Jewish Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania

Book Launch for Prof. Steve Weitzman's Disasters of Biblical Proportions

RELS Colloquium/PSCO/Jewish Studies Cosponsored Event

Steve Weitzman (RELS, Katz Center)
Mar 19, 2026 at 5:00pm - 6:30pm | COLL 319 (reception in COLL 209)

Join the Department of Religious Studies, the Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins, and the Jewish Studies Program for a launch of Prof. Steve Weitzman's Disasters of Biblical Proportions: The Ten Plagues Then, Now, and at the End of the World!

A reception will follow in COLL 209.

People have been telling and retelling stories about disasters for as long as they have been telling stories. One of the oldest of such stories is the ten plagues in the book of Exodus, the series of disasters that forced the Egyptians to liberate the Israelites. These plagues packed enough catastrophe to fill a series of summer blockbusters—rivers of blood, invasions of frogs and insects, mass disease, fiery hail, smothering darkness, and a midnight massacre of the firstborn.

The story of the ten plagues resonates today, as we try to make sense of such calamities of modern life as pandemics, climate change, and war. In Disasters of Biblical Proportions, Steven Weitzman explores how people of later ages—artists, writers, activists, philosophers, believers and unbelievers alike—have reshaped the story of the ten plagues to give expression to their own trauma, outrage, guilt, humor, and hope.

Tracing the interpretation and retelling of each plague across time and space, Weitzman uncovers how this ancient tale found new meaning among Jews, Christians, and Muslims and continues to shape how people today understand the present and envision the future. Even as it recounts the history of how the ten plagues have been reimagined, Disasters of Biblical Proportions is also a history of people’s search for shelter from the calamities of their own times—and of humanity’s striving for justice, freedom, and redemption.

Speaker
Steve Weitzman serves as the Ella Darivoff Director of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and as the Abraham M. Ellis Professor of Semitic Languages and Literatures in the Religious Studies Department. His publications include Solomon: the Lure of Wisdom, published as part of Yale University Press' Jewish Lives series; the Origin of the Jews: The Quest for Roots in a Rootless Age, awarded a National Jewish Book Award in 2017; and with Leora Batnitzky and Eve Krakowski, the just published Princeton Companion to Jewish Studies.

Respondents
Beth Berkowitz is professor of Religious Studies and the Ingebort Rennert Chair of Jewish Studies at Barnard College
Yosefa Raz is senior lecturer in the English department at Haifa University and a Katz Center fellow.
Jillian Stinchcomb is assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Towson University.
Co-sponsored by the department of Jewish Studies and the Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins

"A Woman Is Responsible for Everything: Jewish Women in Early Modern Europe"

Elisheva Carlebach and Debra Kaplan

Tues, Feb 17, 2026 at 5:15pm - 6:30pm | 6th floor, Class of '78 Orrery Pavilion, Van Pelt Library

In small villages, bustling cities, and crowded ghettos across early modern Europe, Jewish women were increasingly active participants in the daily life of their communities, managing homes and professions, leading institutions and sororities, and crafting objects and texts of exquisite beauty. A Woman Is Responsible for Everything marshals a dazzling array of previously untapped archival sources to tell the stories of these woman for the first time.

Debra Kaplan and Elisheva Carlebach focus their lens on the kehillah, a lively and thriving form of communal life that sustained European Jews for three centuries. They paint vibrant portraits of Jewish women of all walks of life, from those who wielded their wealth and influence in and out of their communities to the poorest maidservants and vagrants, from single and married women to the widowed and divorced. We follow them into their homes and learn about the possessions they valued and used, the books they read, and the writings they composed. Speaking to us in their own voices, these women reveal tremendous economic initiative in the rural marketplace and the princely court, and they express their profound spirituality in the home as well as the synagogue.


Speakers:

Debra Kaplan teaches early modern Jewish history at Bar-Ilan University. A social historian, she is the author of Beyond Expulsion (2011) and The Patrons and their Poor (University of Pennsylvania 2020; winner of the Rosl und Paul Arnsberg-Preis).

Elisheva Carlebach is the Salo Wittmayer Baron Professor of Jewish History, Culture, and Society, at Columbia University. She specializes in the cultural, intellectual, and religious history of the Jews in Early Modern Europe. Her books include The Pursuit of Heresy (1990), awarded the National Jewish Book Award, Divided Souls: Converts from Judaism in Early Modern Germany (2000), and Palaces of Time: Jewish Calendar and Culture in Early Modern Europe (2011), winner of the Association for Jewish Studies Schnitzer Prize.

In-person registration here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1SZy1cUIfJkjCOpCjZTc-ay1b1E2KZ4QPiQIBo3iD_Xs/edit

This is the 30th Annual Patricia Braun Silvers and David Silvers Visiting Scholar in the Jewish Studies Program. The Silvers Visiting Scholar Program is endowed by David, C’71, and Patricia, CW’72, Silvers.

Cosponsored by the Penn Department of History and The Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies/The Center for Research in Feminist, Q***r, and Transgender Studies.