EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2018/19

REPORT

Dynamic Maghribi Jewish-Muslim Interaction across the Performing Arts (1920-2020)

5-7 December 2018, Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Cambridge (http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/27895)

Co-conveners: Dr Sami Everett (University of Cambridge), Dr Arthur Asseraf (University of Cambridge), Dr Rebekah Vince (University of Warwick)

This conference explored Jewish-Muslim dynamic interactions in performance art across North Africa (the Maghrib) and France since 1920. We brought together a research network of early career and more senior scholars researching and producing artistic representations across the genres of music, theatre, film, comedy, and art, to discuss how these relate to Maghribi Jewish-Muslim interaction, collaboration, and dialogue on both sides of the Mediterranean. Papers included interdisciplinary research on early twentieth century Jewish-Muslim theatre troupes and orchestras across the Maghrib, Israeli Moroccan nostalgia, and how North African Jews and Muslims have influenced the French stand-up comedy scene. Emphasis was placed on artistic cooperation, creative representation, intergenerational transmission, and dynamic interaction between Jews and Muslims on both sides of the Mediterranean. By discussing these themes, the conference challenged polarised narratives surrounding Jewish-Muslim relations in the Maghrib and France which tend to focus either on anti-Semitism and Islamophobia or on nostalgia and utopianism. While acknowledging the historical and contemporary tensions between Jews and Muslims, the material that we explored focused on transcultural creative production, taking a historical view of dynamic interaction between Jews and Muslims both sides of the Mediterranean. The event examined (co-)production and (inter-)acting, as well as influence from elsewhere, whether acknowledged or unacknowledged, in Jewish and Muslim performance cultures across the Maghrib and France. We are grateful to the European Association for Jewish Studies, the Centre for Research in the Social Sciences and Humanities and the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge, the Institute of Modern Languages Research (IMLR), and the Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL) – Cambridge collaboration scheme for their support and funding.

Event Rationale

The aim of the event was to investigate how Maghribi Jewish-Muslim artistic and cultural production represents or is under-girded by creative coexistence and dynamic interaction between Jews and Muslims in both the Maghrib and France.

=>This was achieved by discussing a series of pre-circulated work-in-progress papers and cultural artefacts (film and music extracts, images, and text including, for example, fieldwork notes or archival photos), which formed the basis for in-depth and knowledgeable conversation around the theme of dynamic Maghribi Jewish-Muslim interactions on both sides of the Mediterranean.

The time period covered the promise of French emancipation to its indigenous subjects; nation-building in the Maghrib; decolonization and end of empire; the Cold War and its end; the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and the rise of the right in France. Together the network scholars explored the ways in which this relationship plays out within production and performance, paying particular attention to shifting conceptions over time about sameness and difference.

=> During the conference this was achieved by addressing in particular the Nahda (Arab renaissance) of the 1920/30s and the significant structural change in the context of the Maghrib surrounding questions of what a North African nation-state might look like that occurred during that period. During that time and space, artists were creating narratives of pluralism. We went on to look at the 1960s and the period of decolonisation in which we found at times a postcolonial absence of Jewish cultural life in the Maghrib, particularly in Algeria. In cinema and in cartoons for examples there was no physical Jewish presence even though many Jews remained. We also discussed the question of rupture and whether or not this was immediate upon independence and a subterranean Judeo-Muslim cultural vestige/continuity which was not fully revived until the 1990s when there was a re-emergence within a religious framing, partly due to the convergence of Islam and politics in North Africa i.e. the increased necessity to show openness towards religious pluralism. This led to a discussion on revivalism abstracted from a lived experience in North Africa (exiles and third-generation re-appropriation), intergenerational post-nostalgia and return to North Africa among a generation who never lived there, resulting in cultural production continuing to the present day.

The event seeks to interrogate the degree of perception-change produced by such performance through addressing the question: What potential do such narratives, their spaces of production and performance, and the relations that generate and maintain them, hold for societal change?

Over the last two decades, scholarship of relations between North African Jews and Muslims, both during and after the colonial period, has side-lined cultural connections. Scholars have offered analyses of structural political connections and differences in relation to rights and racism (see Attias, Katz, Stein), but performance culture such as music has only figured in the background or has been approached from within the anthropology subfield of ethnomusicology (Langlois, Swedenburg). However, recently, some scholars and filmmakers have begun to highlight the centrality of performance culture as underpinning lived connections between Maghrebi Jews and Muslims (Glasser, Hachkar, Safinez). Building on and broadening out this scholarship, the proposed event considered the dialogical impact of performance spaces chronologically and artistically. The performative artworks that the event investigated have challenged and continue to challenge Jewish and Muslim stereotypes, in spite of the ongoing tensions across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, which are negotiated by the artists in creative and provocative ways.

=> The detailed and meaningful discussions during the conference acknowledged and interrogated moments of colonial and religious rupture as well as continuity, the significance of subterranean cultural work of mediation and transmission surrounding memories of Jewish life in the Maghrib. As a group we also explored the potential of performative artwork to challenge stereotypes by exaggerating these to the point of ridicule and from that self-derision offering cathartic dialogic alternatives.

As scholars of Jewish-Muslim interaction in North Africa, we proposed to build on European connections, in particular between Cambridge and Paris by means of a cross-disciplinary approach. The majority UK-France focused network that we sought to establish combines creative and analytical insights by identifying the limits and potential of representation and collaboration in breaking cultural taboos, exercising freedom of speech, and promoting cross-cultural exchange.

=> Through this conference, we established a network of scholars from emerging ERCs to more senior figures from not only France and the UK, but also from the US and Canada, Algeria and Morocco including participants from the social sciences, history, literature, anthropology, music, and modern languages. The strength of this network has the potential for significant written output and establishing a large-scale inter-disciplinary and international project.

Overview and Threads

Keynote 1: Valérie Zenatti (independent author), ‘La mémoire trouée [Perforated Memory]’

The conference began with an autobiographical keynote by Valérie Zenatti. She was introduced to the public by Dr Sami Everett including in her capacity as author, screenwriter, and translator of the late Aharon Appelfeld (from Hebrew into French). The event was open to the public as well as to conference participants and academics from the University of Cambridge.

Born to Algerian and Tunisian Jewish parents, Valérie Zenatti grew up in France where her encounter with the Holocaust was mediated through the American television series Holocaust (1975) and later through the writings of Ukrainian-Israeli writer Aharon Appelfeld, whose translator she was to become. Her affiliative relationship with Aharon Appelfeld is recounted in her (auto)biographical novella Mensonges [Lies] (2011) which preceded her prize-winning novel Jacob, Jacob (2015), an exploration of Jewish life in Algeria during the Second World War and decolonisation. Both these texts, alongside Une bouteille à la mer de Gaza [A Bottle in the Gaza Sea] (2005) and its film adaptation (watch the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL8p6FKCPzQ), featured in her conversational keynote, which addressed issues of memory and forgetting, filiation and affiliation, erasure and reconstitution. Questions and ensuing discussion revolved around the (im)possibility of return, the absence of Muslims in some accounts of Jewish life in the Maghrib, and dialogic approaches to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Session 1: Popular Music

Chaired by Ruth Davis, University of Cambridge, this session explored Jewish-Muslim dynamic interaction in Maghribi popular music, from concert halls in the interwar Maghrib (Chris Silver, McGill University) to narratives of peaceful religious coexistence in Moroccan patriotic rap (Cristina Moreno Almeida, King’s College London). Listen to Casa Mdinti here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNJhJOKqM8Y&feature=youtu.be. These presentations prompted discussion around the construction of the nation and engaging in politics with a capital or lower-case “p”.

Session 2: Staging and Performance

Chaired by Arthur Asseraf, University of Cambridge, this session included a presentation by Mourad Yelles, INALCO, on theatre as meeting point between Algerian Jews and Muslims with a particular focus on the Jewish actress Marie Soussan. Listen to Marcha Djazairia here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ju1EmrbywU&feature=youtu.be. This led to a discussion on similar values among Jewish and Muslim families, and a shift in focus from a socio-cultural analysis to a political and aesthetic one. The session also included a presentation by Adi Bharat, University of Manchester, on how the conflictual model of Jewish-Muslim relations in France is challenged through stand-up comedy, taking the comedy duo Younes and Bambi (‘l’Arabe et le Juif’ [the Arab and the Jew]). This raised questions about exaggeration to the point of ridicule and reinforced the general consensus at the conference that interactions is a more useful concept than relations when speaking about Jewish-Muslim performance art in terms of influence and collaboration.

Session 3: Cinematic Representation

Chaired by Rebekah Vince, University of Warwick, the discussion in this session revolved around cinematic, musical, and linguistic depictions of Jewish-Muslim relations in both Morocco and Israel. Presentations were given by Miléna Kartowski-Aïach, Idemec/Université d’Aix Marseille, on forbidden memory and political song in Kamal Hachkar’s mediatory films, and by Chana Morgenstern, University of Cambridge, on decolonising Hebrew through Arabic in the film adaptation of Almog Behar’s prize-winning short story “I’m one of the Jews”. This led to a debate on whether or not Palestine/Israel can ever be excluded when speaking about Maghribi Jews in the contemporary moment, even in analysing Jewish-Muslim interactions in North Africa before the foundation of the State of Israel.

