The Talmud Blog

Moving On

2011-07-06T07:50:00.005-04:00

The Talmud Blog is now live as a web log collective at www.thetalmudblog.wordpress.com. Update your RSS feeds and what have you, and move on over. The (academictalmud.blogspot.com) blog will not be taken down. But it also will not be updated.

Rebirth

2011-07-01T06:21:00.002-04:00

Just a note to let faithful readers know that the Talmud blog is currently being re-imagined as a collective weblog. Look out for news of the big move soon. Until then, I'm all ears for advice, and volunteers for guest posts.

Best

Shai

Almost Opening night

2011-05-16T07:55:00.002-04:00

A review from the Times on Footnote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/16/movies/at-cannes-kid-with-a-bike-we-have-a-pope-footnote.html

The problem is that if a film looks, sounds or plays too differently it risks alienating critics, which may help explain why there wasn’t more applause for “Footnote,” a competition high point from the Israeli filmmaker Joseph Cedar.

The story of a modern patriarch and his legacy, “Footnote” pivots on the uneasy relationship between a father, Eliezer (Shlomo Bar Aba), and his son, Uriel (Lior Ashkenazi), both well-known if not equally well-regarded Talmudic scholars who come to loggerheads. Punctuated by footnotes (like the Talmud) and great eruptions of music that underscore the dramatic stakes, the film careens audaciously if confidently from the personal to the political, the comedic to the near-tragic, amid discussions about Jewish masculinity and pointed visual references to what it means to live in country where armed guards search scholars on their way to the local library and even into celebrations. (Sony Pictures Classics will release the movie in America.)

(Hat-tip Pinchas Roth)

Michael Pitowsky

2011-05-15T11:14:00.001-04:00

Congratulations to Michael Pitkowsky, whose thesis: "'Mipenei Darkhei Shalom' (Because of the Paths of Peace) and Related Terms: A Case Study of How Early Concepts and Terminology Developed From Tannaitic to Talmudic Literature," (PhD dissertation, The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 2011), was just accepted.

Shamma Friedman receives the Landau Prize

2011-05-12T07:02:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to Prof. Shamma Friedman on receiving the Landau prize.

Two Lectures by Oktor Skjaervo

2011-05-10T01:39:00.004-04:00

At 4pm on Sunday May 22 and on Thursday May 26, the Hebrew University Department of Islamic and ME Studies will be hosting Prof. Oktor Skjaervo for two fascinating lectures.

Conference on Aggada

2011-05-04T06:04:00.001-04:00

It's conference season in Israel. Here's one of many, to be held at the Ben Zvi Institute:

מדרשי אגדה בארץ ישראל ותפוצתם

Midreshei Aggadah in Eretz Israel and Their Proliferation

ימים רביעי - ראשון, כ"ח באייר- ג' בסיוון תשע"א (1 - 5 ביוני 2011)

יד בן-צבי, ירושלים (1 – 3 ביוני) והאוניברסיטה העברית (5 ביוני)

יום רביעי, כ"ח באייר תשע"א, יום ירושלים (1 ביוני 2011)

17:00-15:00 מושב ראשון

סדנא - התקנת מהדורות מדעיות למדרשים: הישגים ואתגרים

מבוא וברכות: מנחם הירשמן (האוניברסיטה העברית ויד יצחק בן-צבי)

משתתפים: ארנון עצמון (אוניברסיטת בר-אילן); יוסף תבורי (מכון לנדר); מ"ב לרנר (אוניברסיטת תל אביב); חיים מיליקובסקי (אוניברסיטת בר-אילן)

17:00 - 18:15 ארוחת ערב

דברי ברכה: יעקב יניב (מנכ"ל יד יצחק בן-צבי)

18:30 – 19:45 מושב שני

ירושלים במדרשי ארץ-ישראל

יו"ר: דינה שטיין (אוניברסיטת חיפה)

גלית חזן-רוקם (האוניברסיטה העברית) רבתי בגויים: עיר ומלכה

אביגדור שנאן (האוניברסיטה העברית): ירושלים של חז"ל – עתיד ועבר

20:00 – 21:15 מושב שני (באנגלית)

Midrash Literature from the Second Temple Period and Onwards

Chair: Carol Bakhos (UCLA)

Joseph Tabory (The Lander Institute): The Aggadic History of Jerusalem

James Kugel (Bar Ilan University): Aggadah and its Development –

The Binding of the Wicked Angels

יום חמישי, כ"ט באייר תשע"א (2 ביוני 2011)

11:00-9:00 מושב שלישי

מדרשי חז"ל וספרות בית שני – היבטים חדשים

יו"ר: מארן ניהוף (האוניברסיטה העברית)

כנה ורמן (אוניברסיטת בן גוריון): שכתוב ומדרש: ספר היובלים כמקרה מבחן

Steven Fraade (Yale University): Philo and Aggada

מנחם קיסטר (האוניברסיטה העברית): ירידת המן: אלגוריזציה וקונקרקטיזציה בפרשנות חז"ל לאור כתבי פילון ואחרים

מגיב: פנחס מנדל (מכון שכטר למדעי היהדות)

13:30-11:30 מושב רביעי

המדרש בהקשריו הבין-תרבותיים

יו"ר: הלל ניומן (אוניברסיטת חיפה)

מיכל בר אשר סיגל (אוניברסיטת תל אביב): מבט משווה – מדרש וספרות מונסטית

רון ניולד CNRS, Aix en Provence)): תשובותיו של מנשה

ראובן קיפרווסר: גורלם המתחלף של לויתן ובהמות

16:30-14:30 מושב חמישי

מדרשי התנחומא

יו"ר: ((Hebrew Union College Lewis Barth

גילה וכמן (האוניברסיטה העברית): מדרשי אגדה באוסף פירקוביץ

יכין אפשטין (האוניברסיטה הפתוחה): בין תנחומא לספרות המדרשית המאוחרת

Rivka Ulmer (Bucknell University): The Structure of Pesiqta Rabbati

מגיב:Marc Bregman (University of North Carolina, Greensborough)

18:30-17:00 מושב שישי

עיצוב הקבצים המדרשיים לדורותם

יו"ר: חיים וייס (אוניברסיטת בן גוריון)

יעקב אלבוים (האוניברסיטה העברית): סדר אליהו ובעיית תארוכה של הספרות המדרשית המאוחרת

ארנון עצמון (אוניברסיטת בר-אילן): פסיקתא דרב כהנא והתנחומא

יום שישי, א' בסיוון תשע"א (3 ביוני 2011)

09:00 – 11:00 מושב שביעי

מדרש פיוט ותרגום

יו"ר: אופיר מינץ-מנור (האוניברסיטה הפתוחה)

חננאל מאק (אוניברסיטת בר-אילן): עשרה ניסיונות אברהם: מדרש, פיוט ופירוש

שולמית אליצור (האוניברסיטה העברית): פיוטים קדומים כמקור לתארוך מסורות מדרש

משה לביא (אוניברסיטת חיפה): הפיוט והמדרש בקהילות הגניזה הקהירית

רות קרא (האוניברסיטה העברית): חותמם של מדרשי האגדה על הספרות הזֹהרית

13:15-11:30 מושב שמיני

עבר ועתיד בחקר המדרש

Chair: Arkady Kovelman (Moscow State University)

David Stern (University of Pennsylvania): Midrash and the History

of Jewish Reading

דינה שטיין (אוניברסיטת חיפה): לשאלת הז'אנרים בספרות האגדה

מגיב: Richard Sarason (Hebrew Union College)

יום ראשון, ג' בסיוון תשע"א (5 ביוני 2011)

המושבים ביום זה מתקיימים בבית מאירסדורף, האוניברסיטה העברית, הר הצופים

10:45-8:30 מושב תשיעי

סדנא – הבטי קריאה שונים באגדת חז"ל

"בשלפי השמד נתכנסו רבותינו באושא" - דיון בשיר השירים רבה ב, ה סימן ג

מנחה: תמר קדרי (מכון שכטר למדעי היהדות)

משתתפים: עזן ידין-ישראל (Rutgers University) ; שלמה נאה (האוניברסיטה העברית) ; עודד עיר שי (האוניברסיטה העברית); רלה קושלבסקי (אוניברסיטת בר-אילן); אדמיאל קוסמן (Universität Potsdam)

11:15- 13:45 מושב עשירי

סדנא – הרמנויטיקה: מדרש כפרשנות

מנחה: ישי רוזן צבי (אוניברסיטת תל אביב)

משתתפים: הלל בייטנר, עמית גבריהו, יעל פיש, ידידה קורן, אסף רוזן-צבי, יקיר פז ויונתן שגיב

17:15-15:00 מושב אחד עשר

אגדת ארץ ישראל בבבלי

יו"ר: יהושע לוינסון (האוניברסיטה העברית)

דוד לוין (היברו יוניון קולג'): דרשן וקהלו בארץ ישראל ובבבל

Daniel Boyarin (UC Berkeley): Death of Rabba

and the Dialogue Between Babylonian and Palestinian Aggada

Jeff Rubenstein (NYU): Aggada and the Technical

Terminology of the Bavli

מגיב: שי סקונדה (מרכז סכוליון, האוניברסיטה העברית)

הוועדה המארגנת:

חיים וייס (אוניברסיטת בן-גוריון בנגב); יהושע לוינסון (האוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים); ארנון עצמון (אוניברסיטת בר-אילן); תמר קדרי (מכון שכטר למדעי היהדות); ישי רוזן צבי (אוניברסיטת תל אביב); דינה שטיין (אוניברסיטת חיפה);
דוד שטרן (אוניברסיטת פנסילבניה); מנחם הירשמן (יד בן צבי / האוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים).

לפרטים נוספים:

Useful Zoroastrian Studies Site

2011-05-03T05:30:00.003-04:00

Just discovered a great resource - the website of my friend Dan Sheffield. There is a lot of material there. Enjoy!

Conference: Encounters by the Rivers of Babylon

2011-05-02T08:11:00.007-04:00

It being a rather slow news day, I thought it might be an opportune time to post the invitation to an upcoming conference that I'm organizing with Dr. Uri Gabbay. If you are in Israel on May 23-25 and are interested in the intersection between ancient Babylonia, Sasanian Iran, and the Jews in antiquity, please come join us in Jerusalem!

Encounters by the Rivers of Babylon: Scholarly Conversations between Jews, Iranians and Babylonians in Antiquity

Dates: Monday, May 23 to Wednesday, May 25, 2011, Rabin Building, Room 3001, Mt. Scopus

Organizers: Uri Gabbay and Shai Secunda (Scholion, Hebrew University)

Preliminary program:

Monday, 23 May

16:00-18:30:

Greetings: Reuven Amitai

Introductory remarks: Shai Secunda and Uri Gabbay

Opening session: Introducing the Intellectual World of the Ancient Near East

Chair: Daniel Boyarin

Irving Finkel: Babylonian scholarship in cuneiform and the Babylonian Talmud

Prods Oktor Skjaervo: Ancient and Late Antique Zoroastrianism and its Priestly-Scholastic Tradition

Isaiah M. Gafni: The Intellectual World of Babylonian Jewry: Teachers, Students, Study-Circles, and Academies

19:00: Reception: Ground floor, Rabin Building

Greetings: Israel Yuval

Tuesday, 24 May

9:00-12:15: Society and Religion

Chair: Nili Wazana

Yaakov Elman: Contrasting Trajectories: The Mesopotamian Encounter of Iranian and Semitic Cultures

Ran Zadok: New sources for the presence of Israelites, Judeans and other foreign population groups in pre-Hellenistic Mesopotamia

10:30-10:45: coffee break

Caroline Waerzeggers: Studying Babylonian priests and its relevance to the Second Temple of Jerusalem

Geoffrey Herman: The Institutional History of Babylonian Jewish Society: Where Do We Stand Today?

Respondent: Daniel Schwartz

12:15-13:30: Lunch

13:30- 15:00: Jewish Law in Dialogue

Chair: Oded Ir-Shai

Kathleen Abraham: Jerusalem in Babylonia: New Evidence on a Judean Community in Babylonia During and After the Exile

Maria Macuch: Jewish Jurisdiction within the Framework of the Sasanian Legal System

Respondent: Robert Brody

15:00-15:30: coffee break

15:30-17:00: Magic: The Aramaic Incantation Bowls

Chair: Shalom Paul

James Nathan Ford: Ancient Mesopotamian Motifs in the Aramaic Incantation Bowls

Shaul Shaked: The Iranian Influence on the Aramaic Incantation Bowls

Respondent: Gideon Bohak

18:30-22:00: evening activity

Wednesday, 25 May

9:00-12:15: The incorporation of Mesopotamian and Iranian knowledge in Jewish Tradition

Chair: Rachel Elior

Nathan Wasserman: Old-Babylonian, Middle-Babylonian, Neo-Babylonian, Jewish-Babylonian? Thoughts about Transmission Modes of Mesopotamian Magic Through the Ages

Abraham Winitzer: Assyriology and Jewish Studies in Tel Aviv: Ezekiel among the Babylonian literati

10:30-10:45: coffee break

Jonathan Ben-Dov: Jewish Acquaintance with and Application of Mesopotamian Astral Sciences

Reuven Kiperwasser: The Encounter Between Iranian Myth and Rabbinic Mythmakers in the Babylonian Talmud

Respondent: Reimund Leicht

12:00-13:30: lunch

13:30-16:45: Hermeneutics and Scriptural Exegesis

Chair:

Eckart Frahm: Reflections on Babylonian text commentaries from the Achaemenid Period

Uri Gabbay: An Akkadian Midrash? Babylonian Commentaries and Rabbinic exegetical terms

15:00-15:15: coffee break

Shai Secunda: Between Rabbi and Dadwar: The Intersection between Rabbinic and Zoroastrian Hermeneutics

Yishai Keil: Shaking Impurity: Exegesis and Legal Innovations in Rabbinic and Pahlavi Literature

Respondent: Paul Mandel

16:45: Concluding remarks: Uri Gabbay and Shai Secunda

"Footnote" at Cannes

2011-04-14T06:57:00.002-04:00

Free translation of Cedar's quote: "The movie takes place in the Hebrew University Talmud department, in the basement of the national library and in the inner world of a stubborn philologist." What will the French do with this?

