Books by Susan Einbinder
Articles and Reviews by Susan Einbinder
complements Evans's interest in the split consciousness that results from retrospective writing a... more complements Evans's interest in the split consciousness that results from retrospective writing and Kim's insight that Kempe "can be at once privileged and marginalized" by her performances (269). Tara Williams examines how modern plays stage the meeting between Kempe and Julian of Norwich in gendered terms as a scene of female friendship rather than an encounter that lends Kempe spiritual authority. Williams argues that this dynamic is also at play in the critical reception of the Book, which "can exhibit a desire for a transhistorical form of female friendship" (279). Of course, Encountering "The Book of Margery Kempe" manifests just such a desire. In fact, the essays' exploration of female networks and relationships, within the Book and across time, marks its major contribution to Margery Kempe studies.
and accessible, the following reflections trace our experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic agai... more and accessible, the following reflections trace our experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic against a rich backdrop of pandemic settings and halakhic responses present and past. Dr. Reichman' s medical erudition treads lightly alongside his commentary on the challenges to Jewish communal life posed by large-scale outbreaks of plague, smallpox, cholera, and COVID. As he demonstrates, rabbis then and now have always struggled to balance the toll of pandemic strain on individuals with the needs of the larger community and the demands of Jewish law. Dr. Reichman' s essays repeatedly remind us of the ways in which our own experience has been "precedented" in other times. At the same time, he astutely notes what is "unprecedented" in rabbinic responses to COVID: the rapid, internet-facilitated, availability and global sweep of COVID-related halakhic rulings. Blending personal anecdote and history with a ranging study of Jewish law, Dr. Reichman has given us eight essays that shuttle between historical pandemics and the present, with a generous representation of the early modern Italian Jewish physicians who are his special passion. The essays are arranged chronologically, permitting brief glimpses of the author' s personal experience as we follow the trajectory of a pandemic from outbreak to recovery. The personal track is modestly subordinated to the second but nonetheless traceable from the ER crisis conditions of the first COVID wave through the author' s exposure to COVID, his illness, hospitalization, and recovery. Spanning these brief biographical references, pandemic experience as a set of communal and institutional challenges plots the dominant arc of these essays. Here we learn from historical precedents about rabbinic responses to quandaries ranging from prayer quorums, social distancing, and quarantine to access to libraries and books. At the same time, we learn some medical
gospel" (75). By connecting the collection of money for the Jerusalem community, the prayers of t... more gospel" (75). By connecting the collection of money for the Jerusalem community, the prayers of the congregation on Paul's behalf, and the implied performance of the text of the letter, Newman establishes social-scientific and neurocognitive explanations of how this letter effectively developed a Christian community in Corinth and beyond. In the process, she argues, 2 Corinthians developed a scriptural status: "Rather than reflecting events, the redacted letter of 2 Corinthians seeks to shape them in relation to assembly practices and perception of Paul" (101). In her final and longest chapter, Newman explores material from the Dead Sea Scrolls to explain scripturalizing processes in light of a perennially extracanonical text, the Hodayot (Thanksgiving Hymns) of Qumran. "The Hodayot … shed light on the dynamics involved in the formation of scripture and its entwinement with teaching, interpretation, and worship practices in the service of shaping self and the community" (107). The Hodayot prayers addressed to God focus on a central leadership figure. The ritualization of this collection of prayers, especially in light of the Maskil's role as one who performs prayer and prostrates to God on behalf of the community, "provides a context for understanding the ongoing interpretive shaping of scripture" (108), serving as a model that holds even in less extreme communities than the Yah. ad of Qumran. This book is an important resource for scholars of biblical studies, Second Temple literature, postbiblical Judaism, and early Christianity working at the intersection of materiality and texts, scriptural formation, and canonicity. Individual chapters could be used in graduate and upper-level undergraduate courses and the book is a usefully concise read for specialists and nonspecialists alike. Newman offers an overview of several ongoing debates about the biblical canon while moving beyond them to a new set of questions. These questions of performance and cognition better reflect the shape of our archive and the embodied experiences of ancient readers.
Catalonia, was composed sometime in 1349. It is one of a number of extant tractates written durin... more Catalonia, was composed sometime in 1349. It is one of a number of extant tractates written during or immediately after the period of the Black Death, which reached Besalú in May 1348. As an early record of a physician's perspective on the pandemic, Abraham's tractate is important as a medical witness. For several reasons, Jacme d'Agramont's Regiment de Preservacio is a useful foil to Abraham's tractate. Jacme held the chair in medicine at the university in Lleida, a city located 200 kilometers west of Besalú. It was where Abraham and his family had spent several years following their expulsion from Languedoc in 1306. The Regiment de Preservacio was written in April 1348, making it the first known medical treatise to respond to the Black Death and the first original medical treatise produced at the University of Lleida. Jacme's work was unique among the early tractates as the only example of a plague regimen written in the vernacular (in this case, Catalan) and intended for ordinary people. In contrast, Abraham Caslari's tractate was intended for a reader learned in medicine and in
This is a big book, with grand ambitions. Its driving premise is that, contrary to the prevalent ... more This is a big book, with grand ambitions. Its driving premise is that, contrary to the prevalent scholarly myth associating epidemics with violence and 'socio-psychological' disruption, most epidemics bring out the best in us. Samuel K. Cohn's 'culture of pestilence' is one of compassion manifested across boundaries of religion, nation, ethnicity, class and gender. For the exceptions, he also seeks to disprove any notion that the mysteriousness of an unknown disease and the lack of a cure for it were motivating factors. If anything, lethality and speed of transmission are apparently more relevant. The book begins with the Plague of Athens, moves through Late Antiquity, the Black Death and subsequent plague outbreaks, syphilis, cholera, yellow fever, smallpox and influenza, concluding with an epilogue on AIDs. Typhus merits several sentences along the way, notably for having no association with violence (pp. 176, 183, 203). According to Cohn, the Black Death, which unleashed a cascade of anti-Jewish violence across several European arenas, was unique. During seventeenth-century plague outbreaks in northern Italy, violence targeted alleged untori (plague spreaders); otherwise, plague unified populations who demanded better government policies and medical care. Cholera caused violence and blame, not ubiquitously in its first wave but in subsequent nineteenth-century outbreaks in Europe, Russia and the Americas; smallpox violence in Europe and the Americas uniquely targeted victims. Syphilis promoted mistreatment and blame of women, but no 'crowd action' (p. 120), and yellow fever epidemics and influenza inspired displays of charity and compassion. Cohn argues that the linkage between disease and hate is modern, but not common to all diseases everywhere. Why that is so, and why we have been led to think differently are the questions that engage this work. To Cohn's credit, he has tried to answer them. His book sweeps across urban and rural landscapes, pre-and post-industrial, across Europe and parts of Russia, India, the United States and Canada, with forays into Latin America and Hong Kong. Still, a lot of the planet goes missing, owing to the limitations of his data. Indeed, what constitutes 'data' is a problem: he uses a constantly shifting set of online databases, unevenly enriched by primary and secondary sources. For antiquity, Cohn has relied on online digital libraries (p. 14); for the medieval period, Biraben updated by Stathakapoulos (p. 45), the Germania
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Books by Susan Einbinder
Articles and Reviews by Susan Einbinder