Moses Arragel’s vernacular Rabbinics in the Biblia de Alba 23 Jul 2023 6:55 AM (last year)
1420: Rabbi Moshe Arragel of Guadalajara was in a quandry. The powerful Luis de Guzmán, a high-ranking nobleman and Master of the influential Order of Calatrava invited him (and this was an invitation that the Rabbi could not refuse) to … Continue reading →
Chivalric Aljamiado Biblical Tales 3 Feb 2023 4:03 AM (2 years ago)
In a previous post (nearly nine years ago!) I wrote about the seemingly paradoxical phenomenon of a Muslim crusader hero imagined by a Spanish Morisco writer in their Arabic-script version of the chivalric romance Paris y Viana (ca. 1560). In … Continue reading →
Fighting over scripture: polemical retellings of the Hebrew Bible in medieval Iberia 8 Mar 2022 8:24 AM (3 years ago)
Lately I’ve been looking at how retellings of the Hebrew Bible by medieval Iberian Jews, Christians, and Muslims reflect the mutual influence and tension between the three traditions (one on Adam and Eve, another on shared Biblical storyworlds). Here I … Continue reading →
Shared Storyworlds in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Retellings of the Hebrew Bible in Medieval Iberia 3 Jan 2022 4:22 PM (3 years ago)
Medieval Iberians of all three religions participated in a common culture of retellings of material from the Hebrew Bible that fused the doctrines of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity with the vernacular languages and cultures common to all three groups. This … Continue reading →
Textbook for a study abroad program that never happened 27 Jan 2021 4:31 PM (4 years ago)
In 2013 I served as visiting faculty for a now-defunct study abroad program in Oviedo, Spain. My family and I spent six months living, working, and attending school in Asturias under the auspices of GEO (Global Engagement Oregon), then known … Continue reading →
An Open Access Online archive of Premodern Iberian and Latin American primary texts for the classroom 30 Dec 2020 9:14 AM (4 years ago)
Anyone who has taught panoramic survey courses of literature knows the frustration of working with published textbooks. I’ve argued both sides of the question in my blog: [pro-textbook] [anti-textbok]. Ultimately no one textbook can serve the curricular and pedagogical needs … Continue reading →
The Curse of Ham in Medieval Iberia and the Enslavement of Black Africans 30 Dec 2020 7:54 AM (4 years ago)
Modern capitalism has its origins in the institution of chattel slavery, in particular the enslavement of Black Africans. As we know, all institutions require complicated symbolic systems to legitimate them and reinforce their power in society. Enslavers attempt to justify … Continue reading →
A Moroccan Jewish nightclub artist sings sáetas to the Virgin in León: Aicha la Hebrea 3 May 2020 6:10 PM (4 years ago)
Looking for a 14th-century Hebrew bible from Spain on the website of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, I stumbled on Prof. Chris Silver’s curated collection of inter-war recordings of Andalusi music from Maghrebi singers. One of them caught my attention: … Continue reading →
Medieval Iberian retellings of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden 12 Mar 2020 6:22 AM (5 years ago)
Medieval Iberia was a hotbed of cross-cultural medieval literary activity. Jewish writers adapted Arabic poetics to give birth to a new Hebrew poetry. Muslim poets penned elaborate Arabic poems based on popular Spanish lyrics. Christian writers pioneered the use of … Continue reading →
The Other Averroism: The Maimonidean Controversy and The Copenhagen Maimonides 10 Jul 2019 6:09 AM (5 years ago)
As a diasporic civilization, Judaism is a moveable world in itself. Heinrich Heine famously quipped that the Torah is a portable homeland, and so Jewish culture provides us with an excellent example of how texts, artifacts, and ideas travel and … Continue reading →