Colloquia

A History of EAJS Colloquia

19 August 2013 by EAJS Administrator

EAJS Colloquia

1996	Medieval Jewish Bible Exegesis. Yarnton Manor, Oxford, 15th-19th July 1996. Co-ordinator: Albert van der Heide, Leiden University

1997	Early Rabbinic Judaism (convened by the European Centre for the University Teaching of Jewish Civilization). Yarnton Manor, Oxford, 22nd-26th September 1997. Co-ordinators: Martin Goodman, University of Oxford, and Philip Alexander, University of Manchester

1998	No Colloquium. VIth EAJS Congress, Toledo, 19th-23rd July 1998.

1999	No Colloquium

2000	Medieval Hebrew Poetry in Its Religious and Secular Context. Yarnton Manor, Oxford, 24th-27th July 2000. Co-ordinator: Dr Wout van Bekkum, University of Groningen

2001	Issues in Jewish Philosophy. Yarnton Manor, Oxford, 23rd-26th July 2001. Co-ordinator: Professor Reinier Munk, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

2002	No Colloquium. VIIth EAJS Congress, Amsterdam, 21st-25th July 2002: Jewish Studies and the European Academic World.

2003	Teaching the Holocaust in Higher Education in Europe. Yarnton Manor, Oxford, 2nd-4th July 2003. Co-ordinators: Professor Jonathan Webber and Dr Isabel Wollaston, University of Birmingham

2004	Epigonism and the Dynamic of Jewish Culture. Yarnton Manor, Oxford, 5th-8th July 2004. Co-ordinators: Professor Shlomo Berger and Professor Irene Zwiep, University of Amsterdam

	Papers published in Studia Rosenthaliana Volume 40, 2007

2005	The Teaching of Hebrew in European Universities. Yarnton Manor, Oxford, 18th-20th July 2005. Co-ordinator: Professor Nicholas de Lange, University of Cambridge

2006	No Colloquium. VIIIth EAJS Congress, Moscow, 23rd-27th July 2006: Past and present perspectives in Jewish Studies.

2007	The Cultures of Maimonideanism: New Approaches to the History of Jewish Thought. Wolfson College, Oxford, 16th-19th July 2007. Co-ordinators: Gad Freudenthal, CNRS, Paris, and James T. Robinson, University of Chicago

	Papers published in Supplements to The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy Volume 9, 2009 (online: http://www.jewish-studies.info/files/maimonidesbrill.pdf)

2008	Hebrew linguistic thought and its transmission in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times. Wolfson College, Oxford, 7th-10th July 2008. Co-ordinator: Professor Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Sorbonne, Paris

2009	Manuscripts and History in the Jewish Middle Ages. Wolfson College, Oxford, 6th-9th July, 2009. Co-ordinators: Piero Capelli, Universita Ca’ Foscari di Venezia, and Marina Rustow, Emory University

2010	No Colloquium. IXth EAJS Congress, Ravenna, 25th-29th July 2010: Judaism in the Mediterranean Context.
2011	Books within Books – New Discoveries in Old Book Bindings. Wolfson College, Oxford, 18th-20th July, 2011. Co-ordinator: Andreas Lehnardt, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz
2012	Wissenschaft des Judentums and Jewish Studies in Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries: Comparative Perspectives. Yarnton Manor, Oxford, 23rd-26th July 2012. Co-ordinator: Christian Wiese, Goethe University Frankfurt
2013	The Jewish-Theological Seminar of Breslau, the ‘Science of Judaism’ and the Development of a Conservative Movement in Germany, Europe, and the United States (1854-1933): An EAJS Workshop in Memory of Francesca Y. Albertini z”l (1974-2011). Wolfson College, Oxford, July 2013. Co-ordinators: Andreas Brämer, Institut der Geschichte der deutschen Juden, Hamburg, and Frederek Musall, Hochschule für Jüdische Studien Heidelberg

The Jewish-Theological Seminar of Breslau, the ‘Science of Judaism’ and the Development of a Conservative Movement in Germany, Europe, and the United States (1854-1933). 13th EAJS Summer Colloquium, Wolfson College, Oxford, July 22nd to 25th, 2013

10 July 2013 by EAJS Administrator

Thirteenth EAJS Summer Colloquium

The Jewish-Theological Seminary of Breslau, the »Science of Judaism« and
the Development of a Conservative Movement in Germany, Europe, and the United States (1854—1933)

Wolfson College Oxford, July 22—25, 2013

Convenors: Andreas Brämer (Institute for the History of German Jews, Hamburg) and Frederek Musall (Hochschule für Jüdische Studien, Heidelberg)

Research on modern Jewish history has been flourishing over the past several decades. Based on diverse methods and approaches, this research has explored the wide range of Jewish responses to modernity, the process of political emancipation and social mobilization as well as cultural and religious transformation. The 13^th Summer Colloquium of the European Association for Jewish Studies (EAJS) highlighted one aspect of this larger process of transformation, the emergence and history of the “positive historical” current, i.e. Conservative Judaism. The conveners, Andreas Brämer (Institute for the History of German Jews, Hamburg) and Frederek Musall (Hochschule für Jüdische Studien, Heidelberg) intended to emphasize the relevance of the “golden mean” for modern Jewish history, a phenomenon that often has been overlooked, since inquiry has tended to focus on the controversies between Liberal Judaism and Neo-Orthodoxy.

Two outstanding scholars in the field opened the Summer Colloquium: Ismar Schorsch, Chancellor emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and Michael A. Meyer, Adolph S. Ochs Professor of Jewish History emeritus at the Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati. Their opening lectures focused on Bernhard Beer and Manuel Joël, two scholars from the “second wave”, who can be best described as mediators who frequently crossed the borders of politics, religion and scholarship.

Ismar Schorsch shed light on the life and work of Bernhard Beer, a leading member of the Jewish community in Dresden (Saxony), who advocated political emancipation, moderate religious reform, and critical scholarship. Beer was an autodidact and well connected with leading Jewish scholars of his time, such as Zacharias Frankel, Leopold Zunz and Moritz Steinschneider. According to Schorsch, Beer’s concept of critical scholarship was paradigmatic for Conservative Judaism. It was in his eyes no contradiction to traditional Judaism—Wissen and Glaube were compatible. Schorsch stressed that not only for Beer, but also Conservative Judaism in general, the Talmud continued to be a crucial point of reference. “Conservative Judaism was not at war with the Talmud”, but demanded its deeper understanding through critical scholarship.