הערת שוליים, סרטו של יוסף סידר ("בופור"), בכיכובם של שלמה בראבא וליאור אשכנזי, יוקרן במסגרת סרטי התחרות של פסטיבל קאן. הסרט עוסק במערכת היחסים המתוחה בין אב לבנו, שניהם חוקרי תלמוד מתחרים. זוהי בשורה משמחת לקולנוע הישראלי, המעידה על פוטנציאל להצלחה בינלאומית נוספת. עם זאת, לסרט צפויה התמודדות מול כמה מתחרים כבדים במיוחד - ביניהם הסרטים החדשים של פדרו אלמדובר("The Skin I Live In"), לארס פון טרייר("מלנכוליה"), טקאשי מייקה ("חרקירי: מותו של סמוראי") וטרנס מאליק (עץ החיים).

יוסף סידר מסר בתגובה: "הסרט מתרחש בחוג לתלמוד של האוניברסיטה העברית, במרתפי הספרייה הלאומית, ובעולמו הפנימי של פילולוג עקשן. המחשבה שהסיפור המוזר הזה ירצד ויאיר את המסך הענק של פסטיבל הקולנוע הגדול והמסוקר בעולם היא מופלאה וממלאת אותי באופטימיות"

Hat-tip: Yitz Landes.

Good Gracious

2011-04-13T02:54:00.002-04:00

The New Lieberman Talmudic Text Database site is online. New platform, thousands of new fragments, and much more. Congratulations to Prof. Shamma Friedman and the entire team!

"Footnote" - the film

2011-03-29T04:15:00.003-04:00

Can you wait until the summer release of Joseph Cedar's הערת שוליים - a film about political intrigue in the Hebrew U Talmud department? I can't! Watch the trailer here. (Hat-Tip Yitz Landes).

Lecture in Tel Aviv

2011-03-28T11:24:00.002-04:00

For anyone in and around Tel Aviv this Wednesday evening (March 30, 2011), would love to see you at Tel Aviv University. I'll be lecturing on the book I'm finishing up. The lecture is entitled: "Reading the Talmud in Iran: The Intersection between the Babylonian Talmud and Zoroastrian Literature."

מגמות:תלמוד וספרות העת העתיקה,קבלה וחסידות, פילוסופיה יהודית

מפגשי הסמינר המחלקתי סמסטר ב' תשע"א

יום רביעי, כ"ד באדר ב' תשע"א, 30 במרס 2011

ד"ר שי סקונדה, מלגאי מנדל, מרכז סכוליון, האוניברסיטה העברית

לקרוא את התלמוד באיראן:המפגש בין התלמוד הבבלי והספרות הזורואסטרית

מפגש הסמינר המחלקתי יתקיים בבניין רוזנברג , אולם 02 , בשעה 18:00

http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/jewish_philosophy/events-other.heb.html

Rosenthal and Epstein Prize

2011-03-10T09:19:00.005-05:00

If I had more time, like in this blog's heyday, I would describe last night's events at the big yearly Hebrew U Talmud department evening, along with the setting (stormy), food (glasses of ice water), and characters (...). But I cannot.

Prof. Henshke received the Rosenthal prize and spoke mainly about the development of the M. Pesahim concerning the commandment to expound ".ארמי עובד אבי" on the first night of Pesach. He unraveled the relationship between this M and a well known parallel in M. Bikkurim.

Hillel Gershuni, a student of mine, received the Epstein prize and spoke (to my great delight) about the relationship between the Moredet and its Sasanian parallel. This is something that Prof. Yaakov Elman has noted briefly, and Gershuni added another possibility*- that the institution of Iggeret Mered (a document about disobedience) which appears only in the Bavli and attributed (in the Yerushalmi) to Babylonian amoraim, is connected with a related Sasanian institution that requires this document to be drafted - and carefully so.

*Gershuni raised this as a possibility, and in general is less interested in influence than I am. But he used the opportunity to reflect upon two basic hermeneutical assumptions that often divide the field: Those who only consider influence if there is absolutely no possibility of internal development (Prof. Haym Soloveitchik has famously articulated this position), or those who see value in raising a possibility even if it cannot be proven beyond the shadow of a doubt.

Rabbinic Revolution

2011-03-10T09:18:00.001-05:00

Event at Harvard:

THE RABBINIC REVOLUTION AND THE INVENTION OF JEWISH LAW

A symposium

Tuesday March 29, 2011 4-6pm

Langdell Hall South (on the campus of the Law School)

Presentations by

Prof. Vered Noam, Goldsmith Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies, Yale University

and

Prof. Aharon Shemesh, Weinstock Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies, Harvard University

Responses by

Prof. Moshe Halbertal, Gruss Visiting Professor in Talmudic Civil Law, Harvard University

and

Prof. Shaye J.D. Cohen, Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy, Harvard University

Chaired by

Prof. Noah Feldman, Bemis Professor of International Law, Harvard University

The second century CE witnessed an amazing development in the history of Judaism: the compilation of the Mishnah and the emergence of rabbinic Judaism. The rabbinic sages believed that the sum and substance of the Mishnah’s legal rulings could be traced back to the Torah (Pentateuch), if not directly, then indirectly via the medium of “the Oral Torah.” The rabbinic sages have thus left a great puzzle for modern historians of religion and law: do the Mishnah and related writings attest to something old, as the sages would have us believe, or something new? Were the sages conservators, the preservers of an ancient heritage, or were they innovators, the shapers of a new culture? Perhaps both. Join us for a multi-pronged discussion of the subject.

Rabbinic Revolution

2011-03-10T09:18:00.000-05:00

Event at Harvard:

THE RABBINIC REVOLUTION AND THE INVENTION OF JEWISH LAW

A symposium

Tuesday March 29, 2011 4-6pm

Langdell Hall South (on the campus of the Law School)

Presentations by

Prof. Vered Noam, Goldsmith Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies, Yale University

and

Prof. Aharon Shemesh, Weinstock Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies, Harvard University

Responses by

Prof. Moshe Halbertal, Gruss Visiting Professor in Talmudic Civil Law, Harvard University

and

Prof. Shaye J.D. Cohen, Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy, Harvard University

Chaired by

Prof. Noah Feldman, Bemis Professor of International Law, Harvard University

HUJI Law school seminar

2011-03-09T08:52:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow, I will be giving a seminar for the advanced seminar in Jewish Law at the Hebrew University law school:

התלמוד הבבלי והמשפט הפרסי: שיתוף פעולה, מתח, ותחרות:

And now, back to preparing a source sheet.

Received: Wimpfheimer's Narrating the Law

2011-03-07T03:50:00.004-05:00

I recently received Barry Wimpfheimer's new book, Narrating the Law. I hope that I will get a chance to offer some thoughts on it in the next few weeks. In the meantime, I though his discussion of Cover and Bakhtin is actually quite clear - if somewhat dense (contra Tzvee). I don't expect authors of medical articles to write accessibly, nor do I expect a disclaimer from them. The book is published by an academic press and caters to an audience that is nominally conversant with literary and legal theory. That is not jargon, it is called a technical language.

Purim's in the air

2011-03-02T02:54:00.004-05:00

Anyone interested in a special Purim edition of the serious (and humorless) Jewish studies journal, Tarbiz? Submit your articles soon!

Conference in memory of Hanna Safrai

2011-02-27T03:49:00.004-05:00

There will be a conference on March 7-8 at Hebrew Union College -Jerusalem in memory of Hanna Safrai which is sponsored by the Feminist commentary to the Bavli project.

Festschrift in honor of John J. Collins

2011-02-16T10:35:00.002-05:00

Congratulations to John Collins. A festschrift was just published in his honor.

Note the section on doctoral dissertations that he directed. Not only is John one of the more prolific scholars of ancient Judaism, he has also given of himself to students, colleagues and friends. I had the pleasure of sharing a few drinks with John discussing the metaphysics of influence. Here's to many more!!

(Hat-tip Agade list)

Contributors
John J. Collins: Cursus Vitae
Doctoral Dissertations Directed by John J. Collins
A Select Bibliography of the Publications of John J. Collins, 1973-2010
Abbreviations and Symbols

Introduction

“Showing the Wisdom of What He Has Learned”: The Scholarly Contributions of John J. Collins
Daniel C. Harlow

Part One: The Hebrew Bible and Its Reception

Israel’s Election and the Other in Biblical, Second Temple, and Rabbinic Thought
Joel S. Kaminsky

God’s Other: The Intractable Problem of the Gentile King in Judean and Early Jewish Literature
Carol A. Newsom

The Original Sin of the Canaanites
Katell Berthelot

Defining and Controlling Others Within: Hair, Identity, and the Nazirite Vow in a Second Temple Context
Susan Niditch

Otherworldly Music and the Other Sex
Susan Ackerman

How Good Was Ruth’s Hebrew? Ethnic and Linguistic Otherness in the Book of Ruth
Timothy H. Lim

The Other in Haggai and Zechariah 1&8211;8
Antonios Finitsis

When the King Is the Other: Nebuchadnezzar’s Hibernian Cousin
Naomi S. Jacobs

Part Two: Wisdom

Elusive Wisdom and the Other Nations in Baruch
Karina Martin Hogan

The Lady Vanishes: Wisdom in Ben Sira and Daniel
Shannon Burkes Pinette

“The Foolish Nation That Dwells in Shechem”: Ben Sira on Shechem and the Other Peoples in Palestine
Matthew Goff

Poverty and Otherness in Second Temple Instructions
Samuel L. Adams

Transcending Death: The Reasoning of the “Others” and Afterlife Hopes in Wisdom 1–6
Daniel J. Harrington, S.J.

Part Three: Apocalypticism

The Apocalyptic Other
Lorenzo DiTommaso

Apocalypticism as the Rejected Other: Wisdom and Apocalypticism in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Sean Freyne

The We and the Other in the Worldview of 1 Enoch, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Other Early Jewish Texts
George W. E. Nickelsburg

Monsters and the Crippled Cosmos: Construction of the Other in Fourth Ezra
Rebecca Raphael

Idolatry and Alterity: Israel and the Nations in the Apocalypse of Abraham
Daniel C. Harlow

Part Four: The Dead Sea Scrolls

Religious Epistemology and the History of the Dead Sea Scrolls Community
Shane Berg

The Wicked Priest Revisited
James C. VanderKam

Poetry of the Heavenly Other: Angelic Praise in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice
Eric D. Reymond

“At the Crossroads”: Anti-Samaritan Polemic in a Qumran Text about Joseph
Esther Chazon with Yonatan Miller

Part Five: Jews Among Greeks and Romans

Romans, Jews, and Christians on the Names of the Jews
Martin Goodman

Jews and Greeks as Philosophers: A Challenge to Otherness
Erich S. Gruen

The Persecution of Judeans by Antiochus IV: The Significance of “Ancestral Laws”
Robert Doran

Constructing Jewish Identity in Ptolemaic Egypt: The Case of Artapanus
Patricia D. Ahearne-Kroll

Dispelling an Illusion of Otherness? Judicial Practice in the Heracleopolis Papyri
Robert A. Kugler

Index of Authors
Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Texts

Deborah Green on Rabbinic Scent

2011-02-14T07:41:00.001-05:00

Tablet magazine has just briefly noted Deborah Green's new book on the rabbis and smell.

What to do this summer, and next year

2011-01-27T01:39:00.003-05:00

This came in from a couple of friends running what looks like two great program at TAU. Check it out!

1. One-year Master's program in Jewish Studies for International Students.

The program offers a series of comprehensive encounters with the classical texts of
Jewish cultures from biblical to modern times. Its intellectual home at
the integrative department of Hebrew Culture Studies, enables us to
cover a wide range of periods, methodologies, and scholarly interests,
while maintaining the highest standards of academic excellence.The
program is designed for students seeking a Master’s degree as an end in
itself, but it also provides a foundation for further graduate studies
in fields relating to Jewish Studies.
Admission is merit-based. Basic reading skills in Hebrew are required
(The Masters program offers optional Hebrew Language classes through the
Ulpan at Tel Aviv University. Students who enroll to the Ulpan will
benefit from an intensive course prior to the start of the academic year
as well as from advanced courses during the year.). The program is also
open to students interested in taking only specific courses, or those
interested in coming to Israel for only one semester. In these cases,
the program offers academic credit (in accordance with the home
institution policy ).

