History Commons^™

“For We Jews Are Merciful”: Emotions And Communal Identity, Elisheva Carlebach

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Assigning character traits to national groups was a key pastime in the early modern period, part of a process of consolidation of European national identities. This presentation examines the way emotional characteristics were assigned to emerging national groups. In particular, it focuses on the way in which Jewish communal sources employed language and terms of emotion to characterize Jewish communities. Internally the language often functioned to call notice to an ideal that the community was failing to live up to.

The following texts are excerpts from Jewish communal records, as noted for each excerpt

A Short History Of Horror: Early Modern Jews And Their Monsters, Iris Idelson-Shein

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The following sources offer a short survey of one particularly troubling source of fear—and indeed horror—in the early modern period, namely—the womb. A mysterious, uniquely feminine organ, for centuries the womb has been the stuff of fantasies and nightmares. It has been imagined at one and the same time as a haven and a hell, a nest and a tomb, a source of pleasure and pain, life and illness.

The following excerpts come from different genres, spaces, and languages. The first two excerpts are taken from two medical compendiums written around the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The …

For The Love Of God: Spiritual Purpose And Mastering Emotions In The Pietistic Writings Of Moses Hayim Luzzatt, David Sclar

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

During the early modern period, Jews lived with an assumed religious tenet to love their God. Biblical texts, including verses used in the liturgical Shema, explicitly commanded believers to wholly and actively do so. In the twelfth century, Maimonides had described a love of God driven by rational adoration of the Torah (and God’s works), which, appropriately realized, would result in a sense of intellectual and emotional fulfillment. Early modern kabbalists took the notion further by desiring to commune with the living God (devekut), channeling all of their faculties, including emotions, towards the spiritual. Both conceptions idealized love …

Rebbe Nachman Of Bratslav's Teachings On Melancholy And Joy, Lawrence Fine

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The several texts presented here are from the teachings of Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav (1772-1810), great-grandson of the Ba’al Shem Tov, and one of the very most significant figures in the history of early Hasidism. They are from part two (tinyana) of Nachman’s most important published collection of teachings, Liqqutei Moharan. These passages each address the subject of melancholy—marah shechora in Nahman’s language--as well as its antidote, joy, simchah. While the avoidance of sadness, and the cultivation of joy, are common motifs in classical Hasidism, Rebbe Nachman’s discussion of them deserves special attention in any …

Emotions In The Margins: Reading Toledot Yeshu After The Affective Turn, Sarit Kattan Gribetz

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

In 826 C.E., Agobard, bishop of Lyon, published a treatise entitled De Judaicis superstitionibus, detailing and ridiculing the ‘superstitions’ of the Jews. The details Agobard recounts make clear that the bishop is referring to a medieval Jewish parody of the story of Jesus’ life, known as Toledot Yeshu (Life of Jesus), composed in Aramaic sometime before the second half of the eighth century and later translated into Hebrew. Toledot Yeshu tells the story of Jesus’ life in a biting, vulgar tone. It was a text composed and used by Jews as an anti-Christian polemic, and as an internal document …

Emotions And Preaching, Sara Lipton

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Jacques de Vitry (b. ca. 1160, d. 1240) was one of the most famous preachers of the high Middle Ages. Born in northern France, he studied at the University of Paris, and in 1210 became a canon regular in the diocese of Liège. Jacques’s most popular collection, the Sermones vulgares vel ad status, contains sermons recorded in Latin but designed to be preached in the vulgar tongue to laypeople, and arranged according the social class and profession of the audience. The sermon transcribed and translated here appears in Jacques’s less popular collection—the Sermones dominicales et festivales. Less popular, because the …

Emw 2016: History Of Emotions/Emotions In History, Fordham University

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The 2016 Early Modern Workshop on “History of Emotions/Emotions in History” was held at Fordham University.

