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The Culture of Jewish Objects

What makes an object Jewish? The question invites other questions about the significance of objects within Jewish culture and whether one can speak of a culture of Jewish objects. Jews have obviously used diverse objects throughout their long history and some of these have been endowed with specifically Jewish significance. Ritual objects, for example, associated with Jewish religious practices immediately come to mind. Sabbath observance, with its candle holders, Kiddush cup, challah plate, and spice box just to name familiar objects, involves a range of Jewish artifacts that simultaneously expand on and deviate from sacred meaning associated with synagogues or the ancient Temples. But what about other, more mundane, objects that are integral to Jewish life yet not associated with sacred time or space? How does one think about buildings and decorations, book covers and design, kitchen structures and cooking utensils, clothing and jewelry? In 2009-2010, the Frankel Institute theme will examine the construction of Jewish objects. Engaging current developments in the field of Material Culture, we will study the purpose, use, and aesthetics of Jewish “things,” as well as the ways they have been embraced and contested throughout history. In focusing on the culture of Jewish objects, the Institute will explore relationships among the physical, visual, spiritual, and textual over a broad span of time and place.

This year’s cohort of scholars spans the globe geographically—Tel Aviv and Amsterdam, London and Haifa, and Chicago—and academically, with topics ranging from early modern Yiddish books to early modern Ashkenaz life to pre-Monarchic Israel and Second Temple material culture, to Jewish acculturation in Fin-de-Siècle Central Europe and Jewish Parisians and Berliners.

See a list of this year’s colloquia, which are open to the public.

2009-2010 Frankel Institute Fellows:

  • Michal Artzy
    distinguished visitor, University of Haifa
  • Leora Auslander
    University of Chicago
    “Strangers at Home: Jewish Parisians and Berliners in the Twentieth Century”
  • Shlomo Berger
    University of Amsterdam
    “The Construction of a Cultural Artifact: Early Modern Yiddish Books and the Materializing of Text”
  • J.P. Dessel
    University of Tennessee, Knoxville
    “In Search of Biblical Elders: Public Space and Rural Elites in Pre-Monarchic Israel”
  • Naomi Feuchtwanger-Sarig
    Tel-Aviv University
    “Jewish Life in Ashkenaz in the Early Modern Period: Proposing a Reconstruction”
  • Judith Goldstein
    Vassar College
    “Jews and Rosaries: Making Intercultural Objects in Contested Spaces”
  • Oren Gutfeld
    University of Michigan
    “Jewish Material Culture in the Judean Shephelah during the Second Temple Period: Beit Loya as a Case Study”
  • Sheila Jelen
    University of Maryland - College Park
    “Photographing Eastern European Jewry: Popular Ethnography and the Post-Holocaust Anthological Imagination”
  • Jenna Weissman Joselit
    distinguished visitor, George Washington University
    “The View From the Gallery: Why Jewish Museums Matter”
  • Alexandre Kedar
    University of Haifa
    “The Judaization of the Israeli Land Regime: 1948–2008”
  • Michal Kravel-Tovi
    postdoctoral fellow, Hebrew University
    “Materializing the New Jewish Self: Material Culture in the Jewish Conversion Process”
  • Rachel Neis
    University of Michigan
    “Ancient Jewish Visual Culture”
  • Vanessa Ochs
    University of Virginia
    “Jewish Object Lessons”
  • Paul Reitter
    Ohio State University
    “Clothes Make the German: Jewish Acculturation and the Practice of Everyday Life in Fin-de-Siècle Central Europe”
  • Josephina Rodriguez-Arribas
    Warburg Institute / University of London
    “Toward a Cultural History of the Astrolabe in Jewish Cultures”
  • David Stern
    distinguished visitor, University of Pennsylvania
    “Through the Pages of the Past: The Jewish Book in History”
  • Jason vonEhrenkrook
    postdoctoral fellow, University of Michigan
    “Jewish Statues: How Jews ‘Used’ Free-standing Sculpture in Greco-Roman Antiquity”
  • Chava Weissler
    Lehigh University
    “Spirituality and Art in the Jewish Renewal Movement”
  • Oded Zehavi
    University of Haifa
    “T’ka Beshofar (Sound the Great Shofar); the Unanswered Cry of the Shofar”
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