embodiment

August 17, 2026
Research Workshop: Sacred Sensoria: Jewish and Christian Embodied Experience in Early Modern Europe

Sacred Sensoria: Jewish and Christian Embodied Experience in Early Modern Europe
A Research Workshop of the Israel Science Foundation

25-28 October 2026
Israel Institute for Advanced Studies, Edmond J. Safra Campus, Givat Ram, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Monday and Wednesday), and Prima Park Hotel, Jerusalem (Tuesday)

Early modern Europeans saw, heard, touched, tasted and smelled their way into the sacred. Preaching, devotion, mystical practice and confessional polemic alike were conducted in the grammar of sensation, and the boundary between Jew and Christian was often drawn by disputing whose senses could be trusted.

Sacred Sensoria gathers historians, literary scholars, art historians and historians of religion from Europe, North America and Israel in order to study the two sensory regimes together rather than apart, across three days: Frameworks, Contact Zones, and Comparative Senses.

Keynote lectures: Prof. Bruce Gordon (Yale University), Prof. Magda Teter (Fordham University), and Prof. Stefan Michels (Goethe-Universitaet Frankfurt).

Convened by Dr Yaakov A. Mascetti (Bar-Ilan University) with Dr Channah Damatov (Bar-Ilan University).

Attendance is free and open to all; no registration is required.

Full programme and details:
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://iias.huji.ac.il/event/sacred-sensoria-jewish-and-christian-embodied-experience-early-modern-europe&source=gmail&ust=1786959320343000&sa=E