Alongside earlier “turns” such as the linguistic and the cultural, an “emotional turn” has provided historians with a fresh perspective to consider the past. Emotion structures human experience. But emotions are shaped by languages of expression that can have ramifications for human thought and behavior. Historians pursuing research about emotions tend to follow one of two tacks: either to explore emotions as an object of inquiry in its own right (did people in the past “feel” differently than we do today?) or to use …

Experience Is Proof: Texts Versus Observation In Eighteenth-Century Italy, Debra Glasberg Gail

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries marked a significant period in the transformation of scientific scholarship. The Latin philosophical tradition’s dominance waned as empirical methods gained credence. University educated men of science began to trust information actually seen and tested more than knowledge contained in books, especially ancient ones. The larger implications of this transformation -- the questioning of the authority of the written word of the Bible and the accompanying narrative of the origins of the universe -- have received significant scholarly attention. The smaller shifts in the way individuals weighed textual and empirical sources of authority, however, …

Jewish Space And Spiritual Supremacy In Eighteenth-Century Italy, David Sclar

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

This primary text, dated 11 October 1720, is taken from a pinkas belonging to the Jewish community of Padua. It concerns the establishment of an eruv hatserot, a boundary covering most of the city in which Jews would be permitted to carry possessions on the Sabbath. References to contemporary eruvin ordinarily appear in responsa literature. Perhaps uniquely, this document provides communal context for the construction of the Padua eruv. In so doing, it sheds light on the social and religious lives of Italian Jewry in the first half of the eighteenth century.

The document’s appearance as a copied …

Striking A Pietist Chord: Isaac Wetzlar’S Proposal For The Improvement Of Jewish Society, Rebekka Voß

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

In 1748/49, Isaac Wetzlar of Celle in Northern Germany completed Libes Briv (Love Letter), a Yiddish proposal for the improvement of Jewish society. In order to initiate exploration of the complex relationship between Central European Judaism and eighteenth-century Pietism selected sources are discussed that concentrate on the links between Libes briv and the contours of German Pietism. These sources demonstrate that Isaac Wetzlar’s Love Letter (edited and translated into English by M. Faierstein) substantially engages the concepts and initiatives encompassed by Pietist missionary efforts to Jews. The diaries of two travelling missionaries from the Institutum Judaicum in Halle who came …

Johan Kemper's (Moses Aaron's) Humble Account: A Rabbi Between Sabbateanism And Christianity, Níels Eggerz

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Moses Aaron of Krakow, a Sabbatean rabbi, who would later call himself Johan Kemper, chose to convert to Christianity in the summer of 1696. When his mentor, the Lutheran cleric Johann Friedrich Heunisch, brought his mentee's wish before the council of the Free Imperial City of Schweinfurt, Kemper was asked to submit the reasons for his request together with a short autobiography in written form. The outcome was his Humble Account, which appeared in print shorty after Kemper was baptized. A close analysis of Kemper's Humble Account reveals a very subtle yet pronounced anti-Jewish narrative which makes use of …

The Religious Condition Of German Jewries In The First Half Of The 18th Century. Rural And Urban Communities In Comparison, Avi Siluk

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

This presentation focuses on Jewish attitudes towards non-Jews in the first half of the 18^th century as depicted in the travelling journals of Pietist missionaries. If up to that point, interreligious encounter had been a field of interaction between Jewish and Christian scholars, in the 18^th century the missionaries began to engage in conversations on faith with Jews of all social strata, genders, ages and educational backgrounds. Such interactions yielded many different forms of individual and communal Jewish reactions. Examining cases of missionary encounters with the large urban Jewry of Frankfurt (Main) and the smaller, rural kehilah of …

Illicit Sex And Law In Early-Modern Italian Ghettos, Federica Francesconi

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

This presentation explores the changes of attitudes toward illicit sexual relations within the ghetto societies that occurred in Italy between the late seventeenth century and the middle of the eighteenth century, with a specific focus on young Jewish maidservants. It analyzes how Italian Jewish leadership, both lay and rabbinical, acted in regard to the vicissitudes of Jewish women who faced seduction, sexual exploitation, and pregnancy under the Jewish roof. This analysis uses archival sources from both Jewish courts and civic magistracies in the cities of Venice, Mantua, and Modena during the years 1691-1751. Through a combination of paternalism, cohesiveness, innovation, …

Emw 2015: Continuity And Change In The Jewish Communities Of The Early Eighteenth Century, The Ohio State University

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Volume 12: Continuity and Change in the Jewish Communities of the Early Eighteenth Century, Ohio State University, Columbus, August 17-19, 2015

The 2015 Early Modern Workshop on “Continuity and Change in the Jewish Communities in the Early Eighteenth Century” was held at Ohio State University.

