Week 1 (August 23-27): Introduction. Concepts and historiography
No medieval historiography of the Jews?
Read: Johannes Heil, “Beyond history and memory: traces of Jewish historiography in the Middle Ages,” Medieval Jewish Studies online 1 (2007-2008), 29-71.
The myth of the Khazars
Read: Mikhail Kizilov and Diana Mikhailova. “The Khazar khaganate and the Khazars in European nationalist ideologies and scholarship.” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 14 (2005), 31-54.
The Ashkenazi Jewry and medieval Eastern Europe
Read: Paul Wexler, “Yiddish evidence for the Khazar component in the Ashkenazic ethnogenesis.” In The World of the Khazars. New Perspectives. Selected Papers from the Jerusalem 1999 International Khazar Colloquium Hosted by the Ben Zvi Institute, edited by Peter B. Golden, Haggai Ben-Shammai and András Róna-Tas, Handbook of Oriental Studies, Central Asia, 17 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2007), pp. 387-98.
Week 2 (August 30-September 3): Sources
Written sources
Read: Osman Karatay, “Addressees of the Genizah Khazar letter: who wrote to whom?” In Studia mediaevalia Europaea et orientalia. Miscellanea in honorem professoris emeriti Victor Spinei oblata, edited by George Bilavschi and Dan Aparaschivei (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române, 2018), pp. 155-68.
Inscriptions
Read: [Jews in Roman] Pannonia
Archaeology
Read: Asher Ovadiah, “Ancient Jewish communities in Macedonia, Thrace and Upper Epirus,” Gerión 33 (2015), 211-227.
Week 3 (September 6-10): Late antique Jews
Written sources
Read: Martin Goodman, “Jews and Judaism in the Mediterranean diaspora in the late-Roman period: the limitations of evidence.” Journal of Mediterranean Studies 4 (1994), no. 2, 208-224.
Archaeology
Read: Aleksandăr Panaiotov, “The Jews in the Balkan provinces of the Roman Empire: the evidence from the territory of Bulgaria.” In Negotiating Diaspora. Jewish Strategies in the Roman Empire, edited by John M. G. Barclay (London: T & T Clark International, 2004), pp. 38-65.
Monday, September 6: Labor Day, no classes
Week 4 (September 13-17): Crimea
Crimea within the Empire
Read: Jonathan Shepard, “’Mists and portals’: the Black Sea’s north coast.” In Byzantine Trade, 4th-12th centuries. The Archaeology of Local, Regional and International Exchange. Papers of the 38th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, St John’s College, University of Oxford, March 2004, edited by Marlia Mundell Mango (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 421-41.
Between 500 and 800
Read: Theophanes [Confessor, Chronographia]
Jews in medieval Crimea
Read: [letter 97 of Patriarch] Photius
Week 5 (September 20-24): Jewish merchants and trade in the early Middle Ages
Monday, September 20: In-class-assignment #1.
Jewish traders in Eastern Europe
Read : [Ibn Khurdadbih on the] Radhanites
The slave trade
Read: Michael Toch, “Was there a Jewish slave trade (or commercial monopoly) in the early Middle Ages?” in Mediterranean Slavery Revisited (500-1800), edited by Stefan Hanss, Juliane Schiel and Claudia Schmid (Zürich: Chronos, 2014), pp. 421-444.
Week 6 (September 27-October 1): The Khazar conversion to Judaism
The Khazars
Read: Florin Curta, Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (500-1300), Brill’s Companions to European History, 19 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2019), pp. 128-144.
Why Judaism?
Read: [King] Joseph [on the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism]
The conversion
Read: J. T. Olsson, “Coup d’état, coronation or conversion: some reflections on the adoption of Judaism by the Khazar khaganate.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 23 (2013), no. 4, 495-526.
Week 7 (October 4-8): The archaeology of early medieval Judaism
Jews in the land of the Avars?
Read: Radovan Bunardžić, “Čelarevo – necropolis and settlement of the VIIIth-IXth century.” In Khazary. Vtoroi Mezhdunarodnyi kollokvium. Tezisy, edited by Vladimir Ia. Petrukhin and Artem M. Fedorchuk (Moscow: Institut slavianovedeniia RAN/Evreiskii Universitet v Moskve, 2002), pp. 19-21.
Wednesday, October 6: In-class assignment #2
Friday, October 8: Homecoming, no classes
Week 8 (October 11-15): Jews in early medieval Greece
Jews in Sparta
Read: [St.] Nikon [chases the Jews out of Lakedaimon]
Refugees from the Fatimid caliphate in Egypt
Read: Nicholas Oikonomides, “The Jews of Chios (1049): a group of excusati.” Mediterranean Historical Review 10 (1995), no. 1-2, 218-25.
The silk industry in 12th-century Greece
Read: David Jacoby, “Silk in western Byzantium before the fourth crusade.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 84-85 (1991-1992), 452-500.
Week 9 (October 18-22): Jews in the Balkans in the High Middle Ages
Jews in Byzantium
Read: Amnon Linder, “The legal status of Jews in the Byzantine Empire.” In Jews in Byzantium. Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures, edited by Robert Bonfil, Oded Irshai, Guy Stroumsa and Rina Talgam (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2014), pp. 149-217.
