾan. In one of its earliest polemics against divine sonship, the Qurʾan declares that the heavens and earth nearly split asunder because of those who claim that “the Merciful (al-raḥmān)” has a son; “for it does not befit the Merciful (al-raḥmān) to take a son” (Q. Maryam 19:90-93). Such statements are prevalent throughout the qurʾanic corpus, but I contend that the use of the divine epithet al-raḥmān in this passage in particular – as well as in the so-called “Raḥmān-sūrahs” in general – evokes a memory of a specifically Arabian context: the rise of ‘raḥmanite’ monotheism in the kingdom of Ḥimyar in South Arabia in the centuries prior to the advent of Islam.

How the Qurʾan relates to, or even draws from, the rise in the political fortunes of monotheism in Ḥimyar remains a historical mystery. This paper aims explore a potential connection between the Qurʾan and these earlier developments by investigating three groups of sixth-century texts that one might regard as testimonies to late-antique precursors to the qurʾanic polemics against divine sonship – in particular the sonship of Jesus – in an Arabian context. The first group is the ‘raḥmānite’ inscriptions of the Jewish and Christian rulers of South Arabian kingdom of Ḥimyar from c. 500-570 ad. The second are the Greek and Syriac sources on the Nagrān crisis of the 520s, precipitated by the siege and extermination of the city’s Christian population by the Ḥimyarite prince Joseph Dhū l-Nuwās. And last are select homilies of the miaphysite theologian Jacob of Sarug (d. 521), who corresponded with the inhabitants of Nagran during the crisis and composed several Homilies of Against the Jews which prominently feature, and rebut, Jewish polemics against divine sonship.

Rabbinization and Jewish Aramaic Bible Translation: Perspectives from Rabbinic and Targumic Literatures

AJ Berkovitz, HUC-JIR/New York

Two sites stand prominent among the landscape of ancient Jewish religious life: the study house and the synagogue. This paper contributes to the story of their relationship by surveying the rabbinization of Targum, the oral-performative translation of Scripture. It will begin with an overview of the history and trajectory of Targum. It will then explore the dialectics of rabbinization through a series of short case-studies from both rabbinic and targumic literatures. Attention to rabbinic literature will show how rabbis attempted to place their imprint upon Targum in both form and practice, going so far as to use the word “Targum” to indicate rabbinic` exegesis. Case-studies from targumic literature, itself a heterogeneous genre, will show that although the history of Targum arcs towards rabbinization, the process itself was non-uniform. This paper will highlight diversity by exploring the seemingly competing ways in which Targum acculturates to rabbinic thought and institutions, creates with traditions and formula developed by the rabbis as well as resists rabbinic prescriptions. Given the underdeveloped nature of Targum Studies, this paper will eschew concrete historical solutions for suggestions. It will highlight prospects and problems for future study.

Jonah and the Three Fish in the Synagogue at Huqoq: An Exegetical Motif between Mosaic and Midrash

Ra‘anan Boustan, Princeton University, and Karen Britt, Northwest Missouri State University

The recently discovered Jonah panel from the early fifth-century synagogue in the village of Huqoq (lower eastern Galilee) provides precious evidence for the circulation of traditions of scriptural exegesis across the boundaries that might be thought to divide rabbinic texts from the visual culture of the late antique synagogue. The panel, found in the synagogue’s nave, depicts the episode from the story of Jonah in which the prophet, having fled aboard a ship from his divinely appointed mission of announcing the destruction of the city of Nineveh, is cast into the sea by his shipmates (Jonah 1:1–2:1). The scene is replete with marine and maritime images familiar from a wide range of artistic mediums and even incorporates iconographic elements associated with depictions of classical mythological narrative (especially Odysseus’s encounter with the sirens). But the Jonah panel is perhaps most noteworthy for its presentation of the Israelite prophet being swallowed by a sequence of three successively larger fish, a motif that is not otherwise paralleled in the hundreds of extant visual depictions of the book of Jonah from Late Antiquity. Curiously, the motif of the three fish first appears in Jewish and Islamic textual sources in the early medieval period (after the seventh century), at least three or four centuries after its use in the Huqoq panel. Our paper will consider the distribution of this motif across visual and textual mediums with the aim of reconceptualizing the borderlines among various religious communities, both within and beyond the bounds of Judaism. In our view, the Jonah panel not only challenges teleological accounts of the dissemination of narrative and exegetical traditions from rabbinic text to synagogue art, but also undermines the common scholarly practice of identifying specific motifs as either “rabbinic” and “non-rabbinic” in the first place.

