Books by David Shyovitz
The twelfth and thirteenth centuries witnessed an explosion of Christian interest in the meaning ... more The twelfth and thirteenth centuries witnessed an explosion of Christian interest in the meaning and workings of the natural world—a "discovery of nature" that profoundly reshaped the intellectual currents and spiritual contours of European society—yet to all appearances, the Jews of medieval northern Europe (Ashkenaz) were oblivious to the shifts reshaping their surrounding culture. Scholars have long assumed that rather than exploring or contemplating the natural world, the Jews of medieval Ashkenaz were preoccupied solely with the supernatural and otherworldly: magic and mysticism, demonology and divination, as well as the zombies, werewolves, dragons, flying camels, and other monstrous and wondrous creatures that destabilized any pretense of a consistent and encompassing natural order.
In _A Remembrance of His Wonders_, David I. Shyovitz disputes this long-standing and far-reaching consensus. Analyzing a wide array of neglected Ashkenazic writings on the natural world in general, and the human body in particular, Shyovitz shows how Jews in Ashkenaz integrated regnant scientific, magical, and mystical currents into a sophisticated exploration of the boundaries between nature and the supernatural. Ashkenazic beliefs and practices that have often been seen as signs of credulity and superstition in fact mirrored—and drew upon—contemporaneous Christian debates over the relationship between God and the natural world. In charting these parallels between Jewish and Christian thought, Shyovitz focuses especially upon the mediating role of polemical texts and encounters, which served as mechanisms for the transmission of religious doctrines, scientific facts, and cultural mores. Medieval Jews' preoccupation with the apparently "supernatural" reflected neither ignorance nor intellectual isolation, but rather a determined effort to understand nature's inner workings and outer limits, and to integrate and interrogate the theologies and ideologies of the broader European Christian society.
Reviews of _A Remembrance of His Wonders_ by David Shyovitz
Shofar, 2019
A review of _A Remembrance of His Wonders_ and several other recent works on "human animality."
American Historical Review, 2019
Papers by David Shyovitz
Jewish History, 2021
Sefer H . asidim (The Book of the Pious) has long served as a crucial source for medieval Jewish ... more Sefer H . asidim (The Book of the Pious) has long served as a crucial source for medieval Jewish historiography. Yet the dual question of who composed the anonymous text and how its varying recensions came into existence has been a contentious one among scholars of medieval Ashkenaz. In particular, opinions have been split on the issue of the book's authorship. Ever since the 1538 publication of the editio princeps, Judah he-H . asid ("the Pious," d. 1217) has been credited as the work's singular "author," but in the intervening years numerous theories of composite authorship have been proposed as well. The present article reassesses notions of "authorship" in medieval Ashkenaz and does so in dialogue with Ivan Marcus's recent Sefer H . asidim and the Ashkenazic Book in Medieval Europe (2018), a work that seeks to deconstruct the reductive category of unitary "books" in medieval Ashkenaz, but which simultaneously reifies Judah's self-conscious "authorial identity." In contrast, I argue on methodological and conceptual grounds that "authorship" is a problematic category in medieval Ashkenazic culture and suggest that in the case of Sefer H . asidim there are textual reasons to doubt that a single individual (Judah he-H . asid or anyone else) was solely responsible for "authoring" the text in its entirety.
This article traces the origins and rapid spread of the Mourner's Kaddish, a liturgical custom fi... more This article traces the origins and rapid spread of the Mourner's Kaddish, a liturgical custom first attested in late twelfthearly thirteenth-century Ashkenazic halakhic texts. While scholars have traditionally linked it to the martyrological needs of post-1096 Ashkenazic communities, this article suggests that the rise of the Mourner's Kaddish was one manifestation of a broader shift in medieval Jewish conceptions of the afterlife. An analysis of the exemplum that provided the new custom with a "myth of origins" reveals carefully inserted allusions and symbolism, which together propound a coherent theology of eschatology, divine recompense, and intercessory prayer. This theology closely mirrors doctrinal developments underway in Christian Europe-specifically the "birth of purgatory" and its accompanying commemorative and intercessory practices. The exemplum, moreover, couches its message in subtly polemical terms, criticizing and ridiculing those very elements of Christian belief and practice that were being covertly incorporated into the Jewish liturgical realm.
Reviews by David Shyovitz
AJS Review, 40(2) 2016, pp. 436–439.
Conferences by David Shyovitz
Conference Presentations by David Shyovitz
ERC Material Culture Conference
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Books by David Shyovitz
In _A Remembrance of His Wonders_, David I. Shyovitz disputes this long-standing and far-reaching consensus. Analyzing a wide array of neglected Ashkenazic writings on the natural world in general, and the human body in particular, Shyovitz shows how Jews in Ashkenaz integrated regnant scientific, magical, and mystical currents into a sophisticated exploration of the boundaries between nature and the supernatural. Ashkenazic beliefs and practices that have often been seen as signs of credulity and superstition in fact mirrored—and drew upon—contemporaneous Christian debates over the relationship between God and the natural world. In charting these parallels between Jewish and Christian thought, Shyovitz focuses especially upon the mediating role of polemical texts and encounters, which served as mechanisms for the transmission of religious doctrines, scientific facts, and cultural mores. Medieval Jews' preoccupation with the apparently "supernatural" reflected neither ignorance nor intellectual isolation, but rather a determined effort to understand nature's inner workings and outer limits, and to integrate and interrogate the theologies and ideologies of the broader European Christian society.
Reviews of _A Remembrance of His Wonders_ by David Shyovitz
Papers by David Shyovitz
Reviews by David Shyovitz
Conferences by David Shyovitz
Conference Presentations by David Shyovitz
In _A Remembrance of His Wonders_, David I. Shyovitz disputes this long-standing and far-reaching consensus. Analyzing a wide array of neglected Ashkenazic writings on the natural world in general, and the human body in particular, Shyovitz shows how Jews in Ashkenaz integrated regnant scientific, magical, and mystical currents into a sophisticated exploration of the boundaries between nature and the supernatural. Ashkenazic beliefs and practices that have often been seen as signs of credulity and superstition in fact mirrored—and drew upon—contemporaneous Christian debates over the relationship between God and the natural world. In charting these parallels between Jewish and Christian thought, Shyovitz focuses especially upon the mediating role of polemical texts and encounters, which served as mechanisms for the transmission of religious doctrines, scientific facts, and cultural mores. Medieval Jews' preoccupation with the apparently "supernatural" reflected neither ignorance nor intellectual isolation, but rather a determined effort to understand nature's inner workings and outer limits, and to integrate and interrogate the theologies and ideologies of the broader European Christian society.