Keynote 2: Jonathan Glasser, Associate Professor of Anthropology, William & Mary, ‘Maghrebi-Jewish Musical Intimacy’

This keynote began with an analysis of how music seems to challenge discourses of antagonism that emphasize Muslim-Jewish conflict and posit Jews as pariahs in North African society. Yet a closer look revealed that Muslim-Jewish interactions via music and surrounding debates were nevertheless marked by tropes of rivalry, marginality, and ambivalence. Jonathan Glasser focused on the case of Algeria to account for the centripetal forces of these tropes and to provide a rich alternative for understanding Muslim-Jewish dynamic interactions in the Maghrib and its diaspora. He also posited the possibility of a particular Jewish aesthetics of Andalusi music born of the hermeticism of community living prior to the twentieth century. A certain accent, musical structure and even ways of playing might underpin this but these ‘Jewish’ musical modes have been adopted and even appropriated by Muslim music players(chioukh) also.

Session 4: Comedy and Satire

Chaired by Warda Hadjab, EHESS, this session looked at absent depictions of Jewish heritage and Muslim-Jewish relations in Algerian caricatures and graphic novels from 1967 through the 1980s (Elizabeth Perego, Shepherd University), and creative co-existence in the work of street artist “Combo” (Nadia Kiwan, University of Aberdeen). See http://www.combo-streetart.com/. These presentations were a springboard into discussion about whether we are dealing with total rupture or lingering traces when addressing the immediate post-independence period: Chris Silver suggested we might talk about ruptured continuity. We also addressed the question of gender (“Is street art male?”) and the extent to which displaying religious symbols in public space acts as a provocation in secular France. Continuing with concepts of satire and comedy, we considered how malaise is dealt with via the medium of humour, how assumptions are deconstructions, and how anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are challenged through performative artwork.

In the concluding comments, the question was again raised, this time by Arthur Asseraf, University of Cambridge, as to the breakdown, rupture, and absence of the immediate post-independence moment. Often when looking for interactions, our attention is drawn to the interwar period or more recent examples but not so much to the period of the independences or following that. Chris Silver suggested that there was a possibly nostalgic need to fill this absence. The Christian question was also raised: Christians are often depicted as the dominant power yet, in the Arab world at least, Christians have a distinctive (minority) identity. Seth Anziska, UCL, noticed how the conference was working against the lachrymose view of history and this led to a discussion on whether or not we were engaging in “grieving cosmopolitanism” and the potential (creative or otherwise) of this concept, which need not be a negative one. Sami Everett was of the opinion that while this may also be the case Maghribi Jews of latter generations had every right to re-engage with a cultural legacy and heritage which was often simply not passed down to them. Jonathan Glasser suggested that co-resistance was a useful way of looking at performative collaboration and co-creative artwork. Vanessa Paloma Elbaz, University of Cambridge, brought up the myth of “the last Jew” and the phenomenon of contemporary Muslims self-identifying with a suppressed past, notably in relation to Judeo-Berber identity within the Arabo-Muslim context of the Maghrib. Miléna Kartowski-Aïach spoke of the subterranean work and the role of mediators in the transmission of cultural memory, which is beginning to bear fruit in changing perceptions and opening a space for interfaith dialogue.

Threads included:

• Multilingualism (localised variants of Arabic in Maghrib/Mashriq and Judeo-Arabic, question of accent, French, Hebrew, Yiddish), translation
• The role of humour in depicting Muslim-Jewish interactions and satire as catharsis
• Absence/presence of Jews in the Maghrib as manifested in performance art
• Influence, aesthetics, and performance relating to Jewish-Muslim interactions
• Memory and amnesia of Jewish life in the Maghrib as depicted in (or left out of) performative artwork
• Challenging stereotypes and assumptions through performative collaboration

Questions that emerged included:

• How to look at the specificities of cultural interactions within temporal and geographical context
• How to talk about the Maghrib in relation to Israel/Palestine without diminishing the importance of local interactions historically and in the present day

Planned outcomes and outputs

Participants submitted 3,000-word work-in-progress papers prior to the event, where these were discussed. These work-in-progress papers will form the basis of 6,000-word chapters to be collected in a volume commissioned by Liverpool University Press for publication in their Francophone Postcolonial Studies series in 2020, co-edited by Sami Everett and Rebekah Vince with an afterword by Valérie Zenatti.

Given the level of interest in the workshop and the desire to participate we are considering a journal special issue as a second written output.

Actual final conference Programme

Dynamic Maghribi Jewish-Muslim Interaction across the Performing Arts (1920-2020)

5 December 2018 – 7 December 2018

The Beves Room, King’s College, University of Cambridge

Day 1 – Wednesday 5 December
18.45 – 19.45	Keynote Valérie Zenatti ‘La mémoire trouée’   (This event is open to all and will be taking place in the Winstanley Lecture Hall, Trinity College)
Day 2 – Thursday 6 December
9.15 – 9.45	Registration
9.45 – 10.00	Welcome and Opening
10.00 – 11.15	Session 1: Popular Music Chair: Ruth Davis (University of Cambridge)   Chris Silver (McGill University) ‘“In a complete fusion of all of the native social classes”: Popular Music and the Production of the Nation in the Interwar Maghrib’   Cristina Moreno Almeida (King’s College London) ‘“Are we all brothers?” Breaking down narratives of peaceful religious co-existence in Moroccan patriotic rap’
11.15 – 11.30	Break
11.30 – 12.45	Session 2: Staging and Performance (bi-lingual session: English/French) Chair: Arthur Asseraf (University of Cambridge)   Hadj Miliani (CRASC) and Mourad Yelles (INALCO) ‘Theatre as Meeting Point Between Algerian Jews and Muslims’   Adi Bharat (University of Manchester) ‘Shalom alikoum! Challenging the conflictual model of Jewish-Muslim relations in France through stand-up comedy’
12.45 – 14.30	Lunch
14.30 – 16.00	Session 3: Cinematic Representation (bi-lingual session: English/French) Chair: Rebekah Vince (University of Warwick)   Miléna Kartowski-Aïach (Idemec / Université d’Aix Marseille) ‘Rediscovering the Lost Voice: Forbidden Memory and Political Song as a Bridge Between Morocco and Israel’   Jamal Bahmad (University of Exeter) ‘In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Aliyah and Transnational Memory in Moroccan Cinema’   Chana Morgenstern (University of Cambridge) ‘Decolonising Hebrew Through Arabic: Almog Behar and the Spectre of Languages in Israel/Palestine’
16.00 – 16.45	Break
16.45 – 18.00	Keynote Jonathan Glasser (College of William & Mary) ‘Maghribi Muslim-Jewish Musical Intimacy’   (This event is open to all and will be taking place in the Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road)
Day 3 – Friday 7 December
9.45 – 10.00	Arrival and Coffee
10.00 – 11.15	Session 4: Comedy and Satire Chair: Warda Hadjab (EHESS)   Elizabeth Perego (Shepherd University) ‘Drawing Blanks: Absent Depictions of Jewish Heritage and Muslim-Jewish Relations in Algerian Caricatures and Bandes Dessinées, 1967 through the 1980s’   Nadia Kiwan (University of Aberdeen) ‘Kidnapping Culture: Transcultural Complexity and Creative Co-existence in the Work of Street Artist “Combo”’
11.15 – 11.45	Final Discussion

Supported by the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge, the European Association for Jewish Studies (EAJS), the Institute of Modern Languages Research, Université PSL, and the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of History.

EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2018/19

REPORT

November Hopes. Jews and the Independence of Poland in 1918

Two-day international conference organized by Museum of the History of Polish Jews in cooperation with the Institute of History at the University of Warsaw, 29-30 November 2018, sponsored by the European Association for Jewish Studies (EAJS) Conference Grant Programme in European Jewish Studies.

Organisers: Museum of the History of Polish Jews in cooperation with the Institute of History, University of Warsaw.

Author of the report: Michał Trębacz, Ph.D (Head of Research Department, Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews)

Event Rationale

The year 2018 marks the 100th anniversary of Poland reappearing on the map of Europe, therefore much interest in the independence related issues has been sparked both in Poland and abroad. Holding a discussion among an international group of eminent scholars presenting the outcome of new research on the attitudes of Jews towards Polish independence and the shape of the newly reconstructed state challenged the stereotypes pertaining to Poland’s founding myth. The unequivocal Jewish standpoint with regard to the country being rebuilt and what it had to offer has been verified. A vital question posed by the keynote speaker “Independence—but for whom?” shifted the perspective to one of the most significant minorities residing in the newly established Second Republic of Poland.

Event programme (Sections and Papers)

The conference began with a curatorial guided tour of a section of the core exhibition and the temporary exhibition titled In King Matt’s Poland, organized for the general public on 25 November (four days prior to the first conference panel). The tour’s goal was to introduce the subject matter to the public and thus to encourage people to participate in the conference sessions and discussions.

The academic part was launched with a roundtable discussion chaired by Maciej Zakrocki, a journalist specializing in history, with the participation of historians from various countries: Christhardt Henschel, Stephan Stach, Darius Staliunas and Andrei Zamoiski. The scholars exchanged ideas on the Jewish question in the newly rebuilt Polish Republic from the point of view of the neighboring states.

The first panel was devoted to Jewish hopes flared up by Poland regaining independence. The discussion, chaired by Dr Kamil Kijek and commented on by Prof. David Engel, focused on the three main trends: Prof. Natalia Aleksiun talked about Galician Jews and their expectations of free Poland; Prof. Joshua Zimmerman discussed the unfulfilled hopes with regard to the internment of Jewish volunteer officers during the Polish-Bolshevik War in 1920; finally, Dr Marcos Silber presented the outcome of his research on the issue of equal rights as viewed by a plethora of Jewish political organizations.

