This is the final call for papers for the annual conference of the British Association of Jewish Studies, which will take place at UCL, London, from 27-29 June 2012. An earlier call for papers was issued in October. The deadline for submission of proposals is 3 January 2012.

The conference theme will be ‘The Jews and the Sciences’. The term ‘science’ is open to interpretation because of the wide range of meanings it has been given in different cultures and in different periods of history. Even today, ‘science’ (or its counterpart in other languages) means different things in Britain and in other parts of Europe. For the purposes of this conference, ‘science’ will be taken in its widest sense. In ancient and medieval contexts, for example, it may include the disciplines of magic, astrology, and alchemy. For all periods of history, it may include philosophy, linguistics, literary theory, sociology, psychology, and all other human sciences.

In short, ‘science’ will be taken to mean any form of knowledge or study that is not culture-specific to Jews or to Judaism. It will be viewed at once as an intellectual activity (the science itself, involving study, research, discovery, dissemination), a cultural phenomenon (related to other aspects of culture such as language, religion, etc.), and an aspect of social history. Science is a context in which Jews have shared a common culture with their wider society.

The theme of ‘The Jews and the Sciences’ can be approached, therefore, in several ways. Participants may present papers, for example, on the contribution of Jews and Judaism to the sciences, or conversely, on the contribution of science to Jewish culture, literature, and Judaism. They may consider Jewish attitudes to science, the historical involvement of Jews in scientific inquiry, the production of scientific literature for Jewish audiences and in Jewish languages, or the historical and contemporary impact of sciences on Jewish culture and Jewish society.

The BAJS 2012 conference will take place consecutively after another conference at UCL on the more narrow theme of ‘Time, astronomy, and calendars in Jewish tradition’, from Monday 25th — Wednesday 27th June 2012. This conference will be hosted by the UCL AHRC-funded research project ‘Medieval Monographs on the Jewish Calendar’ and by the Institute of Jewish Studies. It will be open to the public, and we would like to encourage BAJS Conference participants to attend this conference too. The keynote lecture, delivered by Charles Burnett (Warburg Institute, London) will be shared by both conferences on Wednesday evening, 27th June. Scholars who have so far agreed to participate at the AHRC-IJS conference include Jonathan Ben-Dov (Haifa), Elisheva Carlebach (Columbia), Tzvi Langermann (Bar- Ilan), Reimund Leicht (Hebrew University), Raymond Mercier Cambridge), Marina Rustow (Johns Hopkins), and Shlomo Sela (Bar-Ilan), as well as research staff of the Jewish calendar projects at UCL.

The deadline for submission of proposals is 3 January 2012. This call for papers for the BAJS Conference 2012 is being issued at an earlier date than usual, because the forthcoming Olympic Games in London (July 2012) make it necessary for our conference to be planned well in advance.

Register for the Conference and pay your conference fees via PayPal:

As usual, papers and panels on aspects of Jewish Studies that are not related to the conference theme will also be welcome.
Please send proposals for individual papers (including title and a short, max. 300-word abstract) and panels to the President, Sacha Stern (sacha.stern@ucl.ac.uk). We look forward to your submissions.

Although the conference is open to all who are interested in an academic approach to Jewish Studies, anyone wishing to present a paper who is not a member of BAJS will ordinarily be expected to join by the time of the conference. Membership is open to anyone with a serious academic interest to Jewish studies. For membership enquiries and applications, please write to the BAJS Secretary, Lars Fischer lf309@cam.ac.uk, and see BAJS Websit : http://britishjewishstudies.org/about/join-bajs/

TUESDAY 14 FEBRUARY 2012, 5pm
Lecture: Truth and translatability

WEDNESDAY 15 FEBRUARY 2012, 5pm
Lecture: The face of the Other: the curious nature of biblical narrative

THURSDAY 16 FEBRUARY, 4.30pm
(with drinks reception from 4pm)

Symposium: Making Space (does the Judaic model make sense in Christianity and Islam?)
with Professor Janet Soskice (Cambridge), Professor Abdou Filali-Ansari (Aga Khan University) and Professor Guy Stroumsa (Oxford).

The lectures and symposium are free and open to all however booking is required. For more information and free registration for all events, please visit:

www.humanities.ox.ac.uk/events/humanitas

Admittance will be by ticket only.

All events will take place at Talbot Hall, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

This new one year MA offers a series of intimate encounters with the classical texts of Jewish culture, from biblical to modern times. Its intellectual home is in the department of Hebrew Culture Studies at Tel Aviv University, the single largest integrated Jewish Studies department in the world.

Courses are taught by a team of dedicated lecturers, with world-class expertise in their respective fields and committed to teaching excellence.  Courses are text-centered, with primary texts in Hebrew (with translations), and secondary reading and teaching in English, and students acquire the skills and tools that constitute the foundation of Jewish text study  Areas covered include Bible, Hebrew language, rabbinic exegesis and Midrash, Talmudic and Christian texts compared, Jewish mysticism, medieval philosophy and kabbalah, ancient Jewish magic, and modern Jewish thought.

