EAJS Conference Grant Program in Jewish Studies
Report
BIAJS annual conference: “Jews, Gender, and Sexuality”
University of Bristol, UK, 8-10 July 2024
Given both long-standing and recent debates about feminism, identity, equality, trans rights, women’s religious and political leadership, Queer representation, and reproductive rights, the 2024 British and Irish Association for Jewish Studies conference focused on the myriad questions of gender and sexuality. The BIAJS conference, as always, spans many academic fields, and approaches to the topic were intended to be wide-ranging. The conference invited scholars to think within and across disciplines and to forge new connections to allow us to rethink gender and sexuality within the Jewish world, Jewish Studies, and beyond.
Although BIAJS conferences are always open to panels and papers beyond the immediate theme, this particular theme is one that allowed for many strands of inquiry. Thus, the conference proposed to pursue, among others, the following questions:
- How did and do Jews understand concepts of gender and sexuality in biblical texts?
- How have these concepts been regarded similarly to and differently from non-Jewish perspectives?
- How can understandings of (Jewish) history be rethought using Queer or feminist lenses?
- What Jewish (or Jew-ish) women or other gender or sexual minorities have been excluded from the historical record or popular imaginary that ought to be or are being recovered?
- What gains has Jewish Studies made in the field of gender and sexuality since the University of Birmingham hosted BAJS in 2005 with the theme ‘Women in the Jewish World’?
For the 2024 BIAJS conference on Jews, Gender, and Sexuality, over 140 participants came from 16 countries to discuss and debate these topics.
Event rationale
Recently, a book called Jews and Gender was published (Purdue University Press, 2021), following a similarly titled symposium in the United States. Although the scholars examine phenomena from the Hebrew bible through the 21st-century comedy television series, Broad City, the complete exclusion of essays by Europe and Britain-based scholars and of European and British contexts is notable. The 2024 BIAJS conference in Bristol, UK, aimed to put European and British scholars at the forefront of this important and timely conversation.
In the last few years, issues of gender and sexuality have become a central part of mainstream discourse. These issues have also become core to the Jewish world, even in places that previously supressed such discussions. For instance, in 2018, Rabbi Efraim Mirvis, Chief Rabbi of the Commonwealth, came out with a wellbeing guide for LGBT+ students in Orthodox schools. Other developments have ensued: in 2020, Shel Maala, a ‘digital-first queer yeshiva’ was founded; in 2022, the Conservative Movement developed a new language for calling non-binary people to the Torah; in 2023, a queer yeshiva authored a series of ‘teshuvot’ that ‘use the language of halakha to respond to questions about Jewish life and practice that emerge directly from trans people.’
Within the sphere of Jewish Studies, too, the questions of gender and sexuality have come to play a prominent role, and many of these were represented at the conference:
- Jewish masculinity has been examined by historian Miriam Mora in her book, Carrying a Big Schtick: American Jewish Acculturation and Masculinity in the Twentieth Century (Wayne State, 2023) and by Ronnie Grinberg in Write Like a Man: Jewish Masculinity and the New York Intellectuals (Princeton University Press, 2024). Grinberg’s book has garnered significant media attention, the research written up in The New York Times, The New Republic, New Statesman, and elsewhere. Both scholars presented their work at the conference.
- The burgeoning field of Haredi Studies and more broadly Orthodox Jewish Studies are rife with interrogations of gender, with such recent publications as Karen E. H. Skinazi’s Women of Valor: Orthodox Jewish Troll Fighters, Crime Writers and Rock Stars in Contemporary Literature and Culture (Rutgers, 2018), Michal Raucher’s Conceiving Agency: Reproductive Authority Among Haredi Women (Indiana University Press, 2020), and Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz’s Challenge and Conformity: The Religious Lives of Orthodox Jewish Women (Littman, 2021). Skinazi organised the conference, and Taylor-Guthartz presented on issues of gender and Orthodoxy, as did Katja Stuerzenhofecker, Melissa Weininger, Heather Munro, Katharina Hadassa Wendl, and Asher Suzin, scholars looking at the topic through anthropological, historical, religious, and cultural studies lenses.
