EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2021/22

Report

Returning Galician Jews from Oblivion: 100th Anniversary of Jakub Honigsman

Lviv, March 29–30, 2023

A two-day international conference organised and hosted by the Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies (UAJS), in cooperation with the Center for Urban History of East-Central Europe, sponsored by the European Association for Jewish Studies (EAJS) Conference Grant Programme in European Jewish Studies.

Applicants: Dr. Serhiy Hirik, Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies, Ukraine; Prof. Wacław Wierzbieniec, University of Rzeszów, Poland.

Organisers: Dr. Serhiy Hirik, Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies, Ukraine; Dr. Vitaly Chernoivanenko, Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies, Ukraine.

Author of Report: Serhiy Hirik.

Event Rationale

This conference was of significant importance both for the scholarly community and wider society. It was important for organisers to remind people of the role played by those scholars who tried to work on topics related to the history of Ukrainian Jews in Soviet Ukraine.

During the second half of the 20th century, such historians as Jakub Honigsman worked on the research problems that were restricted by the Soviet power. Prof. Honigsman tried to find, and did find, ways to publish his works outside the USSR (especially in Poland, where the Jewish Historical Institute still existed) and wrote some of his works “not for publication.” Thanks to such scholars, the history of Galician Jews was not forgotten.

Such scholars as Jakub Honigsman played the key role in preserving the memory of the victims of the Holocaust in Ukraine. For a long time, this topic was forbidden to researchers. Honigsman lost his own family in Lublin during the Holocaust. He saw the traces of Galician Jews in the cities where he lived after the Second World War (Kyiv, Lviv, and Ternopil) and felt that the history of the Jewish community must not disappear. He has done everything he could to keep its memory alive.

In the 1990s, the history of Galician Jews became the “legal” topic. But it was not popular. The Ukrainian historiography of the 1990s and early 2000s was significantly ethnic-centered. The history of Galician Jewry was of interest first of all to the Galician Jews and their ancestors. Jakub Honigsman was one of the few Ukrainian-Jewish researchers who studied such topics previously and continued to do so after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, he published several books on the history of Galician Jews and on the Holocaust in Eastern Galicia, Bukovina, and Transcarpathia. His works brought these topics into public discourse. Even more, he made the history and culture of Galician Jewry an essential part of the history of Eastern Galicia. Thanks to him and other historians who worked on these topics in the 1990s and early 2000s, a non-Jewish audience noticed the importance of the Jewish aspects of their region.

In the late 2000s, a new generation of Ukrainian historians started to work on the history of Galician Jews. The Ukrainian historiography changed. It became much more inclusive. Since then, Jewish topics have become of interest to a broader audience of scholars interested in the history of this region. Jakub Honigsman played a significant role in these changes.

The list of topics that are being developed has also changed. In the 1990s, researchers worked mostly on the economic and political aspects of the history of Galician Jewry. In the 2000s, the scholars payed attention to numerous issues of their cultural and religious life, gender problems, etc.

The purpose of the conference was to organise a scholarly conversation among Ukrainian and foreign scholars on the history of Galician Jewry as an integral part of the history of Galicia, and the Galician Jews’ cultural, political and social life. The organisers also aimed to promote debate on the role played by Jakub Honigsman in preserving the Galician Jews’ memory and the importance of his works for the development of the historiography of the history of Galicia. These goals were achieved. A fruitful discussion was organised between researchers from five countries (Ukraine, the UK, Israel, Poland, and Switzerland) who research various topics on the history of Galician Jewry.

Sections and papers presented during the event and significant and productive threads

The conference was hosted at the Center for Urban History of East-Central Europe in Lviv. The conference convened a group of researchers from Ukraine, the UK, Israel, Poland, and Switzerland (both in-person and online).

The security issues were among the highest priorities for the organisers and their partners. Therefore, this wartime event was held in the Center’s basement (exhibition hall before the Russian full-scale invasion), which served as a shelter for the participants in case of missile and drone attacks.

The conference was opened with the opening words by Dr. Vitaly Chernoivanenko, president of the Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies, Maryana Mazurak, deputy director of the Center for Urban History, and Viktoriia Venediktova, Jakub Honigsman’s daughter. Vitaly Chernoivanenko also read greetings from the EAJS president Prof. Elisabeth Hollender.

After the opening words, Dr. Taissa Sydorchuk (National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy) delivered the first keynote lecture, “Jakub Honigsman: Contributions to a Portrait of a Historian of Galician Jewry.”

The first panel (moderated by Vitaly Chernoivanenko, Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, UAJS President; all the participants of this panel participated in the conference online) was opened with a paper, Jakub Honigsman and the Fate of Jewish Cultural Assets in Western Ukraine, presented by Dr Eva Frojmovic (University of Leeds, UK). She developed the topic of the destruction of Jewish cultural assets in Lviv and Lviv region that was only briefly commented by Honigsman. Next Refael Kroizer (Tel Aviv University) gave a presentation Lviv and the District: Between the Jews of the City and the Jews of the Village, the Struggle over Jewish Slaughtering. The following discussion focused on the possible influences from the Western Europe on the policy of Lviv community concerning slaughtering in the Lviv district, price difference for kosher supervising and slaughterers’ work, and the connection between slaughterers’ price and taxation status of Jewish communities in Lviv and Lviv district. The last paper in this panel, What is Known About More than 200 Years of Hasidic History of Otynia?, focused on the history of one of the Galician Hasidic communities. It was given by Dr. Tamara Kutsaeva of the Museum of the History of Ukraine in Kyiv. The following discussion focused on the sources used by the presenter and sources which can be used by her later.

The second panel (moderated by Taissa Sydorchuk, National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy; this panel was held in person). It was opened with a presentation by Prof. Eugeny Kotlyar (Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Fine Arts, Ukraine) Synagogue Wall Painting of Eastern Galicia: An Attempt to Reconstruct Local Tradition. He described and showed several examples of Galician synagogue wall painting (partly documented by himself), ways of its reconstruction and differences between wall painting in wooden and stone synagogues. The following discussion focused on interpretations of symbols used by painters, influences of other traditions on Galician wall painting. The second talk was given by Prof. Yuriy Biryulov (Lviv National Academy of Arts, Ukraine). Its topic was Zygmunt Sperber (1886–1942) as a Lviv Architect, Designer, and Graphic Artist. It was devoted to works by famous Lviv Jewish architect Zygmunt Sperber who died in Lviv Ghetto. The discussion related to Sperber’s published works on architecture and art theory. The last paper in this panel was given by Nataliya Levkovych (Lviv National Academy of Arts, Ukraine). Its topic was Sasiv Center of Jewish Lacemaking in the Second Half of the 19th and the First Decades of the 20th Century: The Forgotten World. The following discussion focused on the technologies used by lace-makers in Sasiv and possible foreign influences on them.

The second day of the conference was opened with a second keynote lecture, How to Quote an Enemy?: “Philosophers” in Galician Jewish Literature. It was given by Dr. Kateryna Malakhova of H. Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the Open University of Israel. She focused on the features of the use of secular philosophical works by Galician Hasidic thinkers of the 18th and 19th centuries. The following discussion was related to the problem of use of modern natural scientific works by Hasidic scholars and the use of modern philosophy in Hasidic literature in the 20th century.

