‘Race in Jewish Worlds: Antiquity to the Present.’

10-12 July 2023

Sponsored by the Department of History, Geography and Social Sciences, Edge Hill University & the European Association for Jewish Studies.

The 2023 British and Irish Association for Jewish Studies conference (#BIAJS23) will explore how race has affected, and been a part of, Jewish lives and beliefs across Jewish time and space, around the globe. In addition, BIAJS2023 includes papers on a variety of issues in Jewish Studies, and will provide the opportunity for participants to network with peers in Jewish Studies from Ireland, the UK, continental Europe, North America, and the Middle East.

We will also explore how we can maximise and promote the contribution of Jewish Studies to wider society, and support future generations of Jewish Studies scholars in the challenges that they face as they leave Graduate School and enter the academy.

Conference sessions will take place at the Ormskirk campus in the Business School; Wilson Building; and the Law & Psychology Building.

10 July 2023
Business School Ground Floor

9.00 Welcome coffee

Business School
Lecture Theatre, B001, Ground Floor
9.45 Conference Welcome


10.00 Session 1
Antiquity

Business School B101

Chair: David Horrell, University of Exeter.
 
‘Antisemitism in Scholarship on the Dead Sea Scrolls and Bible?’
Lindsey Davidson, University of Bristol.
 
Integration Rather than Racism: The Observance of Kashrut as a Case Study for the Integration of Minorities in the Roman Army.’
Haggai Olshanetsky, University of Basel.
 
‘Laughter in Second Temple Literature: The Reception of the Abraham and Sarah-Cycle in Jubilees and the Genesis Apocryphon.’
Hannah Capey, University of Southampton.
 
‘The City of Refuge Between Theology and Politics.’
David M. Feuchtwanger, Hebrew University.		Antisemitism and its Contexts

Business School B102

Chair: Hannah Ewence, University of Chester.
 
‘Jews and Other ‘Others’ – Intersectional Entanglements in Germany’s Long 19th Century.’
Christine Achinger, University of Warwick.
 
‘The 1894 Attack on Dr. Solomon Solis-Cohen in JAMA: An Exploration of the Question of Jews as a Race being Physicians.’
Nicole Siegel, Fordham University.
 
‘Semites and Jews in Victorian Britain.’
David Feldman, Birkbeck, University of London.		Modern Jewish Literatures

Business School Lecture Theatre B001

Chair: Laura Leibman, Reed College.
 
‘Interfaith Marriage Goes Wrong: Belle Kendrick Abbott’s Leah Mordecai.’
Irina Rabinovich, Holon Institute of Technology.
 
‘Entering the Tribal Duck Pond: How Amy Levy’s Novel, Reuben Sachs, Deconstructs Philosemitism in both George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda and her convert character, Bertie Lee-Harrison.’
Sherry Ashworth, University of Manchester.
 
‘War: Attempts to Comprehend the Catastrophe through Jewish Culture in Russian-Israeli Literature.’
Aleksei Surin, Bar Ilan University.		Anti-Racism in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Business School B103

Chair: Ben Gidley, Birkbeck, University of London.
 
‘An Alliance to Advance Education and Social Justice: Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald.’
Rachel Kovacs, City University of New York.
 
‘Beyond Jewish Racial Justice Activism: Can Jewish Tradition Guide Us in Times of Black Lives Matter?’
Armin Langer, University of Florida.
 
‘Teaching Maus in an Age of Racial Panic and Reckoning.’
Barry Trachtenberg, Wake Forest University.

‘Innovative Approaches to International Education on the Holocaust and Genocide.’
Rachel Kovacs, City University of New York.		Jews and Racial Others in the British World after 1945.

Wilson Building W19
 
Chair: Gavin Schaffer, University of Birmingham.
 
‘Did British Jews Become ‘White Folks’ in Post-War Britain?’
Joseph Finlay, University of Southampton.
 
‘Some are Only an Eighth Jewish!’ –Race, Refuge and Escaping the Holocaust to Kenya.’
Eliana Hadjisavvas, Birkbeck, University of London.
 
‘Challenging the Postwar Australian Antisemitism Paradigm: The Case of Shanghai’s Jewish Refugees, the White Australian Policy, and the Cold War.’
Sara Halpern, Cardiff University.
11.30 Coffee Break
12.00 Session 2
Creative Jewish Feminist Theology

Business School B101

Chair: Miranda Crowdus, Concordia University.
 
