Last semester I taught a graduate seminar on Race, Religion, and Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean (see here). As a class project we began to compile a relevant bibliography and provide some minimal annotations. That bibliography is on Zotero (as a public group) under the title RaceReligionEthnicityAntiquity (link here). This is the first time I have done anything like this, so I invite you to add to, improve, or otherwise comment on it.
Wikipedia in the Classroom
I have, in the past, used class assignments involving Wikipedia. These usually involved students identifying weaknesses in entries dealing with the subject of the class, making the changes in Wikipedia to remedy these weaknesses, and then tracking the entry to see if anybody else modifies or deletes their changes. I always found these assignments to be useful and illuminating, especially watching students change their stance toward Wikipedia from one of deference to incredulity. Over the last couple of years it has, for various unimportant reasons, fallen off my list of preferred classroom techniques, but now seeing this post on the Profhacker blog, with links to a wealth of resources, is inspiring me to integrate it again into one of my classes. Keep your eyes on the “Adam” and “Eve” entries – you never know what might happen by the end of the semester.
Conference Announcement: Jewish Attitudes Toward Wealth and Poverty
I am delighted to announce a conference that I am organizing on “Jewish Attitudes toward Wealth and Poverty.” We are now in the “call for proposals” phase; please consider submitting a proposal and spread the word. A short description is below and more information can be found here.
The Program in Judaic Studies at Brown University will host a conference entitled “Jewish Attitudes toward Wealth and Poverty” on November 1-3, 2015.
Traditional Jewish texts present different approaches to wealth, poverty, and money. The purpose of this conference is both to identify these texts and to explore the diversity of their ideas. Accordingly, the conference will be organized around particular texts dealing with specific issues. Conference time will be spent primarily in study of and conversation about these texts. Our ultimate goal is to produce a volume that includes the texts (in original translations) with short commentaries.
We invite proposals for presentations. Presenters will select a text (or short collection of texts) and provide an original translation prior to the conference. At the conference, presenters will very briefly introduce their texts and then lead discussions about them. The texts should be relatively short (no more than a few pages in most cases, except perhaps for literary passages) and drawn from almost any Jewish source from any time period. We particularly encourage submissions dealing with texts that have not been previously translated (e.g., responsa; commentaries; Hasidut).
We are particularly interested in proposals that deal with one of the following themes:
- Ownership: Is there a concept of “private property,” or does all property ultimately belong to God and/or the community? What can acquire the status of “property”?
- The Moral Value of Wealth and Poverty: Is being wealthy a sign of divine favor? Is poverty ultimately a “better” state in which to live?
- The Acquisition of Wealth: Are there better or worse ways to acquire wealth? Can one make money off the labor of others? How is the biblical prohibition against charging interest treated, and what are its ramifications?
- Spending: What are good and bad ways of disposing of wealth? Do the poor have rights to the wealth of others?
Interview: TLV1
When in Jerusalem recently I was interviewed for TLV1, an English-language internet radio station, about How the Bible Became Holy. The interview can be heard here, starting around minute 25.
New PDFs
It is that time of year: CV updating, annual reports, and general housekeeping. Toward that end I just added two new PDF articles to my Research page. One is an article entitled “Jew or Judaean,” and the other, “What Does Love Have to Do With It? Sibling Relationships among Judean Jews in the First-Third Centuries CE.”