The panel opened with the keynote by Rachel Furst, PhD candidate in Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and currently Visiting Scholar at the Tikvah Center for Law and Jewish Civilization at NYU Law School. In her remarks, she introduced the aims of the Graduate Workshop, a group of approximately a dozen young scholars that she co-founded in 2009 with Pinchas Roth (a Revel MA graduate in medieval Jewish history, who went on to earn his PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem), who also attended the symposium. Their goal was to discover “narratives of the medieval world and its various social and material realities that can be gleaned from close readings of halakhic sources by applying to them methodologies from a range of disciplines—law, literature, sociology, psychology, communications, and gender studies, among others.” The lectures delivered at this symposium, Furst explained, are “the products of meetings, collaborative readings, and ongoing research among the group over the past four years.”

Ethan Zadoff, PhD candidate in History at the CUNY Graduate Center and Adjunct Professor at Hunter College, delivered his paper on Child Marriage Law in Medieval Ashkenaz in Comparative Perspective. He aimed to show what can be learned about medieval halakhic discussions from a comparison with contemporaneous (Christian) canon law.  Zadoff’s case study concerning child marriage in both halakhic and cannon law includes the consideration of the “changing dynamic of the medieval family, the relationship between children and parents, and notions of the individual within the context of the family.” Zadoff discussed the following question raised among hakhemei ashkenaz (the scholars of the Rhineland yeshivot in the eleventh century): in a case where a father arranges a marriage between his minor son and an adult woman, would the couple require a religious divorce (get) if they decide to terminate their marriage?  This matter was debated between the scholars of Mainz and Worms, a question, Zadoff argued, that depended on underlying conceptions of a father’s authority over his minor son.  The status of child marriage was also debated among canon lawyers of the time, a debate that likewise reflects differing views of family, parent-child relationships, and the agency of the marital partners.  A medieval work known as 74 Titles reflects the Frankish and Carolingian traditions in asserting that marriage is contingent on the consent of the bride’s protective kin. Ivo of Chartres (c. 1040-1115) disagreed, stating that consent of the marital partners is of paramount importance. Thus, Zadoff demonstrated that both medieval Jewish and canon law reflect changing dynamics of the family, conceptions of betrothal, and the authority of parents over minor children.

Jesse Abelman, PhD candidate in medieval Jewish history at Revel, and a faculty member at the Drisha Institute Yesodot program, presented his talk on “Anger, Violence and the Law: Reading Emotion in Medieval Legal Texts.” He compared the ways in which the emotion of anger is given legal weight in medieval halakhic responsa and in the feuding traditions of the eleventh through thirteenth centuries in general (i.e., Christian) European society. He began by citing Stephen D. White’s influential article “The Politics of Anger” to observe that in medieval times the expression of anger was used to justify aristocratic feuding.   Abelman argued that Jewish halakhic authorities, on the other hand, cited anger as a legal consideration in order to prevent violence, rather than to condone it. Abelman pointed to the halakhic literature regarding a case of mesirah (the prohibition of informing against a fellow Jew to the Gentile authorities) motivated by anger over a real or perceived affront. Citing the writings of the great Ashkenazik halakhist R. Meir of Rothenberg (c. 1215-1293) and his student  R. Hayyim Or Zaru’a (c. 1250-1310), Abelman showed that some halakhic scholars considered such a case to be analogous to the biblical goel ha-dam (blood avenged), who is not punished if he retaliates “in hot anger” against one who killed his kinsman (Deut. 19:6). Among the considerations raised in the halakhic literature was that if mesirah were not permitted under these circumstances, then violence may result instead, as the affronted party might take matters into its own hands rather than seeking legal redress in the Gentile courts.