For further information please see attached flyer and visit our site:
http://international.tau.ac.il/prospective-students/graduate-programs/ma-in-jewish-studies.html

2. The new summer program for the study of Jewish-Christian encounters.
The program is a 6- week English language program, designed for students
(with/in the process of an advanced degree such as M.A., M.Div., M.A.R,
Ph.D., etc.) in ancient Judaism and early Christianity. The Summer
program will provide students with basic scholarly skills in the Hebrew
language and an introduction to the foundational rabbinic texts and to
their manner of interacting with early Christian texts. It will expose
them to current scholarship and to leading Israeli scholars in these
fields, as well as to various archeological sites.

For further information please see attached flyer and visit our website:
http://international.tau.ac.il/prospective-students/summer-programs/jewish-christian-encounter-advanced-program.html

Still here

2011-01-20T07:24:00.001-05:00

And I have this announcement that I received:

Call For Papers

Emerging Normativities:

Examining the Formation of Proto-Orthodox Christianities

and Rabbinic Judaisms 200-800 CE

September 21-22, 2011

St. Thomas More College

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

Within the past thirty years scholarly understandings of the relationship between formative Judaism and formative Christianity have gone through several important shifts. Most recently Daniel Boyarin has posited that in their earliest phases Judaism and early Christianity were almost identical, differing only in the terminology used in their worship rather than in the epistemic structure of their theologies. Nevertheless, according to Boyarin, the leaders of both communities began inscribing boundaries around Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism, using the practices of the other group as examples of how not to believe and/or practice.

In this conference we wish to examine this hypothesis by focusing on the period wherein Boyarin believes the boundaries between the two groups became especially solidified, at least at the official level. Specifically this is the period post-Nicea (325-800 CE) on the Christian side and the Stammaitic period (500-800 CE) on the Jewish side. As a result, we ask contributors to consider how both the emerging Proto-Orthodox Christianities (Catholic, Orthodox, and Celtic) as well as the emerging Rabbinic Judaisms established both discursive and theological norms for their respective communities, or not as the case may be. We are also interested in drawing lines of continuity or discontinuity from the Ante-Nicene period as well as from the Tannaitic and Amoraic periods. In particular, we are interested in how Jewish and Christian norms may or may not have been established in counterpoint to the norms of different religious groups. Of specific concern is the manner in which these norms might have addressed the issue of the religious other, whether these others might have been Jewish, Christian, or pagan.

Our confirmed plenary speakers are Daniel Boyarin (UC Berkeley) and Anders Runesson (McMaster University). We also invite proposals for 20 minute paper presentations addressing both Jewish and Christian aspects of this problem for three panels defined by three historical periods: 0-200 CE; 200-500 CE; and 500-800 CE.

Proposals should be 250-300 words in length and submitted to Dr. Simon Lasair (slasair@stmcollege.ca) by March 31, 2011. Responses will be given by the end of April 2011. Students are encouraged to apply, with a cover letter from their supervisor. Also, submissions concerning the material cultures of the historical periods covered are especially encouraged.

Tour ancient Iraq

2011-01-03T08:27:00.001-05:00

See this write-up on a Times blog. (Hat-Tip Elli Fischer)

New Reviews at RBL

2011-01-02T01:52:00.002-05:00

Review of Biblical Literature has a couple of germane reviews:

Antiquity in Antiquity: Jewish and Christian Pasts in the Greco-Roman World
Gardner, Gregg and Kevin L. Osterloh, editors
Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008 pp. viii + 475. € 109.00

The Exegetical Encounter between Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity
Grypeou, E. and H. Spurling, editors
Leiden: Brill, 2009 pp. xix + 279. $154.00

New E-Sasanika

2010-12-30T05:36:00.001-05:00

New E-Sasanika with lots of good new stuff, available for free, here.

Babylonian and Akkadian Medicine

2010-12-28T05:06:00.003-05:00

Mark Geller just published online his hefty article on "Akkadian Healing Therapies in the Babylonian Talmud" available here.

Scholion Marathon

2010-12-26T03:51:00.003-05:00

The Scholion marathon has been posted online, and will take place Sunday, Jan. 2, 2011 beginning at 9am. As usual, the day is structured with talks about ancient Judaism in the morning. Good luck to the "marathoners"!

שרה סטרומזה ברכות

ישראל יובל דברי פתיחה

נועם מזרחי בדני אלוהים חיים: בין שמרנות לשונית לחדשנות רעיונית

יאיר פורסטנברג

הפולמוס על נטילת ידיים : עיצוב תפיסת הטהרה התנאית על

רקע הנוהג היווני רומי

נעמה וילוז'ני

מי ומה מתחת לרצפה: על שדים וכוחות נסתרים בעולמם של

יהודי בבל

הפסקה 10:45

11:00 ערן ויזל ייחודם של הפירושים היהודיים לדברי הימים

11:30 אילה אליהו אבן אלסִ יד אלבָּטַלְיַוְסִ י וראשית הפילוסופיה המוסלמית בספרד

12:00 יונתן מאיר חסידות מדוּמה: קריאה חדשה בכתבי יוסף פרל

12:30 מעוז כהנא טקסט, פרשנות וגאולה במשנת החת"ם סופר

הפסקה 13:00

13:15 יאיר ליפשיץ לשחק בקודש: אביזרים פולחניים על במת התיאטרון היהודי

13:45 נטשה גורדינסקי "מִ בֵּ יתִ י הַיָּשָׁן לֹא נוֹתַר עוֹד / אֶלָּא זֵכֶר כְּמִ יהָה עֲמוּמָה":

לאה גולדברג והנוסטלגיה הנסתרת במודרניזם העברי

14:15 רפאל צירקין-סדן טולסטוי, הציונות והתרבות העברית

14:45 שירה סתיו נוכח נפקד: הטאבו על גילוי העריות

JQR Centennial

2010-12-13T09:54:00.004-05:00

In honor of the JQR Centennial, the latest issue (100.4) includes a playful set of articles that review early pieces published in the journal's history. Among the spoils are Danny Schwartz' and Galit Hasan Rokem's articles. In addition, Azzan Yadin has published an article that continues work on the Akiva biography by focusing on a line in Sifre Deuteronomy which assumes R. Akiva to have been connected to the rabbinic community, and its culture of learning, from childhood. This further sharpens the distinction between the well known Akiva biography as it appears in later sources, and the "historical Akiva" or at least the Akiva of tannaitic literary sources. There is much much much more, including an obit for Hanan Eshel OBM.

Happy Birthday JQR!

In residence

2010-12-08T08:26:00.002-05:00

I'm on the road Thursday evening. I'll be going to the US to attend the AJS conference in Boston from the Dec. 19-21, but I have business and pleasure to take care of before then. Along the way I will be a scholar-in-residence at two congretations. On Dec. 11 I'll be at Shomrei Emunah in Baltimore where I will be speaking about, among other things, academic Talmud and the community. Oon the 18th I'll be at Kesher in Englewood, NJ where I will be speaking about interfaith disptutations in Babylonia and a discussion of Reuven's sin.

New Oral Tradition

2010-12-06T03:23:00.003-05:00

Oral Tradition 51.1 is out and it is definitely worth checking out:

Oral Tradition in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Introduction

Werner Kelber
Paula Sanders

Response from an Africanist Scholar

Ruth Finnegan

Torah on the Heart: Literary Jewish Textuality Within Its Ancient Near Eastern Context

David Carr

Guarding Oral Transmission: Within and Between Cultures

Talya Fishman

The Interplay Between Written and Spoken Word in the Second Testament as Background to the Emergence of Written Gospels

Holly Hearon

Oral and Written Communication and Transmission of Knowledge in Ancient Judaism and Christianity

Catherine Hezser

Oral and Written Aspects of the Emergence of the Gospel of Mark as Scripture

Richard A. Horsley

The History of the Closure of Biblical Texts

Werner H. Kelber

Two Faces of the Qur’ān: Qur’ān and Muṣḥaf

Angelika Neuwirth

Biblical Performance Criticism: Performance as Research

David Rhoads

The Constitution of the Koran as a Codified Work: Paradigm for CodifyingHadīth and the Islamic Sciences?

Gregor Schoeler

From Jāhiliyyah to Badī^ciyyah: Orality, Literacy, and the Transformations of Rhetoric in Arabic Poetry

Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych

Halakha in Light of Epigraphy

2010-12-05T01:32:00.007-05:00

Steven Fraade just let me know about a new volume that has appeared:
Halakha in Light of Epigraphy.

The volume is the proceedings of a conference held at Bar Ilan in 2008. Steven kindly sent me a copy of the TOC.

Plato and the Talmud

2010-11-30T15:43:00.001-05:00

Anyone out there have any idea what this is, and how it relates to Boyarin's Socrates?

Talmud NOW

2010-11-30T03:08:00.002-05:00

An upcoming even on the place of Talmud in Israeli society. But why the question mark?

?תלמוד עכשיו
דיון על מקומו של התלמוד בחברה הישראלית

בהשתתפות:

הרב יובל שרלו, ראש ישיבת ההסדר פתח תקווה
ד"ר רוחמה וייס, היברו יוניון קולג' ירושלים
ד"ר יאיר אלדן, הקריה האקדמית אונו ומכון הרטמן בירושלים
מנחה: ד"ר אביעד סטולמן, הספרייה הלאומית

באירוע יוצגו פריטים מארכיון אחד העם –

מאבות התפיסה של תרבות יהודית ישראלית

יום ג', ל' בכסלו תשע"א, 7.12.2010, בשעה 20:00

בספרייה לשמע ומוסיקה ע"ש בלה והרי ווקסנר,

פרויקט משותף של הספרייה הלאומית וקרן לגסי הריטג'

הספרייה הלאומית, קריית אדמונד י. ספרא,

האוניברסיטה העברית, גבעת רם, ירושלים.

הכניסה חופשית. מספר המקומות מוגבל.

Palestinian (Rabbinic) Intifada

2010-11-30T02:56:00.002-05:00

Alan Appelbaum publishes an article in JSQ 17 (2010): "Hidden Transcripts in King-Parables:

Windows on Rabbinic Resistance to Rome".

This article will consider the extent to which rabbinic king-parables may be read as a literature of resistance composed under occupation by the Roman Empire. It will demonstrate that a reading of the parables without the lens of contemporary theory provides no answer to this question, but that a reading informed by such theory, specifically James C. Scott s concept of the “hidden transcript,” allows king-parables to emerge as containing a specific sort of resistance literature.

New Journal for the Study of Judaism

2010-11-17T03:34:00.002-05:00

JSJ 41 is out. There is an extremely useful review of articles that covers nearly all the bases for Ancient Judaism in English, French and German. There are however some holes in terms of Hebrew language periodicals.

There also is an article by David Grossberg, entitled "Orthopraxy in Tannaitic Literature," that discusses m. Sanhedrin 10.1. Based on the abstract, Grossberg seems to confirm the non-specialist analysis of the student of Jewish philosophy, Menahem Kellner, regarding tannaitic Orthopraxy vs. Orthodoxy. Interestingly, it seems that the Orthopraxy of m. Sanhedrin 10.1 was a mishnaic innovation which displaced an original emphasis on orthodoxy - though the claim seems to be based on some partisan views regarding the relative dating of non-mishnaic segments of tannaitic literature.

Vevaina enumerates the Den

2010-11-14T04:15:00.003-05:00

In the latest History of Religions, Yuhan Vevaina writes about Zoroastrian exegetical practice of "enumerating the den."

The Oxford Handbook of Judaism and Economics

2010-11-11T09:59:00.002-05:00

Just received notice that the Oxford Handbook of Judaism and Economics is out.

The volume looks fascinating, and there's really too much to survey, but a couple of articles caught my eye:

Could What You Don't Know Hurt You? Information Asymmetry
in Land Markets in Late Antiquity
P.V. (Meylekh) Viswanath and Michael Szenberg

Babylonian Jews at the Intersection of the Iranian Economy
and Sasanian law
Yaakov Elman

Talmudic Monetary Theory: Currency in Rabbinic Halakhah
Lawrence H. Schiffman

Lecture at Yale

2010-11-09T04:50:00.002-05:00

Sorry I'm missing this lecture at Old Mother Yale:

Ancient Judaism Workshop

Yoni Moss, Yale University

“Fish eats Lion eats Man: Christians, Rabbis and the Question of Hellenism in Jewish Babylonia”

Wednesday, November 10 – 11.35-12.50pm

Room HGS 220A

2010-11-09T04:10:00.003-05:00

Adventures in Stamography

The other day, I came across a well known sugya which apparently depicts an amora responding to a stammaitic question. Here is the Mishnah on which the suyga is built:

M. B.Q. 8:1 (MS Kaufman)

החובל בחבירו חייב עליו משם חמשה דברים. בנזק בצער בריפוי בשיבת ובבושת... בצער. כ(ז)[ו]יו בשפוד או במסמר. אפילו על צפורנו מקום שאינו עושה חבורה. אומ' כמה אדם כיוצא בזה [רוצה] ליטול להיות מיצטער כך.

The suyga reads as follows.

