Personal Info

Photo

About Me

I am a cultural historian of Jews in early modern central Europe. My book To Tell Their Children: Jewish Communal Memory in Early Modern Prague (Stanford University Press, 2014) uses textual and material sources to document the ways in which Jews living in this central, populous community from about 1580 to 1730 recorded their own local past and thought about how posterity would recall them. It was reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement and Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, among others. It has also been published in Czech translation. I have also written on Jewish processions in  honor of the birth of heirs to the Habsburg throne. I am now working on writing and publication by early modern Jewish women.

As Judaica Librarian at Brandeis University, I am responsible for the library’s leading Judaica collection and especially for supporting students, faculty and staff in its use. I also love teaching adults Jewish history and related topics, and I accept some freelance writing and speaking engagements.

Simultaneously, I serve as Senior Lecturer in Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College, where I teach one to two courses a a year. In the past, I have taught at Harvard, Wesleyan and St. Anselm College, on topics as diverse as the roles of Jews in American television, museum and display, women and gender in Jewish history and in medieval and early modern Europe. I give public lectures on themes including gender and Judaism, Jewish history and collective memory, and television in American Jewish culture.

Recent Publications

Book

To Tell Their Children: Jewish Communal Memory in Early Modern Prague. Stanford University Press, 2014.

Articles & Book Chapters

“Women Wrote: Glikl in Context”  in In geveb: a Journal of Yiddish Studies (July, 2024).  Special issue: “Old Yiddish Literature: Historical and Cultural Perspectives.“

Abstract: Glikl bas Judah Leib, known since the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry as Glück­el of Hameln, has long been laud­ed as a unique voice in Ashke­nazi his­to­ry. Glikl is the only Jew­ish woman — and one of just a hand­ful of ear­ly mod­ern Jews — who has left us a book-length, auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal work. Her writ­ten work is unique in that respect, and in the qual­i­ty of its nar­ra­tive style. At the same time, char­ac­ter­iz­ing Glikl as an ​“extra­or­di­nary” woman dis­torts the his­tor­i­cal record. Many women in Glikl’s cir­cles — the upper, though not high­est, eco­nom­ic and social stra­ta of late sev­en­teenth- and ear­ly eigh­teen-cen­tu­ry Ger­man Jew­ry — read, wrote, con­duct­ed busi­ness, and raised fam­i­lies. While no sin­gle work by anoth­er woman com­pares in terms of its size and scope, this arti­cle demon­strates that var­i­ous ele­ments of both the form and con­tent of Glikl’s writ­ing can be found in the work of her con­tem­po­raries. A sur­viv­ing will left by Rivkah Sinzheim of Mannheim, Ger­many, pro­vides points of com­par­i­son to Glikl’s mem­oirs in its sense of mor­tal­i­ty and in address­ing moral instruc­tions to the author’s chil­dren. Beila bas Perl­hefter wrote an intro­duc­tion to a book com­posed by her hus­band, at her urg­ing, in mem­o­ry of sev­en of their chil­dren, that nar­rates a bib­li­cal tale like­wise cit­ed by Glikl. The two women use the sto­ry in sim­i­lar ways in draw­ing out its moral mes­sage, but their styl­is­tic choic­es vary great­ly. The com­par­i­son high­lights both a shared cul­tur­al vocab­u­lary and Glikl’s unique artistry. Read­ing Glikl along­side these con­tem­po­raries thus com­pli­cates and deep­ens our under­stand­ing of gen­der roles in ear­ly mod­ern Ashke­naz, and of this extra­or­di­nary woman.

“A Jewish Easter Lamb: Cultural Connection and Its Limits in a 1716 Prague Procession.” In Connecting Histories: Jews and Their Others in Early Modern Europe, ed. Francesca Bregoli and David Ruderman. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. Pp. 154-70, 275-79.

Media Coverage

https://www.jta.org/2020/07/27/culture/how-did-europes-jews-cope-with-a-17th-century-plague-this-350-year-old-memoir-offers-a-glimpse

Social Media

Country Focus

Expertise by Geography

Eastern Europe, Western Europe

Expertise by Chronology

Pre-17th century, 17th century, 18th century, Early Modern

Expertise by Topic

Book History, Gender, Higher Ed, Libraries & Archives, Material Culture, Religion, Women