Visit HBI’s Scholars at AJS

HBI is proud of our current scholars in residence and research associates who will be presenting at the 54th annual conference of the Association for Jewish Studies, Dec. 18-20. This conference, the largest annual gathering of Jewish Studies scholars in the world, will feature more than 1,200 attendees and 190 sessions along with programming, awards ceremonies and a major book exhibit of leading publishers. 

Below are the sessions featuring HBI’s affiliates, including our director, Lisa Fishbayn Joffe, our visiting scholars in residence and our research associates. Join us for a session if you are registered for #AJS22. Please check your conference program for session locations and updates. 

 

Session 5, Monday, December 19, 2022 8:30-10:00 am

MEDITERRANEAN IMAGINARIES: RABBINICS IN COMPARATIVE  CONTEXT 

Chair: Sara Ronis, St. Mary’s University, Texas, HBI Scholar in Residence

Bringing the Bible to Babylonia: The Bavli’s Infusion of the  

Mesopotamian landscape with Biblical narratives 

Omer Shadmi, Haifa University 

Saving Face with David: Echoes of b. Sanhedrin 107a-b in Tafsīr and Late  Midrash 

Madeline Wyse, University of California – Berkeley 

Tractate Kuttim and the Emergence of Jewish Dhimmitude, Eliav Grossman 

CONTESTING JEWISH MASCULINITIES 

Chair: Keren R McGinity, USCJ, HBI Research Associate

“I Could Not Live a Double Life”: Giora Manor, the Kibbutz, and the  Dynamics of the Transparent Closet, Dotan Brom, Tel Aviv University

Sidney Franklin’s Verónica Pass: The First American Bullfighter and His  Construction of Queer Jewish Masculinity, Emily Robins Sharpe, Keene State College

The first Hungarian transgender children’s book? Gender nonconformity  in Jewish author Zsuzsa Kántor’s Szerelmem, Csikó (1973), Bogi Perelmutter, University of Kansas

“There is No Prize at the End of the Movement”: Alon Karniel’s Queer  Choreographic Structures as Jewish Diaspora, Hannah Kosstrin, The Ohio State University)

Session 3, Sunday, December 18, 2022 2:30-4:00 pm 

QUEERING JEWISH STUDIES

Moderators: Anna Hajkova, University of Warwick

Gregg Drinkwater, University of Colorado, Boulder 

Discussants: Rafael Balling, Stanford University

Aleksandra Gajowy,University of College Dublin

Carli Snyder, City University of New York, Graduate Center

Max Strassfeld, University of Arizona, HBI Scholar in Residence

Mir Yarfitz, Wake Forest University Department of History

Session 4, Sunday, December 18, 2022 4:15-5:45 pm

GENDER, EMBODIMENT AND ANIMALITY IN RABBINIC TEXTS 

Chair: Yoel Kretzmer-Raziel, Achva Academic College

Constructing Corpses: The Babylonian Talmud and the Fetal Dead 

Sara Ronis, St. Mary’s University, Texas, HBI Scholar in Residence

The Animalization of Illness in Rabbinic Literature: Models of Illness and Rabbinic Subjectivity, Shulamit Shinnar, Columbia University

“Torah scholars who are similar to women, but act mightily like men;” Once again on construction of rabbinic masculinity Roni Shweka, Bar Ilan University

Session 4, Sunday, December 18, 2022 4:15 pm – 5:45 pm 

DIASPORA WITHIN AND BEYOND JEWISH POLITICS 

Discussants: Mara Benjamin, Mt. Holyoke College,  

Marla Brettschneider, University of New Hampshire, HBI Research Associate

Julie E. Cooper, Tel Aviv University

Session 5, Monday, December 19, 2022 8:30-10:00 am

MEDITERRANEAN IMAGINARIES: RABBINICS IN COMPARATIVE  CONTEXT 

Chair: Sara Ronis, St. Mary’s University, Texas, HBI Scholar in Residence

Bringing the Bible to Babylonia: The Bavli’s Infusion of the  

Mesopotamian landscape with Biblical narratives 

Omer Shadmi, Haifa University 

Saving Face with David: Echoes of b. Sanhedrin 107a-b in Tafsīr and Late  Midrash 

