This year’s Fishman Family Endowed Lecture will be given by Professor David Shyovitz.

Professor Shyovitz is Associate Professor of History at Northwestern University and Director of NU’s Crown Family Center for Jewish and Israel Studies. He is the author of the award-winning book A Remembrance of His Wonders: Nature and the Supernatural in Medieval Ashkenaz. In Spring 2023, he is Vassar’s Fishman Fellow in Jewish Studies.

In the high Middle Ages, European Jews wrote voluminously about which biblical figures had secretly been werewolves, which species of fish scrupulously observed the Sabbath, and whether animals would be resurrected from the dead and rewarded in heaven for their good deeds. They used these thought experiments to interrogate, and even eliminate, the boundaries between humanity and animality—at the very historical moment when Jews were being “dehumanized” by their Christian rivals in unprecedented ways. This talk will seek to shed light on this counterintuitive dynamic, and to explore the ways in which Jews shaped and reshaped their core identities in dialogue with their surrounding Christian culture.