"THE RABBIS RECONSIDERED" AT UPENN:

There will be a roundtable discussion -- "The Rabbis Reconsidered" -- on Wednesday afternoon, April 2, on the Penn Campus as noted below. Three current Fellows at Penn's Center for Advanced Judaic Studies (CAJS) will discuss the ways in which recent scholarship has altered and is altering interpretations of the rabbis and rabbinic literature. This is an open session; no registration is required.

*The Rabbis Reconsidered: A Roundtable Discussion*

Professor Beth Berkowitz, Jewish Theological Seminary
Professor Yaakov Elman, Yeshiva University
Professor Seth Schwartz, Jewish Theological Seminary
Moderator: Professor Natalie Dohrmann, University of Pennsylvania

Wednesday, April 2, 4:45 PM, Arch Crest, 3601 Locust Walk on the Penn Campus [former Christian Association building]

The strong traditional story of Jewish recovery from the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 CE has been radically altered by a recent generation of scholars. The old narrative tells us that the rabbis stepped up to lead and inspire a devastated Jewish population. They built a Torah-based Judaism to fill the void left by the loss of the Temple and priesthood. They created and ran new institutions that patrolled and defined the contours of a rabbinically-inflected Jewish identity.

New evidence of the relationship of rabbis with non-rabbinic Jews, and with imperial governments and cultures in both Babylonia and Palestine, coupled with the revelations gleaned from material remains tell us a different story. Rabbinic Judaism was at best a marginal voice in the Roman world; and most Jews likely paid them little or no mind. To the east of the Roman empire, rabbis living and working under the Sasanian empire reveal themselves to be profoundly influenced by the legal, religious, institutional, and cultural traditions of the Zorastrians among whom they lived.

This newer scholarship has prompted a reconsideration of the role of the rabbis in the ancient world:

* Who in fact were the rabbis and where did they come from?
* If the rabbis were not at the center of post 70 CE Jewish life, who or what was?
* When and how did the rabbis ultimately move from the periphery to the center of Jewish life?
* What should a historian do with the vast corpus of rabbinic literature?
* How do new historical narratives change how we read these canonical texts?

Sponsored by the Jewish Studies Kutchin Faculty Seminar Series, and co-sponsored by the Center for Ancient Studies and the Religious Studies Dept.

From Bob Kraft on the PSCO list.