Seminars

In this presentation, Dr. Bloch will offer a broad overview of the transformation of tsniut (traditional female modesty) and explore its wider significance in several domains: the role of halakhah in shaping modern Judaism; the construction of gender and gender ideology within contemporary Jewish frameworks; and the strategies through which Orthodox Judaism engage with complex modern issues such as gender dynamics, legal authority, sexuality, and embodiment, all while attempting to preserve an image of seamless social, religious, and political continuity.

This book is a study of the life and thought of the Polish Jew Solomon Yom Tov Bennett (1767-1838), who immigrated to London, where he spent the last forty years of his life. In focusing on Bennett’s learned life, it underscores the significance of this singular writer, artist, and public figure, especially his remarkable dual interests in art and thought, his biblical scholarship, his social and intellectual connections with some of the most famous and accomplished Christian intellectuals of London, and his self-determination to complete his life-long ambition of serving Western civilization by correcting and rewriting the entire standard edition of the English Old Testament. Bennett’s Christian associates respected his learning and were willing to accept him as a Jew in their ranks. His integration into the upper echelons of the Christian literary establishment—dukes, jurists, theologians, and other scholars—did not impede his loyalty to his faith. On the contrary, Bennett’s Christian friends made him more Jewish, more convinced of Judaism’s moral force, and more secure in his own skin as a member of a proud minority among Christian elites supposedly liberated, so he hoped, from the dark hostility of the Christian past. His supreme act of translating the Bible constituted the ultimate payback he could offer the altruistic Christians he had met, open to welcoming him not despite his Jewishness but because of it. Bennett’s transformation from a Polish Jewish immigrant to a proud Anglo-Jew exemplifies a unique path of modern Jewish life and self-reflection, one ultimately shaped by the particular ambiance of his newly adopted country.