Sponsored by the Bildner Center, the Departments of Jewish Studies and History, the Rutgers Initiative for the Book, and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies
Dr. Noam Sienna, Jerome and Lorraine Aresty Visiting Scholar, Spring 2026
By 1520 CE, Constantinople (Istanbul) had become a thriving haven for Sephardi Jews who fled the Iberian Peninsula as a result of expulsions from Spain and Portugal. They brought with them a rich literary tradition, including a genre of paraliturgical poetry called baqqasha that featured prominently in the Hebrew poetry of medieval Spain. In connection with his research on Hebrew printing in early sixteenth-century Constantinople, Dr. Noam Sienna will examine a singular text, printed there in the 1520s, which uses baqqasha to celebrate the Ottoman conquest of Rhodes in 1522. What might have motivated this composition among the Sephardi communities of the Ottoman Balkans, and what would it have meant to bring this text into print at the time? Using the interdisciplinary methodologies of book history, this talk will situate this baqqasha in its literary, political, social, and material contexts.
Learn more about Dr. Sienna HERE.
Lunch will be served.
RSVP by Thursday, Feb. 26, to