EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2015/16

REPORT

The Western Balkan Encounter of Sepharad and Ashkenaz:

Between Tradition and Change

Belgrade, July 5-7, 2016

Co-organizer: Prof. Krinka Vidaković-Petrov, Institute for Literature and Art, Belgrade

Co-organizer: Dr. Katja Šmid, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

 

The conference was held in Belgrade, July 5-7, 2016, at the hall of the Jewish Community of Belgrade. The colloquium was organized in cooperation with the Institute for Literature and Art in Belgrade and made possible by a generous subvention of the European Association of Jewish Studies’ Conference Grant Programme. Additional funding was provided by the Embassy of Israel in Serbia as well as the Hungarian Cultural Center Collegium Hungaricum in Belgrade.

 

Event Rationale

The issues the conference is designed to address are the following: status of Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities in the Habsburg and Ottoman territories; types of cultural contacts between the two communities in this period; how historical changes affected their cultures and the contacts between them; differences between patterns of Ashkenazi and Sephardi integration/acculturation; the Yugoslav framework of Ashkenazi-Sephardi communication; shifts in identity concepts and images; new approaches to inter-Jewish communication and extra-Jewish perceptions; the meaning of the Ashkenazi-Sephardi historical encounter in the past and today, in the Western Balkans, Europe and Israel. The event is designed to provide public exposure to Jewish Studies and encourage the establishment of a regional network in the field of Jewish Studies.

 

Event Report

The conference was opened by co-organizers Prof. Krinka Vidaković-Petrov and Dr. Katja Šmid, who gave brief information on the latter and expressed special gratitude to the EAJS and the Institute for Literature and Art, as well as other institutions supporting this academic endeavor. Dr. Bojan Jović (Director of the Institute for Literature and Arts), Dr. Ruben Fuks (President of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Serbia) and Jovan Krstić (Vice-President of the Jewish Community of Belgrade) greeted the participants and attending audience (altogether around ninety persons were present at the opening ceremony) in the full Ceremonial Hall of the Belgrade Jewish Community, highlighting the importance of scholarly research of the topic.

The conference brought together a total of 33 participants from 12 countries (Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, Austria, USA, Germany, Poland, Israel). It was structured in 8 panels/sessions.

In coordination with the EAJS an additional panel titled “Regional Network of Jewish Studies: Discussion”, introduced at a later stage of planning, was integrated into the conference. The conference itself provided a rationale for this final panel that discussed possible ways of responding to the need for better communication, cooperation, and organization of scholars focused on Jewish studies in South-Eastern Europe. The wide range of topics elaborated in papers presented at the conference as well as the vibrant discussion that accompanied them highlighted the basic premises of Jewish Studies in South-Eastern Europe: the impossibility of isolating the region from adjacent areas (Central Europe, Italy, Turkey), the need for multilingual skills, the benefits of an interdisciplinary approach and the need of intensifying cooperation among specialized scholars. These premises provided the rationale for the discussion on the “Regional Network of Jewish Studies”.

The first panel was opened by the presentation “Sisters and Strangers: Sephardi and Ashkenazi Women in the Western Balkans” by Prof. Harriet Pass Freidenreich (Temple University, Philadelphia, USA) dealing with a neglected topic – the role of women in the process leading from tradition to modernization, from parallel action of Sephardi and Ashkenazi women to emancipation, interaction, and joint activities, especially highlighting the issues of education and religion. Dr. Milan Koljanin (Institute for Contemporary History, Belgrade, Serbia) discussed the “New Patriotism or ‘Yugoslavization’ of the Jews in Yugoslavia (1918-1941)” in view of the changes that ensued from the establishment of the Yugoslav political, economic and cultural framework in 1918, the development of a new Yugoslav ideology, issues of dual nationality, nationalism, Zionism, and the impact of these factors on the self-perception and identity of the two Jewish groups interacting within the joint Jewish community and with the Yugoslav multicultural environment. Dr. Jasmina Huber (Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Germany) presented a paper titled “How many Changes Can Tradition Tolerate? Singing and Prayer in the Jewish Community of Belgrade Facing the Challenges of Today”. She drew a distinction between tradition (embedded in the community, a collective body) and neo-tradition (frequently promoted by individuals introducing innovation that may or may not become accepted as “traditional”) in the musicological aspect of the religious domain. Dr. Huber highlighted the process whereby Ashkenazi elements became dominant in Belgrade, indicating how the influence of the Viennese model was mediated by Sarajevo, and how the education/training of contemporary rabbis of Belgrade contributed to the introduction of Israeli musical culture into the Belgrade synagogue. The discussion that ensued dealt with issues regarding migrations, generational differences, the existence of “Yugoslav Jews” in Austria-Hungary prior to the establishment of Yugoslavia, the challenges of globalization.

The second panel dealt with Medieval, Early Modern and Modern Periods. Dr. Janez Premk (Jewish Archive of Slovenia) presented his research on “Encounters of the Medieval Jewish Exiles from Slovenia with Sepharad in the Eastern Adriatic”. He focused on the Medieval Jewish community of Maribor (Slovenia), the persecution in the 15th c. and their migration to the Eastern Adriatic, especially the port of Split, where the Maribor Ashkenazi Jews established good interaction with the local Sephardi Jews. The presentation “Contextualizing Ladino Merchants’ Documents from Early Modern Ragusa” by MA candidate Matthew Dudley (Yale University, USA) focused on Mediterranean trade routes involving Ragusa (Dubrovnik) and the cluster of Ladino sources (16-18th c.) housed in the rich Ragusan archives. He specifically dealt with several documents dating from 1582, indicating possible Sephardi-Ashkenazi joint activities, but also highlighting the problems of deciphering and interpreting these documents due to usage of multiple scripts, Portuguese lexical elements and various transcription systems. PhD candidate Zsuzsana Toronyi (Hungarian Jewish Museum, Budapest) presented a paper titled “’And the Pomegranates Bud Forth?’ The Stories Behind a Ceremonial Object Preserved in the Hungarian Jewish Museum”. The enigmatic museum item she described reflects the complex Ashkenazi and Sephardi migrations from the European north and the Balkan south intersecting in Budapest as well as the sparsely documented role of the Sephardi community in Pest. The closing discussion indicated how all the refugees from Maribor, although not belonging to the same family, became known as the Morpurgos, and brought about new information on some branches of this “family” (in Venice and other places); there were suggestions on possible interpretations of the Ragusan documents based on linguistic and transcription parameters as well as questions on the presence of Ashkenazim in 17th c. Ragusa; regarding the enigmatic museum item there were comments dealing with the Sephardim in Hungary and their Balkan connections.

In the third panel there was a change in the Program: Dr. G. Abramac (from Zagreb, Croatia) cancelled her participation, so the presentation of Dr. K. Šmid was moved from Panel 5 to Panel 3. The first speaker, PhD candidate Martin Stechauner (University of Vienna, Austria) discussed “Vienna: A Cultural Contact Zone Transforming Sephardic Jewry on the Balkans”, focusing on the Sephardic press as a domain of public communication within the Sephardic community in a Central European environment in close contact with the Balkans, with special emphasis on Sephardic “separatism”, the impact of the Sephardic Haskala and press in Vienna on the Balkan Sephardim, monolingual and multilingual paradigms. Prof. Krinka Vidaković-Petrov (Institute for Literature and Art, Belgrade, Serbia) in “A Tale of Three Towns: Belgrade, Zemun, Pančevo” focused on Sephardi-Ashkenazi contacts in three towns on the centuries long border towns Belgrade (Ottoman) and Zemun and Pančevo (Austrian), the impact of shifting of borders, different legal status, migrations, interaction between the two groups, and identified unknown Judeo-Spanish texts from Zemun and Pančevo: a newspaper, folkloric items (folksongs and proverbs) and modern texts (among them a rare example of the travelogue genre). Dr. Katja Šmid (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel) analyzed “The Ashkenazim in Ladino Works Written by Ya’acov Moshe Hay Altarats”, contextualized her topic by discussing the development of Hebrew and Ladino printing in 19th c Belgrade, the scope of publications, the role of subscribers, focusing on allusions to the Ashkenazim in the works of Altarats and his interpretation of the identity of the Jewish nation. The discussion, comments and questions were related to the issue of sources and their accessibility, the role of printing and the Sephardic press, and Sephardic attitudes towards the Ashkenazim.

The fourth panel was opened by Dr. Alexandra Twardowska (Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun, Poland) whose topic “In Search of a Common Identity? Collaboration of Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews within Cultural and Political Organizations in Bosnia until 1941” moved attention from the Danube route (Vienna, Belgrade, Zemun, Pančevo) to Sarajevo. She indicated that the first phase of Sephardi-Ashkenazi contact in Sarajevo highlighted differences between the two groups and announced relations of both convergence and divergence. However, organizations active in the 20th c. such as La Benevolencija as well as newspapers such as Jevrejski glas sought to forge unity and support Zionism, despite the polemics initiated by the “Sephardic movement” that voiced a complaint regarding Ashkenazi domination in the Zionist movement. PhD candidate Miloš Damjanović (University of Priština, Kosovska Mitrovica, Serbia) discussed “Sephardim and Ashkenazim in Kosovo and Metohija between the Two World Wars (1918-1941) – Parallel Coexistence”, pointing out that the substantially more numerous Sephardic community existed apart from the reduced number of Ashkenazim dispersed in small towns, that there was a social distinction between them (the Sephardim being mainly small merchants, craftsmen and bankers, while the Ashkenazim were medical doctors, surveyors, judges, army officers), and that their direction of migration was divergent (emigration of Sephardim versus immigration of Ashkenazim). Dr. Sofija Grandakovska (independent researcher, Skopje, Macedonia) tackled in her presentation “Jews in Ottoman Macedonia: When the Messianic Idea of Zion Meets Secularism” the complex issue of Macedonian Jews, predominantly Sephardim (the biggest community being in Bitola) and the question of how to read Zion in the last period of Ottoman rule, the secularization of education (begun by the Alliance Israélite Universelle) and the competing interests in the region (Young Turks Revolution, Greek and Slavic nationalism) in times of radical change, highlighting the attitude of Dimitar Vlahov towards Jewish issues raised in the Turkish Parliament.

The first speaker of the fifth panel was Dr. Simona Delić (Institute of Ethnology and Folklore, Zagreb, Croatia) whose topic “Golden Age Ballad in Zagreb” dealt with her field work, the collection of the last remnants of Sephardic ballads in a predominantly Ashkenazi environment, the identification of collected fragments and interpretation of their semantic aspects and the relationship of some of them to Golden Age Spanish literature. Prof. Rudolf Klein (Szent Istvan University, Budapest, Hungary) spoke on “The Convergence of Sephardi and Ashkenazi Funerary Art in the Balkans in the 19th and 20th Centuries”. He contextualized Jewish funerary art of this period regarding social, gender and religious aspects manifested in the morphology of cemeteries, pointed out general differences between Sephardic and Ashkenazi cemeteries, identified “Orientalism” as the main Sephardic influence, highlighting the influence of Slavic folklore and Central European culture, commenting the examples of the cemeteries in Belgrade, Sarajevo and Bucharest. In the presentation “Influence and Adoption of Central European Ashkenaz Funerary Monument Forms in the Belgrade Sepharad Community’s Cemetery Space in the End of the 19th and the Beginning of the 20th Century” PhD candidate Vuk Dautović (University of Belgrade, Serbia) focused his detailed analysis on the Sephardic cemetery in Belgrade, identifying specific elements of Ashkenazi influence in Sephardic sepulchral architecture and emblems, in the context of intensified cultural communication between the two communities within the framework of the general shift of cultural models in Serbia. The discussion was related to the issue of folklore collection and interpretation, the distinction between Ashkenazi and Slavic influences in funerary art, how certain tombstone elements (texts, emblems, photographs) reflect these influences in funerary culture.

The sixth panel was dedicated to linguistic studies. Dr. Ivana Vučina-Simović (University of Kragujevac, Serbia) and Dr. Jelena Filipović (University of Belgrade, Serbia) presented the paper “Sephardim and Ashkenazim in the Belgrade Linguistic Landscape” offering a socio-linguistic analysis of language in public spaces (including signs in vivo, graffiti and stencils), its symbolic role, the positioning of the two communities, diachronic shifts, ethnolinguistic vitality in multilingual settings, contrasting Sephardic and Ashkenazi examples that also manifest the distribution of power in the Jewish cultural geography of Belgrade. Prof. David Bunis (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel) in his presentation “Ashkenazi Literature in Judezmo Translation, Sephardic Literature in Yiddish Translation: Some Sociolinguistic Notes” focused on a selection of 19th c. texts (originals and translations) in the context of distinct Jewish subcultures, translations of various types of texts (religious, historical, fiction, socialist writing), literary contact (Sephardic authors impacted by Yiddish authors through translations), specific traits of translations (importation of whole words to fill in terminological voids in Judezmo and Hebrew), and types of interaction (through the written word, physical interaction of groups, face to face contact). In his presentation “Writing in Tongues: Translating into Judezmo or What it means to Translate in a Minority Language” Prof. Michael Studemund Halévy (Institute for the History of the Jews in Germany, Hamburg, Germany) indicated that Judezmo and Yiddish functioned as minority languages lacking official status. He interpreted a detailed statistical presentation of translations to Judezmo identifying factors impacting them, he explained why Judezmo literature can be considered as a literature of translation and highlighted the importance of quantifying and qualifying data pertaining to Judezmo translations. The panel was concluded by a vivid discussion about the importance of the linguistic landscape regarding Jewish monuments and sights in Serbia and other surrounding countries, and the involvement of Jewish (local community) and non-Jewish institutions (municipality, national tourism authority, etc.) in implementing/preserving of these signs in a minority language such as Judeo-Spanish and its translation.