The second panel, chaired by Prof. Jerzy Kochanowski and commented on by Prof. Antony Polonsky, comprised three papers on the subject of Jewish fears fueled by the reconstruction of the Polish state. Prof. Piotr J. Wróbel talked about the Polish-German-Jewish triangle as a generator of such fears; Prof. Theodore R. Weeks discussed those fears on the example of Wilno and Central Lithuania with special attention drawn to local nationalisms. Dr Michał Trębacz presented the case of Łódź and fears instilled in the Łódź Jewry by the First World War and the establishment of a new independent Polish state.

Public lecture delivered by Prof. David Engel was addressed to the conference participants and the general public concluded the first day. It revolved around the conference’s key question of how beneficial was Polish independence for Jews in 1918.

The third panel, chaired by Prof. Dariusz Stola and commented on by Dr Jochen Böhler, focused on the discussions on the reality of Jewish life in the Polish territory prior to 1918 and in the newly established Second Republic. Prof. Konrad Zieliński sketched a broad panorama of the social and political conditions of Jews residing in this territory in 1918. Prof. Robert Blobaum raised the issue of the policy of limitation and restrictions that affected Polish Jews after 1918, and Prof. Eugenia Prokop-Janiec discussed the subject of Jewish cultural institutions in the first years of the Second Republic of Poland.

The panels were followed by the second roundtable discussion chaired by Prof. Antony Polonsky and dedicated to the attitudes of Jews towards Polish independence, as stated in the conference title. The discussion, held on the 100th anniversary of the events, was attended by Prof. David Engel, Dr Jochen Böhler, Prof. Piotr Wróbel and Prof. Jolanta Żyndul.

The conference concluded with a curatorial guided tour of a section of the core exhibition and the temporary exhibition In King Matt’s Poland, with particular attention drawn to the exhibition techniques and methods of conveying information. Dr Tamara Sztyma, curator of the temporary exhibition, guided the tour.

The conference proceedings were recorded and translated simultaneously to Polish and English.

Outcomes

During the conference, the history scholars presented and discussed the fruit of their new research pertaining to Jewish attitudes towards Polish independence and its shape. Due to the presence of general public and the recordings that are already available, the conclusions reached in the course of discussions combated the existing stereotypes and the Second Republic’s founding myth. The historical diagnoses—which, we do hope, will enter public discourse—demonstrated that the social and political reality at the time was extremely complex. The conference and the media tools used in presentations surely contributed to deepening academic knowledge and also, through implementation of the media, reached the widest possible audience. Combating set formulas and pointing to the complex and often ambiguous mechanisms of developing relations between Jews and Poles in the newly independent Poland—much more so than the widely accepted apologetic notions of the history of the early Second Republic—is not merely an element of building a society based on knowledge, but also a factor contributing to better understanding the dangers posed by extreme and xenophobic attitudes.

Outputs

Some of the papers delivered during the conference will be published in a special issue of the journal East European Jewish Affairs edited by Dr Michał Trębacz. The contract concerning the publication has already been signed.

Event Programme

https://www.polin.pl/pl/wydarzenie/miedzynarodowa-konferencja-naukowa-listopadowe-nadzieje-zydzi  – POLISH

https://www.polin.pl/en/event/international-academic-conference-november-hopes-jews-and  – ENGLISH

Publicity

The conference was promoted in various ways through the media such as online portals, the press, the TV and radio. Information on the lecture by Prof. David Engel and on the thematic guided tours of the POLIN Museum exhibitions was included in the bi-monthly Museum program leaflet:

https://www.polin.pl/pl/system/files/attachments/conference_november_hopes_program_0.pdf

Minister Jarosław Sellin, the Government Plenipotentiary for the Commemoration of the Centenary of Poland Regaining Independence, granted us permission to use the graphic identification of the “Niepodległa” Program. The conference along with the special lecture were included in the calendar of events commemorating the anniversary of Polish independence available on the nationwide portal dedicated to the centenary celebrations:

https://niepodlegla.gov.pl/wydarzenia/miedzynarodowa-konferencja-naukowa-listopadowe-nadzieje-zydzi-wobec-niepodleglosci-polski-w-1918-r/

All in all, the conference was mentioned in fifty-two press releases as well as radio and TV programs. You can follow the most important ones by clicking on the links below:

https://biuletyn.imm.com.pl/browser/press/4TFWLH/z/p

https://biuletyn.imm.com.pl/browser/internet/MV3N0D/z/i

https://biuletyn.imm.com.pl/browser/radio/P9LNT3/z/r

https://biuletyn.imm.com.pl/browser/radio/9J4VGH/z/r

https://biuletyn.imm.com.pl/browser/tv/ELE87H/z/t

The conference proceedings were recorded in full and made available to wide audiences. You can watch the video footage from all the conference panels on the POLIN Museum webpage:

https://www.polin.pl/pl/aktualnosci/2018/11/16/abstrakty-wykladow-w-ramach-konferencji  –  POLISH

https://www.polin.pl/en/news/2018/11/16/abstracts  – English

EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2018/19

REPORT

Remembering across the Iron Curtain: The Emergence of Holocaust Memory in the Cold War Era

Event rationale

Cold War thinking has survived its end. The Western understanding of the West as the democratic “Free World” and the East as totalitarian and repressive has continued to impact how scholars have evaluated efforts to commemorate the Holocaust in East and West after the collapse of the Soviet Bloc.

In recent years historians have begun to reconsider how people in East and West remembered the Holocaust, though these attempts rarely transcend national borders and hardly ever the former bloc division. The conference “Suppressed Historiography, Erased Memory? The Perception of the Shoah in East Central Europe during Socialist Rule” organized by Stephan Stach at the Aleksander Brückner Center tried to overcome the national perspective at least for the Soviet Bloc. However, the workshop’s final discussion clarified that Holocaust Memory needs to be examined from a transnational perspective across the Iron Curtain.

Rarely can we see discussions of Holocaust memory that look at both East and West. By bringing together scholars whose research focuses on different parts of the world, from the Soviet Union to the US, from Hungary to France, we will provide opportunities to re-evaluate the commonalities, differences and entanglements between Eastern and Western memory of the Holocaust. Exchange between participants from a variety of backgrounds and with distinct disciplinary expertise will also allow for debates of different methodological approaches.

Foregrounding the essential role of the Cold War, this workshop examines in what ways the confrontation between the two blocks affected research, legal proceedings and collective and individual memories. The first panel asks how political ideologies shaped narratives and understandings of the Holocaust in East and West providing examples of Jewish communities in the USA, the Soviet Union and France.

Recently, scholars have challenged the assumption that research on the Holocaust begun only in 1961, either counting the Eichmann trial or the publication of Raul Hilberg’s book The destruction of European Jewry as the initial event. Newer studies have highlighted the role mostly Jewish scholars and lay people played in documenting and researching the murder of European Jews beginning immediately after the liberation or even before. This new perspective has led historians to reconsider also Eastern European Holocaust Memory, showing how people acting outside the state’s framework succeeded in making room for at least limited discussions of the Holocaust.

Collaboration across national borders and across the Iron Curtain existed at times, and Jewish and non-Jewish actors from different countries cooperated in order to promote research and memory of the genocide against Europe’s Jewish population.

From the 1950s onwards, and especially in the years during and following the Eichmann trial, Holocaust memory frequently became an object or terrain of political fights within the bipolar confrontation. This workshop will take a close look at how Holocaust memory was manipulated and used as a tool in the confrontation between the two blocks.

This conference aimed to provide a platform for academic research that has been done in Holocaust Memory in recent years as well as offer opportunities to exchange ideas and push research further.

Both evening events, the performance “Art is my Weapon. The Radical Musical Life of Lin Jaldati” and the round table discussion “How did Cold War Shape our Understanding of the Holocaust?” were accessible also for non-specialists and attracted a wider audience.

The conference papers spoke directly to the questions raised in our event rationale and stood in close dialogue with one another. Each panel ended with fruitful discussions about the relationship between papers and the relationship of Holocaust Memory to the Cold War. A number of participants begun their talks stating that previous papers had caused them to re-think and develop some of their own premises.

The sections and papers

The conference begun with a well-attended opening event; a performance by David Shneer (University of Colorado Boulder) titled ‘Art is My Weapon: The Radical Musical Life of Lin Jaldati.’ In this inspiring approach to his scholarship Shneer makes the life of Lin Jaldati a Holocaust survivor who became a prominent singer of Yiddish songs in the German Democratic Republic palpable to a wider audience. Part lecture, part video and photographs, part songs this performance piece made for a wonderful beginning of the conference.

DAY 1

Introduction

In their introduction Anna Koch and Stephan Stach underlined that today as in the past the Holocaust is frequently used in order to promote a particular political agenda. During the Cold War Holocaust research as well as public memory became battlefields of the Bloc confrontation. They underscored that most research provides merely a national analysis of Cold War’s impact on the emergence of Holocaust memory while a broader, transnational approach is lacking. Moreover, there is a tendency to recognize political manipulations when examining Eastern memory culture, while turning a blind eye to similar processes in the West. While exploitation in the East is often overestimated the opposite seems to be the case in the West. The conference, as both organizers explained aimed to reassess this question but also wanted to stimulate a more general debate on commonalities and differences of Holocaust Memory on both sides of the Iron Curtain as well as on transnational cooperation in the polarized Cold War era.