- Queer Jewish Studies, which had its start early in the twenty-first century with Queer Theory and the Jewish Question edited by Daniel Boyarin, Daniel Itzkovitz, and Ann Pellegrini and Queer Jews edited David Schneer and Caryn Aviv, has since been picked up and developed by many and diverse scholars. In recent years, Marla Brettschneider published Jewish Lesbian Scholarship in a Time of Change (Routledge, 2022) and Max K. Strassfeld Trans Talmud: Androgynes and Eunuchs in Rabbinic Literature (University of California, 2023). Bringing together Haredi and Queer Studies, Orit Avishai published Queer Judaism: LGBT Activism and the Remaking of Jewish Orthodoxy in Israel (NYU Press, 2023). At the conference, multiple panels addressed the intersection of Queer Studies and Jewishness, including Irina Rabinovich, “Beyond the Pale Veil: Tracing Jewish Lesbian Lives from the Nineteenth-Century Pale to the Horizons of Early Twentieth-Century America”; Daniella Shaw, “Activist-Researcher Perspectives on Jewish, Queer, and Interfaith Lived Experiences”; Stav Meishar, “Viva La Diva: Jewish and Israeli Dragtivism”; Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah, “Joseph and their life of many genders”; Eliya Amsalem, “Lesbian Soldiers in the IDF During the 70s and the 80s”; Dotan Brom, “Beyond Conventional Jewish Narratives: The Life and Work of Robert Friend”; Gavin Schaffer, “Leaning on Lionel: Understanding Jewish faith in Britain through the Writing of Lionel Blue”; Angelica Giménez Ravanelli, “Queering the memory of the Holocaust in Argentina”; Gal Dafadi, “Paradoxical Nature: The Israeli Supreme Court’s Perspective on Nature and the Body in Surrogacy Cases”; and the roundtable “‘Bad’ Jews Around the World.”
The conference offered time and space to pursue the nexus of Jews, Gender, and Sexuality in a setting where scholars and practitioners from a variety of places and backgrounds, could engage productively with each other to shape new research questions, directions, and outcomes.
Event structure and description
The conference took place Monday 8 July – Wednesday 10 July 2024. Conference presentations were selected after an international call for panel/roundtable proposals as well as individual papers. Submissions came from scholars from all career stages, including early career scholars and PhD students, as well as practitioners (rabbis, circus performer). Nine sessions were held, each with multiple (up to 5) parallel strands during each. Traditional panels included three or four thematically linked presentations, focusing on specific issues or approaches; we also had roundtables, a pedagogy workshop, and six “Conversations.” The Conversations gave participants the opportunity to discuss pressing issues for Jewish Studies scholars; the topics included were “Teaching Israel/Zionism,” “What Would a British Jewish History Month Look Like?” “Jewish Staff Networks,” “The War’s Impact on University Campuses,” “Academic Boycotts,” and “How Do We Make Our Scholarship Part of Public Debates? Sessions were very well attended, some with standing-room only.
Keynote speakers, representing research fields from antiquity to the present, and such disciplines as political sociology, literary criticism, history, Women’s Studies, and religious studies offered new insights into the intersection of gender and Judaism. Our three keynote speakers were Professor Dorit Geva, Professor of Politics and Gender, University of Vienna, speaking on “The Jew in the European Radical Right,” Professor Rowena Kennedy-Epstein of University of Bristol, speaking on poet Muriel Rukeyser in a talk called “To Be a Jew in the 20th Century,” and Professor Alexandra Cuffel, Professor of Jewish Religion in Past and Present Times at the Center for Religious Studies, Ruhr University Bochum, whose talk was called “Ideal Men and Dangerous Concubines According to Jonah ben Abraham Gerondi and His Contemporaries.”
Funding for the two keynotes from Europe—as well as for bursaries ten postgraduate/early career research academics from the UK, Europe, the US, and Israel—came from the European Association for Jewish Studies. We are grateful for their support.
On Monday morning, we had a welcome from the BIAJS president Dr Karen E. H. Skinazi and the university Vice Chancellor and President, Professor Evelyn Welch. We then began our sessions—the day included 3 panels, 5 roundtables, a pedagogy workshop, a “Conversation,” as well as a keynote lecture, vegetarian lunch, annual general meeting, and wine reception.
