Shared Appeals to Different Gods: Jews, Christians and Medieval Prayer

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

Berkeley's Center for Jewish Studies presents Elisheva Baumgarten's lecture focusing on private prayers found in Hebrew manuscripts from medieval northern France that both adapt and adopt known Christian prayers. It will trace the ways in which these prayers would have been known by Jews, and discuss the adaptations made by Jews to make these prayers usable.

Blood Libel: On the Trail of An Antisemitic Myth

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

Berkeley's Center for Jewish Studies presents Magda Teter's lecture exploring how the medieval anti-Jewish lie about the story of Simon of Trent, a boy whose death during the Easter/Passover season in 1475 led to one of the most notorious persecutions of Jews in Europe and, as cited in 2019 by the shooter of the Poway synagogue, became rooted in Christian imagination to persist into the twenty first century US and lead to his horrific crime in California.