Researcher: Dr. Ruth Lamdan

Dr. Lamdan is conducting a comprehensive research project on the attitude towards old age in Ottoman Jewish society during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.  Her research particularly examines the status of widows and elderly women in Jewish society.  Her work is based on a broad range of sources: Responsa literature, Halachic sources, eulogies and gravestones, sermons, contemporary correspondence, and documents from the Sharia court of law.  Over the past year Dr. Lamdan has sorted and evaluated the vast array of findings that were collected and she is now in the process of analyzing and summarizing the relevant data.  She is also devoting significant time to the preparation of a comprehensive introduction to the book which will summarize her findings.

Conferences

• July 3–6, 2017
  Dr. Lamdan represented the Center at the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds, where she presented a paper entitled “Otherness in Ottoman Jewish Communities in the 16th and 17th Centuries”.