Nov 16-17: Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age

5th Annual Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age November 16-17, 2012 Taxonomies of Knowledge In partnership with the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania Libraries are pleased to announce the 5th Annual Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age. This year's symposium considers the role of the manuscript in organizing and classifying knowledge. Like today's electronic databases, the medieval manuscript helped readers access, process, and analyze the information contained within the covers of a book. The papers presented at this symposium will examine this aspect of the manuscript book through a variety of topics, including the place of the medieval library in manuscript culture, the rise and fall of the 12th-century commentary tradition, diagrams, devotional practice, poetics, and the organization and use of encyclopedias and lexicons. Participants include: • Katharine Breen, Northwestern University • Mary Franklin-Brown, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities • Vincent Gillespie, University of Oxford • Alfred Hiatt, Queen Mary, University of London • William Noel, University of Pennsylvania • Sara S. Poor, Princeton University • Eric Ramirez-Weaver, University of Virginia • Yossef Schwartz, Tel Aviv University & The Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies • Peter Stallybrass, University of Pennsylvania • Emily Steiner, University of Pennsylvania • Sergei Tourkin, McGill University *Please note: due to some cancellations, the program has been revised. For more information and registration, go to: http://www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/lectures/ljs_symposium5.html.

Methodological Workshops on the Pinkas in Jerusalem

The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem (PBC) A STUDY OF PINKASSIM RESEARCH WORKSHOPS AT THE CENTRAL ARCHIVES FOR THE HISTORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People is honored to invite you to the second year of a series of international research workshops on methodological aspects of the study of Pinkassim (Jewish minute books). The meetings are discussing various types of Pinkassim – communal, communal-societies, Rabbinical court, synagogue, Memorbuch, super-communal organizations – as historical sources, and in relation to their geographic range. Other workshops are dedicated to various thematic aspects, such as gender, law and Halakha, linguistics and paleography. The series also deals with the linkage between Pinkassim and corresponding genres: The place of the communal Takanot in Halakhic and Musar writings; their relationships with the local law; the shift from Pinkassim-based archives to modern archive; and scientific publication of Pinkassim. Among the lecturers: Dr. Dalit Assouline (Haifa), Hadassah Assouline (Jerusalem), Dr. Avriel Bar-Levav (Ra'anana), Prof. Israel Bartal (Jerusalem), Prof. Yaron Ben- Naeh (Jerusalem), Prof. Jay R. Berkovitz (Amherst, MS), Prof. Ted Fram (Be'er Sheva), Dr. Dov Cohen (Jerusalem), Dr. Yehudit Henshke (Haifa), Prof. Gershon David Hundert (Montreal), Prof. Nahem Ilan (Jerusalem), Dr. Maoz Kahana (Jerusalem), Dr. Yaakov Lattes (Ramat-Gan), Dr. Stefan Litt (Jerusalem), Prof. Michael L. Miller (Budapest), Prof. Alan Mintz (New-York), Aubrey Pomerance (Berlin), Prof. Elchanan Reiner (Tel-Aviv), Dr. Noa Shashar (Jerusalem). WINTER SESSIONS Opening Meeting: An Overview Sunday, November 11th, 2012, 15:30-17:00 Prof. Israel Bartal, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem: The Pinkas in its Context: History, Society, and Culture (in Hebrew) 2 Dr. Stefan Litt, The National Library of Israel: Ashkenazi Community Records from the 16th - 18th Century: Their Geographic Range, Form, and Contents (in Hebrew) Second Meeting: Burial Society Pinkassim Tuesday, December 4th, 2012, 15:30-17:00 Prof. Yaron Ben-Naeh, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem: Presents and Coffee, Taxes and Salaries: The Pinkas of the Holy Society of Gravediggers in Izmir (in Hebrew) Dr. Avriel Bar-Levav, The Open University: The Burial Society between Books and Pinkassim (in Hebrew) Third Meeting: Between Genres Monday, December 24th, 2012, 15:30-17:30 Prof. Gershon David Hundert, McGill University: Record-Keeping in 18th-Century-Galicia - Some Problems of Genre Prof. Alan Mintz, Jewish Theological Seminary The Pinkas as a Literary Model in Agnon’s Ir Umeloah (in Hebrew) Dr. Maoz Kahana, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem: The Emergence of the Jewish Coffeehouse in Eighteenth-Century Prague: Halachic Literature and Rabbinic Court Pinkassim (in Hebrew) The spring program will be announced later this year. For details, contact: Tel. ++972-26586249 E-mail: archives@vms.huji.ac.il Website: http://cahjp.huji.ac.il

Humanities and Social Science Post-Docs at Pitt

I wont post all post-docs and fellowships that could possibly apply but are not directly relevant to the history of Jewish books, but I make an exception here since I happen to know about this program and know that it's a good one. The University of Pittsburgh Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences is offering approximately five postdoctoral fellowships in the humanities and social sciences for the academic year 2013-2014. Fellows will teach one course each semester, complete scholarly work, and participate in the academic and intellectual communities of the departments with which they are affiliated and across the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. To foster interaction within the group of fellows and with ongoing concerns of the Humanities Center, the World History Center, and other programs on campus, we seek applicants with projects that engage the concept or practice of comparisonacross time, space, language, genre, discipline or other category. How do we, at this moment, compare? Why do we compare? What can be compared? What do we gain by comparing? What do we lose? We welcome any proposal relating to these issues. We invite applications from qualified candidates in the humanities and social sciences who have received, or will receive, the PhD between September 1, 2011 and April 1, 2013. As part of the application, applicants who have not already received the PhD must submit a letter from their dissertation chair with the scheduled defense date. The annual stipend will be $45,000. Fellows may apply for an additional year renewal. For more information or to apply, visit http://www.as.pitt.edu/postdoctoral-fellowship-program. Applications must be received by 5 p.m. EST on March 1, 2013. We expect to announce the awards by April 15, 2013. The University of Pittsburgh is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer and educator. Women, minorities, and international candidates are especially encouraged to apply. Contact: www.as.pitt.edu/postdoctoral-fellowship-program postdoc@as.pitt.edu Website: http://www.as.pitt.edu/postdoctoral-fellowship-program

