Date/Time
Date(s) - 28 May 2012
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Location
University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School for Communication
Category(ies) No Categories
The History Department Presents:
THINKING WITH THE PAST
David Ruderman, Joseph Meyerhoff Professor of Jewish History, University of Pennsylvania
“The People and the Book: Print and the Transformation of Jewish Culture”
Introduced by: Arthur Kiron, Schottenstein-Jesselson Curator of Judaica Collections, Van Pelt Library, and Director of the Library at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies
DATE: Wednesday, March 28th
TIME: 5:00PM
LOCATION: Annenberg School for Communication, Room 110 (3620 Walnut St., Philadelphia PA 19104)
Like other European communities, Jews were profoundly affected by the invention of print in the fifteenth century and eagerly and swiftly embraced the printed press in publishing numerous Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino books in subsequent centuries. Prof. Ruderman’s lecture describes the transformation of Jewish culture in early modern Europe through the discovery of print looking at the changing ways Jews acquired knowledge, studied and transmitted their cultural legacy, and expanded their cultural horizons in significant ways. The lecture will focus, by way of illustration, on four significant Hebrew books that left their profound impact on Jewish readers for centuries to come.
David B. Ruderman is the Joseph Meyerhoff Professor of Modern Jewish History and Ella Darivoff Director of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to coming to Pennsylvania, he taught at the University of Maryland [1974-83] and at Yale University [1983-94]. He is the author of many books and articles including The World of a Renaissance Jew, 1981; Kabbalah, Magic, and Science, 1988; A Valley of Vision, 1990; Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe, 1995, 2001, published also in Italian and Hebrew; Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key: Anglo-Jewry’s Construction of Modern Jewish Thought, 2000; Connecting the Covenants: Judaism and the Search for Christian Identity in Eighteenth Century England, 2007, and Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History, 2010. Three of these books, including the last, won national book awards in Jewish history. He has also edited or co-edited five other books and co-edited two popular textbooks. He is a past president of the American Academy for Jewish Research. The Teaching Company has produced two of his Jewish history courses, each in 24 lectures. In 2001, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture honored him with its lifetime achievement award for his work in Jewish history.
This event is free and open to the public. Book signing to follow; books provided by the Penn Book Center.
Sponsored by the School of Arts & Sciences.
For more information, please contact
Nari Baughman
[email protected]