The third panel was moderated by Dr. Serhiy Hirik. Two of the participants gave their talks online and one in person. The first presentation, Safe Space? The Role of Instruction in Jewish Religion in Galician Public Schools, was given by Dr. Alicja Maślak-Maciejewska of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. It was focused on the textbooks used by the teachers of Judaism in Galicia in the late 19th and early 20th century and the place of the lessons of Judaism in the school curriculum in general. The following discussion related to the role of the lectures of Judaism for the Jewish community in general and Jewish children in particular. The second presentation was given by Dr. Małgorzata Śliż-Marciniec (Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music and Jagellonian University in Kraków). Its topic was Who Taught Jewish Religion in Galicia? Teachers of Jewish Religion on the Eve of the First World War. She was focused on the personal biographies of Judaism lecturers in Galician schools on the eve of the First World War. The last presentation by Dr. Mariia Vovchko, The Education and Origin of the Rabbis in Lviv’s Jewish Community (Second Half of the 19th Century to 1939). She described the localities where the Lviv rabbies were born and the educational institutions from which they graduated. The following discussion was focused on the cases of misuse of the rabbi title by those who did not have right to use it.

The fourth panel was moderated by Vitaly Chernoivanenko. The topic of the first presentation was Jakub Honigsman as a Researcher of the Holocaust in Galicia. It was given by Serhiy Hirik. Researcher focused on the works on the Holocaust by Jakub Honigsman. He described the features of Honigsman’s books on the Holocaust, topics that were investigated by Honigsman, sources used by him, and topics that were less deeply explored by this author. The following discussion related to the methods used by Jakub Honigsman. The second presentation was given by Marta Havryshko of the Basel University. Its topic was Anti-Jewish Violence in Galicia in the Summer of 1941: Gendered Aspects. The following discussion focused on the ways through which Nazi antisemitic propaganda was spread among the Galician non-Jewish population before 1941 and the field researches in the localities where pogroms occurred in summer 1941.

The conference was concluded by the seminar Prospects for the Study of Galician Jewry. The participants, Vitaly Chernoivanenko, Serhiy Hirik, Taissa Sydorchuk, Eugeny Kotlyar, and Mariia Vovchko expressed their opinions on the further development of the history of Galician Jewry. It was closed by the words of Honigsman’s daughter Viktoriia Venediktova.

 Changes to the Original Programme

There was one major change to the original programme. Prof. Wacław Wierzbieniec (Rzeszów, Poland), one of the conference applicants and keynote speakers, was unable to attend the event or to participate online due to illness.

Event programme (Sections and Papers)

https://uajs.org.ua/sites/default/files/Program-UAJS_Returning_Galician_2023.pdf

Planned Outcomes

The conference contributed to the development of working relationships between Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian researchers on the history of Galician Jews. Its participants discussed possible topics for further research projects (especially on the history of Jewish art in Galicia and on the history of the Holocaust in Galicia).

A detailed description of the event will be published in the “Chronicle” section of the Judaica Ukrainica journal as well as on the website historians.in.ua. Several participants announced that they will submit their papers for the special section of the next volume of Judaica Ukrainica.

All the presentations were filmed and will be published on the UAJS YouTube Channel.

Publicity

UAJS website:

https://uajs.org.ua/en/news/registration-uajs-conferences-march-27-30-2023-now-open

https://uajs.org.ua/uk/news/reestraciya-gostey-na-naukovi-konferencii-uayu-lviv-27-30-bereznya-2023

https://uajs.org.ua/en/news/call-papers-returning-galician-jews-oblivion-100th-anniversary-jakub-honigsman

https://uajs.org.ua/uk/news/ogoloshennya-pro-konferenciyu-povertayuchi-skhidnogalicke-evreystvo-iz-zabuttya-do-storichchya

Center for Urban History of East Central Europe website:

https://www.lvivcenter.org/en/conferences/jakub-honigsman-2/

https://www.lvivcenter.org/conferences/jakub-honigsman/

The Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies website:

https://www.holocaust.kiev.ua/other/details/pov_shevr_evr_2022?objId=1

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.6345741662115798&type=3

YouTube: All the presentations were filmed and will be published on the UAJS YouTube channel.

Feedback from two participants

Kateryna Malakhova: I was very pleased to participate in this conference. The Jewish history and literature of Galicia still has a lot of aspects unknown to us. The contribution of Ukrainian scientists to its research is gradually growing. It is very important that this work does not stop even during the war; to be able to continue the research in cooperation with an international academic community is a great support for us. Many participants presented interesting and promising results, which I was pleased to hear.

Taissa Sydorchuk: First of all, I would like to appreciate the very idea to organise a conference dedicated to Jakub Honigsman precisely in Lviv. The researcher lived most of his life in this city. In addition, I wish to acknowledge the efforts of the organisers to hold the conference in the conditions of the Russo-Ukrainian war with repeating air alerts. The long-term cooperation of the UAJS with the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv provided not only the safe venue, but also high-quality technical support for the conference.

 

EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2022/23

Report

Symposium: Commemorating the “Night of the Murdered Poets”: History and Afterlife

Jewish Museum Berlin

August 14, 2022

Organizers:    Jewish Museum Berlin; Miriam Chorley-Schulz (University of Toronto); Tal Hever-Chybowski (Maison de la culture yiddish – Medem bibliothèque)

Event Rationale

The 12 August 2022 marked the 70th anniversary of the so-called “Night of Murdered Poets,” the climax of the Stalinist persecution of Jewish intellectuals. The murder of Dovid Bergelson, Peretz Markish, Itsik Fefer, Dovid Hofshteyn, Leyb Kvitko and others meant the death of the most important Soviet Yiddish literary figures. At the behest of the Soviet government, they founded the Jewish Antifascist Committee in 1942. When the committee was dissolved by the Stalinist regime in 1948, its members were persecuted, arrested, and in some cases murdered after a secret trial in 1952 on charges of treason, bourgeois nationalism, and anti-Soviet activities.

The one-day symposium of the Jewish Museum Berlin and the “Summer Program for Yiddish Language and Literature” organized by Maison de la culture yiddish – Medem bibliothèque was dedicated to these poets and the Yiddish culture they created and represented both inside and outside the Soviet Union. It revisited the “Night of the Murdered Poets” as both a historical and memorial event and tested new ways of understanding it beyond Cold War dogmatism for a broad Berlin audience in two consecutive panels. Five renowned scholars of Soviet-Jewish culture and history coming from Germany, the US, and Canada drew on their latest research to tackle the following central research questions amongst others:

• How did it come to the events of 12 August 1952?
• What do we know about the history of commemorating this event both inside the Soviet Union and in the West?
• What does the name “Night of the Murdered Poets” signify?
• What were its legacies in research on Soviet Yiddish culture during the Cold War and up until today?
• What are the literary legacies of the murdered writers?

Section Overview

The first panel “The Night of the Murdered Poets – History and Legacies” included (1) newest scholarship on the successes, tragedies and legacies of the Jewish Antifascist Committee and (2) the creation of the “Night of the Murdered Poets” and the memorial culture surrounding it during the Cold War.

