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| Masks were required at AJS 2021 |
It was also different than previous Association for Jewish Studies (hereafter, AJS) conferences in that masking was required. (In fact, they updated the guidelines on Friday requiring even the speakers to remain masked when speaking.) It was also different in that many would-be attendees decided not to attend. As described in Rachel Kohn's JTA article on the conference, the conference was half the size that it usually had been, compared to in pre-pandemic years. Unfortunately, many of those who decided in the days leading up to the conference to not attend were people who had papers to read at the conference, which led to not only many papers being read by people other than their authors, it also led to many panels having to be either canceled in full or shifted around amongst their remnants. As such, the printed program booklet was not reliable, as it did not reflect the panels taking place. Fortunately, the website and the conference app were updated to reflect which panels were actually going to be happening and with which panelists, so that was helpful.
As with previous conferences, I found it intellectually engaging and very intellectually stimulating, not to mention I also learned a lot, as well as learning some aspects of contemporary scholarship, both within rabbinic literature and beyond. I definitely appreciated and enjoyed the sessions on Rabbinic literature, as I have in the past. However, a few other panels that were beyond Rabbinic literature were certainly chock full of terminology and references to scholars with whom I was not familiar at all and it was an interesting to try to understand what I could amongst those.
Having started my podcast (The Jewish Drinking Show) in the fall of 2019, most of the guests I've had on the show have been recorded through either Skype or Zoom. As such, I have not met most of the guests on my show in-person and it was a delight to meet several of them there in-person. It was, of course, also great to reconnect in-person with a bunch of people and meet new ones, as well. Speaking of meeting people, since the conference was half as attended as it had been in pre-pandemic years, it also had a more intimate feel to it, which was great for chatting with people and for conversations, so it made the experience all that much more special.
I am very fortunate that my work paid for my conference attendance and I'm also very excited to bring back many of the learnings I experienced at the conference and share it with the residents of the senior living facility where I work as the Director of Pastoral Care. While it is out of the box thinking to bring back such content for this demographic, I think there will certainly be residents that will greatly enjoy this content being shared with them. In addition to bringing back insightful tidbits of knowledge and information from this conference to the residents of the senior living facility where I work, it was also a helpful for me for thinking about other such content I can provide to them, and possibly even guest speakers.
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| I greatly enjoyed the panel discussion on Deborah Romm |
While I certainly enjoyed the panel discussions on Rabbinic Literature, perhaps the panel I enjoyed the most was "The Romm Printing and Publishing House in Vilna: Between Scholarly, Environmental and Gender Innovation", which featured Ada Gebel speaking on "'Shas Vilna' as a Maskilic Project in the Spirit of 'Mekitze Nirdamim'" and Mordechai Zalkin speaking on "Deborah Romm: Innovative Publisher, Visionary Businesswoman and Cultural Agent" - these were so fascinating and enlightening, not only into Deborah Romm, who was largely responsible not only for the growth of the Romm printing house in the late 19th century, but particularly for the famous "Vilna Shas". What emerged from that session was that Deborah Romm was quite the impressive business lady and orchestrated the printing of the Vilna edition of the Babylonian Talmud, which is the printing of the Talmud that remains with us to this day.
My favorite paper was none other than the brilliantly sharp Christine Hayes (who delivered the absolute best response to papers I have ever heard (and about whom I also previously wrote here)), whose paper “'If all the seas were ink…': The Pre-modern Migrations of a Trope” was a fascinating textual exploration of the intellectual history of a phrase found not only in Rabbinic literature and the Qur'an, but also eastern literature. Rounding out my top five are Jonathan Milgram's "The Mishnah and Ancient Near Eastern Law", Yael Wilfand's "Reconsidering Portrayals of Rabban Gamliel’s Travels in Light of the Journeys of Roman Emperors and Governors", Shira Shmidman's "Rami bar Hama: Historical Figure or Literary Construction of the Talmud’s Redactors?", and Orit Malka's and Ayelet Hoffman Libson's "The Concept of the חבורה in Early Rabbinic Literature".
If you were interested in checking-out my tweeting of these sessions, including my notes, you are welcome to do so here:
- First session: “Disability Studies and Rabbinic Literature”
- Second session: "Rabbinic Texts, Institutions, and Authority in Roman Palestine"
- Third session: "The Use and Abuse of Judaism for Critique"
- First session: "The Romm Printing and Publishing House in Vilna: Between Scholarly, Environmental and Gender Innovation"
- Second session: "Formal Bavli & Mishnah Studies"
- Third session: "Law and Society in Tannaitic Literature"
- Fourth session: "Religious Adaptations in the Time of COVID-19"
- Fifth session: "Midrash in the 21st century"
- First session: “Rabbinics in the Early Islamic Period”
- Second session: “Jewish Studies in the Public Sphere”
- Third session: “Methods in the Study of Rabbinic Literature and Late Antiquity”
*Listing of previous posts on AJS Conferences:
- (I did not post anything here re: attending AJS 2018 (but you can check out this picture from that conference))
- Highlights/Notes from Papers Delivered at the 2016 AJS Conference
- Day 3 of AJS Conference 2009
- Day 2 of AJS Conference 2009
- Day 1 of AJS Conference 2009
- Association of Jewish Studies Conference #41: I'm There
- Addendum to Thoughts on AJS Conference
- Brief Reflections on the Recent AJS Conference
- Day 3 of AJS Conference 2008
- Day 2 of AJS Conference 2008
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