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Steven
F. Kruger.
The
Spectral Jew: Conversion and Embodiment in Medieval Europe.
Minneapolis:
Minnesota U.P., Jan 2006.
Medieval
Cultures Series, volume 40.
416
pages, 6 halftones.
Publisher's
recommended price
Hardback
ISBN
0816640610, $77.95
Paperback ISBN 0816640629, $25.95
Reveals
the interdependence of medieval Jewish and Christian identities.
Medieval European culture
encompassed Judaic, Christian, Muslim, and pagan societies, forming a
complex matrix of religious belief, identity, and imagination. Through
incisive readings of a broad range of medieval texts and informed by
poststructuralist, queer, and feminist theories, The Spectral Jew traces the Jewish
presence in Western Europe to show how the body, gender, and sexuality
were at the root of the construction of medieval religious anxieties,
inconsistencies, and instabilities.
Looking closely at how medieval Jewish and Christian
identities are distinguished from each other, yet intimately
intertwined, Kruger demonstrates how Jews were often corporealized in
ways that posited them as inferior to Christians—archaic and incapable
of change—even as the two mutually shaped each other. But such attempts
to differentiate Jews and Christians were inevitably haunted by the
knowledge that Christianity had emerged out of Judaism and was, in its
own self-understanding, a community of converts.
Examining the points of contact between Christian and Jewish
communities, Kruger discloses the profound paradox of the Jew as
different in all ways, yet capable of converting to fully Christian
status. He draws from central medieval authors and texts such as Peter
Damian, Guibert of Nogent, the Barcelona Disputation, and the Hebrew
chronicles of the First Crusade, as well as lesser known writings such
as the disputations of Ceuta, Majorca, and Tortosa and the immensely
popular Dialogues of Peter
Alfonsi.
By putting the conversion narrative at the center of this
analysis, Kruger exposes it as a disruption of categories rather than a
smooth passage and reveals the prominent role Judaism played in the
medieval Christian imagination.
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