"Slavery and Emancipation in the Babylon Talmud"
About this Event
Wednesday, December 9, at noon | 617 Kent Hall
This presentation will introduce two slaves from within the pages of the Babylonian Talmud, Tavi and Minyamin. As part of Marjorie Lehman’s and Mira Wasserman’s larger project on slavery in the Talmud, they will show how interpretations of the sources that discuss Tavi and Minyamin reflect divergent conceptions of the institution of slavery and of Jews as slaveholders. In this lecture, they will complicate the meaning of the word “eved” (slave) in rabbinic sources to expose different redactional agendas in different talmudic contexts.
Marjorie Lehman is Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at The Jewish Theological Seminary and the Area Chair of Rabbinic Literatures and Cultures. Her books include: The En Yaaqov: Jacob ibn Habib’s Search for Faith in the Talmudic Corpus (Wayne State University Press, 2012) and Bringing Down the Temple House: Engendering Tractate Yoma (Brandeis University Press, 2022). She has co-edited two books, Mothers in the Jewish Cultural Imagination (Liverpool: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization at Liverpool University Press, 2017) and Learning to Read Talmud: What it Looks Like and How It Happens (Academic Studies Press, 2017). She is also the co-director of the digital humanities project in Jewish Studies called Footprints: Jewish Books in Time and Place (http://footprints.ctl.columbia.edu/). She co-directs the Jewish Librarianship Certificate Program, a joint endeavor between the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary and the Association of Jewish Libraries.
Mira Beth Wasserman is Vice President for Academic Affairs at Reconstructing Judaism, where she serves as Associate Professor of Rabbinic Literature and Dean of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. She is co-editor of (2025), part of the Brandeis Library of Modern Jewish Thought. Her book, (Penn Press, 2017), was awarded the Baron Prize for the best first book in Jewish studies published in 2017. As director of the Center for Jewish Ethics from 2017 until 2025, Wasserman pursued public scholarship on race, gender, and Jewish ethics. She led the NEH-funded project , sparking new scholarship and developing resources forstudying the multiracial, multicultural realities of Jewish life.
*Guests must register by Monday, December 7, to be approved for campus access; unregistered guests will not be permitted on campus. Each guest must register individually using a unique email address.
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Supported by the generosity of the Kaye family.
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