Gennady Estraikh gave the keynote and provided a comprehensive history of the Jewish Antifascist Committee from 1941 to 1952. He is a clinical professor at NYU for Soviet Yiddish culture and history and the director of the Shivdler Project A Comprehensive History of the Jews of the Soviet Union. As the foremost expert on the Jewish Antifascist Committee, he provided cutting-edge scholarship on the creation and workings of the committee as well as on its demise and brutal dissolution. The keynote address was followed by Dr. Miriam Chorley-Schulz (neé Schulz), the Ray D. Wolfe Postdoctoral Fellow at the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies and the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto. Dr. Chorley-Schulz works on Soviet Yiddish culture, antifascism and Holocaust memory as well as the “Jewish Cold War.” She addressed the memory of August 12, 1952 up until “The Night of the Murdered Poets” was created as an annual memorial day as part of the burgeoning Soviet Jewry Movement in the United States in early 1970s and how this memory culture rewrote Soviet Jewish history to serve political purposes during the Cold War.

In the discussion part, Estraikh and Chorley-Schulz discussed the memory of August 12, 1952 in the Soviet Union itself and dug deeper into the legacies of the Jewish Antifascist Committee – much of which has been so far overlooked because of the historiography that centers on its demise. Indeed, August 12, 1952 was a decisive break within the history of Soviet Yiddish culture that Soviet-Yiddish speakers and cultural producers hardly ever recovered from. It also changed everything for the telling of Soviet Yiddish culture in Western historiography. With the wounds of the Jewish catastrophe under Nazism so fresh, the budding totalitarian paradigm suggested that Stalin’s assault was nothing less than a ‘second Holocaust.’ The combination of Stalin’s crimes with dogmatic anti-communism in the West had an impact on the writing of history of such proportions that it set in motion a process, per David Shneer, that made a reading of Soviet Yiddish culture any other than backwards from the purges a matter of utter impossibility: suggesting instead an unavoidable teleology of the romance between Jewishness and communism. They also foreclosed any non-imperialist understanding of Soviet Yiddish culture and perpetuated the idea that this culture indeed ended in 1952 – in a way giving Stalin a posthumous victory. Estraikh and Chorley-Schulz came up with ideas for an alternative memory culture – as exhibited through the symposium itself.

During the second panel, the audience encountered newest scholarship into Soviet Yiddish culture and the Jewish Antifascist Committee conducted within the joint interdisciplinary project “The Short Life of Soviet Yiddish Literature” by the Leibniz Institut für jüdische Geschichte und Kultur – Simon Dubnow, Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung in Berlin and the Professorship for Slavic Jewish Studies at the University of Regensburg. This cooperative project takes the “Night of the Murdered Poets” as the point of departure and researches Yiddish literature and culture in the Soviet Union between 1917 and the 1970s. During the symposium, affiliated scholars Professor Dr. Sabine Koller (University of Regensburg), Dr. Alexandra Polyan (University of Regensburg), and Jakob Stürmann (Leibniz Institut für jüdische Geschichte und Kultur – Simon Dubnow) presented and discussed their research.

Prof. Dr. Koller presented a new edition of selected works of Dovid Bergelson in German translation. Bergelson is one of the most famous Soviet Yiddish writers that were murdered on August 12, 1952. As part of the interdisciplinary project “The Short Life of Soviet Yiddish Literature,” Koller is working on German translations of selected works of Bergelson’s entire lifespan. So far, if at all, Bergelson scholarship usually focuses on and celebrates his pre-Soviet period. Koller intervenes by presenting his oeuvre as a whole. Dr. Alexandra Polyan presented on the wartime writings of Peretz Markish, another famed Soviet Yiddish writer who was murdered in August 1952. She specifically compared different Holocaust plays Markish wrote during the 1940s as the gruesome events of the Holocaust were still unfolding. A specific focus was the treatment of Germans within the plays and how it evolved over time. Finally, Jakob Stürmann revisited the fateful North America tour of Shloyme Mikhoels and Itsik Fefer, two representatives of the Jewish Antifascist Committee that made up the Soviet Yiddish delegation. He zoomed in on the conditions that made this tour possible in the year 1943 and its immediate and later tragic outcome.

The Q&A focused on the ways in which the trial and assassination of 1952 continues to hold a sway over the individual research into Soviet Yiddish culture explored against the backdrop of revolution, civil war, and emigration, as well as the experience of Stalinism and the Holocaust as well as the new insights that are being gained in defiance of well-established narratives.

Output

The one-day symposium on August 14, 2022 looked at the role August 12, 1952 has played and continues to play in shaping narratives about Soviet Yiddish literature and culture. It was not merely a day of mourning. Rather the symposium was a celebration of Soviet Yiddish culture despite the history of violence it endured and suggested ways in which to commemorate this event in new and innovative ways to a broad Berlin public. To revisit the Stalinist regime, the early days of the Cold War, and the question of Jewish vulnerability is of special importance at a moment that witnesses nothing less than a new/old Cold War in the face of Russia’s war on Ukraine. The audience left the Jewish Museum Berlin with both a new understanding of the events leading up to and following the “Night of the Murdered Poets” and of Soviet Yiddish culture itself. The symposium itself is available online in the form of video recordings in Yiddish, English, and German on the Jewish Museum Berlin website: https://www.jmberlin.de/en/symposium-night-of-murdered-poets

Final Program

Panel 1, 14-16:30, The Night of the Murdered Poets – History and Legacies (in English)

• Keynote: Gennady Estraikh (NYU, professor of Soviet Yiddish culture and history, director of the Shivdler Project A Comprehensive History of the Jews of the Soviet Union) spoke about the successes, legacies and tragedy of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, 1941–1952.
• Miriam Chorley-Schulz (Ray D. Wolfe Postdoctoral Fellow 2021-23, Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies | Centre for Diaspora & Transnational Studies, University of Toronto, was Research Assistant for the Shivdler project A Comprehensive History of the Jews of the Soviet Union) spoke about the memorialization of the trial/assassination during the Cold War, the creation of the “Night of the Murdered Poets” and the birth of the Soviet Marrano, 1952–2022.
• Followed by a conversation between Estraikh and Chorley-Schulz about the meanings and legacies in East and West until today.
• Q&A

Panel 2, 16:30-18:00, The interdisciplinary cooperation project “The Short Life of Soviet Yiddish Literature” and the “Night of the Murdered Poets” (in German)

• Sabine Koller (Professor of Slavic-Jewish Studies, University of Regensburg, researcher in charge of the interdisciplinary cooperation project “The Short Life of Soviet Yiddish Literature”) presented a new edition of translations of Dovid Bergelson’s work into German.
• Alexandra Polyan (University of Regensburg, postdoctoral fellow of the interdisciplinary cooperation project “The Short Life of Soviet Yiddish Literature”) presented on Peretz Markish’s Holocaust plays of the 1940s
• Jakob Stürmann (Dubnow-Institut, postdoctoral fellow of the project “The Short Life of Soviet Yiddish Literature”) – revisited the North America tour of the delegation of the Jewish Antifascist Committee in the fateful year 1943
• Q&A

EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2021/22

Report

UAJS Conference 2022

Jews of East-Central Europe after the Catastrophe: Multiplicity of Experiences, 1945–1956

Author of Report: Serhiy Hirik

A two-day international conference organised and hosted by the Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies, in cooperation with the Center for Urban History of East-Central Europe, sponsored by the European Association for Jewish Studies (EAJS) Conference Grant Programme in European Jewish Studies (Lviv, March 27–28, 2023)

Applicants: 

Dr. Serhiy Hirik, Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies, Ukraine;

Prof. Frank Grüner, University of Bielefeld, Germany;

Prof. Andrea Pető, Central European University, Vienna, Austria.