Madeline Wyse, University of California – Berkeley 

Tractate Kuttim and the Emergence of Jewish Dhimmitude, Eliav Grossman 

JEWISH WOMEN ACROSS CONTINENTS 

Chair: Marsha Dubrow, The Jewish Theological Seminary of America

“Call Forth My Southern Blood”: Performing Confederate Jewish  Womanhood, Heather Nathans, Tufts University

Cosmopolitanism and Cochin’s Jewish Women, Bindu Malieckal, Saint Anselm College, HBI Research Associate

Contributions to a Mizrahi Women’s Living Archive in the Face of Israeli  Ethnonationalism, Ilise Cohen 

Session 7, Monday, December 19, 2022 1:15-2:45 pm

BEYOND MEASURE: JEWISH WOMEN’S BIOGRAPHY AND THE APPRAISAL OF WORTH 

Chair: Julia Sharff, The University of Toronto

Miriam Karpilove and the Yiddish Middlebrow

Jessica Anne Kirzane, The University of Chicago

Mary Antin as American Religious Seeker

Rachel B. Gross, San Francisco State University, HBI Scholar in Residence

Jessie Sampter: A Poet to Forget? Sarah Imhoff, Indiana University

Respondent: Laura Leibman, Reed College

Session 8, Monday, December 19, 2022 3:00-4:30 pm

TRANSING BIBLICAL CHARACTERS: TRANS LENSES ON TEXTUAL INTERPRETATION 

Moderator: Max Strassfeld, University of Arizona, HBI Scholar in Residence

Discussants: Rachel Adelman, Hebrew College

Esther Brownsmith, MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society

Tyson Herberger, University of Southeastern Norway

Jane Nichols, Yale University

Madadh Richey, Brandeis University 

Session 10, Tuesday, December 20, 2022 8:30-10:00 am 

RELIGION AND SECULARISM IN THE YISHUV AND ISRAEL 

Chair: Michal Raucher, Rutgers University, HBI Scholar in Residence

Jewish Nationalism and Religion: The Hebrew Bible and the Formation of the “New Jew” 

Yitzhak Conforti, Bar-Ilan University

Shabbat According to their Halacha: Worship Rituals and Secular Observance Amongst Israelis on the Weekend, Stav Shufan, Bar Ilan University

Educational Prayer in Mandatory Jerusalem: The Case of the Evelina de Rothschild SIDDUR for Girls , Rueven Gafni, The Department for Eretz-Israel Studies, Kinneret Academic College)

JEWISH SOCIOLINGUISTICS AND IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION 

Chair: Keren R. McGinity, USCJ, HBI Research Associate

Distinctively Jewish? Personal Names of American Jews, Sarah Bunin Benor, Alicia Blumenfeld Chandler, Wayne State University

Hebrew, French, and “Integration;” Confronting Community Change through Language Practices in a Luxembourgish Synagogue, Anastasia Badder, The University of Cambridge

Multilingualism and Identity Construction in the Ukrainian Jewish community during Russia’s War against Ukraine, Renee Perelmutter, University of Kansas

Thinking Strategies of Bible Study, Ehud Tsemach, Stanford University

Session 11, Tuesday, December 20, 2022 10:15 am – 11:45 am 

STRUCTURAL INEQUALITIES IN JEWISH DIVORCE PRACTICE: ETHNOGRAPHIC, LEGAL AND TALMUDIC PERSPECTIVES Sponsored by Hadassah-Brandeis Institute 

Chair: Norma Baumel Joseph, Concordia University

“A Distinctly Jewish Form of Domestic Violence”: Transformations in Jewish Communal Discourse Around Domestic Abuse and Get Refusal,  Lisa Fishbayn Joffe, Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, Brandeis University

 “It was Humiliating”: Orthopraxy and power in stories of Get Abuse in Canada

 Deidre Butler, Carleton University,  Betina Appel Kuzmarov, Carleton University

“Scheming Woman, Clever Man: Rabbinic ambivalence towards abusive behavior in Jewish marriage and divorce” Mari Masha Yossiffon Halpern, University of Toronto, HBI Graduate Student Research Assistant

Compiled by Mara Lebovitz, Brandeis ‘24 and Amy Powell, HBI Assistant Director