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XIth Congress of the European Association for Jewish Studies. Kraków, Poland. 15-19 July 2018

July 26, 2017 by EAJS Administrator

XIth Congress of the European Association for Jewish Studies

Kraków, Poland, July 15-19, 2018

‘Searching for the Roots of Jewish Traditions’

The Organising Committee of the XIth Congress of European Association for Jewish Studies invites submissions for papers and panels to the Congress. It will be held in Kraków (Poland) from 15^th to 19^th of July 2018. Submissions are invited to the following sections:

Ancient Jewish History and Archeology
Biblical Literature
Talmud, Midrash and Rabbinics
Medieval Jewish Thought
Medieval and Early Modern Jewish History
Medieval and Early Modern Jewish Literatures
Hebrew Manuscripts
Modern Jewish History
Contemporary Jewish History
Jewish Mysticism
Hasidism
Modern Jewish Thought and Philosophy; Modern Judaism
Modern Hebrew Literature
Yiddish Literature
Linguistics and Jewish Languages
Jewish Culture and Arts
Jewish History in Central-Eastern Europe
Southeastern European Jewish History and Culture
Polish-Jewish Heritage
Holocaust Studies
Libraries, Archives and New Technologies; History of the Book
Jewish Museology
Karaite Studies
History and Culture of the State of Israel
Jewish-non-Jewish Relations; Antisemitism

Please send abstracts of proposed papers (up to 300 words) to eajs.congress2018@uj.edu.pl. Every proposal must include a title, the name and affiliation of the participant, e-mail address and telephone number, as well as the section in which the paper should be included. The suggested language of papers is English.

Submissions may also include proposals for panels falling outside the above mentioned sections if an interested coordinator is able to list at least five prospective speakers, and the Organizing Committee approves the proposal. The coordinator will be responsible for the selection of papers and coordination of the panel.

The conference fees (excluding accommodation or catering) are € 55.00 for EAJS Student Members, € 80.00 for EAJS Full and Associate Members and € 175.00 for non-members. In order to qualify for the lower congress fee for EAJS members, membership subscriptions must be paid up to and including 2017. Members in arrears should pay membership fees from 2016.

The deadline for paper and panel proposals abstracts is 15^th November 2017. Confirmation of acceptance/rejection of papers 15^th January 2018. Payment of conference fees due 15^th February 2018.

Please note also that the Organizing Committee will offer travel bursaries to PhD students and early career researchers from lower than median income countries who wish to attend. Further details about these bursaries will be published in due course.

In case of any additional inquiries do not hesitate to contact the Organizing Committee: eajs.congress2018@uj.edu.pl

New Position. Lecturer in Biblical and Targumic Aramaic. Leo Baeck College. North London.

July 25, 2017 by EAJS Administrator

Leo Baeck College, based in North London, is seeking to recruit a lecturer in Biblical and Targumic Aramaic to start in the spring semester, January 2018. The post entails teaching one module (2 sessions a week).

For the right applicant this position has the potential to grow in the future depending on the candidate’s qualifications and experience.

Most students at the College will be pursuing academic studies leading to degrees and rabbinic ordination for the Reform, Liberal and Masorti Movements in the UK, Europe and the FSU.

Applications, including a full CV, should be sent to Rhona Lesner, Leo Baeck College, Sternberg Centre for Judaism, 80 East End Road, London N3 2SY, Email: rhona.lesner@lbc.ac.uk

The deadline for applications is 1 September 2017.

Enquires please telephone 020 8349 5621

For more information about the College, see www.lbc.ac.uk

Call for Papers. Workshop and Conference: “Jewish Friends. Contemporary Figures of the Jew”. Institute for Jewish Studies. Dahlem Humanities Center, Freie Universität Berlin. 16-18 October 2017.

July 25, 2017 by EAJS Administrator

Workshop and Conference: Jewish Friends. Contemporary Figures of the Jew

Institute for Jewish Studies │ Dahlem Humanities Center, Freie Universität Berlin

16-18 October 2017

Deadline: 18 August 2017

Organized by Elad Lapidot and Hannah Tzuberi

Participants: Cynthia M. Baker, Daniel Boyarin, AmnonRaz-Krakotzkin, Salman Sayyid, Oded Schechter, Ron Naiweld,OfriIlany, Hillel Ben-Sasson, Ivan Segré, Sultan Doughan, Baruch Wolski

An extraordinarily central, even constitutive element of the set of questions concerning Jews has always been the question concerning the image, the idea or the figure of the Jew for non-Jews. In 2013, David Nirenberg showed how in virtually every chapter of the history of Western thought, basic notions of the world and the self, such as the good and the body, the national, the religious and the cultural, were fashioned and transmitted through figures of Jews. These figures have not always been coherent; they presented contradictory images, and flexibly merged, like fluids, into ever new iconographic formations. What they did have in common was that the Jew has paradigmatically been the figure of the antithesis: a foil to Christian love, a symbol of global commerce, an opponent of reason and tolerance, a malign cancer to the Aryan national body, a problematic origin of Christianity and Western civilization. Thus, the figuration of the Jew not only did not require the presence of real Jews, as Nirenberg shows, but was perhaps even predicated on their absence.