אומדין כמה אדם כיוצא בזה וכו'

צער במקום נזק היכי שימינן

אמ' אבוה דשמואל אומדין כ?מ?ה אדם רוצה ליטול לקטוע לו ידו

לקטוע לו ידו [בטופשני עסקינן ועוד הא (לאו)] לאו צער לחודיה הוא כלהו חמש' דברים איכא

אלא לקטוע לו ידו קטועה

ידו קטועה נמי לאו צער לחודיה הוא צער ובשת איכא דכסיפא ליה מלתא למשקל מבשריה למשדא לכלבים

אלא אומדין כמה אדם רוצה ליטול לקטוע לו ידו המוכתבת למלכות בין סם לסייף

אמרי הכא נמי [הא] לא שקיל ומצער נפשיה

אלא אומדין כמה אדם רוצה ליתן לקטוע לו ידו המוכתבת למלכות בין סיף לסם

האי ליטול ליתן מיבעי ליה

אמ' רב הונא בריה דרב יהושע ליטול זה מה שנתן זה

I was stymied. Rav Huna clearly seems to responding to a stammaitic point and suggesting how to read the Mishnah based on the Stam's interpretation of "pain". This is something that actually occurs fairly often in the Bavli. What now (I will not give it away...)

Article on Bavli and MP literature

2010-11-09T03:38:00.003-05:00

Encyclopedia Iranica has published a very useful article onlineby Professor Elman. Professor Elman writes that the article was completed two years ago and is slightly out of date, but it will "definitely serve." Indeed.

Yerushalmi made accessible

2010-11-08T00:39:00.002-05:00

See this new link (on the sidebar) that makes the Yerushalmi - or at least the folio's of the Leiden manuscript, accessible. Courtesy of the indefatigable Yerushalmionline site:

Call for Papers

2010-11-07T03:08:00.000-05:00

Moshe Lavee sends this Call for Papers:

The Birth of the Author

Individual vs. Collective Composition

in Early Judaism and Rabbinic Literature

Early Judaism and Rabbinic Sessions,

The Annual Meeting of the European Association for Biblical Studies,

Thessaloniki, 8 – 11 August, 2011.

Early Judaism and rabbinic literatures demonstrate continuous tension between collective and

individual writing and redaction.

One may look at Rabbinic literature: even when the redaction of a certain composition is

attributed to a prominent figure, the composition as a whole presents itself as the collective

effort of many generations bringing together various schools and movements into one textual

fabric, quoting hundreds named sages.

Another example is the sectarian literature of Qumran; while it is devoid of authors names, it

attributes content or compositions to the Teacher of Righteousness. Some Pseudepigraphal

works did claim a single author, but by attributing the writing to a biblical figure, kept the

identity of its real author hidden, etc.

The discussion of this tension is, therefore, multifaceted:

What was the actual place of individuals vs. collective bodies in the writing

and composing of various works? What was the nature of collective creativity? Who

were the bodies involved in it and how did they function?

How was the role of author or authors perceived, presented or hinted? How

were the works perceived, accepted and presented in terms of this tension?

What were the various perceptions about the part the individual vs. collective

in the writing, redaction and transmission of the Bible, and how these perceptions

relate to later modes of textual creativity?

These research questions are also relevant to the NT and Patristic literature. While our

main focus is on Rabbinics and early Judaism, we urge contributors to widen the scope of our

meeting and enable a comparative discussion.

Possible subjects for discussion are: the various representations of individual author vs.

collectives in given works (naming a sage in a composition which is attributed to a single

evangelist); the representation of the individual in apocalyptic literature (writing in first

person, sharing the authors emotions, etc.); individuals and bodies that are considered as

redactors of various works (Rabbi Judah the patriarch, The Great Assembly, etc.), and the

attribution of biblical works to individuals (Moshe, David, Solomon, etc.); changes and

developments in the place of individual author throughout time, such as the rise of the

individual in late Midrashic works such as Pirqe De-Rabbi Eliezer and Seder Eliyahu or the

changes of its role in Paytanic literary creativity.

Last date for sending abstracts: 15 January 2011.

Moshe Lavee mlavee@research.haifa.ac.il

Chair of Early Judaism and Rabbinic Program,

European Association of Biblical Studies

Good times

2010-11-05T05:19:00.004-04:00

Dr. Nahid Pirnazar of UCLA kindly sent in a few pictures from a wonderfully delicious outing to Jerusalem's Anna Ticho house at the seventh Irano-Judaica conference.
From L-R: Thamar Ginden, Mihaela Timus, Shaul Shaked, Shai Secunda, Domenico Agostini, and Michael Shenkar

New book by Tzvi Novick

2010-11-04T06:51:00.001-04:00

Tzvi Novick just published a book entitled: What is Good and What God Demands: Normative Structures in Tannaitic Literature (Brill, 2010).

Here is the abstract:

The normative rhetoric of tannaitic literature (the earliest extant corpus of rabbinic Judaism) is predominantly deontological. Prior scholarship on rabbinic supererogation, and on points of contact with Greco-Roman virtue discourse, has identified non-deontological aspects of tannaitic normativity. However, these two frameworks overlook precisely the productive intersection of deontological with non-deontological, the first because supererogation defines itself against obligation, and the second because the Greco-Roman comparate discourages serious treatment of law-like elements. This book addresses ways in which alternative normative forms entwine with the core deontological rhetoric of tannaitic literature. This perspective exposes, inter alia, echoes of the post-biblical wisdom tradition in tannaitic law, the rich polyvalence of the category mitzvah, and telling differences between the schools of Akiva and Ishmael.

Report from Berlin

2010-11-03T06:54:00.000-04:00

This from Jane Kanarek:

We just finished the second day of an excellent conference called “‘A Woman in the Temple Court?’ Women in Seder Qodashim and in the Temple.” The conference is part of a larger project run by Tal Ilan on writing a feminist commentary to the Talmud. The most striking part of the conference has been the ways in which, by bringing new tools and questions to bear on the text, each presenter revealed the presence of women and gender in many unexpected locations.

Conference underway in Berlin

2010-11-02T10:59:00.001-04:00

This conference, organized by Tal Ilan, is currently underway in Berlin. Anyone care to report back?

Jewish Ideas Daily on the Talmud in its Persian Context

2010-11-02T08:10:00.002-04:00

A nice little blurb by Yehuda Mirsky on Jewish Ideas Daily.

http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2010/11/2/main-feature/1/the-persian-talmud

Pluralism in the Talmud

2010-11-01T05:05:00.003-04:00

Ricky Hidary publishes his dissertation with Brown Judaica Series. It looks like it will be a good, hard-headed examination of the much lauded talmudic pluralism in the Bavli, using, among other tools, legal theory:

Dispute for the Sake of Heaven: Legal Pluralism in the Talmud

From the Abstract:

This book explores how the rabbis of the Talmud thought about and
dealt with pluralism in Jewish law. The rabbis remembered the terrible
consequences of Second Temple sectarianism and strove for unity and
even uniformity of practice; they also had thousands of legal disputes
and were not always willing to compromise. This volume analyzes dozens
of Talmudic passages dealing with the balance between peace within the
community on the one hand and the need for each rabbi to follow his
vision of truth on the other. The Talmud Yerushalmi and the Talmud
Bavli present two significantly different models for dealing with such
legal pluralism based on their respective cultural and political
contexts within the Roman and Sasanian Empires.

Hat-tip: Agade.

Where we work

2010-10-28T10:34:00.004-04:00

I received this picture from a colleague from Bucharest who visited my office in Jerusalem two weeks ago to sit in on a Videvdad reading group. She mentioned to me while she was here that she thought my picture in the sidebar of the blog was one of me sitting in my home library. I wish (it is a picture taken in Yale's Babylonian collection). The picture reminded her of one taken of Moses Gaster that is displayed on her department website. She responded in kind with this image of her university office. For some reason, I find this ostensibly banal image to be quite compelling.

On the Horizon

2010-10-26T12:12:00.001-04:00

P. O. Skjaervo's translations of selected Zoroastrian texts - with Yale UP in 2011:

Searching for Geniza Fragments

2010-10-24T05:03:00.002-04:00

This is certainly old news but I only figured out how to do this now. The Friedberg Genizah project allows researchers to search for a specific talmudic folio and see all the fragments that they have entered into the database. One does this simply by going to search by Cataloging data, and searching according to tractate and page. A joy!

Letter from ConferenceLand

2010-10-20T11:50:00.001-04:00

Came and Went

By 4:30pm last Thursday afternoon, the seventh Irano-Judaica conference was pretty much over. Papers delivered, questions asked, five minute warnings written on scraps of paper, flashed. Maybe it was James Russel's Wednesday afternoon ruminations on mortality - delivered, fittingly, in absentia - but I cannot deny the "Ecclesiastes conference willies" that began to work their way across this academic's heart. Of the convening of conferences, is there an end?

If you want a review of the papers, these ABSTRACTS can serve as an approximate guide. On the whole, the papers were excellent and interesting. However, I have other things things on my mind. What were the larger implication of the meeting? What do they say about the current moment in academic Jewish studies, about scholarship in Israel, and about national politics?

The seventh Irano-Judaica conference was on the whole a success. Organizers and their aids worked tirelessly to plan the meeting and see it through. But what was most notable about the conference was the sudden influx of papers on pre-Islamic Iranian-Jewish connections. This can fairly directly be attributed to the work of Yaakov Elman who has produced not only a steady stream of papers, but also has expended much energy to recruit Talmudists to the study of Middle Persian literature and language and what we might call "Talmudo-Iranica." Nearly everyone who spoke about the Babylonian Talmud and Iran did so with at least some level of debt to Elman's excitement and influence. I can only think of this growing interest as positive for the academic study of the Talmud and also for the self-understanding of Jews in Israel and beyond who now need to consider the way their formative religious beginnings took place within an "Eastern" and ""Oriental"" (notice the double scare-quotes on that one) context.

On the other hand, the absence of papers on medieval and modern Jews in Iran, and only a handful of discussions about Shahin, Imrani, and other great Judeo-Persian poets, was striking and at least for me, depressing. Don't get me wrong, "Talmudo-Iranica" is a form of Irano-Judaica, one which I am fully committed to. Yet to put it simply, it is the study of pre-Islamic Iraqi Jews in contact with Iran and its religious, legal, and cultural traditions within the context of a Persian empire that expanded beyond its ancestral borders and centered itself, administratively, in Iraq. What I perceive as the lack of growth in the study of the flowering of Persian Jewry has major implications not just for the future of Persian studies in universities in Israel (and abroad) with strong Jewish studies departments. It also may symbolize a missed opportunity to clear some of the chilly air in the current depressing discourse concerning (contemporary) Jews and (the Islamic Republic of) Iran. Alas, that was not to be.

The Iranist Klaus Schppfma,n Dead at 76

2010-10-18T04:49:00.001-04:00

Via Agade List:

Das Seminar für Iranistik hat die traurige Aufgabe, Sie vom Ableben

des renommierten Iranisten und Archäologen, Prof. Dr. , am 8.

September 2010 in Kenntnis zu setzen. Professor Schippmann war

Direktor des ehemaligen Seminars für Vorderasiatische Archäologie der

Georg-August-Universität Göttingen.

Professor Schippmann studierte zunächst bis 1951 Jura und

Volkswirtschaftslehre an der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

und an der Universität Hamburg. 1958 folgte die Promotion mit einer

Dissertation zum Thema ‘Der Rechtsschutz im Anstaltsverhältnis’.

Anschließend war er zwei Jahre berufstätig.

1960 reiste Schippmann in die Türkei und in den Iran. Anschließend

fing er ein zweites Studium der Vorderasiatischen Archäologie in

Hamburg an. 1969 habilitierte Schippmann sich an der Universität

Göttingen mit einer Arbeit über ‘Die iranischen Feuerheiligtümer’

(veröffentlicht 1971), woran sich bis 1972 eine Privatdozentur

anschloss. 1972 wurde er Professor am neu geschaffenen Lehrstuhl für

„Vorderasiatische Archäologie unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des

Irans“ in Göttingen. 1990 wurde er pensioniert.

Klaus Schippmann war ein international bekannter Fachmann für

iranische Archäologie und Geschichte. Sein Buch ‘Die iranischen

Feuerheiligtümer’ gilt als Standardwerk und auch seine Einführungen in

die parthische sowie in die sassanidische Geschichte (1980 bzw. 1990)

werden von Iranisten hoch geschätzt. 1985 bis 1990 leitete er

Ausgrabungen in Ra’s al-Chaima, 1992 bis 1994 auf Bahrein.

Iranisten und Archäologen in Göttingen und weltweit werden Professor

Schippmann sehr vermissen.

Kwasman Lecture

2010-10-17T06:11:00.001-04:00

T. Kwasman will be talking about "The Demon of the Roof- Epilepsy in Geniza Sources." at Tel Aviv U, Rosenberg Building, Room 204, on Wed. October 20th at 14:15.

Discuss

2010-10-15T07:09:00.001-04:00

A discussion on the Lookjed site about Talmud study (which I was asked to contribute to) has just been put online. Discuss.