News from the Library of Congress

Upcoming Exhibition October 25, 2012 through March 16, 2013 The exhibition will be on view 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Saturday, from Oct. 25, 2012, through March 16, 2013, in the South Gallery of the Thomas Jefferson Building at 10 First Street S.E., Washington, D.C. To help us celebrate the opening we are planning a number of events, starting with a talk by Dr. Emile Schrijver, Curator of the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, University of Amsterdam, on Thursday, October 25th, at 12 noon in our Reading Room: The Jewish Book since the Invention of Printing We are also pleased to announce the publication of our latest book: Perspectives on the Hebraic Book The Myron M. Weinstein Memorial Lectures at the Library of Congress The book will be launched with a panel discussion at noon on Monday, October 29, by some of the outstanding scholars who contributed to it. The discussion, which will take place in LJ119 (rather than the usual LJ220, our Reading Room), will be followed by a book sale and signing.

Libraries and Cultural Memory Conference Budapest

New Programs at the Library of Congress

Upcoming Exhibition October 25, 2012 through March 16, 2013 The exhibition will be on view 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Saturday, from Oct. 25, 2012, through March 16, 2013, in the South Gallery of the Thomas Jefferson Building at 10 First Street S.E., Washington, D.C. To help us celebrate the opening we are planning a number of events, starting with a talk by Dr. Emile Schrijver, Curator of the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, University of Amsterdam, on Thursday, October 25th, at 12 noon in our Reading Room: The Jewish Book since the Invention of Printing We are also pleased to announce the publication of our latest book: Perspectives on the Hebraic Book The Myron M. Weinstein Memorial Lectures at the Library of Congress The book will be launched with a panel discussion at noon on Monday, October 29, by some of the outstanding scholars who contributed to it. The discussion, which will take place in LJ119 (rather than the usual LJ220, our Reading Room), will be followed by a book sale and signing. For more information on these and many other upcoming events, please click on: http://www.loc.gov/rr/amed/Upcomingevents/UpcomingEvents.html

Kiev Fellowships Announced

from the George Washington University website: "Kiev Judaica Research Fellowship Winners Announced The I. Edward Kiev Judaica Collection of the George Washington University Libraries is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2012-2013 Kiev Judaica Collection Research Fellowships. Awarded every two years, the Fellowships provide stipends of $750 for a GW undergraduate and $2,500 for a graduate, post-graduate, or independent scholar to conduct research using the Kiev Judaica Collection. The Senior Fellowship has been awarded this year to Professor Barry Trachtenberg , director of the Judaic Studies Program at the University of Albany, State University of New York. Prof. Trachtenberg will make use of the bibliographic and other resources of the Kiev Collection in the completion of his book-length study on the Algemeyne Entsiklopedye, the first comprehensive encyclopedia in Yiddish, launched in Berlin in 1932 on the eve of the Nazi period. Prof. Trachtenberg, who received his doctorate from the University of California, Los Angeles, has lectured and published widely on the history of Yiddish scholarship. "I'm thrilled to have been awarded the Kiev Fellowship. The staff and diverse Yiddish and Hebrew-language resources of the Kiev Judaica Collection will be of tremendous help with my research project on the Yiddish encyclopedia," said Dr. Trachtenberg. The recipient of this year’s Kiev Junior Fellowship is Ms. Aviv Becher, a Judaic Studies and English major at GW. Her planned Honors thesis in Judaic Studies and English will examine the relevance of modern Hebrew poetry to Jewish religious life in Israel and the Diaspora. In the course of her interdisciplinary research, Ms. Becher will be able to make use of a variety of Hebrew, literary and liturgical materials in the Kiev Collection. Ms. Becher stated: “I am grateful for the opportunity to deepen my studies of Modern Hebrew poetry by tracing historically the theological roots of the discipline in the Kiev Collection. The Collection is such an asset to the university and I feel fortunate to have such free access to its holdings.” These awards mark the second iteration of the Kiev Fellowships. The first Senior Fellow was Dr. Jonathan Skolnik, Assistant Professor of German at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, who worked on German, Hebrew, and Yiddish Writers in 1920s Berlin, focusing in particular on German-Jewish poet Else Lasker-Schüler. The first Junior Fellow was Ms. Robin Janofsky, a GW History major and pre-Law student, who wrote about the American Jewish community’s relationship to Abraham Lincoln; her Honors thesis is now held in the Lincoln Presidential Library. Established by Dr. Ari and Phyllis Kiev in 1996, the Kiev Judaica Collection is based on the private library of Dr. Kiev’s father, Rabbi Dr. I. Edward Kiev (1905-1975), one of the preeminent Judaica librarians of the 20th century. Housed since 1998 in the Kiev Room of the Gelman Library, the collection contains more than 28,000 volumes, along with Jewish graphic art, archives, recorded music, ephemera, artifacts and ritual objects. For more information visit http://library.gwu.edu/collections/kiev"