Innovation in Tenth-Century Karaite Interpretation of the Pentateuch: Ya‘qūb al-Qirqisānī’s Kitāb al-Riyād wa-l-Ḥadā’iq

Miriam Goldstein, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Ya‘qūb al-Qirqisānī’s Kitāb al-Riyād wa-l-Ḥadā’iq (Book of Gardens and Parks) is without a doubt one of the most original exegetical works composed in Judeo-Arabic during the medieval period. In this work, composed during the first half of the tenth century CE, al-Qirqisānī takes up a wide variety of angles in analyzing the biblical text, including bold new methods of interpretation. These methods differed greatly from earlier rabbinic tradition, with which he was no doubt familiar. His methods, though, also contrast strongly with those of his fellow Karaites, such as the exegetes of the Jerusalem school. In my paper I will present newly edited and translated sections of al-Qirqisānī’s exegesis on the book of Genesis, and will demonstrate its sui generis nature, breaking with earlier tradition yet unique even in its contemporaneous Karaite milieu.

Where is the Locus of God’s Greatest Glory? Diversity and Dialogue in Late Antique Hebrew Literature (Hekhalot, Midrash, Piyyut)

Yehoshua Granat, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The proposed paper will focus on a cluster of late ancient Hebrew texts that can be read as manifesting an ongoing dialogue between heterogeneous world views and “theological” orientations within contemporaneous Judaism. As a point of departure, we will consider a group of representative Hekhalot hymns which emphatically express the perception of the heavenly divine and angelic sphere as the ultimate focus of religious experience and attention. Against that background, we will examine certain Midrash and Piyyut texts that (arguably) encapsulate rabbinic or “para-rabbinic” responses to the challenge of the Hekhalot circles’ concentration on the heavenly realm and its ecstatic vision as the most sublime sort of devotional practice. First, we will regard the juxtaposition of the preexistent Torah and God’s throne, and the prioritization of the former to the latter in the process of cosmogony according to Genesis Rabbah. Second, we will consider the poignantly paradoxical superiority of God’s worship performed by inevitably imperfect human beings, to His celestial adoration by the multitudes of immaculate angelic beings, as an accentuated topos in the world of early Piyyut. The explication and analysis of the selected pieces will aim to shed light on ‘subterranean’ intellectual ‘negotiations’ between distinct, and in some sense contradictory and competing, religious ideologies of the time, and thus may hopefully make a worthwhile contribution to a fuller understanding of the “dialectics of rabbinization” and of Jewish culture in late antiquity as a multi-vocal shared space.

Dorming Rabbis: An Incrementalist Approach to Babylonian Rabbinization in Late Antiquity

Simcha Gross, University of Pennsylvania

The reassessment of the position of the rabbis constitutes one of the key paradigm shifts in the study of Jews in antiquity in the past half century. As opposed to earlier scholarship, two key revisionist assumptions are now widely accepted: that the rabbinic movement emerged largely following the destruction of the temple, and, as a new movement in the post-destruction period, the rabbis did not enjoy immediate popularity. These assumptions generated the question of rabbinization; if the rabbis were not always dominant, what was the process by which rabbis and rabbinic teaching did indeed attain an elevated position in the eyes of Jews around the world?

To date, the study of Rabbinization in late antiquity has focused intensely and almost exclusively on Palestinian rabbis and the spread of their influence within Palestine and then across the Mediterranean. Lamentably, there has been no comparable study of Babylonian rabbinization during late antiquity, despite the fact that it is Babylonian rabbinic authority and teachings that will become dominant across the known Jewish world in the early medieval period.