Jewish efforts to remember the Shoah in East and West

Arkadi Zeltser (Director of the Moshe Mirilashvili Center for Research on the Holocaust in the Soviet Union of The International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem) spoke about the extensive spontaneous grass roots Jewish memorializing of victims of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union. Moving West Eli Lederhendler (Vice-Dean for Research in the Faculty of Humanities, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Stephen S. Wise Professor of American Jewish History) spoke about Holocaust Memory among American Jews and showed how also here the Cold War shaped Memory Politics. Like the following paper Lederhendler discussed the frictions and conflict in the Jewish community when it came to Holocaust Memory. Simon Perego (University Paris-I Panthéon-Sorbonne) spoke about how the gatherings organized by Jewish-Communist, Bundist and Zionist associations in Paris served as a transnational ideological battlefield, notwithstanding the willingness of certain actors (such as the Memorial of the Unknown Jewish Martyr) to organize united Holocaust commemorations.

Remembering Perpetrators and Rescuers across the Iron Curtain

Kai Struve (Institute of History of Martin Luther University) analyzed the campaign against Theodor Oberländer and “Nachtigall” as a history of East-West entanglements in the Cold War era that was closely related to increasing public attention to the mass murder of Jews during World War II. Siobhan Hyland (University of Northampton) discussed Searchlight, an anti-fascist group who use investigative methods and infiltration tactics to combat the extreme and far-right in Britain. One of their campaigns, supported by documentation from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles, was to investigate whether Nazi war criminals were living in the U.K and had been since World War Two. Part of the support in enabling Searchlight to produce in depth investigative articles, was by material given to them by the Department of Justice, in the Soviet Union. Manja Herrmann (Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies & Technical University of Berlin) presented on early initiative of the West Berlin federal state government that was honoring and supporting activists who helped and rescued Jews during the Holocaust, Unbesungene Helden (Unsung Heroes) Her presentation traced the development of the program and critically examine its transnational and cold war contexts.

Memory staged in the Courtroom

Mathew Turner’s (Deakin University, Australia and postdoctoral fellow at the Zentrum für Holocaust­Studien in Munich) paper investigates how the Cold War acted to shape the historical picture of the Holocaust that was conveyed in the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial. Turner showed that representatives from the German Democratic Republic used the trial as stage to “unmask” capitalism as the driving force behind Nazism and the Holocaust, while the defense lawyers bluntly questioned all testimonies of East European witnesses, insinuating a communist plot against their defendants. Vanessa Voisin (CERCEC, Paris) focused on a 40-min documentary produced in 1963-1964 by Rostov-on-the-Don studio, in Soviet Russia. In the Name of the Living, directed by Leon Mazrukho, is based on a scenario written by the Moscow writer Lev Ginzburg. It covers a war crimes trial held in Krasnodar in October 1963. Analyzing the film in comparison with press reports on the event and Ginzburg’s book “The Abyss”, which also covered the trial, Voisin presented a large discrepancy on how the Holocaust could be addressed in different media.

The first day ended with an engaging roundtable discussion among Jeffrey Herf (Distinguished University Professor in the Department of History at the University of Maryland, College Park), Nadège Ragaru (Sciences Po Paris), David Shneer (Louis P. Singer Chair of Jewish History, the head of the Department of Religious Studies, and professor of history, Religious studies, and Jewish Studies) Isabel Wollaston (Senior Lecturer in Jewish and Holocaust Studies, University of Birmingham). Herf vigorously argued that Holocaust memory in the West was fundamentally different from that in the East, as the Politburo in Moscow controlled boundaries of public discourse. In his view, the profound de-Nazification in West Germany, prevented a return of Antisemitism and enabled a confrontation with the Holocaust, while the anti-Israeli politics of the Eastern Bloc spurred Antisemitism and blocked Holocaust memory. The other panelists disagreed with Herf in a quite lively debate. Nadège Ragaru responded to Herf with a call for a more complex and nuanced approach to both Cold War and Holocaust memory, which leaves room for ambiguities. David Shneer underlined the need to study other agents of memory beyond the “state” or “party” and to get rid of the Cold War paradigm when it comes to Holocaust memory under communism. Isabel Wollaston in turn used the Polish case to emphasize the enormous change of Holocaust memory over the 40 years of communist rule.

DAY 2

 Scholarship and Holocaust Memory

The second day of the conference started with Olof Bortz’s (Stockholm University) presentation Raul Hilberg, the Cold War and the history of the Holocaust. As Bortz pointed out the Cold War politics which aimed at an integration of West Germany into the Western Alliance, were an obstacle to Hilberg’s work. Among other things, a relevant parts of his source material remained under lock in allied archives. While Hilberg himself interpreted it as a part of the world’s ignorance to the Jewish fate, Bortz reads it as a sign that in the 1950’s the understanding of the Holocaust as an unprecedented event in history had not yet gained enough hold in non-Jewish environments. Daniela R. P. Weiner’s (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) presentation Educational Entanglements: East and West German History Textbooks’ Narratives about the Holocaust and the Second World War reassessed the view that the fate of Jews during Nazi rule and World War II had been upstaged to emphasize antifascist resistance fighters instead. Using text analysis software she could show that both, quality and quantity of the parts dedicated to the Holocaust changed through the time. Unfortunately the third paper of this section on Bulgarian Holocaust Memory had to be cancelled as the speaker, Stefan Troebst (University of Leipzig), could not attend the conference.

Artists and intellectuals’ efforts to shape Memory

The next panel started with Jenny Watson’s (University of Sheffield) presentation ‘No gas chambers. No crematoria. Romanian-German authors of the 1970s-80s and the insufficiency of international memory discourse. Watson showed how young Romanian-German writers distanced themselves from the often Nazi-apologetic generation of their parents. This behavior was, as she underscored, partly induced by their reception of West German literature and literary debates. Irina Tcherneva (CERCEC, Paris) analyzed social and political usages of the painting The Last Way by Yosef Kuzkovski. It shows Jewish civilians on the way to the mass execution in Baby Jar and had originally been painted in 1944-1948. In the 1960 it was exposed in various places in Soviet Latvia in the context of trials against local Nazi collaborators. For Holocaust survivors and Jews living in these areas these exhibitions became important events to commemorate the destruction of local communities during German occupation. Anna Pollmann (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) presented how German-Jewish philosopher and activist Günther Anders assessed the Holocaust originally together with the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as two examples for industrial killings in his critique of technology. Later, however, he reformulated his approach in confrontation with Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem.

Memory and Morality

On the last panel Jonathan Kaplan’s (Freie Universität Berlin) presentation Ambassadors of Memory: The Struggle of guilt and Responsibility in the GDR introduced a fresh perspective on exploitation of Holocaust Memory. On the example of GDR’s Foreign Office he showed, how East German diplomats disclosed material on the Nazi past of West German officials to Western Jewish activists hoping to raise the prestige of East German antifascism. However, as Kaplan argued relying on the case of the Chicago Rabbi S. Burr Yampol, these Jewish activists in turn used their position to intervene in East Germany to lobby for Israel or compensations for Holocaust survivors. Máté Zombory (Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences) discussed how Zoltán Fábri’s film Late Season (1966) addressed moral questions like the responsibility of Hungarian perpetrators and bystanders in an artistically and discursively provoking way. The film, which was screened on international festivals on the one hand demonstrates that the Holocaust was present also in the Eastern Bloc. On the other hand, the scandal which emerged around the film, because its main actor own role under the Hungarian fascist regime, shed light on yet another aspect of the interrelation of Holocaust Memory and Cold War. Finally Marta Zawodna-Stephan (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań) touched on the handling of human remains of camp inmates in her presentation Let the dead serve the living. Dead body politics in the former Nazi camps on both sides of the Iron Curtain. As she points out, the social and political status of the group the victims belonged to had an impact on how their remains were treated after the war.

In their concluding remarks Anna Koch and Stephan Stac picked up on some of the themes and topics that ran through the conference as well as commented on omissions. Koch talked about the absence of gender from most talks and the conference discussion. She also highlighted the diversity of voices, and the myriad understandings of the Holocaust in the aftermath of the war. Numerous papers had shown how personal, or group memories went against or at least conflicted larger narratives. Papers discussed personal memory and mourning that entered public discourses, in forms of literary works, film, art, trials, education and scholarship. Papers made it clear how while east and west constantly accused one another of forgetting the past and stood in obvious conflict about commemoration, dialogue happened as well. Individuals on different sides collaborated in particular when it came to combat Nazism. People, ideas, art all passed the Iron Curtain at different times. The concluding discussion also picked up on the question of terminology and the problematics and suitability of the term “Memory” itself.

Summary and tasks ahead.

Conflict but also conversation and even collaboration across the Iron Boarder became visible in a number of papers. The need to go beyond the Cold War paradigm and re-evaluate how people commemorated the Holocaust on both sides, and in particular re-think how we have understood commemorative efforts in the East likewise played a crucial role in the discussions. Further research that looks at these comparative and transnational aspects would be desirable.

Planned outcomes and outputs

The conference enabled an international scholarly debate on a crucial yet so far neglected question which not only increased our understanding of Holocaust memory but also contributed to our knowledge of the ways in which societies across the globe situated themselves within the Cold War divide. Scholars with a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, from different countries and at different stages of their career allowed for exciting exchanges. We are currently discussing the publication of an edited volume as well as the possibility of a follow-up workshop which would get deeper into some of the issues raised during the conference.

The final programme:

Remembering Across the Iron Curtain

The Emergence of Holocaust Memory in the Cold War Era

A Joint Conference of the Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past, University of York and the Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences, September 2-4, 2018.

 Sunday, 2 September

19:00 Opening Event

David Shneer

Art is My Weapon: The Radical Musical Life of Lin Jaldati

Venue: Black Box Theatre, York University. Public event

Monday, 3 September

Venue: Berrick Saul Building, York University.

