Old Texts and New Media: Jewish Books on the Move and a Case for Collaboration

Footprints: Jewish Books Through Time and Place is a database and research project designed to trace books-in-motion. It brings together acts of careful individual research with large-scale quantification and mapping: using inscriptions, owner’s marks, and catalogues of copies of early Jewish printed books. The project is a cooperative endeavor of four project directors, both faculty and librarian, from different institutions each representing different fields of Jewish Studies. With the technical expertise of partners at a university-based center for teaching and learning, a mix of paid and volunteer student, post-doctoral, and library based researchers, the project directors have created a database that is transforming the way research on the history of the book is done. The chapter will address collaboration in three aspects: between project directors; between the project and its contributors (individual and institutional, public and private); and between contributors and users. The chapter argues for a new model of iterative projects that relies in part on networked collaboration rather than only on operations in concert by a small, bounded group

Gazing Through the Watchful Lens - The Advent of Surveillance Cameras in New York City

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College

The Kuzari and the Shaping of Jewish Identity, 1167-1900.

Judah Halevi's Book of the Kuzari is a defense of Judaism that has enjoyed an almost continuous transmission since its composition in the twelfth century. By surveying the activities of readers, commentators, copyists, and printers for more than 700 years, Adam Shear examines the ways that the Kuzari became a classic of Jewish thought. Today, the Kuzari is usually understood as the major statement of an anti-rationalist and ethnocentric approach to Judaism and is often contrasted with the rationalism and universalism of Maimonides's Guide of the Perplexed. But this conception must be seen as a modern construction, and the reception history of the Kuzari demonstrates that many earlier readers of the work understood it as offering a way toward reconciling reason and faith and of negotiating between particularism and universalism

The Paratexts of Jacob Marcaria: Addressing the (Imagined) Reader in Mid-Sixteenth-Century Italy

For a few years in the middle of the sixteenth century (1557-1564), a Hebrew press was active in Riva del Garda (Riva di Trento) under the management of Jacob Marcaria, a physician. The business arrangements of the press seem complicated and difficult to reconstruct (having only the evidence of the printed editions): Marcaria was printer for most of the books and may be considered the publisher of some; for others, he was in partnership with Rabbi Joseph Ottolenghi of nearby Cremona. The activities of Marcaria and Ottolenghi were undertaken with the permission of the Prince-Bishop of Trent, Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo and some of the editions apparently enjoyed his patronage. Madruzzo, host of the renewed Council of Trent in the early 1560s, also patronized Marcaria by hiring him to do contract printing for the Council. Although Marcaria was only the printer for some of the works, he was the guiding force behind the press and apparently served as editor for almost all of the books, designing and drafting the title pages and writing prefaces for many of the works. The output of the press was eclectic--ranging from major halakhic texts to controversial philosophical works, and also including popular ethical works, and liturgical and other ritual works. Marcaria’s paratexts--mainly title pages and prefaces--offer us an opportunity to study the ways in which Hebrew books were marketed in the middle of the sixteenth century. Other than a work on the calendar (which may have been authored by Marcaria) and a commentary on the Passover Haggadah by Isaac Abarbanel, the press seems to have specialized in producing first or second editions of older works, written before the era of print. Much attention in the history of the early modern book has focused on the impact of print on the transmission and dissemination of new works/new texts. Here I will focus on Marcaria’s [attempted] mediation of the encounter between old texts and new readers by looking at his very personal addresses aimed at an imagined reader (literally addressed, in most cases, with the title “to the reader”). The prefaces are not long--usually about a paragraph. Here, I present three representative ones--from a halakhic text, a book of customs, and a philosophical treatise--along with their title pages. I analyze Marcaria’s strategies and place Marcaria’s paratexts in the context of previous work done on the role of paratexts in the history of reading, particularly in early modern Europe. This presentation is for the following text(s): Abraham Klausner, Minhagim (1558) Levi ben Gershon (Gersonides) (1560) The Book of Rabbi Mordecai (1558

The later history of a medieval Hebrew book: Studies in the reception of Judah Halevi\u27s “Sefer ha-Kuzari”

This dissertation examines aspects of the reception of Judah Halevi\u27s Sefer ha-Kuzari in European culture and scholarship from the late Middle Ages through the nineteenth century. This “classic” Jewish theological treatise is an important example of medieval Jewish apologetic as well as the clearest statement of an anti-rationalist stance in medieval Jewish thought. In it, Halevi (c.1075–1141) argues for a strongly ethnocentric version of Judaism and against the universalistic Aristotelianism then beginning to take hold in Spanish-Jewish intellectual circles. The work is at once polemic, catechism, and religious philosophy. Changing interpretation and uses of the work over a long period of time provide us with a revealing window into the history of Jewish thought and culture. This study suggests a need for rethinking paradigms in the academic study of Jewish thought that stress dichotomies between reason and faith, and between universalism and particularism. Such bipolar distinctions must be understood as modern constructions. Halevi\u27s work was often interpreted by late medieval and early modern readers as a way of reconciling reason and faith and of negotiating between particularism and universalism. In addition, this study is concerned with the role of non-canonized texts in shaping intellectual traditions. In two major case studies, focused on Renaissance Italy and the Haskalah movement in Central and Eastern Europe, this dissertation explores the means by which the Kuzari came to be considered a classic or semi-canonical text, through the activities of late medieval and early modern readers. One consequence of this status was the re-interpretation of the text in a way that preserved a religious meaning even when Halevi\u27s metaphysical and physical assumptions were no longer plausible to all readers. Another consequence was the mobilization of the text and its author to provide models and legitimacy for new cultural activity