Naama Harel, Yael Bruchim and Anna Lissa org. | Wandering beyond the Boundaries: Defining the Natural in Jewish and Modern Hebrew Literature | INALCO | Paris | November 25th-26th 2024

Program – Wandering beyond the Boundaries

November 25, Monday

13h : Registration and Lunch

14h30 : Greetings and Opening Remarks

14h45 : Session 1: THE NATURAL WORLD IN PREMODERN JEWISH LITERATURE 

Chair: Dorit Lemberger

• The Donkey and Classical Philosophy | Giuseppe Veltri, Hamburg University
• Preeminent in Leprosy: The Grotesque as a Metaphor for Human-Nature Relations in the Babylonian Talmud | Yael Bruchim, Ben Gurion University of the Negev
• Fantastic Flora: A Medieval Kabbalistic Reading of Plants | Jonnie Schnytzer, Ben Gurion University of the Negev
• The Golden Peacock: An Eternal Flight between Life and Death | Aviv Livnat, Tel Aviv University & New York University

16h45 : Coffee break

17h : Session 2: LITERARY ANIMALS 

Chair: Raffaele Esposito

• Orpaz’s Animals Anna Lissa, Université Paris 8 – Inalco, Cermom
• Some Reflections on The Bear by Assaf Schur: Or the Natural History of Zionist State | Noam Pines, University at Buffalo
• Dinka’s Language in Someone to Run with: The Theory of Speech-Acts as a Literary Method | Dorit Lemberger, Bar-Ilan University
• Attitude to the Custom of Atonement in Agnon’s Work | Dan Misheiker, Levinsky College

19h30 : Dinner

November 26, Tuesday

09h30 : Session 3: ECOCRITICISM AND ECOPOETICS IN YIDDISH AND HEBREW LITERATURE

Chair: Anna Lissa

• A Maskilic Vision of the Jewish Farmer ca. 1838: Joseph Perl’s Bokhen Tzaddik | Jonathan Schorsch, Universität Potsdam
• Early Environmentalism in the Early Work of Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh | Shai Abadi, Tel Aviv University
• Animals Protest against Their Victimization in Hebrew and Yiddish Literature | Naama Harel, Columbia University
• The Rabbi of Animals: The Hagiographic Character of the Hassidic Rebbe David of Lelov as a Dialogical Righteous Man of Man-Nature | Zeev Kitsis, Bar-Ilan University

11h30 : Coffee Break

12h : Session 4: Climate Change and Speculative Fiction

Chair: Vered Karti Shemtov

• Human Parts: A Discussion of Orly Castel Bloom’s Book in the Context of   Climate Crises | Oshrat Lopez, Ben Gurion University of the Negev
• Blurring Symbolic Boundaries between Center and Periphery through Climate Change Discourse in Israel and Hebrew Fiction | Ilanit Ben Dor Derimian, Université de Lille SHS
• No Longer a Land of Milk and Honey: Hostile Nature in Hebrew Speculative Fiction | Raffaele Esposito, University of Naples L’Orientale

13h : Lunch 

15h : Session 5: THE POETRY OF NATURE / THE NATURE OF POETRY

Chair: Ilanit Ben Dor Derimian

• The Anger of Nature: A Reading in Chaim Nachman Bialik’s “I Knew in a Night of Fog” | Vered Karti Shemtov, Stanford University
• “Adjectives stretch like cats”: The Role of the Animal in Zuzanna Ginczanka’s Poetic Language | Gilad Shiram, Stanford University
• Isn’t the Sky? New Perspectives on Hebrew Garden Poetry of Al-Andalus | Yarden Ben Tzur, Tel Aviv University

16h : Coffee Break

16h30 : Session 6: ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY IN MODERN HEBREW PROSE

Chair: Shai Abadi             

• Vibrant Matter Writing: Eco-Ethical Possibilities in Shimon Adaf’s Work | Danny   Luzon, Haifa University
• “Everyone out of the tree”: Nature & People, Word & Image in Etgar Keret’s ‘shesek’ | Ronit Rapp, David Yellin College of Education
• “The River’s Fault”: Ecofeminism in the Poetry of Nurit Zarchi | Riki Traum Avidan, Ramapo College of New Jersey
• Odors, Nature and Nativity in 1960’s Hebrew Prose | Tal Yehezkely, Tel Aviv University & Yale University

18h : Closing Discussion and Final Remarks