Organisers:

Dr. Serhiy Hirik, Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies, Ukraine;

Dr. Vitaly Chernoivanenko, Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies, Ukraine.

Event Rationale

The conference was of significant importance both for the scholarly community and wider society. The history of East-European Jews after the Second World War frequently is overshadowed by their tragic fate during the Holocaust. Marginalization of the Jewish organised life in East bloc states after the war in mass was much more complex phenomena than only a direct consequence of the Shoah.

During the first decade after the Second World War the East-Central European Jews have experienced a series of dramatic events. For instance, an organised Jewish life in cultural, social, religious, and political spheres was partly revived in Poland in the late 1940s. The local non-Jewish population, however, was not satisfied by this process and especially by Jews’ attempts to return their property. Antisemitic accidents “from below” were not uncommon (the widely known pogrom Kielce pogrom was the bloodiest such episode, but not the only one), so the short revival of Jewish life was shortly interrupted. During next two years two third of holocaust survivors have left Poland, mostly for Eretz Israel. The Jewish political life also ceased, since Zionist activists made Aliyah and members of Jewish non-Zionist parties liquidated their political groups (e.g., many Bundists under pressure from the ruling party became its members in 1948-1949, as a result in 1949 Bund was dissolved). Despite this, the Polish Jews preserved their own representative body (the Central Committee of Polish Jews) until 1950. This organization was significantly independent from the state power. The liquidation of this body in 1950 and the creation of fully controlled by state Jewish Social and Cultural Society in Poland was an expression of final decline of Jewish life.

Similar process had place in the USSR, i.e. the antisemitic actions “from below” (e.g. pogrom in Kyiv in 1945, the last Jewish pogrom in Ukraine) and actions “from above”, i.e. the antisemitic campaign of the late 1940-s and early 1950-s: the liquidation of the Jewish Antifascist Committee in 1948, the liquidation of the Cabinet of Jewish Culture Studies at the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR in 1949 (the last such academic institution in the Soviet Union), liquidation of Jewish theaters (1949), and physical liquidation of Jewish cultural elite in 1952.

Short-time revival of Jewish life and its interruption caused by antisemitic actions both “from below” and “from above” as well as by Jewish emigration also took place in other East bloc states. Sure, this process had much smaller scale in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and East Germany than in Poland and the USSR due to much smaller number of Jews who survived the Holocaust. But it makes the cases of these countries even more interesting.

The purpose of the conference was to organise a discussion on the less known aspects of the post-war history of East and Central European Jews, i.e. the fate of Jewish women, attempts to develop the Jewish culture and academic life, efforts to restore Jewish social and political organizations, the attitude of the USSR and Soviet satellite states’ security services toward organised Jewish life, etc.

The goals were achieved. We managed to organise a fruitful discussion between researchers from eight countries (France, Hungary, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, UK, USA, Ukraine) who research various topics on the history of East-European Jews in the postwar decade.

An overview of the sections and papers presented during the event and the most significant and productive threads in the papers and discussions

The conference was hosted at the Center for Urban History of East-Central Europe in Lviv. It convened a group of researchers from France, Hungary, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, UK, USA, Ukraine (both in-person and online).

The security issues were among the highest priorities for the organisers and their partners. Therefore, this wartime event was held in the Center’s basement (exhibition hall before the Russian full-scale invasion), which served as a shelter for the participants in case of missile and drone attacks.

The conference was opened with the opening words by Dr. Vitaly Chernoivanenko, president of the Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies, and Maryana Mazurak, deputy director of the Center for Urban History. Vitaly Chernoivanenko also has read greetings from the EAJS president Prof. Elisabeth Hollender.

After the opening words Prof. Tamás Stark (Institute of History, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary) has given a first keynote lecture “The Fate of Holocaust Survivors in Hungary and Romania.” This lecture was given in person. The following discussion was focused on the possible conflicts between the collective memory of the Holocaust survivors in Hungary and Romania and the official politics of memory in these countries, the grassroots commemoration activities in postwar Hungary, the fate of those Hungarian Jews who were at DP camps after the war and did not return to Hungary.

The first panel (moderated by Vitaly Chernoivanenko, Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, UAJS President; two speakers of this panel participated online and one did it in person) was opened with a paper Sex, Gratitude, and White Lies: Jewish and Non-Jewish Relationships in the Aftermath of the Holocaust presented by Prof. Natalia Aleksiun (University of Florida, USA). She explored the complex relationships between Jewish men and women and their non-Jewish rescuers and helpers with a particular focus on such relationships in Eastern Galicia. The next presentation was given by Prof. Carol Mann (Université Paris 8, France). Its topic was Idealism Betrayed: Communist Jewish Women Facing Post-War Antisemitism in the Eastern Bloc. She examined the problems facing militant Jewish communist women after the war in the Eastern Bloc basing on several cases from Czechoslovakia, East Germany, USSR, Romania, and Poland. The following discussion focused on connection between the Jewishness of Jewish militant women and their militant behavior and the origin of the militant behavior of those Jewish women. The last presentation, Rape and Justice: Female Holocaust Survivors in War Crimes Trials in Soviet Ukraine, was given by Dr. Marta Havryshko (Basel University, Switzerland). She focused on attempts of Jewish women from Soviet Ukraine who survived the Holocaust to seek justice and put on trial the perpetrators of sexual violence against them. The following discussion was related to sentences for sexual crimes against Jewish women (there was not any separate sentence for such crime, all such crimes were examined along with other crimes perpetrated by the same persons), the way the victims of sexual violence were interrogated.

The second panel (moderated by Carol Mann, Université Paris 8) was opened with a presentation by Prof. Brian Horowitz (Tulane University, New Orleans, USA) Saul Borovoi’s Return to Odessa from Central-Asian Evacuation: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. He described the fate of famous Ukrainian-Jewish historian Saul Borovoi after the Second World War and his role in documenting the Holocaust in Odessa region. The following discussion was related to factors that helped Saul Borovoi to survive the Stalin’s antisemitic campaign in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the reasons why Borovoi did not return to the topics in Jewish history and culture when it became possible, and to his possible contacts with his relatives in Israel. The second talk was given by Dr. Jan Miklas-Frankowski (University of Gdańsk, Poland). Its topic was Life of Polish Jews after the catastrophe in Mordechai Tsanin’s “Of Stones and Ruins.” It was devoted to the articles by Jewish journalist Mordechai Tsanin (a correspondent of the New York newspaper “Forverts”) who described the situation in postwar Poland, especially the image of the destroyed Jewish world and the repression of its memory process and. at the same time, the process of restoring Jewish life in Warsaw, Łodź, Kielce, Tarnów, and other Polish cities. The following discussion was related to the similarities between Jewish reportages from postwar Poland and the Polish reportages (reportage was a very popular genre in the Polish literature both before and after the war). The last talk was given by Prof. Eliyana Adler (Pennsylvania State University, USA). Its topic was “I have come back to the place of suffering”: Narratives of Return in Post-War Polish Jewish Memorial Books. It was devoted to memoirs of Jews who survived the Holocaust and returned to Poland after the Second World War (majority of such testimonies were published much later, when their authors left Poland). The authors of such texts described their experience of returning their homes that were not longer their homes. The following discussion was focused on the nature of such memoirs as a genre and their place among other genres of Jewish literary tradition.

