All meetings start at 8.00pm with tea served at the end of the meeting. The venue is the Marian Oppenheim Hall, Edinburgh Hebrew Congregation, 4 Salisbury Road.
October 16th 2011: Dr Ben Outhwaite: “The Cairo Genizah, a not-so-horrible history of the Jewish Middle Ages”.
The remarkable treasure trove of manuscripts preserved by the Jewish community of medieval Cairo continues to astound researchers with the detailed picture it paints of life in the Middle Ages. Far from being ‘nasty, brutish and short’, life for the Jews of the Genizah world encompassed a period of prosperity, relative political power and a great flowering of intellectual endeavour. For the last hundred years, discoveries made among the nearly quarter of a million Genizah manuscripts have given us unparalleled access into the hearts and minds of a cultured, urbane and sophisticated society.
November 13th: Dr Maria Diemling: “Nursing babies: Christian wet-nurses and Jewish families. A case study in Jewish-Christian relations in the Early Modern Period”.
This talk will discuss the practice of wet-nursing in the context of Jewish-Christian relations. Until the development of formula for infant feeding in the 19th century, wet-nurses were the only safe alternative to maternal breastfeeding. Generally speaking, more Jewish women needed wet-nurses than there were Jewish women who could provide this service and therefore Jews had to look outside their communities for women who could fill this need. This raises interesting questions such as the nature of relations between employers and servants across religious and cultural boundaries, concerns about food, discussions about the moral qualities of mothers and wet-nurses and fear of pollution. It also allows us some insight into the roles women played in establishing links with other women outside their specific culture and adds to our understanding of the complexity of Jewish-Christian relations.
November 27th 2011: Dr George Wilkes: “Wars of Liberation, Wars of Religion: a Jewish Guide that some have called Great”.
A reading of Franz Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption, one of the most influential Jewish works of theology of the twentieth century, with an eye to our own time. Conceived on the front line of the First World War, the book scorns the arguments both of pacifists and of their opponents. Who are the fanatics today? What does it mean to engage with the grim reality of war? Rosenzweig has some interesting answers – but his work also provokes the question: should we pay especial heed to any writer who invokes a Jewish approach to war and peace?
December 11th 2011: Film Evening: to be announced.
January 8th 2012: Sir Malcolm Rifkind KCMG QC MP: “Israel and the Middle East”.
This talk needs no introduction. We are privileged to welcome Sir Malcolm Rifkind back to the Lit for what, as always, promises to be an erudite and inspiring address from a leading statesman of our times.
February 26th 2012: Patricia Allerston: “ ‘Child of the Ghetto’? Sickert’s Portrait of Israel Zangwill”.
The speaker, who is Head of Education, National Galleries of Scotland, will speak about the 1904 portrait of Israel Zangwill, the famous Jewish novelist and playwright, by the artist Walter Sickert. She will discuss what light the portrait sheds on the quick pace of change affecting Jewish thinkers and intellectuals in the late 19th/early 20th century.
March 11th 2012: Stephen Bowd: “Jews in early modern travel literature”.
The speaker will explore traveller accounts of Jews and their communities, mostly in Germany and Italy, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with a view to establishing whether the travel writing aided greater Christian understanding of Jews or, by making them ‘exotic’, simply strengthened their division.
