meetings
TUESDAY, October 11
4:00 pm, 254 Barrows
The Memory of the Memorizers: Ritual and Identity in Late Ancient Mesopotamia
Prof. Moulie Vidas, University of California, Davis
The Tanna'im, the reciters in charge of the memorization of oral tradition in the rabbinic academies, are often portrayed negatively in Talmudic sources as well as modern scholarship. This presentation attempts to recover their voice and role from often-misleading sources, and, by using Christian and Zoroastrian texts, to place both these reciters and their representation in the Talmud in the context of a wide-ranging conversation on ritual and identity in Mesopotamia.
This event is co-sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program