The second day of the conference was opened with a second keynote lecture, Negotiating ‘Soviet Jewishness’ after the Holocaust: Remembrance, Reconstruction, and De-/Normalization in Times of Hope and Uncertainty. It was given by Prof. Frank Grüner of the University of Bielefeld, Germany. He focused on the understanding Jewishness in the postwar USSR, the formation of a “Jewish community of fate and interest” in the Soviet Union, the fate of the Soviet Jews in the years of Soviet antisemitic campaigns and after Stalin. The following discussion was focused on the reasons why some leaders of the Jewish Antifascist Committee proposed to create the Jewish republic in Crimea, the features of the non-Ashkenazi Jews’ fate in the postwar Soviet Union.

The third panel was moderated by Prof. Tamás Stark (Institute of History, Hungarian Academy of Sciences). This panel was completely online. The first presentation, Smuggled to Freedom? Orthodox Jewish Rescue Networks in Communist Hungary (1949–1956) by Dr. Attila Novák of the National University for Public Service in Budapest. Unfortunately, Dr. Novák was not able to attend the conference, so he sent the text of his presentation. It was read to participants and guests by another participant — Dr. András Szécsényi from the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security in Budapest. This presentation explored the network of Orthodox Jewry in Budapest that was incorporated into the Budapest Jewish Community (and MIOK – National Representation of Hungarian Israelites) as a section in the early 1950s. The second talk, Fantasy on the Future: Representation of Post-War Hungary in the Diary of Margit Holländer, was given by Dr. Heléna Huhák of the Research Centre for the Humanities at the Excellent Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Budapest, Hungary). It was devoted to the image of postwar Hungary constructed in a diary of one of the Holocaust survivor. The following discussion was focused on the situations in which the author of the cited diary met Soviet POW (in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp) and representatives of other nationalities (in a DP camp after the war), the reflections of the diary’s author on the typhus epidemic in Bergen-Belsen directly after its liberation, the reflection of the process of magyarization of the Hungarion Jews in the cited diary. The last paper was given by Dr. András Szécsényi from the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security. Its topic was Lost in Europe. Experiences of Hungarian Jewish Survivors of Bergen-Belsen after the Liberation (1945–1947). In his talk, the speaker explored how the members of the liberated inmates lived in “half freedom” in German DP camps and in Swedish sanatoria right after the liberation and in the first post-war year. presentation was based mainly on the survivors’ ego-documents (testimonies, interviews and diaries) and the National Committee for Attending Deportees’ [DEGOB] protocols, also using the press and archival sources. The following discussion was focused on the cases of marriages and having children in DP camps, social and cultural life in DP camps.

The fourth panel was moderated by Vitaly Chernoivanenko. One of its paper was given in person and two were given online. The topic of the first presentation was Ukrainian Architects in the Context of the Post-War Antisemitic Campaign. It was given by Serhiy Hirik (State Research Institution “Encyclopedia Press” and the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Ukraine). Researcher described the features of the antisemitic policy against architects of Jewish origin in Soviet Ukraine in the late 1940s in comparison with such policy against representatives of other professional groups. The following discussion related to the series of organised meetings of various artistic and professional communities in 1949, the factors that influenced on relatively soft policy against architects of Jewish origin. The second presentation, The Activity of ‘the Joint’ in Mukachevo in 1944–1945 and the Soviet Attitude Toward It in 1953, was given by Mikhail Mitsel (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, USA). It was related to the only case of the Joint Distribution Committee’s activity in postwar Ukraine — in Soviet controlled Mukachevo before the ultimate annexation of the Transcarpathian region by the USSR. The following discussion was focused on the process of russification of those local Jews who did not leave the region and their possible contacts with Soviet Jewish intelligentsia in other regions of Soviet Ukraine. The last paper, Honor Court: Jews in Poland Take Stock after the Holocaust, was given by Prof. Gabriel Finder (University of Virginia, USA). In his talk, Prof. Finder described the history of communal honor courts in Poland, especially the honor court of the Central Committee of Jews of Poland.

The conference was concluded by the Young Researchers’ Seminar. Its moderator was Serhiy Hirik. The first paper was presented by Tetiana Shyshkina from Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, Germany. Its topic was Judaica in the Newspapers “Litaratura i Mastatstvo” (BSSR), “Literatura i Mystetstvo”, “Literaturna Hazeta”, and “Radianske Mystetstvo” (UkrSSR). She focused the problems raised by the authors of publications on Jewish art and literature in the abovementioned newspapers. The following discussion was focused on the identification of the person who collected the cuts from those newspapers and the total number of such publications. The next paper was given Uliana Kyrchiv of the Ukrainian Catholic University on Lviv. Its topic was Galician Jew Between Warsaw and Paris: Dynamics of Piotr Rawicz’s Relations with the PRL. The following discussion was related to the correspondence between the Ukrainian émigré historian Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky and Piotr Rawicz. The last talk was given by Krystian Propola (University of Rzeszów, Poland). Its topic was Cultivating the Memory of the Fate of Soviet Jews During World War II in the First Post-War Years in Light of Contemporary Russian-Language Jewish Media. The following discussion was related to the criteria of defining any precise media as Jewish.

Changes to the Original Programme

There were several changes to the original programme. Prof. Tamás Stark (Budapest, Hungary) has changed the topic of his keynote lecture. He has given a talk “The Fate of Holocaust Survivors in Hungary and Romania.” Also the moderator of the first panel was changed (it was moderated by Vitaly Chernoivanenko since Prof. Frank Grüner was not able to moderate this panel). One of the speakers of the third panel (Dr. Attila Novák) was not able to participate. He has sent his paper and it was read by another participant (Dr. András Szécsényi). One of the planned speakers of the Young Researchers’ Seminar (Alicja Podbielska) did not participate in the conference.

Event programme (Sections and Papers)

https://uajs.org.ua/sites/default/files/Program-UAJS_Jews-of-East-Central_2023_0.pdf

A statement about planned outcomes (projects, future workshops, collaborations) and outputs (publications)

Planned Outcomes

The conference contributed to the development of relationships between researchers from European countries (France, Hungary, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, UK, USA, Ukraine) who works on the topics on the history of the post-war Jewish life in East-Central Europe. The fruitful discussions during the conference also contributed to the research on less known aspects of Jewish history in Central and Eastern Europe.

Outputs

The detailed descriptions of the event will be published in the “Chronicles” sections of the journals Judaica Ukrainica (by Dr. Carol Mann) and Eastern European Holocaust Studies (by Prof. Tamás Stark). Some participants have given their papers for publication in the forthcoming volume of Judaica Ukrainica.

All the presentations were filmed and will be published on the UAJS YouTube Channel.

Publicity:

UAJS website:

https://uajs.org.ua/en/news/registration-uajs-conferences-march-27-30-2023-now-open

https://uajs.org.ua/uk/news/reestraciya-gostey-na-naukovi-konferencii-uayu-lviv-27-30-bereznya-2023

https://uajs.org.ua/uk/node/698

https://uajs.org.ua/en/node/698

Center for Urban History of East Central Europe website:

https://www.lvivcenter.org/en/updates/jews-after-catastrophe-2/

https://www.lvivcenter.org/updates/jews-after-catastrophe/

Research Center for the Humanities at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences:

https://tti.abtk.hu/160-esemenyek/konferencia/5208-konferencia-az-ovohelyen

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.6344904562199508&type=3

YouTube: All the presentations were filmed. They will be soon published on the UAJS YouTube channel.