9:00 Registration

9:15-9:45 Welcome

Geoff Cubitt (IPUP, University of York)

Stephan Stach (ÚSD, CAS Prague)

Paulina Gulińska-Jurgiel (Aleksander Brückner Center Halle)

9:45 – 10:15 Introduction

Anna Koch (FMS, University of York)/ Stephan Stach (ÚSD, CAS Prague)

10:15 – 10:45 Coffee Break

10:45-12:15 Jewish efforts to remember the Shoah in East and West

Arkadi Zeltser (The International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem): The Cold War and Memorialization of the Holocaust in the USSR

Eli Lederhendler (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) The Politics of Memory and the Shadow of the Holocaust in America in the Cold War Era

Simon Perego (University Paris-Sorbonne) “The Communist Schism in Jewish Life.” Transnational Politics and Holocaust Commemorations among Parisian Jews during the Cold War, until the end of the 1960s

Chair: Nadège Ragaru (CERI, Sciences Po, Paris)

12:15 – 13:15 Lunch

13:15-14:45 Remembering Perpetrators and Rescuers across the Iron Curtain

Kai Struve (Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg): The Case of Theodor Oberländer in 1959/60 – an Entangled History of Propaganda, Politics, and Holocaust Memory in East and West

Siobhan Hyland (University of Northampton): Searchlight – Campaigning against Nazi Perpetrators in Britain

Manja Herrmann (Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg): Transnational Holocaust Memory and the Case of Rescue: Kurt R. Grossmann and the Early Berlin Initiative Unsung Heroes (1958–1966)

Chair: Jeffrey Herf (University of Maryland, College Park)

14:45-15:15 Coffee break

15:15-16:30 Memory staged in the Courtroom

Matthew Turner (Deakin University, Australia / IfZ München): Cold War Courtroom: Politicising the Holocaust in the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, 1963­1965

Vanessa Voisin (CERCEC, Paris): From the courthouse to the screen: Holocaust history made memory in Cold War USSR

Chair: Paulina Gulińska-Jurgiel (Aleksander Brückner Center Halle)

17:00 Roundtable Discussion:

Venue: Berrick Saul Building, York University.

How did Cold War Shape our Understanding of the Holocaust?

Discussants:

Jeffrey Herf (University of Maryland, College Park)

Nadège Ragaru (CERI, Sciences Po, Paris)

David Shneer (University of Colorado, Boulder)

Isabel Wollaston (University of Birmingham)

Moderation: Anna Koch (University of York), Stephan Stach (CAS, Prague)

Tuesday, 4 September 2018

Venue: Berrick Saul Building, York University.

9:00-10:30 Scholarship and Holocaust Memory

Olof Bortz (Stockholm University): Raul Hilberg, the Cold War and the history of the Holocaust

Stefan Troebst (Leipzig University, Germany): Skopje vs. Sofia: Contrasting Memories on Bulgaria and the Holocaust

Daniela R. P. Weiner (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) Educational Entanglements: East and West German History Textbooks’ Narratives about the Holocaust and the Second World War

Chair: Geoff Cubitt (IPUP, University of York)

10.30-11:00 Coffee break

11:00 – 12:30 Artists and intellectuals’ efforts to shape Memory

Jenny Watson (University of Sheffield) ‘No gas chambers. No crematoria. Romanian-German authors of the 1970s-80s and the insufficiency of international memory discourse

Irina Tcherneva (CERCEC, Paris) The arts judge crimes against humanity. Social and political usages of the painting The Last Way by Yosef Kuzkovski in Soviet Latvia (1944-1970)

Anna Pollmann (Hebrew University of Jerusalem): Atrocities without their own reality. Günther Anders and Holocaust reception in the West German Left

Chair: Hugo Service (University of York)

12:30 -13:30 Lunch break

13:30 – 15:00 Memory and Morality

Jonathan Kaplan (Freie Universität Berlin): Ambassadors of Memory: The Struggle of guilt and Responsibility in the GDR

Máté Zombory (Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences) Moral Universalism in the East: Holocaust and memory in Zoltán Fábri’s film Late Season (1966)

Marta Zawodna-Stephan (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań) Let the dead serve the living. Dead body politics in the former Nazi camps on both sides of the Iron Curtain

Chair: Shaul Mitelpunkt (University of York)

15:15 – 16:15 Closing Remarks

Anna Koch (FMS, University of York), Stephan Stach (ÚSD, CAS Prague)

16:15 Reception

The conference was made possible thanks to generous funding from the European Association for Jewish Studies, the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, the Strategy AV21programme of the Czech Academy of Sciences, the Czech Science Foundation and the University of York.

 

EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2017/18

REPORT

Targum Studies in London, IOTS 2018

The International Meeting of the IOTS at University College London, July 9-12, 2018, featured 25 papers and 4 keynote speakers. It was organised by the IOTS and the Institute of Jewish Studies (IJS) at UCL, with generous funding from several anonymous donors and the European Association for Jewish Studies (EAJS). Many of the attendees considered the meeting one of the best they had attended in years. The following report states the original abstract and event rationale for the IJS summer conference, a summary of the sessions, an outline of key themes and issues emerging from it, and a description of plans for the associated output.

Event abstract

The 9th meeting of the International Organization of Targumic Studies will focus on two closely related aspects of Targumic Literature which have become increasingly topical:

1. the Aramaic dialects of the Targums within their Late Antique environment and
2. the development of targumic literature within its wider interpretative milieu.

These aspects will be addressed in two topics each:

• Local influences on the dialect of Onqelos/Jonathan;
• The provenance and integrity of the dialect of the Late Targums;
• The relation between targumic and classical rabbinic exegesis;
• The signs of non-rabbinic, late rabbinic or local environments in the Targums.

Event rationale

The Aramaic language of the Targums continues to be discussed in the context of language change and language contact. The meeting will consider the following key questions:

• Local influences on the literary dialect of Onqelos and Jonathan: long considered to represent a direct development of Middle Aramaic, and sometimes held to reflect little to no signs of any specific provenance (Western, Eastern, Central Aramaic), in recent years detailed studies identified ambiguous indications of the dialect in which these Targums are written, more specifically specimens of local linguistic influence, which warrant the re-opening of the question about these Targums’ dialect and provenance.
• The literary dialects of Targums to the Writings are nowadays grouped together as Late Jewish Literary Aramaic (LJLA). While this dialect is considered to be a learned, written dialect divested from a vernacular basis, its provenance is as yet unclear. In recent years a considerable Syriac influence has been argued, as has a late, possibly European provenance for some of the Targums to the Writings. The study of syntax and exegesis may shed further light on the provenance and integrity of LJLA.

The second focal point concerns the correlation between the Targums as specimens of interpretation and the wider interpretative Jewish milieu. The Targums have usually been considered as part of the Jewish rabbinic textual and exegetical culture, despite serious questions about the exact position of the Targums within their Jewish context:

• How does targumic exegesis relate to its rabbinic parallels? To what extent is targumic exegesis paralleled in midrashic literature, and what are the differences in terms of context, presentation, and narrative arc? The mere observation of parallels does not analyse the relationship at a level that is profound enough to be meaningful.
• Does targumic exegesis reflect signs of a non-rabbinic, late rabbinic or specific local environment? In spite of the close connection between targumic and rabbinic exegesis, and the origin of the Targums in the rabbinic milieu has been called into doubt without settling the issue. Questions have always lingered about the precise relationship between the Targums and the rabbinic milieu, whether in Roman Palestine, Babylonia or local Jewish communities elsewhere.

Visit to the British Library

Monday afternoon the lecturers attended a ‘show-and-tell’ by Dr Ilana Tahan, who showcased some of the most important Hebrew and particularly Aramaic manuscripts in the collection of the British Library. Highlights included the only extant manuscript of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (which featured heavily during the conference), a Yemenite manuscript of the Targum to the Prophets, one of the famous Peshitta manuscripts, and much more. There was a lively discussion of these manuscripts.

Summary of the papers

The Keynote papers elaborated on four highly different and yet related fields of Targum Studies: the way Targum relates to Jewish scriptural interpretation, the typology of Jewish Aramaic dialects, the study of the Targumim in the early modern period, and the archaeoacoustics of the early synagogues. These were interspersed by many lectures, which will be more briefly touched upon below.

Prof. Robert Hayward delivered the first keynote: ‘Reconsidering Targum Jonathan Malachi 1:11’. In an intricate, contextual analysis of this Targum, he demonstrated in detail not only how this verse posed serious difficulties for ancient Jewish exegetes, as it appears to contradict the commandment that sacrifice be offered in one place only, but also how it solved this conundrum. At the same time, the way this verse and its motifs are treated in early rabbinic literature shows some subtle differences in exegetical choices, most notably the aspect of prayer, which appears not to have been introduced before the Tanhuma other than in the Targum—the passage in the Babylonian Talmud that discusses this verse, in b. Men. 110a, sidesteps the issue of prayer by a reference to Torah study. Yet the church father Justin suggests that Mal. 1:11 was associated with prayer by the mid-second century CE already.

