"The Talmud as Icon: How an Ancient Oral Text Came to Embody Judaism" with Barry Scott Wimpfheimer

Date
Thu January 24th 2019, 5:30 - 7:00pm
Event Sponsor
Taube Center for Jewish Studies, Department of Religious Studies
Location
Bldg. 360, Conference Room
"The Talmud as Icon: How an Ancient Oral Text Came to Embody Judaism" with Barry Scott Wimpfheimer

The Talmud as Icon: The Babylonian Talmud is a Jewish scripture whose content has been central to the practice of Judaism and Jewish ideology for over a millennium. Because of this centrality, the Talmud has also found itself reviled and persecuted as the paradigmatic symbol of Jews and Judaism. This talk will focus on various aspects of the Talmud’s symbolic life.

Barry Scott Wimpfheimer is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Law at Northwestern University. A lifelong student of the Talmud with a special interest in the relationship between law and literature, Wimpfheimer has recently published The Talmud: A Biography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018).