| Paper 824-b | Borders and Society: The Late Medieval Jewish Quarter of Lorca Castle (Murcia, Spain)
(Language: English)
Jorge Eiroa Rodríguez, Departamento de Prehistoria Arqueología Historia Antigua Historia Medieval y Ciencias y Técnicas Historiográficas Universidad de Murcia
María Isabel Molina Campuzano, Departamento de Prehistoria, Arqueología, Historia Antigua, Historia Medieval, Universidad de Murcia
Index terms: Archaeology - Artefacts, Archaeology - General, Archaeology - Sites, Hebrew and Jewish Studies |
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| Paper 824-c | Border Crossings between Poetry and Folk Traditions: Folk Perceptions of Two Medieval Jewish Authors from Spain
(Language: English)
David Rotman, Department of Literature, Tel Aviv University
Uriah Kfir, Department of Hebrew Literature, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva
Index terms: Folk Studies, Hagiography, Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Language and Literature - Semitic |
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| Abstract | Paper -a:
In 1305, Asher ben Yehiel and his family reached Toledo after having fled the Holy Roman Empire. They crossed the cultural border between Ashkenaz and Sefarad and brought with them their own customs and understanding of Jewish law and Torah study. One outstanding source about this migration is the Hebrew testament of Yehuda ben Asher which addresses the family's arrival and integration into the Jewish society of Toledo. Yehuda highlights the importance of marrying within one's own family and wants his offspring to continue the family's legacy as Ashkenazi Torah scholars. At the same time, he strongly expresses his wish that his descendants may remain in Toledo until the rebuilding of Jerusalem.
Paper -b:
This proposal aims to connect the 'frontiers' with the society and minorities that lived in this context during the Middle Ages. We would like to present the recent archaeological interventions carried out in the late medieval Jewish quarter (14th and 15th Centuries) located inside the castle of Lorca (southeast of the Iberian Peninsula). The castle of Lorca was the centre of an important sector of the Castilian frontier against the Nasrid kingdom of Granada and is being studied by the University of Murcia as part of an interdisciplinary research project. The role of the Jewish minority in the frontier context from the 13th-15th centuries occupies a central place in the research. The proposal is related to some topics of IMC 2022: living in border areas, border materiality, and border makers.
Paper -c:
Judah Halevi and Abraham ibn Ezra were two of the most important Jewish poets of the Middle Ages. At the same time, being celebrities, they were and have remained popular heroes of many Jewish folk traditions from the Middle Ages to the present day. Sung in and out of the synagogue, and celebrated in stories in public and family arenas, their memory thus often crosses the border between canonic poetry and folk traditions. Born in late 11th-century Spain, many tales have been told about them separately depicting various facets of each man's character. However, there is also an extensive web of folk narratives that associates them to each other through their imagined biographies. Our paper will show that their hagiographies tend to reproduce the typical milestones characteristic of biographies of saints and cultural heroes. We will further argue that unlike other stories, the traditions that bring them together often cross the border to combine narrative and poetry.
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