הפקולטה למדעי הרוח

The Faculty of Humanities | The European Research Council

Religious Changes and Cultural Transformations in the Early Modern Western Sephardi CommunitiesInternational Conference, Monday-Wednesday, 14-16 November 2016Mount Scopus Campus, Beit Maiersdorf Faculty Club, Rooms 502/405

Monday, 14.11.2016 (room 502)

10:30-11:30 Opening Session

Greetings – Moshe Sluhovsky, Director, School of History (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Yosef Kaplan (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) The Sephardim in Jewish and European Contexts – Opening Remarks

11:30-11:45 Coffee break

11:45-13:45 Forming Converso Identities

Chair: Carsten L. Wilke

James Nelson Novoa (University of Ottawa) Sociability and Kinship among the Nação across the Mediterranean and the Atlantic: the Example of the Teixeira Family

Ronnie Perelis (Yeshiva University, NY) Prison Revelations and Jailhouse Encounters: Inquisitorial Prisons as Places of Judaizing Activism and Cross-Cultural Exchange

Natalia Muchnik (EHESS, Paris) Marranos vs. Recusants: Shaping the Markers of Difference (1570-1680). A Comparison

13:45-15:30 Lunch

15:30-17:30 Economy and Community among Italian Sephardim

Chair: Bernard Cooperman

Serena Di Nepi (Sapienza University of Rome) Jews in the Papal States between Western Sephardi Diasporas and Ghettos. A Trial in Ancona as a Case Study (1555-1562)

Mauricio Dimant (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) The Sephardic Community and the Social Practices in the Circuit of Money: Escamot and Letras de Cambio in Livorno during the 17th Century

Nourit Melcer-Padon (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)'No Charity Greater than This': The Fist Statutes of the Livorno Dowry Confraternity

17:45 DINNER RECEPTION (by invitation only)

Tuesday, 15.11.2016 (room 405)

09:30-12:15 Crossing the Atlantic –Sephardi Communities in the New World

Chair: Evelyne Oliel-Grausz

Michael Studemund-Halévy (Institute for the History of the Jews in Germany, Hamburg) Crossing the Jewish Atlantic- The History of the Nação of Hamburg through the Atlantic Lens

Jonathan Schorsch (University of Potsdam) Judaism and Race in the Early Modern Sephardic Atlantic: A New Overview

Jessica Roitman (KITLV, Leiden University) Beyond Binaries: Jews, Blacks, and Eighteenth Century Curaçao

Sina Rauschenbach (University of Potsdam)Patriots at the Periphery: David Nassy of Suriname and his Contribution to Eighteenth-Century Dutch Debates on the Emancipation of the Jews

12:15-14:15 Lunch

14:15-16:15 Markers of Converso Identities

Chair: James Nelson Novoa

David Graizbord (The University of Arizona)Converso Identities: A 'Crisis of Classification' and Its Echoes, 1391-Present

Carsten L. Wilke (Central European University, Budapest) Semi-Clandestine Judaism in Early Modern France: European Horizons and Local Varieties of a Domestic Devotion

Claude B. Stuczynski (Bar-Ilan University)Gallican Confessionalism for Portugal's 'Converso Problem' and the Sephardic-New Christian Experience in Early Modern France

Wednesday, 16.11.2016 (room 405)

09:30-12:15 Mechanisms of Social Discipline

Chair: Moshe Sluhovsky

Bernard Cooperman (University of Maryland) Labeling Deviance in an Early Modern Port Community: Rabbi Raphael Meldola on the Sephardim of Pisa/Livorno

Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld (Amsterdam) Female Fights and Family: Rebecca Pallache and Eva Cohen on Matters of Religion, Justice and Social Standing

Evelyne Oliel-Grausz (Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne/ ERC Con�gMed)Conflict Resolution and Kahal Kadosh Talmud Torah: Community Forum and Legal Acculturation in 18th Century Amsterdam

Alex Kerner (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) The “Livro de Pleitos”: The Leadership of the Spanish & Portuguese Community of London in the 18th Century as a Court of Requests

12:15 -12:30 Coffee break

12:30 -14:30 The Boundaries of Rabbinical Authority

Chair: Yosef Kaplan

Yaacob Dweck (Princeton University) Jacob Sasportas and Problems of Discipline in the Ets Haim Yesiba

David Sclar (Princeton University) Growth of the Medras Grande: Portuguese Rabbinical Studies in 18th-Century Amsterdam

Yocheved Beeri (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)Haham Ya'acov Athias – A Portuguese Rabbi Facing the Winds of Enlightenment and Secularization

14:30-16:15 Lunch

16:15-18:15 Varieties of Cultural Creativity

Chair: Yaacob Dweck

Moisés Orfali (Bar-Ilan University)On the Role of Hebrew Grammars in the Western Sephardi Diaspora

Aliza Moreno (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) The ‘Thesouro dos Dinim’ by Menasseh Ben Israel – Popular Halakhic Literature as a Source of Social History

Einat Davidi (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Joseph Penso de la Vega and the Jewish Baroque