Background
Einbinder, Susan Leslie was born on December 9, 1954 in Ridgewood, New Jersey, United States. Daughter of Seymour K. and Julia M. (Morrison) Einbinder.
( When Crusader armies on their way to the Holy Land atta...)
When Crusader armies on their way to the Holy Land attacked Jewish communities in the Rhine Valley, many Jews chose suicide over death at the hands of Christian mobs. With their defiant deaths, the medieval Jewish martyr was born. With the literary commemoration of the victims, Jewish martyrology followed. Beautiful Death examines the evolution of a long-neglected corpus of Hebrew poetry, the laments reflecting the specific conditions of Jewish life in northern France. The poems offer insight into everyday life and into the ways medieval French Jews responded to persecution. They also suggest that poetry was used to encourage resistance to intensifying pressures to convert. The educated Jewish elite in northern France was highly acculturated. Their poetry--particularly that emerging from the innovative Tosafist schools--reflects their engagement with the vernacular renaissance unfolding around them, as well as conscious and unconscious absorption of Christian popular beliefs and hagiographical conventions. At the same time, their extraordinary poems signal an increasingly harsh repudiation of Christianity's sacred symbols and beliefs. They reveal a complex relationship to Christian culture as Jews internalized elements of medieval culture even while expressing a powerful revulsion against the forms and beliefs of Christian life. This gracefully written study crosses traditional boundaries of history and literature and of Jewish and general medieval scholarship. Focusing on specific incidents of persecution and the literary commemorations they produced, it offers unique insights into the historical conditions in which these poems were written and performed.
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Einbinder, Susan Leslie was born on December 9, 1954 in Ridgewood, New Jersey, United States. Daughter of Seymour K. and Julia M. (Morrison) Einbinder.
Bachelor in Mathematics magna cum laude, Brown University, 1976. MHL, Hebrew Union College, 1983. Master of Arts in English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, 1978.
Master of Philosophy, Columbia University, 1986. Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature, Columbia University, 1991.
Visiting lecturer, chaplain to Jewish students Colgate University, Hamilton, New York, 1987-1988. Adjunct professor general studies New York University, New York City, 1990-1992. Adjunct professor Manhattan School Music, 1991-1992.
Visiting lecturer University Maryland, College Park, 1992-1993. Assistant professor Hebrew literature Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, 1993-1996, associate professor, 1996—2001, professor, since 2001. Fellow Davis Center, 1999, National Humanities Center, 2000.
( When Crusader armies on their way to the Holy Land atta...)
Board directors Prospect House, Cincinnati, 1995-2002. Speaker at community organizations. Member Modern Language Association, American Heart Association, Center Conference of America Rabbis, National Association Professors of Hebrew, Association for Jewish Studies, Medieval Academy.