Session Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Seminar: The Practice and Materiality of Jewish Death, Part 1

Sun, December 13, 10:00 to 11:30am, Sheraton Boston, Beacon D

Session Submission Type: Seminar

Abstract

While Jewish beliefs surrounding death, the afterlife and the end of times have long enjoyed the attention of scholarship, the human practices and material culture in which these very beliefs have been ritualized have received only sporadic and uneven attention, most often in treatments limited to single periods or regions. “The Practice and Materiality of Jewish Death” seeks to remedy this siloed and uneven treatment by bringing together scholars representing a diversity of approaches, perspectives and periods. This variety is the foundation for a dialogue about the roles that material culture and ritual practice have played in the Jewish experience of death, mourning and remembrance across time and space. From the ancestor cults of the Hebrew Bible to letters to the dead in the Israeli press, participants will contribute to a lively dialogue on specific aspects of Jewish funerary customs, ancient, medieval and modern.

The second meeting of this seminar will continue and build on the great success of our first meeting (AJS 2013). The papers selected for inclusion below approach the primary material and textual sources from a diverse cross section of Jewish studies and represent particular disciplines, approaches and topics underrepresented or missing from our first meeting. Where our first meeting was predominated by archaeological and socio-political perspectives, approaches offered for 2015 include anthropology, linguistics, communications, performance studies, social sciences, and biblical and rabbinic literature. Moreover, the scope of the proposed seminar is both chronologically and geographically more diverse this year. Multiple papers from all periods of Jewish history, biblical to modern, are included, as well as a balance of geographical perspectives from Israel and Europe to the Soviet Union and Barbados. This diversity of places, periods and disciplines presents an opportunity to consider holistically the way that different approaches contribute to our understanding of Jewish funerary and memorial practices. Discussion will be organized across three days according to the interrelated categories of 1) practices, rituals and customs, 2) materiality, artifacts and archaeology, and 3) identities, communities and communal boundaries. Contributions below are organized according to this scheme.

———

PROSPECTIVE PARTICIPANTS AND CONTRIBUTIONS

NB: Two prospective participants, Jessica Dello Russo and Karen Stern have been traveling for some time, but promise their registration for the conference shortly. Additionally, there are thirteen contributions offered below. In the absence of a withdrawal, I hope that it might be possible to include a bakers dozen but am happy to help if we must remove a contribution.

PRACTICES, RITUALS AND CUSTOMS

Yahweh as Divine Caregiver: Reexamining Ancestor Cult in the Post-exilic Period

The depiction of Yahweh as divine caregiver in Isaiah 56:3-5 and Ezekiel 37:1-14 draws upon the imagery and individual practices of ancestor cult in ancient West Asia, suggesting the ongoing importance of ancestor cult not only to the Israelite family but also Yahwistic ideology in post-exilic Israel.

Kerry Sonia, Ph.D. Candidate
Religious Studies, Brown University

Dining with the Dearly Departed: Jewish Funerary Feasts in their Greco-Roman Contexts

This paper considers evidence for funeral feasts among Second Temple and Roman period Jews in light of ancestor cults in the Hebrew Bible and similar meals in contemporary neighboring cultures in order to argue that such meals established bonds with the deceased, created group cohesion and solidified hierarchies within their communities.

Alan Todd
Duke Uiniversity

Calendars of Commemoration: Mourning Practices, Jewish Holidays, and the Power of Local Minhag in Soviet Ukraine and Belarus, 1945-1991

Using oral history interviews and archival documents, this paper examines Soviet Jewish commemorative rituals in Ukraine and Belarus after the Second World War in the context of Jewish holidays, exploring the fate of Jewish holidays and mourning rituals in smaller towns and cities.

Sarah Garibova, Ph.D. Candidate
History Department, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Letters to the Dead in the Israeli Press: Reaching Beyond Materiality

This paper explores a current Jewish phenomenon of writing letters in the second person to deceased beloved ones, and their publication in the Israeli popular press, letters that illustrate practices of reaching the dead through the materiality of personal and mass mediums of communication, along with the creation of the dead’s potential presence.