RUMInations

2010-10-12T15:59:00.003-04:00

Declaim Your love

Last night, the Irano-Judaica conference, held every four years, began in Jerusalem. The opening ceremonies took place in front of that charming little green house at the Ben Zvi Institute in Rehavia. Scholars, some fashionable and some fashionably late, milled around, picked at some quiche, and made talk - small and large. Hugs and handshakes were exchanged along with project ideas. After the requisite introductions by officials (Hebrew U sent its rector and dean of humanities), the highlight of the evening was a performance in memory of the late, and much lamented Prof. Amnon Netzer who passed away almost three years ago.

The word "performance" does little justice to Deltangi put together by Benyamin Yakovian, Shahnaz Dotan (poetry declamation), Manuchehr Balazade (tar), Amin Chandedash (oriental violin and tombak). Shahnaz declamed with such intensity that the room sat silently electrified. If you've never heard Persian poetry this way, then you have never witnessed a mystical art. If you have never heard Rumi translated into Hebrew, then you have never seen Hebrew do beautiful, impossible things. Yakovian, who has a degree in theater from the HU is now translating Judeo-Persian poetry for the department. He also took the opportunity to tell the university how important the study of Persian and Judeo-Persian is.

At the end, the audience asked an encore, and Shahnaz, wrapped in song, took to the floor with song and dance. As the Doktorvater put it, Rav Yehuda might not have approved, but Rav Nahman would have...

Exciting New Books

2010-10-07T11:22:00.004-04:00

For the Wish List

M. L. West, THE HYMNS OF ZOROASTER (I. B. Tauris, 2010)

While West is not an Avestan scholar, but he is simply the man on all things Greek - and beyond. He will surely have what to add on the Gathas. Maybe some more Occident / Orient mixing?

Holger Zellentin, Rabbinic Parodies of Jewish and Christian Literature (Mohr Siebeck, Dec. 2010)

Zellintin has been studying Sasanian Christianity and the way Christian texts interacted with the Bavli. As a former student of Schaefer, author of Jesus in the Talmud, I expect a very interesting and creative take.

JSQ 17.3

2010-10-06T04:26:00.002-04:00

JSQ 17.3 has just been released.

Two articles of interest for this blog:

Tziona Grossmark, "And He Decreed that Glassware is Susceptible to Becoming Unclean": The Application of the Laws of Ritual Purity to Glassware Reconsidered"

Sara Lev, "They Treat Him As a Man and See Him As a Woman: The Tannaitic Understanding of the Congenital Eunuch"

Ivan Marcus also has an article on Israeli historiography on Medieval Jewish history.

Launched

2010-09-14T06:50:00.004-04:00

The website for the 7th Irano-Judaica conference has been launched. The conference takes place in Jerusalem between October 11-14, 2010 and commemorates the late Professor Amnon Netzer.

Below is the UPDATED schedule:

IRANO-JUDAICA 7, 2010

TENTATIVE PROGRAMME

Monday, October 11

Tuesday, October 12 – Beit Maiersdorf, Room 503
9:30 – 11:00
Session 1: Ritual and Law in Iranian Religions and in Judaism: a comparative perspective
Yaakov Elman (Yeshiva University, New York): “Samuel’s Scythe-handle: Sasanian Mortgage Law in the Bavli—Precis”
Shai Secunda (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem): “Zoroastrian and Rabbinic Genealogies of Menstruation: A Chapter in Comparative Hermeneutics”
Yishai Kiel (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem): “The Defilement of Implements and the Classification of Materials in Terms of Ritual Susceptibility to Impurity: Between the Babylonian Talmud and Pahlavi Literature”
Coffee break
11:30 – 13:00
Session 2: History of Jewish Communities in Iran (I)
Anke Joisten-Pruschke (Göttingen University): “The Jewish-Christian Relations in the Sasanian Empire”
Sergey Minov (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem): “Jews as Persecutors of Christians in Sasanian Iran: The Life of Mar Yaret and Beyond”
Michael Shenkar (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem): “Yosef bar El‘asa Artaka and the Elusive Jewish Diaspora of pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia”
Lunch break
15:00 – 16:00
Session 3: History of Jewish Communities in Iran (II)
Zhang Zhan (Harvard University): “Jews in Khotan: In light of the newly-discovered Judaeo-Persian letter”
David Yeroushalmi (Tel-Aviv University): “Observations on the Study of Iranian Jews in the Nineteenth Century”
Coffee break
16:30 – 18:00
Session 4: Selected Issues in Judeo-Iranian Linguistic Contacts
Thamar E. Gindin (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem): “False Friendship in the Scroll of Esther: A Different Look at היהודים הפרוזים היושבים בערי הפרזות”
Alexander Umnyashkin (Center for the Study of Ancient and Modern Languages GLOSSA, Baku): “The Analysis of the Lexemes of Semitic Origin in Iranian Languages of the South Caucasus”
Ali Hosseini (Independent Scholar, Ludwigshaven): “Transliteration of the Oldest Judeo-Persian Pentateuch to Persian scripts British Museum Ms. OR. 5446” (in Persian)
Wednesday, October 13 – Beit Maiersdorf, Room 503
9:00 – 10:30
Session 1: Jewish-Iranian Intellectual Connections
Domenico Agostini (La Sapienza, Rome; The Hebrew University): “Jewish and Iranian Apocalyptic Literature”
Mihaela Timuş (Institute for the History of Religions, Romanian Academy, Bucharest): “Six periods all year long. The doctrine of the creation according to the Middle-Persian exegesis”
Samuel Thrope (UC Berkeley): “On the (Ir)rationality of Divine Justice: the Massacre of the Angels in the Škand Gumānīg Wizār‘s Critique of Judaism”
Coffee break
11:00 – 13:30
Session 2: Texts and Motifs Between Interaction and Debate (I)
David Brodsky (The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College): “‘Hirhur ke-ma‘aseh damei’(‘Thought Is Akin to Action’): The Importance of Thought in Zoroastrianism and the Development of a Babylonian Rabbinic Motif”
Reuven Kiperwasser (Open University of Israel): “The Misfortunes and Adventures of Elihoreph and Ahiah in Land of Israel and in Sassanian Babylonia: The metamorphosis of the narrative tradition and the ways of acculturation”
James Russell (Harvard University): “A Tutorial with a Demonic Pair, or, The Origins of Literature” [paper will be read in absentia]
Lunch break
15:30 – 17:00
Session 3: Texts and Motifs Between Interaction and Debate (II)
Jeffrey Rubenstein (New York University): “King Herod in Ardashir’s Court: The Bavli’s Story of Herod (Bava Batra 3b-4a) in Light of Persian Sources”
Geoffrey Herman (Cornell University): “Back to Bustanay: the History of a Legend”
Shaul Shaked (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem): “Reflections on the Role of Outstanding Men in Zoroastrianism”
19:00 Dinner for the participants (address to be announced)
Thursday, October 14 – – Beit Maiersdorf, Room 503
9:00 – 11:30
Session 1: Judeo-Iranian and Neo Persian
Martin Schwartz (UC, Berkeley): “From the Earliest Judeo-Persian to Central Asiatic ‘Gypsy’ Argots: Evidence for an Influential Medieval Jewish Underworld” [to be presented by means of Skype]
Ludwig Paul (Hamburg University): “The Study of Early Judaeo-Persian. A State-of-the-Art Report”
Coffee break
12:00 – 13:30
Session 2: Judeo-Persian Literature and Jewish Themes in Persian Literature and Folklore
Vera B. Moreen (Independent Scholar, Bala Cynwyd, Pa.): “Shāhīn’s Interpretation ofShira and Ha’azinu”
Nahid Pirnazar (UCLA): “The Concepts of Holy War and Divine Justice as Interpreted in the Judeo-Persian Book of Conquest”
Julia Rubanovich (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem): “Sham’ūn, Shamūd and Mīrzā ‘Abd Allāh: Jews as seen through Muslim eyes”
13:45 – 14:00
Concluding Remarks (Prof. Shaul Shaked, Dr Julia Rubanovich)

My Magic Box

2010-09-07T15:27:00.000-04:00

With little exaggeration, technological innovations of the last few decades have virtually remade the world of scholarship in the humanities (to say nothing of the sciences). The distancing of scholars from their objects of study has already been lamented, while others have celebrated the democratization of knowledge, and most important its hyper-accesibility. The internet revolution simply developed certain principles of storage and accesibility. The rest is commentary.

It has been a long summer, for a variety of reasons. One is that in June my external hard drive, loaded up by a close colleague with an enormous library of thousands of pdfs on topics relating to Iranian Studies, fell off my computer tower and died while I was looking up a reference for uses of the word "farrox" in Sasanian seals. That's most often how I use the hard-drive. I had read a physical copy of Ryka Gyselen's catalogue of the Saedi collection, but now needed to recall it - literally - and put it in a footnote. I find that my notion of "memory" has change drastically over the last few years. As a yeshiva bocher, it was all about imprinting the Talmud on your mind. And that was only acheived by ceaseless review of the material - preferably out loud and in sing-song. But it is not only the silence of the library that has changed that. Recall of "stored" information on my hard drive is frightingly fast - and takes only a second or two longer than recall from my brain. Now, when I read something in hard copy, I walk over to the scanner a hallway away, run it through the system, save it according to a precise convention (last name, first name, first five words of article), and place it in the proper folder - Memorized.

I have an Italian friend in Jerusalem who speaks a charming "dialect" of ESL. The other week he asked me if my "magic box" had come back from the dead. Was it fixed, resurrected, "reloaded," or what have you. Lucky for him, it had just come in. And I felt as if my brain had been returned - carefully shipped in bubblewrap and cardboad (care of my brother-in-law). When I opened the package, the silver gleamed - "SeaGate" sounded like some forgotten Indo-European myth. I attached the hard drive with USB cable to my compuer, selected a few articles on Manuscihr's epistle, and sent them over. A second later he messages back: toda rabah. ciao, Shana tova, buon anno

Festschrift for Israel Francus

2010-09-03T05:20:00.002-04:00

There's a festschrift in honor of I. Francus that just came out. Much to drool over. Here are a few from the table of contents, thanks to the one and only MB.

Jose Faur, Ribbono shel ‘Olam / God, Dominus: What Does It Mean?

Geoffrey Herman, “Bury My Coffin Deep!” Zoroastrian Exhumation in Jewish and Christian Sources

Richard Kalmin, Adiabenian Royal Family in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity

C. Milikowsky, Textual Criticism As a Prerequisite for the Study of Rabbinic

‫יחסה של ״מכילתא דמילואים״ לעיקר הספרא‬

‫אברהם גולדברג‬

‫המילים היווניות במדרש בראשית רבה‬

‫מנחם הירשמן‬
‫
‫עיון מתודולוגי בגלגוליהן של שתי משניות )שבועות פ״ד מ״ו, פ״ה מ״ד(‬

‫עטרה ליושנה‬

‫שמא יהודה פרידמן‬

‫שתי ברייתות בשכירות פועלים‬

‫יעקב פרנצוס‬

‫לסדר המשניות במסכת הוריות‬

‫צבי אריה שטיינפלד‬

‫״הלל הגדול״ — ההלל המקורי של ליל הסדר‬

‫מוטי ארד‬

‫מוקצה למצווה‬

‫משה בנוביץ‬

‫כיצד הייתה מרים לדמות האישה האידיאלית בספרות חז״ל?‬

‫בין מרים למריה‬

‫אברהם גרוסמן‬

‫אין לו שמירה אלא סכין‬

‫ירחמיאל ברודי‬

‫

‫השימוש במדעים בספרות התשובות במאה העשרים‬

‫דוד גולינקין‬

‫תשובות הגאונים מן הגניזה על מסכת עירובין וסוגיות אחרות בתלמוד הבבלי‬

‫‬

‫נחמן דנציג‬

‫״אין נהרגין מן הדין״‬

‫532‬

‫פרק בתפיסת ההלכה של הרמב״ם‬

‫דוד הנשקה‬

‫פסח שני — תשלומים או רגל בפני עצמו?‬

‫552‬

‫הרב יהודה עמיטל‬

‫חמדת שב״תמול שלשום״ — מעין ״משכיל אמצעי״‬

‫362‬

‫אברהם הולץ‬

‫פיוט יוצר לנישואין לרבנא קלונימוס הבחור בן רבנא יהודה‬

‫572‬

‫מנחם ח׳ שמלצר‬

‫השפעת גירוש ספרד על נוסח התפילה‬

‫982‬

‫יוסף תבורי‬

‫ביבליוגרפיה‬

‫פרסומי ישראל פרנצוס‬

‫903‬

Watching the Dissertation Watch

2010-08-23T02:43:00.003-04:00

A new morning, a new Project MUSE alert. Once again, it's JQR. As the third issue of a centennial volume, like its predecessors it is devoted to one epoch out of the triad of Jewish history (ancient, medieval, modern). Since it is devoted to modern Jewish history, there is little of immediate interest for this blog. However, it does include its section of recent dissertations. Some of the pickings:

Drake, Susanna Laing (Ph.D. 2008, Duke University)
Sexing the Jew: Early Christian Constructions of Jewishness
Adviser: Elizabeth Clark

Finley, Gregory C. (Ph.D. 2009, Catholic University of America)
The Ebionites and "Jewish Christianity": Examining Heresy and the Attitudes of Church Fathers
Adviser: Susan Wessel

Kurtzer, Jared L. (Ph.D. 2009, Harvard University)
"What shall the Alexandrians do?" Rabbinic Judaism and the Mediterranean Diaspora
Adviser: Shaye J. D. Cohen

Novick, Michael Tzvi (Ph.D. 2008, Yale University)
Duties and Ends: On the Structure of Normativity in Tannaitic Judaism
Adviser: Elizabeth Christine Hayes

Septimus, Gerald (Ph.D. 2008, Yale University)
On the Boundaries of Prayer: Talmudic Ritual Texts with Addressees Other Than God
Adviser: Steven Fraade

Watts Belser, Julia (Ph.D. 2008, University of California, Berkeley)
Between the Human and the Holy: The Construction of Talmudic Theology in Massekhet Ta'anit
Adviser: Daniel Boyarin

All of these dissertations look interesting, and the ones that I have looked at live up to their seductive titles. Yet I cannot help but notice that for the most part, JQR's "recent dissertations" (even more so in the other items in the list not pasted here) is but a particular slice of intellectual Jewish live in North America in 2010. There is a new set of focuses. There is on the one hand almost no traditional philology and on the other hand, little intellectual history. There are cultural studies, body studies, and the like. I cannot help but think how different the list would look if it included selections from across the ocean - Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and especially Israel. But if it did, then we would not have this nice tool to see where things are, and where things are headed, in North American Jewish studies.