The seventh panel was dedicated to literature. Dr. Željko Jovanović (University of Cambridge, UK) and Julie Scolnik (independent researcher, San Francisco, USA, absent) prepared a presentation on “The Spicy Side of Jewish Humour: Judeo-Spanish and Yiddish Tales of Sex and Scatology” based on tales (collected from Balkan informants and East European Ashkenazi informants) dealing with two topics: humour involving female transgression of social norms and the humour associated with the particular character of Djoha, touching also on the attitude of the speakers towards “dirty” or “salty” tales. The presentation of Dr. Dina Katan Ben Zion (independent researcher, Israel) “Sepharad and Ashkenaz in the ‘Golden Era’ of Jewish Literature in Former Yugoslavia – Insights and Perspectives in View of a Personal Experience” is based on her experience of being a scholar, writer and literary translator. Her analysis provided insights into the ‘Golden Age’ of Jewish literature in Yugoslavia (the period between the two World Wars), a time of cultural conflict and cooperation, oscillating between Zionism and the legitimacy of Diaspora existence, converging finally in the common literary language of both Sephardim and Ashkenazim (Serbian/Croatian), the exploration of Jewish identity, and the modern testing of new literary standards challenging tradition. PhD candidate Tsippy Levin Byron (independent researcher, Israel) presented a paper on “Elements of Sephardi/Ashkenazi Traditions in the Works of Natalia Ginzburg and David Albahari”. Her research highlighted several common semantic clusters in the works of Ginzburg (Venice) and Albahari (Belgrade): the role of women, difference in customs but awareness of common Jewish identity, feelings of detachment, their view of history and the relationship between faith, secularism and literature. The discussion highlighted literature as an expression and reflection of self-perception, identity issues, forms of transgression, the literary function of language and the relationship between traditional and modern literature.

The eighth panel, dedicated to art, was to feature two participants, one speaking on visual art and the other on music (the role of Belgrade Jews in the beginnings of jazz in Serbia), but the second speaker, M. Milovanović (independent researcher, Belgrade, Serbia), cancelled his participation. Prof. Nenad Makuljević (Department of Art, University of Belgrade, Serbia) spoke about “Jewish Identity in the Oeuvre of Leon Kojen” (1859-1934), an outstanding painter from the Belgrade Sephardic community, based on two preferential themes in his oeuvre: Joseph’s Dream and the Wandering Jew. Makuljević’s research suggests that the first theme, rare in works of Jewish painters, is associated with Kojen’s Sephardic background, while the second one, frequently represented in Western culture, is a reflection of Ashkenazi influence appearing during and after Kojen’s studies in Munich. The discussants drew attention to the presence of the Joseph’s Dream theme in Judeo-Spanish poetry from the mid-19th c and plays performed in Balkan Sephardic communities, to more information on the painter’s relationship with the well-known Davičo family, and also to the fact that Kojen’s paintings had been featured on the walls of the Belgrade Jewish Community Ceremonial hall (the venue of the conference), but were destroyed during the Nazi bombing of Belgrade in 1941.

 

Concluding panel: Discussion and establishment of a Network for South-Eastern European Jewish Studies

During the concluding panel Regional Network of Jewish Studies: Discussion, supported by the EAJS to discuss the potential creation of such a regional network, the Network for South-Eastern European Jewish Studies was founded. The discussion is reflected in the minutes (taken by M. Dudley).

Seven persons were selected to attend the panel, but two of them (Maria Fragkou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece and Jonna Rock, Humboldt University Berlin, Germany) cancelled their participation a week before the event, and finally, five invited speakers spoke about the prospects of the proposed network: Benedetto Ligorio, Sapienza University of Rome (Italy); Irina Ognyanova, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia (Bulgaria); Jolanta Sujecka, University of Warsaw (Poland); Melita Švob, Research and Documentation Center CENDO, Zagreb (Croatia); and Bojan Mitrović, University of Trieste (Italy). The panel was attended by around forty interested colleagues.

The participants of the discussion agreed on the name Network for South Eastern European Jewish Studies and decided to use English as the language of communication. It was suggested that the Network should have an Advisory board, but no names were suggested in the discussion, a task to be addressed at the next panel of this kind.

The goal of this Network is to identify and connect scholars of various disciplines in the region and beyond with an interest in the history and culture of the Jews in South-Eastern Europe, and also to function as a network for academics with a general interest in Jewish Studies working in the region. There was a suggestion to look for candidates for the network on preexisting networks of academic institutions and associations as well as on those of the Jewish communities from South-Eastern European cities and abroad. The main goals and plans of the Network are to promote cooperation among academics, to encourage the coordination and organization of the conferences, seminars, courses, colloquia, workshops, and to support publications and databases dedicated to Jewish Studies in the South-Eastern Europe.

The participants decided to pursue further networking through organizing panels on Jewish topics in South Eastern Europe on the occasion of other conferences dealing with Jewish studies in the region and beyond (for example at the 17^th World Congress in Jewish Studies in Jerusalem in August 2017, and at the 11^th EAJS Congress in Jewish Studies in Krakow in July 2018).

After the conclusion of the panel a Facebook page Network for South Eastern European Jewish Studies was created to build a network on-line. This is an open group to be joined by interested scholars upon invitation and will help in communication among them together with the following (already existing) email address: southeasternetwork@gmail.com.

 

Accompanying program

In the accompanying program, two 25-minute documentary films were screened: “The Synagogues of Belgrade” and “The Jewish Cemeteries of Belgrade” (donated by authors and volunteers of the Belgrade Jewish Community J. Raković, M. Mentović and Z. Pantelić).

The Museum of Genocide Victims in Belgrade donated copies of their publications on the Holocaust in Belgrade, the Serbian-Israeli colloquium on the Holocaust and the Museum’s anniversary edition.

The conference was wrapped up by a visit to the Jewish Historical Museum hosted by Museum director Vojislava Radovanović.

The photographs documenting the conference will be accessible on an internet link.

Co-organizers Krinka Vidaković-Petrov and Katja Šmid spoke about the conference in an interview given to Radio Belgrade.

 

Summary

The theme of the conference is an unexplored field as most of the existing research has focused on Sephardic studies, few on Ashkenazi studies, and even fewer on the relationship between Sephardim and Ashkenazim in the Western Balkans. The conference was planned to respond to this challenge which it did. The time frame was limited to the period prior to World War Two because the inclusion of the Holocaust would have expanded the number of participants beyond our possibilities. Even so, the number of participants and topics exceeded the original limit, enriching the overall contribution of the conference to the elucidation of the main theme.

The conference brought together researchers from various disciplines (history, linguistics, literary studies, translation studies, history of art, musicology) providing a much needed interdisciplinary approach that illuminated the subthemes spelled out in the rationale. The geographical framework was the territory of the former Yugoslavia (Serbia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia) including adjacent regions (Austrian, Turkish, Italian, Bulgarian, Rumanian, Hungarian) as this historical and cultural space as a whole witnessed migrations, conflicts and cooperation among the multiethnic and multicultural protagonists of Western Balkan history, affecting especially the encounter and communication between the Sephardim and Ashkenazim.

The interaction and mutual influences between the two communities were explored regarding identity shifts, historical relations, language, the effects of translations (from Hebrew, German and Yiddish) on Judeo-Spanish, the public linguistic landscape, literature (written traditional, oral, modern, various genres such as ballads, tales, novels), religion, art (religious and secular), funerary customs and art (architecture, decorative elements), music, printing, periodical publications as public fora, community organizations (educational and cultural), education, economic activities, political backgrounds, status of women, all highlighting the diachronic process leading to change and shifts in cultural models and practices.

Public exposure and the choice of venue (Jewish Community of Belgrade) attracted an audience that actively participated in the discussion on points of special interest to them, providing information on some projects in Jewish studies members of the audience were engaged in.

The participation of academic researchers from a wide range of countries contributed to the discussion on how to promote Jewish Studies in the Western Balkans and establish a Network whose function would be to facilitate communication among them and stimulate joint activities and projects in various formats.

 

Planned outcomes and future projects

The conference lead to several new cooperations. Firstly, the establishment of the Network for South Eastern European Jewish Studies, the first step of which was the creation of a Facebook page to be used as a tool for registering scholars from the Western Balkans and beyond interested in this field of research. Secondly, the co-organizers Prof. Krinka Vidaković-Petrov and Dr. Katja Šmid agreed to commonly edit a volume that would assemble the conference papers. Thirdly, the joint organization of one or two panels for the conference of the World Union of Jewish Studies to be held in Jerusalem (2017) and the EAJS conference to be held in Krakow (2018).

 

The Conference Programme may be found here (pdf).

The Conference Poster may be found here (pdf).

The link to the website promoting the conference may be found here.

The link to the Facebook page of the Network for South Eastern European Jewish Studies may be found here.

 

Krinka Vidaković-Petrov

Katja Šmid

28th July 2016

 

EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2015/16

REPORT

Jewish Languages

Institute of Jewish Studies, UCL, 26th to 27th July 2016

Main organiser: Professor Mark Geller (Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, UCL)

Co-organiser: Dr Lily Kahn (Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, UCL)

 

The following report presents the original aims and rationale for the UCL Institute of Jewish Studies 2016 summer conference on Jewish Languages, a summary of the sessions, an outline of key themes and issues emerging from it, and a description of plans for the associated output. The conference organisers wish to express their gratitude to the EAJS for the generous funding which made the event possible.

 

1. Event rationale

The following is the original event abstract and rationale as proposed to the EAJS.

Event abstract

This conference is dedicated to the rich array of vernacular and written linguistic varieties other than Hebrew employed by Jews throughout history. Recently there has been a growing scholarly recognition of the significance of theoretical and descriptive research into these Jewish languages, including varieties with a long and in some cases substantial written tradition such as Aramaic, Yiddish, Judeo-Spanish, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Italian, Judeo-French, and Karaim, as well as less well attested, scantily documented, and primarily oral varieties such as Judeo-Berber, Judeo-Turkish, Jewish Hungarian, Jewish Russian, and Jewish secret languages. The conference will bring together established scholars who have conducted pioneering work on Jewish languages with younger researchers who are contributing to this emerging field of enquiry.

Description of the event

The conference will be a two-day event consisting of a series of five consecutive one-and-a-half- to two-hour panels of three or four speakers each. Each panel will be devoted to a key topic in the field of Jewish language and linguistics. The first two panels will be devoted to the grammatical characteristics of Jewish languages, addressing issues of morphology and syntax respectively. The third panel will be dedicated to lexemes and lexicography. The fourth panel will focus on script, palaeography, and writing. The fifth panel will consider the relationship between Jewish languages and identity. The conference will conclude with a roundtable discussion enabling participants to address themes arising from the presentations and to consider future research agendas.

Motivation for topic

The motivation for this topic is the increasing recognition of Jewish languages and linguistics as a significant emerging academic field. This heightened awareness is evidenced by the establishment in 2013 of Brill’s Journal of Jewish Languages, a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to theoretical and descriptive research into historical and present-day Jewish linguistic varieties, and by the forthcoming publication of two volumes devoted to Jewish languages, Brill’s Handbook of Jewish Languages (2015) and De Gruyter’s Jewish Languages: An International Handbook (2016). The conference will be a timely complement to these publications. It will appeal to Jewish Studies scholars with an interest in linguistic issues as well as to historical linguists, endangered language researchers, and members of the general public.

 

2. Summary and analysis of conference sessions

 The conference consisted of eight sessions spread over two days. Each session was comprised of one or two 45-minute papers, which allowed for relatively in-depth presentations and discussions. There were twelve speakers in total drawn from a pool of European scholars with expertise in a diverse range of Jewish languages. The session groupings were designed to bring to the fore the key themes arising from the various papers and to highlight a number of important topics in the field emerging from the speakers’ abstracts (i.e. the relationship between Jewish languages and sacred texts, Jewish vernacular traditions, cultural history of Jewish languages, contemporary Jewish languages, multilingualism and language contact, and literary production in Jewish languages). A presentation on the typology of Jewish languages was selected for the concluding session in order to situate the preceding talks within their broader theoretical context. Note that in order to make the most coherent programme possible through full exploitation of the links between speakers’ topics, the conference sessions differed somewhat from those proposed in the original event application.

In addition to the speakers, the conference (like all IJS events) was free and open to the public, and was attended by 55 audience members (according to the Eventbrite registration data). The organisers were very pleased that the conference was so well attended and that the event was able to offer high standards of scholarship while remaining accessible and relevant to the general public.

 

Session 1: Jewish languages and sacred texts

This session consisted of two papers, each addressing a different aspect of the relationship between Jewish languages and sacred texts. The first paper was delivered by Dr Alinda Damsma (Leo Baeck College, London), who presented a clear and insightful overview of the history of scholarship on Zoharic Aramaic. This began with the nineteenth- and early-twentieth century proposals by Gustav Dalman and Gershom Scholem that the language represented an artificial fusion of Eastern and Western dialects, a view that remained largely unchallenged until the 21st century when scholars such as Professor Ada Rapoport-Albert and others working within the framework of UCL’s five-year project on the language of the Zohar sought to revisit this notion and offer a more nuanced assessment of its composition. Dr Damsma 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. A lively Q & A session followed the presentation, including a discussion about whether the Aramaic of the Zohar can be considered a koiné, a topic which requires further study based on a larger sample of medieval Aramaic texts.

Dr Damsma’s contribution was complemented by a presentation by Professor Henryk Jankowski (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań) on translations of the Hebrew Bible into Karaim, a Turkic language variety used by the Karaite community in Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine. He gave a fascinating survey of Karaim Bible translations, which are all fragmentary but which reveal important information about Eastern European Karaite translation techniques. The translations are believed to have been conducted orally in the synagogue (in a similar method to that of Aramaic Targumim), and this is evident in the language of the written versions, which hints at a word-by-word rendition. Key translation strategies, which likewise often resemble those found in the Targumim, include addition of explanatory material; alterations of vocabulary without a specific Karaim equivalent; avoidance of anthropomorphism (e.g. ‘God’s power’ instead of ‘God’s hand’); and omissions (usually due to scribal error or uncertainty on the part of the translator). Professor Jankowski noted that these techniques, which have parallels not only in the Targum tradition but also in other Jewish languages such as Ladino, is very different to the translation tradition of Islamic texts into Turkic languages. The discussion session at the end of the presentation raised issues regarding the motivation for the avoidance of anthropomorphic expressions; the differences between Karaite and Islamic translations into Turkic languages; and the attempt to create a koiné for Karaim based on the Turkish standard.

