Jews and Judaism in Late Antiquity: Taking Stock

I am just emerging from a colloquium that earlier this week I co-organized with Ishay Rosen-Zvi on “Jews and Judaism in Late Antiquity.”  As such things go, it was a bit unusual: we focused on five “meta” issues (state of the academic field; undergraduate education; graduate education; the relationship between Israeli and American scholars; and our place in and response to the wider societal sources in which we work), discussing them as a group rather than having formal presentations.  I made brief opening remarks, Ishay made brief closing remarks, and Shaye J. D. Cohen delivered a keynote, but otherwise the group participants took turns facilitating the discussions.  I may have more to say later about what I got out of this colloquium but in the interim below are my slightly redacted opening remarks:

My name is Michael Satlow, from the Program in Judaic Studies and Department of Religious Studies here at Brown University.  Ishay Rosen-Zvi and I are delighted to be able to welcome you to our colloquium on Jews and Judaism in late antiquity.

This idea for this colloquium arose out of a happenstance.  The Program in Judaic Studies at Brown University administers a fund, the Ruth and Joseph Moskow Endowment, used to sponsor a colloquium or symposium most every year.  A bit over a year ago at a program meeting, I discovered that the symposium for which the funds had been earmarked for this year had been canceled and I somewhat impulsively volunteered to organize one for this year.  To be honest, my ideas were rather vague at that time.  I knew that despite my ability to have many wonderful intellectual conversations here at Brown, I have very few opportunities on a day-to-day basis to have ones that are very field specific.  So what I really wanted to do at that time was to bring together a group of people who share a passion for this topic as well as a basic vocabulary.  (Try explaining the stam to a theorist of French literature.)  What exactly we would talk about I was not at all clear about.

At that point I contacted Ishay.  Brown and Tel Aviv developed a memo of understanding some years ago, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to put it to use.  Together we settled on a topic and format that if not unheard of, are unconventional.  We thought that what would be most useful – what we don’t, as a collective, have enough time to do – is to reflect together on the big picture, the meta-issues of our field specifically.  Where are we and where are we going?  In order to accomplish this goal, we also decided to forego paper presentations in order to foster a more serious discussion.  At the larger professional conferences, after all, what many of us enjoy most, and what we find most productive, are the side conversations that occur between paper presentations and over meals.  It made us wonder if you could design a whole colloquium around loosely structured conversations.

Given the unconventional nature of this gathering – and our inability to fund travel or honoraria – it was far from clear to either of us that anyone would actually want to come.  And yet, to our great surprise, almost everyone we invited accepted.  Maybe, it made us think, we are onto something here.  I hope that by the end of the day tomorrow the exact nature of that “something” will be much clearer, but in advance of that let me say how grateful we are that you are here to join us in this endeavor.

Let me add some personal comments to give some context to these upcoming conversations.  I entered graduate school in 1987 and received my Ph.D. in 1993.  Over the past few years I have been becoming increasingly aware of how the field, and maybe the profession, has shifted, and concerned about my own ability to respond to these shifts.  I have thought about these shifts under the four major rubrics of our conversations – the state of the field; undergraduate education; graduate education; and the relationship between scholars working in the United States and in Israel, and I want to say some very brief words about each.

First, the state of the field.  When I got my first job, it was a field that was animated by a few core issues.  These issues – such as the reliability of rabbinic reports and the authority of the rabbis – at times got a bit tedious, but they did serve as an intellectual axis mundi that helped to create a common conversation.  At the same time, the study of Jews and Judaism in Late Antiquity – which we often, if incorrectly, simply labelled “rabbinics” – was exciting.  The field was seen as the virtual core of “Jewish studies.”  Even if the reasons for this mostly arose from the incomplete separation between traditional and academic approaches to rabbinic texts, the field still pushed to make contributions to the wider academy, particularly in classics, religious studies, and literary theory.

Today, I’m not sure if I can say any of those things about our field.  Are there core issues around which we have common conversations and around which larger research agendas form?  Or is what unites us simply our shared interest in a common dataset, and perhaps a methodology here or there?  While it is clear to me that our status within the world of Jewish studies has severely eroded with the growth and acceptance of other fields within Jewish studies, it is unclear if we are making the same impact in the wider academy, or, indeed, if we even want to.

