EMW 2011: Egodocuments: Revelation of the Self in the Early Modern Period

'My Happiness Overturned': Mourning, Memory and a Woman's Writing

Rachel Greenblatt — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 13:00:00 PDT

In the late seventeenth century, Beila Perlhefter mourned her seven children in the introduction she wrote to a Yiddish ethical work written (at her urging, she tells her readers) by her husband, Ber. While the autobiographical information provided in the introduction is sparse indeed, it shares certain generic characteristics with other self-writing by early modern Jews from Prague, including Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller's "Megillat eivah." At the same time, each voice is a different voice, all the more so the rare instance of a woman's voice, and this short piece defies easy categorization.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

Sefer Be'er Sheva (Book of Seven Springs, 1690s)

Personal Life in the Context of Personal Death

Avri Bar-Levav — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 11:00:00 PDT

In his ethical will, R. Naphtali Ha-Kohen Katz (1650? - 1719), a central rabbinic figure in his time, gives specific instructions for death rituals that he wants, and also addresses his family in warm words, while mentioning meaningful events of his past. The presentation will analyze this personal voice of the beginning of the 18th century.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

The Ethical Will of R. Naphtali Ha-Kohen Katz

Introduction to Megillat Sefer by Rabbi Jacob Emden

Jacob J. Schecter — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 09:30:00 PDT

Among Jacob Emden’s many works is Megillat Sefer, one of the most unusual, open, revealing, and unself-conscious egodocuments in Jewish and even general history. Written between 1752 and 1766, this work existed only in manuscript form for one hundred and thirty years, first in Emden’s hand and then in the hand of someone who copied the original. Emden’s handwritten version is no longer extant and only the copy exists. The work was first published in Warsaw, 1896 by David Kahane. In 1979 it was printed again in Jerusalem by Abraham Bick-Shauli who claimed that he was correcting mistakes in the earlier Kahana edition although his version is much less reliable, to the point of being worthless. I am now completing a new edition of this work with an introduction and extensive annotations. This work is a multi-faceted one and deserves analysis on a number of different levels. My interest in my presentation is to focus on one aspect of this fascinating work, what motivated Emden to write it, thereby situating this work in the context of other early modern Jewish examples of such writing.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

Jacob Emden's Megilat Sefer (The Scroll of the Book)

Generational conflict in converso families, 1492-1550

Sara Nalle — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 15:30:00 PDT

The egodocuments presented to the seminar are Inquisitorial confessions of second-generation "nuevos convertidos" who in one way or another were caught between their parents' desire to maintain contact with Judaism and their own alleged desire to assimilate as Spanish Catholics.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

Trial of Francisco Martínez, apothocary, resident of Deza (1533)
Trial of Gaspar de San Clemente (1541)

Autobiographical accounts for a non-Jewish friend: Joseph Attias' Letters to L.A. Muratori

Francesca Bregoli — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 14:00:00 PDT

The Livornese Jewish scholar Joseph Attias (1672-1739) is known for his contributions to eighteenth-century Tuscan culture as a book collector and mediator. Attias sent two autobiographical letters to a beloved correspondent, renowned Modenese historian Ludovico Antonio Muratori, in 1724 and 1733. This presentation will analyze the documents as self-conscious life narratives and examples of early Enlightenment self-fashioning that shed light on the strategies employed by a Jewish member of the Republic of Letters to present his formative years, his training, and his achievements to one of the most esteemed representatives of eighteenth-century Italian culture.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

Joseph Attias' Letter to L.A. Muratori (December 22, 1724)
Joseph Attias' Letter to L.A. Muratori (November 20, 1733)

The Travel Diaries of Hayim Joseph David Azulai

Yaacob Dweck — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 13:00:00 PDT

This presentation examines the travel diaries of Hayim Joseph David Azualai, an emissary of the Jews of the Palestine in the third quarter of the eighteenth century. In particular it addresses the question of the place of reading and books in his diaries and compare Azulai's experience of books and reading to two of his contemporaries Hayim Isaac Karigal and Israel Landau.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

Hayim Joseph David Azulai's Ma'agal Tov (The Good Journey, 1770s)

Descend to the Abyss: Jacob Frank's going to Poland

Pawel Maciejko — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 11:00:00 PDT

This presentation examines several autobiographical fragments of the most important Frankist document, The Words of the Lord. It focuses on the motif of recurrent divine calls to 'go to Poland' and, ultimately, the justification of Frank's conversion to Christianity.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

The Collection of the Words of the Lord spoken in Bruenn

Mining an Unusual Ego Text (or Two)

Gershon D. Hundert — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 09:30:00 PDT

The texts presented here are excerpted from a 329-page-manuscript Divrei Binah in cursive Hebrew entitled Divre binah. The book was completed in 1800 but never published. It is devoted mostly to the Sabbatian and Frankist phenomena; the genre to which the text belongs is open to discussion. Its author is Dov Ber Brezer or Birkenthal of Bolechów (1723-1805) in western Galicia.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

Divrei Bina (Understanding Words) by Dov Ber Brezer (Birkenthal) of Bolechów

EMW 2011: Egodocuments: Revelation of the Self in the Early Modern Period

EMW 2011 — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 17:00:00 PDT

The Early Modern Workshop in 2011, “Egodocuments: Revelation of the Self in the Early Modern Period,” seeks to examine how individuals in the early modern period wrote and thought about themselves. The workshop participants explore texts ranging from the obvious autobiographical texts to less obvious, such as ethical wills, Inquisition-prompted accounts of self, family diaries of births and deaths, travelogues, and others. Questions raised deal with issues of self-representation, reading, relationship with the divine, gender differences in self-representation, and motivations to write autobiographical accounts.

Revealing, Concealing: Ways of Recounting the Self in Early Modern Times

Natalie Zemon Davis — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 18:00:00 PDT

Keynote address by Natalie Zemon Davis, University of Toronto, “Revealing, Concealing: Ways of Recounting the Self in Early Modern Times” is preceded by opening remarks by Robert Abzug and Miriam Bodian)