HJS News
UCL Festival of the Arts May 7-17
Start:
May 7, 2013 1:00:00 PM
End:
May 17, 2013 7:30:00 PM
Location:
various venues, UCL Bloomsbury Campus More...
Europe and the Holocaust - Shifts in Public Debates in Poland, Germany and the UK
The panel investigates shifts in the role of the Holocaust in European
public debates in the recent past. Contrasting developments in Poland,
Germany, and Great Britain, we will identify common threads as well as
differences in perceiving, presenting, memorizing the mass murder of
European Jewries.
More...
Graduate Student Conference: Jewish Spirituality in Eastern Europe
The Yiddish Forverts has recently published a report from the Graduate Student Conference on ‘Jewish Spirituality in Eastern Europe – a Textual Perspective,’ held at the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, UCL on 6-7 June, 2012. The article, authored by conference participant Adi Mahalel (Columbia University), is available online on the website of the Forverts: http://yiddish.forward.com/node/4589 More...
New publication: The Russian-Jewish Diaspora and European Culture, 1917-1937
Over a period of three years, the Hebrew and Jewish Studies Department at
UCL has been cooperating in a research project devoted to 'Cultural Continuitiy
in the Diaspora: Paris and Berlin in 1917-1937', based at the Department of
European Studies and Modern Languages, University of Bath, and in cooperation
with the Centre for European and International Studies at the University of
Portsmouth. The project had been funded by the Leverhulme Trust Academic
Collaboration-International Network scheme. Among the initiators of the project
had been the late John D. Klier. More...
International Graduate Student Conference 2012
The Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at UCL is pleased to announce plans for an International Graduate Student Conference, devoted to explorations of multiple aspects of Jewish spirituality in Eastern Europe, to be held on 5th and 6th of June 2012 in London. The conference organizers invite graduate students and recent PhD holders to submit their proposals. We welcome presentations addressing any aspect of the religious history and religious culture of Eastern European Jewry, with an emphasis on their textual products. We are particularly interested in proposals which open up new perspectives and pose new questions regarding conceptual frameworks and traditional definitions used to describe Eastern Europe in the field of Jewish Studies. Topics may include:
More...
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The Jewish Calendar in Early Islamic Sources
THE JEWISH CALENDAR IN EARLY ISLAMIC SOURCES
A Leverhulme-Funded Research Project
This research project started in May 2010 is in run in conjunction with the AHRC-funded major research project on ‘Medieval Monographs on the Jewish Calendar’, which deals with Hebrew monographs on the Jewish calendar from early 12th-century Spain and in France .
The social and cultural importance of calendars was recognized by all faiths in the Middle Ages, and this explains why medieval scholars became interested in the calendars of faiths other than their own. Islamic scientists and chronographers from the 9th-11th centuries wrote extensively about the Jewish calendar, and their works are an invaluable source of evidence on the rabbinic calendar in this early period. Just as the 12th-century Jewish authors on the same subject, their expositions of the Jewish calendar constitute a rich blend of astronomy and mathematics with the study of chronology, social practices, and religious traditions. They also reflect early Islamic attitudes to Judaism.
This project is focused on the colossal monograph of Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, known in English as Chronology of the Ancient Nations, written in Arabic c.1000 CE, which contains substantial sections on the Jewish calendar and its historical origins. A new edition and translation of the relevant sections of this work will be prepared on the basis of the best manuscripts, which hitherto have been unpublished. Other relevant works of al-Biruni will also be surveyed, as well as a number of tracts on the Jewish calendar that were written in these centuries by several Islamic authors including the eminent mathematician al-Khwarezmi, al-Qaini, and other anonymous authors, which will be similarly edited, elucidated, and published. Questions will be raised about the sources and accuracy of these Islamic writers, why they took the trouble to describe the Jewish calendar, and what these works reveal about the culture and society in which they were produced.
The project is funded by the Leverhulme Trust with an award of £104,790, running from May 2010 to April 2012. It is led by Prof. Sacha Stern (as Principal Investigator), an expert on ancient and medieval Jewish calendars and Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded project (see above), and Mr Francois de Blois (as Project Researcher), a distinguished scholar who has already made a substantial contribution to the study of al-Biruni and of Islamic and Iranian calendars.