This conference will reflect on the current situation of this paradigm. It will tentatively point at and attempt to contemplate a profound shift in the paradigmatic figuration of the Jew that seems to have begun after the Shoa and is still at work today. While “Jews”, “Judaism” and “Israel” remain important terms for describing and accounting for global agenda, they seem no longer to serve as figures of antithesis, but on the contrary of essential and integral, even representative element of the West’s political-cultural self. For the first time in history, the Jew has become a figure of the Western establishment, which is normatively committed to support the Jewish state and to protect and cultivate Jews and Jewish institutions. Jews have become a “good other”. Anti-Semitism still exists, but is perceived by normative institutional discourse as social and psychological, even epistemological pathology. The conference will reflect on the ambivalent nature of this new situation of the Jew as a figure of hegemony.

The historical situation of Germany makes it an especially interesting place for this conference. In contemporary Germany, figures of Jews have been playing an important role in the making of a new national self, following the fall of the Berlin wall. “Renaissance of Jewish life” has emerged, as also observable in Eastern and Central Europe, as a powerful narrative of overcoming the past destruction. The central role of this narrative stands in utter disproportion to the very limited presence of actual Jewish communities. Thus, the Jew has become a figure of a national discourse that does not necessarily promote pluralism and multiculturalism.

This conference will be highly interdisciplinary and will gather scholars of a wide range of research fields and methodologies to explore various aspects of the new figural paradigm of the Jew. It will be preceded by a one-day workshop with Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin. We would like to invite in particular graduate students, and early and mid-career researchers, whose work engages the following questions:

How can the current figure of the Jew be more accurately characterized, in itself and in historical and transcultural comparisons?

How can the ambivalence of this figure be described and identified in concrete situations worldwide, on the political, social, cultural and epistemological levels?

What is the relation between the current figure of the Jew and the various Jewish personal and communal forms of existence?

What is the relation between the current figure of the Jew and other basic categories and figures of Western discourse?

How does the figure of the Jew intersect with the figure of the Muslim?

We invite 20-minutes presentations of papers (in English). For application, a short abstract (max. 300 words) and a short CV (max. 200 words) is to be mailed to Elad Lapidot (elapidot@zedat.fu-berlin.de) and Hannah Tzuberi (tzuberic@zedat.fu-berlin.de) by August 18th, 2017.

The conference is supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

For further information, please refer to

www.fu-berlin.de/dhc/programme/termine/cfp-jewish-friends.html

Call for papers. The Seventh International Conference for Jewish Studies Researchers. Warsaw. 14-16 November 2017.

July 18, 2017 by EAJS Administrator

The Jewish Studies Student Association at University of Warsaw in cooperation with Institute of History, Mordechai Anielewicz Center and POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews are pleased to invite you to The Seventh International Conference for Jewish Studies Researchers (Warsaw, 14-16 November 2017).

The conference is planned for undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral students under the age of 30. It aims at showing the full scope of current interests of young researchers, as well as the current condition of research on broadly understood Jewish Studies. The conference will focus on the global history of Jews and the history of the State of Israel from ancient times until today. The topics cover: history, history of art, philosophy, sociology, cultural, literature and religion studies as well as linguistics (focusing on Hebrew, Yiddish and Ladino).

The conference will be accompanied by a program of scientiﬁc and cultural events. We are planning to publish a bilingual volume (in Polish and English) in 2018.

To take part in the conference send us an abstract (200-300 words) with information about your preferred presentation language (Polish or English), your brief biographical note and a completed application form at judaistyka.kn@uw.edu.pl. The deadline for submitting papers is 1st September 2017. Participants will be informed about whether they have been accepted or not at the beginning of September via e-mail. The decision of the Organizing Committee is ﬁnal. Every participant is required to pay a fee of 50 PLN ($13 or €13). We do not cover the costs of travel and accommodation in Warsaw during the conference, but we can help organize your stay in Warsaw.

