Jews in Old Rus'
Date and Time
Location
Book launch and discussion of Jews in Old Rus' with author Alexander Kulik
In conversation with Oleh Kotsyuba, Director of Print and Digital Publications at HURI, and Michelle Viise, HURI Books' Monographs Editor
Books are available for purchase on the HURI Books website.
This event is organized by HURI Books, the publications program at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, and co-sponsored by the Harvard Center for Jewish Studies.
About the Book
This volume is paradigm-changing in more than one way: for the first time, this collection makes available a selection of documents on the history of Jews in Old Rus´ that provide a unique insight into Slavic-Jewish relations, offering both the original texts of the documents in Latin, Hebrew, Church Slavonic, and Arabic, and their English translations.
Adding nuance to our understanding of the difficult relations Rus´ had with Khazaria, the volume also realigns the position of East European Jews within the larger diaspora of European Jews. This collection meticulously portrays legal rulings, religious and liturgical customs, practices regarding food and garments, linguistic acculturation, and the political loyalties of Jews in Old Rus´.
About the Author
Alexander Kulik is a professor in the Department of Russian and East European Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on the cross-cultural transmission of texts and ideas in the fields of Slavic (palaeoslavica, medieval and modern Judeo-Slavica, and broader aspects of Russian and East European cultural history) and Jewish studies (Jewish literature and thought of the Hellenistic and Roman periods, early history of East European Jewry).
In addition to this volume, Kulik has authored three other books: Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha (two editions: Society of Biblical Literature: Atlanta GA, 2004 and Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2005), 3 Baruch: Greek-Slavonic Apocalypse of Baruch (Berlin-New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), Biblical Pseudepigrapha in Slavonic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015; with S. Minov). He has also edited the collected volume History of the Jews in Russia: From Antiquity to Early Modern Period in the bilingual series with Zalman Shazar Center (Jerusalem) and Gesharim (Moscow). Kulik founded and has headed the Brill book series Studia Judaeoslavica.