On Tuesday, Sept 29 at 7:30 p.m., Fairfield University’s Bennett Center for Judaic Studies will present the Adolph and Ruth Schnurmacher Scholar-in-Residence Lecture, “People of the (Printed/Digital) Book: Printing and the Birth of the Jewish Bookshelf,” by Rabbi Joseph A. Skloot, PhD. 

In his lecture – the first of the Center’s online series of fall events – Skloot will explore how the invention of printing – and with it the sudden availability of the printed word – changed pre-modern Jewish texts and readers’ experiences of them, as well as the implications of digitization for Jewish books and their readers. 

The recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, Rabbi Skloot teaches at Hebrew Union College in New York, where he is the Rabbi Aaron D. Panken Assistant Professor of Modern Jewish Intellectual History. He received his PhD in Jewish history at Columbia University (2017), where his dissertation was entitled, “Printing, Hebrew Book Culture and Sefer Hasidim.” His research explores the effects of printing on Hebrew texts during the sixteenth century, and his teaching encompasses courses in early modern and modern Jewish history, and Jewish religious thought.

The lecture will be held online and is free and open to the public. Register at fairfield.edu/bennettprograms for a program link.