Dilemmas of Disease: Jews and the Plague in Prague in the Eighteenth Century

Part of the Centre for Jewish Studies 2020-21 Evening Lecture Series

Speaker: Prof. Joshua Teplitsky, Stony Brook University

The lecture will examine competing pressures on Jews at the time of the plague, such as health policy, economic pressure, and the impulse to conceal disease from the civic authorities. These competing pressures appear in a variety of instances during the early modern period, and invite an investigation into the spaces of both Jewish commonality and distinctiveness, as well as Jewish self-perception during the plague, and questions of compliance vis-a-vis the state and social norms -- issues that are exceedingly relevant again nowadays.

Joshua Teplitsky is Associate Professor of History at Stony Brook University, New York. His work focuses on Jewish life in the Habsburg Empire in the early modern period (16th–18th centuries), with an emphasis on the city of Prague. His publications include “Plague, Passover, and Perspectives on Social Distancing”, Magazine of the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies Spring 2020; “A Conversation Between Joshua Teplitsky and Magda Teter about Epidemics, Disease and Plagues in Jewish History & Memory” (April 22, 2020).

Register for this lecture on Eventbrite.

Contact email: ch12@soas.ac.uk