Whereas Beer is almost forgotten today, Manuel Joël is known as a teacher at the Jewish Theological Seminary and rabbi of Breslau as well as for his historical and philosophical writings. Michael A. Meyer described Joël as a mediator between Conservative and Liberal Judaism and emphasized his self-perception as a “Jew without any Richtung”. In particular with regard to his position as the rabbi of Breslau—and successor to Abraham Geiger—Joël sought to avoid further controversies. In contrast with Geiger, who understood dispute as the expression of a Jewish Freigeist, a free spirit in thought that would strengthen Judaism, Joël appreciated compromise as an intrinsic value. Joël’s efforts led him to undertake a new edition of the Breslau prayer book[1] and this sparked a public controversy with Geiger that, as Meyer demonstrated, highlighted the difference between these two. Nevertheless, Joël was much appreciated beyond Conservative circles. He attended rabbinical assemblies such as the synod of Leipzig and was appointed to a committee to prepare the foundation of the Hochschule für die Wisenschaft des Judentums—irrespective of his personal and professional connections with the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau.

The following presentations dealt with a variety of questions within the history of Conservative Judaism and focused in particular on the role of Breslau as its birthplace and the Jewish Theological Seminary (Jüdisch-Theologisches Seminar Fraenckel’sche Stiftung) as the “mother institution” of rabbinical education. Almost all presentations would refer to players or projects related to Breslau, in one way or another, including its importance for modern Jewish scholarship.

Margit Schad and co-convener Andreas Brämer (both Hamburg) provided a socio-historical perspective and focused on the role of Silesia as the birthplace of Conservative Judaism. Margit Schad presented “positive-historical” or ”middle-of-the road” Judaism not only as a religious movement but also as political one that can be described by its specific social, political, and geographical parameters. With regard to their origin, Schad showed that an astonishing number of protagonists of Conservative Judaism came from Silesia and Posen, Moravia and Bohemia. Andreas Brämer’s talk elaborated in detail Silesia as a center of Conservative Judaism and the interrelationship between the Jewish Theological Seminary and the Jewish communities in the mid-19^th century. A majority of Silesian rabbis advocated moderate reform, which drew them closer to Zacharias Frankel already before the foundation of the Breslau Seminary.

Abraham Ascher (New York) examined the relationship between the Seminary and the local Jewish community of Breslau, while Irene Kajon (Rome) compared the Breslau Seminary and the Rabbinical College of Padua. The latter was founded already in 1829, followed a more traditional approach towards rabbinical education and was influenced by the Galician Haskalah. In addition to describing the similarities and highlighting the differences between these two institutions, Kajon focused on the life and work of Sabato Morais, the founder of the Jewish Theological Seminary of New York. She presented Morais as a bridge builder, between Breslau and Padua, Ashkenazic and Sephardic Judaism.

Historical research was from its beginnings a central pillar of the Wissenschaft des Judentums and greatly appreciated within Conservative Judaism. Heinrich Graetz was not only the most important 19^th-century Jewish historian but also a representative of the Conservative approach and a teacher at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Marcus Pyka (Lugano) took the “loud silence” of German Neo-Orthodoxy after Graetz’s death as his point of departure. For Liberals and Conservatives, he became at that point “their Graetz”. Pyka sees the reason for the refusal of Orthodox leaders to follow this path of glorification in the Orthodox reception of Graetz’s work, and in particular in Samson Raphael Hirsch’s response to the History of the Jews. Pyka elaborated Hirsch’s substantial critique based on classical historical argumentation and the subsequent public, in tone highly polemical controversy with Raphael Kirchheim. Nils Roemer (Dallas) introduced a broader perspective on historiography by focusing on the approaches of Jewish historians towards revelation and reason, the sacred and the secular. Roemer sought to challenge the “linear narrative” of secularization within historiography on the Wissenschaft des Judentums, highlighting the different contexts in which Jewish historiography emerged and developed over the 19^th and early 20^th century. The experiences of emancipation and the influence of romanticism were followed by the challenges of anti-Semitism, and in particular the Berliner Antisemitismus-streit that became a defining moment of the Wissenschaft des Judentums. At the end of the 19^th century, Roemer argued, Wissenschaft had become a sacred space, inheriting a religious dimension that would later become the battleground for the young radical intellectuals in the 20^th century.

Chanan Gafni (Jerusalem) explored the debates on the history of Jewish tradition, namely the Oral Law, which gained a particular significance for Jewish historiography in the 19^th century. The idea that the Oral Law provided Judaism with a certain flexibility and changeability was already promoted in the 18^th century, for example by Moses Mendelssohn, who emphasized this particular value in contrast to the negative perception of Jewish law in the Christian environment. In the 19^th century, Conservative and Liberal scholars stressed a later conception that underlined the idea of flexibility and changeability inherent to Judaism and legitimized the historical approach towards Judaism as well as the efforts for reform. By contrast, Orthodoxy preferred the concept of the Law as unchangeable law. Regardless of the significant differences between these approaches, Gafni refrained from classifying them as movements.

The presentations by Myriam Bienenstock (Tours/Paris) and George Y. Kohler (Ramat Gan) focused on philosophy and its place at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Bienenstock proposed that Manuel Joël’s work on Spinoza can serve to illuminate why Hermann Cohen changed his perception of Spinoza between an early positive discussion in ”Heinrich Heine und das Judentum” (1867) and his famous and harsh condemnation in 1915 in “Spinoza über Staat und Religion, Judentum und Christentum”. How evident this influence was is uncertain, given the short time Cohen spent in Breslau and the fact that Joël was neither his teacher nor did Cohen quote him in his later work on Spinoza. George Kohler provided further insight into the work of Manuel Joël and focused on the interest of the ”Breslau school of thought” in medieval Jewish philosophy and its influence on Christian scholasticism. Joël and Jacob Guttmann were the most important representatives of this field of research, which was at least partly based on the political and scholarly efforts of the Wissenschaft des Judentums to present Judaism in its own right and to highlight its role in world history.

The Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums, founded by Zacharias Frankel in 1851, was one of the most important projects of the Wissenschaft des Judentums and linked, not only though Frankel, to the Jewish Theological Seminary and Conservative Judaism.[2] Kerstin von der Krone (Berlin) examined the late history of the Monatsschrift from the First World War to its final issue in 1939. Whereas the editors of the journal decided to react to the First World War by publishing essays on the war, letters and reports by soldiers and field rabbis that were meant to support the German cause and reflected as well on its (negative) implications for German Jewry, the dramatic changes since 1933 were almost invisible in the journal’s pages. The situation of German Jewry was only indirectly discussed, for example through the re-evaluation of the history of emancipation. In 1939, and after almost all German-Jewish periodicals had been banned by the Nazis, Leo Baeck became editor of the Monatsschrift and was able to engage leading Jewish scholars as contributors to its 83^rd and final volume.

