Emerging Voices in Jewish Studies: A Talk by Allyson Gonzalez, Yale University

Scholarship, Belonging, and the Politics of A.S. Yahuda’s Forgotten Scholarship
A Talk by Allyson Gonzalez, Yale University

In the midst of WWI, the Orientalist Abraham S. Yahuda (1877-1951) served as the first chair of Rabbinic Language and Literature at the University of Madrid, Spain’s flagship university. Born in Jerusalem to Baghdadi and German parents, and of distant Sephardi heritage, Yahuda held a chair in Jewish studies more than a decade before both Harry Wolfson (1925) and Salo W. Baron (1930). This talk asks how an important figure like Yahuda has been all but forgotten and examines his participation in the complex political and academic worlds that surrounded him.

This is a joint event of Fordham University’s Center for Jewish Studies and Columbia’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies.