Monday, February 26, 2007
Elliott Horowitz, Professor of Jewish History at Bar Ilan University and Visiting Professor at Johns Hopkins University
Mild Men or Wild Men? The invention of the Non-Violent Jew
4:30 pm, 115 Mirvis Hall
Reception to follow
Professor Horowitz is one of the leading historians of the Jewish experience in medieval and early modern Europe and is Co-Editor of the Jewish Quarterly Review, the oldest English-language academic journal devoted to Jewish studies. He is the author of numerous studies in Jewish social and cultural history, including Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (Princeton University Press, 2006). This recently published book has raised important questions about the ways in which modern historians have treated past episodes of violence among Jews and how modern agendas of Jews and non-Jews have led to the creation of the image of the Diaspora Jew as non-violent.
(Students from Medieval Jewish Civilization and Jewish Mysticism should recognize Professor Horowitz’s name as the author of the articles on “Coffee, Coffeehouses, and the Nocturnal Rituals of Early Modern Jewry,” “The Eve of the Circumcision,” and the chapter on Italian Jewish culture in Cultures of the Jews.)
Cosponsored with Jewish Studies, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and History.