Carolin Aronis, Ph.D. Candidate
Independent Scholar /Univ. of Colorado, Boulder

Recipes on tombstones: Culinary resistance to mortality in Jewish practice

This paper examines the ways that food and cooking, inextricably connected to life, are also deeply intertwined with modern Jewish practices regarding death and resistance to mortality.

Eve Jochnowitz, Food Blogger and Independent Scholar
http://inmolaraan.blogspot.com

2) MATERIALITY, ARTIFACTS AND ARCHAEOLOGY

Living in the Grave: The Herodium Tomb Complex in light of Landscape Analysis and Second Temple Burial Practices

This paper examines the theoretical multi-phased tomb complex at the Herodium and argues that the connection of these structures to Herod’s tomb does not reflect Second Temple Jewish burial practices and ignores the “lived” experience of the site’s inhabitants such that the attribution of these structures to the tomb should be re-considered.

Brian A. Coussens, Ph.D. Student
Dept. of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

A New Structural Analysis of Tomb Typologies in the Ancient Jewish Cemeteries of Rome.

This paper considers a sampling of results of new structural analyses of tombs in the Jewish catacombs of Ancient Rome in order to illustrate how a lack of uniformity in tomb construction and diverse subterranean environments (not only in terms of location, but also, apparently, as regards to site clientele) affects our current perceptions about the development, chronology and distribution of these sites in the suburban regions around Rome.

Jessica Dello Russo, Ph.D. Candidate at the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology (Vatican) and Executive Director of the International Catacomb Society (USA).

Nautical imagery in Jewish burials across the Mediterranean

This paper considers the visual evidence from Jewish burials across the Mediterranean in the Roman and Byzantine periods, taking up in particular the popularity of nautical imagery and its interpretation.

Karen Stern, Assistant Professor
History Department, Brooklyn College of CUNY

Etched in Stone: Language Patterns on the Early Modern Jewish Tombstones of Colonial Barbados

This paper seeks to provide explanations for the shifting patterns of languages used on the Jewish tombstones of Barbados during the early modern period.

Derek R. Miller, Ph.D., Visiting Lecturer
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Richmond


3) IDENTITIES, COMMUNITIES AND COMMUNAL BOUNDARIES

Jewishness in the making in a Christian context: The function of death

This paper explores the social function of death in crystallizing Jewishness during the high middles ages, when identities of Jews and Christians were still blurred.

Sylvie-Anne Goldberg, Directrice des Études
Centre d’études juives, L'École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS)

Places of burial and funeral rituals of medieval jewish communities in Europe: comparison of archaeological data with textual and iconographic sources

This paper considers the archaeological finds from excavations of medieval Jewish burial sites in Europe over the past thirty years together with textual and iconographic sources in order to reach a better understanding of the materialization of death in Jewish communities of medieval Europe, and to distinguish differences with Christian and Muslim rituals and between Sephardim and Ashkenazim.

Philippe Blanchard, Department Member
Institut National de Recerches Archéologiques Préventives (INRAP)

Jewish Mourning in Polish Dress? Symbiosis in Jewish and Polish Burial Culture in the Modern Era

This paper investigates how the material culture of Jewish burial in the Polish lands, long a physical marker of social and religious exclusivity, was shaped by the Polish-Catholic approach to death in the modern era.

Daniel Rosenthal, Post-Doctoral Fellow
Department of Jewish History, University of Haifa

Eshet chayal or Edelfrau: Modern Developments in the Commemoration of Women on Jewish-Viennese Matzevot.

This paper explores the commemoration of women on Jewish-Viennese matzevot in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in relation to socio-cultural developments such as emancipation, religious reform and embourgeoisement, to elucidate the intersectionality of women’s roles in Jewish-Viennese society at the time and the consequent developments in identity and memory.

Tim Corbett, Post-Doctoral Fellow
Center for Jewish History, New York

Sub Unit

Chairs

Discussants