 

Session 2: Cultural history of Jewish languages

This session was delivered by Dr Hilary Pomeroy (UCL), who gave a historical overview of the development of the Ladino (Judeo-Spanish/Judezmo) language and its associated literature and culture. This included a discussion of the linguistic differences that evolved between the language of the Jews following their expulsion from Spain and settlement in the Ottoman Empire and North Africa on the one hand, and Castilian Spanish on the other. Outside of a Spanish-speaking milieu, Ladino preserved archaic features that were subsequently lost from Castilian Spanish. (This is a feature commonly observed in Jewish languages, though the reasons for this differ from language to language.) An example of such an archaism is the use of a third person feminine singular pronoun as a polite second person form. Dr Pomeroy also discussed Ladino Bible translations, which exhibit some of the same techniques witnessed in the Karaim translations, such as highly literal renditions preserving Hebrew syntax (e.g. translating the Hebrew plural form מים ‘water’ with the Spanish plural ‘aguas’). Dr Pomeroy touched on the emergence of Ladino literature and then discussed the factors leading to the language’s decline, including the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, negative self-perception by speakers, the increasing dominance of French as a prestige language, and the decimation of speakers in the Holocaust. The session concluded with a discussion of Ladino in the present day: the language is in a critical condition, rarely spoken in the home or passed on to the younger generation, but scholarly efforts to promote it have led to a resurgence of interest with a variety of academic programmes and initiatives aimed at fostering research in the field.

 

Session 3: Jewish vernacular traditions

This session was opened by Dr Rachid Ridouane (CNRS, Paris), who provided an overview of the history, sociolinguistics, and linguistic structure of Jewish Berber, as spoken in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains. As very little is known about Jewish Berber, Dr Ridouane’s session was a particularly important one for the light it shed on this neglected Jewish linguistic variety. The session highlighted the long history of Jews in North Africa, discussed the various theories on the origin of the Berber Jews, and stressed the close and friendly relationship between Berber-speaking Jews and Muslims, with most elements of the culture shared between the two groups. Dr Ridouane used a transcription of a Berber Passover Haggadah to illustrate some of the distinctive features of Jewish Berber, which are most highly concentrated in the domain of phonology (including e.g. the merger of the phonemes /s/ and /ʃ/, which would be distinguished in non-Jewish Berber), but also include a Hebrew/Aramaic lexical component that has in some cases been incorporated into Berber syntax. Dr Ridouane illustrated the mutual intelligibility between Jewish and Muslim varieties of Berber with a video clip showing a Skype conversation between a Berber speaker in Israel and the son of an old friend from his home in Tinghir, Morocco. This high degree of mutual intelligibility prompted a discussion in the Q & A session regarding the degree to which a variety such as Jewish Berber can be defined as a distinct language.

The session was concluded with a presentation by Maria Maddalena Colasuonno (University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’), who provided a detailed survey of the phonological, morphosyntactic, and lexical characteristics of various Judeo-Italian spoken dialects from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as attested in written sources of different genres. Dr Colasuonno demonstrated that many of the Jewish dialects of Italian exhibit archaising features when compared to their co-territorial non-Jewish counterparts; for example, Judeo-Mantuan is thought to represent a pre-Lombardised dialect of Italian because of its use of features no longer attested in non-Jewish Mantuan (e.g. non as a negator instead of the bleached lexeme mia/miga). Other Jewish Italian dialects, such as Judeo-Roman, exhibit similar archaising trends, e.g. old preterite endings. These differences can be attributed to the fact that throughout much of the period in which these dialects developed, the Italian Jews lived in relative social isolation from speakers of the co-territorial non-Jewish dialects. The juxtaposition of Dr Colasuonno’s talk with Dr Ridouane’s was highly instructive as it illustrated the sociolinguistic variety found among vernacular Jewish languages: while Jewish Berber speakers enjoyed a close relationship and greater linguistic similarity with their non-Jewish neighbours, Jewish speakers of Italian dialects were often socially isolated from their non-Jewish counterparts and this is reflected in their language.

 

Session 4: Contemporary Jewish languages

This session was opened by Dr Helen Beer (UCL), who delivered an insightful presentation on the historical and contemporary marginalisation of Yiddish and the dichotomy between popular conceptions of the language and the reality of its rich and diverse literary and cultural legacy. Dr Beer gave an overview on the history of negative attitudes towards Yiddish, including the nineteenth-century disdain for the language by its own speakers and others as a corrupt and degenerate jargon; the hostility towards Yiddish in Mandate Palestine and the early years of the State of Israel, which included the banning of Yiddish newspapers and theatre productions and the boycotting and attacking of Yiddish actors; and the current dismissal of the language as nothing more than a vehicle for jokes and curses. She then contrasted these attitudes with a case study of the Tsisho school movement in interwar Poland, which served to illustrate the vibrancy of twentieth-century Yiddish-language cultural activity. Key features of Tsisho included a broad curriculum including biology and other sciences taught in Yiddish; the involvement of Yiddish literary figures in syllabus development; intensive pedagogical discussions; and a comprehensive teacher training programme including instruction in Yiddish language and literature, music, and pedagogical methodology. Key figures involved in the programme included well-known scholars and writers such as Max Weinreich, Avrom Reyzn, and Emanuel Ringlblum. Dr Beer finished the presentation with a call for the gap between popular conceptions (past and present) and the reality of Yiddish cultural diversity to be closed, and for preconceptions to be replaced with a more accurate and multi-layered understanding of the language and its contributions.

Dr Beer’s presentation was followed by an illuminating talk by Joshua Lebenswerd (Stockholm University) on the linguistic practices of present-day Swedish Jews. The presentation began with a sociolinguistic history of Jewish settlement in Sweden, which was overwhelmingly Yiddish-speaking both before and after World War II. It then turned to an examination of the linguistic switch that occurred in the 1950s when, after the establishment of the State of Israel, Swedish Jews began to replace their Ashkenazic pronunciation and postvernacular use of Yiddish vocabulary with Modern (Israeli) Hebrew pronunciation and vocabulary. Thus, for example, Yiddish expressions (e.g. gut yontef ‘happy holiday’) were replaced by their Modern Hebrew equivalents (e.g. ḥag sameaḥ). Today, Swedish Jews employ both Yiddish and Modern Hebrew lexis and pronunciation, but are likely to do so in different social settings, with Yiddish associated with informality and nostalgia, while Modern Hebrew is regarded as more formal, ‘correct’, and modern. Similarly, Yiddish is regarded as more of an in-group code, with speakers preferring to employ Modern Hebrew equivalents in conversation with non-Jewish speakers. The questions following the session focused on attempts to clarify the degree of difference in perception of Yiddish among older versus younger speakers, and whether speakers fluent in Yiddish would be more or less likely to regard the language as nostalgic; the consensus was that most speakers apart from the oldest living generation are not fluent in Yiddish, and that the attitudes expressed are rooted in a postvernacular relationship to the language.

 

Session 5: Multilingualism and Judeo-Arabic

The second day of the conference opened with a session comprised of two complementary presentations on codeswitching and multilingualism in medieval Judeo-Arabic. Dr Esther-Miriam Wagner (Woolf Institute and University of Cambidge) focused on contracts, letters, and other documents from the Cairo Genizah, whereas Dr Meira Polliack (Tel Aviv University) concentrated on literary texts. Both speakers emphasised the issue of dialect continua in Arabic, discussing the question of (as mentioned above in the case of Jewish Berber) whether Judeo-Arabic can be considered a distinct language. Dr Wagner pointed out that the question is a vexed one because in many cases there is no clear-cut distinction between Jewish forms of Arabic versus Christian and Muslim counterparts; instead, there may be other distinctions, such as urban vs. rural. Dr Polliack added that the situation varies tremendously depending on the historical and sociolinguistic setting, so that while e.g. there may be very little difference between the language of an urban twentieth-century Iraqi Jew and that of his or her Muslim and Christian neighbours, the situation can be very different in other periods and contexts. With respect to the Genizah, the first salient feature marking a given Arabic text as ‘Judeo-Arabic’ is the use of Hebrew script. Dr Polliack pointed out that the use of Hebrew script was often the primary factor prompting medieval users to regard the language as ‘Jewish’, regardless of the presence or lack of any distinctive phonological, morphosyntactic, or lexical features that they may have. In addition, Judeo-Arabic texts may exhibit considerable linguistic differences from non-Jewish varieties of the language, but (as in the case of many other Jewish languages), there is a continuum depending on the genre and intended audience. Thus, Hebrew vocabulary is much more commonly attested in documents intended for a Jewish audience, and Aramaic is restricted to certain specific genres (legal and magical). The discussion following the sessions focused on questions of the appropriate labels for a linguistic variety such as Judeo-Arabic, with speakers asked for their opinion on Benjamin Hary’s term ‘religiolect’ (which they supported, but which has not gained widespread currency).

 

Session 6: Jewish languages in contact

This session was delivered by Dr Szonja Komoróczy (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest), who gave a presentation on the linguistic shift that Hungarian Jews underwent in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries whereby Yiddish was gradually abandoned in favour of German and Hungarian. This shift took place in several stages in different parts of the country. In the early nineteenth century Jews in Budapest and other regions with the German and cultural and linguistic sphere of influence began to substitute written Yiddish for Judeo-German (i.e. German in Hebrew characters) and to replace their spoken Yiddish with German. This was particularly common in the Reform community. Simultaneously, some rabbis in Reform congregations began delivering their sermons in Hungarian rather than Yiddish. While the use of Judeo-German and German persisted for nearly a hundred years, by the late nineteenth century spoken and written Hungarian spread rapidly throughout the Hungarian Jewish population, including the Orthodox, and while Yiddish continued to be employed in informal contexts into the twentieth century, it was largely replaced by Hungarian in this period. However, in the decades after it ceased to be a vernacular traces of Yiddish continued to be attested in the speech of Hungarian Jews. Yiddish was often associated with particular social contexts, frequently appearing in satirical writing and in ironic settings, with code-switching and code-mixing featured prominently. The session raised questions as to whether recent years have seen a similar phenomenon to the one exhibited in the speech of Swedish Jews whereby speakers have started to replace traditional Yiddish lexical items with their Modern (Israeli) Hebrew equivalent. Dr Komoróczy replied that the Hungarian situation appears to be different than the Swedish one, and that Yiddish terms continue to be used as opposed to Modern Hebrew ones.

 

Session 7: Literary production in Jewish languages

This session was delivered by Dr Andrea Schatz (King’s College London), who presented a detailed history of the early modern Yiddish translation of the tenth-century Hebrew chronicle Yosippon, a popular adaptation of some of Josephus’ works including Jewish War. The Yiddish translation of Yosippon is an instructive case study of the reception of historical writing in early modern Ashkenaz. The text was translated by Michael Adam, a Jewish convert to Christianity; it was first published in Zürich in 1546 and was subsequently reissued in a number of editions. Dr Schatz juxtaposed Michael Adam’s Yosippon with his Yiddish translation of the Pentateuch, and provided a comparison of the different early modern editions of the work, illustrating the ways in which changes to the introduction, the choice to include or omit the Hebrew introduction, and the presentation of his commentary reflected shifting linguistic and literary standards. The presentation prompted the question of whether Michael Adam’s translation was affected by his conversion to Christianity, and of whether any comparative studies had been done on the Latin and German translations of the text, which were conducted in a similar period to the Yiddish one. This is a subject on which little work has been done, and which requires further investigation.

 

Session 8: Typology of Jewish languages

The final session in the conference placed the two days’ discussions within a broader theoretical framework by outlining a number of key considerations regarding the typology of Jewish languages. Professor Frank Alvarez-Pereyre (CNRS, Paris) provided a thorough overview of the history of Jewish interlinguistics, beginning with the work of pioneering mid-twentieth-century scholars Max Weinreich and Salomo Birnbaum, who paved the way for comparative study of Jewish diaspora languages as a distinct field of enquiry, and continuing with the work of later scholars such as Joshua Fishman. He then presented a number of key typological points which should be taken into account in the analysis of Jewish languages; these include the use of the Hebrew script; the presence of a Hebrew/Aramaic lexical component; archaising morphosyntactic features; and mutual intelligibility. This session provided a fitting end to the conference in that it drew together and contextualised many of the issues which had been raised over the course of the event.

 

3. Summary of significant themes

The conference papers highlighted six major themes which were presented by Dr Lily Kahn in a closing address following the final session. The first of these is the issue of co-territoriality. While two of the most prominent Jewish languages, Yiddish and Ladino, have been isolated geographically from their non-Jewish sister languages throughout most of their history, this is actually an unusual phenomenon among Jewish languages in general; instead, it is much more common for such language varieties to be co-territorial with their non-Jewish counterparts. Apart from Yiddish and Ladino, among the languages discussed during the conference, Polish/Lithuanian Karaim stood out as being the only other example of a non-co-territorial Jewish language. The remaining languages (e.g. Judeo-Arabic, Jewish Berber, and Judeo-Italian), are more typical in that they have been spoken and (where relevant) written in the same geographical region as the corresponding non-Jewish sister varieties.

The second important theme flows from this issue of co-territoriality: with few exceptions, the Jewish languages examined in the conference are or were completely, or almost completely, mutually intelligible with their non-Jewish counterparts. Nevertheless, the Jewish varieties invariably exhibit some distinctive features which allow them to be labelled as such; these may be phonological, as in the case of Jewish Berber and some of the Judeo-Italian dialects, or morphosyntactic, as in Judeo-Italian. In most cases the Jewish varieties contain certain archaising features, which is particularly noteworthy because the reasons for this vary from language to language: in some cases (e.g. Judeo-Italian) archaisms may reflect a history of social isolation from the co-territorial non-Jewish community, whereas in others (e.g. Ladino) they are a function of geographic isolation. The languages also exhibit lexical differences from their non-Jewish counterparts, most prominently in their use of a Hebrew/Aramaic component. Despite these distinctive features, the overwhelming tendency towards mutual intelligibility raises the question (on which Dr Wagner, Dr Polliack, and Professor Alvarez-Pereyre touched in their talks) of whether and to what extent these Jewish varieties can be termed ‘languages’.

