2024 Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Awards

The Association for Jewish Studies is pleased to again offer its Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Awards. This program is designed for current AJS member authors who already have secured publishing contracts but who require subventions to ensure publication of their first books. The AJS will grant awards of $5,000 each, payable directly to the press on behalf of the author. A multidisciplinary committee of scholars will evaluate applications. In deciding how to allocate these funds, the committee will consider both the scholarly significance of the book and the demonstrated need for subvention support. Applications are invited from AJS members in all research disciplines. In 2024, there will be two award cycles: Applicants can either submit an application during the first cycle, which closes at the end of June, or they can submit an application during the second award cycle, which closes on December 31. Notifications will follow within roughly six weeks of each application deadline.

TOC: Oqimta: Studies in Talmudic and Rabbinic Literature 10 (2024), 5 new papers

We are pleased to announce the publication of five new articles (free download, link is attached below): 

1. Shraga Bick, The Cancellation of the Recitation of the Ten Commandments in Prayer and Jewish-Christian Polemics: A Re-examination (Heb.)

2. Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, The Story-Cycle in Bavli Nedarim 91a-b

3. Amitai Glass-Stegmann, Elderly Mothers and Holy Sons: An Examination of Two Late Antique Stories (Heb.)

4. Ruth Stern, Methods of Lexical Expansion in the Geonic Period – A Window onto the Cultural World of the Jewish Communities  

5. Shai Secunda, The Talmud of Babylonia

Robert de Sorbon Fellowship

Hannah Teddy Schachter is now Robert de Sorbon fellow  at the Laboratoire de Médiévistique occidentale de Paris, CNRS & Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France. Congratulations!

She will give a lecture on The Queens of France and the Jews in the 13th Century, Wednesday April 17 at 5pm in the Salle Perroy (Paris, Sorbonne).

2024 Writing beyond the Academy

The Association for Jewish Studies is pleased to announce a four-day online seminar to help academics develop skills for sharing their expertise with the wider public and engaging diverse audiences beyond the walls of academia. Participants will workshop their own pre-prepared writing samples and participate in instructional seminars on topics such as writing op-eds, personal essays, narrative non-fiction, and cultural criticism, as well as public speaking and managing social media. The workshop will be held Monday, June 3 – Thursday, June 6, 2024 on Zoom for four hours each day. The exact timing will be announced closer to the workshop dates. It will be led by Samuel Freedman, award-winning author of Jew v. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry, professor of journalism at Columbia University, and columnist for The New York Times, and will feature additional instructional guests.

Applications will be accepted on a competitive basis from among the membership of the Association for Jewish Studies, with a submission deadline of April 15, 2024. Applicants must have a terminal degree in their field.

Participants will be expected to come to the workshop with 1 to 2 works-in-progress. These can include editorials, personal essays, cultural criticism essays, narrative non-fiction pieces, or similar works intended for non-academic audiences.

Participants are also expected to submit at least two pieces of public writing for potential publication within six months of completing the Writing beyond the Academy workshop.

The Girona International Research Workshop Kabbalah of Catalonia

May 6 – 8, 2024, Girona

The Instituto de Estudios Judíos Barcelona (EJB), in collaboration with the Universitat de Girona, Institut d’Estudis Nahmànides, and Paideia – European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden, is pleased to invite you to Girona International Research Workshop on the Kabbalah of Catalonia, scheduled to take place from May 6 to May 8, 2024.

Continue reading The Girona International Research Workshop Kabbalah of Catalonia

2024 AJS Graduate Student Summer Writing Group

The AJS has implemented this program to provide extra support and encouragement for graduate students seeking to finalize a writing project with structured guidance and the support of a writing group of their peers. The entire group, facilitated by Professor Sarah Abrevaya Stein, will meet 6 times over an 8-week period, and will explore strategies for writing, seeking mentorship and feedback, developing and staking arguments, and more. Smaller writing groups will meet to circulate drafts and share constructive criticisms.  The group is designed to help participants finalize a dissertation chapter or grant proposal:  it is not intended for those at the earliest stages of dissertation conceptualization or research. All applicants should have completed their qualifying exams and defended their dissertation proposal. They must also be available Mondays from June 17-August 5 from 10-12:15 PST/1-3:15 EST.  Working groups will meet from 10 – 11 AM PST (1 – 2 PM EST) and the group as a whole will convene from 11:15 AM – 12:15 PM PST (2:15 – 3:15 EST) the same day.  The dates of our six group meeting times will be announced with selection results.  

Call for Applications for a major lecture to be given in November,  related to Jewish heritage and history in Central Europe.

We are pleased to share this Call for Applications for a major lecture to be given in November,  related to Jewish heritage and history in Central Europe. The deadline for applications is May 31, 2024

The Jewish Museum in Prague – in co-operation with the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews and the Consulate General of the Czech Republic in New York – invites applicants to submit their topic proposals for the Bohemian National Hall Annual Lecture on the History and Culture of Jews in the Czech and Slovak Lands.

This call is open to scholars from different disciplines working on a variety of topics centred around Jewish history and culture in the Czech lands, Slovakia and in the other regions of the former Habsburg Monarchy from the Middle Ages to the present.

The lecture will be given in English and will be connected with a stay in New York between November 18–24, 2024.

Join the AJS Review Editorial Board

The AJS Review is seeking two new Editorial Board members. Members of the Editorial Board shape the vision of the journal, help plan special issues, actively solicit articles, and represent the journal at conferences and other forums. Applications from scholars in all fields are welcome, but they are particularly interested at this time in applications from scholars of American Jewish studies, medieval and modern Jewish thought, the social sciences, and the arts.

Open access: New book “Shared Saints and Festivals among Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Medieval Mediterranean” by Alexandra Cuffel

This book explores shared religious practices among Jews, Christians, and Muslims, focusing primarily on the medieval Mediterranean. It examines the meanings members of each community ascribed to the presence of the religious other at “their” festivals or holy sites during pilgrimage. Communal boundaries were often redefined or dissolved during pilgrimage and religious festivals. Yet, paradoxically, shared practices served to enforce communal boundaries, since many of the religious elite devised polemical interpretations of these phenomena which highlighted the superiority of their own faith. Such interpretations became integral to each group’s theological understanding of self and other to such a degree that in some regions, religious minorities were required to participate in the festivals of the ruling community. In all formulations, “otherness” remained an essential component of both polemic and prayer.

Call for Submissions: ‘Storytelling and the Middle Ages’, Trivent Publishing, deadline 1 May 2024

This series examines the cultural practice of storytelling in and about the Middle Ages. It aims at advancing our understanding of the art and practice of storytelling in the global Middle Ages in different languages and media. It places particular emphasis on the combination of narration and performance, and it extends its scope to include contemporary storytelling of medieval stories and themes. Moreover, the series invites contributions researching the stories we tell today about the Middle Ages, and so welcomes perspectives on medievalism and the ways our narratives about our cultural past connect with historical reality. The series welcomes a global perspective and a comparative point of view. The series invites proposals for monographs, edited collections and conference proceedings on all subjects related to storytelling in and about the Middle Ages.