January / February 2002 Vol. 34, no. 1

"Mishnah's Rhetoric and the Social Formation…"

From left to right: Professor Jack Lightstone, George Marcus, Cheryl Jaffee. Copyright/Source

On Thursday evening, November 1, 2001, Professor Jack N. Lightstone gave a lecture entitled "Mishnah’s Rhetoric and the Social Formation of the Early Guild of Rabbis" to an enthusiastic crowd at the National Library of Canada. The lecture was illustrated with images of texts from the Jacob M. Lowy Collection of rare Hebraica and Judaica. These included the earliest extant printed edition of the Mishnah (Naples, 1492); Tractate Bekhorot (Venice, 1522) from the first complete edition of the Babylonian Talmud; and the editio princeps of the Jerusalem Talmud, printed in Venice one year later.

As Professor Lightstone guided the audience through the linguistic conventions and rhetorical models of the Mishnah, examining the character, use and social meaning of language, he shed light upon the masters who dominated Judaism in the first centuries of the Common Era.

Jack Lightstone is provost and vice-rector, Research, and professor of Religion at Concordia University. An expert in Judaism in Greco-Roman times and early Rabbinic religion and literature, he has authored numerous scholarly works, including the forthcoming Mishnah and Social Formation of the Early Rabbinic Guild, under contract with Wilfrid Laurier University Press and the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion.

The evening was presented by the National Library of Canada and the Council of the Jacob M. Lowy Collection.

This illustrated lecture is now accessible as a Webcast on the National Library’s site: www.nlc-bnc.ca/1/3/n3-207-e.html

For further information about the Jacob M. Lowy Collection:
Telephone: (613) 995-7960
Fax: (613) 943-1112
E-mail: lowy@nlc-bnc.ca