The Budapest Jewish Studies Colloquium in cooperation with the CEU Democracy Institute, the CEU Jewish Studies Program and the Tom Lantos Institute cordially invites you to a public lecture.
Registration is required for in-person and online participants by May 14 here.
Zoom link will be sent to registered guests. In-person participants can enter the building through the main entrance at Nádor street 15.
Reception to follow.
Abstract:
This seminar focuses on an emergent, transnational Hasidic revival movement centered around the Kerestirer Rebbe, Yeshaya Steiner (“Shayele”), a Hungarian “miracle-worker” who lived in Hungary from 1851-1925. His iconic portrait is commonly associated with mystical protection against the infestation of rodents in Jewish homes and businesses. Sam Shuman reveals how this is only one small piece of his broader populist appeal, however. He does this by interweaving hagiographic texts, Hasidic social media, and ethnography with anthropological theory and political theology on hospitality, sovereignty, and patronage.
Speaker:
Sam Shuman is a visiting assistant professor at Davidson College. Sam’s research situates Hasidic Judaism within a global context to rethink larger questions in political theology about religion and capitalism, race and gender, sovereignty and empire. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Jewish Quarterly Review, Shofar, Images: A Journal of Jewish Art & Visual Culture, and Religions and as chapters in Jewish Studies Now: The Relational Politics of Memory and How Transparency Works: Ethnographies of Global Value.