Second, undergraduate education.  My experience teaching undergraduates has also changed and I’m not sure to what extent that has been the result of wider shifts or of the different cultures at the institutions at which I’ve worked.  Interest specifically in the rabbis has never been very high, but there was some undergraduate recognition of and interest in the Talmud (in English translation) and until recently enrollments in such courses were usually healthy.  That has changed and in my own experience undergraduate interest in anything that smacks of being “too Jewish” or “too old” has severely weakened.  This, of course, is consistent with general trends in the humanities and Jewish studies, at least in the United States, and both students and educational institutions increasingly emphasize STEM fields and relevance.  I know that I can get students into my classes if I offer easy grades – and once they are in the course, they do work, learn, and enjoy.  But I struggle with trying to balance student interest, my own areas of strength and weakness, and my old-fashioned sense of rigor.

Third, graduate education.  From my first tenure track job in 1994 I have been involved in graduate education.  My approach to graduate training combines the traditional with the practical.  On the one hand, students need to be prepared to do scholarship that is on a high-level and impactful: they should have good linguistic skills; solid methodological capabilities; and broad acquaintance with the major issues of the field.  On the other, though, they also need always to be aware that graduate training is first and foremost professional training, a certification that will help one get a job.  There is a delicate balance to be struck here as we try to train students in five or six years.  Given the wider shifts occurring throughout the academy, should we continue to train in the same way, or do we need to think differently about what a PhD in the field really means?  Complicating these decisions, of course, is the job market.  For years, I’ve told graduate students that the market in our field is robust enough that most – not all, but most – graduates who have been diligent about their works will get tenure track jobs.  While our graduates continue to get good jobs, I have been shaken enough by the market – which is downright scary – that I no longer use this line on our students.  It is no longer the case the every JS program feels it needs someone trained in rabbinics.

And, finally, the relationship between scholars in Israel and the United State.  During graduate school I spent two years studying at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.  For me, this was a critically formative experience, especially perhaps because it came at a time when American and Israeli scholars were explicitly discussing their different approaches.  Prior to the 1990s, it was indeed expected that American scholars in the field would have some significant connection to Israeli colleagues, a connection that might mean actually studying there or at least knowing Modern Hebrew and attending the World Congress.  At the same time, there was a recognized tension between the approaches and goals of American and Israeli scholarship in the field.  Here I wonder if we have seen a major change, almost a reversal.  American scholars increasingly have asserted their independence and, implicitly, have placed Israel toward the margins; it has become easier to ignore Israeli scholarship and the value of engaging with scholarship in Modern Hebrew has lessened.  Instead, I see far more Israeli scholars spending time in the United States, whether as graduate students or post-docs, and that is changing what Israeli scholarship looks like.  If this observation is correct, what does it mean and how do we respond to it, especially as we train our own graduate students?

I want to emphasize that I am not claiming that the field has changed for the worse, and that somehow I lived in a golden age.  Nor am I claiming the reverse, namely that all is glorious now and that we are marching into a better, kinder world.  It’s just that things have changed and continue to do so, and we – indeed, this is generally true of all academics – respond slowly in the face of change.  Maybe we need to tweak things; maybe we need to completely overhaul our assumptions and approaches.  I’m not sure, but I am convinced that these new challenges and opportunities that are worth at least exploring.

As you have noticed, in sending invitations we have focused on what loosely might be described as the “mid-career” demographic.  This was intentional; most of us have already experienced some of the changes that I’ve flagged, and others, but we are still in a position to act on whatever insights and suggestions we take out of these discussions.  These are discussions that I hope don’t dwell on the reasons for the changes, particularly those that we cannot control.  They should look forward: how do we respond to, change, and take advantage of our new landscape.

I expect, and hope that the discussions we have will be open, honest, and respectful.  This is not exactly a case of “what is said in Providence stays in Providence” – because I do hope that we’ll all bring back nuggets that we want to share with others – but I do want to create a space in which we all feel free to articulate half-baked thoughts without fear that we will be judged or held accountable to them.  A safe-space, if you will.  We are a group of equals and the role of the facilitators is to help keep a discussion moving and orderly, not to sit as the resident experts of their sessions.

The goal of these discussions, at least as I see it, is rather simple: to emerge from these discussions, as individuals, with a better sense of what can be done to grow professionally.  If, in addition to this, we emerge with a group consensus about certain issues, or even larger collaborative projects, that would be a great but added bonus.  We are here primarily to learn from each other.

Ishay and I welcome you once again to this colloquium and look forward to our conversation.