Conservative Judaism gained influence likewise beyond Germany through dissemination of ideas, the migration of protagonists and the adoption of concepts and institutional models. In Hungary, the establishment of the Budapest rabbinical seminary, which resembled the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau, played a significant role in strengthening a Conservative approach. Carsten Wilke (Budapest) shed light on an earlier but failed attempt by Wolf Meisel, chief rabbi of Pest (1859—1867), to establish a moderate reform Judaism in Hungary. Meisel was confronted with attacks by Neologs, in particular by Leopold Löw, Pressburg Orthodoxy and Hungarian nationalists and, as Wilke showed, was unable to moderate the conflict-ridden situation, which contributed to his failure. In her paper, Mirjam Thulin (Mainz, Frankfurt am Main) discussed the eminent role of rabbinical seminaries as the institutional framework of Conservative Judaism and its transnational networks. Thulin presented an outline for further study on a number of seminaries in Europe and North America which largely followed the educational and organizational program of the Breslau Jewish Theological Seminary. She emphasized that the question as to whether this resemblance allows us to subsume these diverse institutions of rabbinical training under Conservative Judaism needs further exploration.

Guy Miron (Jerusalem) dealt with the historiography on the Jewish Theological Seminary of New York beginning in the mid-20^th century and questioned the tendency there to overestimate the role of Breslau and Germany as the wellspring of American Conservative Judaism, a tendency which in Miron’s view was related to the Jewish experience in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s. At a time when Breslau had vanished as a center of Jewish life, it became a positive point of reference for American Conservative Judaism. The discussion on Guy Miron’s talk brought up the question whether the concepts of ”positive-historical” Judaism as used in the German context and Conservative Judaism as used in the American context are congruent, or rather reflect the different historical and political contexts in which they emerged. Zacharias Frankel was influenced by the German intellectual and legal discourse, whereas Solomon Schechter adopted ”conservative” as a term from the political landscape of the day in England, which he used to implement his concept of moderate Judaism in a fast growing (migrant) community in North America. The debate showed that further research is necessary not only regarding theses concepts but on how they were implemented in their respective contexts.

Originally the Colloquium was planned to focus on the history of Conservative Judaism from the mid-19^th century until 1933. But the final presentations chose to move beyond that fateful year. The last two speakers dealt with post-war developments in Israel and the recent efforts to re-establish Jewish Studies in today’s Wrocław (Poland). Asaf Yedidya (Jerusalem) describes the attempts of Ephraim Elimelech Urbach, one of the last teachers of the Jewish Theological Seminary Breslau, to continue its legacy in Israel though the formation of the Movement for Torah in the 1960s and ’70s. In opposition to the Israeli Orthodox establishment, Urbach saw the need to revive the Halachah according to the challenges of the time and planned to found an educational institution that resembled the Breslau model. The implementation of these plans proved abortive due to a lack of necessary vision for the future of this movement within Israeli society. Michał Bojanowski (Heidelberg, Wrocław) shed light on the recent efforts to re-establish Jewish cultural life in Wrocław, including a Jewish Studies Program that was developed in cooperation with Wrocław University and is meant to lay the foundation for a future international center for Jewish studies. The restoration of the White Storch Synagogue was an important step towards this goal. It was re-opened on May 6, 2010 as a community and educational site, a synagogue and place of historical memory. A first educational program attracted members of the Jewish community and the Breslau population alike, creating a new space for interaction between Jews and non-Jews.

The concluding discussion, opened by the impressions of co-convener Frederek Musall (Heidelberg), picked up several issues raised during the Colloquium. A number of presentations pointed out the different levels of invention of tradition prevalent in the history of Conservative Judaism, which according to Andreas Brämer can be explained by a dual challenge its protagonists had to respond to: the demand to define precisely what Conservatism is and the need for openness with respect to the broader idea of a moderate ”middle of the road” movement. The further discussion also commented on Chanan Gafni’s thesis that there were no movements as such, which is contradicted by the self-perception of Liberals, Conservatives or Orthodox Jews, who used terms like ”Bewegung” (movement) and ”Partei” to distinguish themselves from each other. George Kohler questioned the perception of Conservative Judaism as a clearly defined religious movement from a different angle. In his view, the acceptance of the Halachah is the decisive factor of differentiation. This perspective follows the Orthodox viewpoint, subsuming Conservation Judaism under the Reform movements. Whether the Conservative approach should be understood just as another version of Reform or constituted an independent movement, it is clearly based on particular concepts. For Conservative Judaism, the idea of a revealed Torah remained unquestioned and only the Oral Law was historicized. As Ismar Schorsch had already pointed out in his opening lecture, this led to different attitudes towards the Talmud. In contrast with Liberal Judaism, the Talmud was not fought against but rather was studied critically with the aim to deepen its understanding as a source of Judaism. However, the Colloquium showed that deeper inquiry into the history of Conservative Judaism, its protagonists and institutions, reveals a more complex picture of modern Jewish history. It provided comprehensive insights into the history of Conservative Judaism and offered new impetus for further research that hopefully will contribute to a better understanding of Conservative Judaism and its place in modern Jewish history.

Kerstin von der Krone (Berlin)

Andreas Brämer (Hamburg)

Frederek Musall (Heidelberg)

Overview

Opening:

Andreas Brämer (Hamburg)

Opening Lectures:

Ismar Schorsch (New York): Bernhard Beer—Between Religious Reform and Positive-Historical Judaism

Michael A. Meyer (Cincinnati): The Career of a Mediator: Manuel Joël, Conservative Liberal

Panel I: Positive-Historical Judaism in Germany

Chair: Frederek Musall (Heidelberg)

Margit Schad (Hamburg): The Positive-Historical or Middle-of-the Road Judaism in Germany as a Movement (1844—1930)

Andreas Brämer (Hamburg): Positive-Historical Judaism in Silesia—A Success Story?

Panel II: The Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau (in Comparative Perspective)

Chair: Nils Roemer (Dallas)

Abraham Ascher (New York) The Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau: The Pride of a Small Community

Irene Kajon (Rome) The Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau and the Rabbinical College of Padua: A Comparison

Panel III: Historical Research at the Jewish Theological Seminary and Beyond

Chair: Margit Schad

Marcus Pyka (Lugano): Greatz, Hirsch, and the Dimension of Personality in the Emergence of Conservative Judaism. A Plea for More Than One Context

Nils Roemer (Dallas): Secularism and Its Discontent: Jewish Historians between Revelation and Reason

Chanan Gafni (Jerusalem): The Debate on Oral Law in the 19th Century

Panel IV: Breslau Versions of the Wissenschaft des Judentums

Chair: Carsten Wilke (Budapest)

Myriam Bienenstock (Tours): Between Biblical Hermeneutics and Biblical Criticism: Manuel Joel on Spinoza

George Kohler (Ramat Gan): »Scholasticism is a Daughter of Judaism«—Breslau and the Discovery of Jewish Influence on Medieval Christian Thought

Panel V: The Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums

Chair: Marcus Pyka (Lugano)

Christian Wiese (Frankfurt): Markus Brann (1849-1920) and the Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums [cancelled on short notice]