New History of Religions

2010-08-18T12:18:00.005-04:00

The first two articles in the latest issue of History of Religions are of interest to this blog:

Human Unity and Diversity in Zoroastrian Mythology
Bruce Lincoln
History of Religions August 2010, Vol. 50, No. 1: 7-20.

The Jewish Sacking of Alien Temples: “Limits of Toleration” in a
Comparative Perspective
Daniel Barbu
History of Religions August 2010, Vol. 50, No. 1: 21-42.

While I cannot say anything about Barbu, Lincoln has been a dominating presence in the academic study of religion. His roots are in Indo-Iranian and he has returned throughout his career. in between trenchant analysis of the WWWF (yes, you know what I mean), to drink the waters of Zoroastrian Studies. It seems that the Bundahishn has a special place in his heart, probably because of its incredible taxonomic imagination.

Received: The Talmud in its Iranian Context

2010-08-09T10:06:00.006-04:00

Just received The Talmud in its Iranian Context (Tuebingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010). The book is fittingly dedicated "To our teachers, Richard Kalmin and Prods Oktor Skjaervo, and to Yaakov Elman" and has contributions by Yaakov Elman, David Goodblatt, Geoffrey Herman, Richard Kalmin, Maria Macuch, Jason Sion Mokhtarian, Shai Secunda, Shaul Shaked, Prods Oktor Skjærvø, Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina

I wrote an article "'The Sasanian Stam': Orality and the Composition of Babylonian and Zoroastrian Literature," in the volume over three years ago, and I am afraid that my view on a number of matters has changed - hopefully for the better. But hopefully this early foray will still have meaning.

Update:

TOC

David Goodblatt, "A Generation of Talmudic Studies" - The article is a nice update of the state of the field.

Yaakov Elman, "Towards an Intellectual History of Sasanian Law: An Intergenerational Dispute in Herbedestan 9 and its Rabbinic and Roman Parallels" - A groundbreaking, in depth look at a section of the Middle Persian Zand, or translation-cum-commentary on the Avestan work, the Herbedestan (priestly instruction). Deals with issues of liability and unlawful guardianship in Sasanian law, along with illuminating parallels from rabbinic and Roman law.

Geoffrey Herman, "Persian in Light of the Babylonian Talmud: Echoes of Contermporary Society and Politics: hargbed and bidaxsh" - a painstaking philological study of the talmudic sources that, apparently, refer to these two official positions, and the implications of the references.

Richard Kalmin, "Talmudic Attitudes toward Dream Interpreters: Preliminary Thoughts on their Iranian Cultural Context" - argues that rabbinic opposition to professional dream interpreters may have been part of their opposition to the magi, who were known to have engaged in dream interpretation.

Maria Macuch, "Allusions to Sasanian Law in the Babylonian Talmud" - An article that summarizes some of the authors findings regarding Sasanian law in the Bavli, along with new finds and a new statement about the Bavli's use of two kinds of Sasanian law: Middle Persian technical terms (i.e. pursishn-namag) and the translation of important legal institutions (i.e. b. Nedarim 62b's avda de-nura calquing both anshahrig i ataxsh and bandag i ataxsh in a deliberately ambiguous way in order to avoid taxes).

Jason Sion Mokhtarian, "Rabbinic Depictions of the Achaemenid King, Cyrus the Great" - a fresh look at the Babylonian Esther Midrash (b. Meg 10b-17a) which considers its relationship to Sasanian historiography of the Achaemenids.

Shai Secunda, "The Sasanian 'Stam': Orality and the Composition of Babylonian Rabbinic and Zoroastrian Legal Literature," - breaks down the basic forms of Zoroastrian oral teaching (direct statements of authorities, cashtag, and circulating, "private" Zands) and suggests that oralists pay attention to the kind of orality evinced in the Bavli and Middle Persian literature, and not only the classic "song-like" forms studied up until this point.

Shaul Shaked, "No Talking During the Meal: Zoroastrian Themes in the Babylonian Talmud" - looks at two institutions - not talking during the meal (Zoroastrian baj, Jewish law that is, to say the least, observed in breach - aside from after washing hands) and the sacred belt (Zoroastrian kustig and Jewish priestly belts / belts worn in prayer).

P. O. Skjaervo, "On the Terminology and Style of the Pahlavi Scholastic Literature," An extremely useful study of some of the most common, but most understand Pahlavi particles in the scholastic literature: "had" "ay" and "oh"

Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina, "Relentless Allusion: Intertextuality and the Reading of Zoroastrian Interpretive Literature" - continues this author's groundbreak efforts to examine the parallel hermeneutics of Zoroastrian and rabbinic exegetes.

Received: The Dissociation of Judaism and Christianity in the Roman Near East

2010-08-08T03:55:00.002-04:00

Received: Joshua Ezra Burns, The Dissociation of Judaism and Christianity in the Roman Near East First to Third Centuries C.E.: Historical Sources and Interpretation (Yale University dissertation, 2010). |Hat-ti[ MB]

It looks like there is a nice assessment of the history of the recent scholarly reversal regarding "the ways not parting."

According to the Abstract:

The object of the present study is to describe the intellectual foundations of the ancient

schism between Judaism and Christianity as it appeared to its earliest surviving Jewish

witnesses. Since the early nineteenth century, critical efforts at documenting the grounds of

the historical conflict between Jew and Christian have drawn primarily upon the ancient

Christian literary record and significantly less upon the contemporary Jewish record as

represented by the literature of the early rabbinic sages. The net effect of this scholarly

tendency has been a dominant historical discourse on the schism heavily biased toward the

Christian experience, often to the marginalization or exclusion of the Jewish experience. In

light of this discrepancy, the author's aim is to outline a new historical model of the schism

adequately accounting for the Jewish evidence while nonetheless complementing the

dominant Christian narrative. The author proposes to achieve this goal by analyzing the

Christian schism as a function of Jewish history. Acknowledging that the ancient Jewish

authors would likely have commemorated the schism in different terms than their Christian

contemporaries, the author proposes to read the Jewish evidence in light of the unique sociorhetorical objectives of its authors. Specifically, the author proposes to situate its dual

epistemologies of Judaism and Christianity within the objective confines of the Roman Near

East, the setting of the early rabbinic movement. Tracing the development of the ideas of

Jewish and Christian identity in the minds of the region's Jewish ethnic polity, the author

attempts to demonstrate a process of gradual dissociation between the two spanning roughly

the first three centuries of the Common Era. This cognitive process, the author argues, was

spurred by political and cultural developments affecting the internal social dynamic of Near

Eastern Jewry. The result was a gradual deterioration of the theological platform of the socalled

Jewish Christians, i.e., ethnic Jews who maintained characteristically Christian beliefs.

It was this process, the author concludes, that informed the uniquely Jewish impression of the

Christian schism inscribed upon the classical rabbinic literary corpus and subsequently upon

the collective historical consciousness of the Jewish people.

Still here

2010-08-06T08:21:00.002-04:00

Dear patient readers - all, dwindling, now 49 of you per day. The academic Talmud blog is still here, if dormant. I have been busy with a number of projects that I am struggling to emerge from. A few chapters in books, editing a festschrift, and working on my own volume The mapping continues, though I have moved from the geographic to the chronological. I have been engaged in a tedious, perhaps foolhardy mission to map the generations of Sasanian Zoroastrian authorities from the ground up, first assembling an excel file of every single name in Pahlavi literature lined up against their interlocutors. The path has been long but as they like to say in times square, the end is near. It has also been a bit of a time consuming, rough summer, for personal reasons. But I do hope that as the summer heat wanes and the shofar blasts are heard in our land - we'll have things you'll want to talk about. And I will too.

Shaya Cohen Article

2010-07-15T06:35:00.003-04:00

Don't know when this came out, but Shaya Cohen's fascinating work on Origen and the Mishnah (which he delivered at the SBL in November) is out in JSQ Volume 17, Number 2, 2010.
Enjoy

Mandaean Texts

2010-07-14T05:38:00.002-04:00

Check out this new tool (courtesy of Agade List)
http://yardna.wordpress.com/

The Bowls have Made It

2010-07-12T08:27:00.001-04:00

The Why Didn't I Think of that First? Department

The Bowls Project is
an unusual sound and architectural installation now on display at the Yerba Buena Center for Arts in San Francisco. A
combination of a song cycle, a double-vaulted masonry dome, strangers’ secrets,
and inscriptions found in Babylonian Jewish amulets known as “demon bowls,” the
Bowls Project is the creation of the composer and performer Jewlia Eisenberg,
together with her band, Charming Hostess, and a gang of volunteer architects,
masons, and engineers. Tablet Magazine contributor Hadara Graubart spoke to
Eisenberg about the project shortly before its opening on July 6. It runs
through August 22, and it includes an opportunity to shed some demons of your
own. (If you’re abstaining from music during the Three
Weeks that precede Tisha
B’Av , you’ll want to wait until July 21 to listen.)

http://www.tabletmag.com/podcasts/38281/back-to-babylon/

Elijah and the Rabbis

2010-07-11T02:59:00.003-04:00

This just in:

Columbia University Press is pleased to announce the publication of Elijah and the Rabbis: Story and Theology by Kristen H. Lindbeck.
Through an innovative synthesis of narrative critique, oral-formulaic study, folkloric research, and literary analysis, Kristen H. Lindbeck reads all the Elijah narratives in the Babylonian Talmud and details the rise of a distinct, quasi-angelic figure who takes pleasure in ordinary interaction. She concludes with a survey of Elijah's diverse roles from medieval times to today, throwing into brilliant relief the complex relationship between ancient Elijah traditions and later folktales and liturgy that show Elijah bringing benefits and blessings, appearing at circumcisions and Passover, and visiting households after the Sabbath.
Kristen H. Lindbeck is an assistant professor of Jewish studies at Florida Atlantic University.
To read an excerpt or find out more about this work go to:http://www.cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-13080-6/elijah-and-the-rabbis

Some interesting work on Elijah in rabbinic literature is also being done by Karin Hedner-Zetterholm. See most recently her, "Elijah's different roles: a reflection of the rabbinic struggle for authority in JSQ 16.2 (2009): 163-182.

New JSIJ

2010-06-30T10:58:00.003-04:00

A New JSIJ is out. What it means for an internet journal to be "published" is a philosophical question, since these articles have been "on deck" in the "forthcoming section" for some time now. Now, Gilad Sasson's article "The Story of David’s Captivity in the Hands of Yishbi-benov in Tractate Sanhedrin of the Babylonian Talmud – Sources, Editing, Structure and Plot in the Service of an Ideological Message (Heb.)" is on deck and appears in the forthcoming section - soon to be published.

Finally, Hebrew Digitization

2010-06-30T02:35:00.001-04:00

What we have been waiting for Department

Exciting news, via Amit Gvaryahu of the HU Talmud Department:

Israel set to open first digital archive of Hebrew academic journals - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

Back issues of 60 Hebrew-language research journals will be scanned into an online archive that will be accessible to professors and students both in Israel and abroad.

By Asaf Shtull-Trauring

Israel's academic journals are embarking on a large-scale digitization project: In the coming months, back issues of 60 Hebrew-language research journals will be scanned into an online archive that will be accessible to professors and students both in Israel and abroad.

The archive, the first of its kind in Israel, will later be opened to the general public as well...

