Laura S Lieber
Biographic Data
| ID | 3958811 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Laura S Lieber |
| GIVEN NAMES | Laura S |
| FAMILY NAME | Lieber |
| SIGNATURE | LIEBER L S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Duke University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Extracanonical Traditions and the Holy Land: Texts, Rituals, and Material Culture in Late Antique Palestine
The Holy Land is more than a sanctified geographical space that roughly corresponds to the Roman province that has been known as Palaestina since the end of the Bar Kochba War. Instead, it is primarily an idea and imaginative space created by a complex interaction of texts, rituals, and material culture. The authors of this volume's contributions highlight the major role that extracanonical traditions - often misleadingly called apocryphal - whic…
Arise and Sing: Readings in Medieval Hebrew Penitential Poetry from Iraq and al-Andalus
Not the Whole Megillah, Just Enough to Be Dangerous: “A Million Women: An Esther Call to the Mall.” October 12, 2024; Washington, DC
I remember being a little unnerved and uneasy for reasons I didn't fully understand at the time, when, in the spring of 1999, various press reports (both pro-Israel and anti-Israel) suggested that Monica Lewinsky had found a position as a White House intern not because of qualifications and ambition but because she had been placed there, a Jew in Bill Clinton's court, to advocate for the Jewish state—“For such a time as this,” as the quotation fr…
An Unholy Spectacle: The Ordeal of the Accused Adulteress in the Early Synagogue
An Unholy Spectacle: The Ordeal of the Accused Adulteress in the Early Synagogue
“On This Day, We Are Perfect”: Embodiment in Yannai’s Yom Kippur Qerova
This article analyzes two poetic units within a much longer composition (translated in full here) composed by Yannai (6th c. CE , Galilee) for recitation on Yom Kippur. Specifically, it offers readings of Unit 8, which prefaces the third blessing of the Amidah (the Qedushah), and Unit 15, which concludes the work. Both units dwell on the physical experience of Yom Kippur and the ways in which ritual affects the body, permitting us to consider the…
With One Voice: Elements of Acclamation in Early Jewish Liturgical Poetry
In this essay, the Rosh Hashanah Shofar service poems by the Jewish poet Yose ben Yose (fourth or fifth century CE, Land of Israel) are read through the lens of the Late Antique practice of acclamation. Yose's surviving body of works is limited, but he was influential within the Jewish tradition, and his poems have long been noted for their use of formal features such as fixed-word repetitions and refrains—features which align not only with poeti…
Daru in the Winehouse: The Intersection of Status and Dance in the Jewish East
Scripture Personified: Torah as Character in the Hymns of Marqah
Samaritans and Jews in Late Antiquity dramatized their sacred canon, personified it, and composed lyrics to express their devotion to it. In both traditions Scripture was understood as possessing properties of agency. It was not merely a document symbolizing the covenant between God and Israel, but God's primary creation, possessing the ability to act, mediate and engage both deity and people. Scripture became a character in the ongoing story of …
Stages of Grief: Enacting Lamentation in Late Ancient Hymnography
This essay explores the rhetoric and performance of grief by examining two related bodies of texts composed in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic: eulogies for deceased individuals ( hespedim ) and communal laments ( kinot ) for Jerusalem; also included are two “narrative laments” from the same corpus that construct the voices of grieving biblical characters. In the analysis, the dynamics among the living participants in the mourning rituals are investig…
Theater of the Holy: Performative Elements of Late Ancient Hymnography
A script is merely an artifact until a performer brings it to life; a text is a starting point, despite the fact that its finality suggests a destination. With works that were meant to be performed in some fashion (however generously understood “performance” may be), the dynamic relationship between performer and audience shapes and even defines their reception; such works, fully expressed, are visual, auditory, and kinetic. The written word may …
Telling a Liturgical Tale: Storytelling in Early Jewish Liturgical Poetry
Setting the Stage: The Theatricality of Jewish Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity
In this article, various elements of late ancient theatrical practices are used to inform the subject of the theatricality of Jewish liturgical poetry (piyyut). Evidence from handbooks of ancient oratory and declamation (the progymnasmata), discussions of Late Ancient theater (particularly mime and pantomime), and material artifacts suggest ways in which piyyutim were both performed and received. By viewing piyyutim through this lens, this paper …
Piyyut (Jewish liturgical and secular poetry)
A piyyut (pl. piyyutim ) is a poem created to substitute for, adorn, or preface a passage from the Jewish liturgy or a liturgical rite. The Hebrew term derives from the Greek poiēsis (something made, created), also the root of the English word “poetry.” A composer of piyyutim is a payyetan .