Participants’ feedbacks:

Carol Mann, Ph.D, Research Associate, Université de Paris 8:

Regarding the conference held in Lviv 27-28 March 2023 entitled Jews of East-Central Europe after the Catastrophe: Multiplicity of Experiences, 1945–1956, I wish to congratulate Vitaly Chernoivanenko and Serhiy Hirik for having organised such an interesting and successful conference under such difficult circumstances.

I found the whole venture extremely brave and coherent with what Judaism (for me) has always stood for: study, scholarship and intellectual development even in the most impossible situations.

Whilst drones and missiles were raining on the country, the organisers managed to get together a group of papers on a vital topic, post-war Jewish life in Eastern and Central Europe. The variety of presentations and their sheer quality was impressive. It was also important to give the floor for a whole session to young scholars.

Admittedly, because of the war conditions and the fear, few people turned up in person. I was fortunate enough to be one of them. So the majority of contributions were on line, in Covid-conditions in a basement-cum-shelter

The Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies is truly an important basis for research and reflection and one can only hope that it will continue to develop further in more peaceful times- what we saw in the middle of a war was already impressive.

EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2021/22

Report

Schismatics, Heretics, and Religious Crisis: Frankism and the Turbulent 18th Century in East Central European Jewry

Summer school in Jewish studies, Palacký University Olomouc

Kurt and Ursula Schubert Center for Jewish Studies (CJS), Faculty of Arts

11-21 August 2022

Dr. Ivana Cahová, Head of CJS

Event Rationale

The international summer school “Schismatics, Heretics, and Religious Crisis: Frankism and the Turbulent 18th Century in East Central European Jewry”, intended primarily for graduate and undergraduate students of Jewish Studies and related study programs, was designed to help to heighten participants’ knowledge about the dynamic quality of Jewish religious history, with a focus on early modern Jewish heterodoxies. In particular, the course centered on topic of Sabbatean and Post-Sabbatean Movements.

The summer school took place in the Moravian region of the Czech Republic: this region played a very important role in the 18thcentury development of the Sabbatean and Frankist heresies. Nevertheless, due to various historiographical reasons, Moravian sources have not been utilized in research and in teaching to the degree they deserve. The summer school remedied this situation by focusing on Moravian historical phenomena interpreted in a broad European and global context. Moreover, the event co-organized by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, one of the most prestigious strongholds of Jewish Studies in the world, brought together some of the internationally renowned researchers of early modern Jewish religious history, experts on Sabbateanism, Frankism, and Czech Jewish history as well as local experts of Moravian religious and social history (including both Christian and Jewish history).

The event was hosted by the Kurt and Ursula Schubert Center for Jewish Studies at Palacký University in Olomouc; which, since its establishment, has played a significant role in revitalizing the research of the Moravian Jewish heritage. The Center used its excellent relations to other Moravian institutions, including museums, archives and libraries to create a broad cultural program. The very close cooperation with the Jewish community in Olomouc enabled participants from abroad to get to know local religious and communal life. The Center has an appropriate Judaica library with many Moravian sources which was fully available to the participants.

In general perspective the international summer school was aimed to bring together European, Israeli and other students of Jewish Studies, who were to be exposed to interactive instruction and who were to bring important newly acquired knowledge home. The exchange of knowledge, taking place in a cross-cultural group of participants, both students and faculty, should allow for new and shared perspectives on Jewish Studies across borders, languages, and scholarly specialties. International learning encounters between university students and academics from the Czech Republic, Israel and other European and non-European states should enrich the experience for all concerned, stimulating new kinds of intellectual, cultural, and social interaction.

Event Program

Although the event was initially planned to be held already in August 2020, due to the ongoing Covid-19 situation the international summer school “Schismatics, Heretics, and Religious Crisis: Frankism and the Turbulent 18th Century in East Central European Jewry” took place at the Kurt and Ursula Schubert Center for Jewish Studies (CJS), Faculty of Arts, Palacký University in Olomouc on 11-21 August 2022. This academic event was organized by Ivana Cahová, Head of CJS, Palacký University in Olomouc (UPOL), in close collaboration with the staff and faculty of CJS and in cooperation with Eli Lederhedler, Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI) with the generous support and financial assistance of the Conference Grant Program of the European Association for Jewish Studies (EAJS) and Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility Program. Faculty have been selected with the goal of bringing together the most experienced and widely acknowledged experts in the relevant fields of study, so that the sophistication and quality of the course is a defining feature:

• Avishai Bar-Asher (Department of Jewish Thought, HUJI)
• Martin Elbel (Department of History, UPOL)
• Hadar Feldman Samet (Department of Jewish History, Tel Aviv University, Mandel-Scholion Center, HUJI)
• Eli Lederhendler (Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
• Pawel Maciejko (Department of History, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore)
• Pavel Sládek (Prague Center for Jewish Studies, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague)
• Daniel Soukup (Kurt and Ursula Schubert Center for Jewish Studies, UPOL)
• Tamás Visi (CJS, UPOL).

The summer school was open mainly for graduate and undergraduate students of Jewish Studies (and related study programs), experts in Jewish Studies and all who are interested in Jewish history, culture and philosophy. The Call for Applications and the preliminary program of summer school was published in March 2022 in the Newsletter of EAJS and on the official webpage and Facebook page of CJS. In the process of selection of participants, the organizers prioritized European graduate and undergraduate students, doctoral candidates and recent doctoral graduates of Jewish Studies. 20 successful applicants were selected, 11 from European countries (Czech Republic, Italy, Ukraine), and 9 from Israel, who received the EAJS financial support. 2 applicants (from USA and Israel) participated at their own expense. Following the end of the selection process the final program was published (see below). All confirmed participants of the summer school were registered in the registration system of the Palacký University STAG, so that ECTS credits could be awarded to them after completing the course and meeting all the conditions of attestation.

The program consisted of the intensive instruction (35 instruction units, 1 instruction unit = 45 minutes) in the morning and/or early afternoon and cultural and social events in the afternoon and evening. Instruction included lectures, seminars, and practical teaching during the field trips. Cultural program included guided tours in Olomouc and its neighborhood, excursions and trips to attractive destinations in the Czech Republic, and cultural events in Olomouc and its neighborhood. The language of instruction was English.

The organizers created a Google Drive platform on which important organizational information and materials, including detailed Summer School Guide, was shared with all participants. Folders with recommended reading and complementary sources for seminars and lectures were also created there. Two student coordinators were appointed, who communicated with the participants in a less formal manner through e-mail and established group on a social network. A welcome Zoom meeting took place in the second half of June.

