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“Go forth and learn”: The Artist Joel ben Simeon and a Newly Discovered Hebrew Manuscript – A Webinar

“Go Forth and Learn” Joel ben Simeon

Thursday, October 22, 2020 –  1 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. EDT

The webinar is via Zoom (link is sent out 1 day prior)

Joel ben Simeon was a fifteenth-century Jewish scribe and illuminator.  Trained as an artist and scribe in Germany he spent most of his itinerant career in the book arts in northern Italy. The fifteenth-century was a time of great religious uncertainty, economic opportunity, and cultural exchange.

Simeon is one of the best illuminator-scribes, Jewish or Christian, in the fifteenth century. He is most famous for his colophons and his signed works. But now a new manuscript with more than 300 drawings by the hand of Simeon, is prompting a reassessment of his career and times. .  This manuscrhpt  highlights another side of him.  He depicts himself as a traveler in one manuscript. He suggest we, “Go forth and learn.”

 

Speakers:

Keynote: Professor Katrin Kogman-Appel, University of Muenster, Institut fur Judische Studien.  She previously taught at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (1996-2015). Dr. Kogman-Appel has multiple publications. Research topics include medieval Jewish art and the book culture. Areas of particular interest focus on Hebrew manuscript illumination and its cultural and social contexts.

Professor Lucia Raspe, Goethe Universitaet, Frankfurt am Main. Professor Raspe has published widely on late medieval and early modern Jewish communities, including the migration of German Jews to Italy, on manuscript and print culture.

To Register

This event is a joint program between Fordham Jewish Studies and Les Enluminures, organized by Sandra Hindman, Professor Emerita of Art History, Northwestern University, and President and Founder, Les Enluminures and Sharon Liberman Mintz, Curator of Jewish Art, The Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Senior Consultant, Judaica, Sotheby’s.