This selective focus is not simply a matter of neglect; it is the result of a number of widely shared – and I will argue deeply problematic – assumptions about how the Babylonian rabbis, Babylonian Jewish society, and indeed, the Sasanian Empire, differed from Palestinian society in crucial ways. These arguments precluded any need to seriously address the question of rabbinization in Babylonia. Once these older assumptions are jettisoned, an incrementalist approach to Babylonian rabbinization throughout late antiquity is possible, one that is attuned to social historical arguments about the spread of movements through networks and contacts. I will offer a model of such an approach through the case study of stories about Babylonian rabbinic lodging practices and the landlords with which they were regularly in contact.

Binyamin al-Nihāwandī’s Exegesis in Light of New Evidence

Ofir Haim, Mandel Scholion Research Center, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Binyamin ben Moshe al-Nihāwandī (fl. early ninth century) was considered one of the forerunners of Karaism by later Jewish authors. Binyamin authored several Hebrew legal works and biblical commentaries, most of which are now lost. His exegetical and halakhic opinions, which reveal his scripturalist leanings, often appear in Karaite works of the tenth century and onward.

In this paper, I present and closely examine several fragments possibly attributed to Binyamin al-Nihawandī, including two hitherto unknown texts dealing with the Book of Daniel and the End of Days. Attention is paid to the terminology and techniques employed in these texts, which may prove helpful in identifying other fragments containing the works of Binyamin. Finally, I attempt to determine the nature of contacts between midrashic literature and Binyamin’s exegetical writings, thus shedding new light on Binyamin’s attitude towards the rabbinic corpus in general and the Rabbanites of his age.

The Rabbinic Movement in Babylonia: Distinctive Features

Geoffrey Herman

Discussion on the nature of the Rabbinic movement in recent decades has focused on the Rabbinic movement in Palestine and the Roman sphere. Many of the assertions relating to how to understand the rabbis, and their place in Jewish society are not relevant or meaningful for Babylonia, and much of the evidence on which such discussion is based, is not available for Babylonia. This paper seeks to quantify what is different about the Rabbis in Babylonia and asks what if any characteristics the rabbinic movement may have shared with contemporary and comparable intellectual elites within the Sasanian milieu.

Rabbinic Messianism and Rabbinic Christology: From the Amidah to Saadya

Martha Himmelfarb, Princeton University

This paper will attempt a better understanding of rabbinic messianism and eschatology and its development from early in the rabbinic era into the Middle Ages. It will focus on the variety of ways rabbinic traditions respond to contemporary non-rabbinic Jewish sources and to Christian messianic narratives and themes over the period in question.

The Transmission of Rabbinic Literature and the History of Rabbinic Judaism

Yitz Landes, Princeton University

Scholars agree that the second half of the first millennium witnessed significant shifts in rabbinic geography and hegemony. Yet, it is the case that many of the central processes behind theses shifts are almost impossible to trace. For much of this period, our evidence for rabbinic leadership is frustratingly slim, and uncovering these processes is hindered also by definitional issues, as it is difficult to even define “Rabbinic Judaism.” In this paper, I will present a method that can shed light on sveral of the shifts that occurred in rabbinic Judaism during this period, one that focuses on the study of the reception and transmission of rabbinic texts and knowledge. This model is based on the conviction that “Rabbinic Judaism” can be described as a practice of Judaism that bears fealty to the canon of rabbinic texts. As such, I propose utilizing the significant amount of work that has been done in the philological study of the rabbinic corpus in order to document the history of the transmission of rabbinic knowledge over the course of late antiquity and the early middle ages. This approach, in turn, allows us to gain greater insight into forms of rabbinic education and into the geographic diffusion of rabbinic knowledge that occurred during this time.

