EAJS Administrator

The Untimely Passing of Professor Ada Rapoport-Albert (26/10/1945 – 18/6/2020)

July 3, 2020 by EAJS Administrator

The Untimely Passing of Professor Ada Rapoport-Albert

The European Association for Jewish Studies mourns the untimely passing, after long illness, of Professor Ada Rapoport-Albert (26/10/1945 – 18/6/2020), a distinguished scholar of Jewish religious history and spirituality. She excelled in the interpretation of Jewish mysticism, of Hasidism, and of the Sabbatean and Frankist movements. She combined sheer universal knowledge of Jewish civilisation with deep erudition in her fields of expertise, and with a keen interest in the impact of gender on religious thought and practice.

Professor Rapoport-Albert had come to London from Israel in 1965 to study Jewish history with Joseph Weiss, and completed her PhD under the supervision of Chimen Abramsky. Her charismatic teachers, the unique opportunities of an ambitious and radical university such as University College London, the dynamic of a comparatively young field such as Jewish Studies provided fertile grounds for a long and distinguished career as scholar and academic teacher. London became home – not as far away as the United States from her native Israel, but also not as determined by political and social affiliations as the young Jewish state.

Her academic home for over 50 years was the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at UCL, for which she served as Head of Department for ten years (2002-2012). She was president of the British Association for Jewish Studies and of the Jewish Historical Society of England. Solicited by distinguished universities across North America, Europe, and Israel, she generously shared her expertise through multiple visiting positions, including Harvard Divinity School, Stanford University, the Institute of Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich and the Spanish National Research Council in Madrid. Professor Rapoport-Albert was involved in several academic events supported by the EAJS, and was awarded a Distinguished Panel at the 11th EAJS Congress in Kraków in 2018.

Professor Rapoport-Albert had a unique network of colleagues and friends across the world, and among all generations of scholars. To the latest stages of her distinguished career, she remained a source of inspiration for scholars of the youngest generation. While always curious to learn about new interpretations and perspectives, she never lost sight of the canon – neither the religious nor the scholarly one. She certainly was proud of the academic lineage leading from Scholem to Weiss and thus to herself. Professor Rapoport-Albert was passionate about languages in general, and Hebrew and English in particular – sometimes to the chagrin of her doctoral students, to whom she would return chapter drafts time and time again with her unrelenting ambition for precision and style. A uniquely independent, generous, and kind human being, the cosmopolitanism of one of the world capitals suited her well. She followed the belles-lettres in both Israel and in Britain. She loved the theatre and opera stages of London. She is survived by former husband Bill Albert, and her two children, Maya and Saul, and Yishai, her grandson.

Professor Rapoport-Albert excelled as author as much as an editor. Among her works are: Women and the Messianic Heresy of Sabbatai Zevi: 1666–1816 (2011), “Something for the Female Sex”: A Judeo-German Manuscript from the Circle of Jacob Frank’s “Believers” in Prague at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century (Hebrew, 2009). Essays in Jewish Historiography (1991), Studies in Hasidism, Sabbatianism and Gender (Hebrew; 2015) and Hasidic Studies: Essays in History and Gender (2018) are volumes of collected chapters and articles. Among her edited volumes are Hasidism Reappraised (1996) and Jewish History. Essays in honour of Chimen Abramsky (1998). Most recently, she edited with Marcin Wodziński vol. 33 of the yearbook Polin. Studies in Polish Jewry, on Jewish Religious Life in Eastern Europe (forthcoming 2021).

Dr François Guesnet

UCL Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies

Executive Committee, EAJS

Claims Conference University Partnership Program in Holocaust Studies. Deadline for applications: 9 November 2020.

July 2, 2020 by EAJS Administrator

Claims Conference University Partnership Program in Holocaust Studies

The Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (The Claims Conference) provides grant funds to European universities for the purposes of teaching Holocaust courses for one year and is currently seeking universities that are interested in creating a partnership for the 2021-2022 academic year.

