New book (available for pre-order) — Craig Perry, Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt: A History

Princeton University Press, January 2026.

From the publisher: “In this book, Craig Perry mines a remarkable cache of fragmentary documents preserved in an Egyptian synagogue to write a new history of slavery and the slave trade in the medieval Middle East. These documents—which range from the everyday correspondence of traveling merchants to legal queries sent to Jewish jurists—provide the richest surviving archive for the social history of slavery during the centuries when Cairo was an imperial and commercial capital at the intersection of the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean worlds. Perry draws on this archive, known as the Cairo Geniza, to shed new light on such crucial topics as the slave trade in state diplomacy, the entanglements of gender and household slavery, and the lives of the enslaved.”

Gerd Blum and Katrin Kogman-Appel, “Vasari and Giambullari on the Menorah, the Tabernacle and Bezalel”

Read now the new article by Gerd Blum and Katrin Kogman-Appel, “Vasari and Giambullari on the Menorah, the Tabernacle and Bezalel. Discourses on the Legitimisation of Art in Early Modern Italy and Their Jewish Sources,” in The Menorah in Jewish and Christin Art and Thought in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods, ed. Andrea Worm and Maria Streicher (Berlin: de Gruyter), 97–141.

University of California – Santa Barbara – Marsha and Jay Glazer Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies

According to their call, “[t]he Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, invites applications for a position at the rank of full or associate professor to fill the Marsha and Jay Glazer Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies. We seek a rigorous and imaginative scholar whose research encompasses one or more of the following specializations: Rabbinic Judaism and Jewish Law in Late Antiquity or the Medieval Period, Medieval Jewish Mysticism and Philosophy, or Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Judaism.”

Deadline: 30 June 2026.

CfP, Christians, Jews, and Muslims: Trajectories and Interactions in the Mediterranean, Madrid

The Conference “Christians, Jews, and Muslims: Trajectories and Interactions in the Mediterranean,” taking place from 9 to 12 June 2026, organized by the Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean and the Near East (ILC-CSIC) in collaboration with the Common Action Forum (CAF), invites for paper proposals. The conference aims “to offer a comprehensive approach to the topic, bridging academic research with public outreach and citizen science. To this end, it will bring together specialists from diverse disciplines to foster interdisciplinary debate and present new perspectives on the political, cultural, and religious history of the Mediterranean, with particular emphasis on the analysis of textual sources and their circulation in multiconfessional and multilingual contexts. With this dual focus, the congress aims to demonstrate the public role of academia by translating historical and philosophical perspectives into reflections on contemporary challenges: the trajectories that have shaped the development and evolution of the Mediterranean up to the present day have much to reveal about the end of  geographical and historical barriers, as well as about the immediacy and misinformation that characterize the modern age. In an exercise of scientific and academic diplomacy, the congress seeks to open a dialogue connecting past interactions with the challenges of today’s technological era.”

Submission Deadline for Proposals: 31 December 2025

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Maritime Connections: Jews Across the Indian Ocean, Delhi

Accroding to their call, this “international conference will explore the historical evaluation of Jewish Networks and Knowledge Exchanges Along the Indian Ocean. The conference will focus on Trade, Religion, Culture, and the Development of Social and Intellectual Movements from antiquity to modernity. This conference aims to provide a comprehensive platform for scholars to examine the relationships between these communities and their pivotal roles in the cultural and economic dynamics of this crucial maritime region.” The “invite submissions of papers presenting new research on the movement and connections between Jewish communities along the coasts of the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea.”

Deadline: 15 November 2025.

CfP: Jews between Public and Private Through the Ages

The conference “Jews between Public and Private Through the Ages,” taking place from 12 to 13 January 2026 at the Institute for Jewish Studies at Jagiellonian University in Krakow has issued a call for papers. It “aims at bringing together historians of various disciplines and periods, from Antiquity to the end of the Second World War, dealing with social, cultural, religious, legal history, as well as rabbinic literature, such as responsa” to discuss questions such as “what does it mean for a person to be at home? How does the idea of bodily integrity or accessibility for religious rituals affect the personal feeling of privacy of a given person?”

Deadline: 14 November 2025

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