Conference Presentations by Saskia Dönitz
A “Literary” History of Byzantine Hebrew Literature – Methodological Considerations, Symposium: Literary history in a Medieval Eurasian environment: Methodological and interpretive approaches org. by Prof. Panagiotis Agapitos, Mainz, 9-11th January 2023
This lecture will present the state of the art of Byzantine Hebrew Literature with a focus on the... more This lecture will present the state of the art of Byzantine Hebrew Literature with a focus on the Middle and Late Byzantine period. It will give an overview of the existing texts and trends and indicate the gaps and the unknown about this subject due to transmission and state of scholarship. In a second step it will be discussed how it may be possible to conceptualize and characterize these texts and their genres, especially with regard to the Byzantine environment. What kind of genres can be discerned and is it possible to differentiate between periods? It will be explored if concepts like poetry and prose, religious and secular, literary and scientific, and the language register can successfully be applied to Hebrew literature. Are there similarities to be seen in the conceptualizations of Byzantine Christian and Byzantine Jewish texts, genres, periodizations? What may be the reasons for convergences and differences? Which factors need to be considered and why? These reflections can only present a preliminary approach to these questions since much more research needs to be done in this field. Yet, in preparation of an updated introduction into Medieval Byzantine Hebrew literature, this lecture will benefit to a large extent from the discussions during the symposium.
Byzantine Hebrew Book Culture / ICBS Venice, August 26th, 2022
The character and materiality of Byzantine Hebrew Book Culture has hardly been examined by schola... more The character and materiality of Byzantine Hebrew Book Culture has hardly been examined by scholars of Hebrew Codicology and Paleography. However, a particular Byzantine script has been identified and can be used to establish a corpus of Byzantine Hebrew manuscripts. The number of transmitted manuscripts rises close to the number of manuscripts that survived from Ashkenaz. Thus, this corpus needs further research and examination since its contribution to our understanding of Hebrew Book culture in the Middle Ages and the relation between Jewish and Christian book production in Byzantium cannot be underestimated. This paper is a first step into the design of a project on Byzantine Jewish manuscript culture.
The Other Side: Byzantine Jewish Polemics Against Christians / ICBS Venice, August 23rd, 2022
The Jews in Byzantium suffered from relatively few persecutions in comparison to their brethren i... more The Jews in Byzantium suffered from relatively few persecutions in comparison to their brethren in Central Europe. However, in the Middle Byzantine period, a number of forced conversions are reported in the sources. For the later period, the evidence is scarce. Yet, beside the actual violence, there also was vivid polemic between Jews and Christians in Byzantine literature. In this lecture, the Hebrew polemical material transmitted from the Middle Byzantine period is presented. Despite the fact that only a few texts survived which can be seen as polemical works per se, there is quite a lot of anti-Christian material to be found in Hebrew Bible commentaries, in Karaite exegesis and in historiographical texts. In reaction to Christian claims and reproaches, Jewish authors discussed classical anti-Christian topoi together with contemporary topics. Contrasting the Christian view on Jews in hagiography, the presentation will focus on examples from Jewish polemics against Christians taken from these sources in order to show how the other side writes back.
Commenting on the Hebrew Dante – How to Read Hebrew Poetry in 16th century Italy / World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, August 9th, 2022
The popularity of Dante’s divina commedia within the Jewish communities in Italy resulted in a nu... more The popularity of Dante’s divina commedia within the Jewish communities in Italy resulted in a number of works that adopted and reworked Dante’s masterpiece. Moshe da Rieti’s Miqdash Me'at is one of them. This 14th century poet took Dante as a model and through his poetic work conflated Jewish history and Jewish learning with contemporary discussions of philosophy and its role in Judaism. Similar to Dante’s commedia, Rieti’s text was subject to exegesis and interpretation which found its way into a commentary written in the 16th century. As part of the project currently undertaken in Frankfurt and Paris on Moshe da Rieti’s Miqdash Me'at, the lecture will present first results of the analysis of the manuscript transmission and the scope of this commentary. The anonymous commentator used various exegetical strategies in order to deal with the poetic text. He discusses textual problems, gives references to biblical, rabbinic and contemporary sources and expounds the allegories and metaphors that permeate Rieti’s poetry. The commentary also provides an insight into the scholarly discourse held in the 16th century on Judaism, philosophy and mysticism. A view into the transmission of the commentary shows the relevance and the role Rieti’s work was assigned within the Jewish library of 16th and 17th century Italy.
“Hebräisch, Griechisch, Latein – Sprachen und Sprachpraxis der Juden in Byzanz“, Kolloquium Johannes Heil, Wissenschaftskolleg München, 19-21 Mai 2022
"Sefer Yosippon in the Genizah - Versions and Variations", Workshop Workshop "Seeking Yosippon", org. by Carson Bay, Bern May, 11-12th, 2022
This lecture will focus on the manuscript tradition of Sefer Yosippon. Since David Flusser publis... more This lecture will focus on the manuscript tradition of Sefer Yosippon. Since David Flusser published his edition in 1980/81, several new manuscript witnesses were found. The most important ones are the fragments preserved in the Cairo Genizah which provide the earliest textual version of Sefer Yosippon known to us. The fragments will be introduced and their internal relations will be discussed. Several examples from the transmitted text will be compared to Flusser’s edition in order to get a broader picture of the differences and variants between the text of the fragments and the Flusser’s version. The relevance and consequences of this analysis will be presented to the audience in order to enable a discussion in the context of a new edition and in the broader picture of the transition between the Latin sources and the Hebrew text.
“Sefer Yosippon and its Hebrew Manuscripts - The State of the Question”; Conference – From Josephus to Yosippon and Beyond, organized by Carson Bay, J.W. van Henten, Michael Avioz, 23.-26.08.2021 (Zoom)
„Silversmith and Silk Dyer – Byzantine Jewish Craftsmanship“, Workshop Jewish Craftspeople in the Middle Ages: Objects, Sources and Materials, organized by Andreas Lehnerz, Maria Stürzebecher, Joseph Lifshitz and Simha Goldin, Tel Aviv University, 03.-05.03.2021 (Zoom)
„Strategies of Legitimization in Jewish Historiography“, Vortrag im Rahmen der Konferenz „Aneignungen der Geschichte“, M. Bubert, WWU Münster, 25.11.2020 (Zoom)
“Medieval Byzantine Jewry – A Less Violent History?”, Colloquium Historical Dimensions of Religious Violence, Invitation by Prof. Dorothea Weltecke, Historisches Kolleg München, 29.-31.01.2020
“The Byzantine Oeuvre in the Middle Ages: Aspects of Literature and Exegesis” at the Department for Literature/Hebrew University Jerusalem, invitation by Prof. Yehoshua Granat, March 17th, 2019 (in Hebrew)
"Byzantine Commentaries on Song of Songs and their Christian Context“, Vortrag in der University Tel Aviv, 16.10.2018, invitation by Prof. Meira Polliack (in Hebrew)
“Byzantine Jewry between East and West – The Exegetical Works of Shemarya ha-Ikriti”, lecture at 70th World Congress of Jewish Studies Jerusalem, 06.-10.08.2017
“Sefer Hasidim in Manuscripts – Transmission and Compilation/A Response to Ivan Marcus“, Conference Sefer Hasidim in Context, Jerusalem 19.– 22.03.2017
“Ashkenazic Use of the Past: Rewriting Second Temple Literature”, Conference Ashkenaz at the Crossroads of Cultural Transfer II: Tradition and Identity, Frankfurt am Main, 29.11.–30.11.2016
Sefer Yosippon, the medieval Hebrew paraphrase of Flavius Josephus, was rewritten several times. ... more Sefer Yosippon, the medieval Hebrew paraphrase of Flavius Josephus, was rewritten several times. The various recensions are enriched by textual passages that demonstrate the reception and understanding of this text by its medieval readers. One of these interpolations consists of a reshaped story of the legatio ad gaium, narrated in Antiquities 18, which integrated motifs of the Toledot Yeshu-tradition. This lecture will place this passage from Sefer Yosippon in the context of the Toledot Yeshu-tradition and discuss their intertextual relations. It will be shown how the readers/copyists of Yosippon constructed a counter-story against the Testimonium Flavianum, the famous reference to Jesus in Josephus's Antiquities. The narrative strategies of polemics inherent in this passage will be asked for the way the religious "other" is defined. Around this interpolation several stories about seduced and seducing women who are told or pretend to give birth to the messiah are added as well. These stories will be analyzed for their representation of feminine values in the context of the Jewish-Christian discourse in the Middle Ages.
“Shemarya ha-Ikriti – Exegete and Poet?”, Workshop The Interplay of Medieval Jewish Poetry and Bible Exegesis, Frankfurt a.M. 20.–21.08.2014
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Conference Presentations by Saskia Dönitz