Kerstin von der Krone (Berlin): Crisis, New Beginnings and a »Dignified End«: The Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums in the First World War and the Interwar Period

Panel VI: The Conservative Trend in Judaism – Beyond Germany

Chair: George Y. Kohler (Ramat Gan)

Carsten Wilke (Budapest): Rabbi Wolf Meisel’s Attempt to Establish a Midstream Judaism in Hungary, 1859-1867

Mirjam Thulin (Mainz): From Breslau to New York: The Establishment of Rabbinical Training in Conservative Judaism

Guy Miron (Jerusalem): In Search of a Usable Past: On the German Roots of Conservative Judaism

Panel VI: Contemporary Issues

Chair: Guy Miron (Jerusalem)

Asaf Yedidya (Jerusalem): Ephraim Elimelech Urbach and the Movement for Torah’s Judaism 1966-1975—An Attempt to Re-Establish the Breslau School in Israel

Michal Bojanowski ( Wrocław): History Reclaimed: Jewish Studies in Wrocław after World War II

Concluding Remarks and Final Discussion

Chair: Frederek Musall (Heidelberg)

[1] On the occasion of the establishment of the Neue Synagoge that was inaugurated by Joël and the Orthodox rabbi Gedalja Tiktin in 1872.

[2] Unfortunately, Christian Wiese (Frankfurt am Main) was obliged to cancel his talk on Markus Brann and the Monatsschrift on short notice.

Wissenschaft des Judentums in Europe: Comparative Perspectives. 12th EAJS Summer Colloquium, Yarnton Manor, Oxford, July 23rd to 26th, 2012

2 October 2012 by EAJS Administrator

Twelfth EAJS Summer Colloquium

Wissenschaft des Judentums in Europe: Comparative Perspectives

23-26 July, 2012, Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies (OCHJS), Yarnton Manor, Oxford

Convenor: Christian Wiese (Frankfurt am Main)

The Twelfth Summer Colloquium of the European Association of Jewish Studies (EAJS) was held at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies (OCHJS) at Yarnton Manor from 23 to 26 July 2012. The colloquium aimed at bringing together scholars from different fields in Jewish Studies as well as archivists to discuss new trends in the historiography on Wissenschaft des Judentums/Jewish Studies in Europe and to re-think and partly re-write its history in a collective, interdisciplinary endeavour. The colloquium was attended by twenty-one scholars from several European countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland and the UK) as well as from Israel.

Whilst today Jewish Studies in Europe is an integral part of academia, the history of the discipline throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century is that of a young field of research that was never really accepted at European universities before the Holocaust. Despite its discrimination, the tradition of Wissenschaft des Judentums developed in Germany after the Enlightenment spread throughout most of the European Jewish communities, creating its own institutions and producing an impressive record of research on Jewish history, religion, literature and culture. Apart from its scholarly endeavours, Wissenschaft des Judentums had important cultural and political functions: the discipline played a vital role in the Jewish minority’s struggle for political and cultural emancipation, especially in its fight against anti-Semitism and its attempt to demonstrate that Judaism was a religion that was compatible with Enlightenment and modern European culture, capable of being modernized and of contributing important cultural, religious and ethical values.

Much of the research done in recent decades focuses strongly on Germany or analyses the history of Jewish Studies along national lines without providing systematic comparative perspectives. This is especially problematic since Jewish Studies was clearly a transnational European endeavour characterized by a network of scholars originating from the important rabbinical seminaries in Padua, Breslau, Budapest, Berlin or Vienna, and spreading to other European countries, including Britain, France, England, the Netherlands as well as parts of Central and Eastern Europe. Furthermore, the situation of Jewish Studies, the needs and strategies of the discipline, its political and cultural function varied in different countries and political contexts. The role of Wissenschaft des Judentums in Germany an instrument of combat against anti-Semitism and of the struggle for emancipation differed, for instance, from England or France where the Jewish minority was much more integrated and less affected by anti-Jewish sentiments.

Twenty years after the publication of Julius Carlebach’s edited volume on Wissenschaft des Judentums: Anfänge der Judaistik in Europa (1992), the purpose of the colloquium was to revisit the history of Jewish Studies in Europe before the Holocaust in a comprehensive systematic manner as well as to devote attention to new thematic and methodological approaches regarding the comparative and transnational dimension of Wissenschaft des Judentums, particularly in less-known centers of Jewish Studies such as Italy, Hungary, Austria and Eastern Europe. The programme included three keynote lectures and eighteen presentations. It provided a detailed discussion of the transnational Jewish scholarly networks in Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth century and the specific circumstances such as the political context, the degree of cultural integration, the challenges by anti-Jewish sentiments and organizations, the religious identity of Jews, their patterns of communal and political activity as well as the various thematic perspectives of Jewish Studies in different European countries.

After a warm welcome by the EAJS administrator GARTH GILMOUR (Oxford), CHRISTIAN WIESE (Frankfurt am Main) reflected upon the purpose of the colloquium, emphasizing that, since Carlebach’s volume, much had changed in research on Wissenschaft des Judentums. In recent years, Wiese pointed out, a new generation of scholars has entered the field of Jewish Studies, developing new perspectives and methodological approaches from different disciplines, including cultural studies; furthermore, the opening of the archives in Eastern Europe provided rich material for a re-assessment of previous research results.

The first panel on the “Beginnings of Wissenschaft des Judentums in Italy” started with CRISTIANA FACCHINI (Bologna), who analyzed the conditions under which Wissenschaft des Judentums developed in a Catholic surrounding and the impact of different religious and ideological systems on the Italian-Jewish communities. Exploring the life and works of main figures of the Italian Wissenschaft such as Samuel D. Luzzatto, Elija Benamozegh and David Castelli, the paper pointed to the specific character of Jewish Studies in the Italian context. ASHER SALAH (Jerusalem) dedicated his talk to another outstanding Italian scholar, Marco Mortara. As a prolific and meticulous correspondent, Mortara established contact with most of the key figures in German speaking Wissenschaft des Judentums, including Moritz Steinschneider and David Kaufmann. Thus Salah emphasized the crucial role of the written correspondence of Jewish scholars for future research. CHIARA ADORISIO (Rome) then went on to portray the relationship between the Parisian librarian Salomon Munk and the Italian Jewish scholar Samuel D. Luzzatto, thus presenting another illuminating scholarly correspondence. Containing the philosophical dialogue between both correspondents, their letters written between 1850 and 1864 highlight the strong influence exerted by German Wissenschaft des Judentums on its Italian counterpart. The three presentations of this panel demonstrated quite clearly that – despite the influential rabbinical seminary in Padua – Wissenschaft des Judentums in Italy rested mainly on the activities of individual scholars and their (correspondence) networks.