Dissertation season

2010-06-22T02:18:00.003-04:00

Dissertation season continues. Now work on the compositional art of the Sheiltot: Jason Phillip Rogoff "The Compositional Art of the She‘iltot of R. Aha - Creating a Babylonian Homiletic Midrash" (PhD, JTS, 2010).
From the abstract (hat-tip to, once again, Menachem Butler):

This dissertation identifies the compositional art of the She‘iltot of Aḥa of Shabḥa
– a collection of halakhic homilies dating from the eighth century connected to the weekly Sabbath and Festival Torah portions. Through a synoptic analysis of Babylonian Talmudic parallels the editorial methods and techniques of the redactor are categorized in order to reveal the format and goals of the work. Previous She‘iltot research has focused almost exclusively on the relationship of textual variants that appear in the She‘iltot that differ from our version of the Babylonian Talmud; but few have seen or allowed for the literary creativity of the redactor.
The body of the dissertation begins by identifying the four standard sections of the She‘iltot and defining the function of each. The dissertation then highlights the various emendations, omissions, and additions made by the redactor to the cited Babylonian Talmudic texts. By examining the various changes, a picture emerges of an active redactor who dramatically changes the meaning, substance, and purpose of quoted talmudic sections to fit them into the she‘ilta form and more significantly to teach specifics lessons which were part of his pedagogic agenda. The examination of these sources forces a reconsideration of the notion that the She‘iltot can be used indiscriminately as a source of textual variants for the Babylonian Talmud. While the
She‘iltot may preserve alternate readings in certain cases, many of the changes are intentional programmatic emendations of the redactor. The arrangement of the cited sources are analyzed uncovering the existence of a Babylonian homiletic midrash based on diverse citations from the Babylonian Talmud forged in a manner to create weekly lectures appealing to both scholars and educated laymen.

Important Yerushalmi Tool

2010-06-16T15:21:00.001-04:00

This just in from R. Shimon Deutch of Havruta at Hebrew U:
webapp2.netanya.ac.il/talmud
If this is what it promises to be, then this is a very exciting development.

Journal of Early Christian Studies

2010-06-14T03:30:00.002-04:00

New Journal of Early Christian Studies 18.2 (2010) is out.

A review of interest:
Miriam Ben Zeev reviews Leonard V. Rutgers, Making Myths: Jews in Early Christian Identity Formation (Leuven: Peeters, 2009).

New Rubenstein book

2010-06-10T10:34:00.002-04:00

Department of Trilogies

Johns Hopkins has just published the new Jeff Rubenstein installment: Stories of the Babylonian Talmud (Baltimore, 2010).

From the publisher:

Jeffrey L. Rubenstein continues his grand exploration of the ancient rabbinic tradition of the
Talmudic sages, offering deep and complex analysis of eight stories from the Babylonian Talmud
to reconstruct the cultural and religious world of the Babylonian rabbinic academy.
Rubenstein combines a close textual and literary examination of each story with a careful
comparison to earlier versions from other rabbinic compilations. This unique approach provides
insight not only into the meaning and content of the current forms of the stories but also into how redactors reworked those earlier versions to address contemporary moral and religious issues.
Rubenstein's analysis uncovers the literary methods used to compose the Talmud and sheds light on the cultural and theological perspectives of the Stammaim—the anonymous editor-redactors of the Babylonian Talmud. Rubenstein also uses these stories as a window into understanding more broadly the culture of the late Babylonian rabbinic academy, a hierarchically organized and competitive institution where sages studied the Torah. Several of the stories Rubenstein studies here describe the dynamics of life in the academy: master-disciple relationships, collegiality and rivalry, and the struggle for leadership positions. Others elucidate the worldview of the Stammaim, including their perspectives on astrology, theodicy, and revelation.
The third installment of Rubenstein’s trilogy of works on the subject, Stories of the Babylonian
Talmud is essential reading for all students of the Talmud and rabbinic Judaism.

Great : Review of Boyarin's Socrates

2010-06-09T04:17:00.003-04:00

Adina Levin on her BookBlog, has a very important review of Boyarin's Socrates and the Fat Rabbis.

New Article on Masculinity and Femininity

2010-06-09T03:25:00.003-04:00

Admiel Kosman, "R.Johanan and Resh Lakish: The Image of God in the Study Hall: 'Masculinity' Versus 'Femininity' European Judaism 43.1 (2010): 128–145.

(Hattip: Menachem Butler)

Geniza Conference / Workshop

2010-06-08T04:35:00.001-04:00

Upcoming conference at Haifa University:

הגניזה הקהירית ומחשובה

סדנה בשיתוף

אוניברסיטת חיפה – הפקולטה למדעי הרוח

ו"גנזים" – יחידת המחשוב של פרויקט פרידברג לחקר הגניזה

תכנית

9:30 – 9:45 התכנסות

9:45 - 9:50 פרופ' אפרים לב, דברי פתיחה

9:50 – 10:30 פרופ' יעקב שויקה, הגניזה הקהירית ומחשובה

10:30 – 11:10 חגית גלבר, אתר הגניזה – פונקציות בסיסיות

11:10 – 11:40 פרופ' אפרים לב, 'רפואה ימי ביניימית פרקטית ותיאורטית על פי כתבי הגניזה'

11:40 – 12:00 הפסקת קפה

12:00 – 12:30 ד"ר רוני שויקה, חיפוש באתר הגניזה

12:30 – 13:00 ד"ר משה לביא, 'דוגמאות לתרומתו של פרויקט גנזים לחקר מקומה של ספרות המדרש בקהילות הגניזה'

13:00 – 13:45 ארוחת צהריים

13:45 – 14:15 חגית, אתר הגניזה – פונקציות מתקדמות

14:15 – 14:45 ד"ר משה מורגנשטרן, 'תרומתה של גניזת קהיר לחקר הארמית'

14:45 – 15:30 תרגול מודרך ובסופו דיון

15:30 פרופ' אפרים לב ופרופ' יעקב שויקה, דברי סיכום

הסדנה תתקיים ביום שני 28/6/2010 בחדר 562 בבנין ראשי באוניברסיטת חיפה

ההשתתפות חופשית, אולם מספר המקומות מוגבל, וכל הקודם זוכה

יש לכן להירשם מראש בדוא"ל earonowsky@genizah.org

Glenn Beck Redux

2010-06-07T05:08:00.002-04:00

Great Link For all my Jewish friends who are somehow proud of Glenn Beck. And because I couldn't resist (Via PaleoJudaica).

Beyond but not Outside

2010-06-07T03:38:00.002-04:00

Two new journals of interest, though beyond the regular scope:

Iranica AntiquaVolume 45 (2010)

Ursula Weber, "Wahrām III., Koenig der Koenige von Ērān und Anērān" (pp. 395 - 418)

Janos Jany, "Private Litigation in Sasanian Law"

Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 5.1 (2010)

David Porreca, "Divine Names: A Cross-Cultural Comparison (Papyri Graecae Magicae, Picatrix, Munich Handbook) "

Julien Veronese, "God's Names and Their Uses in the Books of Magic Attributed to King Solomon"

Reviews:
Naming the Witch: Magic, Ideology and Stereotype in the Ancient World (review)
Eleni Pachoumi
pp. 138-142

Magic and the Supernatural in Fourth-Century Syria (review)
Naomi Janowitz
pp. 142-145

Review: Maimonides in his World

2010-06-06T04:33:00.004-04:00

I have begun writing for a wonderful new magazine of Jewish history, Segula. In the last issue, I published a review of Sara Stroumsa's book, Maimonides in his World. Since this issue is no longer current, I post it here. In the second, forthcoming issue, I have a more extensive article on Jewish Magic. Enjoy!

Maimonides in His World:Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker
Sarah Stroumsa

Princeton University Press, 2009

Faced with a sophisticated yet uncomplicated gadget, the New York Times’ review of the iPad^™ offers two assessments side by side – one for techies and the other for everyone else. As a piece of intellectual technology, Sarah Stroumsa’s erudite and accessible Maimonidies in his World deserves no less. The book is an exceptional work of critical scholarship that remains readable and relevant beyond the ivory tower. Indeed, its true significance might be found among a more general readership. As a number of scholarly reviews have already (positively) appraised the book, here we limit ourselves to discussing its importance for non-specialists, and particularly those for whom the Rambam was, as Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchick evocatively put it, “a permanent guest in the home.”

It has been more than half a decade since the eight-hundredth anniversary of Maimonides’ death, yet the publishing mill continues to spawn major Maimonidean biographies [Moshe Halbertal, Ha-Rambam (Jerusalem, 2009)], translations [Michael Schwarz, Sefer Moreh Nevukhim (Tel Aviv, 2008)], intellectual portraits [Joel Kraemer, Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization's Greatest Minds (New York, 2010)], and even a so-called “Rambam diet” [David Zulberg, The Life Transforming Diet: Health and Psychological Principles of Maimonides (New York, 2007)]. Ecclesiastes’ warning against the endless making of books has been observed only in the breach. But in Stroumsa’s case, we are all the more fortunate.

Maimonides in his World presents a fully integrated and contextualized figure. The attempt to separate Maimonides the philosopher from Maimonides the halakhist is smartly refuted. In addition, Maimonides is now located in what Stroumsa calls his Mediterranean Islamic context. Both the integration and contextualization of Maimonides are likely to be resisted by those who devote themselves to the traditional study of Rambam’s writings. But given Stroumsa’s mastery of the material and the way she consistently links the Rambam’s language to a rich lexicon of Arabic terms and Islamic ideas, the book’s conclusions are hard to avoid. Of course the unfortunate truth is that a book by a professor of Arabic philosophy published in English by a university press will never make it into the study halls where the Rambam is most venerated. But it should, and to its credit – it theoretically could. Despite the fact that Maimonides in his World derives from over twenty years of painstaking philological research on Hebrew and Arabic texts, like the iPad, the complex machinery is present, but elegantly tucked away.

Using advanced linguistic and scholarly tools, Stroumsa demonstrates how virtually every one of Maimonides’ projects can be properly understood only in relation to broader trends in the Islamic Mediterranean. These include Maimonides’ polemics against the widespread theological approach of his day (kalām), his heresiography in which deviant Jews of the past and present are essentially depicted as Muslim heretics (zandādiqa), the creation of the Mishneh Torah – a new primary source of Jewish law that eschews fundamentals (furū‘) and uncovers basic legal principles (uşūl). According to Stroumsa, the composition of Mishneh Torah is to be connected with currents that Maimonides was exposed to under the Almohads during the years 1148-1165, as is his almost militant anti-anthropomorphism, his image of Messianic kingship (similar to the Islamic Mahdī), and his impatience with Ptolemaic astronomy. Maimonides’ famous position regarding animal sacrifices in the Temple, which are seen as but one step in the evolution of Judaism from its pagan past, is of a piece with the renewed interest in religious phenomenology. His denigration of darshanim and the uncritical use of aggada parallels Muslim assessment of preachers (wu‘‘āz) and religious storytellers (qusşāş).

Maimonides’ vision of human perfection and an austere intellectual afterlife plainly reflects the dominant philosophical approach of his day. Famously, this approach engendered considerable problems for Maimonides both during his life and after his death, for if there is no need for the body after death, why would God have to resurrect the dead? One of the most original claims in the book is that Maimonides’ codification of this belief in his thirteen principles was neither an abandonment of his philosophical approach nor an attempt at synthesis. Rather, it was a shrewd strategy he hoped would allow him to avoid the discussion entirely. Unfortunately for his sake, he was mistaken.

In Stroumsa’s capable hands, the image of Maimonides that emerges is not a portrait of a brilliant Talmud-centric Lithuanian Rosh Yeshiva; rather a kind of pre-Renaissance Renaissance man who was completely fluent in the philosophical discourse of his day and who attempted an unapologetic reading of Judaism using the prevailing intellectual tools of his day. The secret to Maimonides’ success, which Stroumsa sees as the culmination of prior attempts by Jewish philosophers, was his distinct ability to observe with cool, scholarly detachment all of the philosophical and religious traditions that preceded him – including his own Judaism.

Pervasive self awareness is both the blessing and curse of modernity. However, when you are hundreds of years ahead of your time, it can only be experienced as a howling loneliness. Taking its cue from the popular saying “from Moshe (Rabbeinu) to Moshe (ben Maimon) there arose none like Moshe,” the final section of the book explores Maimonides’ idea of the “philosopher king” – a man who responds to the call for communal involvement, yet remains in philosophical contemplation. It is good to be king, but how lonely it is!

The second half of the twentieth century saw Modern Orthodox Judaism – particularly in its American strain – attempt to fashion itself as a Maimonidean movement. Some continue to call for “Maimonidean reform” [Marc D. Angel, Maimonides, Spinoza and Us: Toward an Intellectually Vibrant Judaism (Woodstock, VT, 2009)]. At the same time, there has been hesitation about a pure “imatatio Maimonides,” with some questioning the wisdom and feasibility of community-wide emulation of this elite, intellectually unparalleled, and singular Jewish leader. In the future conversations that are sure to ensue about Maimonides’ place in contemporary Jewish life, Stroumsa’s portrait will be a most welcome, indispensible guide.

Dr. Shai Secunda is a Fellow at the Scholion Center for Interdisciplinary Jewish Research – The Hebrew University of Jerusaelm.

New Journal of Jewish Studies

2010-05-13T03:54:00.003-04:00

Spring has Sprung. As usual, JJS keeps things nice and ancient. And people with Yale connections are well represented.

TOC:

Beth A. Berkowitz, Allegory and Ambiguity: Jewish Identity in Philo's 'De Congressu'"

Jordan D. Rosenblum, "From Their Bread to their Bed: Commensality, Intermarriave and Idolatry in Tannaitc Lit"

Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, "The Unintentional Killer: Midrashic Layers in the Second Chapter of Mishnah Makkot."

Tzvi Novick, "The 'For I Say' Presumption: A Study in Early Rabbinic Legal Rhetoric'

Alexander Toepel, "When Did Adam Wear the Garments of Light?"

