Lilach Assaf-Mølbach | Independent Researcher (original) (raw)

Lilach Assaf is an independent researcher and a Hebrew teacher in East Jerusalem. Before that I was a research collaborator at the Open Jerusalem project of the Université Paris-Est http://www.openjerusalem.org/lilach-assaf
I wrote my dissertation, titled "Names, Identifications, and Social Change: Naming Practices and the (Re-)Shaping of Identities and Relationships within German Jewish Communities in the Late Middle Ages", at the universities of Constance and Zurich.
In my dissertation, analyzing shifts in the Jewish name repertoire and name-circulation patterns, I examined the roles played by naming in the reshaping of social relationships and the construction of affiliations, focusing on three levels: cultural borrowing, gender relations, and kin relationships within late medieval Ashkenazi families.

My Master thesis (Tel Aviv University) is titled “Orthodoxy and Heresy: Montaillou at the Beginning of the 14th Century”. Based on the analysis of the inquisitorial register of Jacques Fournier, the work re-examins the relations between Catholicism and Catharism and explores the links between family affiliation and the participation in Cathar life. Concentrating on the depositions of the residents of Montaillou, it reconstructs the social constellations at the base of the villagers’ beliefs and religious activities, showing also how men and women reshaped and used theological ideas as instrument for negotiation, not necessarily in a theological context, but as social actors in daily interactions with others.

Publications:

Lilach Assaf-Mølbach, “Names, Jewish”, in Routledge Medieval Encyclopedia Online (forthcoming).

Lilach Assaf, "Naming Practices, Kinship, and Households in Late Medieval Ashkenazi Communities”, in Schweizerisches Jahrbuch für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte 32 (2017).

— Names, Identifications, and Social Change: Naming Practices and the (Re-)Shaping of Identities and Relationships within German Jewish Communities in the Late Middle Ages (Konstanz: Univ. Diss., 2016), https://kops.uni-konstanz.de/handle/123456789/42604\.

— “Lovely Women and Sweet Men: Gendering the Name and Naming Practices in German-Jewish Communities (13th-14th c.)”, in Intricate Interfaith Networks: Quotidian Jewish-Christian Contacts in the Middle Ages, Ephraim Shoham and Gerhard Jaritz eds. (Brepols: Turnhout, 2016)

— “The Language of Names: Jewish Onomastics in Late Medieval Germany, Identity and Acculturation”, in Zugehörigkeit(en). Spätmittelalterliche Praktiken der Namengebung im europäischen Vergleich, Christof Rolker and Gabriela Signori eds. (Konstanz University Press, 2011), pp. 149-160.
Supervisors: Gabriela Signori and Gadi Algazi
Address: Bergen,
Norway

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