The New Issue of Al-Masāq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean 35.1 (2023) features an article by Moshe Yagur, “Excommunication and apostasy: re-drawing Jewish communal boundaries in Fāṭimid and Ayyūbid Egypt,” pp. 95-109.
Monthly Archives: April 2023
New Pages of Sefer Tagin: JTS ENA 2753.16 and NLR Box N.91
Read now the new Fragment of the Month post by Joseph Ginsberg about “New Pages of Sefer Tagin: JTS ENA 2753.16 and NLR Box N.91″ via the Tyalor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit’s blog.
New Article by Ilona Steimann about “Jewish Exemplars and Hebraist Copies of Hebrew Manuscripts”
You can now read Ilona Steimann’s article “Jewish Exemplars and Hebraist Copies of Hebrew Manuscripts,” Personal Manuscripts: Copying, Drafting, Taking Notes, ed. David Durand-Guédy and Jürgen Paul. Studies in Manuscript Cultures, 30 (Berlin et al.; De Gruyter, 2023), 477–508.
The Journal “Sephardic Horizons” seeks Reviewers
Sephardic Horizons, the on-line journal of Sephardic studies, is seeking book reviewers for recent titles. Reviewers are expected to complete their reviews within ten weeks of receipt of the book. Reviews consist of approximately 1000 to 2000 words, formatted according to the journal’s guidelines (https://www.sephardichorizons.org/Submit.html).
If you are interested in any of these titles, please send your name, academic affiliation, and address, telephone number, and e-mail address to Annette B. Fromm, Review Editor, Sephardic Horizons, annettefromm@hotmail.com.
Learn Hebrew at UW-Madison this Summer at MEDLI
The Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Language Institute (MEDLI) is an intensive, eight-week language program run each summer at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Students receive the equivalent of one year’s worth of college-level language study during this time and earn eight credits upon completion of the program.
Continue reading Learn Hebrew at UW-Madison this Summer at MEDLIStudent Scholarship Award
The Association of Jewish Libraries is pleased to offer a combined academic scholarships with conference subvention. An academic scholarship of $1000 to a student enrolled or accepted in a graduate school of library and information science, in combination with a conference subvention award for attending the Association of Jewish Libraries annual conference. Free full conference registration is included.
Continue reading Student Scholarship AwardTalk: „Die Entwicklung jüdischer Selbstverwaltung im mittelalterlichen Polen als Problem transkultureller Verflechtung“ by PD Dr. Jürgen Heyde (Leipzig)
Monday, 17 April, at 6 p.m. CEST, Trier University, room DM 223, and via zoom
Zoom link: https://uni-trier.zoom.us/j/89887250682?pwd=cFdrK2hKelpmalhxVERMK0NON2hoQT09
(Meeting-ID: 898 8725 0682, Code: vxh71dDx).
AJS Review 47.1 (2023) is out
The new issue of the Association of Jewish Studies Review 47.1 (2023) features an article with medieval content:
Abraham Ibn Ezra and the Natives: An Ethnic Morphology of Modern Jewish Scholarship
Noah S. Gerber
A bias toward medieval Sephardic Judaism and its early modern Occidental offshoots has accompanied critical Jewish scholarship for two centuries. This essay examines how this bias has structured latter-day Sephardic and Mizrahi involvement in the discipline, with Abraham Ibn Ezra as a case study. While the nineteenth-century textual remapping of Ibn Ezra drew on numerous Mizrahi communal genizot, the early twentieth century witnessed the emergence of an intellectual conversation between European Jewish and Mizrahi savants in tracing the medieval poet’s historical sojourn in non-European lands. Subsequently, a specifically Zionist emphasis on the ingathering of Ibn Ezra lore somewhat reduced Mizrahi agency to the category of folklore, with the primitivism of the tales gathered associated almost exclusively with non-European comprehension of this medieval Sephardic icon. The divide between a veteran “first” Israel versus a “second” Israel helped solidify this ethnic distinction in cultural labor, with the tide reversing itself only recently
The Conversion of Synagogues in Late Medieval Iberia – Putting Theory into Practice
by Franziska Kleybolte, University of Münster
(English/Deutsch)

Although Muslim spaces were objects of frequent confiscation and conversion in 13th century Iberia, the conversion of synagogues was, with a few exceptions, by that time only theoretical. With the conquest of Sevilla in 1248, however, king Ferdinand III allowed the local Jewish community to convert three mosques into synagogues. The transfer of those synagogues is an exception;[1] still, it fits into the discernible political strategy of the time which supported Jewish communities during the Christian campaigns of war against the Muslim territories.[2] This changed by the end of the 14th century, when the Christian conquest of the Peninsula had been completed for the most part: clerics explicitly called for the destruction and transformation of the synagogues in the persecutions of 1391–92, and the laws of Ayllón (1412) created a legal basis that encouraged and evoked these transformations. Meanwhile, the Disputation of Tortosa (1413–14) once again provided theological fuel for the persecution and conversion of Jews and the attack on their places of worship. All of that is reflected in the conversion of 42 synagogues that I have found as part of my research. I argue that this makes the period a turning point not only in the attitudes towards Iberian Jews, but also towards their synagogues.
Continue reading The Conversion of Synagogues in Late Medieval Iberia – Putting Theory into PracticeJob: Metadata Analyst at the Hebrew Collections, Bodleian Library
The Bodleian Library is looking for a Metadata Analyst – Hebrew Collections!
(Fixed term; Part-Time). Use your skills in Hebrew and Judaica studies and your strong reading knowledge of Hebrew. Bring IT skills and be comfortable working with digital data. Collaborate with colleagues to improve the discovery of Bodleian manuscript and archival holdings. Apply by 21 April.