Join us for Tamid of Hebrew College Adult Learning’s monthly GROW series. For our November program, we will examine memory in medieval Ashkenaz. We hope you will spend an hour with us for this and future programs in our series, to gather, reflect, observe, and wrestle with topics that will deepen your Jewish learning.
Anyone who has crammed for an exam, or left home without whatever you vowed not to forget, has strategies for enhancing memory. For late antique and medieval Jews, an excellent memory was as key to social status as religious authority, and Jewish emphasis on study encouraged the cultivation of memorization techniques. Beginning with a survey of ancient memory enhancement practices, we will look at some Jewish responses to the need to memorize and retain large quantities of text. Where memory fell short, magic was also an option. Remarkably, elements of early Jewish memory magic survived into medieval Ashkenaz in the rituals that marked a Jewish boy’s first day of school. What might the persistence of these rituals in Jewish life tell us about Jewish attitudes toward learning and how they may differ from modern emphases?
Susan L. Einbinder is professor emerita of Hebrew and Judaic studies at the University of Connecticut, where she taught from 2012-23 following a long career at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. She received her B.A. from Brown University and Ph.D. from Columbia University, and received rabbinic ordination from the Hebrew Union College.
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