BAJS Conference 2016: The Texture of Jewish Tradition: Investigations in Textuality

Programme

Sunday 10 July 2016

15:30 - 16:30 - OPTIONAL guided tour of items of interest (The Barber Institute of Fine Arts)

Please note: The guided tour requires registration. All delegates have been sent a link to register for this.

16:00 - 18:30 - Conference registration (European Research Institute (ERI))

18:00 - Meet outside of the European Research Institute for shared taxis to dinner venue (ERI)

18:30 onward - Informal dinner (Deepalis Restaurant)

Monday 11 July 2016

8:30 - 9:00 - Conference registration (Wolfson Common Room, Centre for Professional Development (CPD), Medical School)

9:00 - 10:30am - Monday morning sessions

Jewish/non-Jewish relations (Forum Lecture Theatre, CPD)

Chair: Dr Hannah Holtschneider (University of Edinburgh)

Catherine Bartlett (PhD Candidate, University of Kent and University of Strasbourg), 'Jewish Prodigal Daughter in the Nineteenth-Century Anglo-Jewish, German-Jewish and French-Jewish Novel'
Dr Yulia Egorova (University of Durham), 'Indian Jewish Textualities and the Tropes of Jewish-Muslim Difference'

Medieval texts I (CPD 5)

Chair: Dr Eva Frojmovic (University of Leeds)

Dr Maria Cioată (University of Manchester), 'Medieval Hebrew Tellings of Tobit: Versions of the Book of Tobit, or New Texts?'
Professor Philip S. Alexander (University of Manchester), 'Written v. Oral Texts in Jewish Tradition Illustrated from the Toledot Yeshu'

19th century history and thought (CPD 6)

Chair: Dr Francois Guesnet (University College London)

Noemie Duhaut (PhD Candidate, University College London), 'French Jews and the Abolitionist Discourse in the 19th Century'
Professor Daniel Langton (University of Manchester), 'Rethinking Reform Judaism as ‘a Response to Modernity’: Nineteenth-Century North American Jews and the Discourse of Doubt'

10:30 - 11:00 - Refreshment break (Wolfson Common Room, CPD)

11:00 - 12:30 - Monday late morning sessions

Rabbinic Judaism (CPD 4)

Chair: Professor Philip Alexander (University of Manchester)

Dr Holger Zellentin (University of Nottingham), 'Gentile Purity from the Holiness Code to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam'
Rabbi Dr Margaret Jacobi (University of Birmingham), 'Sodom Re-imagined. A case study in interpretation and invention in the Babylonian Talmud'
Dr Alex Tal (Haifa University), 'The Sabbath and Yom Tov: A Holy Day or a Holiday'

Medieval texts II (CPD 5)

Chair: Dr Maria Cioată (University of Manchester)

Dr Michael T Miller (Liverpool Hope University), 'Words on the Body of God: The Texture and Physicality of the Divine Stature'
Dr Federico Dal Bo (Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin), 'Torah as “Texture” in the 13th century Kabbalah: The notion of arigah and its use in Rabbi ben Abraham Gikatilla'
Dr Eva Frojmovic (University of Leeds), 'Visualities, Textualities, and the Gender of the Medieval Jewish Book (13th/ 14th Century Ashkenaz)'

20th century Jewish history (CPD 6)

Chair: Professor Gavin Schaffer (University of Birmingham)

Ruth Amir Yezreel (Valley College, Israel), 'Raphael Lemkin, the Totally Unofficial Man: Reflections on Intertextuality'
Adi Sherzer (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), 'Rediscovering, Reinterpreting and Revising Jewish Traditional Texts in a Modern Israeli Context: The Case of Yom Ha’Atsmaut (1948 – 1958)'
Dr Simon Mayers (University of Manchester), 'Merely Murdered in Odium Fidei: Jewish and Catholic Responses to Herbert Thurston’s “Defence” of the Jews (1898 - 1913)'

12:30 - 13:30 - Lunch (Wolfson Common Room, CPD)

13:30 - 15:00 - Monday afternoon sessions

Second temple period: Qumran, Ben Sira and the 'Bible' (CPD 4)

Chair: Professor George Brooke (University of Manchester)

Dr Charlotte Hempel (University of Birmingham), 'Cutting the Chord with the Familiar: What Makes 4Q265 Miscellaneous Rules Tick?'
Lindsey Askin (PhD Candidate, University of Cambridge), 'Beyond Encomium or Eulogy: Simon the High Priest as Patron of Ben Sira'
Dr J.G. Campbell (University of Bristol), '(De-)Texturing the Text: The Reception of Second Temple Scripture in the Contemporary English Bible'