The third theme arising from the talks is the issue of script as a marker of linguistic identity. Often, as Dr Polliack noted in her discussion of Judeo-Arabic, the use of Hebrew script has been regarded as the defining feature that has historically made speakers and writers perceive a language as ‘Jewish’, and indeed, most languages traditionally categorised as ‘Jewish’ have been written in a form of the Hebrew script. However, as the conference highlighted, this is not always a necessary precondition for a language to be regarded as ‘Jewish’; this was clearly demonstrated in the case of Berber, Italian, and Swedish as spoken by Jews, in which we can see distinctive Jewish features despite the absence of Hebrew script.

The fourth theme is the prevalence of multilingualism and layering of elements in successive Jewish linguistic varieties. A salient early example of this is the way in which Aramaic, the first Jewish language apart from Hebrew, itself became an element of subsequent Jewish languages (e.g. Yiddish, Judeo-Arabic, and Karaim) when it fell out of vernacular use. More recently, this pattern has recurred, with postvernacular Yiddish becoming an important element of the speech of Swedish and Hungarian Jews. In some cases, different Jewish languages may be incorporated synchronically into a new speech variety and employed in different social or generic settings: for example, in Judeo-Arabic, Aramaic features more prominently in legal writings, while in modern Jewish Swedish, Yiddish and Modern Hebrew are used in different social registers. The use of Jewish elements may also shift depending on the language of the interlocutor or correspondent: thus, writers of Judeo-Arabic letters tend to reduce their use of Hebrew vocabulary in correspondence with non-Jews, while Swedish Jews eschew Yiddish in favour of Modern Hebrew when speaking with non-Jews due to the belief that their audience is more likely to understand the latter.

The fifth theme is the relationship between Jewish languages and sacred texts. This can take the form of a) new sacred texts composed in Jewish languages and b) the translation of Hebrew sacred texts into Jewish vernaculars. In both cases Aramaic set the trend for this type of engagement with sacred texts. As Dr Damsma showed in her talk, Aramaic was a key vehicle of Jewish linguistic creativity in the composition of the Targums, Zohar, and other mystical texts. Likewise, the evolution of the Targums was rooted in a desire for the Hebrew Bible to be made available to the people in their vernacular; as Professor Jankowski demonstrated, this tradition continued to proliferate long after Aramaic itself ceased to be a Jewish vernacular, and many of the same Targumic techniques are visible in Karaim Bible translations (as well as in other Jewish languages such as Ladino).

The final theme emerging from the conference is that there is still a lack of wider understanding and need for further investigation regarding the position, history, nature, and role of the languages of the Jewish Diaspora. This is exemplified perhaps most tellingly in the fact that Yiddish, the largest Jewish language in terms of speaker numbers and diversity of literary production, is still the subject of much misinformation and stereotyping (an issue addressed by Dr Beer), and that its literary riches (which Dr Beer and Dr Schatz touched on) remain very much under-examined. It is hoped that this conference, along with the associated publication (see below), will contribute in some measure towards a heightened awareness of the importance of Jewish languages as a field of enquiry, and that the scholars involved in the event will continue to engage with each other on the issues raised in this summary.

 

4. Planned outcomes

Revised and edited versions of the conference papers will be published in the Brill series of IJS conference proceedings. Conference participants were informed of this during the event and the organisers will be in touch with them over the coming months with further details. It is hoped that this volume will serve as a useful resource for scholars and students of Jewish languages and that it will make a meaningful contribution to the growing body of research on this exciting field.

 

5. Conference programme and other materials

See attached PDFs for the following:

• Conference programme
• Conference flyer
• Abstracts and speaker biographies

 

Lily Kahn

Mark Geller

31st July 2016

EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2015/16

REPORT

Talmud and Christianity: Rabbinic Judaism after Constantine

Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, 26th to 28th June 2016

Main organiser: Dr Holger Zellentin, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Nottingham

Co- organisers: Dr Daniel Weiss, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, and Dr Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

 

The conference titled Talmud and Christianity: Rabbinic Judaism after Constantine, was held from 26th to 28th June 2016 at the University of Cambridge, and co-organized by Michal Bar-Asher Siegal (Ben Gurion University of the Negev), Daniel Weiss (University of Cambridge), and Holger Zellentin (University of Nottingham). With the help of a generous grant of the EAJS, which was matched by a contribution of the Faculty of Divinity of the University of Cambridge, we were able to bring together a total of 19 participants from the UK, mainland Europe, Israel, and the United States.

 

1) Event rationale.

The idea behind the international conference was to bring together leading and fresh voices in Talmudic studies and select experts in Roman and Persian Christianity in order to explore the complex relationship of both emulation and enmity between the rabbis and their Christian neighbours. It was our hope that a new look at the Talmud and Christianity, would synergize three of the most central recent developments in the study of rabbinic Judaism: our more precise understanding of the indebtedness of the Babylonian to the Palestinian Talmud; our growing sense of the editorial artistry that gave both Talmudim their present form; and a better understanding how closely both Talmudim, respectively, reflect the early Byzantine and Sasanian culture in which they evolved.

 Judged by the success of the event, the time proved right for a synthesizing and collaborative conversation, enabling scholars to come together in order to assess and draw attention to relations between the Talmudim and the surrounding Christian culture, textuality, and theology. In broader scholarship on Late Antiquity, increasing attention has been given to cultural context and literary interactions. This conference enabled a ‘returning of the gaze’, illuminating important new elements of Jewish/Christian relations as well as of classical rabbinic Judaism itself. Working towards a new understanding of how to read rabbinic Judaism in light of the Christian elements of the rabbis’ Palestinian and Sasanian context, the venture proved highly stimulating.

 

2) The papers and the ensuing discussion.

We had invited contributions to four main topics, dedicated to exploring various aspects of the complex subject matter. The first topic was to seek to re-evaluate whether and how the Palestinian Talmud (along with the Amoraic Midrashim) reflects the Christianiziation of the Roman Empire from both a cultural and political point of view. The second topic suggested a focus on the encounter between the rabbis of the Babylonian rabbis and their Persian Christian neighbours. The third topic asked for a focus on how the Babylonian Talmud, in reworking of Palestinian Talmudic traditions, adopts and adepts Palestinian rabbinic responses to Christianity to fit its own Persian Christian context. The fourth and final topic sought to formulate a new synthesis on how the rabbis relate to Christianity, and what this can tell us about rabbinic culture as a whole. The scope of many of the papers presented not only addressed all of these four topics in various ways, but also offered insightful ways of combining them. The individual papers had been pre-circulated; the participants then summarized them efficiently (in 15-20 minutes), leaving 25-30 minutes of intensive discussion for each of them:

 

Moulie Vidas (Princeton University)

“The Emergence of Talmudic Culture: Overview of a Work in Progress”

This paper explored ways in which (mainly Palestinian) Talmudic approaches to the status of previous authorities differed from earlier rabbinic approaches to this same issue. In particular, the Talmud sought to attribute a consistent set of views to earlier named rabbis, and also began to make use of authoritative traditions—without, however, actively being committed to the positions put forth by those earlier authorities. The paper argued that this approach could be fruitfully compared to the approach of Christian figures such as Jerome, who could put forth the position of someone like Origen in an expository manner, while also being willing to criticize Origen’s view. Jerome, like the approach displayed in the Talmud, marked a transition into a mode of thought that could make use of, without having to be committed to, earlier authorities.

The ensuing discussion focused on whether the shift in rabbinic culture explored in the paper can be said to be a universal or at least widespread way in which traditions develop in relation to previous authorities, or whether it is more unique to rabbinic and/or Christian cultures (a view strongly defended by the presenter). In particularly, how might it relate to contemporary non-Christian Greco-Roman models of authorship?

 

Catherine Hezser (School of Oriental and African Studies)

“The Creation of the Talmud and Apophthegmata Patrum as Monuments to the Rabbinic and Monastic Movements in Early Byzantine Times”

This paper laid out a variety of ways in which fruitful comparisons might be explored between the Talmud, in the context of rabbinic culture, and the Apophthegmata Patrum, in the context of Christian culture. Among various elements, the fact that both texts contain a polyphony of voices, in a format that is fluid and open to development over time, was emphasized.

The discussion raised queries about whether, despite the similarities between the texts, an important difference might lie in the fact that the Talmudic texts appear to be more deliberately edited and ordered, whereas the Apophthegmata Patrum tends to have a more anthological character. There was also discussion of whether it would make most sense to contextualize the Monastic movement in relation to the Origenist rather than Chalcedonian debate (as had been proposed by the presenter). In addition, there was discussion of whether the themes presented in the paper would benefit from being put into more explicitly relation with some of the previous work on the Talmud and Christian monasticism (esp. Bar Asher-Siegal, as well as Zellentin and others) mentioned by the presenter.

 

Philip Alexander (University of Manchester)

“Rabbinic Political Theology after Constantine: Some Preliminary Observations”

The paper highlighted the central place that Rome held within the rabbinic understanding, as displayed in Palestinian rabbinic texts. While viewing the Roman Empire as in one sense divinely ordained, and as the final empire before the coming of the messiah, the texts also affirmed a need for Israel to withdraw from involvement in the empire itself. The paper posited that Augustine displayed an attitude similar to the rabbinic position, in also advocating a critical and largely withdrawn attitude toward the empire.

The discussion focused on the fact that Augustine, while offering critical points of view, simultaneously affirms Christian involvement in the power-workings of the Roman Empire, and so, while still critical, cannot be as easily described as withdrawn. It was also emphasized that Augustine’s City of God is a multi-faceted and potentially contradictory work, with seemingly different stances often manifesting themselves. In particular, the fact that the “two cities” are not only Rome and the Church per se, but also their invisible and eschatological extensions, makes it difficult to pin down a clear uniform position from the text. In addition, it was suggested that a parallel comparison, in the Sassanian context, could be drawn by examining Aphrahat alongside the attitudes displayed in the Babylonian Talmud.

 

Marton Ribary (University of Manchester)

“Comparative Talmud Research beyond the Influence Paradigm”

This paper sought to argue that fruitful comparison between rabbinic legal material and Christian-Roman legal codes could be aided by abandoning a simple notion of influence in order to account for similarities between the two. Without this restrictive framing, it is possible to uncover illuminating contrasts between, for instance, the Institutes of Justinian, and the Palestinian Talmud, for instance, in the fact that the former assigns value to previous legal concepts, but not to previous legal wording, while the latter places stronger emphasis on the significance of previous legal concepts along with actual wording.

Questions were raised concerning the proposed late dating of the Yerushalmi; a more standard earlier dating would potentially make comparison to the redacted version of the 6th-century Institutes less straightforward. In addition, there was discussion of the fact that, even if the paradigm of influence was set aside, there would still be a basis for assuming that a provincial minority culture would reflect aspects of the dominant imperial culture.

 

Matthias Morgenstern (Universität Tübingen)

“Reflections on Edom and Edom’s Mother in Bereshit Rabba”

The paper’s argument focused on the use of the term ‘Matrona’ in Genesis Rabbah, and the way in which the application or non-application of this term to Sarah and Rebecca might have significance for assessing rabbinic conceptions of and relation to Christian Rome, represented by the figure of Edom/Esau.

The possibility was raised that ‘Matrona’ in the rabbinic context might not be a proper name, but rather a general name for a married woman. Inversely, attention was drawn to various Christian martyrs whose personal name was ‘Matrona.’ A suggestion was raised that comparison might be made between Genesis Rabbah and Tertullian, in that both present Jacob as the ‘first born’ despite the fact that he emerges second in the birth process.

 

Tali Artman-Partok (University of Cambridge)

“How to kill the political parrhesia without killing the political”

The paper discussed the transformation of the notion of parrhesia in the rabbinic context, arguing that the later use of the term ‘parrhesia’ to mean ‘in public’ can in fact be understood as in fact maintaining a political dimension, whereas earlier scholarship had seen the term as having lost its previous political dimension. The paper argued that rabbinic conceptuality understood acts performed in the presence of ten Jews as being acts performed ‘in the presence of the king’, i.e., God, so that the minyan becomes not simply a religious gathering, but a political or theo-political assembly. The paper also proposed a contrast between Christian martyr narratives and rabbinic martyr narratives: in the former, those who are punished by the human king are praised by the divine king, and vice-versa, whereas in the latter, those who are punished by the human king are also those who have sinned before God, so that one is not punished by a human king unless one is also deserving of punishment before God.

Discussants raised methodological issues concerning tracing the word ‘parrhesia’, in contrast to tracing the concept of parrhesia even when the specific word is not used. Comparison was made to criticisms of Rosen-Zvi’s study of “goy”. In addition, Dov Weiss’s doctoral work on the notion of parrhesia was raised as relevant to the present study. The point was also made that in some Christian martyr narratives, there are not simply two addressees (the human king and the divine king), but also a third, namely, Satan, thus pointing to the fact that the genre is not monolithic, and thus contrasts to the rabbinic approach must be made carefully.

 

Daniel Weiss (University of Cambridge)

“The Christianization of Rome and the Edomization of Christianity: minut, avodah zarah, and Political Power”

Focusing on the Palestinian Talmud, this paper argued that the reason that the pre-Christian Roman empire was viewed as idolatrous in rabbinic conceptuality not simply because of the use of concrete images or statues of the emperor, but also on the basis of the fact of claiming political rulership, and especially world-rulership, which was understood as properly belonging only to God. In this regard, it was argued that in the rabbinic conception, pre-Constantinian Christianity would not necessarily have been viewed as avodah zarah, but that the merging of state-power meant that Christians would have become directly linked to avodah zarah only following the Constantinian shift.

There was discussion of whether the Mishnaic conception of avodah zarah, as well the Yerushalmi’s to a degree, specifies actual worship of images rather than an abstract concept; as such, while the emperor’s claim of world-rulership would be theo-politically problematic, it is not clear whether the claim in itself falls directly within the sphere of avodah zarah. Another concept may be needed. There was also discussion as to whether pre-Constantinian Christianity would already have been viewed as avodah zarah, merely insofar as it was a religious group viewed as ‘other’ to the rabbinic group. It was also suggested that comparison to themes in Josephus could lend support to the basic argument.

