Two prizes of £200, ordinarily for one outstanding undergraduate and postgraduate essay by students at institutions in the UK and Ireland are awarded annually.

The UG submission should be a dissertation or long essay on a subject relating to Jewish Studies.

PG submissions on the theme of the forthcoming BAJS conference will be given preference.

The word limit is 12,000 words for undergraduate and 5,000 words for postgraduate submissions. Please submit two hard copies and one electronic copy, clearly marked as undergraduate or postgraduate submissions, and provide your full contact details. Submissions by post-graduate research students are not considered.

Deadline for submission: 15 June 2012.

Colleagues are encouraged to alert those of their students who are producing outstanding work that meets these criteria to the prize competition. Submissions can be made either by the student or the department of which s/he is a member and should be sent to:

BAJS Secretariat, Lars Fischer, CJCR, Wesley House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge CB5 8BJ. Email: lf309@cam.ac.uk

The theme of the 2012 conference is ‘The Jews and the Sciences’.

Past Prize Winners

2011

undergraduate – with special distinction: Magdalena Luszczynska, ‘Father-Son Relationship in medieval Ashkenaz’ (UCL); – Daphna Starr, ‘Clare Winsten. The Whitechapel Girl’ (Leeds)

postgraduate – not awarded

2010

undergraduate – Rebecca Coll, ‘Who should be permitted to represent the Holocaust visually? A comparative study between the art of a survivor, an evader and an empathizer’ (Birmingham)

postgraduate – not awarded

2009

undergraduate – Hannah Atkinson, ‘A Comparison of the Views and Assumptions of the Holocaust Theologies of Eliezer Berkovits and Paul van Buren’ (Manchester)

postgraduate – Tyler Smith , ‘The “Communal Meal” in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus, and Philo: An Evaluation of its Purported Cultic Function and Relation to the Eucharist’ (Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies)

2008

Joint 1st (postgraduate) – Simon Mayers, ‘An Examination of the Judaism-Jewishness Dialectic within Jewish Studies’ (Manchester)

Joint 1st (postgraduate) – Zoe Jacob, ‘Which theory of secular domestic law best helps underpin the Orthodox Jewish feminist approach to halakhah, and does this theoretical underpinning strengthen Orthodox Jewish feminist position?’ (UCL)

2007

1st – Thomas Sharrard, ‘Representations of London’s East End through literature: Israel Zangwill’s Children of the Ghetto and Monica Ali’s Brick Lane’ (Southampton)

2006

1st – Charlotte Alfred, ‘Should Palestinian attitudes to Israeli Jews be explained primarily in terms of religion or modern nationalism?’ (Edinburgh)

2nd – Felicity Griffiths, ‘The Blood Libel and the Papacy’ (UCL)

2005

1st – Helen Bartos, ‘Compare and Contrast the Experiences of Jewish Immigrants in the US, England and One Other English-Speaking Land Around 1900′ (UCL)

2nd - Hannah Ewence, ‘How Can national Socialist Attitudes Toward Motherhood Be Interpreted?’ (Southampton)

3rd – Hannah Judd, ‘With Reference to the Work of Melissa Raphael, Discuss Whether there Is a Need for a Jewish Feminist Response to the Holocaust’ (Birmingham)

2004

1st – Zubin Mistry, ‘Jewish Greek literature: apologetic or assertive?’ (Cambridge)

2nd – Fiona Eatwell ‘Popular Conceptions of the Jew in the Medieval Period’ (Manchester)

3rd – Steven Winter ‘Revisiting the 1948 War’ (UCL)

2003

1st – Helene Bartos ‘The Zionist Movement and Jewish Settlement in the Land of Israel 1881 to 1948′ (UCL)

2nd - Daniel Cowen ‘The Treatise of the Pool of Obadiah Maimonides, 1228-1265′ (Oxford)

3rd – Ophira Starr ‘Are There Modernistic or Even Post Modernistic Elements in the Hasidism?’ (UCL)

2002

1st – Sally Style (UCL)

2nd – Greg Smart (Southampton)

2001

1st - J. Cartaris, ‘Yiddish cinema: Der Dibek’ (UCL)

2nd – S. Schubert, ‘Greek and Roman perceptions of Jews’ (UCL)

3rd - Danny Burkemann, ‘R. Ruether and G. Kittel on Jews’ (Cambridge)

2000

1st – C. Belo

2nd – I. Conn

3rd – E. Krausova (UCL)

1999

1st – R. Esterson, ‘Maimonides’ Position on Creation in The Guide to the Perplexed’ (UCL)
2nd – R. Tragen, ‘The Judgments of the Ruseisin Case: Legalism and Refection on the Nature of Jewish Identity’ (Manchester) and L. Wicken, ‘The Significance of the Spanish Expulsion for the Messianic Idea in Judaism’ (UCL)