Research in Jewish Studies
An Interdisciplinary Approach to Preserving the Sacred
After interviewing soferim and GLAM professionals I wrote a research paper on whether and how different institutions may keep torah scrolls. I have shared my conclusion below.
The meticulous nature of a rare books library provides the type of care needed for materials that their original owners and caretakers view as kadosh. These spaces are meant for learning, teaching, and research; they allow the texts to have a second life in accordance with Jewish tradition. The space can be designed as a geniza should be and has the purpose that would be seen as respectful from the Jewish community. The willingness to compromise of many traditional Jewish communities is permitting a transfer of these sacred materials into libraries and allowing non-Jewish people to take over their care. It is important for soferim to work in collaboration with preservationists to learn how to better provide repairs that last and to share their traditional methods on a niche subject. Simultaneously they need to allow pasul texts to be repaired, like the re-stitching of seams, by non-Jewish people, a common point of controversy. While a museum can certainly be an educational and interactive space and even afford opportunities for research, the missions of museums are too varied to always be an appropriate space for Torahs. In addition, the museum focuses on displaying objects, which goes directly against Jewish standards. With creative imagination and careful thought, both those who work with Torahs and in rare books libraries could find a second life for pasul Torah scrolls.
The Monsanto Family: Enigmatic -Jews and the First Jewish Family of Louisiana
I researched a Jewish family living in Spanish Louisiana under the Inquisition. I have included my introduction below and a short excerpt.
The Monsantos never converted to Catholicism and there also is no overt evidence that they practiced Judaism. The term crypto-Jew, which is used for Jews in Spain and Portugal in similar circumstances who had converted but maintained their practice in secret, is therefore not appropriate to describe their relationship to Judaism. I will use the term enigmatic-Jew: enigmatic is defined as “mysterious and impossible to understand completely,” which captures the uncertainty of their religiosity. I will highlight aspects of their story that are summarized in: Early Jews of New Orleans by Bertram Korn (the only text that has gone in depth on their family); Francis Kolb’s dissertation on “Contesting Borderlands: Policy and Practice in Spanish Louisiana, 1765-1803,” which references the Monsanto family and sheds light on new archival records; and archival materials from Spanish Louisiana.
Femininity and the Jewish-American Food Voice through Cookbooks
For my undergraduate thesis I analyzed Jewish cookbooks to better understand the intersection of food, assimilation, Judaism, and American culture. It was published and I have shared it here with a short excerpt below as well.
Cookbooks written for a Jewish-American female demographic create an aspirational Jewish-American foodvoice. This can be seen in the cookbooks as a textual assemblage of different genres: prefaces, advertisements, and in the recipes themselves. Here, I examine historical Jewish cookbooks to assess how Jewish religious and cultural values were used to elevate an American middle-class ideal about femininity and food and, ultimately, to define the value of a woman in the home. My analysis will look at how aspects of American values and class markers, purity, Jewishness, and femininity inform this aspirational Jewish-American foodvoice.