The wine reception was hosted by the Faculty of Arts, Law, and Social Sciences at University of Bristol. The BIAJS President gave a short speech attesting to the value of the contributions of the conference. The Faculty Dean, Professor Martyn Powell, then welcomed the participants. Finally, BIAJS executive committee members announced the winner of the 2024 Book Award. Every year since 2018 we have run a book prize, with an award of £1000, to recognise and promote outstanding scholarship in the field of Jewish Studies. Last year the prize was won by Dr Jan Rybak, with honourable mentions for Professor Emily Michelson and Dr Jaclyn Granick. Our annual award for the best monograph submitted alternate between books on the ancient to medieval period and early modern to modern period. For the 2024 prize we invited submissions focused on topics relating to the ancient to medieval period. The winner was:
Aaron Hornhokl for The Historical Depth of the Tiberian Reading Tradition of Biblical Hebrew
Aaron came to the conference from Cambridge to accept his award. We also had an Honourable Mention for the book prize: Jewish and Christian Women in the Ancient Mediterranean by Sara Parks, Shayna Sheinfeld, and Meredith J.C. Warren. The recipients joined us by Zoom.
Next, we announced the winners of our student essay awards. The postgraduate prize went to Pia Regensburger for “On the Theme of Theosis in 4 Maccabees and other Jewish Greek Texts.” The undergraduate prize was awarded to Konor Sajti for “Regimenting Emotions Emotional Communities under Israeli Militarism during the 1969-1970 War of Attrition.” Additionally, there was an undergraduate Honourable Mention: Max Benster, “A Study of the Motif of Celestial Book Erasure in Ancient Judaism.”
Following the wine reception, we had a film screening of the comedy “Husband” and Q&A with filmmakers Josh Appignanesi and Dr Devorah Baum (of Southampton University), hosted by Professor Gavin Schaffer.
Many participants then joined us for a three-course plated vegetarian conference dinner, held at the beautiful Hotel du Vin Avon Gorge overlooking the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
After dinner, we were joined by colleagues who had dined elsewhere for another exciting cultural event: a research-led Yiddish dance lesson led by UCL lecturer Dr Sonia Gollance, author of It Could Lead to Dancing: Mixed-Sex Dancing and Jewish Modernity. The day wrapped up at 11:59pm!
Tuesday was a very full day, beginning at 8am. We had 13 panels, one roundtable, three “Conversations,” and a keynote lecture. People chatted and networked over coffees and a vegetarian lunch.
The day ended with two more highlights. The first was a Mizrachi cooking workshop and one-woman performance of “My Angry Turkish Savta” by anthropologist Dr Michal Nahman of University of the West of England (UWE), a scholar who leads on “The Mizrachi Food Project.” The event took place at Co-Exist Community Kitchen. Participants in the workshop made Yemeni malawach, chraymeh (Tunisian white fish in spicy tomato sauce with caraway seeds, cumin, garlic, date syrup, lemon and fresh coriander), baked aubergine medallions coated in breadcrumbs, Turkish piyaz salad of white beans, tomatoes, red onions, sumac, pomegranate molasses and cilantro, and a dessert of kataif noodles slathered in rose syrup, baked, and served with clotted Turkish buffalo cream, kaimak, pistachios, and roasted peaches.
The second was walking tour of the Jewish communities of Bristol led by University of Bristol History postgraduate student Caroline Gurney. Focused primarily on the 17th and 18th-century communities, Caroline also showed participants some of the more recent sites of Jewish life (e.g., the 1871 Park Row Synagogue and the site where the inventor of the moving picture camera did his photography apprenticeship 1869-75) and medieval sites (e.g., “Jacob’s Well,” the water source once thought to be a mikveh, now understood as a Bet Tehorah, and the Jewish burial ground now beneath a school in Bristol). In addition to leading the tour, which lasted four hours, Caroline prepared a map in both hard copy and as a phone app for those who could not join her. It can be found here.
The last day, Wednesday, saw 11 more panels, a keynote lecture, a vegetarian lunch, and two “Conversations” before participants went on their way.
In sum, we had a wildly successful event, featuring scholars from 16 countries presenting on a wide range of Jewish Studies topics, and diverse and exciting cultural events. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.
Please see programme booklet for further details about talks and participant biographies.