Food For Thought - February 25, 2004
“Pride and Polemics: Exploring the Self-Image of Medieval Jews Through Their Illuminated Manuscripts”

This Food For Thought lecture is part of the Efroymson Lecture series.

Wed. Feb 25 FOOD FOR THOUGHT-Monthly Lunch and Lecture Series
Mayerson Hall

“Pride and Polemics: Exploring the Self-Image of Medieval Jews Through Their Illuminated Manuscripts”

Just as Jewish art, film, and literature today offer a rich selection of images that tell us much about how we see ourselves in our world (and how we want others to see us), so too the illuminated images of medieval Jewish books communicate the very specific identity concerns of those who made and used them. Drawing on images from early illuminated books (communal prayerbooks and Bibles), this talk explores some of the ways in which visual images served to buttress Jewish identities in a Christian world.

Lunch is $8, in Mayerson Auditorium at noon and the lecture will begin at 12:30 p.m. There is no charge for this special lecture thanks to the generous endowment by the Efroymson family of Indianapolis, Indiana. There will be a special dessert and fruit reception for everyone, following the lecture.

For reservations
please call Marcia Cruse, (513) 221-1875, ext 353,
or email at mcruse@huc.edu
or send a check for the lunch, made payable to:
HUC-JIR,
Department of Outreach Education,
3101 Clifton Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45220

Dr. Eva Frojmovic received her undergraduate degrees from the University of Freiburg in archeology and art history, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in art history from the University of Munich. She has been a fellow at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome and the Warburg Institute in London. Since 1996 she has been the director of the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Leeds in Great Britain. Her publications cover a variety of themes in the history of Hebrew books and iconography: Hebraica and Judaica from the Cecil Roth Collection (1997), essays and talks on illustrated mohel books and circumcision liturgies, woodcuts in the earliest printed Haggadah, images of the Sanctuary in Hebrew Bible manuscripts. Most recently, she was a contributor to and editor of Imaging the Self, Imaging the Other: Representations of Jews in Medieval Visual Culture (2002).