In order to be eligible for this round, the university must:

be Eastern European based and well established
be a public (government-supported) university
have an established History or other Humanities related department
be offering no more than 1 Holocaust course throughout the university
be able to accept funds from the Claims Conference to pay the chosen lecturer directly (the Claims Conference will not pay the lecturer)

The Claims Conference will offer a maximum amount of $25,000 to:

create a new full-time lecturer position to start in September of 2021 and end in June of 2021. The lecturer will be expected to teach at least 3 Holocaust courses in the university, including one course that must be an Introduction to the Holocaust in a Bachelor level program. The other courses can either be in a Bachelor or Master level program. The courses should be taught in the language that the majority of students understand. The lecturer must also offer 4 seminars open to the public, with the support of the university. The university will not be able to add to the lecturer’s responsibilities beyond those related to teaching these courses unless the university offers the lecturer a stipend.

combine the above Holocaust teaching position with an already existing lecturer position at your university.

The lecturer and the curricula must be approved by the Claims Conference. While there is a possibility of a second year of funding for this position, it is expected that the university will look for additional funding sources in order to make this position a permanent one.

If interested or if you have any questions, please email Ms. Chavie Brumer at Chavie.brumer@claimscon.org indicating your intent to apply.

You must submit the application form below, along with a copy of your CV and your university’s academic freedom policy by 9 NOVEMBER 2020.

https://mcusercontent.com/db9190cf3354f272fa9c7a934/files/7ab78be3-d9f4-4711-b06a-f70001918564/University_Flyer_Application_Form_for_Sept_2021_Funding1.07.docx

Ian and Mildred Karten PhD Studentship in Jewish/non-Jewish relations. The Parkes Institute, University of Southampton. Deadline for applications: Friday 24 July 2020

July 1, 2020 by EAJS Administrator

Ian and Mildred Karten PhD Studentship in Jewish/non-Jewish relations

The Parkes Institute for the study of Jewish/non-Jewish relations at the University of Southampton announces the availability of a studentship to support a doctoral candidate working on any aspect of Jewish/non-Jewish relations throughout ages.

The Parkes Institute is a major centre for the study of Jewish/non-Jewish relations across the ages. Its research covers antiquity to the twenty-first century and is wide-ranging in geographical scope. Amongst the specialised interests of its members are study of the Ancient World, Migration, Maritime Studies, Eastern Europe, Western Europe including the UK, Holocaust Studies, Heritage and History of Ideas, and the work of the Parkes Institute is underpinned by examining questions of the relations between Jews and non-Jews and Jewish identity and culture more broadly. The Parkes Institute currently has academic members working in a variety of disciplines including History, Religious Studies, English, Music, Archeology and Cultural Studies, and an interdisciplinary approach is key to its work.

The scholarship will cover UK/EU fees and full maintenance at AHRC rate for a duration of 3 years. Overseas candidates are encouraged to apply but should be aware that the overall amount of the studentship will not exceed £20,000 per annum. The candidate is required to hold a Master degree with merit or equivalent in a related discipline.

Starting dates: September 2020 or January 2021. Application: Please email Dr Claire Le Foll (c.le-foll@soton.ac.uk) by Friday 24th July 2020 with a research proposal (500 words) and CV. Please note all candidates will also need to apply to the University of Southampton through the normal application procedure in order to be eligible for the studentship. https://www.southampton.ac.uk/courses/how-to-apply/postgraduate-applications.page

Deadline for applications: Friday 24 July 2020

New Position. Registrar at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. Closing date for applications: 24 July 2020.

June 29, 2020 by EAJS Administrator

OXFORD CENTRE FOR HEBREW & JEWISH STUDIES

REGISTRAR

Location Clarendon Institute, Walton Street, Oxford

Salary £29,176 [Grade 6, stage 1 of the University of Oxford’s salary scale]

Hours Full time – 35 hours per week

Contract type Permanent

The Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies is the leading academic Jewish studies centre in Europe and provides Hebrew and Jewish studies tuition at the University of Oxford. We are seeking to fill the position of Registrar from 1^st October 2020. The post, which is directly responsible to the Centre’s President, comprises administrative support for the Centre’s academic activities including visiting fellows and scholars, fundraising support, servicing Fellowships’ and Visitors’ Committee, database management and development, purchasing and mailings.

It is a varied, demanding role, for which we seek a self-motivated, positive, highly-organised person, with significant relevant experience. Applicants should be educated to first-degree level or equivalent.

The Centre is financially independent, a registered charity and company limited by guarantee.

For more information about the Centre and its academic activities please visit: www.ochjs.ac.uk

For further particulars and details of how to apply please go to: https://www.ochjs.ac.uk/vacancy-registrar/

Closing date: 24 July 2020

Interview date: August 2020

British Association for Jewish Studies (BAJS) Online Event: “Perspectives from a New Generation of Scholars”. 15 July 2020.

