Monday, May 27, 2013

Spotlight on Emily Michelson


 Pulpit and the PressDr Emily Michelson is a transplant from the United States, and has previously lived in Italy, Jerusalem, Salt Lake City, Manhattan, and other parts of the US East Coast. She received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1995 in History and Literature of the Renaissance and Reformation. Despite vowing never to go to graduate school, and taking a few years off after university to pursue other interests, she returned to the field to earn a PhD from Yale in 2006 in History and Renaissance Studies.

Emily is a cultural historian of the Reformation era, with a focus on Italy. She is especially interested in how religious change affects standards of behavior for individuals and for groups, and the tensions between external social norms and internal experience. Her recent book, The Pulpit and the Press in Reformation Italy (Harvard University Press, 2013), examines the role of Italian preachers during religious crisis and schism. The book credits preachers with keeping Italy Catholic when the region’s religious future seemed uncertain, and with creating a new religious culture that would survive in an unprecedented atmosphere of competition and religious choice. She is also the co-editor of A Linking of Heaven and Earth: Studies in Religious and Cultural History in Honor of Carlos M.N. Eire (Ashgate, 2012); among other topics, the book tackles head-on the question of how to study miracles in an age of skepticism. Emily currently runs a project, funded by the British Academy, studying how people heard (or misheard) sermons in the Reformation era, and whether audience behavior links to growing religious differences. From 2010-2012 she was interim director of the Reformation Studies Institute. 

Emily’s new research examines the social and theological significance of Roman Jews in the Catholic Reformation. This project has brought her speaking engagements in Edinburgh, Tel Aviv, Rome, and Dublin. She will be spending the 2013-2014 academic year in Florence as the Robert Lehman Fellow at Villa I Tatti (the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies), where she plans to complete the bulk of the research for this project.

Monday, May 20, 2013

Letting It Go: A Post-Holocaust Delight



The world of Holocaust literature is filled with horrific stories of murder and gritty survival – think Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi and Art Spiegelman. Seldom does a book come along from a Holocaust survivor that can truly be called delightful.

Letting It Go by Miriam Katin
is that book.
Katin, a New York artist born in Hungary during World War II, has created a graphic novel about moving past her anger toward Germany. On the surface, it's the true story of Katin's reaction to her son moving to Berlin – news that, at first, sends her into a tailspin.

But Letting It Go is not a memoir of Holocaust sorrow. It's a book full of life – a colorful novel of pencil drawings portraying a million small moments that make up Katin's current life: An obsessive crusade against kitchen cockroaches; a cheer-me-up shopping spree for expensive sunglasses; an embarrassing case of diarrhea in a hotel bed; and, throughout, a touching, loving, supportive relationship with her husband.

Katin emerges as an immensely likable, complex woman – a friend you'd enjoy meeting for a drink.

- Marc Davis

Monday, May 13, 2013

The Liars' Gospel


Review by Ada Brunstein

Liars Gospel"It is important to quiet the lamb, that is the first thing." So begins Naomi Alder­man's The Liars' Gospel, a fictional account of Jesus' life set against the backdrop of the Jews' struggles against Roman rule.

Alderman gives us four points of view, or gospels, on the life of Yehoshuah (Jesus), focusing mainly on the time between his departure from home and his death. We hear from his mother, Miryam (Mary), who laments her son's departure and has trouble accepting him in his new role as a “teacher.”

We hear from his follower, confidant, and later his betrayer, Iehuda (Judas), one of the most compelling characters in this story. It is through Iehuda's eyes that we see Yehoshuah evolve from a man who has gathered a few supporters through his messages of forgive­ness and healing, to a man who is leading a movement of thousands of followers. Through Iehuda we see how Yehoshuah loses his way gradually, in small missteps, veering incrementally farther away from the messages he started his teachings with and into a more self-serving role.

We hear from the high priest, Caiaphas, whose life's work was to maintain the precari­ous balance between the desires of the Jews and the demands of the Romans.

And finally we hear from a young Jewish rebel, Bar-Avo (Barabbas), in whose hands lies the fate of the Jewish people at the time.

 Continue reading the review and an interview with the author, Naomi Alderman.

Monday, May 6, 2013

Ancient History: A Jew Among Romans


On the long list of all-time greatest Jewish calamities, the destruction of the Second Temple is surely among the Top 10. We remember it every year on Tisha B'Av, and at every wedding when the groom smashes a glass. But how do we even know about this 2,000-year-old catastrophe?

Mainly from the writings of one man: Flavius Josephus, a remarkable Roman-Jewish warrior-historian. Frederic Raphael's recently published A Jew Among Romans captures both the gory ancient war that led to the Temple's destruction and the life of the scribe himself.

To be sure, the book is not an easy read. It's interspersed with dry patches and esoteric phrases like "mimetic opportunism" and "divine afflatus." But it is also filled with wry observations and unexpected humor. About Nero: "He was the first ruler for whom the X factor of showbiz trumped statesmanship or martial prizes." About Josephus: "Josephus entertained many ideas, and they entertained him."

Ultimately, Raphael concludes that the Judean Jews had "no great principle at stake" in their rebellion, and that they "had only themselves to blame" for the Temple's destruction.