 

Karin Zetterholm (Lund University)

“Rabbis in Conversation with Jesus-Oriented Groups: An Ancient Version of the ’Who Is a Jew?’ Debate”

The paper focused on the Clementine Homilies in order to argue that the Homilies might represent an alternative view to rabbinic Judaism with regard to affirming a community structure in which Jews and Gentiles are encouraged to interact, which stands in contrast to the idea that rabbinic Judaism sought to limit social interaction between Jews Gentiles.

It was suggested that exploring the role of Shabbat observance among converts in Palestine and Babylonia could provide potential parallels to the ‘Clementine’ orientation. It was also raised that other texts, such as the Gospel of Nicodemus, in which figures identified as rabbis give testimony to the resurrection, could potentially indicate closer overlap between outer edges of rabbinic circles and the community of the Clementine Homilies. It was also suggested that other instances of recent scholarship (such as Zellentin’s work on the relationship of law in Clementine Homilies and law for resident gentiles in Leviticus, or Matthew Thiessen’s recent monograph on Paul and Gentiles) could be useful for fleshing out the argument. In addition, there was discussion of whether the rabbinic notion of the Noahide could constitute a fruitful comparison to the Clementine Homilies’ notion of God-fearers, so that the contrast between the two theological frameworks need not be quite as sharp.

 

Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe (University of Cambridge)

“Demons between the Fathers of the Church and the Rabbis”

The presentation drew out comparisons between the way in which demons are represented in rabbinic literature and in the Church fathers, addressing issues such as the potential visibility of demons, the bodily status of demons, and the ways in which demons could be repelled by written or spoken words.

The discussion raised a number of possibilities for extension of the present study, for instance, in examining how Jewish or Christian groups may have presented social competitors or ‘others’ in demonic terms.  It was also suggested that attention to differences between rabbinic and patristic views of demons would be helpful. While the presenter laid out many such instances of difference, it was remarked that Christian demons are usually associated with sin, whereas rabbinic demons are associated with danger. Moreover, Christians viewed pagan gods as associated with demons, while rabbinic texts appear not to have made this association.

 

Holger Zellentin (University of Nottingham)

“Typology and the Transfiguration of Rabbi Aqiva (Pesiqta de Rav Kahana 4:7 and Bavli Menahot 29b)”

This paper explored aspects of the typological models of Christians and their echoes among the rabbis and claims that the key to reading one of the most researched stories in rabbinic literature lies in its Late Antique typological context, which has hitherto been neglected. In addition to exploring rabbinic reactions to the typological elevation of Adam, the paper discussed how Amoraic rabbinic literature increasingly recasts its own view of the relationship of the written and the oral Torah in ways that mirrored the Christian typology of the fulfilment of the Old Testament in the New One. A case study presented the late antique use of the transfiguration scene in art and literature as a hermeneutical key to a story in Pesiqta de Rav Kahana 4:7 72-3 and Bavli Menahot 29b.

The discussion revolved around rabbinic disruption of Talmudic discourse in order to engage with Christian conceptualities. Suggestions for further research included to inquire into non-Christian models of elevating Moses (as for example in the Tebat Marqe and the Targumim), further consideration of the ways in which the Bavli itself counters its own typological elevation of both Moses and Aqiva; and Typology further instances of reactions to Christian typological models in the Mishna and Midrash Tehilim.

 

Reuven Kiperwasser

“What is Hidden in the Small Box?: Kohelet Rabbah and John Moschos’ Spiritual Meadow”

This paper presented a comparative reading of distinct narrative traditions with very similar features of plot and content, with a focus on a comparison between the Palestinian midrash, Kohelet Rabba 3: 8 on the one hand and John Moschos’ Spiritual Meadow, story 203 on the other (the motifs treated were that of a sea voyage during which great wealth is sacrificed and that of a fabulous gem found in a fish). The paper asked in how far the question “who took from whom” is justified, and also dealt with the cultural mechanisms underlying the narration. The speaker concludes that the motif of “a box thrown into the sea” is clearly descended from a common prototype, and that the Christian version is primary. The second parallel is an example of a common motif, from around the same time, borrowed by the two storytellers from the common narrative continuum.

The discussion revolved around Hebrew and Greek philology, concentrating on words such as קוביה; and the Primacy of Christian over Hebrew story; as well as methodological questions regarding the comparison of texts and the question of “borrowing.” In how far does similarity between texts in different cultures serve as the backdrop of exploring the cultural differences?

 

Helen Spurling (University of Southampton)

“The End of the World: Interpretations of Daniel 12:1 and perceptions of the Christian “Other”

This paper dealt with the reception of Daniel by examining rabbinic traditions that utilise interpretations of Daniel 12:1, asking to what extent these traditions present reflections on Christian rule, and/or perceptions of Christian beliefs in various periods. Of particular interest were traditions that are concerned with questions of religious status and election, and, although through an eschatological lens, the perspectives they may reveal on Christian Byzantine society in Late Antiquity. The texts under consideration were Ruth Rabbah, Pirqe Mashiaḥ and Otot ha-Mashiaḥ. With different emphases, all of these exegetical approaches highlight eschatological concepts of election history centered on Torah. The traditions examined have different emphases, but can be read as portraying a view of election history in dualistic opposition to the Christian ‘other’.

The discussion explored questions such as whether “Christianity” indeed constitutes a conceptual or epistemological entity for the rabbis, why references to Christianity are oblique in earlier literature and blatant in later texts, and what constitutes the political context of the texts under discussion. Further issues where the difficult question of what constitutes a “rabbinic” tradition in the medieval period, and in how far later texts can be used as “historical readers” of earlier ones.

 

Michal Bar-Asher Siegal (Ben Gurion University of the Negev)

“What Will Become of Us at the Hands of the Heretics?: On Minim Stories in the Babylonian Talmud and the Case of b. Yevamot 102b”

This paper focused on one of the minim (“heretics”) narratives in the Babylonian Talmud. The paper offered a reading of the rabbi-min narrative in b. Yevamot 102b against the backdrop of the Christian understanding of the ḥalitsah ceremony. The paper claimed that the min’s discussion with Rabban Gamaliel revolves around the question of who is God’s chosen people. This is a prototypical Jewish-Christian argument, one reflected in many other sources, both Christian and Jewish. In this case, the ḥalitsah topos as employed in contemporary, Christian sources is put in the mouth of the Christian min as he interprets Hosea 5:6. The Talmudic story seems to be aware that the Christian use of this topos is grounded in a different formulation of the ritual than the rabbinic version, which relies on Deuteronomy. The paper claims that the rabbis’ precise knowledge about Christians and their engagement with them may offer yet another step in decoding the complex matrix of Jewish-Christian relations in Late Antiquity and the Persian Empire.

The discussion focused on lexical relationship between shared words used in the Bavli and in the Greek and Aramaic gospel tradition, on the Christian interpretation on Hosea (with which the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud seem to have been eerily familiar), and on the general topos of minim in the Talmud and its potential for further research

 

Ron Naiweld (Centre Nationale de Recherche Scientifique)

“Some Considerations on the History of the Talmud and Christianity and a Proposition of a New Method”

This paper took a look at an older version of a paper by the same author (“The Forgotten Rabbi: The Bavli’s contribution to the ‘Judaism as the Mother of Christianity’ Paradigm”) and undermined some of its methodological and epistemological assumptions. It offers instead to look at structural similarities between the historian and the people he or she studies, in order to objectify our “empathic connection” with our subjects. This method, named by the speaker as “speculative philology,” allows us to deepen our understanding of the past by using our knowledge of ourselves as historical and ethical subjects.

The discussion revolved around the methodological assumption of present scholarship, and the epistemological bases of historical comparisons. Further points raised were that of the insider/outsider problem in the study of religion, and the dimension of gender.

 

Sacha Stern (University College London)

“Passover and Easter in Talmudic Babylonia”

The paper constituted a further inquiry on previous work by the presenter and considered various models of cultural “influence” at the example of calendric practices in Jewish and Christian culture. The paper’s key example was the practice of celebrating the Christian Easter “with” the Jews in the Syriac church. The example showed that it sometimes is possible to explain shared practices in the context of a concrete, and in this case polemical social context, whereas in other cases, the context cannot be fully explained.

The discussion focused on the variety of methodologies necessary to ensure capturing the variety of cultural interaction in an adequate way. A further focus was an attempt to apply the presenter’s findings, which primarily dealt with the interactions between the Babylonian rabbis and the Syriac church, to the context of Jewish Palestine.

 

Abraham J. Berkovitz (Princeton University)

“Opening the Psalter and Crafting a Reader: Psalm 1 Between Babylonian Jews and East Syrian Christians”

The paper dealt with the relationship between Jews and Christians, through a look at their scriptural encounters. It focused on the most cited text in both traditions: the book of Psalms. It dealt with the reception of Psalm 1 in Babylonian Talmud Avodah Zarah 18b-19b and in the Psalm commentary of Theodore of Mopsuestia. It offered to read the Talmudic passages as presenting Psalm 1 as a guidebook on the production of a Rabbinic sage. The presenter illustrated that according to a widespread East Syrian Christian interpretation of Psalm 1, the text is understood as an instruction of crafting a moral and educated Christian. The presenter then argued that the Jewish and the Christian reading should be read in light of each other.

The discussion explored whether or not there is strong evidence for rabbinic practices of psalm-recitation, and assessed the difference between the importance of interpreting the psalms on the one hand and reciting them, on the other. There was discussion of whether the tendency of scholarship to focus on polemical aspects of relations between Jews and Christians might have obscured aspects where the two traditions could more easily put forth similar interpretations of scriptural texts, as in the case of a wide range of interpretations of the psalms.

 

Emmanouela Grypeou (Free University Berlin)

“Necromancy in Jewish and Christian Accounts from Mesopotamia and Beyond”

This paper dealt with rabbinic interpretation of Gen 31:19, where Rachel steals the teraphim (εἴδωλα) of her father, Laban, and flees from Harran together with Jacob, illustrating it in light of archaeological and historical evidence about demonology and necromancy. The paper shows that Syriac Christian literature and the rabbinic literature clearly use common sources – possibly oral ones- that refer to necromantic sacrifices among the pagans in Harran. The details show interesting differences between the various accounts. The stronger coherence and broader dissemination of the versions of the story in the rabbinic literature suggest a closer familiarity with these cults compared to the somewhat ‘patchy’ evidence in the Syriac literature. The rabbinic sources and the Syriac accounts seem to provide complementary information on these unique necromantic practices. If we read mentioned sources side-by-side, they help us gain a more complete picture of this peculiar rite. The complementarity of the information is a clear indication of a shared cultural knowledge

The discussion revolved around the question whether ancient “sciences” such as magic and medicine are more likely to be shared between Jews and Christians than ideological more central aspects of culture. The philological details of the translation of the various sources and their importance to the main claim were discussed, as was a broader appreciation of “popular elements” as a place of meeting between religions.

 

Simcha Gross (Yale University)

“Persecution as Power: Pirqoi ben Baboi and John of Fenek in Context”

This paper contextualized texts from the Geonic period with Christian literature of their time, in the areas of law, exegesis and philosophy. The paper shows how a Jewish polemicist – Pirqoi ben Baboi – and a prominent writer from the Church of the East– John of Fenek – each used remarkably similar polemical and rhetorical tools but in ways uniquely suited to their respective audiences and particular contexts. It considered how Babylonian Geonim – a non-dominant group in Iraq during this period – responded, conformed or objected to the inescapable imperial context to which they were subject. It then considered how the same imperial context is reflected in, and negotiated by, neighbouring minority groups, such as the Syriac Christians. The presenter illustrated how the similar polemical and rhetorical devices employed by Pirqoi ben Baboi and John of Fenek also reflect the larger shared background to which both authors were responding.

The discussion revolved around the difficulties of writing Babylonian Jewish history after the Talmudic period, on the somewhat haphazard nature in which potentially marginal texts happen to be preserved, and on the dangers of “canonizing” specific authors when contextual data is not available.

 

Moshe Lavee (University of Haifa)

“There is either Jew or Gentile, Man or Woman: The Rabbinic Move from Legal to Essentialist Polarization of Identities”

This paper portrayed some textual, conceptual and legal developments documented in the Talmud concerning people of marginal and liminal identity: the Samaritans on the one hand, and the androgynos and tumtum on the other. The paper claimed that the two categories represent similar lines of development attested in areas of group or ethnic identity (i.e., the Samaritans) and gender. The presenter argued that the categories that are used in tannaitic legal discourse become a tool for understanding reality, and that the legal categories morph into an essential description of social reality. The paper ended with reflexion regarding these observations in relationship to the famous Pauline dictum: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female,” inviting a comparative discussion.

The discussion centred on the question whether the Bavli laws on tumtum and androgynos actually introduce them as third category, and whether the Bavli does not in effect essentialize the category. Moreover, the meaning of Paul’s saying was parsed, leading to the evaluation of Lloyd Gaston’s insight that Paul, in his social and political thought, actually upholds the very categories he claims to be fused only in a higher reality.

 

3) A summary highlighting the most significant and productive threads in papers and discussions, with a reflection on the tasks ahead.

The most important recurrent topics in the focused and intense discussions were of methodological nature. The revolved around the integration of the broadest possible amount of evidence—drawn from literary, historical, archaeological and anthropological sources—in a framework that allows for a better understanding of Jewish and Christian identity in antiquity. The conference illustrated a growing consensus that Christianity should be seen as the most immediate and central context of rabbinic Judaism both in Palestine and in Mesopotamia; more important perhaps than even Pagan Roman and Sassanian imperial culture. At the same time, most participants shared a sense that the actual contextualization of Judaism within this Christian context must remain a piecemeal, tentative, and local endeavour, eschewing the danger of essentializing the proximate Other.

 

4) A statement about planned outcomes (projects, future workshops, co-operations) and outputs (publications).