Between the late seventeenth century and the middle of the eighteenth century, much of European Jewry (and elements within Ottoman Jewry as well) appear to have shifted from a generally traditional and religious way of life to a way of life that embraced non-traditional and/or non-halakhic practices and fashions. There were no great intellectual or …

The Sabbatean Who Devoured His Son: The Emden-Eibeschütz Controversy And Cannibalism, Shai Alleson-Gerberg

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

At a time when cannibalism captured European imagination and was used as effective propaganda against the ‘other’ within or elsewhere, as well as a test case for the concept of Natural Law, it is hardly surprising to discover similar rhetoric in internal Jewish discourse of the early modern era. R. Jacob Emden’s halachic writing on the subject of modern medicine and his tenacious battle against Sabbateanism, provide illuminating examples of the use of cannibalistic imagery, as this had crystalised in colonial literature from the new world and in religious polemics on the Eucharist. Emden’s halachic position on the question ‘is …

The End Of Jewish Democracy In 18th Century Prague, Joshua Teplitsky

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

One intriguing register for considering continuities and changes in Jewish life in the early eighteenth century is the constitution of the autonomous Jewish community, or kehillah. This institution of Jewish self-government was formed at the nexus of the imposition of governments, on the one hand, and Jewish collective investment in the legitimacy and utility of this form of association, on the other..

Although Jewish communal leadership appears to have been determined by elections in the earlier centuries of this period, by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries an increasing trend towards permanent ruling oligarchies can be discerned. A standing patriciate …

Mvst 4654 Medieval London: Omeka Report Instructions, 2015, Maryanne Kowaleski

Digital Pedagogy: Omeka Medieval London

Instructions for the object and site assignments that will assist students in completing their object and site assignments for the 2015 offering of MV 4654 Medieval London at Fordham University

The Troubles In Northern Ireland, John Francis Cancellieri

Senior Theses

This thesis examines the history of the conflict involving Ireland, Northern Ireland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom that eventually led to the period of time in history known as the Troubles (1968-1998) Within this span of time, a war was fought in Northern Ireland between the Republicans and the Unionists / Loyalists. The Republicans had a strong sense of Irish national identity. They believed and still believe that Northern Ireland should be united with Ireland. The Unionists and Loyalists, on the other hand, were loyal to Britain and the Queen. They believed and still believe in Northern Ireland’s union …

Mvst 4654 Medieval London: Syllabus, 2015, Maryanne Kowaleski

Digital Pedagogy: Omeka Medieval London

Course syllabus for the 2015 offering of MV 4654 Medieval London at Fordham University

Mvst 4654 Medieval London: Bibliography For Reports, 2015, Maryanne Kowaleski

Digital Pedagogy: Omeka Medieval London

Bibliography of resources that will assist students in completing their object and site assignments for the 2015 offering of MV 4654 Medieval London at Fordham University

Emw 2014: Healing, Medicine, And Jews In The Early Modern World, Northwestern University, Evanston And Spertus Institute, Chicago

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Early modern healing and medicine continued medieval traditions and were simultaneously transformed as a result of radical scientific, religious, and social changes. Early modern scholars, pharmacists, medical doctors, and popular healers advanced significant arguments that drew from and shaped new understandings of human nature and subsequently altered the interactions between healing, religion, and society. Such changes afford a unique opportunity to discuss forms of Jewish interaction with Christian and Muslim societies and developments within Jewish learned and popular culture. They also engage and test the limits of new topics and methodologies employed in early modern studies, enriching the evaluation of …

Mussolini, Romano. My Father, Il Duce: A Memoir By Mussolini’S Son. Carlsbad, Ca: Kales Press (Distributed By W. W. Norton), 2006., Sarah Sullivan Fcrh '12

The Fordham Undergraduate Research Journal

Written by the son of 20th-century dictator Benito Mussolini, this story is of a son’s unreserved, blind love for his father—even if his father had been a fascist monster responsible for the slaughter of millions— makes for a complicated and conflicted memoir, which quickly became a bestseller in Italy.

