Elliott Horowitz ז”ל
[Professor Elliott Horowitz passed away on March 18, 2017. This account is curated by Mr. Menachem Butler.]
Elliott Horowitz (Elimelekh Shimon b. Shraga ha-Levi, 1953-2017) was one of the most versatile and original Jewish historians of his generation. A native of Queens, Horowitz was educated at Yeshivat Kerem be-Yavneh, Princeton, and Yale, where he completed his dissertation "Jewish Confraternities in Seventeenth-Century Verona: a study in the social history of piety", in 1982. That year Horowitz moved to Israel, where for thirty-two years he taught Medieval and Early Modern Jewish History, first at Ben Gurion University and from 1989-2014 at Bar Ilan. During this period he held numerous visiting positions at American universities, including, in 2010-2011, the Ella Darivoff Fellowship at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaica Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
A glance at his bibliography below will suggest the astonishing range of his scholarship, across the social, economic and cultural history of Jews in Europe and the Near East from the Middle Ages to the present, with particular focus on the early modern period and, later in life, on the 19th century. Horowitz pioneered the use of anthropological approaches and the histoire de mentalités to Jewish history, and a host of hitherto marginal figures -- women, adolescents, Jewish converts to Christianity -- found their voice in his work. With his characteristic blend of erudition, cosmopolitanism, love of tradition and irreverence, Horowitz's book Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (Princeton University Press 2008) brought together many of the central themes of his oeuvre: rituals and transgression, Jewish history and Jewish memory, Jewish-Christian relations, and Zionism. The book gained an abiding readership both within and beyond the academy, and was a runner-up for the National Jewish Book Award. As the editors of the Jewish Quarterly Review noted upon his passing, "The book brought together his enduring scholarly curiosity about violence and the carnivalesque with an ethical concern for the way in which religion can be used and abused."
In 2014 Horowitz took early retirement and was appointed to the Oliver Smithies Visiting Fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford for the academic year 2015-6. While there, he curated an exhibit and produced a fine catalogue: Elliott Horowitz, הביטו אל צור חצבתם 'Look to the rock from which you were hewn': Hebraica and Judaica at Balliol (Oxford 2016). Among fellow historians, such articles as "Coffee, Coffeehouses and the Nocturnal Rituals of Early Modern Jewry," AJS Review 14:1 (1989): 17–46, and "The Eve of the Circumcision: A Chapter in the History of Jewish Nightlife", Journal of Social History 23:1 (1989), pp. 45-69, have become beloved classics, historically illuminating, deeply learned, methodologically original, and very witty. From 2004 until his death, Horowitz served as co-editor of the Jewish Quarterly Review, the oldest English-language journal devoted to Jewish studies. Horowitz contributed vitally to expanding the journal's horizons, approaches and subjects, and to putting JQR back at the avant-garde of Jewish scholarship. By way of tribute, the Jewish Quarterly Review 108:3 (2018) devoted a curated forum of essays by the Natalie Zemon Davis, Stuart Schoffman, Francesca Bregoli and Javier Castaño to Horowitz's work. Prof. Davis concluded her tribute by noting "His own superb scholarship, cut off much too soon, placed Jewish history and the issues it carried with it at the heart of all our historical inquiry."
[Professor Elliott Horowitz passed away on March 18, 2017. This account is maintained by his family and friends.]
Elliott Horowitz (Elimelekh Shimon b. Shraga ha-Levi, 1953-2017) was one of the most versatile and original Jewish historians of his generation. A native of Queens, Horowitz was educated at Yeshivat Kerem be-Yavneh, Princeton, and Yale, where he completed his dissertation "Jewish Confraternities in Seventeenth-Century Verona: a study in the social history of piety", in 1982. That year Horowitz moved to Israel, where for thirty-two years he taught Medieval and Early Modern Jewish History, first at Ben Gurion University and from 1989-2014 at Bar Ilan. During this period he held numerous visiting positions at American universities, including, in 2010-2011, the Ella Darivoff Fellowship at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaica Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
A glance at his bibliography below will suggest the astonishing range of his scholarship, across the social, economic and cultural history of Jews in Europe and the Near East from the Middle Ages to the present, with particular focus on the early modern period and, later in life, on the 19th century. Horowitz pioneered the use of anthropological approaches and the histoire de mentalités to Jewish history, and a host of hitherto marginal figures -- women, adolescents, Jewish converts to Christianity -- found their voice in his work. With his characteristic blend of erudition, cosmopolitanism, love of tradition and irreverence, Horowitz's book Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (Princeton University Press 2008) brought together many of the central themes of his oeuvre: rituals and transgression, Jewish history and Jewish memory, Jewish-Christian relations, and Zionism. The book gained an abiding readership both within and beyond the academy, and was a runner-up for the National Jewish Book Award. As the editors of the Jewish Quarterly Review noted upon his passing, "The book brought together his enduring scholarly curiosity about violence and the carnivalesque with an ethical concern for the way in which religion can be used and abused."
In 2014 Horowitz took early retirement and was appointed to the Oliver Smithies Visiting Fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford for the academic year 2015-6. While there, he curated an exhibit and produced a fine catalogue: Elliott Horowitz, הביטו אל צור חצבתם 'Look to the rock from which you were hewn': Hebraica and Judaica at Balliol (Oxford 2016). Among fellow historians, such articles as "Coffee, Coffeehouses and the Nocturnal Rituals of Early Modern Jewry," AJS Review 14:1 (1989): 17–46, and "The Eve of the Circumcision: A Chapter in the History of Jewish Nightlife", Journal of Social History 23:1 (1989), pp. 45-69, have become beloved classics, historically illuminating, deeply learned, methodologically original, and very witty. From 2004 until his death, Horowitz served as co-editor of the Jewish Quarterly Review, the oldest English-language journal devoted to Jewish studies. Horowitz contributed vitally to expanding the journal's horizons, approaches and subjects, and to putting JQR back at the avant-garde of Jewish scholarship. By way of tribute, the Jewish Quarterly Review 108:3 (2018) devoted a curated forum of essays by the Natalie Zemon Davis, Stuart Schoffman, Francesca Bregoli and Javier Castaño to Horowitz's work. Prof. Davis concluded her tribute by noting "His own superb scholarship, cut off much too soon, placed Jewish history and the issues it carried with it at the heart of all our historical inquiry."
[Professor Elliott Horowitz passed away on March 18, 2017. This account is maintained by his family and friends.]
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