‘God as Agunah? A Feminist Reinterpretation of Divine Repulsion (Mi’us) in Jeremiah.’
Natalie C. Polzer, University of Louisville.
 
‘Midrashic Poetry by Contemporary American-Jewish Women on Sarah and Hagar Relationship.’
Anat Koplowitz-Breier, Bar-Ilan University.
 
‘Miriam in Shreveport: Marian D. Moore’s Poetic Black Jewish Midrash.’
Brian Hillman, Indiana University.		Contemporary Antisemitism

Business School B102

Chair: Christine Achinger, University of Warwick.
 
‘Defining antisemitism and anti-racism in the international arena 1997-2005.’
Emilie Wiedemann, Birkbeck, University of London.
 
‘Religious Change and Antisemitism in Eastern Europe.’
Nadia Beider, University College London.
 
‘Conspiratorial Reading Against Antisemitism and Migrantphobia’
Edmund Chapman. Maynooth University.
 
‘Antisemitism, Holocaust Memory, and the Decline of Christian Britain.’
David Tollerton, University of Exeter.		British Jewish History

Business School B001 Lecture Theatre

Chair: Julie Kalman, Monash University.
 
‘Suits & Boots: Women’s Charity Leagues, Textiles, and Naughty Schoolchildren.’
Laura Leibman, Reed College.
 
‘From Economic Migrant to Refugee: The Concepts of Jewish Migration Politics in Fin-de-Siècle Britain.’
Cynthia Cheloff, University of Oxford.
 
‘They are not one of us’: The racialisation of Eastern European Jewish immigrants within the Anglo-Jewish Community.’
Karolina Sierzputowska, Jagiellonian University.
 
‘Jewishness and Jewish Race on the Pages of The Jewish Chronicle (1901-1910).’
Apolonia Kuc, Jagiellonian University.
Contemporary Diaspora

Business School B103

Chair: James Renton, Edge Hill University
 
‘Flying – From Here to the Moon: Jewish Encounters in Aviation History.’
Astrid Zajdband, Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, FL.
 
‘The Changing Significance of Synagogues in Light of Covid-19.’
Jessie Clark, University of Bath and Historic England.
 
‘Voice, Action, and Representation: Jewish Girl Activists.’
Cheryl Weiner.		What’s in a Name? Contemporary Debates in Mizrahi/MENA/Arab Jewish Studies

Wilson Building W19
 
ROUNDTABLE
 
Karen EH Skinazi, University of Bristol.
 
Michal Nahman, University of the West of England.
 
Vanessa Paloma Elbaz, INALCO and University of Cambridge.
 
Yair Wallach, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
 
Samuel Sami Everett, University of Southampton.
 
Clive Gabay, Queen Mary, University of London.
 
Joseph Finlay, University of Southampton.
13.30 Lunch

Business School Ground Floor
15.00 Keynote Lecture

Business School B001 Lecture Theatre

Chair: Lindsey Davidson, University of Bristol.

‘Jewish Ethnicity versus Christian Inclusion? Religion, Race, and Whiteness in the Field of New Testament Studies”
 
Professor David Horrell, Professor of New Testament Studies and Director of the Centre for Biblical Studies, University of Exeter.
16.30 Coffee Break

Business School Ground Floor
17.00 Session 3
Ancient and Medieval Worlds

Business School B101

Chair: Alexander Samely, University of Manchester.
 
‘Ambrose of Milan and the ‘Hermeneutical Jew.’
Geert de Korte, Theologische Universiteit Apeldoorn.
 
‘Did the Babylonian Talmud use an “Ancient Tosefta”?’
Hillel Gershuni, University of Haifa.
 
‘Tevi Crosses the Border.’
Tzachi Cohen, Ono Academic College.		Jews and Photography

Business School B102

Chair: Yulia Egorova, Durham University.
 
‘The Draw of Colour: Jews in Photographic Research.’
Michael Berkowitz, University College London.
 
‘Making Jewish Refugees Visible: The Photographic Construction of the SS Exodus 1947.’
Steven Samols, University of Southern California.
 
