Transmission of Texts: Between Byzantine and Crimean Jewish Communities

The Crimean Peninsula was one of the important Jewish cultural centers in the Black Sea region, as evidenced by the surviving manuscripts originating in the Rabbanite and Karaite Crimean and Byzantine communities. These manuscripts reveal the Byzantine influences on the various spheres of intellectual life of the Crimean Jewry, as well as the pathways of transmission of texts and of distribution of knowledge between the Crimean, Byzantine and other communities. The lecture focuses on the contents of the “Jewish bookshelf” as reflecting major intellectual trends in the Black Sea region and the Mediterranean up to the Early Modern period.