The Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften: Events
Thursday, 04 December 2025, 11:00
Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Am Wingertsberg 4, 61348 Bad Homburg
Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften of Goethe UniversityFKH colloquium
Avital Davidovich-Eshed (Tel Aviv University)
»Myth, Metaphor, and Gender Performance: Medieval Ashkenazi Wedding Rites Reconsidered«Abstract
This research explores how mythic and allegorical models – above all the metaphor of Sinai as a divine wedding – reshaped medieval Ashkenazi marriage rites. It identifies a conceptual reversal in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, whereby the divine–human union became the template for human marriage rather than its analogue. This shift from the earlier Edenic myth to Sinai reconfigured gender relations, communal self-understanding, the ritual imagination, and the cultural dynamics between Jews and Christians. The research examines halakhic literature, ritual manuals, and piyyut (liturgical poetry) in order to illuminate the mechanisms through which myth operates.
The speaker
Avital Davidovich-Eshedis a senior lecturer in the Department of Jewish Philosophy and Talmud and the program of Women and Gender Studies at Tel Aviv University.
Participation
Closed event. Contact: Beate Sutterlüty; email: b.sutterluety@forschungskolleg-humanwissenschaften.de
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