Rethinking Nancy Jay’s opposition between sacrifice and childbirth in what she defines a “remedy for having been born of woman”, the conference aims to explore new approaches to the maternal sacrifice as a ritual, as a narrative, and as a metaphor in the context of Jewish culture.

Paris, 19-21 November 2019

CERMOM-INALCO - Ca’ Foscari University, Venice

Programme

19 November

9-9,30 Registration, INALCO, 65 rue des Grands Moulins, 75013, room 4.24

9,30-11

Chair: Piero Capelli, Università Ca’ Foscari, Venezia.

• An Old Tale in New Times: The Martyrdom of the Woman and her Seven Sons in Italian Jewish Literature of the Nineteenth Century - Asher Salah, Bezalel, Academy of Arts & Design, Jerusalem
• An Extreme Sacrifice: A Cannibal Mother in the Siege of Jerusalem - Ilaria Briata, Universität Hamburg
• Daughters of Truth and Mothers of the Community: Some Observations on the Elusive Women of Qumran - Corrado Martone, Università di Torino

11-11,30 coffee break

11,30-13 Chair: Elisa Carandina, INALCO, Paris

• Where Have All the Mothers Gone? Maternal Sacrifice in Hebrew Literary History -Hamutal Tsamir, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheva
• Nationalized Maternal Bodies of Mothers (and their sons) in David Grossman’s To the End of the Land (Isha Borahat Mib’sorah) – Ranen Omer-Sherman, University of Louisville, Kentucky
• Speaking Hebrew as Maternal Sacrifice: Rachel Katznelson and the Abandonment of the Mother Tongue - Roni Henig, New York University

13-15 Lunch

15-17 Auditorium

• Keynote - The Sacrifice of the Mother and the Akedah, Yvonne Sherwood, University of Kent

20 Dinner

20 November

Auditorium

9,30-11 Chair: Alessandro Guetta, INALCO, Paris

• Circumcision or the maternal sacrifice of a child - Daniel Felipe Niño López, Universidad De La Salle, Bogota, Colombia
• Le sacrifice des enfants par leurs mères sur l’autel du Dieu d’Israël : Une réaction féminine juive aux conversions forcées et la sanctification du Nom Divin (qiddush ha-Shem). Étude comparative de quelques chroniques médiévales - Liliane Vana, , IEJ, Université Libre de Bruxelles
• Mothers in Heroic Birth Narratives in Sassanian Persia - Shana Schick, University of Haifa

11-11,30 coffee break

11,30-13 Chair: Corrado Martone, Università di Torino

• Birth and Giving Birth as Reflected in the Classical Rabbinic Sources - Dalia Marx, Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem
• The Sacrifice of the Suspected Adulteress - Isabella Scortegagna, Università Ca’ Foscari, Venezia
• Sacrificing Motherhood Itself: The Case of Dr. Gisella Perl as Inmate Doctor and Reproductive Specialist - Elena Hoffenberg, International School, University of Haifa

13-15 Lunch

15-16,30 Chair: Leili Anvar, INALCO, Paris

• Breaching the Visual Contract of Sacrifice - Leni Dothan, Artist, Architect, Researcher 
• The Multifaceted Image of the Victimized and Self-Sacrificing Maternal Figure in Post-Holocaust Feminist Art - Mor Presiado, Bar-Ilan University
• Resurrecting Rachel as the Archetype of Mourning Motherhood - Marc Michael Epstein, Vassar College, New York

16,30-17 coffee break

17 -18,30 Screening of Ha-qir, by Moran Ifergan

20,30 Dinner

21 November

Auditorium

9,30-11,30 Chair:  Marie-Christine Bornes Varol, INALCO, Paris

• Killing the mame-loshn. The sacrifice of mother tongue at the altar of a new Hebrew identity - Raffaele Esposito, Università L’Orientale, Napoli
•  “My Dear Son”: Literary Posthumous Letters as a Mother’s Last Sacrifice - Nourit Melcer-Padon, Hadassah College Jerusalem
• Testing the Tested:  The Sacrifice of the Mother in Modernist Fiction Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf and Sh. Y. Agnon - Anna Lissa, Université Paris 8
• Did the “Yiddishe mame” exist? Mother figure in the east-European Jewish childhood narrative of the 19th century - Ekaterina Oleshkevich, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan

11,30-12 coffee break

12-13,30 Chair: Avraham Rubin, The Martin Buber Society of Fellows, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

• The Jewish Woman Immigrant Sacrifice of Jewish Womanhood upon Coming to America: Four Women and their Stories - Mara W. Cohen Ioannides, D.S., Missouri State University
• Maternal Criticism: Reading Literature by Women as Nonviolent Resistance and Constructing Peaceful Communities through Mothers’ Activism - Charlyn Marie Ingwerson, Drury University
• Sacrifice and Admiration: The Image of the Yemeni Jewish Mother - Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman, The Open University of Israel