In his keynote lecture delivered at the end of the first day of the colloquium, ANDREAS GOTZMANN (Erfurt) discussed the challenging impact the new paradigms of history and historiography developed by Jewish scholars had on the identity of Jewish communities in nineteenth-century Europe. He identified two main pathways that emerged in the face of the prevailing historical system of interpretation: Whilst one group of more progressive Jews followed the academic standards in defining a society, people or religious and cultural tradition via historical thinking rather than in terms of categories of revelation, an alternative was to stand aside and continue transmitting Jewish knowledge in a traditional manner. Eventually, history and scholarship (in the German sense of Wissenschaft) became the driving forces of Jewish modernization in the era of emancipation and acculturation. Subsequently, the acceptance or denial of the scientific ideal was also a reason for the – partly schismatic – division of Judaism into a Reform, an Orthodox and a Conservative current.

The second day started with a session on “Wissenschaft des Judentums in Eastern Europe”. In his keynote address, FRANÇOIS GUESNET (London) discussed the epistemological shift occurring in modern Jewish scholarship and the new definition of the Jewish scholar that emerged during this period. Guesnet emphasized that, for the sake of a better understanding of the impact of Wissenschaft des Judentums in Eastern Europe, future research should take a closer look at individual scholars such as Salomon Buber and Leopold Löw, at institutions such as the rabbinical seminaries in Russia and Hungary as well as at Jewish historiography in Poland, Lithuania or Moravia. In the following, MICHAL GALAS (Kraków) characterized the activities of influential scholars such as Markus M. Jastrow, Samuel A. Poznanski, Izaak Cylkow and Moses Schorr (who were associated with the Great Synagogue in Warsaw) and highlighted the link that existed between synagogue/religion and Wissenschaft des Judentums in the Polish context. KERSTIN ARMBORST-WEIHS (Mainz) analyzed the development of Jewish scholarship in the Russian Empire at the turn of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Even though Simon Dubnow had called for the establishment of an historical institute already in 1891, it took more than a decade until the Jewish Society for History and Ethnography (JSHE) was eventually founded in 1905 and started to operate in 1908. The JSHE succeeded in publishing a Russian quarterly, organized public lectures and brought together a large collection of artifacts reflecting Jewish life of Jews and Judaism, which was dispersed throughout the Soviet Union after the forced dissolution of the JSHE in 1929.

In the third panel devoted to the “Wissenschaft des Judentums in the Habsburg Empire”, BJOERN SIEGEL (Hamburg) discussed the role of the Viennese rabbi Adolf Jellinek in the Austro-Hungarian capital. Jellinek took various approaches to introduce the ideas of Wissenschaft des Judentums to the local Jewish community, for instance by establishing a Bet ha-Midrash. One of the outcomes was an intensification of the ongoing debates regarding the necessities of modern Jewish education and the ethos of modern Jewish scholarship. MIRJAM THULIN (Frankfurt am Main) examined the establishment of Wissenschaft des Judentums in Hungary by looking at the long lasting controversies over the rabbinical seminary in Budapest. As Thulin pointed out, it took almost seventy years until the so-called Landes-Rabbinerschule, the Budapest rabbinical seminary, was opened in 1877 and the institution developed into one of the main centers of Wissenschaft des Judentums in Central and Eastern Europe. As FERENC L. LACZÓ (Jena) showed, new literary and historical societies continued and supported modern Jewish scholarship in Hungary in the course of the twentieth century. Focusing on the Israelite Hungarian Literary Society (IMIT Évkönyvek), a major institution of Jewish scholarship in the Horthy era, Laczó emphasized that, apart from containing information about a Bible translation project, the articles of the IMIT yearbooks allow a profound insight into contemporary discussions on the nature of Jewish(-Hungarian) identity.

The fourth panel on “Visions and Values in Wissenschaft des Judentums” centered around the emphasis Jewish scholarship in early and mid-nineteenth-century Germany put on the tension between Jewish tradition, contemporary historical experience and the concepts and values embraced by the modernizing trends of Jewish scholarship. As a start, CÉLINE TRAUTMANN-WALLER (Paris) introduced the autobiography of the founder of the Wissenschaft des Judentums – Leopold Zunz. The “Buch Zunz,” a scrap book the famous scholar began to write only in the 1850s, combined personal memories with interesting data of contemporary and historical events. This idiosyncratic document demonstrates Zunz’s passion for numbers and his interpretation of the link between personal experience, Jewish history, and historical events in the surrounding world. GEORGE Y. KOHLER (Beer Sheva) then discussed the reception of Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism by the representatives of Wissenschaft des Judentums. In contrast to Gershom Scholem’s famous statement according to which Kabbalah and mysticism had been neglected or even eclipsed by contemporary Jewish scholarship, Kohler was able to show that scholars such as Leopold Löw and Abraham Geiger were far from underestimating the significance of Kabbalah for the understanding of historical and contemporary Judaism. Already in 1835 Geiger pointed out that Kabbalah was “the true jewel of our science” and called for a systematic research on this element of Jewish tradition.

A further element that is essential for the understanding of the history of modern Jewish scholarship is the currently much-discussed relationship between Wissenschaft des Judentums and Oriental Studies. In his paper presented during the fifth panel on “The Intersection of Wissenschaft des Judentums and Islamic Studies,” DIRK HARTWIG (Berlin) analysed the development of Oriental Studies in Germany up to 1900 and the contribution of Jewish scholars to the creation and growth of academic Islamic Studies in Europe. OTTFRIED FRAISSE (Frankfurt am Main) focused on the prominent Hungarian scholar Ignác Goldziher and his motivation to research Islamic theology by carefully examining the latter’s lecture on the “Essence and Evolution of Judaism” delivered in 1887. Fraisse showed that, by adapting Darwin’s theory regarding evolution and by following Maimonides’ reasons of law, Goldziher had developed a distinctive model of scientific evolution of tradition that both combined and represented his (Jewish) religious and academic motivation for scholarly research.

The sixth panel of the colloquium addressed the “Wissenschaft des Judentums in the Early Twentieth century” and drew the attention to the various developments within Jewish scholarship around one hundred years after the emergence of the Verein für die Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden in 1819. In her presentation, KERSTIN VON DER KRONE (Berlin) gave an account of the new institutions, projects and methodological approaches characterizing Wissenschaft des Judentums after World War I. At that time, a new programmatic debate about the nature of Jewish scholarship unfolded in Germany, inspired by scholars such as Ismar Elbogen, among others, who for the first time called for a critical reflection on the history of modern Jewish scholarship. NICOLAS BERG (Leipzig/London) focused on a crucial external element that became increasingly relevant for the discipline around 1900, namely the challenging variant of anti-Semitism that tended to argue in academic – historical, theological, social and economic – terms. By examining the reception of Werner Sombart’s “Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben” (published in 1911), Berg illustrated the complex reception of this classic of anti-Semitic literature among Jewish as well as non-Jewish intellectuals and showed how Sombarts book made use the contents of the writings and ideas of Wissenschaft des Judentums, transforming it into an anti-Semitic argument.