June 29, 2020 by EAJS Administrator

British Association for Jewish Studies:

Perspectives from a New Generation of Scholars

15 July 2020

On 15 July 2020, the British Association for Jewish Studies is holding an online event that showcases the work of a selection of emerging talents in the field. This is not a replacement for the full BAJS conference (now postponed until July 2021), but rather a standalone event that provides a snapshot of early career research continuing to be developed even amidst the current uncertainties and disruptions.

The event is open to all those working in the field of Jewish Studies. Register for free via this Eventbrite page.

Timetable:

10.00-11.10 – Session 1

Dr Rebekah Welton (University of Exeter) ‘Gluttony and Drunkenness in Ancient Israel’

Dr Yael Fisch (University of Oxford) ‘The Vitality of Tannaitic Temple Architecture: The Case of “Beit Ha’Moqed”’

11.40-12.50 – Session 2

Dr Tali Artman Partock (University of Cambridge) ‘Picking up the Pieces: Men’s Recovery from Captivity and Rape in Rabbinic Literature’

Dr David Torollo (King’s College London) ‘On Wisdom, Wine and Wandering: Texts and Intertexts on the Good Life from Medieval Sepharad’

13.50-15.00 – Session 3

Dr Sarah Irving (Edge Hill University) ‘Donations and their Destinations: Charity and Conflict after the 1927 Palestine Earthquake’

Dr Phil Alexander (University of Glasgow) ‘Berlin Klezmer and Urban Community’

For BAJS members, our Annual General Meeting will follow the event from 15.30-16.45.

Abstracts:

Dr Rebekah Welton (University of Exeter) ‘Gluttony and Drunkenness in Ancient Israel’

Everybody eats but food is not universal. Every culture has its own unique ‘foodways’ – which are the means by which a culture produces and processes food, as well as its normative ways of eating, and associated social practices. The counterpoint to these normative modes of consumption are what we might consider ‘deviant’ forms of eating and drinking, and these too are diverse between cultures of different times and places. While diet and food preparation in ancient Israel and Judah has recently received increased scholarly attention, the analysis of normative and non-normative consumption practices has been less rigorously assessed. Consequently, this lack of interrogation into the socio-religious roles of food and drink in ancient Israel and Judah has led to certain assumptions regarding the attitudes towards food and consumption as reflected in biblical texts. Indeed, it is particularly easy to project one’s own experiences with food, an everyday materiality with which we are intimately familiar, onto other less well-understood contexts. This presentation will explore some of the socio-religious roles of eating and drinking in ancient Israel and Judah as informed by archaeological and ethnographic data, and will particularly focus on those presented as deviant in select Hebrew Bible texts.

Dr Yael Fisch (University of Oxford) ‘The Vitality of Tannaitic Temple Architecture: The Case of “Beit Ha’Moqed”’

This paper is dedicated to Tractate Middot in the Mishnah and will argue for the continuous transformation of temple architecture within Tannaitic literature. Though scholars have long recognized that the architecture of the Jerusalem temple in Mishnah Middot does not fully coincide with Herod’s temple as described by Josephus, nor does it fit with the archaeological reports, Middot’s unprecedented architectural details are often taken by historians of the Second Temple as facts. In this paper, I will revisit the Mishnaic descriptions of “Beit Ha’Moqed,” the priestly sleeping chambers in the Temple, and will offer an explanation to the changes in its architecture and to Mishnah’s choice to narrate the architecture of the temple in the past tense.

Dr Tali Artman Partock (University of Cambridge) ‘Picking up the Pieces: Men’s Recovery from Captivity and Rape in Rabbinic Literature’

The destruction of the Temple, the Bar Kokhva revolt and the ongoing wars on the fringes of the Roman Empire in the 4^th-6^th centuries put Jewish men and women in harm’s way. While some scholars have written about rape, wartime rape, and rape in captivity of women in rabbinic literature, not much has been written about the experience of men (apart from a recent study by Mor), who we tend to think of as aggressors rather than victims. The rape of men under all these circumstances creates a specific, emotional, communal, and legal set of problems. The Biblical verses in Leviticus regarding homosexual intercourse condemn both the active and the passive parties to death, and do not even mention the possibility of a man being raped. However, Lamentations tells us that the rape of boys and men has happened. What then, is the halachic responsibility in case of rape? Is it the same as in the rape of a woman? Tannaitic sources tell us that men who stand to be raped should be prioritized over women when redeeming captives and tell us stories of redeeming of such captives. Why is that so, and do these men ever regain their place in rabbinic society? In this paper, I will focus on the perilous moment in which these men try to make their way back into rabbinic society. The legal issues of what happens to their estates while they are gone and when they come back, what happens to their marriages and social status will be analysed vis a vis Roman law. Issues of emotional damage and ritual standing will be discussed from within rabbinic culture while comparing the fate of men and women.

