The fourth annual Early Modern Workshop in Jewish History, entitled “Jewish Consumption and Material Culture in the Early Modern Period,” took place at the University of Maryland at College Park in August, 2007.

The topic of material culture within Jewish historiography has been explored predominantly in the context of ancient Jewish history.  Unlike early modern European history, or early American history, both of which have been studied from the perspective of material culture and consumption, Jewish history has been predominantly based on texts.  Scholars of early modern Jewish history have tended to see the minhagim (customs) and responsa literatures as a particularly valuable source of information about daily life, but have tended to focus on specific data rather than to explore the significance of Jewish material culture. There are of course well known sources such as memoirs (see the recently published edition of Gluckel of Hameln's memoir by Chava Turniansky), travel accounts, and the "ethnographic" descriptions of non-Jewish observers such as the Buxtorfs (father and son) and converts from Judaism such as Samuel Nahmias (Giulio Morosini, Via della Fede).  It is only recently that questions of the transformation of Jewish culture through consumption and material culture have been raised, by scholars such as Elliott Horowitz, Zeev Gris, Shifra Baruchson, Shalom Sabar, or in art history Vivian Mann and Richard Cohen.  This workshop intends to open up a new venue for inquiry in this field and, in the process, foster links between historians and museums and their curators.   The types of questions the 2007 workshop addressed included:

• Is there a specifically Jewish material culture?  Are there specifically Jewish patterns of consumption?
• How do objects of Jewish daily life (housing, clothing, food, ritual objects) compare to similar categories of objects in non-Jewish daily life?
• Do objects of consumption serve as indications of Jewish social status both within the community and vis-a-vis the outside? What do material possessions and consumption tell about social and personal values at different strata of society?
• Did Jews intentionally seek to distinguish themselves from non-Jews through consumption and material objects? To what extent can the material objects and patterns of consumption be seen as markers of acculturation?

Speakers discussed the representation of Jews and their way of life in art and the use of various types of images and objects by scholars trying to learn about Jewish rituals, customs, and culture: images from Christian sources (Shalom Sabar), beakers (Vivian Mann), cloth and textiles used to make parokhet (Rachel Greenblatt).  Can symbols used in synagogues and books tell us much about the values of the Jewish community? What role did ideology play in public representations of the Jewish community (Limor Mintz-Manor)?  Scholars discussed the usefulness and pitfalls of using inventory records, focusing on what is behind the significance ascribed by historians to material objects (Flora Cassen, Benjamin Ravid/Bernard Cooperman, Miriam Bodian). Can descriptions of rituals and processions in Christian cities tell us anything about material culture and clothing of the Jews (Nadia Zeldes)?  Finally, what about the underclass? What can crime records tell us about the relationship to material possessions of the poorer strata of society (Magda Teter)?

Sponsors

• Wesleyan University’s Jewish and Israel Studies Certificate programs, the Office of Academic Affairs and the Academic Deans, Center for Faculty Career Development; Information Technology Services Department
• University of Maryland’s Louis L. Kaplan Chair of Jewish History at the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies.
• Yeshiva University

↑ Back to top