Susan Ashbrook Harvey: Song and Memory. Biblical Women in Syriac Tradition
The Rhetoric of Participation: Experiential Elements of Early Hebrew Liturgical Poetry
Scriptural Exegesis: The Shapes of Culture and the Religious Imagination: Essays in Honour of Michael Fishbane
This book gathers voices from an international community of scholars to consider the many facets of the history of biblical interpretation and to question how exegesis shapes spiritual and cultural creativity. Divided into four broadly chronological sections that chart a variety of approaches from ancient to modern times, the chapters examine texts and problems rooted in the ancient world yet still of concern today. Eighteen chapters incorporate …
Portraits of Righteousness: Noah in Early Christian and Jewish Hymnography
The transformation of Noah into a Christian ideal in the writings of Aphrahat and Ephrem (4th century), with the resulting denigration of Noah in much rabbinic exegesis, is well documented. The purpose of this essay is to examine the characterization of Noah in the liturgical (as opposed to the scholarly) setting. Four groups of works are examined: the Hebrew Avodah poems and the hymns of Ephrem the Syrian (4th century); and the kontakia of Roman…
The Exegesis of Love: Text and Context in the Poetry of the Early Synagogue
The Poet and the Tower-Builders: A Translation and Analysis of Yannai's Piyyut for Genesis 11
The Torah's Vision of Worship . Samuel E. Balentine
Theater of the Holy: Performative Elements of Late Ancient Hymnography
A script is merely an artifact until a performer brings it to life; a text is a starting point, despite the fact that its finality suggests a destination. With works that were meant to be performed in some fashion (however generously understood “performance” may be), the dynamic relationship between performer and audience shapes and even defines their reception; such works, fully expressed, are visual, auditory, and kinetic. The written word may …
Stages of Grief: Enacting Lamentation in Late Ancient Hymnography
This essay explores the rhetoric and performance of grief by examining two related bodies of texts composed in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic: eulogies for deceased individuals ( hespedim ) and communal laments ( kinot ) for Jerusalem; also included are two “narrative laments” from the same corpus that construct the voices of grieving biblical characters. In the analysis, the dynamics among the living participants in the mourning rituals are investig…
The Rhetoric of Participation: Experiential Elements of Early Hebrew Liturgical Poetry
The Torah's Vision of Worship . Samuel E. Balentine
The Poet and the Tower-Builders: A Translation and Analysis of Yannai's Piyyut for Genesis 11
The Exegesis of Love: Text and Context in the Poetry of the Early Synagogue
Scriptural Exegesis: The Shapes of Culture and the Religious Imagination: Essays in Honour of Michael Fishbane
This book gathers voices from an international community of scholars to consider the many facets of the history of biblical interpretation and to question how exegesis shapes spiritual and cultural creativity. Divided into four broadly chronological sections that chart a variety of approaches from ancient to modern times, the chapters examine texts and problems rooted in the ancient world yet still of concern today. Eighteen chapters incorporate …
Portraits of Righteousness: Noah in Early Christian and Jewish Hymnography
The transformation of Noah into a Christian ideal in the writings of Aphrahat and Ephrem (4th century), with the resulting denigration of Noah in much rabbinic exegesis, is well documented. The purpose of this essay is to examine the characterization of Noah in the liturgical (as opposed to the scholarly) setting. Four groups of works are examined: the Hebrew Avodah poems and the hymns of Ephrem the Syrian (4th century); and the kontakia of Roman…
Susan Ashbrook Harvey: Song and Memory. Biblical Women in Syriac Tradition
The Rhetoric of Participation: Experiential Elements of Early Hebrew Liturgical Poetry
Piyyut (Jewish liturgical and secular poetry)
A piyyut (pl. piyyutim ) is a poem created to substitute for, adorn, or preface a passage from the Jewish liturgy or a liturgical rite. The Hebrew term derives from the Greek poiēsis (something made, created), also the root of the English word “poetry.” A composer of piyyutim is a payyetan .