Eschatological Avengers Or Messianic Saviors? Violence And Physical Strength In The Vernacular Legend Of The Red Jews, Rebekka Voss

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The vernacular legend of the Red Jews allows us to explore the relationship of violence, physical strength and power during the early modern period, extending the traditional treatment of Jews and violence in that era. Violence is often linked to power and physical strength. Violence is typically associated with ruling authorities and the realm of the majority, rather than in the hands of an oppressed minority, as in case of Diaspora Jewry, which has been identified with victimhood. Moreover, in historiography, the perception of Jews as targets of aggression perpetrated by “the other,” whether Christian or Muslim, corresponds to the …

Plague And Violence Against Jews In Early Modern Europe, Samuel Cohn

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Based on Italian chronicles and archival sources Samuel Cohn examined questions of violence against Jews during plague.

Killed Or Be Killed. Realities And Representations Of Violence In Seventeenth-Century Ukraine, Adam Teller

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Based on sources related to the 1648 Chmielnicki Uprising, Adam Teller examined "The Realities and Representations of Violence in Seventeenth Century Ukraine"

2013 Emw: Jews And Violence In The Early Modern Period, Emw 2013

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The 2013 Early Modern Workshop on “Jews and Violence in the Early Modern Period” sought to contextualize the violence involving Jews in the early modern period in order to understand this crucial aspect of their experience. Participating scholars tried to complicate not only the over-simplified notion of Jews as solely victims of violence in the premodern period, but also examined complexities of the question of Jews as victims of violence.

Keynote address by Robert Davis of Ohio State University, "Typologies of Violence in Early Modern Europe"

Emw 2012: Cross-Cultural Connections In The Early Modern Jewish World, Emw 2012

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Understanding the processes of cultural change in early modern history as a process of creating and negotiating social, cultural, and religious borders has become a commonplace in the last generation of research. This perspective has great validity for Jewish history, too: early modern Jews also found themselves in a range of new settings, which allowed a considerably greater range of interactions with their non-Jewish neighbors than had previously been the case. It was not only geographical dispersion that broadened their social, economic, cultural and religious contacts with their non-Jewish surroundings: new ideas and ideologies deriving from the thought of the …

Medicine As A Cultural Connection Between Jews And Christians In Early Modern Italy, Berns Andrew

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

This presentation explores cultural connections between Jews and Christians in sixteenth-century Italy through the lens of medicine. I present and analyze two texts. The first (from 1587) is a letter from Girolamo Mercuriale, a Catholic, to Moses Alatino, a Jew. The second (from 1592) is an excerpt from a consilium sent by the Jewish physician David de' Pomi to Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino.

It discusses the following texts:

1. Girolamo Mercuriale to Moses Alatino,"On a Uterine Tumor, Painful Urination, and Constipation, for a noble young Jewess, [sent] to the Jewish Physician Moses Alatino. Consultation #16" From: Hieronymi …

'My Happiness Overturned': Mourning, Memory And A Woman's Writing, Rachel Greenblatt

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

In the late seventeenth century, Beila Perlhefter mourned her seven children in the introduction she wrote to a Yiddish ethical work written (at her urging, she tells her readers) by her husband, Ber. While the autobiographical information provided in the introduction is sparse indeed, it shares certain generic characteristics with other self-writing by early modern Jews from Prague, including Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller's "Megillat eivah." At the same time, each voice is a different voice, all the more so the rare instance of a woman's voice, and this short piece defies easy categorization.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Sefer …

Personal Life In The Context Of Personal Death, Avri Bar-Levav

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

In his ethical will, R. Naphtali Ha-Kohen Katz (1650? - 1719), a central rabbinic figure in his time, gives specific instructions for death rituals that he wants, and also addresses his family in warm words, while mentioning meaningful events of his past. The presentation will analyze this personal voice of the beginning of the 18th century.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• The Ethical Will of R. Naphtali Ha-Kohen Katz