Lost Books: The Forgetfulness of Writing and the Forgetting of Jewish Pasts – Annette Yoshiko Reed
314 Royce Hall 10745 Dickson Plaza, Los AngelesIt is often noted how the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls transformed our understanding of ancient Judaism, radically expanding our evidence for Jews and Judaism prior to the rise of Christianity. Yet this material also stands as a striking reminder of how much of the literary heritage of Jewish antiquity has been lost to us. How and why was this material lost to the Jewish tradition, and what might its forgetting tell us about Jewish memory-making, past and present? This lecture explores these questions with a focus on lost books, real and imagined, and the shifting meanings of writing...