medieval bodies life and death in the middle ages

What’s even harder to explain is its persistence. And it always seems like something that’s really hard to explain. And whenever I’m presenting antisemitic tropes historically, I always feel like I have to stop when I get to the blood libel and acknowledge that it seems like this preposterous thing, this idea that Jews murdered Christian children and used their blood for ritual purposes. Which I spend a lot of my time doing these days. The story of the blood libel is always one of the things that mystifies people, I think, more than almost anything when we talk about the history of antisemitism. I want to thank specifically the Joseph and Eda Pell Endowment for sponsoring this evening and for this Annual Pell Lecture that they sponsor each year, as well as a number of other important programs at the CJS. The Pell Lecture is always one of the major programs each year for the Center of Jewish Studies and, specifically, for the Antisemitism Education Initiative. We also do workshops for students, faculty and staff, and we’re actually called upon to do a lot of education work for other campuses.Īnd very excited to welcome tonight’s speaker. I’m the faculty director for something called the Antisemitism Education Initiative, which is a major programming under the Center for Jewish Studies where we put on a whole series of programs throughout the year on antisemitism education. For those of you who don’t know me, I teach in the Center for Jewish Studies and the history department. Can everybody hear me? OK, can everybody hear me now? My name’s Ethan Katz. It’s my pleasure to introduce Ethan Katz who will be introducing our distinguished speaker. If you’re new to the Magnus, our museum collections reflect global Jewish life and if you’re returning, thank you very much for continuing to engage with us. And to thank you all for coming and engaging with us. We have one at the front and one at the back of the room.

Before we get started, I just wanted to ask you to please silence any devices you have with you.

Thank you so much for coming out tonight for the Center for Jewish Studies’ Annual Pell Lecture. I’m Hannah Weisman, executive director of the Magnus Collection of Jewish Art and Life. Also, we have another podcast, Berkeley Voices, that shares stories of people at UC Berkeley and the work that they do on and off campus.

New episodes come out every other Friday. You can follow Berkeley Talks wherever you listen to your podcasts. Intro: This is Berkeley Talks, a Berkeley News podcast from the Office of Communications and Public Affairs that features lectures and conversations at UC Berkeley. Listen to Berkeley Talks episode #167: “How a lie from medieval Europe spread antisemitism across the world.”

Medieval bodies life and death in the middle ages