​​Material and Materiality in the Three Abrahamic Faiths​​

T. Fogel 

​Dr. Tom Fogel is a Folklorist and ethnographer. He studies Yemenite Jewish Folklore, Culture and Language, and addresses issues regarding Identity, Heritage and Tradition. Fogel is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher in the "Jewish Diaspora in the Indian Ocean" project, hosted by Dr. Menashe Anzi at the Department of Jewish History, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Within the framework of this project, he studies the ethnographic work of Jewish-Baghdadi scholar and collector David Suleiman Sassoon. Additionally, Fogel is a research fellow in the ISF project "The varieties of Yemenite Arabic spoken by Jews" led by Dr. Ori Shachmon, in The Department of Arabic Language and Literature, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Contact Infortmation:

tomfogel@gmail.com +972-543-143-200 https://bgu.academia.edu/TomFogel ​

Research project: 

Object, Text, Place: between Kabbalists and Sufis in Lower Yemen This research wishes to examine a cultural-religious dialogue between Jews and Muslims in Yemen, prior to the mass immigration of the Jewish community from Yemen to Israel. By using concrete objects that take part in magical healing practices, such as amulets, mystical texts and holy tombs, this research will portray the religious boundaries, and transitions, between Jews and Muslims in the mystical context of Kabbala and Sufism.​

Y. Mabat

​​Dr. Yael Mabat is a historian of Modern Christianity in the Americas with an interest in Christian fundamentalist movements and Christian Restorationism. In her research, she implement concepts and approaches from the fields of Lived Religion, material religion and ritual studies. She's taught courses on Modern Christianity in the Americas, Popular Culture and Popular Religion and Latin American Modern History in both Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion University. Currently, Mabat is completing her first manuscript titled Christian Renewal on the Top on the Andes: The Early Dynamics of Latin America’s Religious Transformation. 

Contact Infortmation:

mabat@bgu.ac.il​​      https://telaviv.academia.edu/YaelMabat

Research project:

Living like Christ: Material Religion and the Construction of a New Israel in the Andes An idiosyncratic Christian denomination named “The Evangelical Association of the Israelites Mission of the New Universal Pact” emerged in Peru in the 1960s.  This Church incorporates, produces, and interacts with a series of objects that are believed to be related to Judaism or ancient Israel and range from clothing, cooking utensils, and incense to the shofar replicas of the stone tablets. Specifically, Mabat examines sources of inspiration for the Church’s materiality and delves into the ways these objects changed in use and meaning in a new social setting.​

T. Rotman

Dr. Tamar Rotman is a cultural historian of the early middle ages, she is particularly interested in hagiography, identity, and transmission of knowledge and cultural practices. She completed her PhD in the department of General History in Ben Gurion University, and for the last two years has been a post-doctoral fellow as the Department of General History in Bar Ilan University.  Tamar is also one of the co-editors of the online magazine The Feminist (הפמיניסט.ית).

Contact information:

tamarrot@post.bgu.ac.il​ +972-525-596-956 https://biu.academia.edu/TamarRotman    https://thefeminist.world​

Research project:

Relics, Hagiography and Identity in the early Medieval West Identity is an important component for any attempt to reach a a more profound understanding of social, political, and cultural histories of past societies. In this project, Rotman intends to examine the role of cults of saints in the early medieval identity discourse and offer new methods for studying this subject. To do so, she'll use hagiographical texts, that is, written records of saints and martyrs, and juxtapose them with material evidence, such as relics, reliquaries, tombs, and liturgical vessels. Given that the analysis of such sources requires a complex approach, the study combines methods and theories that are taken from history, philology, literature, and religious studies.​

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D. Sabato

Dr. David Sabato recently completed his Phd in the Talmudic department at the Mandel School's PhD Honor Program, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His doctorate focused on the development of rabbinic law after the destruction of the Second Temple. He also teaches the Bible and rabbinic literature at a variety of institutions in Israel.

Contact information:

sabatoster@gmail.com​

Research project:

The Production Processes and Use of the Ashes of the Red Heifer: Material, Interpretive and Polemical Aspects. His research will focus on the shaping of the process of ash production and the laws that govern it in Tannaitic literature. Sabato will examine the process in comparison with ceremonies and interpretations found in the surrounding cultures and religions in Eretz Israel – the Sadducees, the Qumran sect, pagans and Christians. He will carefully analyze the ritual itself as it is described in the Tannaitic sources, and the combination of the material aspects with the interpretative and polemical aspects that came together in its formation​.

C. Shacham-Rosby

Dr. Shacham-Rosby completed her PhD in the Department of Jewish History at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, titled: “Elijah the Prophet in Medieval Ashkenazi Culture” in 2018. She was a doctoral research assistant at the Center for the Study of Conversion and Inter-Religious Encounters, Ben-Gurion University from 2014 to 2018, and contributed to the online course "Reading Religious Conversion". During 2019 and 2020, she was a teaching fellow in the Department of Jewish History at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. Dr. Shacham-Rosby has presented and published her research in numerous platforms, in Israel and abroad.

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Photo credit: http://nfp.co.il/

Contact Infortmation:

chanasrphd@gmail.com    https://bgu.academia.edu/ChanaShachamRosby​

Research Topic:

The Honorable Chair of Ceremony: Elijah's Chair as a case study of a ritual object's transitions through eras, spaces and cultures. The Chair of Elijah is an iconic component of Jewish circumcision ceremonies, found almost universally throughout the Jewish diaspora from the 8th century until the present day. Its chronologically and geographically expansive use makes it an ideal component of material culture for examining local traditions, shifts in practice and conceptualization, and exchanges between religious groups. This study will examine varied approaches to Elijah’s Chair across diverse Jewish communities, including how the theological and social meanings associated with the object were shaped by the Christian and Muslim societies within which they existed.​

R. Tzoreff

Roni Tzoreff is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Arts at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, under the supervision of Dr. Ronit Milano and Prof. Sara Offenberg. Her research focuses on the representation of feminine experiences in the religious space in contemporary art, from gender, aesthetic and Jewish thought perspectives. She is the recipient of the Nathan Rotenstreich (Vatat) scholarship for 2017-2021. Her article: "She Writes in White Ink: On Aesthetic, Religious and Gender Perceptions in the Work of Jacqueline Nicholls" was published in Ars Judaica 14, 2018. 

Contact Infortmation:

ronitzoreff@gmail.com +972-502-057-346 https://bgu.academia.edu/RoniTzoreff ​

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Research Topic:

In her Ph.D. dissertation, she deals with contemporary art works that correspond to synagogues’ “Shiviti” tablets. She stands on gendered, theological, and political perceptions of the tablets, and looks for ways that contemporary artwork can reflect those perceptions and harness them to elaborate new perspectives. Her research is designed to illuminate how the tablets and the artworks are interrelated, and the way that contemporary art reflects a religious dimension and can be interpreted in a theological context.​

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