‘Ernst Leitz of Wetzlar: Helping the Persecuted.’
Frank Dabba Smith, Leo Baeck College and UCL.		Borders & Colour Lines

Business School B001 Lecture Theatre

Chair: Yair Wallach, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
 
‘Blackness’, Historiographical Biases, and Heritage Erasure: Kochi Jew Town as a Case study.’
Ophira Gamliel, University of Glasgow.
 
‘You are Attacking the Sacrosanct of Sacrosanct’: Youth, Childhood and Jewish Whiteness in South Africa 1945-2000.’
Joshua Alston, University of Leeds.
 
“You had buried me, and I’ve come back!”:
Racial Identity and the Haunting Legacy of the Cinematic Dybbuk (1937).’
Zehavit Stern, Hebrew University.

‘Race and Orientalism in the Thought of Ze’ev Jabotinsky.’
Elad Nachshon, Bar Ilan University.		Belonging, Identity, and Safety: #JewishStudiesMatters in/and the Contemporary World.

Business School B103
 
ROUNDTABLE
 
Jennifer Creese, University of Leicester.
 
Mie Astrup Jensen, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
 
Jennifer A. Thompson, California State University, Northridge.
 
Karen E.H. Skinazi, University of Bristol.
 
Gavin Schaffer, University of Birmingham.		Sephardi Music and Liturgy

Wilson Building W15

Chair: James Renton, Edge Hill University.
 
‘Pureza de Sangre and the Racialization of Sound: Sephardi and Arabo-Andalusi cosmologies.’
Vanessa Paloma Elbaz, University of Cambridge.
 
‘North African Liturgy and the Religious Thought of Albert Memmi.’
Ilana Webster-Kogen, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

































18.30 PKC Millins Lecture

Welcome drinks

Business School Ground Floor

Chair: James Renton, Edge Hill University.

Business School Lecture Theatre B001

‘Black/Beautiful: A History.’

Professor Miri Rubin, Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History, Queen Mary, University of London & President, Jewish Historical Society of England.





11 July 2023
9.30 Welcome coffee
Business School Ground Floor

10.00 Session 1
Medieval & Early Modern Worlds

Business School B101

Chair: Brian Hillman, Indiana University, Bloomington.
 
‘Images and Aesthetics in Kabbalah.’
Rosslyn Brown, University of Nottingham.
 
‘The Drama of ‘Welcoming the Sabbath’ in Lurianic Kabbalah: the Repair of Abel’s Murder by Cain that Took Place in the Field.’
Roee Horen, Open University, Israel.
 
‘The Bologna Yerushalmi Fragments.’
Moshe Pinchuk, Netanya Academic College.		Race, Otherness and Migration: The Jewish Experience

Business School B001 Lecture Theatre

Chair: Laura Almagor, Utrecht University.
 
‘Migration of Jewish Traders in the American Midwest and the Myths of Their Native Wives and Children.’
Mara W. Cohen Ioannides, Missouri State University.
 
‘Migration Myths as of Expressions of Otherness in Irish Jewish Experience.’
Natalie Wynn, Trinity College Dublin
 
‘Rooted Cosmopolitanism? Representing British Jews and Europe in the post-Brexit Era.’
Sue Vice, University of Sheffield.		Dictatorships

Business School B103

Chair: David Tollerton, University of Exeter.
 
‘Polish Diplomacy and Anti-Jewish Persecution in the Third Reich.’
Kinga Czechowska, Institute of National Remembrance, Bydgoszcz.
 
‘The First Generation of Holocaust Research: Eva G. Reichmann and Remembrance.’
Rosa Reicher, Goethe University of Frankfurt.
Ashkenazi/Sephardi Fault-Lines

Law and Psychology Building– LP0.26

Chair: Karen Skinazi, University of Bristol.
 
‘Ashkenormativity and the Racial Contract.’
Miriam Yosef, University Duisburg-Essen
 
‘When did Ashkenazim become European? Racialising Ashkenazi Jews in Palestine.’
Yair Wallach, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
 
‘ “Mizrahi Rap” in Contemporary Israel: Racial Signification and Ethnic Re-Orientation.’
Miranda Crowdus, Concordia University.

‘Purity of Blood, the Inquisition, and the Sephardic Diaspora.’
Isaac Amon, Jewish Heritage Alliance.
 