Sara Tova Brody, MA in Gender Studies at Bar Ilan University and currently a Fellow at Yeshivat Hadar in NY, delivered the third of the evening’s presentations: “Staying Home: Social Standing of Widows in Medieval Spanish Responsa.” Brody introduced the audience to the notion of “feminist geography” and showed how it can illuminate halakhic discussions when we consider “issues such as the boundaries of the home and the divisions between private and public spaces” as defined in halakhic literature. Brody turned her attention to the specific case of “the widow’s lodging,” i.e., a widow’s right to dwell in the husband’s home and claim support from his estate before collecting her ketubah money. Discussing at length a responsum (teshuvah) by R. Solomon ibn Adret (Rashba; Barcelona, 1235-1310), Brody showed that this question is inextricably tied up with a woman’s status inside her own home as well as the way women where viewed by their societies. In other words, while the questions posed to the medieval halakhists in this sort of case relate explicitly to money and estates, the place and status of women at the time emerge quite clearly as key factors.

Following the three presentations, Rachel Furst offered responses to each speaker, and then took questions from the audience—ranging from halakhic to sociological to methodological. A number of attendees remarked that the evening was particularly stimulating. As one Revel alum commented: “The presentations and dialogues were really thought-provoking. These young visiting scholars clearly have a lot to offer and it’s great that Revel organized this symposium. Please do it again!”

Click here to see a photo essay of the event.

This article was written by Steven and Rivka Skaist (Revel 2014)

Wednesday, May 29
4 – 6 p.m.

Yeshiva University
Wilf Campus
Belfer Hall, Room 1214
2495 Amsterdam Avenue
New York, NY 10033

Click here for Flyer

Keynote speaker Dr. Yael Zerubavel of Rutgers University
Speaking on the topic, “Israel, Cultural Memory, and the Transformations of a National Tradition.”

Sunday, May 12, 2013
Registration 9:00 am, Keynote speaker 9:30 am
Belfer Hall Room 1214, Yeshiva University

Click here for flyer

For more information about the conference please contact Israel.studies@yu.edu.

For further information about the Center for Israel Studies, visit yu.edu/ci

• Friday night home hospitality meals

• Friday night Oneg at Mt. Sinai Jewish Center, 135 Bennett Avenue
(entrance on 187th Street) featuring Professors Cohen and Rynhold
on “Personal Reflections on Careers in Jewish Academia” (10:15 p.m.)

• Shaharit on Shabbat at Mt. Sinai Jewish Center featuring a drasha
by Professor Rynhold on “The Religion Science Conflict Revisited”

• Communal Shabbat lunch on Yeshiva University’s Wilf Campus,
followed by a Revel student panel (12:15 p.m.)

• Community Seudah Shelishit at Mt. Sinai Jewish Center, featuring
a presentation by Professor Cohen on “Between America and Israel:
The Latest Exchanges in Jewish Studies Scholarship”

Cost is $10. Reservations are required by Monday, April 15.
To RSVP, or if you are interested in hosting a Friday night home hospitality meal,
please contact Revel Student Liaison Elianna Mitnick at Elianna119@gmail.com

Click here for flyer.

The medieval era holds particular interest for Daniel, since “it was a formative period in Jewish history in which various strategies were put forward in the interpretive endeavors revolving around the dual axes of the Bible and rabbinic literature. For a people that has an ongoing meaningful relationship with those texts, the period was trendsetting and has loomed large ever since.”  Daniel explains that as a student deeply involved in understanding medieval texts in a traditional context he wanted to move into the world that those texts inhabited and inquire after the human factor. He was perhaps most animated by the question “What was the medieval Jew really like?”

When asked about the professors Daniel has most enjoyed, he emphatically rattles off the long list of teachers to whom he feels indebted:

Professors Berger, Kanarfogel, and Tsadik are tasked with introducing neophytes like me to the sprawling world of medieval Jewish history (and in Berger’s case: quality jokes) in a short span of time, but they do it extremely well. Professors Dauber and Carlebach teach students to read closely and carefully. Professor Kaplan’s gift, in my opinion, is in enabling her students to contextualize any given subject matter and to formulate tough questions about it from a variety of perspectives. Her pedagogy is inspiring. Any private attention from Professor Olson is to be cherished, and I really enjoyed a guided readings session with him. His breadth of knowledge and patience with my ignorance were astounding. Professor Steiner’s courses challenged me the most through his insistence upon participation and quality work in areas in which I had no previous expertise. I could not but emerge from his courses a changed person.

