The Vanities of Friendship in Sephardi Ethical Writing (Online and in Person), 12 June 2023

Years after they left Spain, Sephardi Jews continued to write about friendship, subjugating this intimate relationship to moral instruction, praising the friendships which brought one closer to God and warning against false and dangerous friendships. Did they express a “Jewish” perspective on friendship? Did they perceive friendship as a challenge to Jewish life according to the Torah? And how did they rewrite the humanist and Catholic teachings they learned in Iberia? Exploring Sephardi moral writings in Spanish and Ladino, this presentation will offer some initial answers and even more questions about the contested place of friendship in Jewish history.

About the Speakers:

Shai Zamir is a PhD history candidate at the University of Michigan. He works on the early modern Iberian world and on Jewish history, especially of the western Sephardi diaspora, New Christians, and on Jewish-Christian polemics. He holds a master’s degree from Tel Aviv University (with distinction) where he wrote on gender and anti-Jewish discourse in the Trent blood-libel (1475). He won several fellowships, including from the American Historical Association, Casa de Velazquez in Madrid, and the John Carter Brown Library in Providence. He was also a fellow at Hadar Yeshiva in New York where he studied Talmud. He is working on his dissertation on the cultural history of friendship in the seventeenth century Iberian world, which explores friendship among Portuguese New Christians through the records of the inquisition, as well as Jewish texts from Amsterdam that engage with the Iberian model of friendship. Recently he organized a conference on the history of modern Jewish friendship in Ann Arbor.

Jane S. Gerber is Professor Emerita of Sephardic History and Director and Founder of the Institute for Sephardic Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the author of Jewish Society in Fez: 1450-1650 (1980); The Jews of Spain (National Jewish Book Award, 1992); Sephardic Studies in the University (1995); Jews in the Caribbean (2014); Cities of Splendour in the Shaping of Sefardi History (2020); Jews and Muslims in Morocco- Their Intersecting Worlds (2022) and numerous articles and reviews. She is past president of the Association for Jewish Studies and former head of the Academic Board of ASF. 

Monday, June 12, 4 pm ET

To register to attend and receive a pre-circulated paper please email miriam@cjh.orgPlease specify whether you are attending in person or on Zoom and please read the paper in advance of the webinar.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Andreas Lehnertz (May 23, 2023). The Vanities of Friendship in Sephardi Ethical Writing (Online and in Person), 12 June 2023. medievalJewishStudiesNow! Retrieved March 18, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/ri34


About Andreas Lehnertz

As Juniorpofessor of medieval history with a specialization in Jewish history at the University of Trier, Andreas Lehnertz studies the social, cultural, and religious history of Europe. His academic pursuits focus on the nuanced dynamics of everyday Christian-Jewish relations, the study of marginal Hebrew and Yiddish deeds, the study of Jewish and general sealing practices, and the in-depth study of Jewish craftspeople. He wrote a book on "Jewish Seals in the Medieval German Empire: The Authentication and Self-Representation of Jewish Men and Women". His expertise has been further honed through his roles as a postdoctoral fellow in the ERC project "Beyond the Elite - Jewish Daily Life in Medieval Europe" at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and as a member of the Martin Buber Society in the Humanities and Social Sciences, also at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Currently he writes a book that about "Jewish Craftspeople in Medieval Germany". Through his research and publications, he aims to make a meaningful contribution to the academic discourse surrounding medieval history and to provide valuable insights into the rich tapestry of European history during this pivotal period.