From Graduate School to First Jobs

Business School B102

Chair: James Renton, Edge Hill University.
 
ROUNDTABLE

Lindsey Davidson, University of Bristol.

Julie Kalman, Monash University.

Miri Rubin, Queen Mary, University of London, & President, Jewish Historical Society of England.
11.30 Coffee Break
12.00 Session 2
How to Maximise Research Impact in Wider Society

Business School B101

Roundtable

Miri Rubin, Queen Mary, University of London, & President, Jewish Historical Society of England.

Yulia Egorova, University of Durham.

Michael Berkowitz, University College London.

Ben Gidley, Birkbeck, University of London.		Jewish Activists and Conceptions of Race across the 20th Century
 
Business School B102

Chair:Sara Halpern, Cardiff University.
 
‘Are the Jews “Civilised”? Jewish Nationalism, International Law, and the Standard of Civilisation.’
Rotem Giladi, University of Roehampton.
 
‘Reinvention at Bandung: Jewish Displaced Persons and the new global order, 1943-1962.’
Laura Almagor, Utrecht University.
 
‘Jewish women and human rights: building horizontal alliances in the Cold War international system.’
Jaclyn Granick, University of Cardiff.		Identity in Israel

Business School B103
 
Chair: James Renton, Edge Hill University.
 
‘The Ascendance of Ethno-National Populism in Israel.’
Yoav Peled, Tel Aviv University.

‘Gender, Ethnicity and Intersectionality: The motives of Ultra-Orthodox Women in Israel to Struggle for their Political Representation.’
Asher Suzin, University of Haifa.
 
‘From Understanding to Resentment: Coping with Hostility in the Yishuv and in Israel.’
Yossi Kugler, Yad Vashem.
 





13.30 Lunch
15.00 Keynote Lecture

Business School Lecture Theatre B001

Chair: Yulia Egorova, Durham University.

‘And Still I Rise: Exploring Socially Engaged Practice in Museums.’

Dr Richard Benjamin, Head, International Slavery Museum on secondment as Visiting Professor of Slavery & Public Engagement, University of Liverpool.
16.30 Coffee Break.
17.00 BIAJS Annual General Meeting.

Business School Lecture Theatre B001
19.00 Jewish Historical Society of England 130th Anniversary Reception.

With classical guitarist, Fernando Gonzalez.

Business School Garden Terrace B201
20.00 BIAJS23 Conference Dinner

Faculty of Health, Garden 41
12 July 2023
9.00 Session 1
Atlantic and Mediterranean Worlds

Business School B103

Chair: James Renton, Edge Hill University.
 
‘Why is there a Black Manservant in a Jewish Morality Painting? Race, religion, and identity negotiation in the seventeenth-century Dutch Atlantic World.’
Zoe Abrahams, Jewish Museum.
 
‘The Assassination of the King of Algiers’: Trading Jews and the Napoleonic Mediterranean.’
Julie Kalman, Monash University.
 
‘Jews and the Empire: The Legal Position of the Jews in the Ottoman Classical Period.’
Talha Kaan Ünlü, Amasya University.


















Entangled Encounters: Jews, Muslims and Racialisation

Business School B102
 
Chair: Ben Gidley, Birkbeck, University of London.

‘Entangled Encounters: Jews, Muslims and racialisation.’
Ben Gidley, Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London.
 
‘Defining Difference: Solidarity, Race and the Liminal Self in Jewish-Muslim Inter-community Networks.’
Yulia Egorova, Anthropology/Centre for the Study of Jewish Culture, Society and Politics, Durham University.
 
‘Faith, Space and Racial identities in One London Borough.’
Daniella Shaw, Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck University of London.
 
‘Whiteness, Race, Indigeneity & Decolonisation among Jewish and Muslim activists online.’
Alyaa Ebbiary, Anthropology, Durham University
 
‘Discourses of Séfarade and being Maghrebi and Jewish in France.’
Samuel Sami Everett, MPI-MMG (Max Planck).
10.30 Coffee Break
11.00 Keynote Lecture
 
‘Telling Jewish Stories on the BBC.’
Mark Burman, Producer, BBC Radio.
12.30 Lunch
END OF CONFERENCE

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