Current fellow Hadar Feldman Samet has been working for years on a trove of particularly intriguing but difficult manuscripts. She is decoding the dense, multilingual songs of the sect of Sabbatians that maintained secretive religious beliefs and practices for centuries. Based on indicators in the handwritten texts of hundreds of hymns, full of kabbalistic and messianic symbols and abbreviations, she has managed to reconstruct the tunes that some were sung to.
Last week, current fellow Chen Bram (Hebrew University) sat down at Penn Hillel with a group of students interested in multiculturalism in Israel. In a ninety-minute discussion he offered them a taste of the graduate course he teaches in Jerusalem on the city’s complex intergroup relations. Inviting the students to comment and raise concerns as he spoke, Bram joked that as an Israeli he is more comfortable with direct confrontation than passive silence.
In the series What Do You Know?, we feature scholars’ answers to questions about Jewish history and culture submitted by our readers.
An anonymous reader asks,
“What is the difference between “Sephardi” and “Mizrahi”?”
Current fellow Dina Danon answers:
We are delighted to announce the gift by Laurence Salzmann and Ayşe Gürsan-Salzmann of the Laurence Salzmann Photography Collection.
In the series What Do You Know?, we feature scholars’ answers to questions about Jewish history and culture submitted by our readers.
An anonymous reader writes: I would be interested in getting a better understanding of the ebb and flow of dhimmi status over the centuries, and how that affects the way they are treated today.
What does dhimmi mean, where did it come from, and is it still relevant?
This week, the Katz Center welcomed a cohort of rabbis to begin a year-long collaboration. They are participating in the LEAP program, a partnership now in its fourth productive year with Clal, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. This remarkable, interdenominational group will visit the Center three times this year and learn from a variety of fellows and colleagues to explore the depth of research being carried out in the area of our current fellowship theme, Jewish culture in modern Islamic contexts.