This lecture was followed by three sessions. The first session focused on the typological, linguistic and literary connections between Targum and other, contemporary literatures: Bärry Hartog (University of Groningen) on ‘Pesher and Targum: Revisiting an Old Issue’, who argued that the similarities and dissimilarities from an exegetical perspective should not obscure the fact that both are the scholarly products of an intellectual elite, and both more mainstream than sectarian. In the Q & A session there was a lively debate on the use of scribal techniques, although the authors of both corpora did not identify themselves as scribes. Srecko Koralija (University of Cambridge) spoke about ‘Targum and Peshitta: The Lexeme špr’, arguing that there is a real desideratum for a corpus-based lexicon which does not make too close connections between the targumic and syriac employments. In the Q & A Koralija questioned the interdependence between Targum and Peshitta, as it does not do justice to the different interpretative techniques and lexical meanings of lexemes shared by the two dialects of these texts. In the next lecture, David Shepherd returned to the Dead Sea Scrolls, asking the question ‘What’s ‘Targumic’ about the Genesis Apocryphon? Reflections on 1Q20 as an Aramaic version’. The Genesis Apocryphon has literary features which have long been compared to those of targumic literature, sometimes in part. Yet the features of GenAp that have been used as arguments for a comparison to the Targums do not follow the targumic practice, in keeping with the other Aramaic fragments from Qumran.

The second session dwelt on the late Aramaic translations. The first two lectures, by Leeor Gottlieb, ‘Is Pseudo-Jonathan a European Targum?’ and Gavin McDowell, ‘The Date and Provenance of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: The Evidence of Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer’ startingly converged on very similar, well sustained, and highly innovative arguments. Both argued for a provenance in South Italy, and both related the Targum to the 12th century author of Sekhel Tov, written in 1139 CE by R. Menachem ben Solomon. Gottlieb also related the Targum to his work Even Bochan, which displays remarkably close parallels with TgPsJ. He further pointed out that there is clear knowledge of the Islamic empire, but at the same time no familiarity with the geography of Israel. McDowell pointed out that PRE does not display any knowledge of TgPsJ, while the latter uses sources that use PRE. TgPsJ also used the longer recension of the Chronicle of Moses. Altogether, the evidence points to a medieval redactor with an antiquarian mentality far beyond the end of the first millennium, and more precisely with an Italian provenance. The Q&A to both lectures were extremely lively, with a general acceptance of the main hypotheses posited by both speakers, but also questions about the nature of the dialect (LJLA) when it is pushed so close to the composition of the Zohar. The final paper in this session was delivered by Abraham J. Berkovitz, ‘The Late Antique Contexts of Targum Psalms’. In this lecture, the Targum of Psalms was set against the backdrop of late ancient rabbinic literature, selecting and developing late antique sources, joined with traditions from rabbinic literature. The Targum may be the product of the end of a long late antique process of rabbinization.

The third session was opened by Nahum Ben-Yehuda with ‘Textile and Garment Terminology in the Targumim’. In a presentation that was as detailed as it was instructive and clear, the audience was treated to the practice and terminology of weaving with warp and loom, with a profound discussion of the various technical terms used and the practice to which they refer. Matthew Morgenstern presented a survey of ‘Newly Discovered Lexemes in Mandaic’, which included a presentation of the available sources and their vicissitudes, with dates ranging from the 4th century CE (the earliest incantation bowls) to manuscripts of the premodern period. While his research will lead to a vastly improved and far more critical lexicon of Mandaic, we were treated to a selection of new Mandaic lexemes. Margaretha Folmer explored ‘The Translation of Biblical Hebrew אל in Targum Onqelos: the Complementation of Verbs of Motion and Verbs of Saying’. Among the meanings of the BH preposition, the meaning ‘to’ (direction) is the most frequent. In Onqelos, the compound preposition לות is used with verbs of motion when the motion is directed towards a person, while ל is used wherever the motion is directed towards a location (with some noted exceptions). The same distinction exists in Old Aramaic and in Official Aramaic.

The second keynote was delivered by Steven Fassberg on the topic of ‘Jewish Palestinian Aramaic: Typology, Geography, and Chronology’. His presentation carefully delineated the various strata of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, including Samaritan Aramaic and Christian Palestinian Aramaic for comparative purposes. From the dialects of the Palestinian Targums (for which an exact date is impossible to give), yo that of the Talmud Yerushalmi and the Midrashim, up to and including Late Jewish Literary Aramaic. It was noted that CPA and SamA also could be shown to belong to different periods, of which the later phases were 10-13th and 10-11th c. respectively. In fact, late Samaritan Hebrew is of a hybrid nature (from the 13th c. onwards). The development of the dialects did not stop when Aramaic was no longer a spoken language, and LJLA features within the later period of Palestinian Aramaic dialects. Lots of specific dialect features were brought into the limelight. In the Q&A the influence of copyists was noted, leading to sporadic fluctuations, as was the possibility of conscious scribal choices for the borrowing of elements belonging to a distinct dialect, for example Babylonian Aramaic.

The fourth session was opened by Shai Heijmans with an insightful paper on the western pronunciation of the Targum, ‘The segol in Targum Jonathan according to MS Reuchlin’. Although there is indeed ample reason to distrust (some of) the Western vocalisation in the manuscript tradition, but there is an argument to be made that the pronunciation reflected in other Western manuscripts does in fact represent a tradition that is genuinely Western. Portions of the text were recited in the synagogue during the medieval period, while the manuscripts were provided with cantillation signs, also suggesting their continued use in liturgical reading. The lecture focused on the occurrence of the segol in Codex Reuchlinianus 3, a vowel which has no base in the Babylonian tradition and is accordingly unique to the Western pronunciation. The Q&A to the paper dwelled on many aspects of this study, including the date for this pronunciation tradition. The next paper was delivered by Dmytro Tsolin, ‘Compound Verbal Forms in Aramaic Dialects of the Targums: Discourse Aspects’. These compound verbal forms are widely used in Jewish Aramaic dialects and occur both in translations and non-translational parts of the corpus. The question is, whether there are any tense-aspect-modal differences between these compound verbal forms and non-compound verbs. This paper analysed the compound forms in terms of discourse (narrative, prophecy, speech) and in connection with their positions in comment / narrative, recorded / anticipatory, foreground / background-clauses. The third paper was delivered by Alinda Damsma on ‘The Aramaic of the Zohar: The status quaestionis’. She gave a commanding overview of scholarship on Zoharic Aramaic which could not have been more timely in the wake of the renewed discussion on LJLA during this very conference. She proposed that the language of the Zohar can be considered a type of Late Jewish Literary Aramaic, as it bears striking similarities to the language of the Tosefta-Targums written in that dialect. She is currently conducting a research project on the language of the Zohar which will culminate in the publication of a much-needed reference grammar of this important form of Aramaic.

The fifth session opened with a paper by Michael Langlois about ‘New Aramaic Divination Texts in Light of the Targums’. Among all these important ostraca, recently discovered at Maresha and to be published by Ester Eshel and Michael Langlois, some 137 can be classified as divination texts. However, many of them are notoriously hard to decipher, as demonstrated. The paper went into some detail about the decipherment but also the parallels with targumic literature. The next paper by Miriam Kahana addressed an often overlooked topic, namely ‘Targum Jonathan to the Prophets and the Masoretic Cantillations’. She contrasted Targum with masoretic cantillations, each of which present a different way of dividing the verse, something which frequently gives a different meaning. She demonstrated the Targum’s preference for a subordinate structure, even when translating paratactic clauses. In addition, she showed a lack of correlation between cantillations and Targum in ambiguous verses. Despite the general correlation between the Targum and the cantillation signs, there are notable distinctions between the two. The last paper was delivered by Willem Smelik, ‘Targum Toledot Yeshu’, a study of a new Aramaic fragment of the Toledot Yeshu. This fragment preserves the start of the narrative, but it is presented as a Targum Yerushalmi to Isa. 66.17. Both the narrative and the dialect show up many peculiarities. Despite some notable linguistic errors, the dialect also displays signs of a genuine albeit late dialect. The narrative preserves the birth narrative and other motifs, and most importantly, it fully overlaps with the Harkavy fragment published in 1875.

In the sixth session, Dineke Houtman, ‘What’s in a Name: The Translation of Toponyms in Targum Isaiah’, pays close attention to the rendering of geographical and ethnical names. Generally, these remain unaltered, but not always, and these exceptions merit further analysis. The Targum identifies unknown ancient tribes and place names with contemporary ones, for one, which has the effect of making the Bible more accessible. Sometimes the translator obviously did not know exactly which place or people was meant and chose a quite general translation. And finally, some toponyms received a symbolic interpretation. Gary Rendsburg followed this up with a study of ‘Targumic Parallels to Variant Readings of the Book of Samuel amongst the Cairo Genizah Manuscripts’. As a pilot project, he read each and everyone of the more than 650 manuscript fragments of the book of Samuel found in the Cairo Genizah. He presented a sampling of the variant readings he recorded, in comparison with the evidence from Qumran, the Septuagint, Targum, Peshitta and Vulgate. The third lecture was delivered by Johanna Tanja, ‘Tosefta Targums in Targum Samuel’. The Tosefta Targums are not found in the extant Babylonian textual witnesses of the Targum and more of these Tosefta Targums seem to have been preserved in the European manuscripts and editions and several were attested in specific geographic areas only. The fact that these additions are attested in specific geocultural zones raises questions on the specific milieu of transmission. The Tosefta Targums are not attested in the same way, as they can be attached to different verses in the Targum text. Moreover, not all known Tosefta Targums are attested in all manuscripts.

