Bible glossaries as hidden cultural carriers. judeo-French cultural exchange in the High Middle Ages

Funding by and establishment at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities / Academies' Program

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Bible glossaries as hidden carriers of culture | Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities

The project focuses on Hebrew-French glossaries, which are being edited (for the most part for the first time) and historically and philologically processed and contextualized because they are exceptional witnesses to a simultaneously developing (Jewish and Christian) French (Bible) reading culture in Western Europe between the 12th and 14th centuries. The glossaries form basic texts for research into the interrelations between Jewish intellectual history and the non-Jewish environment as well as the lexical interferences between Jewish and Christian vernacular cultures. The French glosses are written in Hebrew throughout and comprise about 1/4 of the Old French vocabulary known today.

From the outset, the philological work will be integrated into a digital working environment that uses the BIMA 2.0 database, which has been in productive use in the Corpus Masoreticum project since 2018 and is continuously being further developed. BIMA 2.0 ensures the editorial indexing and long-term archiving of all Hebrew-French material and provides tools that guarantee the sustainable management, processing, presentation and visualization of the project results. A data export interface via RDF/OntoLex ensures that the interoperability of the lexicographically relevant edition data is guaranteed as 'linked open data' with the resources of DEAFél(Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français électronique), which are still available, and that DEAFél is therefore also used for further research. The field of Digital Humanities also makes an independent research contribution to the differentiation of a digital corpus linguistics of Judeo-French text cultures of the Middle Ages. The digital results will be supplemented by online and print publications that will provide new transdisciplinary academic impetus for Jewish studies, Romance studies, Jewish and Christian theology and medieval (knowledge) history as a whole.

Paris BNF hébr. 302 Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0 — Paris BNF hébr. 302 Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0

Paris BNF hébr. 302 edit Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0 — Paris BNF hébr. 302 edit Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0

Events

All Events

HfJS Heidelberg

LectureGerman / English

8 December 2025 - 2 February 2026 09:30 - 19:00 UTC+01:00

It starts on December 8

Gesicht zeigen gegen Antisemitismus- Flyer 1

HfJS Heidelberg

LectureOn-siteGerman

11 December 2025 19:00 - 20:30 UTC+01:00

Lecture by David Lüllemann as part of the art and education project "Invisible in the middle of society? Showing your face against anti-Semitism!"

HfJS Heidelberg

Kabbalat ShabbatOn-siteGerman / English

12 December 2025 18:00 - 21:00 UTC+01:00

Invitation to the monthly Shabbat celebration

Past events

Research Colloquium Winter Semester 2025/26

3 December 2025 News Announcement

3 Mondays, scholars from all areas of Jewish Studies will present their research - B.A. students will meet Master's students, PhD students, research assistants and professors - interested parties will gain insights into a wide range of topics and have the opportunity to ask questions and participate in discussions.

Everyone is cordially invited to attend one or more sessions!

Program

Monday, December 8, 2025

09.30 - 11.00
Natalia Ivashkevich, M.A.
Heidelberg University for Jewish Studies
Intertextual Connections: Anton Chekhov and Sholem Aleichem

11.30 - 13.00
Nadezhda Bezuevskaia, M.A.
Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies / Heidelberg Center for Ibero-American Studies
The Works of Fiction by Ruth Behar: Jewish Child Migration, Cultural Memory, and Family Lore of Latin American Women Writers

14.00 - 15.30
Patrick Locher, B.A.
Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies / University of Heidelberg
The Tombstone of Meshullam ben Kalonymos. Observations and theses

15.45 - 17.15
Milena Engel, B.A.
University of Heidelberg
Possibilities and limitations of sources on Jewish students at the University of Heidelberg (1933-1938)

17.30 - 19.00
Noah Knodel, B.A.
University of Heidelberg
Colonialism without empire? Zionist self-positioning between emancipation and land appropriation (1921-1935)

Monday January 12, 2026

09.30 - 11.00
Johannes Müller, M.A.
Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies / University of Frankfurt
David Qimchi's commentary on Psalms - genesis, tradition, thematic focus and impact

11.30 - 13.00
David Bindrim, PhD
Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies
Language, Dialect, or Variety? The status of Ugaritic in the Semitic language family

14.00 - 15.30
Timon Wulf, B.A.
University of Heidelberg
Theodor Heuss and Judaism

15.45 - 17.15
David Gilinsky, M.A. (Cantab) / MScR
Heidelberg University for Jewish Studies
Hibatullah Abu'l Barakat al-Baghdadi: His Judeo-Arabic Perush on Kohelet (1143 CE)

17.30 - 19.00
Hannah-Lea Wasserfuhr, PhD
Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies
The production and marketing of Jewish ritual objects between the 1870s and 1930s

Monday February 2, 2026

09.30 - 11.00
Silvia Negri, PhD
Heidelberg University for Jewish Studies
Tracing Intellectual Circulations Between Provence and Italy: First Steps Toward a Cartography of Ideas

11.30 - 13.00
Imen Ben Temelliste, PhD
Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies
Out of the Shadows of History: Jews of Tunisia between 1940-1943

14.00 - 15.30
Sören Gero Bartneck, M.A.
University of Graz
The institutional history of the development of German-language post-war Jewish studies 1945 - 1971

15.45 - 17.15
Yuliana Mosheeva
Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design
Anti-Semitic image patterns in text-to-image models of generative AI

17.30 - 19.00
Prof. Dr. Hanna Liss
Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies
A Jewish vernacular translation? Hebrew-French Bible glossaries and their use in Jewish education