The participants submitted a complete draft of their research paper a couple of months before the conference; these papers were circulated among all participants. At the event, the participants briefly summarized the written version for all present (10-15 minutes), leaving ample time for a focused discussion. The participants will submit the final version of their papers by December 31, 2016. Additionally, submissions from key scholars in the field who were not able to participate in the conference will be solicited. After a rigorous editorial review, selected papers will be submitted as a conference volume to a British University Press.

As we had hoped, the event strengthened professional bonds between all participants, and a flurry of further collaboration is currently under discussion, especially in the framework of the European Association of Biblical Studies, in personal collaboration between scholars in the UK and abroad, and in the possibility of applying for research funds for potential joint PhD programmes.

 

5) The actual programme of the event, including changes which may have become necessary.

Please find the program of the actual event below; the online site can be found here:

http://www.divinity.cam.ac.uk/research/confseminars/conferences/talmud-christianity

In addition to the posting on the website of the University of Cambridge, the European Association of Jewish Studies, and the British Association for Jewish Studies, the conference was advertised in a number of mailing lists, including Agade, Hugoye, and H-judaic. The postings generated considerable interest by members and numerous solicitations from quality publishing houses.

 

Michal Bar-Asher Siegal

Daniel Weiss

Holger Zellentin

 

—————————————————–

 

The Talmud and Christianity

An International Conference at Murray Edwards College

June 27 – 28, 2016

The University of Cambridge

Organized by Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Daniel Weiss, and Holger Zellentin

 

Programme:

Monday, June 27, 2016

9:30 Welcome

9:45 Moulie Vidas (Princeton University), “The Emergence of Talmudic Culture: Overview of a Work in Progress” (45 minutes)

10:30 Catherine Hezser (School of Oriental and African Studies), “The Creation of the Talmud and Apophthegmata Patrum As Monuments to the Rabbinic and Monastic Movements in Early Byzantine Times” (45 minutes)

11:15 Coffee Break (15 minutes)

11:30 Philip Alexander (University of Manchester), “Rabbinic Political Theology after Constantine: Some Preliminary Observations” (45 minutes)

12:15 Marton Ribary (University of Manchester), “Comparative Talmud Research Beyond the Influence Paradigm” (45 minutes)

13:00 lunch break (60 minutes)

14:00 Matthias Morgenstern (Universität Tübingen), “Reflections on Edom and Edom’s Mother in Bereshit Rabba” (45 minutes)

14:45 Tali Artman-Partok, “How to kill the political parrhesia without killing the political” (45 minutes)

15:30 Coffee Break (15 minutes)

15:45 Daniel Weiss (University of Cambridge), “The Christianization of Rome and the Edomization of Christianity: minut, avodah zarah, and Political Power” (45 minutes)

16:30 Karin Zetterholm (Lund University), “Rabbis in Conversation with Jesus-Oriented Groups: An Ancient Version of the ’Who Is a Jew?’ Debate” (45 minutes)

17:15 Coffee break

17:30 Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe (University of Cambridge), “Demons between the Fathers of the Church and the Rabbis” (45 minutes)

18:15 Discussion

18:30 Dinner (By Invitation)

 

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

9:00 Holger Zellentin (University of Nottingham), “Typology and the Transfiguration of Rabbi Aqiva

(Pesiqta de Rav Kahana 4:7 and Bavli Menahot 29b)” (45 minutes)

9:45 Reuven Kiperwasser, “What is Hidden in the Small Box?: Kohelet Rabbah and John Moschos’ Spiritual Meadow” (45 minutes)

10:30 Coffee Break (15 minutes)

10:45 Helen Spurling (University of Southampton), “The End of the World: Interpretations of Daniel 12:1 and perceptions of the Christian “Other” (45 minutes)

11:30 Michal Bar-Asher Siegal (Ben Gurion University of the Negev), “What Will Become of Us at the Hands of the Heretics?: On Minim Stories in the Babylonian Talmud and the Case of b. Yevamot 102b” (45 minutes)

12:15 Ron Naiweld (Centre Nationale de Recherche Scientifique), “Some Considerations on the History of the Talmud and Christianity and a Proposition of a New Method” (45 minutes)

13:00 Lunch Break (60 minutes)

14:00 Sacha Stern (University College London), “Passover and Easter in Talmudic Babylonia” (45 minutes)

14:45 Abraham J. Berkovitz (Princeton University), “Opening the Psalter and Crafting a Reader: Psalm 1 between Babylonian Jews and East Syrian Christians” (45 minutes)

15:30 Coffee Break (15 Minutes)

15:45 Emmanouela Grypeou (FU Berlin), “Necromancy in Jewish and Christian Accounts from Mesopotamia and Beyond” (45 minutes)

16:30 Simcha Gross (Yale University), “Persecution as Power: Pirqoi ben Baboi and John of Fenek in Context” (45 minutes)

17:15 Moshe Lavee (University of Haifa), “There is either Jew or Gentile, Man or Woman: The Rabbinic Move from Legal to Essentialist Polarization of Identities” (45 minutes)

18:00 Farewell (15 Minutes)

 

Location: The Long Room, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge

http://www.murrayedwards.cam.ac.uk/alumnae/visitingcollege/mapsanddirections/

 

The conference has been sponsored by a generous grant of the European Association for Jewish Studies and by the Cambridge Faculty of Divinity.

Attendance is free and open to the public. To rsvp, or if you have any questions, please contact Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Daniel Weiss or Holger Zellentin.

EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2015/16

REPORT

Nationhood and Religion in Hellenistic-Roman Judaea

The Qumran Institute, University of Groningen, 21–23 June 2016

Main organiser: Professor Steve Mason (Qumran Institute, University of Groningen)

Co- organiser: Professor Mladen Popović (Qumran Institute, University of Groningen)

 

The European Association for Jewish Studies generously funded this highly successful conference in Groningen. While the events are still fresh, the organisers wish to express their deep gratitude for EAJS funding by fulfilling the requirement of a final report as fully and quickly as possible. Our report departs from the original conception and mission statement to summarise the content of the event, synthesise the results, discuss planned outcomes, and give the actual programme.

1. Conception and Aims

Our application for EAJS funding gave the following ‘event rationale’:

A significant development in the study of ancient history and ancient Judaism is the increasing attention paid by some scholars to Greek, Latin, and Hebrew ways of understanding and categorizing the world and its populations. While modern concepts of state and race have long been considered inapplicable to antiquity, newer research has questioned also the utility of the familiar ‘religion’ (e.g., Rives, Nongbri, Boyarin, Mason). Might a re-imagining of the world in ancient terms aid our self-understanding? After years of relevant debate, and given the possible importance of these issues for modern reflection on Jewish identity, Zionism, and modes of ‘Diaspora’ belonging, the time seems right for a closer examination of both methodological foundations and concrete applications.

In other words, especially since European Jewish Emancipation, ‘nation’ (Volk, peuple) and ‘religion’ have been the poles on the continuum along which discussions of Jewish identity have lived. Without daring to define either pole term—or their relationship—in the modern world, we wished to use them heuristically, as stimuli to explore ancient discourses of identity. Our central aim was thus to rethink the basics: foundations and specific cases in a dialectical relationship. So our focus was on the shared, unrepeatable experience. We wanted to gather congenial experts who had published or were leading current projects on these problems, from the grand sweep (Goodblatt, Zetterholm, Rajak, Berthelot, Lapin, Schremer, Schwartz) to particular corpora, problems, and texts (Stern, Stemberger, Schwartz, Bloch, Frey, Pearce, van Henten, van Ruiten). And we needed to construct a programme as conducive as possible to the goal.

Although bringing together European and Scandinavian scholars who rarely have the opportunity to meet was a primary concern, for a wide-ranging discussion of such large questions we thought it important to include Israeli and American scholars of note. All those invited expressed initial interest, though four had to withdraw at various points, because of irresolvable conflicts—even as we first tested various dates—or because of personal issues that arose closer to the agreed dates (J. Frey, H. Lapin, A. Schremer, J. van Ruiten). Several of those who eventually came and were eager to participate stressed from the start that they would not have anything completely new to say. We insisted that this was fine, for we were inviting them largely because of their previous publications, and were asking simply that they bring their perspectives to bear on the specific conference theme in dialogue with others.

2. Parts, Papers, and Discussions: Analysis

With this clear aim, we sought to craft a symposium structure optimally suited to achieving it. To be avoided, for example, was the ‘charter airline’ model: considering it a virtue to stack in as many people as possible—with twelve to eighteen 30-minute sessions per day, with 3-5 minutes for ‘Q & A’ policed by time-anxious chairs, a sheer test of stamina. Because we wished to promote a rich and thorough discussion, we needed to plan plenty of time for both formal and informal encounters. We also needed to give the sessions a shape that would promote interaction and dialectic: wholes and parts, larger syntheses and particulars, one set of assumptions challenged by another. Other considerations included issues of comfort, absorptive capacity, motivation, alertness, and conceptual clarity.

We settled on the following plan. We would divide the material in four parts, mainly by chronology but partly by theme, and give a morning or afternoon block to each: Hellenistic-Hasmonean, Roman-Herodian, Christian-and-Jewish, and rabbinic. And rather than schedule these over two full days, it seemed preferable to begin with an afternoon session and end with a morning (so Tuesday afternoon through Thursday morning). That would not overhelm people from the start, and would include only one long day (early morning until dinner+) in the middle. This arrangement proved necessary, in the end, as the end of June was heavily booked more than a year in advance. Some participants could not leave their European homes until early Tuesday because of prior commitments, and had to be home by Friday, yet they could still reach us for the opening lunch and first session.

Each of the four sessions would begin with a 45-60-minute keynote, raising central issues from the presenter’s perspective, to be followed by two half-hour case studies. Although this distinction could provoke resentment, we thought that among our list of invitees were some who seemed to prefer broad-stroke syntheses (long articles and books) and others who clearly relished detailed study of words, phrases, and particular texts. As far as we could tell, after answering a couple of queries about this, everyone was happy with the arrangement. In addition to the few minutes that might be available for clarifications at the end of each paper, we would ring-fence a full hour for discussion of all three, with the presenters of that session sitting together at the front semi-circular table of our Court Room venue.

Each session would be punctuated by a half-hour coffee/tea break, offering informal small-group chats in the foyer. Along with the hour lunch-break and the two group dinners, these proved valuable for stimulating interpersonal contact, and the making and strengthening of acquaintances.

I turn to a summary of what actually transpired.

A. Hellenistic-Hasmonean. With the late withdrawal of Jacques van Ruiten (Groningen), the opening session (Tuesday afternoon) comprised the overview by David Goodblatt (University of California–San Diego) and the case study by Daniel Schwartz (Hebrew University of Jerusalem). These two went together well, for Goodblatt reviewed the whole scholarly debate about the meaning of Greek Ioudaios and related terms, to which debate Schwarz was a key contributor. Goodblatt supported his published view (in a book on ancient Jewish nationalism) that ancient uses of ethnos language corresponded closely to modern conceptions of ethnicity and thence nationhood, so that ‘nation’ was not a bad rendering of ethnos. He challenged the common view of a distinction between insider and outsider language—according to which insiders spoke of Israel, outsiders of Judaeans/Ioudaioi—by demonstrating that Yehudim/Ioudaioi language was actually early and internally familiar, though to be sure outsiders did not speak of Israel.

Schwartz developed his earlier-published arguments for a shift from geographical-territorial to ‘religious’ senses of Ioudaios-language with a new example. Departing from the puzzling reference to ‘Galilee of the allophyloi’ in 1 Macc 5.15, he traced a shift in the meaning of galil, from ‘region/circle’ to the geographical area, and of allophyloi from Philistine (in LXX) to non-specific foreigner. In his view, the latter development imposed on the semantic range of allogenēs, which now took the narrower meaning of different descent, whereas allophyloi served for those of different culture or religion—the new term being needed, according to Schwartz, given his view of the growing scope for ‘religion’ after the Hasmonean period.

The first discussion period was wide ranging. It showed respect for both of these giants, as participants took the opportunity to probe them on many relevant matters (e.g., ethnicity in modern research, nationhood, the utility of religion), while clarifying their views on the specific presentations. These were found to be broadly compatible, with the exception that Schwartz maintained a separate category of religion or religion-like phenomena.

B. Herodian-Roman. Tessa Rajak (Oxford, emerita Reading) opened the session with a lively account of Masada, reconsidered from the perspective of the conference questions. She sought to find in the final events as portrayed by Josephus a sense of both his and the sicarii’s sense of national feeling. With all due qualifications and hesitations concerning the relationship between Josephus’ narrative and historical reality, she highlighted the potent theme of freedom in his account as a national aspiration. Her presentation was in part meant to qualify the marginalisation of Masada over the past three decades as a national symbol in Israel, by recovering a hard nationalist core in this increasingly doubted story. Although Josephus had excoriated these rebels often, she found him in the Masada story admiring their final act and asserting a national spirit. Rajak linked all of this with larger themes in Josephus and in the ambient literature of the Roman world.

Sarah Pearce (Southampton) followed with a case study of Philo on the terms laos (people) and ethnos. The latter is by far the most common in this author’s critically important corpus, and Pearce showed how ethnos language bears much of what we consider religious, and incorporating notions of sanctity and piety, in relation to both life under laws and such transitions as conversion. Pearce emphasised that her study was a first exploration and work in progress, which we all welcomed from such an expert: laying out the patterns of usage with preliminary analysis.

René Bloch (Bern) returned to questions pursued in his famous book on Tacitus’ presentation of the Jews (Hist. 5.1–13) as ethnography,[i] to reconsider that passage from the conference perspective. After noting that most discussion in recent decades has been about Greek terminology, he was asking about the Latin Iudaei of Tacitus. He emphasised the difference between this passage in Histories 5 and other ethnographical passages in Tacitus, in that it does not begin with the place or invoke the place-people bond (environmental determinism) common in the Roman author. Bloch suggested that this could reflect Tacitus’ view that Jews were not tied to a specific place, that their identity was translocal and largely religious or cultural.