Daniel would like to follow in their footsteps, transmitting his knowledge and skills to the broader community. He is currently planning on a career in academia, which will enable him to engage in research and teach Jewish history on a university level.

As a dedicated doctoral student, Daniel doesn’t have a lot of free time. “But,” he adds, “when I pretend that I have free time, I cherish my family. Occasionally I play my acoustic guitar while my fifteen-month-old daughter bangs out some Old McDonald on her electric.”

 This article was written by Rivka Skaist, Revel 2014.

Key Note: Introducing New Academic Approaches to Halakhic Texts

Rachel Furst, Co-founder of the Graduate Workshop, PhD candidate in Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Visiting Scholar, Tikvah Center for Law and Jewish Civilization at NYU Law School

Child Marriage and Marriage Law in Medieval Ashkenaz in Comparative Perspective

Ethan Zadoff, PhD candidate in History at the CUNY Graduate Center; Adjunct Professor, Hunter College

Anger, Violence and the Law: Reading Emotion in Medieval Legal Texts

Jesse Abelman, PhD candidate in medieval Jewish history at Revel; teaches in the Yesodot program at Drisha Institute.

Staying Home: Social Standing of Widows in Medieval Spanish Responsa

Sara Tova Brody, MA in Gender Studies at Bar Ilan University; Fellow at Yeshivat Hadar in NY.

Response and Questions moderated by Rachel Furst

See Flyer here

Tuesday, April 16, 2013 (Yom ha-Atzmaut)

7:00-8:00 p.m.

Belfer Hall, Room 1214

2495 Amsterdam Avenue

New York, NY  10033

Parking Available

There will be a dinner before the program at 6:30p.m. in BH1214. There is no charge for dinner. However, space is limited, and so reservations must be made in advance.

For reservations and further information, please contact: shalpern@yu.edu

Professor Teller joined Revel students, faculty and alumni for dinner, during which he spoke informally about his academic trajectory. He described how his life experiences as an outsider—as a Jew at Oxford, an Englishman in Israel, and an Israeli-trained scholar in America—contributed to his intellectual career and scholarship. Anecdotally, he emphasized the role that close examination of non-Jewish sources has played in his understanding of Polish Jewry. Through a careful reading of numerous economic and legal archival documents in Polish and other languages (to which he gained unique access by actually working in various cities in Poland), Professor Teller discovered that Polish Jewry was in fact well integrated with non-Jewish society, playing a large role in royal commerce and heavily utilizing the Polish court system. This informal presentation was followed by a lively discussion of historical methodology prompted by questions from Revel students and alumni.

Professor Teller subsequently delivered a lecture entitled “Print, Power, and Prestige: The Polish-Lithuanian Rabbinate and the Book in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” This lecture presented an ironic pairing of historical developments: whereas the real political power of Polish-Lithuanian rabbis declined during this era, the prestige of the rabbinate actually rose, with the community showing them greater ceremonial respect. In this context, Professor Teller explained the role played by the printing press in Polish-Lithuanian Jewish society. While the conventional wisdom regards the availability of print to have served to democratize and disseminate knowledge, Professor Teller argued that, in fact, book printing in early-modern Poland and Lithuania was targeted at an already educated, affluent, and often rabbinic, elite. In other words, book printing is not an independent factor of historical change, but rather works in tandem with other social and intellectual processes, in this case giving more knowledge and prestige to those who already possessed them for other reasons. As proof for his claim, Professor Teller cited the formatting of the books printed during this era, which were difficult to read and included no illustrations. Sometimes, in fact, works originally intended for a popular audience were reformatted by printers in a way that made them suitable primarily for scholars. As an example, Professor Teller cited the case of the Shulhan Arukh, the four-part code of Jewish law penned by the sixteenth-century Safed Rabbi Joseph Karo. This work was originally composed as a brief exposition of Jewish law and was accordingly first published in a pocket-size version accessible to anyone who could read Hebrew. That format was eventually abandoned, however, as publishers in the seventeenth century increasingly printed the Shulhan Arukh within an extensive apparatus of complex scholarly commentaries in large tomes suited primarily for study by advanced rabbinic scholars.

