- 05 Feb 2015
Muslim-Jewish Relations in the Middle East: A Historical Presentation
Abstract:
“Muslim-Jewish relations” began even before the emergence of Judaism or Islam. The ancient Israelites, who became the first Jews, saw themselves as related to the Arab peoples who became the first Muslims, and they interacted in a variety of ways. This can be traced in the Jewish Bible and Talmud, and relations between Jews and Muslims have continued to the present. The relations have been shaped by religious, political and social factors, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. One thing is certain: there was no “Golden Age” of blissful Muslim-Jewish relations, but rather periods of tension and mistrust, and periods of cooperation and mutual benefit. The foundational story of Jews and Muslims during the generation of Prophet Muhammad has tended to have an outsized impact on the perceptions of Muslim-Jewish relations to this day.
About the Speakers
Medieval Judaism and Islam
Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles
Reuven Firestone was born in Northern California and educated at Antioch College, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Hebrew Union College where he received his M.A. in Hebrew literature in 1980 and Rabbinic Ordination in 1982, and New York University where he received his Ph.D. in Arabic and Islamic studies in 1988. From 1987 to 1992, he taught Hebrew literature and directed the Hebrew and Arabic language programs at Boston University. In 1992 he was awarded the Yad Hanadiv Research Fellowship at the Hebrew University to conduct research on holy war in Islamic tradition. In 2000, he was awarded the fellowship for independent research from the National Endowment for the Humanities for his research on holy war in Judaism. Chosen to be a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Jewish Studies at the University of Pennsylvania in 2002, he received the Fulbright CASA III Fellowship for study and research at the American University in Cairo in 2006. In 2012-2013 he was appointed DAAD Visiting Professor in Jewish and Islamic Studies at Universität Potsdam/Geiger Kolleg in Berlin-Brandenburg. Since 1993 he has served as associate and then full professor of Medieval Judaism and Islam at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles. Firestone founded the Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement (CMJE), a joint program of Hebrew Union College, the Omar Ibn Al-Khattab Foundation and the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California. He serves on numerous committees and commissions on interfaith relations, serves on the editorial boards of numerous scholarly publications and is vice-president of the Association of Jewish Studies. Professor Firestone has lived in Israel, Egypt and Germany and regularly lectures in universities throughout the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. His publications have been translated into German, French, Hebrew, Turkish, Arabic, Albanian, Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, Indonesian and Urdu.
