Adolph and Ruth Schnurmacher Scholar-in-Residence Lecture with Dr. Alan Verskin

Forging Intellectual Bonds: Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Encounters in the Middle Ages

It is widely known that shared veneration of Greco-Roman texts led medieval Jews, Christians, and Muslims to read one another's books. What, however, do we know about the actual, flesh and blood, meetings of such scholars? How would intellectual respect translate into interpersonal relations? This lecture attempts to shed insight on that question by looking at several concrete examples of interfaith meetings between Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholars.

Dr. Alan Verskin is the Samuel J. Zacks Chair of Jewish History at the University of Toronto. He has held academic positions at Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Rhode Island. He researches the history of the Jews of the Islamic world, Ashkenazi-Sephardi interactions, and Jewish thought.

Thursday, September 18^th at 5:30 pm

Kelley Presentation Room