In the seventh panel, the colloquium looked at the “Material Cultures of Wissenschaft des Judentums”. EVA MARIA JANSSON (Copenhagen) introduced the David Simonsen Archives in Copenhagen, which is today part of the local Royal Library and one of the biggest collections of an individual scholar of Wissenschaft des Judentums. As Jansson pointed out, Simonson was in contact with at least 50 percent of the European Wissenschaft scholars. The archive preserves nearly 29.000 letters and is currently being digitalized (http://www.kb.dk/en/nb/samling/js/dsa/index.html). ZSUZSANNA TORONYI (Budapest) presented the complex history of the Hungarian-Jewish Archives in Budapest, sited in the building of the Dohanyi Street Synagogue and the Jewish Museum. Toronyi explored the evolution of the Judaica and archival collections in the museum within the context of the development of Jewish ethnography and art. By introducing the Aron Freimann and the Judaica Collection named after the former librarian of the city library in Frankfurt am Main, RACHEL HEUBERGER (Frankfurt am Main) drew the attention to another essential archive and book collection, today located in the main library of the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. The digitalization projects of the Hebraica and Judaica Division of the University library such as “Compact Memory” and “Judaica Europeana” have become most useful tools for research in many disciplines of Jewish Studies (http://www.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/ssg/judaica.html). The databases provide users with an easy access not only to the journals linked to the Wissenschaft des Judentums but also to an abundance of further collections located in Frankfurt.

The last day of the colloquium opened with the eighth and last colloquium panel on “Wissenschaft des Judentums and Identity”. In his keynote lecture, CHRISTIAN WIESE (Frankfurt am Main) explored the mutual perceptions and debates characterizing the encounter between Wissenschaft des Judentums and the emerging Jewish nationalist (and later Zionist) movement in Europe from the end of the nineteenth century to the rise of National Socialism in Germany. Beyond the well-known Jewish national and Zionist statements, according to which Wissenschaft des Judentums was the gravedigger of Judaism and an obstacle for its national and spiritual survival, Wiese described the increasing ambivalence inherent in the relationship between Jewish nationalism/Zionism and Wissenschaft des Judentums; this relationship allowed anything from polemical dissociation and cautious rapprochement to enthusiastic identification. The question regarding Jewish identity was also the main topic of the presentation of TALLY GUR (Haifa), who spoke about Jewish Studies in Germany between 1967 and 1989. Gur emphasized the complex and difficult relationship between the tradition of Wissenschaft des Judentums and the emergence of Jewish Studies in Germany in post-war Germany, addressing the phenomenon that Jewish Studies during the analyzed period has been mainly taught and represented by non-Jewish scholars with different disciplinary backgrounds.

In his concluding remarks, CHRISTIAN WIESE summarized topics that had been debated during the colloquium as well as perspectives that should be considered in future research. One of the desiderata he identified is a Gesamtgeschichte of Wissenschaft des Judentums in Europe that may well be only possible as a long-term collaborative undertaking of specialist in different areas of Jewish intellectual history, based on further in-depth research on different traditions, institutions and representatives of Jewish Studies in differing European cultural contexts, including their interdependenca and interaction. Under-researched areas such as France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland or the UK still need detailed individual and comparative studies. The following discussion centered around the transnational element inherent in networks of Jewish scholarship, the need to further explore and ensure the accessibility of archival collections of correspondence as well as the future task, on the one hand, to come to a more precise analysis of the way Wissenschaft des Judentums was embedded in differing European cultures that prompted varying religious and historical interpretations, and, on the other hand, to better assess the overarching themes dominating modern Jewish scholarly discourse during the last two centuries. The publication that is planned as an outcome of the colloquium promises to be at least one step towards this ambitious research agenda.

Christian Wiese (Frankfurt am Main)

Mirjam Thulin (Frankfurt am Main)

Books within Books – New Discoveries in Old Book Bindings. 11th EAJS Summer Colloquium, Wolfson College, Oxford, July 18th to 20th, 2011

20 September 2011 by EAJS Administrator

Eleventh EAJS Summer Colloquium

Books within Books: New Discoveries in Old Book Bindings

18–20 July 2011, Wolfson College, Oxford

Convener: A. Lehnardt

The 2011 Summer Colloquium of the EAJS was held at Wolfson College, Oxford from July 18th – 20th 2011. This year’s colloquium was an occasion – after the colloquium in Mainz in 2007 – to bring together researchers dealing with Hebrew manuscripts fragments and Hebrew documents found in old book bindings all over Europe. These new materials encourage new studies of palaeographical and codicological material, philological studies of rare or autographic texts, lexicography, as well as comparative studies and historical analyses based on rare documents.

The keynote lectures took place on the first evening. In his introductory address, “Ginze Europe – The state of Research and new Developments,” Prof. Dr Andreas Lehnardt (Mainz) recalled the beginning of the European Genizah Project as a network of European researchers and presented a short survey of his recent research in Germany concerning fragments through the Genizat Germania Project, as well as several new discoveries including a marriage contract from Italy from the end of the 16th century and of great importance for historical research. This was followed by a paper titled “Carta pecudina literis hebraicis scripta. The Awareness of the Binding Hebrew Fragments in History: An Overview and a Plaidoyer,” presented by Dr Saverio Campanini (Paris), wherein he traced the concept of dealing with Hebrew Fragments in Europe, mainly in Germany. In addition to reviewing his introduction to Andreas Lehnardt’s volume Genizat Germania (2010), he pointed out that while a history of research on fragments indeed exists, this research was conducted mainly by amateurs rather than scholars using self-reflective methods.

The first full day of the conference started with a paper on “Ginze Yerushalayim – Hebrew Binding fragments in the Jewish National Library Jerusalem,” by Dr Abraham David (Jerusalem). He presented a remarkable overview of the collection of fragments held at the JNUL, especially from Yemenite Bindings, underlining the importance of these discoveries, which include letters of Isaac Luria (16th century). Most of these fragments were not known even to researchers who worked for years on the complete manuscripts in this institution. In his paper “The first Autograph of the Tosaphists from the European Genizah,” Prof. Dr Simha Emanuel (Jerusalem) argued for the importance of research on medieval autographic texts. He presented a fragment from Austria of a text written by R. David, brother of Judah ben Qalonymos of Speyer (Tossafist), from the end of the 13th century – surely a highlight among the recent discoveries in Austria. Dr Pinhas Roth (Jerusalem) presented “Fragments of Medieval Halakhic Works in Girona,” emphasizing features of the discoveries related to the Halakhic discussions on Excommunication which took place in Provence, with a special interests on scholars from Digne and Manosque (11th-14th centuries). Then, in a paper titled “Reconstruction of a Sefer Haftarot from the Rhine Valley,” Dr Judith Kogel (Paris) proposed a codicological analysis based on medieval Ashkenazic codices and fragments (kept in Parma and Strasbourg) in order to determine when the Sefer Haftarot appeared as separate works or as a part of a codex which includes Pentateuch, Megillah, and Haftarot. In his paper “Rare fragments from Yemen” Dr Michael Krupp (Jerusalem) presented a wide panel of fragments coming from Yemenite Book Bindings in his private collection; a number of Sephardic and Italian fragments had been discovered in his collection and were discussed at the Colloquium for the first time.

