The Development of the Talmud Yerushalmi
05 March 2025, 6:00 pm–7:30 pm

Lecture and book launch by Catherine Hezser
This event is free.
Event Information
Open to
- All | UCL staff | UCL students | UCL alumni
Availability
- Yes
Cost
- Free
Organiser
-
Sara Benisaac
Location
-
Online via Zoomvia zoomzoomWC1E 6BTUnited Kingdom
Based on an understanding of scholasticism as a cross-cultural phenomenon, undertaken by rabbinic, Graeco-Roman, and Christian scholars in late antiquity, this book examines the development of Palestinian rabbinic compilations from social-historical and literary-historical perspectives.It focuses on the compilation of the Talmud Yerushalmi in the context of late antique scholarly practice aimed at preserving past knowledge for future generations. The speaker will provide insight into how rabbinic scholarship in the Land of Israel participated in the wider intellectual practices of Roman-Byzantine times. Beginning with the social, educational, and legal contexts that generated rabbinic knowledge. Catherine Hezser investigates the oral and written transmission of rabbinic traditions to eventually examine the compilation of the Talmud Yerushalmi with a comparative and redaction-historical approach. Integrating Palestinian rabbinic education and scholarship into the context of late antique Graeco-Roman and Byzantine Christian scholarly practices, she demonstrates how rabbinic compilatory techniques resembled but also differed from.those of Hellenistic, Roman, and Christian scholars.Her book highlights how rabbinic compilations are idiosyncratic and create a distinct rabbinic identity. Overall, she argues that rabbinic scholarship was an integral part of late antique intellectual life in the Near Middle East and should be recognized as an Eastern equivalent to Western, paideia-based forms of scholarship in the Roman-Byzantine period and beyond.
About the Speaker
Catherine Hezser
Professor of Jewish Studies at SOAS, University of London
Prof. Catherine Hezser studied Jewish Studies, Theology and Philosophy at the universities of Muenster and Heidelberg in Germany and at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York.
She completed her studies with a Dr. theol. (Heidelberg, 1986) and a Ph.D. in Jewish Studies (New York, 1992). After spending two years as a senior research fellow at Kings College Cambridge (1992-94), she went to the Freie University Berlin to teach and complete her Habilitation in Jewish Studies (Berlin, 1997). Afterwards she did research at the Hebrew University Jerusalem as a Yad Hanadiv - Rothberg Foundation fellow and was granted a Heisenberg Professorship by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
From 2000 to 2005 she was the Al and Felice Lippert Professor of Jewish Studies at Trinity College Dublin and the Director of the Herzog Centre for Jewish and Near Eastern Religions and Cultures. Since 2005 she has been teaching at SOAS, University of London.