All posts by Hannah Teddy Schachter

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.

Online Talk: Paola Tartakoff, “Mendicant Jewish Converts and Miracle Stories around the Medieval Pyrenees,” Brandeis University, Tauber Institute, 5 December 2023

The Tauber Institute welcomes Paola Tartakoff of Rutgers University to the Jewish Studies Colloquium. She will present her paper “Mendicant Jewish Converts and Miracle Stories around the Medieval Pyrenees” at 12:45pm on December 5, 2023 in Lown 315 and stream live on Zoom.

The event is free and open to the public, and a light kosher lunch will be served at 12:30pm. 

Sociohistorical Realism in Juive, a Conversion Miracle in the Fourteenth-Century Vie des pères

by Karen Casey Casebier, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

“Juive,” La Vie des pères, Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 5204, fol. 150v (source: gallica.bnf.fr/ BnF). The Virgin Mary appears to a Jewish woman during childbirth.

Although my background is in Old French literature, and the devotional works, miracle tales and saints’ lives that I study rarely concern themselves with issues pertinent to medieval Jewish studies, I was naturally intrigued to find a conversion miracle in which a Jewish woman becomes a Christian saint. More importantly, I began to consider how this miracle of the Virgin Mary might shed light on the relationship of Jews and Christians in medieval society, since they often shared the same communities and cultures, even if they did not share the same religious values.

Continue reading Sociohistorical Realism in Juive, a Conversion Miracle in the Fourteenth-Century Vie des pères

New Book by Pierre Savy: Les princes et les Juifs dans l’Italie de la Renaissance (Les Presses universitaires de France, 2023)

When the Western kingdoms expelled the Jews, the princes of Renaissance Italy kept them at their side or welcomed them. Why, in the Duchy of Milan or that of Savoy, in the Ferrara of the Estes or the Mantua of the Gonzagas, are the Jews even better accepted than in the neighboring oligarchic republics, such as Venice, Genoa or Florence?

CfA: Ph.D. Student Workshop”Textual Communities in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Formation, Influence, and Afterlife” Jerusalem, 5-7 September 2023

The Israeli Forum of Early Medieval Studies and Utrecht University invite Ph.D. students to submit their proposals. The aim of this workshop is to open up the discussion of textual communities in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. We welcome speakers from various disciplines, studying varying periods and religions (such as late-antique Judaism, early Islam, and Eastern, Western, and Syriac Christianity).

Deadline for proposals: April 23rd, 2023

Continue reading CfA: Ph.D. Student Workshop”Textual Communities in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Formation, Influence, and Afterlife” Jerusalem, 5-7 September 2023

Exhibition: “Les lumières d’Al-Andalus” at the Institut du monde arabe, Paris, 9-30 March 2023

This cycle of meetings, organized by Emmanuelle Tixier du Mesnil andJean-Baptiste Brenet intends to make history and philosophy resonate together in order to disentangle history from myth, and to highlight the powerful contribution of al-Andalus to the universal history of knowledge. Deals with some aspects of Jews at the court of of Abd al-Rahman III and more…