In her presentation “A list of books discovered in Munich specimens,” Dr Elodie Attia (Mainz) focused on new materials from Munich, especially a list of books from southern France. She reconstructed its origin (Provence – Comtat Venaissin) and its date (probably 14th century) according to other documents from southern France that came from the same book binding. In a paper titled “The newly found Hebrew fragments in the Russian State Library,” Dr Alina Lisitsina (Moscow) presented news about discoveries in Moscow, and presented the identification of various fragments from the Russian National Library, among them a hitherto unknown leaf of Midrash Tanhuma (Buber). The work in progress is of great importance to the European Genizah. In his paper “Diagnostics and chemical analysis as interpretative skills for manuscripts,” Luca Baraldi (Modena) argued for the use of chemical techniques and scientific analyses in order to improve the interpretation of manuscripts. In a paper titled “Hebrew Fragments in a Regional Perspective: Reconstructing the Book Culture of Jews in Medieval Moravia,” Dr Tamas Visi (Olomouc) reconstructed the cultural particularism of the Jews of Moravia, showing preservation of more traditional texts than in other places in Central Europe. In her paper “Economic Hebrew Fragments of Arxiu Històric de Girona,” Dr Esperança Valls (Gerona) underlined the importance of several unedited documents from Girona, especially those provided by pinqassim. These new documents offer insights into local economic aspects and legal proceedings of the Bet-Din in the Catalan 14th century; they are also of great importance for historical researches. Finally, Prof. Dr Marta Keil (St. Pölten) invited us, in a paper titled “Fragments as Objects: Medieval Austrian Fragments in the Jewish Museum Vienna,” to consider the material aspects and contexts of the fragments, presenting them as “objects” through a virtual visit to the Jewish Museum of Vienna.

On the second day of the colloquium, Prof. Mauro Perani (Ravenna) started by discussing “Documents on Jewish Economic Activity in the 14th-16th centuries from the Italian Genizah,” presenting cultural and historical materials that included documentary sources (such as registers, account books and contracts) concerning Italian Jews from the 13th to 16th centuries. In his paper “Specimens of Jewish Deathbed Bequests (15th C. Spain),” Dr Javier Castaño (Madrid) presented researches in Navarra (Northern Spain), and underlined the diversity of the documentary sources he found (13th to late 15th century) as well as the notarial Jewish culture that can be analysed from Wills. In her pioneering paper “Hebrew Manuscript Fragments in Switzerland,” Justine Isserles (Geneva) proposed a preliminary overview of new medieval fragments kept in Switzerland (Bibles with Targum, Mahzorim, Haggadot, Piyyutim). Dr Saskia Dönitz (Berlin) discussed in her “‘With two letters two worlds were created’ – A fragment on the Hebrew letters from Genizat Germania” the possibility of the reconstruction of an unknown commentary of Menahem ben Shlomo, kept among the long known fragments of the Staatsbibliothek of Berlin, a fragment previously discussed by M. Steinschneider in his catalogue. Finally, Prof. Dr J. Olszowy- Schlanger (Paris), in a paper titled “Fragments of Jewish-Christian relations: the Alpha Beta de Ben Sira of Durham,” traced how a fragment produced by a Christian Hebraist of the 13th century can shed new light on Jewish and Hebrew knowledge in mediaeval England, according to the analysis of the superscriptio’s ductus.

A final plenary discussion considered further developments, including the opening of the BwB Database (http://www.hebrewmanuscript.com). The research group, composed of doctoral and post-doctoral students as well as advanced researchers, is currently focussing, on the one hand, on Book History and Culture, and on the other, on documentary historical sources providing fresh evidence of Medieval Jewish Communities all over Europe. These two aspects are both of great importance. In addition, these discoveries raise many questions about the transmission of texts and documents more generally. Hebrew codicology, palaeographical analyses and material features are, consequently, of greater importance. If the text is transmitted by a vehicle (incunabula, printed book, etc.), this should also be taken into account. In future research, more attention should be paid to the history of research itself, as well as to the non-Jewish languages that refer to local dialects (Catalan, Provençal, Franco-German, Central European area). They all demonstrate the usefulness of Hebrew fragments found in Europe for shedding new light on Jewish Culture as well as on local Jewish reality in the Christian realm.

Manuscripts and History in the Jewish Middle Ages. 10th EAJS Summer Colloquium, Wolfson College, Oxford, July 6th to 9th, 2009

12 October 2010 by EAJS Administrator

Tenth EAJS Summer Colloquium

Manuscripts and History in the Jewish Middle Ages

6–9 July 2009, Wolfson College, Oxford

Conveners: Piero Capelli and Marina Rustow

The 2009 Summer Colloquium of the EAJS was held at Wolfson College, Oxford from 6 to 9 July 2009. This year’s colloquium was an occasion to bring together historians and philologists who work on medieval manuscripts in Hebrew script, from both the Christian and Islamic worlds. Our starting point was the recognition that scholars who work with medieval manuscripts from the points of view of paleography, codicology, language and content make a vital contribution to the discipline of history; similarly, historians’ work in analyzing events and their complex temporalities is indispensible to the study of textual production and the survival of textual evidence. Yet philologists and historians seldom have opportunities to discuss their shared concerns and the methodological problems related to them. The program included three keynote lectures, sixteen shorter presentations, and plenary and small-group discussions. A particular highlight was an on-site working group in the Bodleian Library, in which participants presented original manuscript materials on which they have conducted research.

The keynote lectures took place over the course of three evenings. Malachi Beit-Arié (Hebrew University) argued that the initiative for writing, consuming, and storing Hebrew manuscripts came from individuals, not institutions. The majority of manuscripts were user-produced, and this affected transmission, multiplying opportunities for errors and emendations. The implications of this are far-reaching for textual editing, calling into question the very basis of Lachmannian textual criticism. In discussion, some raised the objection that prestigious texts such as Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed that were canonized at an early stage of their history show a narrow range of variant readings; research into the vertical relationship among manuscripts cannot be dismissed as useless a priori.