We will provide you with all the documents your home university may need to help you take part in the conference. For any additional information, please contact us at judaistyka.kn@uw.edu.pl.

More: www.studiajudaistyczne.pl and www.facebook.com/sknjuw

Academic Committee: dr hab. Anna Michałowska-Mycielska, dr Artur Markowski, dr Monika Polit; Organizing Committee: Joanna Filipska, Matylda Jonas-Kowalik, Zuzanna Łapa, Natasza Majewska, Agata Maliszewska, Pola Namysł, Jowita Pańczyk, Natalia Różańska, Anna Sasińska, Bogumiła Siebyła, Mateusz Szczepaniak, Zoﬁa Zięba, Jakub Zygmunt.

Call for Papers. “Emergent Religious Pluralism(s)”. Woolf Institute (Cambridge). 16-17 April 2018.

July 18, 2017 by EAJS Administrator

The Woolf Institute (Cambridge) invites 250-word abstracts for an interdisciplinary conference on the theme of ‘Emergent Religious Pluralism(s)’. The event will be held at the Woolf Institute in Cambridge, in April 2018 and will include a keynote talk from Professor Nasar Meer (University of Edinburgh). Please submit your abstracts to John Fahy (jef96@georgetown.edu) by August 15th 2017.

Outline

The concept of religious pluralism has been at the centre of major political developments and discourse in recent years. The rise of the Hindu right in India has contributed to an increasing sense of marginalisation amongst non-Hindu minorities, and Muslims in particular. Donald Trump’s divisive rhetoric and persistent attempts to impose a Muslim travel ban have similarly left Muslim minorities in the U.S. feeling targeted. In war torn countries throughout the Middle East, the place of the dwindling Christian communities looks ever more precarious, and the rich tradition of pluralism seems to be disappearing. Across Europe controversial attempts, both legal and political, to manage the challenge of religious diversity have led to heated debates on how to deal with difference. At the heart of these developments, the very ideal of religious pluralism itself is being contested. But how have changing realities on the ground informed the ideal of religious pluralism itself in different parts of the world?

Religious pluralism has often been defined in relation to, but as distinct from, religious diversity. David Machacek defines pluralism as “meaningful diversity” (2003) while in Diana Eck’s (2006) words “pluralism is not diversity alone, but the energetic engagement with diversity”. It is not just tolerance, Eck writes, but “the active seeking of understanding across lines of difference”. The ideal of religious pluralism in the American context, at least, connotes integration, and not segregation. More than the merely descriptive diversity, it implies both evaluation and engagement. It is, in other words, a moral response to the existential fact of diversity.

That such definitions of religious pluralism can encompass the broad range of ways in which the challenge of religious diversity can (or should) be managed has been problematised. Taking account of the myriad social, political and historical factors that shape the kinds of religious pluralism that have emerged throughout the world, and throughout history, some now prefer to speak of ‘pluralisms’ (Marty 2007) or ‘modes of religious pluralism’ (Riis 1999). Such modes of religious pluralism are not simply alternative approaches to a common ideal, but constitute complex political responses to particular socio-historical challenges.

But what kinds of challenges elicit what kinds of responses? How is the ideal of religious pluralism conceived, constructed and contested in different parts of the world? Are there identifiable approaches to religious pluralism within or between different religious traditions? How might we describe the various ways in which the challenge of religious

diversity is being responded to today, and who is responding? What is the relationship between everyday experiences of diversity, on the one hand, and ideals of religious pluralism, tolerance and coexistence, on the other?

This conference looks to explore the emergent conceptions of, and commitments to, the ideal of religious pluralism in different parts of the world. We invite submissions that engage with one or more of the following questions:

How are the ideals of religious pluralism changing in light of recent social and political developments? Are there identifiable ‘modes’ of religious pluralism emerging in different parts of the world? Do we find broader trends that transcend particularities of national (and nationalistic) political discourses?
In what ways can the history of religious pluralisms throughout the world, and across religious traditions, inform our understanding of recent developments? Is there anything new about how religious difference itself is being constructed and contested?
What is the relationship between religious pluralism and broader strategies for managing difference, such as multiculturalism? To what extent do ideals of religious pluralism reflect those of other pluralisms, for example, cultural, ethnic or national?
What kinds of responses are being offered to the challenge of religious diversity by both state and non-state institutions and actors? How is the challenge itself being articulated, and by who? How do the ideals of religious pluralism, tolerance and coexistence relate to the everyday experience of diversity?
What role do religious actors play? How are theological resources being mobilised to address the challenge of religious diversity, for example, through interfaith dialogue?