Co-sponsored by the Yeshiva College Jewish Studies Colloquium, Professor Teller’s lecture drew a large crowd of YC and Stern College students and faculty, who joined the Revel audience that had attended the dinner and remained for the lecture. Among the participants in the program that evening were YU Vice Provost Lawrence Schiffman, Revel Dean David Berger, and Associate Dean Mordechai Cohen, as well as Revel Jewish History Professors Elisheva Carlebach and Debra Kaplan. It was, in fact, Professor Kaplan who had invited Professor Teller, and she introduced him and his work at both his dinner presentation and lecture. Professor Kaplan is teaching a Revel course this semester on Print Culture in the Jewish World, and her students found this special program to be a lively and illuminating supplement to their usual weekly preparations and lectures.

This article was written by Tali Arbit (Revel MA student in Jewish history)

Indeed, passion for learning has long characterized Yael. As a junior in high school, she avidly memorized biographies of the rishonim (the great medieval Jewish sages). As an undergraduate in the S. Daniel Abraham Honors Program at Yeshiva University’s Stern College, Yael double-majored in philosophy and Jewish studies, and sought out the most challenging teachers—including Professors David Shatz and Haym Soloveitchik, whose classes forced her to think deeply and expand her intellectual horizons. After graduating as Valedictorian of her class, it seemed natural for Yael to take her scholarship to a higher level by pursuing a Master’s degree in Jewish history at Revel.

Though fully engaged as a high school teacher and administrator, Yael has never given up on her passion for learning—which has brought her back to Revel for another Master’s degree, this time in Bible. Yael finds that she most enjoys learning about the various commentators within their respective cultural contexts, a study that combines her interests in Bible interpretation and in Jewish history. Moreover, it allows her to trace themes across disciplines and form a fuller understanding of the trajectory of Jewish tradition. These themes permeate Yael’s Frisch classrooms, ensuring that her curriculum continues to develop and the standards of her teaching continue to rise as she expands her own scholarship.

Yael’s ultimate goal is to inspire her students to themselves become part of the chain of the tradition of Jewish learning. “When I was a high school student,” Yael recalls, “my Chumash teacher, Mrs. Teitz, shed a tear when we reached Moshe Rabbinu’s death.  She had followed him through his ups and downs as we studied….  She related to the Torah not only intellectually but in a deeply emotional way.  It is this connection to [learning]… that I hope my students attain.” In her own way, Yael is successful at achieving this goal. “The students at Frisch appreciate my continuing education,” she explained.  By returning to graduate-level study herself, Yael provides her students with a living model of the importance of in-depth Jewish scholarship as a life-long pursuit.

This article was written by Rivka Skaist (Revel MA student, Jewish Philosophy)

David chose Modern Jewish History as his concentration and finds his Revel classes deeply engaging. As an undergraduate majoring in English Literature, he was always intrigued with the ways that people have contributed to the shaping of their environment throughout the ages—and graduate study of Jewish History allows him to investigate this possibility in an area of critical interest to our heritage. While at first David assumed he would gravitate toward Eastern European history and Chassidim, he actually found himself fascinated by a large range of topics offered at Revel. He is now fully engaged in the course he’s taking with Professor Perelis on Sephardic Jews in the New World—which prompts him to remark: “There is so much I need to know that I never realized I had been missing.”