The discussion sought clarifications from Pearce on Philo’s usage, though the preliminary nature of her survey did not invite strong challenge. More pointed questions came to Rajak and Bloch. Had Rajak really taken on board Josephus’ harsh treatment of the sicarii, not only before the Masada passage but also afterward, as he denounced the sicarii of Cyrene (even while admiring their courage in death)? On the other hand, Josephus specialist J. McLaren of Australian Catholic University in Melbourne—who travelled from Australia just for this conference at his own cost, though we had not invited a paper from him in view of the distance and cost—noted in potential/partial support of Rajak that the sicarii are not the ones who receive Josephus’ harshest criticism. Challenges to Bloch, which he took on board for further reflection, suggested that perhaps Tacitus’ failure to link Jewish national traits to the land matched his insistence that they were not autochthonous in the Jerusalem area (but rather from Egypt), that his accounts of their travels through desert to that hilly and grassy habitation might serve as a national character-forming foundation, and that Tacitus’s decision to begin with Judaean origins rather than landscape/native environment might result from a literary concern for symmetry (Hist. 5.2: Since I am about to describe the end of this urbs, it is fitting to begin with a description of its foundation)—all of which would connect the Iudaei to their famous homeland.

This discussion period was pleasantly interrupted near the end by a visit from University President Dr. Sibrand Poppema. He warmly greeted our international guests while highlighting Groningen’s commitment to the humanities. The organisers considered this an important moment, both for the guests to be recognised by the university’s highest official and for him (a medical scientist and administrator) to see the humanities in action.

C. Judaism and Christian Origins. The idea behind this session was to probe what recent research on Christian origins, which has taken surprising turns in relation to older scholarship—especially the tendency to include even Paul among the varieties of Judaism and a new insistence that Christians did not break from ethnic reasoning but understood themselves as a new ethnos (e.g., Denise Kimber Buell)—might suggest about Roman-period Jewish identity.

Magnus Zetterholm (Lund) gave the spirited overview lecture, laying out his view that Paul—key figure in the rise of gentile Christianity—remained wholly and observantly Jewish. His evidence ran along the following lines. Paul must have attended synagogue to have faced the beatings from countrymen that he claims. He spoke often (if only in Romans) about the divine nature of the Law. And his harsh statements about adopting Jewish law or undergoing circumcision were aimed exclusively at gentiles, whom Paul understood to be brought into Judaism broadly defined. Finally, by analogy with modern differences among Jewish groups and denominations, some of which would not consider the others truly Jewish (and yet probably would accept them as Jews), he sought to create space for Paul.

Jan Willem van Henten (Amsterdam) provided a case study of the Maccabean martyrs in 2 and 4 Maccabees. Van Henten contends in general that Judaism was unique in being a ‘national religion’ from an early point, but sees the nation-religion relationship in dynamic terms. He isolated national and religious motives (according to 2 Macc) for the martyrs and their role as ‘national heroes’, but he highlighted what he considered the specific concept of a national religion in 4 Maccabees, with politeia-related language fused with that of eusebeia. Time ran out before he could present the Christian connection, though he rapidly mentioned that Christian authors re-interpreted these martyrs as Christian heroes, for a new Christian ‘nation’, while erasing the Jewish identity markers.

George van Kooten (New Testament Professor in Groningen) offered as case study the statement in Paul’s letter to the Galatians (4.25) about ‘the present Jerusalem’ being in slavery. Although this is usually read in purely theological terms, in support of Paul’s claim that the Law of Moses enslaves those who live under it, van Kooten asked about possible political dimensions. Perhaps it referred to an actual sense of Jerusalem’s enslavement and suffering under the Roman empire? Situating his exploration in agreement with two broad tendencies in current NT scholarship—(a) to include Paul in Judaism and (b) to find anti-imperial motives among early Christian authors—van Kooten asked whether the steadily deteriorating conditions in Judaea might not stand behind Paul’s remark. He too stressed that he only wished to test a possibility.

The discussion period was again lively, and involved all three presenters equally. Zetterholm faced a number of challenges for what many perceived as his overlooking or downplaying of Paul’s statements about the end of the Law, antipathy toward it, and lack of identification as a Jew. Zetterholm responded by pointing out that there were exceptions to this perception—even if they were limited to Romans. (Why Romans alone should have had these statements remained unexplored.) Questions for van Henten focused on the politeia language of 4 Maccabees and its meaning in context, given that it can have to do with either self-policing (way of life) or political community. Challenges to van Kooten’s paper indirectly exposed the need for scholars of early Christianity and of ancient Judaism to be in closer dialogue, for again very different perceptions came to the surface. Whereas van Kooten assumed that the perception of slavery to the Roman Empire was a given in scholarship, as it obviously led to the war with Rome in 66, others present (McLaren, Mason) doubted the conventional picture of such a gathering storm of resistance to Roman oppression.

D. Rabbinic. The final session furnished a spectacular conclusion to the conference, and held everyone’s interest to the last moment. Since Adiel Schremer of Bar-Ilan University had been forced by circumstances to withdraw shortly before the conference, we had no longer opening paper. That was not a problem for the schedule, however, for we had planned three case studies for this session only. So we still had three papers (as with the other sessions), each of which could take a bit of extra time. Indeed, two of the notional ‘case studies’, though focused on particular questions, could be considered large-scale syntheses because of their sweep.

The first of these was from Katell Berthelot (Aix-en-Provence), who explored the changing treatment of the ger (resident foreigner, convert) from Israel-Judaea through the rabbinic period. She used her expertise in Philo to argue that Philo marked the end of a development in which there were two distinct ways for people to belong to Israel, by descent or by the kind of change of allegiance described in Philo’s De Virtutibus 102–103, essentially a religious move. She proposed that the rabbis, in a development from the third century onward, refined this duality in one unified whole by invoking (without naming) Roman principles of adoption, to create a way for converts to be fully integrated into Jewish ancestry and identity.

Günter Stemberger (Vienna) provided a more particular case study, of Mishnah Sanhedrin 1–2 and Tosefta Sanh. 1–4. These describe various court configurations, and mention the high priest and the king, but not patriarchs or rabbis (from the time of writing). He argued that the ‘constitutional’ system developed here could not reflect the reality of pre-70 Judaea-Israel; nor did it simply reprise the Bible. It is a utopian picture of an ideal state, and Stemberger tried to isolate its influences.

The ‘case study’ by Sacha Stern (University College London) again filled a vast canvas. Drawing largely from his book on calendars in Jewish and Christian antiquity, he asked the conference what these revealed about national-religious identity. His central contention, enriched by many nuances and insights, was that the period before the fourth-century rise of Christianity was marked by a pervasive assumption of calendrical variety, among but also within the various poleis and many peoples—something that posed no problem whatsoever for the functioning of those societies. Incidentally, he rejected the common view that Qumran and related sectarian splits had a calendrical motive. The modern assumption (S. Talmon, E. Durkheim) that calendrical unity was necessary for an ordered society did not hold for the pre-Christian world. S. traced the major change to Constantine’s rise and unification of the empire under Christian auspices, such that from the Council of Nicaea (325 CE) we see a new requirement of calendrical conformity, as part and parcel of theological agreement. Whereas Christians had earlier disagreed about the date of Easter, for example, such dissent now became heresy. Likewise in the Yerushalmi (4^th cent.) and especially the Bavli (6^th cent.) we find a new demand for agreement in calendar and excommunication of those who follow different schedules. The general idea seemed to be that national identity did not require calendrical agreement, but that the unified belief system or religion of Christianity did: one God, one truth, one calendar—though Stern did not spell this out in these terms.

Our final discussion period had a bit of extra time because of Schremer’s withdrawal. Discussion with Stemberger mainly probed his meaning in speaking of utopian or ideal constitution. He clarified both that it was not ideal in that murder and so on remained envisaged, and that it was utopian only for the tiny group of scholars who discussed it, not for society in general. Berthelot took many questions, some in relation to Philo and pre-rabbinic material (Did it not already imply fictive ancestry of converts, without resort to Roman adoption?) and some in relation to the adoption model itself: How much do we know about it? Why would the rabbis not mention it at all, when they explained so much in detail? How appropriate was it for families or communities as distinct from individuals? The first challenges to Stern came from a Groningen doctoral student (Marijn Vandenberghe) on the theoretical issues, in Durkheim and Weber: Did they really require calendrical unity for social order? The rest of the discussion with Stern was mainly about clarifications and analogues.

3. Synthesis: Unifying Themes

Several issues, methodological and substantive, came up repeatedly in different forms and guises. Goodblatt’s opening lecture, which grounded the whole problem-set of the conference in the Hellenistic-Hasmonean period (with glances back to the Exile), laid a foundation to which we often returned. Most obviously, the various connotations of Yehudim, Ioudaioi, and Iudaei in different authors and situations came back time and again. Oft repeated was that our problems arise most vividly in translation, cultural and verbal, in trying to bring over the meaning of ancient texts in English and in (unavoidably) modern perspective. As long as we are trying to think in ancient mindsets and texts in their languages we often feel we can manage, but then when we go to speak with each other we must use categories that we find our interlocutors don’t share. So we face a constant process of definition, challenge, and nuance in response.

Given that no modern English terminology simply equals ancient values and language, we all recognised anew that every effort was imperfect. While some of us insist that there was no category ‘religion’ in antiquity, but are willing to speak of culture as a catch-all for the common accoutrements of an ethnos or polis, others doubt that culture is any better and remain content with religion. Some insist that there was no Juda-ism discussable, but speak of Paul as a Christian; others claim that this is equally anachronistic.

A recurring problem set, from the Hasmonean period through the Roman, Christian, and rabbinic sessions, concerned those on the margins of Judaism in some way, particularly converts. What did ‘conversion’ mean in ancient terms (was it religious, political-national, or both?), and what were the possibilities for full identification with the nation, religion, or people? A fascinating phenomenon was the general agreement among participants that ancient writers recognised both birth-descent and voluntary joining as ways of becoming Jewish (Bible, Philo, Josephus, rabbis), combined with disagreement about (a) whether these two avenues distinguished national from religious identity and (b) whether the relationship between the two changed significantly with time and place in the Graeco-Roman world.

4. What comes next?

As I have explained above, we put on this conference in order to bring together leading scholars at different stages of their careers (three emeriti, several nearing retirement, several in their early prime, two guests and one host managing major ERC grants) to rethink together basic questions of ancient Jewish identity. We considered this a good in itself. To attract such busy and eminent scholars, we could not—and did not wish to—require in advance a commitment to some specific output. Such a utilitarian motive would have jeopardised the atmosphere of genuinely open discussion, and the willingness of participants both to refashion their published arguments in this context, under this particular stimulus, and to launch trial balloons in an atmosphere of trust. This was a symposium of scholars.

I took a few minutes at the end of our final discussion to poll participants on their interest in contributing their presentation to a volume of collected essays. Only six of the eleven indicated that they would like to publish their work in such a volume, and two or three of those raised their hands only halfway, or with a ‘quasi’ gesture. In some cases (Berthelot, Stern) it was clear that the work was part of a committed research project. In others (Pearce, van Kooten) it was in the nature of a trial balloon that would need considerably more work.

Brill Publishers were present at the back of the room for most of the conference, and they have offered publication in a volume. Some of those present in the audience (van Ruiten, McLaren) also suggested that they would be willing to work up a chapter to contribute to such a volume. At the moment, however, Mladen Popović and I are not convinced that such a volume would repay the efforts needed to produce it. We consider the conference a huge success—this has been confirmed by every participant. We have all had our thinking shaped and challenged by these encounters, as we have sought to understand better our colleagues’ different perspectives. This treasure will influence everything that each of us writes on the subject in the future, and the way we go about our research: what evidence we consult, what assumptions we make, what questions we are willing to entertain.

But this does not mean that a volume of essays from the conference is obviously desirable for the scholarly world. If colleagues embarked on other projects found this experience as valuable as they said, and the three or four colleagues most eager to publish their case studies offer them to journals, especially if they note their origin in the conference, that would be both a salutary ‘output’ and a contribution of the conference to scholarship. To reproduce the whole conference in a book, we think at the moment, would be to invite criticism for unevenness even if it were possible—and it is not.

Perhaps the most important consequence of the conference is that, in keeping with the main purpose of EAJS conference grants, it has created the possibility for European (and Israeli and American) scholars to share vital experiences in protracted open discussion. This has generated a feeling of trust, even across real differences of view, that promises much in future cooperation and shared projects. We left with a number of invitations extended to each other.

 

5. Conference Programme

Nationhood and Religion in Hellenistic-Roman Judaea

21–23 June 2016, University of Groningen

Organisers: Steve Mason and Mladen Popović

This conference is made possible by generous grants from the European Association for Jewish Studies (EAJS), the Royal Dutch Academy of the Sciences (KNAW), and the Nicolaas Mulerius Fund (Groningen).

 

Tuesday, 21 June

Welcome Lunch: 12:30–1:30.

1:45–5:30 Nationhood and Religion in Hellenistic-Hasmonean Judaea. 

Chair Steve Mason

1:45 Welcome: Steve Mason and Mladen Popović

2:00 David Goodblatt, University of California—San Diego. “Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?” (Jonah 1:8): Questions of Identity in Jewish Antiquity

3:00 Daniel R. Schwartz, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. From Philistines to Gentiles: On allophyloi between the Septuagint and Josephus

 3:30 Tea Break

4:00 General Discussion

 6:30: Dinner

_____________________________________________________

Wednesday, 22 June

9:00–12:30 Nationhood and Religion in Herodian-Roman Judaea

Chair Mladen Popović

9:00 Tessa Rajak, University of Oxford. Writing and Re-writing Masada: Freedom, Faith and Nation

10:00 Sarah Pearce, University of Southampton. Jewish Life and Jewish Faith in Graeco-Roman Alexandria

10:30: Coffee Break

11:00 René Bloch, University of Bern. Tacitus on the Jews Reconsidered

11:30 General Discussion

12:15 Greeting from Dr. Sibrand Poppema, President of the University of Groningen

Lunch: 12:30–1:30.