Tel Aviv’s location provides excellent opportunities for on-site study. Students can, e.g., enhance their understanding of 1st CE texts through a series of guided excursions to archeological digs and other key locations in the Galilee, the Judean Desert and Jerusalem.
Candidates must complete the program application, by March 15th 2011.

Scholarships will be awarded by an academic committee.

To find out more about the program, and to apply for scholarships, please visit our website:
http://humanities.tau.ac.il/jewish_studies/ or contact Emilie Levy: majes@post.tau.ac.il

These awards are open to all new PhD students (home, EU or overseas) and all disciplines. The Centre for Jewish Studies is encouraging applications to the Department of Middle Eastern Studies in the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures (LLC) or to the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures (AHC), in regard to this funding scheme from candidates working on Jewish Studies topics, including post-biblical and classical rabbinic literature, medieval Jewish-Muslim Relations, modern Jewish-Christian Relations, modern Jewish philosophy, Holocaust Studies, Israel Studies and the history and culture of modern Middle Eastern Jewry. The award covers tuition fees (home/EU or international, as appropriate) and the equivalent of the research council stipend (£13,590 in 2011-12). The following application deadlines should be observed in relation to this award:

An application for a place on a doctoral programme should be submitted to the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures or to the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures by Wednesday 15 February 2012 at the latest; a completed funding application form should be submitted by Friday 1 March 2012 at the latest.

For guidelines about how to apply to the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, please visit http://www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/postgraduate/funding/
For the departments or subject areas included in this school, please see
http://www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/postgraduate/research/

For guidelines about how to apply to the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures, please visit
http://www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/postgraduatestudy/funding/fundingfordoctoralstudents/
For the departments or subject areas included in this school, please see
http://www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/postgraduatestudy/researchbysubject/

For informal inquiries about the academic side of the application process, please contact Professor Alex Samely (LLC) at Alex.Samely@manchester.ac.uk or Professor Daniel Langton (AHC) at Daniel.Langton@manchester.ac.uk

For questions about the administrative side of the application process, please contact Ms Rachel Corbishley (LLC) at Rachel.Corbishley@manchester.ac.uk  or Mrs Joanne Marsh (AHC) at Joanne.Marsh@manchester.ac.uk

AS/20 December 2011

Please write to the Executive Secretary at:

Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society

2^nd Floor, Supreme House, 300 Regents Park Road, London N3 2JX for an application form or e-mail your request to: sheilarford1@sky.com

Forms may also be downloaded from the AIAS website: www.aias.org.uk

Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society, 2^nd floor, Supreme House, 300 Regents Park Road, London N3 2JX Tel: 020 8349 5754       www.aias.org.uk, Hon. President: Rt. Hon. The Viscount Allenby of Megiddo Chairman: Prof. Martin D. Goodman MA, D.Litt., FBA, Affiliated to the British Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Registered Charity No. 220367

The “Family Names in the UK” Research Project (FaNUK) at the University of the West of England, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, is investigating the origins, history, migration patterns, and geographical distribution of all family names with more than 100 bearers in Britain (plus a number of rare but “interesting” names), regardless of where they come from or how long they have been here.  One particularly important thread is the history of Jews in Britain.  It is generally accepted that Jews have made a disproportionately large and valuable contribution to the cultural, intellectual, and economic life of Britain, often in the face of prejudice and ignorance. Modern British Jewry provides a model of balance between social integration and preservation of religious and cultural heritage. Any investigation of modern family names must do justice to Jewish family names and their history in Britain.

There are a few well-known milestones:

• Jewish settlement in England from northern France under William I in 1070
• The blood libel and ritual murder charges and persecution beginning in 1144 prior to the expulsion of the Jews in 1290.
• The petition of Rabbi ben Israel of Amsterdam to Oliver Cromwell in 1655
• Resettlement of Jews  in England starting in 1656
• Sephardic immigration from the 17th century onwards
• The establishment of an Ashkenazic community in London in 1690
• The Jewish Naturalization Bill of 1753
• The admission of Jews to Parliament and to the Bar in the 19th century
• Mass immigration from Eastern and Central Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries.

It would be good to put some flesh on these bare bones in the context of researching family names, addressing questions such as the following:

• Who are the earliest known bearers of each Jewish family name in Britain?
• Can such a UK Jewish family name be traced back to an original immigrant?
• If the original immigrant is known, when did the family first arrive in Britain and where did they come from?  Where in Britain did they establish themselves? What was their prior history?
• In what language and under what national administration was the name of each Jewish family now found in the UK coined, adopted, or imposed?
• To what extent have names of Yiddish and other European origin been anglicized?
• What are the processes of anglicization. In the anglicization of Yiddish and other European surnames, which names were calqued (e.g. Zuckermann > Sugarman), shortened (e.g. Sugar), or otherwise changed?
• How can we identify apparently English names that are also Jewish (e.g. Morton)?
• In the case of polygenetic names like Morton and Goldsmith, what are the relative proportions of Jewish and gentile bearers?
• What does each name mean, and what, if any, are the religious, cultural, or other implications of the name?
• Some families can trace their genealogy to a single ‘key ancestor’—someone who had many marrying male children who themselves had male marrying children.  How many Jewish key ancestors can be identified, and what can be said about them?
• Some families (e.g., among the gentiles, Cecil, Cavendish, Campbell) have made a particular contribution over several generations to the political or cultural life of Britain.  What should be said about similar Jewish families, for example Montefiore, Rothschild, Mocatta, Goldsmid, and Sassoon?
• Was the pattern of Jewish migration into Scotland and Ireland different from that into England and Wales?
• What are the main centres of Jewish settlement today, and were they always there?
• What are the comparative frequencies of Jewish surnames in the UK? (FaNUK already has some data on this)