The classes that David himself teaches at Frisch also benefit from his return to studies at Revel. As far back as he can remember David has aspired to teach Judaic Studies and share what he has learned with students in a classroom. Talmud is his favorite subject to teach because he loves the methodology it involves. He likes to “show students the rich conceptual underpinnings of different Talmudic passages. Through the exciting analysis of the different Talmudic positions and a volley of back and forth arguments with the students, the Torah becomes a living breathing document.”  This dynamic is greatly enhanced by the new perspectives that David’s Revel studies has given him, which seeps into his high school teaching.  For instance, although Sephardic Atlantic History is not directly related to his Talmud classes, David now often finds himself drawing from the methods of analysis and higher thinking that Professor Perelis presents while he teaches and interacts with his own students. In his words, “teaching at Frisch is thoroughly satisfying. The students are an incredible group of kind, united, sincere individuals with a thirst to learn.  As a teacher and mentor, I just want to spend time listening to their questions and answers about life and watching them develop.”  This endeavor is enriched by David’s own desire to continue to develop as a scholar.

This article was written by Rivka Skaist (Revel MA student, Jewish Philosophy)

After graduating from YC, Dr. Koller entered the doctoral program in Bible at the University of Pennsylvania. Despite all that Penn had to offer, he soon began to realize that for his research interests the Revel program was better suited. Therefore, after a year at Penn, he returned to YU, where he ultimately completely his PhD. Dr. Koller specifically sought to study the philological aspects of biblical and rabbinic literature in comparison with other ancient Semitic languages, areas for which there are no scholars in the US more expert than Revel Professors Barry Eichler and Richard Steiner. In the course of his research at Revel, Dr. Koller avidly studied an array of ancient languages. In addition to Aramaic and Arabic, the sister languages of biblical Hebrew, he acquired a proficiency in Akkadian, Ugaritic, Moabite, Phoenician, and Egyptian (hieroglyphs). At Revel, Dr. Koller explains, Professor Steiner encourages his students to choose an area of specialization and focus on it, in order to themselves become world experts in their sub-field. Following that advice, Dr. Koller established himself as the world expert on the language related to cutting tools in the Bible, writing his 2009 dissertation on the philological and archaeological study of the ancient Hebrew semantic field related to knives, swords, axes, plows, etc. This study was regarded as a key contribution in the field was recently published (in augmented form) as a book: The Semantic Field of Cutting Tools in Biblical Hebrew: The Interface of Philological, Semantic, and Archaeological Evidence, Volume 49 of The Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series.

Dr. Koller treats language as a tool for uncovering ancient history. To this end, he approaches the Bible diachronically, viewing it as “a window into all sorts of different things, such as social history, intellectual history, and the transmission if ideas, in addition to being a window into people’s real lives.” Tanakh is by far the most significant text extant from ancient Israel, and comprises what Dr. Koller calls “our data set,” that also enables us to “get behind the text.” As he explains,

when it comes to biblical history, pretty much everything we know is [from] archeology or from texts. When history is mediated through text, the better you understand the nuances of the language, the more completely you can mine the text for insights into the historical circumstances behind it.

While studying for his PhD at Revel, Dr. Koller began teaching at Yeshiva College, where he has proven quite popular. Upon completion of his PhD, he began teaching courses at Revel periodically as an associate faculty member. He has already made his mark in both schools. This year he is teaching the crucial two-semester graduate Introduction to Biblical Hebrew, which is required for all Revel Bible graduate students. Dr. Koller has also spent time teaching at other institutions, including Queens College and Drisha Institute for Jewish Learning, where he is currently teaching a class entitled “Inscriptions from the World of the Bible.” Teaching at Revel holds a special place in Dr. Koller’s heart. Apart from the natural satisfaction one gets from teaching in a program that one found enriching as a student, he enjoys the fact that Revel students are diverse, with men and women from a variegated spectrum of backgrounds and ages, who bring richly different perspectives to the table, and enrich the conversations and analysis in class. Dr. Koller points to the new Revel Student-Faculty Lounge and to the now frequent events and activities for Revel students as important community-building initiatives that were largely missing during his own student experience at Revel. Happy that his Revel students are offered these enriching new opportunities, he encourages them to participate fully in the Revel experience.

This article was written by Elianna Mitnick (Revel MA student, Bible)