The Divinity School is pleased to announce a public lecture by Erez DeGolan: Rabbinic Joy and the Roman Economy of Emotions

Wednesday, December 7, 4:30pm, Common Room

Jewish history under Roman rule has long been told as “a history of suffering.” From this perspective, joy is considered incongruous with the experience of the rabbis of Roman Palestine. This talk puts joy back in the history of the rabbis. It will not be a feel-good lecture, however (at least not only). Instead, the talk will explore what rabbinic literature reveals about the nexus between public joy and imperial power in Palestine, elsewhere in the Roman world, and even within asymmetric political systems of other times and places.

Erez DeGolan is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Religion at Columbia University, where he specializes in rabbinic literature, culture, and history. His dissertation, titled “Affect in Power: Public Joy in Roman Palestine and the Lived Experience of the Rabbis (~70-350 CE),” argues that the rabbis’ engagement with public joy—construed as a somatic and relational experience—was key to their negotiation of Roman power. Before joining Columbia, he earned a B.A. in Hebrew Literature and Middle Eastern History from Tel-Aviv University and an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School.