Jewish poetry (CPD 5)

Chair: Dr Holger Zellentin (University of Nottingham)

Anat Koplowitz-Breier (Bar Ilan University), 'Revision Abishag: American Jewish Women’s Midrashic Poems on Abishag the Shunamite'
Dominic Williams (University of Leeds), 'Twenty-First-Century Gematria: Rabbinic Hermeneutics in Contemporary Jewish Poetry'
Professor Simon Glass (OCAD University), 'Hebrew Scripture as Concrete Poetry'

Contemporary literature (CPD 2)

Chair: Dr Karen E. H. Skinazi (University of Birmingham)

Dr Mia Spiro (University of Glasgow), 'Uncanny Survivors and the Nazi Beast: Textual Monsters in Holocaust Fiction'
Joshua Lander (PhD Candidate, University of Glasgow), 'Seriousness, Strength and the Body: Unheroic Conduct in Philip Roth’s Nemesis and American Pastoral'
Dr Hannah Holtschneider (University of Edinburgh), 'The City and the Text: Jewish Life and Urban Space in David Daiches’ Two Worlds'

15:00 - 15:45 - Annual general meeting (Leonard Deacon Lecture Theatre, CPD)

16:00 - 17:00 - OPTIONAL visit to items of interest (Cadbury Research Library, Special Collections)

17:30 - 18:00 - Conference wine reception (Muirhead Tower Atrium, Muirhead Tower)

18:00 - 19:00 - Keynote lecture (Watson Building, Lecture Theatre A)

Chair: Professor Charlotte Hempel (University of Birmingham)

Dr Judith H. Newman (University of Toronto), 'Scribal Bodies as Liturgical Bodies: the Formation of Scriptures in Early Judaism'

19:00 - 21:00 - Conference dinner (Staff House)

Tuesday 12 July 2016

8:30 - 9:00 - Conference registration (Wolfson Common Room, Centre for Professional Development (CPD), Medical School)

9:00 - 10:30 - Tuesday morning sessions

Panel: The texture of early judaean legal interactions (Forum Lecture Theatre, CPD)

Chair: Professor Sarah Pearce (University of Southampton)

Professor Sophie Demare-Lafont (Institut d'histoire du droit/ University Panthéon-Assas/ Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris), 'Ancient Near Eastern Monumental Law and Its Impact on the Hebrew Bible'
Dr Cornelia Wunsch (Vorderasiatisches Museum/ School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London), 'Cuneiform Legal Tradition in the Earliest Judaean Written Sources from Babylon'
Dr Sandra Jacobs (King's College London), 'The Legal Collections of the Hebrew Bible and their Lack of Statutory Force'

Panel: The bible in the Cairo Genizah (CPD 5)

Chair: Professor Hindy Najman (University of Oxford)

Dr Ben Outhwaite (University of Cambridge), 'Writing the Bible in the Cairo Genizah'
Professor Geoffrey Khan (University of Cambridge), 'Recent Research on the Tiberian Tradition'
Dr Kim Phillips (University of Cambridge), 'Samuel ben Jacob, Scribe of the Leningrad Codex'
Samuel Blapp (PhD Candidate, University of Cambridge), 'The Non-Standard Tiberian Language Tradition as Reflected in Genizah Bible Manuscripts '

Literature, film and preaching (CPD 6)

Chair: Dr Karen Wenell (University of Birmingham)

Zhang Wen (PhD Candidate, Shanghai International Studies University), 'Singer’s Recreation of Jews’ Vanished Past through Memory'
Professor Marc Saperstein (Leo Baeck College), 'Textuality and the Jewish Sermon'
Dr Karen Skinazi (University of Birmingham), 'For Women Only: Reading Orthodox Jewish Women’s Films'

10:30 - 11:00 - Refreshment break (Wolfson Common Room, CPD)

11:00 - 12:30 - Tuesday late morning sessions

Second Temple Period: Qumran (CPD 4)

Chair: Professor George Brooke (University of Manchester)

Rabbi Helen Freeman (PhD Candidate, University of Birmingham), 'A Psychological Approach to the Dead Sea Scrolls'
Tuppa Guerra (PhD Candidate, University of Birmingham), 'The Textuality of Magic in the Dead Sea Scrolls'
Hanne Kirchheiner (PhD Candidate, University of Birmingham), '“To save them from all the Nets of the Pit” The Ending That Does Not Fit? CD XIII 7b-23 and CD XIV 1-2'

