Jews and Health: Bodies, Perceptions, Practices

To register, please email Marci Seder (sederm@upenn.edu).

MONDAY, APRIL 28
 

9:30 am | BREAKFAST 

10:15 am | WELCOME
Steven Weitzman, Ella Darivoff Director, Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies

10:30 am | DISEASE AND DISABILITY

Uzi Rebhun, Hebrew University of Jerusalem ♦
Jewish Demography and Health in Modern Times

Ahuvia Goren, Ben Gurion University of the Negev ♦
Holiness in Broken Vessels: Separating and Linking Physical Disability and Moral Character in Early Modern Jewish Thought

Hannah E. Zaves-Greene, New York University ♦
The State of the Body and the Body in the State: How American Jews Challenged Disability in US Immigration Law

Respondent: Sarah Imhoff, Indiana University
 

12:00 pm | LUNCH 
 

1:30 pm | HEALTHSCAPING
Chair: Ralph M. Rosen, University of Pennsylvania

Marek Tuszewicki, Jagiellonian University in Krakow ♦
“Linasy”: The Controversies and Achievements of Jewish Healthscaping in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Carmen Caballero Navas, University of Granada ♦
Public Health from Within: Jewish Ethics, Medical Discourse, and Households

Benjamin Gordon, University of Pittsburgh 
Water and Wellness in Early Roman Judea: A Health-Oriented Approach to the Ancient Mikveh

Respondent: Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, University of London ♦
 

3:00 pm | BREAK
 

3:30 pm | PRACTITIONERS AND THEIR NETWORKS
Chair: Beth Wenger, University of Pennsylvania

Carla Vieira, School of Social Sciences and the Humanities, NOVA University Lisbon ♦
Mediating Knowledge and Practices: Sephardic Medical Networks and Their Influence on Eighteenth-Century Materia Medica

Magdalena Janosikova, University of Amsterdam ♦
The Intimate Networks of Jewish Medical Training: The Social Map of Knowers behind Early Modern Texts

Lennart Lehmhaus, University of Tübingen ♦
Patients, Practitioners, and Peer Experts: Rabbis Navigating the Late Antique Healthscape

Respondent: Ayala Fader, Fordham University

5:00 pm | BREAK

6:00 pm | DINNER (by invitation)

TUESDAY, APRIL 29
 

8:30 am | BREAKFAST 
 

9:00 am | RELIGION AND REPRODUCTION
Chair: Annette Aronowicz, Franklin & Marshall College 

Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar, Sapir College ♦
Sacred Choices: The Fertility Perspectives of Old Order Amish and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Women

Anabella Esperanza, Tel Aviv University ♦
Ritual Dimensions of Women's Practices of Pregnancy Termination: Observations from the Judeo-Spanish-Speaking Diaspora

Jordan R. Katz, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Baby One More Time: Midwives and Birth Registration in Early Modern Europe

Respondent: Sara Ronis, St. Mary’s University 

10:30 pm | BREAK

10:45 am | BODIES THAT DIE
Chair: Molly Sinderbrand, University of Pennsylvania 

Sarah Wolf, Jewish Theological Seminary ♦
Bodies That Mourn: Avelut in Rabbinic Literature

Adam S. Ferziger, Bar-Ilan University ♦
Ashes, Outcasts, and Saints: Cremation and Jewish Identity before and after the Holocaust

Eve Krakowski, Princeton University
Grief and Blindness in Geniza Mourning Letters 

Respondent: Wendy Zierler, Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion ♦
 

12:15 pm | CONCLUDING PANEL
Moderator: Xandy Frisch, George Mason University ♦

Panelists:

Natalia Aleksiun, University of Florida ♦
Joshua Teplitsky, University of Pennsylvania ♦
Ahmed Ragab, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine 

1:00 pm | LUNCH 

♦ Katz Center fellow