Center for Religious Studies

This article examines indications from Judeo-Arabic, Hebrew and Latin
sources which suggest that one or more versions of the Toledot Yeshu, theJewish “counter-gospel”, were circulating in Egypt, Castile and northernEurope during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and that this tale wasparticularly popular in Iberia during the thirteenth centuries. The articlefocuses on the tale of the Hebrew youth and the magician in Ibn Sahula’sMeshal ha-Qadmoni, suggesting that Ibn Sahula used elements of the ToledotYeshu which his audience would have recognized, but changed portionsof the Toledot narrative. Ibn Sahula did so in order to shape it into a polemic against Jewish courtiers, too intrigued with Christian culture, women andthe study of magic, astrology, and divination at King Alfonso x’s court.

This essay examines medieval and early modern Jewish reverence for the holy deceased and fear of the dangerous dead themselves or those who had the knowledge to manipulate spirits. I focus specifically on the relationships of women to the dead and to women as members of the dead (both holy or dangerous) in Ashkenazi (Germanic or Northern European Jewish) culture. I maintain that women's own death, especially martyrdom, granted women a degree of holiness and authority that they lacked in life, or as individuals unassociated with the dead. Furthermore, recognition of women's interest in and involvement with the dead increased in the Ashkenazi world during the early modern period. Despite continued disapproval from some circles, men and sometimes women themselves, actively encouraged women's devotion to the dead.

In 2015, a workshop convened by Ana Echevarria and Nora Berend at St Catharine's College, Cam bridge invited medi evalists to discuss contacts between religious minorities in the medi eval period. Participants considered case studies from different historical and geo graphical contexts to analyse a range of groups and individuals and the dynamics of their interactions, while also discussing current uses of the term 'minority'. Concurrently another workshop, organized at Saint Louis Uni ver sity, Madrid, by Luke Yarbrough, discussed the apparent paradox of religious alterity and political power in medi eval polities. The speakers focused on persistent patterns of out-group empowerment that arose from relationships between minorities, both those who lacked access to ideo logical hegemony or political power and elites who were numerical minorities, short on legitimacy and access to mechanisms of local control. Participants also discussed the discourses that such empowerment motivated among the ostensible majorities. Both conferences spurred debate about the implications of being a minority and the limitations of the term 'minority' itself to refer to medi eval realities. It became clear that the topics at hand merited further analysis in the form of a coherent publication that could contribute to broader scholarly discussions of these problems. Although those workshops provided the initial impetus for this collection, to which some of the participants have contributed, the concept and rationale of this volume are new. The contributions of participants in the workshops are joined here by other specialists who have recently pioneered innovative approaches to the topic. The final result provides, we hope, fresh perspectives on how difference was experienced and managed in the medi eval Mediterranean.

In a late thirteenth, early fourteenth century text, the Niẓẓaḥon Yashan, the anonymous Jewish author or compiler adapts Christian anti-hagiographical traditions about the Prophet Muhammad and interweaves this polemical biography of the Prophet with Jews' own anti-hagiographical tradition against Jesus, namely the Toledot Yeshu. I suggest that in this strategy, one sees an "entanglement" of popular, sometimes oral narratives, with more formalized written polemic used by medieval Jews and Christians. Furthermore, by engaging both Islam and Christianity in parallel fashions, and intertwining the polemic against one with the other, the author of the Niẓẓaḥon Yashan sought to sharpen his invective against both. The Jewish adoption of Christian anti-Islamic polemic was a calculated polemical strategy on the part of the Jewish author, on the one hand, and is a testament to the depth of cultural awareness and exchange between medieval European Jews and Christians, not only in Iberia, often recognized as one of the main centers of these activities, but in Northern European, German-speaking lands. The twelfth century has long been recognized as the beginning of a new stage of European Christian approaches to Jewish and Muslim writings, as Christians began to study both Hebrew and Jewish biblical exegesis, and later, the Talmud and Midrash on the one hand, and Arabic, the Qur'an and ḥadīth on the other. While initially, this effort was rooted in a desire to better understand the biblical text by studying it in Hebrew, the learning of Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic and the translation of religious texts in these languages into Latin or European vernacular

An overview of the senses in the study of religion and religious encounter is provided, along with reflections on the ways in which various specific senses were imagined to serve as modes of communication between human beings and between humans and transcendent beings. How the individual case studies collected in this volume inform such a project and further research on religion, the senses, and the role of the senses in religious encounter is a core concern of this introductory essay. We end by suggesting new directions for additional research for an integrated and systematic examination of how senses shape and are used in human encounters with the transcendent and the (human) religious Other. senses, taste, olfaction, smell, touch, visual, hearing, grammar, language incense to express worship of the divine. As such, his study shows that smell is an element in most forms of human and non-human interaction (Stoddart 1990). It is this communicative function, not merely of smell but of most of the senses, on which we intend to focus in this volume. Each sense on the one hand roots humans in their corporeal existence, while on the other provides the means, both literally and also within the symbolic imagination, of creating

Introduction to all essays of the special issue Entangled Histories and Interreligious Encounters - Jews and Christians in Premodern and Early Modern Asia and Africa that is based on the proceedings of the workshop Eastern Jews and Christians in Interaction and Exchange in the Islamic World and Beyond: A Comparative View held in Jerusalem and Raʿanana in June 2016.

Proposals for sessions relating to Jewish topics in all disciplines related to the Middle Ages will be considered, however, since the special topic for the IMC in 2023 is "Networks and Entanglements", proposals which address this thematic concern will be especially welcome. 'Networks' have become a much-employed term in the connected world of the 21st century, and also in scholarship. Historical studies, including medieval studies, have adapted concepts from sociology and digital tools to survey, visualise, and analyse the webs of interaction and relations among individuals, groups, places, artefacts, or polities. These notions emerge from a far-reaching relational approach across disciplines. Networks thus emerge from, or are defined as, multifaceted interdependencies. They highlight linkages between the human and non-human sphere, akin to how medieval people perceived manifold connections between the macro-and the microcosm. 'Networks' can address all kinds of relationships, connections, and correlations, their manifestations and structures, dynamics, and limits.

This book explores shared religious practices among Jews, Christians, and Muslims, focusing primarily on the medieval Mediterranean. It examines the meanings members of each community ascribed to the presence of the religious other at "their" festivals or holy sites during pilgrimage. Communal boundaries were often redefined or dissolved during pilgrimage and religious festivals. Yet, paradoxically, shared practices served to enforce communal boundaries, since many of the religious elite devised polemical interpretations of these phenomena which highlighted the superiority of their own faith. Such interpretations became integral to each group’s theological understanding of self and other to such a degree that in some regions, religious minorities were required to participate in the festivals of the ruling community. In all formulations, “otherness” remained an essential component of both polemic and prayer.