Slaughtering Practices, Rabbinization, and the Western Mediterranean in the Ninth Century

Hayim Lapin, University of Maryland

In their polemical writings, Agobard and Amulo, Bishops of Lyon in the ninth century, provide perhaps the earliest evidence for the presence of Jews, Jewish traditions and texts, and Jewish ritual practice in early medieval Christian Europe. Agobard in particular attests to the peculiarly rabbinic Jewish practice of inspecting the lungs of slaughtered animals to evaluate whether the animals may be eaten. This material has been studied previously from the point of view of early medieval anti-Judaism and for the orientation of Agobard’s Jews to Babylonian or Palestinian halakhah. This paper shifts the focus to the diffusion of rabbinic practice to the western Mediterranean, its demographic dimensions (the movement of new people and/or of new ideas), and its visibility to outside, Christian and Muslim, observers.

Others of Ourselves: Rabbinization in Geonic Times and Seder Eliyahu’s Discourse on Jewishness, Leadership, and Diversity

Lennart Lehmhaus, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Seminar für Judaistik und Religionswissenschaft

Departing from earlier largely “rabbinocentric” Talmudic history (i.e., the rabbis as religious and political leaders), more recent scholarship suggests a slower process of “rabbinization” and continued cultural competition within a diverse Jewry in changing socio-historical contexts. Seder Eliyahu Zuta and Rabba (SEZ/SER) may serve as rich and astonishing sources for these developments. While primarily appearing as ethical discourse, the texts elaborate on Jewish identity/identities and the (social) role of rabbinic scholars, partly educated, and unlearned people. These non-rabbinic or para-rabbinic interlocutors figure in outstanding passages of encounter and dialogue in Seder Eliyahu (SE), which touch upon core issues of religious identity and ideals of Jewish communal responsibilities. While, at first, these passages seem to indicate inner- and inter-religious polemics, a second look reveals their focus on instruction and inclusion despite a greater diversity.

Based on these dialogues and other passages, my paper will focus on SE’s discourse on leadership and community. The text offers (rabbinically biased) accessible and appealing alternatives of religious participation operating below the realm of Talmudic academies or rabbinic circles. Ambitious full-blown rabbinic erudition is augmented or contrasted with the ideal of ethical responsiveness and communal reciprocities. This discourse seems to reflect inner-rabbinic competition, Jewish plurality, (proto-) Karaite Scripturalism, and different Christian and Muslim communities. The rabbinization (and Talmudization) of Geonic Judaism unfolded partly in dialogue with or against the backdrop of lacking coherence in ritual, learning, and other customs – mirrored in Seder Eliyahu’s discussion of different halakha, liturgy, and minhag. Even the so-called “mainstream” of these religions/cultures in early Byzantine/Islamicate milieus were more variegated, and exchanges between Palestine, Babylonia, and North Africa (or Southern Italy) were more complex than previously assumed. Seder Eliyahu navigates this shared discursive space keeping a safe distance to traditional rabbinic learning (institutions), while exhibiting structural similarities with contemporary texts (e.g., PRE and so-called “late midrashim”), new Geonic literary types, and various Arabic-Persian, Muslim, or Syriac Christian forms of discourse. Consequently, one may study SE as a bridging tradition of the formative phase between late antique rabbinic literature and the complex rise of Geonic-Talmudic Judaism in the medieval period.

The Rise and Function of the Holy Rabbi

Avigail Manekin-Bamberger, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The vast corpus of the Babylonian incantation bowls brings to light an unprecedented magical technique: invocations of rabbis and particularly their legal prowess as powerful apotropaics in the combat against demons and disease. This technique provides us with evidence that at least some Babylonian Jews venerated rabbis for their legal powers and expertise in magical incantations. In this talk I will suggest that invoking rabbis in magical contexts is a natural extension of the portrayal of rabbis in the Babylonian Talmud. Additionally, I will suggest how and why this technique became popular among bowl writers in late Sasanian Babylonia. Finally, I will argue that a close reading of these magical texts may provide nuance in our understanding of rabbinization and diversity in the late antique Jewish world.

Jews in North-West Arabia: When, Where and How?

