Monthly Archives: February 2023

Call for Papers: Journal of Religious Minorities under Muslim Rule (Brill)

The Journal of Religious Minorities under Muslim Rule provides a primary venue for scholarly studies that examine religious minorities (such as Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, and other minoritarian Muslim groups) under majoritarian Muslim rule. The journal covers a large temporal period, spanning from 7th century Arabia to 1922 (the end of Ottoman rule), in addition to a large geographic area from North Africa and al-Andalus in the West to Iran, some Central Asian lands, well into Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Indonesia in the East. The focus includes minority-minority, minority-majority, and minority-state relations. In addition to its broad temporal and geographic reach, this is an interdisciplinary journal which will appeal to those working in specific disciplines, including history, religious studies, literature, legal studies, and archaeology.

Talk: “Ein mörderischer Leibarzt, ein Klosterverwalter und ein Henker in Byzanz. Zu den Berufen von Juden in den christlichen Quellen des Frühmittelalters” by Danny Grabe (German)

7 March 2023, Old Synagogue Erfurt

For more than two decades now, there has been considerable controversy in the study of the history of the Jews in the early Middle Ages. The background to this is the widespread absence of Jewish testimonies, while Christian texts do indeed speak about Jews. This sometimes leads some researchers to question the existence of a Jewish early Middle Ages. The accusation is that the Christian sources merely use the Jews as a rhetorical target. The lecture offers an excerpt from a dissertation project that asks about the professions of Jews and their functions in the Christian sources of the early Middle Ages.

‘Encountering Others, Encountering Ourselves’: Reflexivity and the Jewish Studies Researcher, 4 September 2023 

This workshop seeks to explore collaboratively and reflexively our positions as Jewish Studies researchers in relation to the Jewish subjects we study. Some researchers identify as Jewish themselves but are outsiders to the Jewish community they study. Others do not identify as Jewish but are insiders in other respects that are significant to their research, e.g. gender, sexuality, disability or nationality. The wide range of possible insider-outsider constellations poses challenges and opportunities that shape the research process and the researcher’s personal and professional development. This workshop aims to facilitate exchange between scholars across the spectrum of insider-outsider positions in Jewish Studies. We will explore the ethics, tensions and practicalities arising from our insider-outsider positions, broadly defined as a continuum on which we find ourselves, sometimes in several positions concurrently. 

Appealing to the Senses: Finding Artistic Expression through Medieval Jewish Studies

by Avery Gosfield and Neta Bodner

“Ritual Echoes”, filmed from May 9-11 2022 and recently published on YouTube, is the result of the 2022 ShUM (Hebrew acronym for Speyer, Worms, and Mainz in the Rhineland) cities Artistic Residency program. The project features artistic reconstructions of 12th and 13th century piyyutim (Hebrew liturgical poems) as well as songs dedicated to joyous occasions. The idea to perform medieval music and poetry within the mikve (the Jewish ritual bath) and the ruins of the women’s synagogue at Speyer came from conversations in pre-covid Oxford between Avery Gosfield, specialist in medieval and Renaissance music, and Neta Bodner, Lecturer and art historian at the Open University of Israel working on medieval mikvaot. The idea of enlivening the Speyer mikve with a performance of medieval music and poetry came in answer to a call for ‘artists in residence’ in the ShUM cities (which soon thereafter were granted UNESCO World Heritage Status) which, with Neta’s help, Avery applied for and received.

Continue reading Appealing to the Senses: Finding Artistic Expression through Medieval Jewish Studies

“New Beginnings” Grad Student Summer School in Jewish Studies, Antwerp 10-14 July 2023

The Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Antwerp, the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School for the Advanced Study in the Humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania announce a summer program for graduate students in Jewish studies.

Deadline for Apps: 1 April 2023.

Membership Waiver for Scholars Based in Ukraine

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia has led to significant hardship across Ukrainian society. In order to support Jewish Studies scholars based at Ukrainian institutions of higher learning who have been affected by the hostilities that began on 24 February 2022, and where possible to help them to continue their teaching and research, the EAJS has decided to waive the membership fees for Full Members (including successful new applicants for Full Membership) who are currently based in Ukraine (or who were based in Ukraine at the beginning of the invasion in February 2022). Membership fees will be waived until 31 December 2024. For more information, please contact the EAJS Administrator.