Researcher of the Week

Nureet Dermer

PhD Candidate
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Supervisor: Prof. Elisheva Baumgarten

“In my Ph.D. project, entitled “Between Expulsions: Daily Encounters between Jews and Christians in Northern France, 1285-1394,” I examine notions of “foreignness” attributed to northern French Jews throughout the events of the crisis-ridden 14th century, focusing precisely between expulsions. In that century, France (i.e., the northern French realms) experienced political, economic, social, and environmental upheavals, e.g., the Great Famine (1315-1317), the Shepherds’ Crusade (1320), many local uprisings, the beginning of the Hundred Years’ war (1337), the Black Death (1348-1351), and more. Beyond these calamitous and disastrous events, the Jews of France also faced three expulsions – the first and most comprehensive expulsion executed in 1306, another (either official or consequential) in 1322, and a final banishment in 1394. The lives of medieval French Jews during this period of crisis and instability and changing economic and political circumstances are at the heart of my research.

My thesis focuses on the city of Paris, illustrating how the legal, political, and environmental circumstances shaped and crystalised the perception of Jews as foreigners. My aim is to unravel who the various “foreigners” in 14th-century Paris were, what the repercussions of such a delineation was, and in which ways Parisian Jews were grouped among such foreigners as the century progressed. By exploring everyday socio-economic interactions between Jews and Christians, legal and administrative developments, as well as changes in urban topography, my dissertation aims to reveal more details about the status and everyday lives of Parisian Jews between expulsions.

My recently published article, Between Foreigners, Strangers, and Jews: The Changing Perception of Parisian Jews on the Eve of the 1306 Expulsion,” Medieval Encounters 27 (2021): 308-334, presents some fruits of my project underway. It provides an edition and discussion of one previously unpublished archival document, recounting the story of a criminal collaboration between Jews and Christians in Paris just before the turn of the 14th century.”



OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Hannah Teddy Schachter (May 1, 2022). Researcher of the Week. medievalJewishStudiesNow! Retrieved November 2, 2024 from https://doi.org/10.58079/rhnd


About Hannah Teddy Schachter

I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Doctoral Fellow of the Israel Science Foundation-funded research group "Contending with Crises: Jews in Fourteenth-Century Europe" led by Prof. Elisheva Baumgarten. While my doctoral research explores the relationships between Jews and royal women--specifically queens--in 13th-century France, my other research projects consider Jewish-Christian encounters in medieval processions, dance and song, as well as costume in France and the German Kingdom during the Middle Ages.