Final Program:

Thursday, August 11      

Arrival, registration, accommodation

Evening: Festive opening (Rector of Palacký University Olomouc, Chair of the Jewish Community Olomouc, Head of CJS, workshop leaders, program presentation), reception at the Jewish Community

Friday, August 12

Morning (9-12AM): Opening lecture Eli Lederhendler: “Jewish History and Society in the 18^th Century”

Afternoon (2-5PM): Palacký University Olomouc, guided tour; Jewish Olomouc, guided tour

Evening: Jewish Community Olomouc, Shabbat celebration

Saturday, August 13

Morning (9-12AM): Jewish Community Olomouc, Shabbat celebration

Afternoon (2-4PM): Ololoď (boat trip, optional); alternative informal activity in Olomouc within walking distance

Sunday, August 14

Morning (9-12AM): Seminar Avishai Bar-Asher: “Messianism, Redemption, and Soteriology: From Medieval Kabbalah to Early Modern Jewish Mysticism”

Afternoon (2-7PM): Field trip to Mikulov

Monday, August 15

Morning (9-12AM): Seminar Hadar Feldman Samet: “Cultural Crossings and Communal Confines: Sabbateanism in its Muslim Contexts, 17^th – 19^th Centuries“

Afternoon (2-4PM): Palacký University Interactive Science Center Olomouc, guided tour and screening in the planetarium

Tuesday, August 16

Morning (9-12AM): Seminar Pawel Maciejko: “The Portrait of the Kabbalist as a Young Man”

Afternoon (2-4PM): Memory of Nations Institute in Olomouc, guided tour

Wednesday, August 17

Morning (9-12AM): Seminar Tamás Visi: “Kabbalah and Popular Religion in Early Modern Moravia”

Afternoon (2-5PM): Seminar Pavel Sládek: “Was There a Crisis of Rabbinic Authority in The Early Modern Period?”

Thursday, August 18

Morning (9-12AM): Seminar Daniel Soukup: “Jewish Conversions to Catholicism in 17th and 18th Century Moravia and Bohemia”

Afternoon (2-6PM): Field trip to Holešov

Friday, August 19

Morning (9-12AM): Seminar Martin Elbel: “Heresy and Witchcraft in 17th and 18th Century Moravia”

Afternoon (3-5PM): Olomouc non-Jewish history, guided tour

Evening: Jewish Community Olomouc, Shabbat celebration, festive dinner

Saturday, August 20

Morning (9-12AM): Jewish Community Olomouc, Shabbat celebration

Afternoon (3-5PM): Conclusion; consultation (on demand)

Evening: Informal coffee in Cafe Library

Sunday, August 21

Departure

Topics of Lectures/Seminars and Discussions Summary

Eli Lederhendler: “Jewish History and Society in the 18^th Century”

In the introduction of the lecture, the question of how to approach the research of history was posed. Are we interested in the “mainstream” or normative social and cultural discourse to establish the patterns of the past? Furthermore, how should we proceed toward the marginal phenomenon, such as Jewish messianic movements of the early modern period? May the study of the “odd” reveal the attitudes and actual practice of the “normative” society and its history? The social and political development of Europe in the 18th century suggests corresponding questions concerning the Jewish individuals and communities being “within” but also “separate” from these trends. Such development constituted for its adoption and adaptation by Jewish society in Europe. The lecture offered the historical background to the 18th century Jewish life in Europe – spreading of late waves of Sabbateanism, geo-politics of Frankism, emergence of Haskalah in the West and Hasidism in the East. The last but not less important discussion dealt with the perception of this dynamic period in Jewish history either as that of order (gradual relief from civil disabilities, enhanced quality of life, absence of major persecutions etc.), or disorder (internal disruption gradually leading to secularization, assimilation and conversion, crisis of self-government motivating external authorities to intervene etc.).

Avishai Bar-Asher: “Messianism, Redemption, and Soteriology: From Medieval Kabbalah to Early Modern Jewish Mysticism”

The early modern period was witnessing a rise of two messianic movements – Sabbateanism and Frankism, both of which were building intricate foundations of thought and myth. Although Jewish messianism might appear as innovative in conception, it was developed in light of medieval Jewish thought and literature. In the lecture, the historical background of evolving ideas (rooted in medieval Jewish mysticism) was discussed also adding and comparing various scholarly approaches, furthermore, the discourse was enriched by exploring several medieval mystical texts that influenced the later stages of Jewish messianism, namely Kabbalistic Zohar literature and writings of R. Moses Nahmanides. The lecture and the text analyses supplied essential information to the background of early modern Jewish messianism and its thought evolution.

Hadar Feldman Samet: “Cultural Crossings and Communal Confines: Sabbateanism in its Muslim Contexts, 17^th – 19^th Centuries“

The lecture was opened with illustrative examples witnessing that Sabbatean thinking is still alive in the present worldview. Further, it was presented that the birth of the original Sabbatean movement itself was based on a crisis and consequent transformation within the context of early modern Jewish history. Although Sabbateanism as a mass public movement was to a great extent extinguished by the conversion of Sabbatai Tsvi to Islam in 1666, it kept on resonating inside Jewish settlements in the Ottoman Empire which were established mainly after the expulsion of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula. A case of a noteworthy Sabbatean community that was settled in Salonika was discussed. In the 19th century, the late Sabbateanism was flourishing in Ottoman society and it had a huge impact even on later generations whose descendants are searching for an understanding of their almost forgotten Sabbatean identity until today. Primary sources which were read during the lecture included a 19th-century poem based on a 5th-century love story of Lucretia and Sextus Tarquinius depicting Sabbatai Tsvi as Don Kreensia, on one hand a feminine aspect of Divine, and on the other hand a male aspect of Sabbatai Tsvi’s real personality.

Pawel Maciejko: “The Portrait of the Kabbalist as a Young Man”

The lecture followed the story of an individual which revealed the bigger picture of contacts between Sabbateans and Frankists and Bohemian and Moravian thinkers and nobility in the early modern period. Analysis of the portrait of Count of Waldstein family connected him, through the painting’s foreground, to the Kabbalistic writing Zohar, more specifically to a text with messianic significance. Since the depiction of perfectly readable, and traceable, text was not common in this period a question concerning the historical context of the painting was posed. Another hint appears in the Arabic inscription, also present in the painting, that alludes to the Count having contacts in the Sabbatean and Frankist milieu. The lecture continued the discussion of historical background and introduced the unique milieu of Czech Sabbateans and Frankists and their interactions with local Christian noblemen. Bohemian and Moravian followers of Frank and other Sabbateans remained predominantly Jewish (did not convert to Catholicism as their Polish counterparts); and in the second half of the 18th century they established exceptional contacts with Bohemian and Moravian noblemen who were interested in freethinking; in this context Sabbateans were mediators of the Kabbalistic thoughts.

Tamás Visi: “Kabbalah and Popular Religion in Early Modern Moravia”

The seminar focused on participants’ group work with assigned texts which varied in expected Hebrew language competence benefiting from the native speakers among the students. The chosen texts illustrated the spread and significance of Kabbalah in the Moravian Jewish communities in the early modern period (early 17th to late 18th century). Amid the texts was a gravestone inscription, letter, compendium, chronicle report and biblical commentary, all of which developed the picture of Kabbalah as being well respected knowledge heralding social prestige, as being accessible to avid students like Shlomiel Dressnitz through books but also through the local rabbis who in case of Moravian rabbi Moses Altschuler claimed rabbinic authority over mystical activities. The biblical commentary was a curious case of Sabbatean writing probably by Leib Judah Prossnitz which was dealing with the concept of redemption. The seminar, through active participation of the students, explored the Kabbalistic background of the early modern Moravia and its social significance, furthermore, it suggested a certain continuity or “preparing of the ground” – from the learners and self-learners of Kabbalah to later followers of Sabbatean and Frankist movement and thought.

Pavel Sládek: “Was There a Crisis of Rabbinic Authority in The Early Modern Period?”

