Vienna Jewish Studies Colloquium (VJSC) – Summer Term 2022
Convening Institutions:
- Central European University, Jewish Studies Programme
- Institute for Jewish History in Austria
- University of Vienna, Law Faculty, Institute for Legal and Constitutional History
- University of Vienna, Faculty for Historical and Cultural Sciences, Institute for Judaic Studies
- Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies
Monday, March 7, 6 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Host: University of Vienna, Institute for Judaic Studies
Kosher in Vienna
Christoph Lind
Monday, March 28, 6 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Host: University of Vienna, Law Faculty, Institute for Legal and Constitutional History
Approaching the Manuscript Heritage of Western Ashkenazi Yeshiva Scholarship
Carsten Wilke, Central European University, Departments of History and Medieval Studies, Jewish Studies Program
ABSTRACT | Talmudic academies reached a late bloom in the Germanic lands during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The numerous and mobile Jewish student community practiced an educational culture that was distinct from Christian universities and Haskalah education, yet included moments of convergence. Based on literary and archival studies on the last generation of Western Ashkenazi yeshivot, I will in this lecture present its manuscript legacy as a source for further research on Jewish higher learning. The lecture notes, student essays, responsa, and memoirs add up to a plentiful and attractive corpus in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Yiddish, whose access is, however, largely foreclosed due to its linguistic and palaeographic challenges. In this lecture, I will discuss strategies of gathering and exploring this dispersed material in collaboration between academic historians and present-day yeshiva scholars.
BIO | Carsten Wilke is professor in the Departments of History and Medieval Studies at Central European University, as well as in its Jewish Studies Specialization. He has devoted his research mainly to Sephardic studies, Jewish-Christian relations, and the history of the rabbinate. In the coming VJSC lecture, Carsten Wilke will build on his monograph Den Talmud und den Kant: Rabbinerausbildung an der Schwelle zur Moderne (Olms, 2003), on the collective volume Modern Jewish Scholarship in Hungary (ed. with Tomás Turán, 2016), and on new research in the archival collections and rural genizot of Franconia.
Monday, May 9, 6 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Host: Institute for Jewish History in Austria
TBA
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