PhD honors 2013/14

Supervisor: Prof. Cyril Aslanov

Abstract: My research focuses on the (socio)linguistic aspects of the Jewish communities of Catalonia before the Expulsion of 1492. The study consists of a linguistic and philological analysis of texts and documents in Catalan written in Hebrew characters (fourteenth-fifteenth centuries). Some of these documents have not been published or edited thus far.  I also discuss the notion of “Judeo-Catalan” and aspects of language usage in a multiglossic community: when and in what context did these Jews use Catalan and Hebrew, and what was their treatment and knowledge of Arabic and Latin throughout the Middle Ages.

Polonsky Stipend 2013/14

Supervisor: Prof. Ruth HaCohen

Abstract: In my research I wish to examine the way in which nineteenth century Italian opera reflects and mediates the dynamic emotional space of Italian subjects and society, and in particular the conflicted emotional space of jealousy and its surroundings.

Presidential Stipend 2013/14

Supervisor: Dr. Pawel Maciejko

Abstract: My work is dedicated  to the research of the lives and texts of the Sabbatean "Ma'aminim", also known as " Dönme ", who converted to Islam in the footsteps of their messiah Sabbatai Sevi. The Ma'aminim lived in Ottoman Salonika, starting at the late 17^th century, and until 1924, when they were forcibly repatriated in Istanbul.

My research deals with one of the few authentic inner sources that are available: a codex of approximately a thousand mystical, messianic, liturgical poems, dating to the 18^th and 19^th centuries, written in Ladino, Hebrew, Aramaic and Ottoman- Turkish. These poems appear in five manuscripts, four are located in Ben Zvi institute and the fifth at Harvard University library archives. To this day only a small part of the poems were examined and published. My research aims to progress current achievements by providing an encompassing and systematic analysis of the entire codex. I wish to discern the unique identity of the Ma'aminim community and their relationship to their surroundings by examining the poems in multiple aspects: Linguistic, formative, musical, ritualistic and philosophical. Through this work I wish to contribute to the understanding of the inner world of the Ma'aminim, as well as exploring their syncretic religion and the development of later Sabbateanism. Moreover, studying the poetry of the Ma'aminim can provide a case study for other syncretic phenomena and a model for exploring inter-cultural relations taking place between a majority and a minority in general, and in European and Ottoman cultures of the early modern era, in particular. 

President Stipend 2013/14

Supervisor: Professor Ronnie Ellenblum & Professor Iris Shagrir

Abstract: This dissertation aims to reconstruct different facets in the formation of the cityscape of Frankish Jerusalem, particularly during the first six decades of the twelfth century following its conquest by the Crusaders. The analysis is based on a spatially and chronologically organized database encompassing the widest possible array of documents from the examined period. This database allows tracing various patterns concerning different aspects in the urban development of Jerusalem that could not have been detected otherwise. The study analyzes the patterns of economic activity of the city’s major institutions, demonstrating their impact on the formation of urban space. This impact can be traced both in their involvement in urban endeavors as well as in their architectural expansion during the examined period. Other objectives include an analysis of urban social constructs, as well as an examination of Jerusalem in its wider socio-economic context, through its relationship with its rural hinterland.

Rotenstreich Stipend 2013/14 

Supervisor: Prof. Ilan Sharon

Abstract: Cooking vessels occupy an important place in the archaeological research. The manufacturing of cooking pots is a result of a careful production process; modification of this production process can be indicative of social and behavioral changes. During the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman periods (ca. 500BCE through ca. 250CE), a gradual revolution occurred in cooking vessels production at Phoenicia, in the southern Levantine coast, that made the Phoenician kitchen – and dinner table – more diverse. I wish to consider how and why production of cooking vessels changed in this period. I will do so by examining Phoenician workshop production to determine what types of vessels local potters developed and what they borrowed. I am interested in determining the extent to which local workshops used potting techniques, originating from other areas around the eastern Mediterranean, shaping new assemblage of cooking vessels. This will allow to move from archaeological evidence – such as the manufacture of new types of cooking vessels – to the interpretation of behaviors.