The seventh session was devoted to Aramaic poetry, opened by Moshe Bernstein, ‘An Aramaic Poem for Purim, but It’s Not About Purim!’ This paper addressed the first poem for Purim in the collection that Yahalom and Sokoloff published, although, unlike the other poems in this section, it does not dwell in particular on the Scroll of Esther or on Purim. Instead, it presents a survey of historical attacks on the Jews, culminating in the salvation of the Jews on Purim. In the second contribution to this session, Laura Lieber addressed the soundscapes of Late Antiquity in ‘Refrains and Acclamations: The Congregational Dynamic within JPA Poetry’. This study of participation in ritual assumed that the Jews in this period would have been familiar with the widespread practice of acclamation, possessing a performative literacy. The variety of refrain structures in this literature is a good place to begin the study the intersection of acclamation structures and JPA poetry. Michael Rand spoke about ‘The Use of Aramaic in Classical (Byzantine-era) Palestinian Piyyut, and Beyond’, pointing out that Aramaic does sometimes appear in classical piyyut, but there is no transparent pattern to predict when it does or does not appear. However, piyyut is a form of versified prayer, and since the language of prayer is predominantly Hebrew the absence of Aramaic can be explained more generally. The JPA poetry is not piyyut. Finally, Eliav Grossman explored one of the possible contexts for the JPA poetry in his paper ‘Observations on the Relationship between JPA Poetry and Targumic Expansions’. He pointed out that several themes and images which seem to be specific to JPA poetry in fact also appear in Targumic expansions, sometimes in almost identical formulations.

Philip Alexander delivered the third keynote lecture, ‘The Study of the Targumim in the Early Modern Period, with particular reference to Codex Neofiti and Pseudo-Jonathan to the Torah’. There is still no history of the textual transmission of many targumic texts, especially between Late Antiquity and the invention of the printing press. There are some references to targumic manuscripts, not all of them currently known (Azariah de Rossi saw two copies of TgPsJ, only one of which is known today, assuming it is identical with the one housed in the British Library). The Targum was a book that could be creatively transmitted, whereas we only have snapshots of its transmission. We do know that copies of Onqelos and Jonathan were brought back to Israel in the Geonic period, and that Onqelos was dominant, representing the Bible of the (Jewish) Aramaic world. Hence quotations of the Torah in Aramaic that are embedded within Targum Writings often use Targum Onqelos. There is, therefore, a need for regional studies of the manuscripts (Yemenite, Egyptian, Western, etc) and the function of the Targums, which would have differed by the area. Further details followed about established representatives of these areas. It was pointed out that the ancient form of the text cannot be disentangled from its subsequent reception, with the opening of Targum Neofiti being a case in point (a Qabbalistic Targum of Genesis 1?). The lecture was followed by a lively Q&A session about various aspects of textual transmission and the later reception of the Targums.

The eight session was opened by Craig Morrison, ‘Abraham and the Fires of Gehenna in the Palestinian Targums and the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16,19-31)’. This paper focused on the way early Christian and Jewish interpreters ascribed sometimes lengthy speeches to Abraham as an eschatological figure, by which means they express the theological interests of their particular communities. Abraham is a tortured soul, wondering whether he’ll make the grade for beatific afterlife. Both traditions illuminate each other and extend the traditions of Abraham, and the targumic Abraham shares some characteristics with the Lukan one. Chris Brady analysed the translation of Lam. 1.15 in ‘“The Lord Has Trodden as in a Wine Press,” A Note Regarding TgLam 1:15 and Isa. 63:3’. He made clear how several verses are brought into dialogue in this analysis, including Ezek. 36, and how the interpretation focuses on Edom, the colour and the wine-press. Finally, Eveline van Staalduine-Sulman spoke about ‘The Reception of the Tenth Commandment’. The interpretation of the tenth commandment, which teaches not to be covetous, varies over the course of the centuries. Targum Neofiti and Pseudo-Jonathan add at least two points to the whole discussion, namely one concerning individual and joint responsibility to fulfil this commandment and one concerning the punishment or consequence in cases this commandment is violated. In the Q&A session, attention was drawn to the maginalia in Codex Neofiti, some of which features halakhic annotations, while others are similar in style to TgPsJ.

The fourth keynote lecture, and the final paper of the conference, was delivered by Paul V.M. Flesher: ‘Where did the Scripture Reader and the Scripture Translator Stand in Ancient Galilean Synagogues?’ In this archaeoacoustic study of the Galilean synagogues, the potential use of an object and the possible positioning of the reciter and the interpreter were discussed on the basis of the floor-plan of these synagogues. The difference between a raised bimah and an apse for the way a voice carries was discussed in detail. It emerged that the projection of a voice, and the ability for two people standing on a raised platform, differs between an open-plan synagogue with a carpeted dirt floor and a basilica-type synagogue with mosaics on the floor. The Q&A session of this final lecture was lively and appreciative.

A statement about planned outcomes and outputs

We seek to publish selected lectures as Targum Studies in London, IOTS 2018 (Supplements to Aramaic Studies; Leiden: Brill). All contributions will be double-blind peer reviewed and vetted. The deadline for contributions is January 31, 2019.

EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2017/18

REPORT

Greek expanded, Greek transformed: The Vocabulary of the Septuagint and the Cultural World of the Translators

Conference held on 18 to 20 June 2018

Rationale of the event

The Septuagint became widely influential beyond the Jewish world only in Late Antiquity, but it was produced much earlier, during the Hellenistic period.  In their struggle to render the archaic Hebrew of the source text into intelligible Hellenistic Greek, the translators coined some new words (using the existing morphological resources of the language) and extended the meanings of others.  Words that had been rare became frequent, and some common Greek words are conspicuous by their absence.  The Hebrew Bible was Hellenized, and the Greek language was “Hebraized”.  The dialectic between biblical and Hellenistic connotations lends Septuagint words a semantic complexity that is both hard and rewarding to analyse.

The conference brought together an international team of scholars from different disciplines to work over two days on the religious and political vocabulary of the Septuagint and to analyse this semantic complexity.

Most of the speakers in the conference had participated in a residential research workshop held at the Centre between January and June 2018.  The conference provided an opportunity to draw their work together, as well as to expose it to dialogue with some additional international experts.  This embedding in the research workshop gave the conference a depth and a unity of purpose that is not always easy to achieve in events bringing together scholars from different disciplines and different cultural backgrounds, and the resulting discussions were exceptionally rich and productive.

Papers

Monday 18 June

2-2.35pm : Jean Maurais (McGill University)

‘The Beloved One Grew Fat: Style, Context, and the Vocabulary of Deuteronomy 32:15’

Instead of focusing on a specific word or word-group, Maurais studied a short passage in Deuteronomy and attempted to demonstrate the coherence of the vocabulary used there, in semantic and stylistic perspective. The most interesting insight was that the perfect participle êgapêménos ‘beloved one’ used for Yeshurun/Israel in Deut 32:15 plays a role in royal titulature in Ptolemaic papyri.

2.35-3.10pm: Mikhail Seleznev (National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow)

‘On the Usage of στερέωμα in the LXX, with an Appendix on the Non-Usage of στερέωμα in Περὶ ὕψους’

The word στερέωμα ‘firmament’ is used in Gen 1 to refer to the vault of heaven, raqia‘ in Hebrew.  In a fascinating paper, Seleznev showed how this striking equivalence reflects the struggle of the translator to mediate between biblical and Hellenistic cosmology.  He went on to propose a brilliant new reconstruction of the history of Ps-Longinus’ approximate quotation from Genesis (Περὶ ὕψους 9. 10): γενέσθω φῶς, καὶ ἐγένετο. γενέσθω γῆ, καὶ ἐγένετο.  In this proposal the quotation was adapted from the earlier Περὶ ὕψους by Caecilius of Calliacte, who the Suda says was Jewish by faith, and γῆ ‘earth’ is Ps-Longinus’ attempt to understand the word στερέωμα when faced with a quotation such as Γενηθήτω φῶς, καὶ ἐγένετο…Γενηθήτω στερέωμα…καὶ ἐγένετο…., in the absence of further context.

3.40-4.15pm: Arjen Bakker (University of Oxford)

‘Knowledge and Light: Lexical Observations on the Old Greek of Isaiah’

In Isa 53:11, the Septuagint and several Qumran witnesses have a noun meaning ‘light’ in excess of the Masoretic text: ‘From the travail of his soul he shall see (light).’  Bakker argued, following Seeligman, that this is an exegetical addition.  He then went on to show that the book of Daniel already knows the verse with the added word.  This suggests that the knowledge-as-light idea, absent in earlier biblical tradition, spread among several Jewish groups in the Hellenistic period.

4.15-4.50pm: Dominika Kurek-Chomycz (Liverpool Hope University)

‘Disability and the Septuagint’

This was probably the very first exploration of the motif of disability in the Septuagint corpus.  Kurek-Chomycz showed that the different perspectives distinguished in contemporary studies on disability—medical, social, cultural—were already implicit in certain lexical choices in the Septuagint.

Plenary lecture, 6-7pm: Trevor Evans (Macquarie University)

‘Verbs of Sexual Intercourse, the Greek Translation of the Pentateuch, and Lexicographic Analysis’

Several euphemistic expressions—to know, to lie with, to be with, to come into—are used for sexual intercourse in the Hebrew Bible. Evans showed how each of these translates a Hebrew verb with a similar non-sexual sense, and for all but one the sexual as well as the non-sexual sense is already attested in Greek before the Septuagint. The translators’ choices here show their high level of competence in both languages.

Tuesday

9.15-9.50am: Jelle Verburg (University of Oxford)

‘Murderous Intention in the Septuagint, Philo, and the Mishnah’

Jelle Verburg discussed the terminology used in Greek to express the notion of intentional manslaughter, absent from the Hebrew where this idea is rather suggested by reference to external circumstances such as ‘lying in wait.’  He showed that while later Rabbinic interpretations of the biblical laws on murder also underscore the criterion of intention, the specific use of this criterion diverges in the Septuagint and the Rabbis diverges markedly.