The second keynote was delivered by Haggai Ben-Shammai (Hebrew University), who discussed the marginalia of literary manuscripts as a historical source. Inscriptions and dedications reveal a great deal not only about manuscripts’ history, but also about the contexts in which they were produced and consumed. Many books were in fact stored in institutions such as synagogue libraries, as inscriptions on biblical manuscripts such as the Aleppo Codex attest.

The third keynote was delivered by Joseph Shatzmiller (Duke University), who discussed the various genres of medieval manuscripts that are useful for writing history, including chronicles, rabbinic letters, and responsa. The latter in particular occupy a place in writing the history of Jews in the Latin west comparable to the Geniza documents for Jews under Islamic rule. Since responsa were sent to Jewish courts rather than individuals, they too offer insight into the social and institutional structures of Jewish textual consumption.

The first day of the conference was devoted to “Manuscript Production, Transmission and Circulation,” and included seven presentations. In a paper called “The Passion for Books and Its Social Significance as Illustrated in Geniza Correspondence,” Miriam Frenkel (Ben-Zvi Institute and Hebrew University) discussed the social contexts in which books were commissioned, bought, sold, traded, and pawned. Lucia Raspe (Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität), in a paper called “The Legacy of Medieval Ashkenaz in Italian Manuscripts,” argued for the dependence of manuscript traditions on the mobility and continuity of the groups doing the transmitting, focusing in particular on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century minhag books.In “What Hebrew Bibles Tell about Themselves: the Case of MSS Héb. 15 and 21 from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France” Javier del Barco del Barco (CSIC) traced the paths that various books and their authors and owners took, as well as evidence of patronage and commissioning, by examining the colophons of various bible manuscripts. Ofer Elior (Ben Gurion University), in a paper called “Manuscripts’ Role in Studying the Later History of a Medieval Book: The Case of Ruah Hen,” presented an example of a manuscript tradition with a very wide chronological range and numerous variants; one criterion for ordering them, he suggested, would be to look for recensions or variants that attest to particular geographic or social environments. Finally, in a paper called “A Jewish Targum in a Christian World: Targum Samuel in Sepharad,” Johanna Tanja (Protestant Theological University, the Netherlands) presented the textual and codicological differences between Christian European and Islamic Levantine manuscripts of the Aramaic translation of the books of Samuel.

The panel “Jewish Books in a Christian World” opened with a paper by Ursula Ragacs (Universität Wien), “From Manuscript to Film: Hyam Maccoby and The Disputation,” in which she presented modern scholarship on Nahmanides’ account of the disputation of Barcelona of 1263 and her research on the transmission of the text. Piet van Boxel (University of Oxford), in “The Unicorn of Ferrara: Symbol of Power and Peace,” discussed the iconography of the unicorn from late antiquity to the Italian Renaissance, its christological significance, and its appearance among the extraordinarily rich miniatures in the Ferrarese Hebrew Bible Bodl. Can Or. 62. The illuminator of this Bible was Christian; his Jewish patron accepted the inclusion of a unicorn among the illustrations, perhaps reading it as a mere decorative motif.

A panel on the “Transmission of Non-Literary Texts” included two papers on Jewish amulets. The first, “The Secret Life of Spells: From Late Antique Palestine to Modern Kurdistan” by Gideon Bohak (Tel Aviv University), traced the development of an erotic spell over the course of fourteen centuries—a remarkable example of the continuity of a non-canonical text produced and transmitted entirely by individuals free from institutional intervention or support. Emma Abate (Università di Roma La Sapienza), in her paper “Studies on Hebrew Amulets from the Alliance Israelite Universelle’s Geniza Collection,” presented a range of texts from this Geniza collection and also discussed when kabbalistic terminology began to influence the tradition of Jewish amulets.

A panel on “The Social Contexts of Textual Production and Consumption” opened with a paper by Israel Sandman (University College London), “The Quality of Italian Transmission of Sephardic Learning: Associations of Copyists?” Sandman noted the extraordinarily high level of textual fidelity and understanding in some Italian copies of Sephardi manuscripts from the 13^th-16^th centuries. He asked whether there may have been scribal associations, formal or informal, made up either of scribes in close association or masters and disciples. Elodie Attia (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris), in a paper called “How Were Hebrew Texts Read by Jews during the Renaissance? Some Observations about Hebrew Manuscripts of the 16th Century,” discussed twenty-three manuscript copied by Raphaël Salomon ha-Kohen da Prato, paying particular attention to their annotations in terms of their form, mise-en-page, and mise-en-texte.

A panel on “Transmission of Scientific and Technical Knowledge” included a presentation by Sacha Stern (University College London) tracing Jewish calendars in medieval manuscripts that do not otherwise focus on the calendar. Stern interpreted these difficult texts as evidence of relatively independent calendars that veered from the official rabbinic calendar; they represented either errors or non-normative halakhic assumptions that copyists made either consciously or unconsciously, and they may have led to practical divergences in the Jewish calendar as late as the fifteenth century. Ilana Wartenberg (University College London), in a paper called “The Medieval Hebrew Mathematical Bookshelf,” focused on the work of Yishaq ben Shelomo ibn al-Ahdab, a Jewish mathematician of fourteenth-century Syracuse, originally from Castile. The final panel, on “The Interaction of Textual and Lived Traditions,” began with Ronny Vollandt (Cambridge University) and a paper entitled “What Happens to a Jewish Text When Leaving the Community Boundaries?” Vollandt discussed the remarkably long shelf-life and wide geographic range of Seadya Gaon’s Judaeo-Arabic translation of the Bible, which migrated into Qaraite, Coptic, and Syrian Orthodox biblical traditions, and even into the Paris Polyglot. Mark Cohen (Princeton University) closed the panels with a paper called “Commercial Law in Maimonides’ Code of Jewish Law: The View from the Cairo Geniza,” in which he argued that Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, ostensibly a summary of Jewish law rather than an innovative work, in fact diverges considerably from previous precedents. In passages on commercial law, those divergences can be explained as perfectly logical in the context of the commercial practices evidenced in the documents of the Cairo Geniza.

The colloquium closed with a final plenary discussion in which the participants debated whether the traditional Lachmannian method of genealogical reconstruction should be maintained as a working hypothesis in the study of Hebrew-script manuscripts. Should philologists study texts or manuscripts—that is, reconstruct texts that are “more true than what is attested” (Gianfranco Contini) or focus on the phenomenology of the text, explaining each divergence as the product of particular historical context? The central problem is how to define the object of philological study: the first approach is author-oriented, while the second is scribe-oriented. Each assumes modern definitions of “text,” “author,” “copy,” and “copyist” that one cannot presume hold valid for the practices of the Jewish Middle Ages. We closed the conference with the decision to continue the discussion in other forums, both in person and on-line, and we immediately established a new listserv devoted to discussing medieval Jewish manuscripts (http://groups.google.com/group/mss-and-history-in-the-jewish-middle-ages).