Rachel
Furst
Bio
Rachel Furst is a research fellow and adjunct lecturer in medieval Jewish history and Jewish law at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Her research focuses on law and litigation as well as Jewish-Christian exchange in medieval northern Europe, and she has a particular interest in the history of women and gender.
Furst received her PhD in Jewish History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has held fellowships at the Hebrew University, the Free University of Berlin, Oxford University, and New York University School of Law. Since 2017, she has coordinated a collaborative, international research project funded by the German-Israeli Foundation, “Rabbinic Responsa and Archival Records from Medieval Ashkenaz in Legal and Cultural Conversation.”
Selected publications
- “A Return to Credibility? The Rehabilitation of Repentant Apostates in Medieval Ashkenaz” in On the Word of a Jew: Religion, Reliability, and the Dynamics of Trust, ed. Nina Caputo and Mitchell B. Hart (Indiana University Press, 2019)
- “Marriage Before the Bench: Divorce Law and Litigation Strategies in Thirteenth-Century Ashkenaz” Jewish History 31 (2017)
- “Captivity, Conversion, and Communal Identity: Sexual Angst and Religious Crisis in Frankfurt, 1241” Jewish History 22 (2008)