Early modern interpretation (CPD 5)

Chair: Dr Andrea Schatz (King's College London)

Dr Benjamin Williams (King's College London), 'Bringing Maimonides to Oxford: Edward Pococke and Maimonides’ Commentary on the Mishnah'
Dr Francois Guesnet (University College London), 'Text and Context: The Book of Esther and Jewish Intercession in the Early Modern Period'
Dr Martin Borysek (University of York/ University of Southern Denmark), 'Textual Tradition in Communal Legislation of Medieval and Early Modern Jewish Communities'

Holocaust (CPD 6)

Chair: Dr Isabel Wollaston (University of Birmingham)

Rosa Reicher (PhD Candidate, University of Heidelberg), 'Visualization and Textuality of Holocaust Commemoration in Britain'
Dr Rumyana Marinova-Christidi (Sofia University), 'The Narrative of the Salvation of the Bulgarian Jews during the Holocaust: between Mythology and Reality'

12:30 - 13:30 - Lunch (Wolfson Common Room, CPD)

13:30 - 15:00 - Tuesday afternoon sessions

Panel: The hellenistic shaping of textuality (Forum Lecture Theatre, CPD)

Chair: Professor Sarah Pearce (University of Southampton)

Dr Jim Aitken (University of Cambridge), 'What did the Septuagint look like? The Hellenistic shaping of the Biblical Text in light of Papyri'
Daniel Ryan (PhD Candidate, University of Cambridge), 'Reading Jewish Coins'
Marieke Dhont (PhD Candidate, Louvain-la-Neuve), 'Shaping Jewish-Greek Literature'
Dr Peter B. Hartog (University of Leuven), 'Births of the Author? Homer and Moses as Authors in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods'

Time and calendars (CPD 5)

Chair: Professor Charlotte Hempel (University of Birmingham)

Dr Nadia Vidro (University College London), 'Who Authored the Calendar in Arba’a Ṭurim? The Transmission of Tables in Manuscript and Print'
Dr I. M. Sandman (University College London), 'Scribal Culture and Textual Plurality in the Transmission of Isaac Israeli’s Yesod Olam'
Professor Sacha Stern (University College London), 'Text and Visuality: The Representation of Time in Jewish Tradition'

19th and 20th century: Eastern Europe (CPD 6)

Chair: Dr Norman Solomon(University of Oxford)

Dr Naftali Loewenthal (University College London), 'The Manuscript in Habad - An Esoteric Dimension of a ‘Modernizing’ Movement'
Joanna Cukras-Stelagowska (Nicolas Copernicus University in Torun), 'The Benefits of Reading Diaries'

15:00 - 15:30 - Refreshment break (Wolfson Common Room, CPD)

15:30 - 17:00 - Tuesday late afternoon sessions

Philo and Josephus (CPD 4)

Chair: Professor Hindy Najman (University of Oxford)

Professor Martin Goodman (University of Oxford), 'Agrippa II in Jerusalem and the Silence of Josephus'
Dr Joshua Carroll (University of Aberdeen), 'Abraham’s Mystical Ascent: Philo of Alexandria’s Retelling of the Biblical Patriarch’s Spiritual Journey'
Dr Idan Breier (Bar Ilan University), 'Between Textual Worlds: Eastern and Western Prophecies Concerning the Rise of Emperors'

Halakhah (CPD 5)

Chair: Dr Helen Spurling (University of Southampton)

Yoseph Citron (PhD Candidate, University College London), 'Complementarity, Contradiction or Symbiosis? The Relationship between Kabbalistic and Halakhic Writing in R. Isaiah Horowitz's Sheneh Luhot Haberit'
Professor Kate Miriam Loewenthal (Royal Holloway, University of London), 'Texts and Language in Contemporary Jewish Society: The Current Impact of Sefer Chafetz Chaim'
Dr Katharina Keim (University of Manchester), 'The Samaritan Collections of Moses Gaster: Material and Text'

Panel: psychotextual dislocations in modern British-Jewish writing (Forum Lecture Theatre, CPD)

Chair: Dr Karen Skinazi (University of Birmingham)

Professor Sue Vice (University of Sheffield), 'Notions of Exile in Kindertransport Narrative'
Dr Peter Lawson (The Open University), 'John Rodker: “Foreign-ness” and Modern Jewish Culture'
Dr Ruth Gilbert (University of Winchester), 'Dislocations: Exploring Diasporic Identifications in Contemporary British Jewish Writing'