The perception of the 17th and 18th century as that of a crisis comes from David Ruderman’s research suggesting major rejection of rabbinic authority caused primarily by the messianic figure Sabbatai Tsvi releasing waves of change across Europe. The seminar illustrated the historical context of the early modern period in Moravia and Bohemia describing the complicated Jewish self-government systems, the lack of rabbis in communities and the reliance of both individuals and communities on rabbinic rulings (especially in the issues concerning family and kashrut laws that were in the rabbinic hegemony), thus indirectly opposing, or rather locally differentiating, the extent and/or direction of said crisis. The depiction of local historical reality shed light on how potentially receptive was the environment to which Sabbatean and Frankist ideas arrived. As a specific case in historical reality the seminar discussed the significance of Hebrew book printing in terms of availability and perceived threat to the rabbinic authorities who were issuing permits or banishments to books; specifically banning books on certain topics (messianic visions included).

Daniel Soukup: “Jewish Conversions to Catholicism in 17th and 18th Century Moravia and Bohemia”

The religious context of the early modern Czech lands was marked by recatholization, and the Habsburg intent to homogenize the society and dispose of heterodoxies; one of the oppressive tools in these endeavors was conversion. Local Jewish communities were simultaneously subjected to institutionalized oppression and missionary activities, both of which were supposed to lead to reduction of the Jewish population. The primary topic of the seminar was the phenomenon of Jewish conversion. The seminar explored the methodological issues and specifics of conversion studies; then the focus turned to discussion of the historical background of Bohemia and Moravia at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries and the implication of conversion being a tool for reducing Jewish population (highlighting specific local cases of conversions – mass conversions, child conversions etc.); the picture’s complexity was supplemented by an analysis of Jesuit missions among Jews, catechetical literature, and the image of the ideal Jewish convert.

Martin Elbel: “Heresy and Witchcraft in 17th and 18th Century Moravia”

In the first part of the lecture, the situation which led to persecution of all that posed a threat to an obsolete system was outlined. The focus was on the Roman Catholic Church in early modern Czech lands and its power struggle with Protestantism which was born in response to the people’s dissatisfaction with the actual condition of the Church. Significant milestones on the way to the maintenance and predominance of Catholicism were presented, e. g. the Third Prague Defenestration, or the Battle of White Mountain in 1618. In the second part, practices associated with witch hunts in Moravia were discussed, and a case study of the Šumperk region in the 17th century was described. Infamous inquisitor Boblig, during his 14-year career, succeeded in executing about 100 people, among them local priest Lautner. These absurd trials, which were common practice in some countries in Europe, lasted until the late 18th century when the last victim was executed. It is reasonable to consider it as the manifestation of the crisis of the old culture which had to be replaced by the modern one. The same sort of crisis was expressed also by the Sabbatean movement. Thus, it is not surprising that both of them were born in the turbulent times of the 17th century.

On the last day of the summer school all successful participants received the graduation certificate. The summer school required submission of a final paper (2-3 pages, double-spaced) reflecting on one (or more) idea/s that participants acquired during the course. Use of the course reading was welcome. Upon successful submission of the final paper, the course participants received Transcript of Records for 6 ECTS credits.

Outcomes

During the course of the summer school, participants gained the general overview of the dynamic quality of Jewish religious history in the early modern era, with a focus on Jewish heterodoxies and mysticism. The gained knowledge increased participants’ ability to identify the concepts of religious dissent, heresy, and conversion in the broader context of Jewish and Christian history; to correctly identify and distinguish between various forms of Jewish mystical and messianic thought and to correlate analogous issues of heterodox religious behaviors as these may be compared in between Jewish and Christian sectarian history in the early modern era. Field trips, guided tours and off-campus lectures complemented classroom instruction by anchoring gained knowledge in a specific geo-cultural milieu where crucial events took place and left their trace in the local historical record. After the end of the summer school, each participant worked on a short academic paper reflecting on one (or more) idea/s that the participants acquired during the course.

In addition to these educational outputs, the European participants of the summer school benefited from the close social and co-learning contact with their Israeli peers, both with regard to Jewish Studies-related areas of common interest and to Hebrew-language exposure. Israeli and other non-European students left with a deeper appreciation for the East-Central European context of early modern Jewish history as well as the ongoing character of the Jewish communal, cultural, and scholarly presence in today’s Europe.

The event also provided a distinctive opportunity for scholars, from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, to meet and discuss their respective work. It has, therefore, broadened the academic networks of all the participants. This successful summer school contributed to the development of Jewish Studies in the Czech Republic and in Europe, and engaged young scholars in the field. It helped to establish an international network of students and faculty in Jewish Studies and supported student and faculty exchange practices. Moreover, it upgraded local-level inter-university cooperation between Jewish Studies programs in the Czech Republic (CJS in Olomouc and PCJS in Prague), while it also reinforced inter-university ties between Europe and Israel (HUI), thereby enabling a wider range of common projects in the future.

The summer school brought also some important “soft products“. The encounters between the students from different places and backgrounds contributed to the course from the social and cultural perspective, which was recognized and appreciated by everyone involved. The evening social event organized by students themselves in a pub next to the dormitory was a huge success, and that atmosphere carried on throughout the second half of the course. An additional “soft product” that emerged from the summer school was the encounter with the local Jewish community. The encounter was a positive element for both, students from abroad and especially from Israel, and also for the community itself since it brought an influx of new faces, new voices and showed many common and connecting elements.

In conclusion, this successful event and its final evaluation among the organizers provided a basis for the establishment of further summer and/or winter courses.

Final Summary

The EAJS Conference Grant Program in Jewish Studies enabled the organizers of this summer school to provide full 10 days program of the summer school, including 35 instruction units (1 instruction unit = 45 minutes), opening and closing reception, coffee breaks, entrance fees during the field trips, guided tours and excursions to all participants of the event; in addition to accommodation, travel expenses within the borders of the Czech Republic, and lunches to 20 supported students, to 3 local lecturers and 2 coordinators.

Publicity

The event was published through the following channels:

• Website of EAJS: https://www.eurojewishstudies.org/conference-grant-programme-reports/2019-20-and-2020-21/
• Webpage of Kurt and Ursula Schubert Center for Jewish Studies, Palacký University Olomouc: https://judaistika.upol.cz/aktuality/ and https://judaistika.upol.cz/fileadmin/users/120/Summer_school_2022_PROGRAM_official.pdf
• Facebook of Kurt and Ursula Schubert Center for Jewish Studies, Palacký University Olomouc: https://www.facebook.com/events/2861600524136322
• Webpages of H-Judaic: https://networks.h-net.org/node/28655/discussions/10241338/cfa-eajs-summer-school-frankism
• Webpage of Prague Center for Jewish Studies, Charles University in Prague: https://pcjs.ff.cuni.cz/cs/summer-school_olomouc/
• Personal channels of individual participants

A summer school poster and guide were printed and distributed at the start of the event.

An article about the summer school was published in the university bulletin Žurnál UP, and a report was broadcasted on the Czech Radio Olomouc.

https://www.zurnal.upol.cz/nc/zprava/clanek/na-univerzite-palackeho-se-vubec-poprve-kona-letni-skola-judaistickych-studii/

https://regiony.rozhlas.cz/proc-bydlet-v-prazskem-moische-house-jaka-byla-letni-skola-judaistiky-a-co-8812141           

EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2021/22

Report

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

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

The Rationale for the Conference

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

The Goals Reached

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

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

Overview of the Papers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Significant Conversations

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

(1) Magical vs medical

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

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

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

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

(2) Gendering the body and healing

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

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

(3) Re-evaluating the sources and their use

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

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

Planned Outcomes

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