9.50-10.25am: Jan Joosten (University of Oxford)

‘Divine Compassion in the Septuagint’

The notion of divine compassion is present in the Hebrew Bible, but it is underscored much more often in the Septuagint translation.  The reason for this transformation cannot be found in Greek culture or religion, where divine compassion is not a frequent theme.  Rather, it seems the translators embraced this notion because it contributes to mark out their Jewish identity in the Hellenistic society they inhabited.

10.25-11am: Hindy Najman (University of Oxford)

‘Formation of the Subject as Imitatio Dei’

Najman made a plea to approach the question of the ‘self’ in terms the Bible itself recognizes: the self as a human being standing in relation to God (symbolized by human blood), and the self as an individual who is also a member of a collective.

11.30-12.05pm: James Aitken (University of Cambridge)

‘Ambiguous Ethical Terms in the Septuagint’

Hebrew ‘arum tends to be translated by πανοῦργος when it has negative connotations, and by φρόνιμος when it has positive connotations.  In Proverbs, however, even the positive uses are rendered by πανοῦργος.  With a careful survey of the evidence for the pre-existing connotations of πανοῦργος, Aitken argued that the translator of Proverbs expanded the semantic range of this Greek adjective under the influence of the partial synonym ‘arum.

12.05-12.40pm: Hallel Baitner (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

‘Sprinkling for Purification in the Septuagint and in Philo’s writings’

From Rabbinic sources we know that sprinkling with blood or sprinkling with water mixed with the ashes of a red heifer were considered to be entirely different procedures, although the Hebrew text uses the same verb, hizzah, to express them.  Baitner observed that the Septuagint uses several equivalents for the Hebrew verb in question, notably ῥαίνω and περιρραίνω, and that the distribution of these two agrees with the distinction drawn in Rabbinic literature.

2.15-2.50pm: Anthony Ellis (Universität Bern)

‘The Devil in the Detail: (ὁ) διάβολος, σαταν, ὁ ἀντικείμενος and Diabolical φθόνος’

While some gnostics in the second century AD found the God of the Bible to be envious because he did not want the human being to eat of the tree of knowledge, later tradition unanimously attributed envy to the serpent.  This contributed to the identification of the serpent as the devil, because in Hellenistic views demons could be envious while God (gods) was always good.

2.50-3.25pm: Anna Angelini (University of Lausanne)

‘The Vocabulary of Images in the LXX between Materiality and Immateriality’

Angelini presented a very nuanced analysis of the terms used in the Septuagint for divine images, notably εἰκών, εἴδωλον and ὁμοίωμα.  She indicated that the semantic differences between these terms is not obvious and that in the Septuagint as in non-biblical Greek their meanings often overlap.

3.25-4pm: Maria Sokolskaya (Universität Bern)

‘The Concept of Paideia in Philo’s Biblical Exegesis’

Setting out from her idea of paideia as a bonum tantum, Sokolskaya showed how Philo at once borrowed the notion of philosophy as the only true paideia and nuanced it by arguing that the other academic disciplines belong to paideia if they are capped by philosophy.  Philo’s interpretation of the relation between Sarah and Hagar draws on a well-known motif in Greek philosophy in which Penelope is opposed to Ulysses’ handmaidens.

4.30-5.05pm: Patrick Pouchelle (Centre Sèvres, Paris)

‘Did a Jewish Paideia exist during the Hellenistic and Roman period?’

Pouchelle was unable to come because of acute back pain.  His paper was read by Jean Maurais.  Pouchelle argued for a view of Jewish paideia that incorporates both elements taken from the Greek idea and elements with a biblical background, such as the notion of divine education by the means of historical catastrophes.

5.05-5.40pm: Tessa Rajak (University of Reading)

‘The Language of Instruction in the Fourth Book of Maccabees’

In a third paper on paideia Rajak argued at length that the author of 4 Maccabees pleads throughout his book for a combination of Greek philosophy with biblical values such as the avoidance of certain foods.

9.15-9.50am: Maria Yurovitskaya (National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow)

‘Magic and Ritual: some Reflections of Greek Religious Practices in the LXX’

The mysterious biblical ritual of ‘making one’s children pass through fire’ seems to have been interpreted as a magical act by the translator of Ezekiel, who uses the Greek verb ἀποτροπιάζομαι ‘to turn away evil’ instead of ‘to pass through’ in Ezek 16:21.  Yurivitskaya showed, on the basis of a large number of non-biblical Greek texts, that this was a reasonable interpretation in the Hellenistic milieu.

9.50-10.25am: David A Lambert (University of North Carolina)

‘Problems in the History of the Self and Bible Translation: The Case of the Septuagint’

Lambert showed with many examples how language expressly showing awareness of the ‘self’ may be introduced in the biblical context although it is absent from the Hebrew source text.

10.25-11am: Romina Vergari (University of Florence)

‘The Life-cycle of the “Shadow” Metaphors in the Hebrew Bible in the Light of their Semitic and Greek Backgrounds’

In Hebrew, the word shadow mostly has positive metaphorical interpretations: protection, shelter.  The metaphor of shadow as transience is less well developed, and characteristic of later texts. In Greek, shadow is mostly a negative metaphor—the shadow of death.  Many Septuagint translators translate Hebrew tsel ‘shadow’ literally with σκιά when it is used in a negative way, but use σκέπη ‘protection’ when the metaphor is positive.

11.30-12.30pm: CONCLUDING REMARKS

Teresa Morgan (University of Oxford) and Philomen Probert (University of Oxford)

Philomen Probert summarized the conference and drew out recurring themes on vocabulary and translation. The challenges faced by the translators included unfamiliar or obscure Hebrew words; Hebrew words with multiple senses; familiar Hebrew words in unfamiliar meanings; unfamiliar metaphors; and Hebrew words for unfamiliar concepts. The consequences of translation were sometimes very slight, both for the content of the text and for the Greek language itself: verbs of sexual intercourse were a case in point where the translators identified remarkably close Greek equivalents for semantically complex Hebrew words. On other occasions the semantic range of a Greek word was expanded in translation, to match the range of meanings of a Hebrew word that was already a partial synonym; πανοῦργος in Proverbs was a case in point. But the conference had highlighted especially richly how pragmatic enrichment in translation (when translators make explicit a distinction or a detail that they take to be implicit in the original) can provide a window onto the cultural world of the translators. The readiness with which the translators alluded to divine compassion was one example among many that the conference had brought into focus.

Teresa Morgan opened up the discussion by asking the question of the origins of the Septuagint: is this really a liturgical text, or not rather a cultural statement made, at least partly, in view of the debate between Jews and non-Jews in Hellenistic Egypt. A lively discussion ensued.

Papers were 25 minutes with 10 minutes left for discussion. The Q&A periods were lively but there were few clashes. After Aitken’s paper, Joosten stated: “The principal task of the [Septuagint] translators was to translate” to which Aitken replied: “That is what you think”—suggesting, in context, that their primary goal was rather to create a readable Greek text. Some participants saw here the outline of a great rift. But of course, both views are correct: the translators wanted to translate the Hebrew and create a good Greek text. Otherwise the regnant mood was one of enthusiasm. The conference capped a four-month long seminar in which the interest of the Septuagint as an object of research, and the particular fruitfulness of the focus on vocabulary was driven home to many participants again and again.

Summary

Some papers (Evans, Aitken, Vergari, and the three papers on paideia) focused more on the translation of single words while others (Seleznev, Joosten, Angelini, Yurovitskaya) were more concerned with biblical themes and the way they were expressed in Greek.  Several papers proceeded in the opposite direction, exploring how and to what extent certain notions that became important in Greek and, later, modern thought can be found in the bible (Kurek, Bakker, Verburg, Najman, Lambert).  But these are differences of nuance, not substance.

The main insight to take home from the conference is that translation equivalences are tied up with important differences in culture and world view.  An eye opener in this regard was Selezenev’s paper in which he showed how a single word in the Greek text of Genesis may have sounded very different to biblically literate Jews and to Greeks without knowledge of biblical traditions.

At the same time, it is clear that what could be done during the seminar and the conference was only a spoonful out of an ocean and that many more discoveries of the same type remain to be made.  If words like στερέωμα ‘firmament’ or συγγίνομαι ‘to be with’ can be made to tell such a fascinating story, there is really no end to it.

Outcomes and outputs

It is planned to follow up on this year’s seminar with an ongoing “Septuagint Forum” that will meet twice a term in the framework of the seminar on Judaism in the Graeco-Roman period directed by Martin Goodman.  Another type of follow-up will be workshop, to be run by Anna Angelini and Jan Joosten, at the European Association for Biblical Studies’ yearly conference.  Finally, there are plans also to have a meeting in Oxford, perhaps just after the end of Hilary Term 2019 (11-12 March perhaps) with some of the people who have been active in this year’s project.  Scott Scullion (Worcester) has declared an interest in organizing this event.

The major output is planned to be a book to be published with Mohr Siebeck, collecting the most topical papers of the seminar with most papers of the conference. The editors will be Trevor Evans, Teresa Morgan and Jan Joosten.

The Programme

See flyer (link).

Departments circulated with details about the Conference

Theology and Religions Faculty at Oxford University

University College London, Dept of Hebrew and Jewish Studies

Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge

Leo Baeck College

Parkes Institute, Southampton

Dept of Hebrew Studies, SOAS

British Association of Jewish Studies

European Association of Jewish Studies