Jews in Bulgaria
Read: Kazimir Popkonstantinov and Rossina Kostova. “Minorities and foreigners in Bulgarian medieval towns in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries: literary and archaeological fragments.” In Segregation, Integration, Assimilation. Religious and Ethnic Groups in the Medieval Towns of Central and Eastern Europe, edited by Derek Keene, Balázs Nagy and Katalin G. Szende (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 133-49.
Jews in the Balkans after 1204
Read: David Jacoby, “The Jewish communities in the social fabric of Latin Greece: between segregation and interaction.” In A Companion to Latin Greece, edited by Nickiphoros I. Tsougarakis and Peter Lock (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2015), pp. 255-287.
Week 10 (October 25-29): Jewish travelers to Eastern Europe
Monday, October 25: In-class assignment #3
Ibrahim ibn Yakub
Read: Dmitrii E. Mishin, “Ibrahim ibn-Ya’qub at-Turtushi’s account of the Slavs from the middle of the tenth century.” Annual of Medieval Studies at the CEU (1994-1995), 184-99.
Benjamin of Tudela
Read: [the part in] Sefer [ha-massa’ot that covers the Balkans]
Week 11 (November 1-5): Jews in Arpadian Hungary
Laws
Read: Katalin G. Szende, “Traders, ‘court Jews’, town Jews: the changing roles of Hungary’s Jewish population in the light of royal policy between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries.” In Intricate Interfaith Networks in the Middle Age. Quotidian Jewish-Christian Contacts, edited by Ephraim Shoham-Steiner, Studies in the history of daily life (800-1600), 5 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), pp. 119-51.
The economic and administrative role of the Jews
Read: Nora Berend, “Hungary: the Jews between integration and exclusion.” In The Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages (Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries). Proceedings of the International Symposium Held at Speyer, 20-25 October 2002, edited by Christoph Cluse, Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, 4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 261-70.
Life in Jewish communities
Read: [rabbinical decisions concerning] Jews [in medieval East Central Europe]
Week 12 (November 8-12): Jews in Rus’
The Jews of Rus’
Read: Isaiah Gruber, “‘The journeys of my soul in this land of Canaan’ by Yitshak ben Sirota.” In Portraits of Medieval Eastern Europe, 900-1400, edited by Donald Ostrowski and Christian Raffensperger (Abingdon/New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 166-77.
The Jews of the Rus’ literature
Read: Alexander Pereswetoff-Morath, “A shadow of good spell: on Jews and anti-Judaism in the world and work of Kirill of Turov.” In Kirill of Turov, Bishop, Preacher, and Hymnographer, edited by Ingunn Lunde (Bergen: Department of Russian Studies, University of Bergen, 2000), pp. 33-75.
Friday, November 12: Rus’ translations from Hebrew
Read: Horace G. Lunt and Moshe Taube. “Early East Slavic translations from Hebrew?” Russian linguistics 12 (1988), 147-87.
Week 13 (November 15-17): Jews in Poland
Origins of Jews in Poland
Read: Aleksander Gieysztor, “The beginnings of Jewish settlement in the Polish lands.” In The Jews in Poland, edited by Chimen Abramsky, Maciej Jachimczyk and Antony Polonsky (Oxford/New York: Blackwell, 1986), pp. 15-21.
Organization of Jewish communities
Read: Jerzy Wyrozumski, “Jews in medieval Poland.” In The Jews in Old Poland, 1000-1795, edited by Antony Polonsky, Jakub Basista and Andrzej Link-Lenczowski (London: Tauris, 1993), pp. 13-22.
Privileges
Read: [the Statute of] Kalisz
Week 14 (November 22-24): Jewish migration into East Central Europe
Migrations
Read: Michael Toch, “Demography and migrations,” in The Middle Ages: the Christian World, edited by Robert Chazan, The Cambridge History of Judaism, 6 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 335-356
Wednesday, November 24: Thanksgiving break – no classes
Friday, November 26: Thanksgiving break – no classes
Week 15 (November 29- December 3): Jews in Bohemia
Monday, November 29: In-class assignment #4
The Jews of Bohemia and the First Crusade
Read: Salomo [bar Simson on the Jewish community of Prague]
Organization and privileges
Read: Cosmas [of Prague on the Jews of Prague]
Week 16 (December 6-8): Medieval Jewish culture
Manuscripts and written culture
Read: Jiřina Sedinová, “Life and language in Bohemia as reflected in the works of the Prague Jewish school in the 12th and 13th centuries.” In Ibrahim ibn Ya’kub at-Turtushi: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism Meet in East-Central Europe, c. 800-1300 A.D. Proceedings of the International Colloquy, 25-29 April 1994, edited by Petr Charvát and Jiří Prosecký (Prague: Oriental Institute, 1996), pp. 207-16.
Art and architecture. In-class assignment #5
Read : Vivian Mann, “The artistic culture of Prague Jewry.” In Prague. The Crown of Bohemia, 1347-1437, edited by Barbara Drake Boehm and Jiří Fayt (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005), pp. 82-89.