2:00–5:30 Implications of the Nationhood-Religion Question for Early Jewish-Christian Relations

Chair Jacques van Ruiten

2:00 Magnus Zetterholm, Lund University. Jews and Gentiles in the Synagogue: Revisiting the Birthplace of Christianity

3:00 Jan Willem van Henten, University of Amsterdam. Nation and Religion: the Case of Jewish and Christian Martyrdom

3:30: Tea Break

4:00 George van Kooten, University of Groningen. “The present Jerusalem (ἡ νῦν Ἰερουσαλήμ) is in slavery, but the Jerusalem above (ἡ ἄνω Ἰερουσαλήμ) is free” (Galatians 4.25-26): Political Aspects of Paul’s Description of Roman Jerusalem and Implications for Early Jewish-Christian Relations

 4:30 General Discussion

6:30: Dinner

_________________________________________________

Thursday, 23 June

9:00–1:00 Nationhood and Religion in the Rabbinic Period

Chair George van Kooten

9:00 Katell Berthelot, University of Aix-Marseille and CNRS: The Gerim in Rabbinic Literature: What Implications for the Definition of Israel?

9:30 Günter Stemberger, University of Vienna: Mishnah Sanhedrin 1–2: A Utopian Constitution of the Jewish State

10:00: Coffee Break

10:30 Sacha Stern, University College London. Time and Social Cohesion: Qumran, Nicaea, and Rabbinic Judaism

11:10 General Discussion

Farewell Lunch: 12:30–1:30.

Conclusion and Thanks

The organisers (Steve Mason and Mladen Popović) would like to reiterate their profound gratitude to the EAJS for sponsoring and fostering fundamental scholarship—not a mechanical or formulaic gathering to present dozens of small studies for another edited volume, but a gathering of leading scholars for collegial, respectful rethink of basic language and categories. This is an essential creative process, indispensable for the advancement of a sustainable research that truly listens and seeks to understand. With the unanimous testimony of the participants, we are sure that this event will bear fruit for many years to come.

 

Steve Mason (principal applicant)

with Mladen Popović (co-applicant) in agreement

[i] René S. Bloch, Antike Vorstellungen vom Judentum: der Judenexkurs des Tacitus im Rahmen der griechisch-römischen Ethnographie. Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 2002.

 

EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2015/16

REPORT

Jewish Museologies and the Politics of Display

Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Leeds, 13th-14th March 2016

Main organizer: Dr Eva Frojmovic (Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Leeds)

Co-organizer: Dr Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek (Association of European Jewish Museums, Amsterdam)

 

Event Rationale

As debates on the musealisation of Jewish history / culture proliferate, this conference will engage international curators and scholars to ask the following questions:

• Are there commonalities among Jewish museums in Europe?
• What are these museums and exhibitions trying to achieve?
• How do they construct and involve their stakeholders?
• How do they engage with the political discourses that shape their societies?
• Is a dividing line emerging between museums in countries directly affected by the Holocaust and others not directly affected?
• What research is needed, and has become possible as archival resources become available and laws change?
• With new challenges arising in living in an increasingly fractured Europe vulnerable to extremist violence, what reorientations may be required?

 

Conference Report

This was a very intensive conference with 34 participants giving papers or presenting at round table panels, and 25 further attendees, and 8 sessions of between 3 and 4 papers each, and two roundtables. In grouping the papers, the organisers were guided by the desire to put academics and museum professionals into dialogue. Furthermore, the papers were grouped not by periods or geographical principles, but rather by theoretical concerns.

Session 1 “Jewish Museologies I” was devoted to a diversity of museology. Accordingly, the debate revolved around Jewish museums’ self-positioning:  the move from a “logic of equivalence” between minority and majority values to a logic of difference (David Clark, London Metropolitan Uni [emeritus]);  the move from narratives of the nation to narratives of migration (Kathrin Pieren, University of Southampton and Petersfield Museum); and the creation of a multivocal, post-authoritarian narrative in a shifting political landscape (Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, POLIN Museum Warsaw and New York University [emerita]).

The issues raised in this initial session were continued in Session 2b “Jewish Museologies II”, in which Michal Frankl (Jewish Museum Prague) unravelled the challenges to presenting the history (of the Czech Jews) in a synagogue setting (the orientalising “Spanish” Synagogue); Hagai Segev (former chief curator of Beit Hatefutsot) spoke to the challenges of transforming a didactic university museum into a lively place of cultural exchange, and Katalin Deme (Aarhus University) discussed the new challenges of Scandinavian Jewish Museology. All three discussed  the relationship between Jewish museums and changing ideas of the nation (Czech Republic after communism, Israel’s changing relation to the Diaspora, social integration in Scandinavia and “scandinavianness”). In this way, some of the stakes were set out for the rest of the conference, and many other papers and Q&A sessions incorporated a reflection on these recent and ongoing transformations.

Session 2a took a different approach to the question of display of Jewish heritage in the museum by engaging with museums that do not describe themselves as Jewish museums, but which either have older Judaica holdings or which are seeking to integrate Jewish history and personal narratives. Thus, the question of Jewish “folk art” in many older ethnographic museums (Erica Lehrer, Concordia University), especially (but not exclusively) in Eastern Europe, was addressed, and above all Jewish presences in history museums and documentation centres. Timo Saalmann (Germanisches Nationalmuseum) reflected on the implications of transferring the temporary exhibition “Jewish Life in Bamberg”, installed in a house formerly under Jewish ownership into a permanent display within the Historisches Museum; Sylvia Necker (Dokumentation Obersalzberg and Institute for Contemporary History, Munich) outlined the plans for integrating personal narratives of victims at this symbolic perpetrator location of Obersalzberg.

Session 3 was devoted to new and renewing museums. Ch. Twiehaus (Rhineland Regional Council and Archaeologische Zone & Jewish Museum, Cologne) presented the evolving concept for the archaeological museum set to open in the next few years. The other speakers spoke to radical or far reaching transformations in existing museums. Zsuzsanna Toronyi (chief curator, Jewish Museum Budapest) meticulously documented the radical nature of the reversion from communist state control to community museum. We were especially fortunate to welcome the new director of the Jewish Museum Frankfurt Mirjam Wenzel, who outlined how the new extension and the reopening of Museum Judengasse will incorporate the “past imperfect” history of the museum since the 1980s.

A second major theme was initiated in Session 4: Trauma and Display. Here, Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek (xhibit.at and Association of European Jewish Museums), one of the co-investigators of the present grant, was able to elaborate on her earlier major essay, “Thoughts on the role of Jewish museums in the 21^st century”, and propose that in some way most Jewish museums in areas affected by the Holocaust have to confront the continuing trauma of the Holocaust. Her paper was complemented by Griselda Pollock’s (University of Leeds) critical display history of Charlotte Salomon – between “woman artist” and “Holocaust artist”, and by Dominic Williams’s (University of Liverpool and University of Leeds) exploration of the materialities, display possibilities and challenges for the so-called Scrolls of Auschwitz.

Roundtable 1, “Jewish Museums and European Politics” (Hetty Berg, Joods Historisch Museum Amsterdam; Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek; Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, POLIN Museum Warsaw and New York University; Cilly Kugelmann, Jewish Museum Berlin; Zsuzsanna Tornyi, Jewish Museum Budapest; chair: Griselda Pollock, University of Leeds), was devoted to the impact of European politics on the role of Jewish museums. The often animated discussion, which also included voices from the audience, revolved around the ethical position of Jewish museums in relation to current debates, for example around the refugee crisis. There was a clear sense that although Jewish museums cannot avoid current debates, they should not be delegated the sole responsibility (i.e. what is to be avoided is a scenario of “there’s a political crisis with an ethical dimension – let’s leave it to the Jewish museum”). Beyond that, the variety of views was significant. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett warned against Jewish museums being instrumentalised by new right wing governments in central and Eastern Europe; this warning that was seconded by Zsuzsanna Toronyi who defined the Budapest Jewish Museum’s independence as a community museum with all the financial disadvantages but with political independence. By contrast, Hetty Berg outlined a commitment to intercultural dialogue, especially with migrant groups from beyond Europe; this commitment was seconded by Joanne Rosenthal (Jewish Museum London) and David Glasser (Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, London) from the floor. In sum, it emerged very clearly that Jewish museums in former communist countries are having to deal with quite different sets of political issues than some of those in western European countries.

On the second day, many papers addressed the question of diverse and changing visitor demographics and the imperatives arising therefrom. The theme was explored thoroughly in Sessions 5 and 7. In particular, the challenges to Jewish museums in non-Jewish areas or without a significant Jewish audience were explored, and different strategies were discussed for reaching out to a variety of communities. A significant part of the discussions revolved around reconciling the desire to be a “Jewish” museum and the need to reach out across communities.

Session 5 was opened by Cilly Kugelmann (Jewish Museum Berlin), who outlined the change of direction towards a museum whose audience consists overwhelmingly of non-Jewish visitors. Sara Tas (Joods Historisch Museum Amsterdam) presented a museum pedagogy aimed at confronting intercommunal and anti-Jewish prejudice. Magda Veselska (Jewish Museum Prague) discussed the challenges posed by changing institutional frameworks and changing visitor profile in post-communist Prague; and Rachel Sarfati (Israel Museum Jerusalem) spoke of the new strategies for integrating contemporary art within the Jewish ethnography wing, and the resulting challenges from a range of different audiences.

Roundtable 2 was devoted to developments across the United Kingdom. Alexandra Cropper (Jewish Museum Manchester) reported on the newly won Heritage Lottery Grant to build an extension, and plans to involve the local (non-Jewish) community; Sharman Kadish (Jewish Heritage UK) called for synergy between preservation and museum, especially for museumization as a method for salvaging historic synagogues. Joanne Rosenthal (Jewish Museum London) and David Glasser (Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, London) presented different facets of engaging a variety of audiences in multicultural London.  Other participants included Philippa Lester and Diane Saunders (Leeds Jewish Literary Festival ), who together with Antonia Lovelace and Kitty Ross (Leeds City Museum) floated the possibility of a virtual heritage network across the city. There was a dose of healthy debate between the imperative to save Jewish monuments by turning them into museums, the salvaging of ephemera, the desire to serve as a focal point for changing Jewish communities, and the need to broaden one’s audience by bringing other communities into the museum.

A special feature of the conference was a session dedicated to Ph.D. students (Session 6 “Research in Progress”) from a variety of institutions in Lucca, London and of course Leeds. Lorenzo Borgonovo (IMT School for Advanced Studies, Lucca) traced the lines of continuity between the pre- and postwar Jewish museums of Livorno, while highlighting the loss of heritage in that historic community; Shir Kochavi (University of Leeds) spoke about the transformation of the Bezalel Museum during the immediate post-Holocaust period, by its acquisition of “heirless property”; and Natalia Romik (UCL) presented her installation plans for the old Tahara Hall of Gliwice. An interesting part of the discussion revolved around the ethics of reconstruction.

Session 7 engaged with questions of migration and integration. Annette Seidel-Arpaci (independent scholar) focussed on the changing discourses of migration in relation to museum pedagogy. Hilda Nissimi (Bar Ilan University) showed how both Daniel Libeskind’s architectural metaphors and the display narrative in the Copenhagen Jewish Museum transmit metaphors of rescue and shelter. Joanne Rosenthal (Jewish Museum London) presented the “Your Jewish Museum” project, a collaboration with Kings College London aimed at developing new audiences by means of community engagement and participation processes such as their series of “crowdsourced” exhibitions. David Glasser (Ben Uri Gallery and Museum) gave an account of the successive stages of Ben Uri’s rebranding over the last two decades, which positioned the Ben Uri Gallery and Museum as being in close connection with the changing face of multicultural London.

 

Summary

The conference demonstrated the benefits of museum-university dialogue – this was universally praised by participants. The papers and roundtables showed that despite much European collaboration, there remain significant centrifugal political forces between Eastern and Central Europe (broadly post communist countries) and Western Europe, which need to be addressed in future collaborations if cultural cohesion is to be furthered across Europe. The contributions also show divergences between countries once occupied by the Nazis and those not occupied, with significant differences in emphasis and interpretation of Holocaust memory.

 

Outcomes

The conference has led to 2 new collaborations:

• An informal connection between the University of Leeds and Southampton University, which is hosting a heritage workshop in July 2016, which may lead to a joint publication.
• A connection with the Hohenems Jewish Museum in Austria. This has already materialised in Leeds’ participation in a development workshop at Hohenems, and is set to continue with an event at Leeds with one of the artists currently active there, the UK sound artist Susan Philipsz, see http://www.jm-hohenems.at/en/veranstaltungen/susan-philipsz-soundinstallation-am-juedischen-friedhof-hohenems-en

 

Outputs

• During the conference, an archive of recordings was assembled. We are now looking into how to make at least portions of it accessible.
• An extensive questionnaire collected feedback from speakers. The results may be summarised as follows:

In a rapidly changing political climate in Europe, including centrifugal forces connected to economic crisis, enlarged EU, new nationalisms, new religious identities including fundamentalisms, and the refugee crisis, Jewish museums face significant challenges. “Jewish Museums all over are undergoing a process of change. They are confronted with new challenges due to the advanced development of professional museology, political changes in many countries, and advanced academic research in the field of Jewish visual and material culture.” In this context, there were discussions about the changing audiences of Jewish museums, changing funding structures, and also the diversity that divides community led Jewish museums from state led museums.

A major contribution was the insight that temporary exhibitions are not merely a way to bring the visitors in, but also the vehicle of choice for responding flexibly to changing political climate and changing educations imperatives.

• A publication is being planned.

 

Announcements about the Conference online

• http://www.cjs.leeds.ac.uk/2016/02/22/jewish-museologies-speakers-and-titles/
• http://www.fine-art.leeds.ac.uk/news/jewish-museologies-and-the-politics-of-display-call-for-papers/
• http://www.fine-art.leeds.ac.uk/events/jewish-presences-and-presents-in-the-museum-jewish-museologies-and-the-politics-of-display/
• https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=gem;cd71c14e.1602
• https://twitter.com/aejmnews/status/705151370664550401
• https://twitter.com/eahn_org/status/663627941331525632
• http://arthist.net/archive/11427
• http://amigosdesousamendes.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/conference-on-jewish-museologies-and.html