Copyists, Collectors, and Curators: Stocking the Rabbinic Bookshelf
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Standing between writers and readers is an often-overlooked ecosystem of printers, editors, and publishers: brokers who make decisions about the form and even content of the texts that spring from the pen of the scholar before they reach the eyes of a reading public. In the case of Jewish legal texts that achieved canonical status over centuries, a special role belongs not only to the printers, but to the preservers of texts before they are published: manuscript copyists, collectors, and curators. In this session we will look at some texts that were written in the Middle Ages but not widely distributed until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and see how their stories are embedded in the objects and people that carried them forward. Attention to the processes by which classical medieval writings entered into the early modern and modern curriculum will invite us into thinking about historical contingencies and the importance of the material text in the making of canons.
About the “Canon in Context” Series
Stepping back and squinting at the major works of the Jewish legal canon dotted across history, many of them appear…puzzling. Centuries of tradition treat the Mishnah, Talmud, and other texts as settled law and as contributions to rabbinic thought. But in their own times, they were outliers. Each one diverged remarkably in form and content from the Jewish writings of their time and place. So how did they get that way, and how did they become canon?
This series explores the historical context of halakhic compilations and codes: who composed them, what were they trying to achieve, and why did they choose the format and the topics they chose? Set aside what you think you know, and encounter these texts in the worlds of their creation.
About the image above: "The Book of Ruth and the Book of Ecclesiastes with Joseph Kara's commentary," ca. 1322, held in the British Library.
Featuring
Joshua Teplitsky
University of Pennsylvania
Joshua Teplitsky is the Joseph Meyerhoff Associate Professor of Modern Jewish History and the Ruth Meltzer Director of the Jewish Studies Program at Penn. His research focuses on the history of Jewish life in early modern Central Europe within the wider context of Jewish/Christian interaction and minority experience. He is also a codirector of the digital humanities project, “Footprints: Jewish Books through Time and Place.” This ongoing collaborative project traces the movement of Jewish books between 1450 and 1800.
Teplitsky received his Ph.D. in Hebrew and Judaic studies from NYU in 2012.
Cosponsors
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Klatt Family and the Harry Stern Family Foundation.