Daniel A. Machiel, "A Brief History of the SEcond Temple Period Name 'Hyrcanus'."

Also, many many reviews worth reading for Talmudists.

A Magical Catalogue

2010-05-12T08:10:00.000-04:00

Angels and Demons, Jewish Magic Through the Ages
Filip Vukosavovic (ed.)
Exhibition catalogue
Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem, 2010
159 p. + 33 p.
ISBN 965-7027-21-7
Price: $39

This catalogue accompanies the exhibition Angels and Demons, Jewish
Magic Through the Ages currently on display at the Bible Lands Museum
Jerusalem. It examines the origins and development of magic in Judaism
from the First Temple period to the present day. The main focus is on
beliefs, customs and the practical use of magic objects in daily
Jewish life.

The volume includes a number of articles written by experts in the field:

Jewish Magic in the First and Second Temple Period
Gideon Bohak

Jewish Magic in Eretz-Israel during Late Antiquity and the Byzantine Period
Ortal-Paz Saar

Jewish Magic in the Middle Ages
Moshe Idel

Jewish Amulets from the Beginning of the Modern Age until the Twentieth Century
Shalom Sabar

Practical Kabbalah in Israel
Yuval Harari

Black Magic
Mark Geller

A Rare 2,500 Year Old Marble Discus (ophthalmos) Found off the Coast
of Yavneh-Yam, Israel
Jacob Sharvit

Aramaic Magic Bowls and Their Use: A Brief Introduction
Shaul Shaked

Lilith
Mark Geller

The Khamsa
Shalom Sabar

Textiles with ‘Sacks,’ from the Cave of Letters by the Dead Sea
Orit Shamir

Abecedary on a Jar from the Hasmonean Period
David Amit

Magic in the Cairo Genizah
Ortal-Paz Saar

Amuletic Skulls
Dan Levene

Magic Art Between Judaism and Christianity: Aramaic Incantation Bowls
and Christian Amuletic Pendants
Naama Vilozny

To order contact:
shop@blmj.org
#972-25638228 - fax
#972-25611066 - phone

(Via Agade)

JQR 100.2

2010-05-10T08:52:00.002-04:00

JQR 100.2 (2010) is finally out.

TOC:

100 Years of JQR and Rabbinic Judaism
Natalie B. Dohrmann

Herod's Jewish Ideology Facing Romanization: On Intermarriage, Ritual Baths, and Speeches
Eyal Regev

Tradition and Truth: The Ethics of Lawmaking in Tannaitic Literature
Tzvi Novick

"Fruit and the Fruit of Fruit": Charity and Piety among Jews in Late Antique Palestine
Michael L. Satlow

Josephus, the Rabbis, and Responses to Catastrophes Ancient and Modern
Jonathan Klawans

And last but not least:

Reading the Bavli in Iran
Shai Secunda

HUCA 78

2010-05-10T04:09:00.002-04:00

This may be early (pre-publication) or late (post), but there's a new HUCA out, chock full of the good stuff:

Moshe Benovitz on "Time-Triggered Positive Commandments as Conversation Pieces" (?!)

Tzvi Novick on "A lot of Learning is a Dangerous Thing: On the Structure of Rabbinic Expertise in the Bavli" (The piece focuses on the story about Rav and the herders at b. Sanhedrin 5a-b).

Jeffrey Rubenstein, "Talmudic Astrology: Bavli Shabbat 156a-b" (a nuanced and very learned article on astrology in the Stam - including interesting discussion of Iranian parallels).

Barak Cohen, "ניגודים בדרכי הלימוד של אמוראי נהרדעי האחרונים"

Ishai Rosen-Zvi, "ברכות כמיפוי מבנה ותוכן במשנה ברכות פרק ט"

A Magical Evening

2010-05-10T03:38:00.000-04:00

ערב עיון לרגל הופעת הספר
הכישוף היהודי הקדום
מחקר שיטה מקורות
מאת יובל הררי
בהוצאת מכון בן-צבי ומוסד ביאליק
יום חמישי, כ"ט באייר תש"ע (13 במאי 2010) בשעה 18:30
ביד בן-צבי, רחוב אברבנאל 12, רחביה, ירושלים
דברים:
פרופ' שאול שקד, האוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים
"אבא רבא קדמאה": מטבעות השבעה בקערות בבליות
פרופ' גדעון בוהק, אוניברסיטת תל אביב
מקורות חדשים לחקר הכישוף היהודי הקדום
ד"ר דינה שטיין, אוניברסיטת חיפה
מאגיה: בין תיאוריה למעשה
פרופ' משה אידל, האוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים
העברתן של מסורות מאגיות ליהודי אירופה
דברי תגובה:
ד"ר יובל הררי, אוניברסיטת בן-גוריון בנגב
יו"ר: מיכאל גלצר, מכון בן-צבי
באירוע יימכר הספר בהנחה מיוחדת
הכניסה חופשית
בסיוע משרד החינוך, המזכירות הפדגוגית,
המרכז לשילוב מורשת יהדות המזרח
טל': 02-5398844
www.ybz.org.il

Leora Elias Memoiral Lecture

2010-05-04T06:48:00.003-04:00

For those of you in Jerusalem the day after Shavuot, Prof. Yehuda Liebes will be delivering the Leora Elias memorial lecture on "The Mystical Halakhic Midrash Ascribed to Shimon b. Shetah," at 7:30pm, Thursday, May 20th, in the music library at Givat Raam.

The good old days

2010-05-01T13:34:00.002-04:00

Personal History

PaleoJudaica just referred to a new on-line exhibit at the Hebraic Collection of the Library of Congress. Along with the Baltimore Hebrew University, at the advice of the very-learned Dan Rabbinovitz, the LOC was a favorite Friday afternoon haunt. The smell, art, and holdings of the place so impressed me that I brought my wife on our first date, to the library. As they say, the rest was history.

יהרג ואל יעבור

2010-04-30T02:37:00.003-04:00

Department of Irresponsible Language

As S once put, "I generally like to stay above the fray....sniff"

But then there's this:

Before the vote (on the ordination of women in Orthodoxy - S.S.), the delegates heard a shiur by Rav Hershel Schachter, shlit”a, who said that there were two reasons lehalachah that women could not be ordained. He saw such ordination as a violation of the issur of serarah, citing an Avnei Nezer that modern semichah is invested with power. He then drew gasps from the audience when he said that it was also a yehareg v’al ya’avor – because the Conservative movement had made egalitarianism a key plank in its platform. [Note: It did not take long for the ignorant to demonstrate their ignorance. There are reports that people outside of Orthodoxy are reporting that RHS argued that it is better to be killed than to [fill in the blank.] I was not at the shiur, but anyone who spent time in a beis medrash understands that his reference was almost certainly to the Yam Shel Shlomo in Bava Kama which states that falsifying or misrepresenting what Torah stands for is impermissible under all circumstances. “Yehareg v’al ya’avor” translates into “No way!” and nothing more. People citing him to any other effect are only demonstrating their inability to handle rabbinic text.]

Read more: http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2010/04/28/the-day-the-rca-became-agudah/#ixzz0mYxckryz
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

The shiur, the report, and especially the gloss in bold above show a complete lack of understanding of the mechanics of language and politics. I too have Kztoyses, Avnei nezers, Yam Shel Shlomo's, Reb Chaim's, and what have you coming out of the wazoo. And I know that יהרג ואל יעבור is a rhetorical advice. But that, my dear friends, is precisely the point...
(via Tzvee)

Review: The Return of the Repressed: Pirque de-Rabbi Eliezer and the Pseudepigrapha.

2010-04-29T04:56:00.000-04:00

Rivka Ulmer reviews Rachel Adelman. The Return of the Repressed: Pirque de-Rabbi Eliezer and the Pseudepigrapha. ( Leiden: Brill, 2009)

Still, even more, yes more "Parting of the Ways"

2010-04-29T04:16:00.001-04:00

That's right, its Bar Ilan dissertation time:

Tertullianus De idolatria and Massekhet Avodah Zarah :‎ the parting of the ways? /‎ Stéphanie E. Binder.‎
‪ Ramat Gan :‎ ‪ [s.n.],‎ ‪ 2009.‎

New AJS REview

2010-04-29T01:01:00.002-04:00

In the nick of time, the April 2010 issue of the AJS Review was just posted online (Hat-tip: the truly, truly incomparable Menachem Butler). It is מלא וגדיש.

The run-down:

Ricky Hidary, "Classical Rhetorical Arrangement and Reasoning in the Talmud: The Case of Yerushalmi Berakhot 1:1" uses y. Berakhot 1:1 to think further about the context of the Yerushalmi. An excerpt:

The goal of this study is to further explore the possible use of classical rhetorical
structures and thought processes in the Talmud. This analysis will shed light on
the interactions between the rabbis and their surrounding Greco-Roman culture, as
well as provide insight into the nature and provenance of talmudic reasoning. This
article focuses on one sugya from the Yerushalmi. I will first present a source-critical
analysis of the sugya, followed by a second analysis using rhetorical criticism. The
rhetorical analysis will focus on the arrangement of the parts of the sugya and will
reveal its similarity to classical rhetorical structures and methods, as defined in the
rhetorical treatises of Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, the anonymous Ad Herennium,
and On Invention attributed to Hermogenes

Jane Kanarek, "He Took the Knife: Biblical Narrative and the Formation of Rabbinic Law" also thinks about rhetoric, but in a different way.

A very important article for those interested in the Bavli's Sasanian context by Adam Becker, "The Comparative Study of “Scholasticism” in Late Antique Mesopotamia: Rabbis and East Syrians " sets out do to exactly what it says it will - in a sober and compelling way.

In the reviews section, Geoffrey Herman smacks-down Daniel Friedenburg's Sasanian Jewry and Its Culture: A Lexicon of Jewish and Related Seals (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009). Ouch.

Zvi Septimus tries to locate Sergey Dolgopolski's What Is Talmud...somewhere. I think he's quite successful.

Finally, Mira Balberg likes Yishai Rosen-Zvi's הטקס שלא היה even though part of its argument is so obvious - at least on the far western shores of the United States:

Rosen-Zvi presents his study as an attempt to solve a riddle: how is it possible,
he asks, that the sotah rite as designed by the Mishnah is so different not only
from its biblical origin, but also from the rabbinic ethos and norms? The answer to
this question might seem obvious enough to those well versed in some of the
gender-oriented scholarly works of the past few decades, in rabbinics as in
other fields: clearly, the rabbis are anxious regarding female sexuality and are
looking to control it, if not to oppress it.Rosen-Zvi’s outstanding accomplishment in this book is not in suggesting why the Mishnah’s imagined rite is so abusive and brutal toward women (although his answer to this question is more fine-tuned than the aforementioned crude formulation, he largely follows it). Rather, it is his scrupulous and skillful analysis of how the Mishnah systematically devises and shapes a “textual rite,” as Rosen-Zvi calls it, with its own cohesive ideological structure and underlying logic.

The Talmud Blog goes Maimonidean...and Pop

2010-04-28T13:55:00.004-04:00

I recently wrote a review of Sara Stroumsa's Maimonides in his World for a great new popular history magazine called Segula (ironically!). It is technically available only in print but they have put this issue online. My piece is on pp 92-3.

New Article by Dina Stein

2010-04-26T01:25:00.002-04:00

The latest Prooftexts (29.2) is out and in it, Dina Stein, in "Let the "People" Go?: The "Folk" and their "Lore" as Tropes in the Reconstruction of Rabbinic Culture," argues (from the abstract):

that "folklore" has served as a narratological device in modern scholarship of rabbinic culture; rather then reflecting rabbinic history, "folklore" has served in constructing sociocultural images that are not grounded in, or indicated by, the rabbinic corpus itself. The first part of the article addresses the role of "folklore" as yielding a variety of historiographical tropes in the writings of scholars such as Lieberman, Urbach, Ginzberg, and Fraenkel, as well as in the writings of specific folklore scholars such as Hasan-Rokem and Yassif. "Folklore," as an essential category, when applied to rabbinic texts, designates ideological, institutional or social margins, and in turn, it implies an imagined canon. As the article argues, the identification of "folklore" with marginality cannot be sustained by the texts themselves. The article therefore suggests implementing folkloristic tools in reading rabbinic texts without the underlying essentialistic understanding of the texts themselves as reflecting rabbinic "folklore." The second part of the essay applies the nonessentialized use of folklore methodology to two close readings of rabbinic texts.

In other words, the folkloristic study of rabbinic literature is now under review.

Literary Analogies in Rabbinic and Christian Monastic Sources

2010-04-21T04:32:00.007-04:00

The Defended

Mikhal Bar-Asher, (aka Michal Bar-Asher Siegal), "Literary Analogies in Rabbinic and Christian Monastic Sources," (Yale University dissertation, 2010).

New Book on the Artscroll Revolution

2010-04-21T04:24:00.004-04:00

Upward and Onward with the Cultural Critique

A real study of the Artscroll Revolution. Jeremy Stolow's Orthodox by Design (University of California Press, 2010).
(Hat-tip: Jewish Book Maven)

Manor's Nikhsei Tzon Barzel

2010-04-19T05:35:00.001-04:00

For Yom Hazikaron