Feminism and Scepticism
The Maimonides Centre established a lecture series which focuses on feminist approaches to and perspectives on scepticism. The Centre invites researchers to give a public lecture on this topic, and—following this lecture—to meet with the female fellows in an informal setting in order to share their experiences and career paths in their academic systems. The female fellows expressed the wish to learn more about academic career advancement opportunities in different countries.
2022: Serena Di Nepi: Self-Questioning Her Own Membership: Doubts, Gender, and Religion in the Roman Ghetto (Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century)
Date
21 June 2022, 18:00
Abstract
The history of women in the ghettos of early modern Italy traditionally revolves around two axes: on the one hand, the exceptional biographies of educated and powerful women (Gracia Nasì, Deborah Ascarelli, Sara Copio Sullam, and so on); on the other, microhistorical analyses of social and economic history (dowry, marriage, work, conversion), which rarely explore the wider culture of “normal” women. This paper aims to test a research (and interpretative) methodology that could overcome this gap and to begin to address issues about the identity and religious tools available to ghetto women. Central to this is the case of the Roman ghetto and the production of documents in Hebrew by and concerning women. The internal registers of Jewish institutions and the dedications on Judaica that Jewish women donated to their synagogues will offer two key sources for this investigation. As is well known, they are mainly written in Hebrew and Italian, with frequent entries in Latin and sometimes in other languages. The decision to write a document in a particular language is not neutral and responds to precise juridical needs (and therefore to the validity of the document in cases of litigation) and also to identitary requirements. What was written in Hebrew and why? And in Italian? How were words and names translated from one language into another? What was always considered untranslatable? How important were the choices of the individual authors? What motivated them? How did this change in cases where women were concerned, and how did it affect them? And finally, what did women understand of such documentation, and how did they act on it?
Serena Di Nepi is a professor of early modern history at Sapienza Universitá di Roma.
Poster
[PDF]
Venue
Hybrid (MCAS/Zoom)
Please contact MCAS for further information and registration.
2021: Resianne Fontaine: The Female Contribution to Generation in Medieval Hebrew Texts: The Issue of Female Semen
Date
April 13, 2021
Abstract
Several medieval Hebrew scientific and medical encyclopedic texts addressed issues related to procreation. Such issues were hotly debated in the Middle Ages since the two main classical authorities on which these texts drew, Aristotle the philosopher and Galen the physician, held quite different views about essential topics in the domain of zoology. One of the topics discussed was the question of what the female contributed to the formation of the embryo and the nature of the so-called female semen. In my lecture, I will examine how some medieval Jewish authors treated these questions.
Resianne Smidt van Gelder-Fontaine studied Semitic languages at the University of Amsterdam (NL). She has taught at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (1994–2001) and in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the University of Amsterdam (2001–2019). In 2007 and 2012, she participated in research groups at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Jerusalem. Her field of research is medieval Jewish philosophy and science, specifically Arabic-into-Hebrew translations. Among her publications are In Defence of Judaism: Abraham Ibn Daud (1990) and Otot ha-Shamayim: Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew Translation of Aristotle’s Meteorology (1995). Forthcoming is A Hebrew Encyclopedia of the Thirteenth Century: Natural Philosophy in Judah ben Solomon ha-Cohen’s Midrash ha-Ḥokhmah. She is involved in the Hamburg PESHAT project and together with Reimund Leicht, she is editor of the journal Aleph: Historical Studies in Science & Judaism.
Poster
[pdf]
Recording
[link]
2019: Ruth Kara-Ivanov Kaniel: Scepticism and Gender. King David in the Image of the Shekhinah
Date
April 2, 2019
Abstract
King David is one of the most colourful heroes of Jewish myth; warrior and poet, sinner and penitent, conqueror and musician, adulterer and Messiah. The many facets of his character are rooted in biblical scripture and continued to develop in the literature of the Midrash and the Kabbalah. Each generation has added new layers to David’s portrait, sketching him in a new light. Indeed, David’s personality reflects the characters and hopes of his interpreters throughout generations. Embodying the hero “with a thousand faces” and representing the messianic idea, David is not merely a private character, but a collective entity, wearing many different forms. In the Zohar, David’s collective image is identified with the Shekhinah, the Assembly of Israel [Knesset Israel] and the Divine Spouse.