Laïla Nehmé, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Attention to the presence of Jewish individuals or communities in the northwestern part of the Arabian peninsula was drawn a long time ago by various academics. Newby, Lecker, Gil, Hoyland, Robin, Noja, Costa, are names which are familiar to anyone interested in the subject. The author considers herself as an outsider in the debate, being neither a specialist of religious history nor, strictly speaking, a historian of the period, but she will try to tackle the issue from a different, possibly more archaeological and spatial, perspective. She will base her contribution on the available material as well as on the material she has collected during the surveys she undertook in the area under discussion.

Affective Niche as Marking Diversity: Tanhuma-Yelammedenu Literature and Rabbinic Hegemony

Ronit Nikolsky, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

The debate around the place of Tanhuma-Yelammedenu Literature (TYL) within rabbinic literature makes it an excellent locus for the study of diversity in the society that gave rise and place to rabbinic culture: questions about how institutionalized this literature is, is it literary or performative, the relationship with the rabbinic institutions, its role in the synagogue, and what is reflected in its midrashic activity and halakhic proems.

Based on a nuanced understanding of the concept of cultural hegemony, I will introduce the affective-niche approach, from the field of the study of emotions. This approach studies the unique emotional engagement of a social group with its cultural canon. I will apply it to the TYL, reframing previous research of TYL within this suggested model. I will present a new study, which looks at the attitude of the TYL literature to the commandments (מצוות) and compare the type of engagement suggested in the TYL to that of “main stream” rabbinic literature, both contemporary as well as earlier.

Why “not an Apple” is not necessarily an Orange: Comparing and Grouping texts

Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra, École Pratique des Hautes Études

One of the main questions around diversity and rabbinization centers around priests and priestly texts traditions vis-à-vis rabbis and rabbinic texts and traditions. This paper will focus on the phenomenon of Templization and its relation to Christian competitors.

Textual Archipelagos: Evidentiary Models for Jewish Society in Late Antiquity

Michael D. Swartz, Ohio State University

Students of Judaism in late antiquity are confronted with a challenge: While it is clear that society and culture in Jewish Palestine and Babylonia were more complex than depicted in the rabbinic canon, we lack evidence for the behavior and identity of the vast majority of Jews in those times and places. The goal of this paper is to think through models of dealing with the evidence for literature and material culture outside of that canon, drawing on recent methods for studying social networks and ancient material culture. Case studies from divination texts and early piyyut will provide examples.

Babylonia or All the East? Patriarchal Authority in the Church of the East in Islamic Late Antiquity

Lev Weitz, Catholic University of America

This paper explores themes of comparative relevance to rabbinization and diversity in medieval Jewish communities by examining that other religious organization centered in Babylonia, the Church of the East. In heuristic terms, medieval Christianity differed from Judaism (and Islam) in that its recognized centers of authority—bishoprics, metropolitan bishoprics, and patriarchates—were more institutionally defined, at least in the eyes of those who sought to hold that authority. But this state of affairs in no way relieved East Syrian Christians in Iraq, Iran, and further east from contestation over religious and social norms and who got to define them.

From this vantage point, this paper will look at several developments within the intellectual and institutional life of the East Syrian Church in the early Islamic centuries that parallel or otherwise offer comparative views relevant to the dialectical relationships between the Babylonian rabbinic establishment and other Jewish communities throughout the Mediterranean. These developments include: resistance to the primacy of the Church of the East’s Babylonian patriarchate in Iran and east Arabia; textual methods by which East Syrian patriarchs sought to project their authority to distant Christian communities, including letter-writing and law-making; and the introduction of paper to the Middle East and whether this new technology aided the patriarchs in their efforts to administer territories over which they claimed authority.

Public Engagement

The conference was held virtually on zoom provided by Princeton University. Usually around 50 people from all over the world attended the sessions.

Planned Outcomes

We plan to publish a volume based on the presentations and discussions in the same series as the previous conference “Diversity and Rabbinization: Jewish Texts and Societies between 400 and 1000 CE” edited by Gavin McDowell, Ron Naiweld and Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra, and published at Cambridge: Open Book Publishers in 2021. We have also reached out to other potential contributors.