The coordinator for Jewish family names in the project is David Jacobs, Chairman of the Jewish Historical Society:
email david.jacobs40@ntlworld.com

Linguistic and etymological information for the project will be based on the contribution of David Gold to the Dictionary of Surnames (ed. Hanks and Hodges, Oxford University Press, 1988) and of Alexander Beider to the Dictionary of American Family Names (ed. Hanks, Oxford University Press, 2003). In addition, we shall be very glad to receive information about family history and early bearers of particular names that will help us to provide answers to at least some of the above questions. Please send such information to david.jacobs40@ntlworld.com.

The complex relationship between Jews and non-Jews lies at the heart of teaching Jewish Studies at university level. A new online teaching resource provides access to a broad range of primary sources and high-quality commentaries by experts in the field, addressing the perceived lack of an easily accessible body of sources, which specifically deal with relations between Jews and non-Jews from a historical and contemporary perspective.

The website offers a range of commented primary sources from all periods of history, offering original and stimulating discussions of a broad range of topics and issues from an interdisciplinary perspective. Accessibility is a major concern of the project: as an online-based project, it can be freely accessed by anybody with an internet connection. All entries were written in jargon-free language.

The main target group for the website are students and academics in higher education. Each peer-reviewed entry provides the historical and social context and background of a chosen primary source, includes the source in its original language and, where necessary, a translation into English, followed by a discussion of the source and a number of relevant questions that can be used as a starting point for discussion in the classroom.

In the now completed pilot stage of the project, we have mainly secured contributions from colleagues at other British universities. We are now commissioning additional contributions from all periods of history and geographical areas and invite scholars working on Jewish-Christian or Jewish-Muslim relations to suggest further contributions from their specific field of expertise.

Please contact us at jnjr@ed.ac.uk for suggestions and comments and for authors’ guidelines if you wish to contribute to the site.

Project coordinators:
Dr Maria Diemling (Canterbury Christ Church University)
Dr Hannah Holtschneider (University of Edinburgh)

Contact:
jnjr@ed.ac.uk

URL:
www.jnjr.div.ed.ac.uk

And panel discussions with:
Professor Philip Davies
Professor Mary Grey
And others…

We are welcoming contributions from all perspectives under four main headings:

• Antisemitism, Philosemitism and the Bible
• the Bible and the Existence of Israel
• Judaism, Christianity and Zionism
• and the Bible and the Palestinians.

Topics may include (but are by no means limited to):

• biblical archaeology and historiography
• Palestinian liberation theology
• violence and peace in the Bible
• Christian Zionism
• postcolonial biblical criticism
• modern Judaism and its relationship to Zionism.

Please send a title and a 300 word abstract to bzpconference@sheffield.ac.uk, for a 20 minute paper.

www.thebiblezionismandpalestine.co.uk

The Holocaust Educational Foundation, USA, and the Holocaust Research Centre at Royal Holloway, University of London are pleased to invite applications for Fellowships to participate in the first European Summer Institute on the Holocaust and Jewish Civilization from 18-30 June 2012 at the Royal Holloway campus, Egham, Surrey in England.

This programme is an intensive two-week residential course designed to broaden and deepen the background of postgraduates in Holocaust studies, early career academics, and educators in relevant fields.  It is open to students enrolled full- or part-time in postgraduate programmes, full- or part-time academic staff, and educators at recognized institutions such as museums and archives.

Approximately 20 Fellows will be selected, each of whom will receive free room, board, and tuition during the programme.  (Fellowships do not however, cover travel expenses to and from Royal Holloway or the cost of field trips during the course.)  We seek fellows from a wide variety of disciplines and all intellectual fields related to Holocaust Studies.

The Institute curriculum consists of courses, lectures, and seminars taught by leading scholars on the following themes: the history of Jews and Judaism in Europe; Holocaust history and historiography; the Holocaust in literature and film; the Holocaust and modern thought.  In addition, the Institute offers a rich program of guest lectures on special themes and of cultural and recreational trips to sites in London.

Applications should include a statement explaining the prospective Fellow’s interest and experience in Holocaust studies, and intentions for teaching the Holocaust, a curriculum vitae, plus, a letter of recommendation from a line manager; in the case of graduate students, a letter of recommendation from the doctoral supervisor. Applications should be submitted online by February 29 to Rachel Century, Summer Institute Administrator rachel.century.2009@live.rhul.ac.uk.

Fellowships will be awarded and all applicants notified by March 30, 2012.