The Henry Schwartzman Endowed Faculty Seminar
Sponsored by the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life; the Departments of Jewish Studies, History, Art History, and English; and the Rutgers Initiative for the Book
Joseph A. Skloot
Rabbi Aaron D. Panken Associate Professor of Modern Jewish Intellectual History, Hebrew Union College, New York
In 1494, a Jewish woman, newly pregnant, dressed in men’s clothes and hid in the hull of a boat. She sailed from Portugal to Spain and on to Italy, following the husband who had abandoned her to certain baptism, if not martyrdom. The events of her escape and ultimate reunion with her husband, Rabbi David Ibn Yahya, cast a long shadow over the lives and careers of their son Yosef and grandson Gedaliah. This seminar will explore how three generations of the Ibn Yahya family told and retold the story of that escape and how they made sense of their trauma in theological terms. On the Italian peninsula, they were prominent communal leaders and teachers, composers of new works of poetry, history, theology, and exegesis. They helped fashion a new and defiant early modern Jewish print culture in the face of enduring and ongoing persecution. Their story stands at the intersection of medieval and early modern history; Italian and Mediterranean studies; Judaic studies; gender studies; religious studies; trauma psychology; and migration studies.
Joseph A. Skloot is the author of First Impressions: Sefer Ḥasidim and Early Modern Hebrew Printing (Brandeis University Press, 2023) and is currently at work on a biography of three generations of the ibn Yahya family.
Tuesday, November 18, 2025
10:30 AM–Noon; Lunch will be served.
Miller Hall (14 College Ave.); Room 115
RSVP by Monday, November 3, to