The 2008 Pratt Oration
The People and the Book
The Invention of Printing and the Transformation of Jewish Culture
Prof David Ruderman, University of Pennsylvania
Building on recent scholarship on the history of the book in early modern Europe, Professor Ruderman will consider how the printing press transformed Jewish education, broke down regional barriers between communities, challenged the rabbis to deal with an information explosion, and changed Jewish-Christian relations. Professor Ruderman will also discuss the fascination of the Christian world during this period with Hebrew books and Jewish learning.
David B. Ruderman is the Joseph Meyerhoff Professor of Modern Jewish History at the University of Pennsylvania and the Director of the university’s Centre for Advanced Judaic Studies. Professor Ruderman’s works include Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe and Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key: Anglo-Jewry’s Construction of Modern Jewish Thought, for which he received the Koret Book Award. His book The World of a Renaissance Jew: The Life and Thought of Abraham B. Mordecai Farissol, was honored in the United States with the JWB National Book Award in Jewish History. His most recent book is Connecting the Covenants: Judaism and the Search for Christian Identity in Eighteenth-Century England. Professor Ruderman has been president of the American Academy for Jewish Research and is the recipient of a lifetime achievement award for his work in Jewish history from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture in the United States.
- Date:
- Thursday 14th August 2008
- Time:
- 7:00pm
- Location:
- Prince Philip Theatre
Architecture Building
University of Melbourne - Enquiries:
- Dr Dvir Abramovich
Centre for Jewish History and Culture
03 8344 3789
dvir@unimelb.edu.au