The Center for Judaic Studies will be hosting two members of the University of Haifa faculty, Dr. Efraim Lev and Dr. Moshe Lavee, for a week from September 1 to September 5. Dr. Lev and Dr. Lavee are the co-directors of a center recently established at UHaifa called The Interdisciplinary Center for the Broader Application of Genizah Research, a center that is seeking to use newly available digital technologies to foster wider and more diverse use of the extraordinary historical archives of the Cairo Genizah. (If you are unfamiliar with the Cairo Genizah, you can get a quick sense of it from the site of Cambridge’s digital collection. There will also be a display in the Dodd Center of some of their Genizah Research during that same week – come check it out!
Dr. Lev is trained as a historian of medicine and an ethno-pharmacologist. Much of his research centers on the records of plant remedies and other medicinal knowledge that has been preserved in the Genizah fragments.
Dr. Lavee is trained as a scholar of rabbinic literature and his research focuses on the transmission and peregrinations of rabbinic texts throughout the classical and medieval periods. His academia.edu page is probably the best place to get a sense of the work he does.
We are excited about hosting Dr. Lev and Dr. Lavee, and for the opportunities to explore potential collaborative relationships between UHaifa and UConn, especially amongst our faculty and advanced graduate students.
On September 2nd, at 4:00pm, Dr. Lev will be conducting a Public Lecture, free and open to the public, on the subject “Practical and Theoretical Medicine in Medieval Eastern Societies: The Case of the Cairo Genizah.”
On September 3rd at 12:30pm, Dr. Lavee will be giving a Research Seminar, open to anyone – but geared more towards faculty and graduate or advanced undergraduate students, “The Egyptian Midwives: Gender and Identity in Lost Aggadic Traditions from the Genizah.”
During their time in Storrs Drs. Lev and Lavee are available and eager to meet with faculty and students interested in their research and in possible collaborative arrangements. If you are teaching a course in the Fall that might lend itself to a visit by one or both of these scholars and/or you are someone with whom they might like to meet, perhaps for a lunch or dinner during that same week, please contact us.