Ernest Gellner: an intellectual biography

Catherine Hezser finds that John A. Hall’s biography of one of the most prominent social anthropologists of our time provides fascinating reading on issues and debates which are still of utmost importance. Ernest Gellner: An Intellectual Biography. John A. Hall. Verso. 2011. Paperback edition

Oral and Written Communication and Transmission of Knowledge in Ancient Judaism and Christianity

This paper examines the contexts of oral communication and the use of written messages in Josephus’ writings, the New Testament, and rabbinic literature, and discusses the possible reasons for using orality or writing in the respective Jewish and Christian contexts in antiquity. It is argued that an individual’s social power depended on his position within the communication network and his ability to control and manipulate the dissemination of knowledge among his co-religionists. Mobility was an important means of creating these networks and the most mobile rabbis would have been the most well-connected

Book review: violence and understanding in Gaza: the British broadsheets’ coverage of the war by Dávid Kaposi

Instead of asking who is innocent and who should be blamed, the media should start to treat the Israel-Palestine conflict as a story of mutually painful but very real human relations, argues Dávid Kaposi in his new book. Catherine Hezser hopes that journalists will take up Kaposi’s suggestions and initiate a more complex, balanced, and historically-informed discourse on Israel and Hamas/Palestinians

Book review: the history of the kiss! the birth of popular culture by Marcel Danesi

How should we make sense of the iconic act of the kiss? How and when did it become a vital sign of romance and love? In this book, Marcel Danesi argues that the romantic kiss had its origins in the medieval court ritual. He aims to explore how the kiss emerged in the context of adultery and non-traditional amorous relationships. He takes the reader through medieval poetry and romance literature to modern paintings, movies, and pop songs, arguing that its romantic incarnation signalled the birth of popular culture. Catherine Hezser finds that The History of the Kiss is too light on analysis and lacks a convincing argument to make it useful for academic reading

Rabbinic Body Language: Non-Verbal Communication in Palestinian Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity

This study constitutes the first comprehensive examination of rabbinic body language represented in Palestinian rabbinic sources of late antiquity. Catherine Hezser examines rabbis’ appearance and demeanor, spatial movement, gestures, and facial expressions on the basis of literary and social-anthropological methods and theories. She discusses the various forms of rabbis’ non-verbal communication in the context of Graeco-Roman and ancient Christian literary sources and in connection with the material culture of Roman and early Byzantine Palestine. Catherine Hezser convincingly shows that in rabbinic literature body language serves as an important means of rabbis’ self-fashioning. Rabbinic texts create the image of a particularly Jewish type of intellectual who functioned and competed for adherents within the highly visual and body-conscious environment of late antiquity