by Dana Eichhorst. Brepols 2025

by Dana Eichhorst. Brepols 2025


“The Widow and the Notary: Death, Gender, and Legal Culture in the Jewish and Christian Communities of Medieval Catalonia,” by Sarah Ifft Decker, is the winner of the JMIS Best article Prize for 2024.
According to the reports, archaeologists in Spain have confirmed they have discovered the remains of a medieval synagogue in Belchite.
Im Schwerpunktprogramm der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) „Jüdisches Kulturerbe“ sind im Projekt „Jüdisches Welterbe – lokales jüdisches Erbe in Deutschland: Bedeutungsverschiebungen, Inwertsetzungen und Transformationsperspektiven“, das kooperativ vom Heidelberg Center for Cultural Heritage (HCCH) der Universität Heidelberg (Prof. Dr. Thomas Schmitt) und dem Ignatz Bubis-Lehrstuhl für Geschichte, Religion und Kultur (IBLS) der Hochschule für Jüdische Studien Heidelberg (Prof. Dr. Johannes Heil) durchgeführt wird, zwei Stellen (w/m/d) in Vollzeit, befristet auf drei Jahre, möglichst ab dem 01.11.2025 zu besetzen.
Read this interview with Carmen Caballero Navas about medieval gynecology via the Katz Center.
Read the new Post of the Genizah Research Unit “Judaism’s Service Entrance” by Moshe Yagur.
by Natasha Jenman (Oxford)
A new walking tour, written by Natasha Jenman and Dean A. Irwin, has been created to explore the Jewish history of Medieval Lincoln. Between c.1150-1290, the town was home to a sizeable community, eminent scholars and several prosperous individuals, and the lives they led are still visible in the surviving medieval street plan of Lincoln. The route of the tour leads through hotspots of activity: the markets, the community chest, the places where children played, designed to illustrate the rich tapestry of Jewish life woven into the streets of Lincoln.

Extensive archival work has traced property ownership to known individuals, spotlighting the Jewish women and men who once owned these sites, and revealing glimpses of the actual people who made up the community. The periods of life, interrupted, are also navigated, and are unavoidable in any Jewish history of Lincoln. The tour situates the anti-Jewish aggression in the context of national events, and how these events played out in the real, local sense at Lincoln. In the thirteenth century, a ritual murder accusation would have devastating consequences for the Jewish community: the case of ‘Little Hugh’. Importantly, this tour seeks to reorient this heritage away from how this narrative was imagined and used by antisemitic commentators, instead, shaping this discussion around the real individuals caught up in this tragedy, amidst the sites it took place. This aspect of Lincoln’s history could easily dominate the tour, but instead one should get a sense of the good, the bad and the ugly of life in this medieval town. Walking the physical remnants of Lincoln’s history is a reminder that for two centuries, the people of Lincoln (Jews and Christians) lived alongside each other.

This tour is dedicated to the late Dr. Robin Mundill, whose impact on the field of medieval Anglo-Jewish history is immeasurable, and in whose memory these efforts are made to engage with and spread public awareness.
Thanks to funding by the Jewish Historical Society of England, it will be available year-round as a printed leaflet.
(German below)
by Stefanie Fuchs
Today, most people know Rothenburg ob der Tauber for its romantic old town or as the home of the famous scholar Meir ben Baruch von Rothenburg, the Maharam.
Less well known is the eventful history of the Jewish community: Rothenburg Jews first appear in written sources with Samuel Bischof from Rothenburg in 1180. However, it can be assumed that a stable community formed in Rothenburg within the next few decades at the latest. This is indicated by the imperial tax register of 1241, in which the Jewish community is assessed with taxes amounting to 10 marks of silver. The sum seems very small in relation to the 200 marks of silver paid by the Strasbourg community, but surmounts the taxes paid by the communities of Überlingen, Lindau or Ulm. At the end of the 13th century, the community was demonstrably significant. 469 of its members named in the Nürnberg memor-book fell victim to the Rintfleisch persecutions.
Continue reading New discovery: Foundations of the first synagogue in Rothenburg ob der Tauber excavatedRead abotu this 900-Year-Old Jewish-Iranian Manuscript via the Librarians.