Dr David Torollo (King’s College London) ‘On Wisdom, Wine and Wandering: Texts and Intertexts on the Good Life from Medieval Sepharad’

While the study of Hebrew poetry of the Andalusi ‘Golden Age’ has flourished, less attention has been given to the birth and development of secular Hebrew prose from the twelfth century in the Christian side of the Iberian Peninsula. It seems to be the case that the phenomenon of translations from Arabic into Hebrew that took place within Jewish intellectual circles in both Iberia and Provence contributed to the increased versatility of Hebrew prose as an artistic medium. This versatility prompted the appearance of secular narrative works, of which the maqāma genre is the best representative. This paper focuses on an image of ‘good life’ according to three narrative works written in the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries: Sefer sha‘ashu‘im [The Book of Delights] by Joseph ibn Zab’arah, Sefer taḥkemoni [The Book of Taḥkemoni ] by Yehudah al-Ḥarizi, and Mishle he-‘arav [The Sayings of the Arabs] by a certain Yiṣḥaq ha-Qatan. The goal of the paper is to preliminarily explore the chapters dealing with wisdom, wine and travelling through the lens of musar, i.e. the proper ethical and moral behaviour, and against the intellectual and political developments of the Jewish communities in medieval Sepharad.

Dr Sarah Irving (Edge Hill University) ‘Donations and their Destinations: Charity and Conflict after the 1927 Palestine Earthquake’

Soon after the 1927 earthquake in Palestine, Jerusalem’s Sephardic congregation contacted their co-religionists in London to ask for help rebuilding damaged homes and synagogues. In doing so they relied upon longstanding practices of financial support, but on this occasion controversy emerged when funds raised by the Spanish & Portuguese Jewish congregation in London were merged with the larger relief effort channelled via the Board of Deputies to the Jerusalem relief committee. Not only was the S&P money not allocated to Sephardim in Jerusalem, much of it was used to help Arab victims of the earthquake in Nablus and other areas. This paper contextualises the disagreement within the wider relief effort, reconstructed using sources from the Mandate government, religious organisations, the Palestinian press, and memoirs and autobiographies. It shows how experiences of the earthquake and of the relief effort which followed it united Jews and Arabs in Palestine and their international networks to help those worst affected, but also exposed varying understandings of these networks of solidarity and obligation, and a resulting competition for funds which was articulated in geographical, communal and ethnic terms. In doing so, it challenges stereotypes about communal relations in Mandate Palestine, contributing to a more complex understanding of Arab-Jewish relations in the period.

Dr Phil Alexander (University of Glasgow) ‘Berlin Klezmer and Urban Community’

For more than twenty-five years, Berlin has hosted the busiest and most dynamic klezmer scene outside North America. The resurgence of this Jewish folk music—initially by a majority of non-Jews—in the nerve-centre of its planned annihilation has at times provoked a heady and inevitably unsustainable mix of optimism, polemic, anxiety and vitriol. But over the past decade, something has changed. That a far greater proportion of Jews are involved is only a part of the story. What has transformed at a deeper level is the relationship between this traditional ritual music—now mostly divorced from its original ritual context—and the contemporary city with which it is in continual dialogue. My discussion, therefore, will look at some of the musical and spatial means by which the urban klezmer community has rooted itself within the distinctive material and symbolic conditions of today’s Berlin. I will argue that this transnational and syncretic music—with few historical ties to Berlin—can be understood in relation to the city’s particular post-reunification bricolage aesthetic and subversively creative everyday tactics. By engaging with the material city itself, klezmer in Berlin has found alternative musical practices beyond the overdetermined discourses of ‘revival’—revealing how traditional culture can remain meaningful within a shifting, avowedly modern, urban cosmopolitanism.