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2008 Early Modern Workshop Announcement
Our topic in 2008 will be "Law: Continuity and Change in the Early Modern Period." It was chosen because various shifts in the legal sphere are among the many changes that mark the early modern period as transitional. These include issues of communal self-governance as well as the relationship of Jews to the laws and courts of the lands in which they lived. It is our goal to look at the primary texts through both an historical and a jurisprudential lens, since we believe that such an interdisciplinary dialogue will add much to our understanding abut how law evolves, and how it affects and is affected by historical developments. The 2008 workshop will address these issues, in an attempt to understand better what types of legal developments are characteristic of the early modern period. As in previous workshops, topics will be considered from a multi-regional perspective. Some topics that we hope to address and discuss include:
- Charters, privileges, and Jews living under multiple systems of law
- Questions of jurisdiction and Jewish appearances before various secular and/or church courts
- The development of lay community governments, their enforcement of law, and the civil procedures involved
- Changing roles of rabbis and of lay communal governments
- Print and its role in the popularization and/or codification of law
- The development of merchant law
- The interplay between law and social change
- Changing conceptions of the nature and role of law and their significance for the Jews' legal status.
It is our goal to look at the primary texts dealing with questions of law in the early modern period through both an historical and a jurisprudential lens. The vision is that such an interdisciplinary dialogue will add much to our understanding abut how law evolves internally, and how it affects and is affected by historical developments. The title of the workshop, “Law: Continuity and Change in the Early Modern Period” is designed to stimulate thinking about the links between pre-modern and modern conceptions, practices, and uses of law.
Program
Sunday, August 17- 5:30 pm Welcome reception
- 6:00 pm Richard Ross, “Law: Continuity and Change in the Early Modern Period.” (keynote address)
- 7:30 pm Dinner
- 8:30-9:30 Breakfast
- 9:30-10:30 Ted Fram, "Expanding Legal Horizons"
- 10:30-11:30 Elimelech Westreich “The Legal Status of the Wife in Ashkenazi Jewish Legal Tradition: Continuity and Change in the Sixteenth Century”
- 11:30-11:45 Coffee Break
- 11:45-12:45 Stefan Litt, "Takkanot Kahal and the origin of communal structures in a Franconian village community in the 17th century"
- 12:45-2:00 Lunch
- 2:00-3:00 David Horowitz, "Challenging Herem in Early Modern Hamburg"
- 3:00-4:00 Anne Oravetz Albert “The Herem as the Source of Authority of the Lay Governing Council”
- 4:00-4:30 Coffee Break
- 4:30-5:30 Miriam Bodian, "Evasion as a Legal Tactic: The 1616 Amsterdam Regulations Concerning the Jews"
- 5:45 Dinner
- 8:30-9:30 Breakfast
- 9:30-10:30 Barbara Staudinger, “Under Imperial Protection? Jewish Presence on the Imperial Aulic Court in the 16th and 17th Centuries”
- 10:30-11:30 Yaron Ben Naeh, “Jews at the Court of the Kadi”
- 11:30-11:45 Coffee Break
- 11:45- 12:45 Adam Teller, "Trying Issues: Polish-Lithuanian Jews under Multiple Jurisdictions"
- 12:45-2:00 Lunch break
- 2:00-3:00 Ben Ravid, “When the Indelible Sacrament of Baptism Met Mercantile Raison d'Etat”
- 3:00-3:15 Coffee Break
- 3:15-4:15 Ken Stow “The Jews and Ius Commune”
- 4:30-6:00 Roundtable (Bernard Cooperman, Richard Ross, Suzanne Stone)
- 6:00 Dinner