Telling a Liturgical Tale: Storytelling in Early Jewish Liturgical Poetry
Setting the Stage: The Theatricality of Jewish Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity
In this article, various elements of late ancient theatrical practices are used to inform the subject of the theatricality of Jewish liturgical poetry (piyyut). Evidence from handbooks of ancient oratory and declamation (the progymnasmata), discussions of Late Ancient theater (particularly mime and pantomime), and material artifacts suggest ways in which piyyutim were both performed and received. By viewing piyyutim through this lens, this paper …
Theater of the Holy: Performative Elements of Late Ancient Hymnography
A script is merely an artifact until a performer brings it to life; a text is a starting point, despite the fact that its finality suggests a destination. With works that were meant to be performed in some fashion (however generously understood “performance” may be), the dynamic relationship between performer and audience shapes and even defines their reception; such works, fully expressed, are visual, auditory, and kinetic. The written word may …
Stages of Grief: Enacting Lamentation in Late Ancient Hymnography
This essay explores the rhetoric and performance of grief by examining two related bodies of texts composed in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic: eulogies for deceased individuals ( hespedim ) and communal laments ( kinot ) for Jerusalem; also included are two “narrative laments” from the same corpus that construct the voices of grieving biblical characters. In the analysis, the dynamics among the living participants in the mourning rituals are investig…
Scripture Personified: Torah as Character in the Hymns of Marqah
Samaritans and Jews in Late Antiquity dramatized their sacred canon, personified it, and composed lyrics to express their devotion to it. In both traditions Scripture was understood as possessing properties of agency. It was not merely a document symbolizing the covenant between God and Israel, but God's primary creation, possessing the ability to act, mediate and engage both deity and people. Scripture became a character in the ongoing story of …
With One Voice: Elements of Acclamation in Early Jewish Liturgical Poetry
In this essay, the Rosh Hashanah Shofar service poems by the Jewish poet Yose ben Yose (fourth or fifth century CE, Land of Israel) are read through the lens of the Late Antique practice of acclamation. Yose's surviving body of works is limited, but he was influential within the Jewish tradition, and his poems have long been noted for their use of formal features such as fixed-word repetitions and refrains—features which align not only with poeti…
Daru in the Winehouse: The Intersection of Status and Dance in the Jewish East
An Unholy Spectacle: The Ordeal of the Accused Adulteress in the Early Synagogue
An Unholy Spectacle: The Ordeal of the Accused Adulteress in the Early Synagogue
“On This Day, We Are Perfect”: Embodiment in Yannai’s Yom Kippur Qerova
This article analyzes two poetic units within a much longer composition (translated in full here) composed by Yannai (6th c. CE , Galilee) for recitation on Yom Kippur. Specifically, it offers readings of Unit 8, which prefaces the third blessing of the Amidah (the Qedushah), and Unit 15, which concludes the work. Both units dwell on the physical experience of Yom Kippur and the ways in which ritual affects the body, permitting us to consider the…
Not the Whole Megillah, Just Enough to Be Dangerous: “A Million Women: An Esther Call to the Mall.” October 12, 2024; Washington, DC
I remember being a little unnerved and uneasy for reasons I didn't fully understand at the time, when, in the spring of 1999, various press reports (both pro-Israel and anti-Israel) suggested that Monica Lewinsky had found a position as a White House intern not because of qualifications and ambition but because she had been placed there, a Jew in Bill Clinton's court, to advocate for the Jewish state—“For such a time as this,” as the quotation fr…
Extracanonical Traditions and the Holy Land: Texts, Rituals, and Material Culture in Late Antique Palestine
The Holy Land is more than a sanctified geographical space that roughly corresponds to the Roman province that has been known as Palaestina since the end of the Bar Kochba War. Instead, it is primarily an idea and imaginative space created by a complex interaction of texts, rituals, and material culture. The authors of this volume's contributions highlight the major role that extracanonical traditions - often misleadingly called apocryphal - whic…
Arise and Sing: Readings in Medieval Hebrew Penitential Poetry from Iraq and al-Andalus
Art (18 works) · Philosophy (17 works) · Biblical Studies and Interpretation (16 works) · History (14 works) · Literature (14 works) · Archaeology and Historical Studies (12 works) · Judaism (12 works) · Theology (12 works) · Historical and Linguistic Studies (10 works) · Poetry (9 works)