tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post4014277198557960004..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: Jews of StoneCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-20933026856711488452010-02-25T11:05:33.397-05:002010-02-25T11:05:33.397-05:00And one more thing about Jews and Christian stonew...And one more thing about Jews and Christian stonework, since Martin brought up that rich topic. Kathy Lavezzo is currently working on an absolutely fascinating project right now about the architectural space and medieval English Jews, which looks at (among many other things) Bede's connecting of the Jews to the stone of the Jerusalem temple and the Jewish financing of Christian architectures, like cathedrals. She is presenting at the conference on Thomas of Monmouth's Life of William of Norwich (a vita obsessed with the mapping of Jewish space).Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-77302602010703221412010-02-25T11:01:18.367-05:002010-02-25T11:01:18.367-05:00Mo: cell phone video? How much are you willing to ...Mo: cell phone video? How much are you willing to pay for that?<br /><br />Sarah, thanks for that tidbit of local history. I am wondering if you know where the stone hurled by the Jews from the tower might have originated? Am I right in thinking it could be from the base or foundation of the wooden tower itself?Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-46703365203496560822010-02-25T07:12:38.164-05:002010-02-25T07:12:38.164-05:00Can't wait.
Around the time of the excavatio...Can't wait. <br /><br />Around the time of the excavations of the Jewish cemetery here - there was a lot of debate about why the graves were not marked by stones as was supposed to be the Jewish custom but was apparently not in medieval York. <br /><br />this absence of stone markers caused a bit of a fuss, and 'fortified' the claims of those who wanted to argue that this could not be a Jewish cemetery.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-32511850553344274722010-02-24T22:07:09.664-05:002010-02-24T22:07:09.664-05:00so jealous you get to see the Croxton Play! can yo...so jealous you get to see the Croxton Play! can you make a cell phone video?Monoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-49011293054805433392010-02-24T19:08:04.227-05:002010-02-24T19:08:04.227-05:00Thanks so much for that link, Martin, and for your...Thanks so much for that link, Martin, and for your thoughts.<br /><br />I know of Stowe's fascination with the Jewish writing on the London wall especially well from my colleague Gil Harris's work on it: he has a chapter in _Untimely Matter_. I didn't knw about the 1817 note you've directed me to though, and I love its richly thick temporalities.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-76498071029315750832010-02-24T16:45:05.733-05:002010-02-24T16:45:05.733-05:00Jeffrey - I've over the years done some resear...Jeffrey - I've over the years done some research on the Jewish presence in medieval London, in connection with what Chaucer's view of past (or possibly present) Jews in London may have been. Some day I'll have to write it up.<br /><br />I cannot imagine you do not know this already, but Jewish poetics of stone in York aligns but inverts with the historical factoid that when the barons refortified the London walls in 1215, they sacked parts of the Jewry, and used stones from the Jewish houses for the repairs. As Stowe reports:<br /><br /><i>From Walter Coventry and Ralph Cogshall in the 17th of K. John I read: In the year 1215 the 17th day of May being Sunday the Barons came to London and entered through Aldgate in the service time, where they took such as they knew favoured the King, and spoiled their goods: they brake into the houses of the Jews and searched their coffers to stuff their own purses that had been long empty After this Robert Fitzwalter and Gefferey de Maundeville, Earle of Essex and the Earl of Gloucester chiefe leaders of the army, applied all diligence to repair the Gales and Walls of the City with the stones of the Jewes broken houses.</i><br /><br />These stones possess moments of an overlaid and telling 19th century historicity as well; they above quotation is pulled from a note in an 1817 <i>Gentlemen's Magazine</i> commenting about a stone recovered and reputedly from the wall with strange writing that the correspondent presumes to be Jewish. See here: http://bit.ly/awR0tZ<br /><br />~ MartinMartin Foysnoreply@blogger.com