Rotenstreich Stipend 2013/14

Supervisor: Prof. Orly Shenker

Abstract: In my research I analyze the main philosophical implications of the probability space. This mathematical structure is the core part of Kolmogorov's theory and is the dominant structure being used (sometimes implicitly) when calculating probabilities. Hence, it can said that the probability space is applicatively accepted by almost all the different interpretations of probability theory as an appropriate mathematical formalism of the notions: 'probability' and 'event'. However, accepting this formalism has ontological consequences on the possible interpretations which should be taken into consideration. Besides analyzing these consequences, I will also attempt to show how an analysis of the probability space structure helps to clarify major issues in philosophy of probability such as the Indifference Principle and the Reference Class Problem.

Presidential Stipend 2013/14

Supervisors: Dr. Galit Noga-Banai (Hebrew University), Prof. Hedwig Röckelein (University of Göttingen.

Abstract: My doctoral research focused on the reference to the holy place in Jerusalem: the stations along the Via Dolorosa (The Stations of the Cross), the Holy Sepulchre Church and Christ’s Tomb. These representations were common especially in convents of northern Germany and were repeated in a variety of media: architecture, sculpture, reliefs, illustrations and texts. In the PhD the phenomenon was examined and reasons were offered for the popularity and centrality of Jerusalem representations in the art and cult of the medieval nuns. The PhD was approved in June 2020.

Publications:

• “The Holy Sepulchres of Maria-Medingen,” in preparation  
• “Die Heiligen Stätten des Bickenklosters, Villingen, im Kontext,” Geschichts- und Heimatvereins Villingen 45 (2021), in preparation  
• “The Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre in Medieval Saxony: Between Cloistered Community and Lay Parish,” forthcoming 2021
• “A Tale of Three Cities: Between Jerusalem and Gerusalemme – Gernrode of (St.) Scholastica,” 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual  –Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte und visuellen Kultur 1 (2020), https://doi.org/10.11588/xxi.2020.1.73141 
• Devotional ‘Cross-Roads’: Practicing Love of God in Medieval Jerusalem, Gaul and Saxony, co-ed. with Hedwig Röckelein and Galit Noga-Banai, Göttingen: Göttingen University Press, 2019
• “Re-living Resurrection in Medieval Saxony: The Development of New Imagery of the Resurrected Christ,” in Devotional ‘Cross-Roads’: Practicing Love of God in Medieval Jerusalem, Gaul and Saxony, ed. by Hedwig Röckelein, Galit Noga-Banai and Lotem Pinchover, Göttingen: Göttingen University Press, 2019, pp. 211–247
• “Christus und seine Verehrung im Kloster,” in Schatzhüterin. 200 Jahre Klosterkammer Hannover, ed. by Katja Lembke and Jens Reiche, Dresden: Sandstein, 2018, pp. 98–109
• “The via crucis in Wienhausen: Visual Witnesses,” in Jerusalem Elsewhere: The German Recensions. Proceedings of the Minerva-Gentner Mobile Symposium, October 2011, ed. by Bianca Kühnel and Pnina Arad, Jerusalem: Spectrum, 2014, pp. 91–98 
• Tradition and Innovation in the Former Cathedral of Gurk, Jerusalem: The Centre for Austrian Studies, 2013
• “The Gurker Lenten-Veil as a Product of its Immediate Surrounding,” in From Collective Memories to Intercultural Exchanges, ed. by Marija Wakounig, Münster: LIT, 2012, pp. 85–116
• “Illustrated Evening Skies: A Comparison between Children’s Book Illustrations by Chaim Hausmann and David Polonsky (Hebrew),” Ha-Pinkas: Online Magazine for Children’s Literature and Culture, 09/03/2011, http://ha-pinkas.co.il/?p=3911 

Azrieli Fellows Stipend 2016/17

Presidential Stipend 2013/14

Supervisor: Prof. Esther Cohen

Abstract: What were Anglo-Saxon perceptions of impairment and disability, and how did they effect the lived realities of impaired people? In my dissertation I examine questions of inclusion and exclusion, agency and personhood, lived realities, and cultural constructions of impairment in various spheres - personal, social, religious, and political - in order to better understand Anglo-Saxon views on impairment and disability. I show that common attitudes were inclusive and maintained the personhood, agency, and participation of impaired people in society, alongside positive cultural representations which caused, and resulted from, those inclusive attitudes.

Polonsky Stipend 2013/14