Why was this figure of the warrior—the ultimate male, conqueror of cities and kingdoms, the redeemer, who was presented as a masculine hero in both Christian and Jewish literature—“converted” by the Zohar to signify a feminine image? In her lecture, Ruth Kara-Ivanov Kaniel will try to solve this riddle by using questions of scepticism, identity, and gender.
Ruth Kara-Ivanov Kaniel is a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem/Israel.
Poster
[pdf]
Lecture2Go
[link]
2018: Tsippi Kauffman: Hassidism and Gender: Shades of Scepticism
Date
January 30, 2018
Abstract
Did the Hassidic movement’s revolution of the Jewish world include women? We will examine the case of Temer’l Sonenberg-Bergson, a patron of Polish tsaddikim. Using feminist criticism of religion studies, I will demonstrate the implications of the patriarchal approach to setting the boundaries of religious phenomena – in this instance, the question of whether this extraordinary woman may properly be called a hasida. A review of several Hassidic stories will show how Temer’l expressed her Hassidism and how she was viewed within Hassidic circles as a sort of hermaphrodite, with scepticism towards both her femininity and her religiosity.
Tsippi Kauffman is a faculty member of the Department of Jewish Thought at Bar-Ilan University, specialising in Hassidism and Kabbalah. She is the author of In All Your Ways Know Him: The Concept of God and Avodah be-Gashmiyut in the Early Stages of Hassidism (Hebrew).
Poster
[pdf]
2017: Judith R. Baskin: Rabbinic Forensics
Rabbinic Forensics: Distinguishing Egg White from Semen in bGittin 57a
Date
December 07, 2017
Abstract
This lecture begins with a discussion of a brief passage within a passage in bGittin 57a that demonstrates how rabbinic knowledge of a forensic technique for distinguishing egg white from semen protected a woman from her husband’s fabricated accusation of adultery. I then go on to discuss how this investigative procedure is cited in medieval and early modern Jewish exegeses of the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife (Gen 39), where the same forensic test is used to absolve a man who was falsely accused of rape by a woman. Interestingly, this scientific test is also cited in a medieval Muslim source. Additionally, the lecture looks at the values these narratives attach to female passivity and agency, and establishes, as well, how the anecdote about the husband who was found guilty of falsely accusing his wife in
the Talmudic passage is also part of a late ancient polemic against Christianity.
Judith R. Baskin is Philip H. Knight Professor of Humanities at the University of Oregon/USA.
Poster
[pdf]
Lecture2Go
[link]
2016: Channa Pinchasi: On Yalta and Scepticism
Date
July 25, 2016
Abstract
Yalta is a unique figure in Rabbinic literature. In scattered references in the Talmud we are introduced to a knowledgeable, distinguished woman who is a Torah scholar. A short story in Tractate Berakhot sheds a somewhat confusing light on her personality: was Yalta a spoilt and peevish woman or rather a subversive character, through which Hazal, the Jewish sages of the Talmudic era, criticise themselves? During the presentation I will discuss various interpretations of the story, which will guide us between sceptical and antisceptical points of view. These interpretations will refer to the symbolic layers of the story and its context, to traditional and feminist commentaries, and to gender characteristics of the Hebrew language.
Channa Pinchasi wrote her PhD at Bar Ilan University on Gender Constructions in Midrash Eikhah Rabbah, offering a feminist interpretation to this classical Rabbinical text. She is a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and facilitates Heder mi-shelakh, a Beth Midrash for female leaders. Channa Pinchasi is also the director of the Be’eri School for Teacher Education at the Hartman Institute. She lives in Jerusalem and is a mother of four.