Arresting Tales: Law and Morality in Modern Jewish Literature

Arresting Tales: Law and Morality in Modern Jewish Literature will straddle two seemingly unrelated phenomena in Jewish history: the encounter of Polish Jews with the concept of state law and the birth of modern Jewish literature in Eastern Europe. Drawing on newly discovered documents, legal texts, poems, and plays, Dynes will reflect on the experience of a generation of Jews who, in the wake of Poland’s partitions (1773–1795), experienced the shift from living under Polish feudal-like rule to being subject to an imperial state and its laws. Dynes will explain how literature then emerged as a means to popularize strategic knowledge about the law, extract new forms of political experience, and reflect on the relationship between the legal and the moral. The Emerging Voices in Jewish Studies Award is presented jointly by Fordham University’s Jewish Studies program and Columbia University’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies to promising young scholars who are treading new paths in Jewish studies.