Eine Ringvorlesung des Instituts für Judaistik der Freien Universität Berlin

How to Make a Book Holy: The Example of Jewish Tradition

• Prof. Dr. David Stern
  Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, 
  Harvard University

There are many types of holy books, and many types of holiness, and none are identical. This talk will explore the holiness of the most sacred textual artifact in Jewish tradition, the Sefer Torah, or Torah scroll, and will show how the ancient rabbis during Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages constructed the holiness of the Sefer Torah through halakhic (legal) prescriptions and through Aggadah, narratives describing the inscription of the Sefer Torah. Through comparisons with Christian and Islamic Scriptures, the lecture will demonstrate the singularity of the Sefer Torah’s holiness.

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