Oded Zinger
Biographic Data
| ID | 4447676 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Oded Zinger |
| GIVEN NAMES | Oded |
| FAMILY NAME | Zinger |
| SIGNATURE | ZINGER O |
| AFFILIATIONS | Hebrew University of Jerusalem |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8186-7412 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 7 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 7 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Narrating Masculine Failure
Gender and the Art of Asking
Almost a hundred petitions from Jewish women are preserved in the Cairo Geniza, but there is practically no petition written to a Jewish woman. This is understandable, as petitions were sent to figures with political power and economic means, and Jewish women in medieval Egypt usually lacked both. This study explores the absence of such petitions by exploring the edges of the lacuna; it examines five full letters and five drafts of letters reques…
How to Write a Desperate Letter
This article presents editions and a comparative structural analysis of six Cairo Geniza letters in Judaeo-Arabic which were written by Manṣūr b. Sālim, a father in early thirteenth-century Alexandria desperate to bring home his runaway son Abū l-Naǧm. Three of Manṣūr’s letters are addressed to communal leaders in Fustat and three to the runaway son himself. The letters to communal leaders are shown to be more regimented, with underlying patterns…
Meanderings in the Arabic Literary Genizot
The Cairo genizot (plural of Geniza) provide not only new Arabic literary texts but also new contexts. This study explores different kinds of context by presenting several examples of Arabic literary material found mostly in the Ben Ezra Geniza ( BEG ). The examples include three tales that also appear in the Arabian Nights literature, a Judeo-Arabic fragment of a Šīʿī kitāb al-ğafr , a Muslim historical work dealing with Muḥammad’s letters to fo…
The Use of Social Isolation (inqiṭāʿ) by Jewish Women in Medieval Egypt
Petitions from the Cairo Geniza often emphasize that the petitioner is lonely or “cut off” ( munqaṭiʿ ) from social support. Such claims are gendered, as they are more common in women’s petitions than in men’s, and women occasionally use explicitly gendered expressions to highlight their social isolation. Claiming to lack social support had a special valency in medieval Islamicate societies due to the primacy of reciprocal social relationships in…
Tradition and Medicine on the Wings of a Fly
This study examines the pre-modern debate surrounding a strange Islamic prophetic tradition ( ḥadīṯ ) that commands to fully immerse a fly that has fallen into a drink, “for in one of its wings there is poison and in the other a cure”. Studying different discussions of the hadith from the 3th/9th to the 9th/15th centuries reveals the variety of ways Muslim scholars negotiated the substantial tension between the competing authorities of prophetic …
From an Arab Queen to a Yiddische Mama
This study explores the travels of a literary anecdote about ten pieces of advice that a mother gave her daughter on the eve of the latter’s marriage. Tracing the various incarnations of the anecdote from its first attestation in ninth-century Arabic works to later versions in Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Italian, Catalan, and Yiddish demonstrates the connectivity of the medieval Mediterranean and the porous nature of political, religious, and linguisti…
The Use of Social Isolation (inqiṭāʿ) by Jewish Women in Medieval Egypt
Petitions from the Cairo Geniza often emphasize that the petitioner is lonely or “cut off” ( munqaṭiʿ ) from social support. Such claims are gendered, as they are more common in women’s petitions than in men’s, and women occasionally use explicitly gendered expressions to highlight their social isolation. Claiming to lack social support had a special valency in medieval Islamicate societies due to the primacy of reciprocal social relationships in…
From an Arab Queen to a Yiddische Mama
This study explores the travels of a literary anecdote about ten pieces of advice that a mother gave her daughter on the eve of the latter’s marriage. Tracing the various incarnations of the anecdote from its first attestation in ninth-century Arabic works to later versions in Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Italian, Catalan, and Yiddish demonstrates the connectivity of the medieval Mediterranean and the porous nature of political, religious, and linguisti…
Tradition and Medicine on the Wings of a Fly
This study examines the pre-modern debate surrounding a strange Islamic prophetic tradition ( ḥadīṯ ) that commands to fully immerse a fly that has fallen into a drink, “for in one of its wings there is poison and in the other a cure”. Studying different discussions of the hadith from the 3th/9th to the 9th/15th centuries reveals the variety of ways Muslim scholars negotiated the substantial tension between the competing authorities of prophetic …
From an Arab Queen to a Yiddische Mama
This study explores the travels of a literary anecdote about ten pieces of advice that a mother gave her daughter on the eve of the latter’s marriage. Tracing the various incarnations of the anecdote from its first attestation in ninth-century Arabic works to later versions in Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Italian, Catalan, and Yiddish demonstrates the connectivity of the medieval Mediterranean and the porous nature of political, religious, and linguisti…
Meanderings in the Arabic Literary Genizot
The Cairo genizot (plural of Geniza) provide not only new Arabic literary texts but also new contexts. This study explores different kinds of context by presenting several examples of Arabic literary material found mostly in the Ben Ezra Geniza ( BEG ). The examples include three tales that also appear in the Arabian Nights literature, a Judeo-Arabic fragment of a Šīʿī kitāb al-ğafr , a Muslim historical work dealing with Muḥammad’s letters to fo…
The Use of Social Isolation (inqiṭāʿ) by Jewish Women in Medieval Egypt
Petitions from the Cairo Geniza often emphasize that the petitioner is lonely or “cut off” ( munqaṭiʿ ) from social support. Such claims are gendered, as they are more common in women’s petitions than in men’s, and women occasionally use explicitly gendered expressions to highlight their social isolation. Claiming to lack social support had a special valency in medieval Islamicate societies due to the primacy of reciprocal social relationships in…
How to Write a Desperate Letter
This article presents editions and a comparative structural analysis of six Cairo Geniza letters in Judaeo-Arabic which were written by Manṣūr b. Sālim, a father in early thirteenth-century Alexandria desperate to bring home his runaway son Abū l-Naǧm. Three of Manṣūr’s letters are addressed to communal leaders in Fustat and three to the runaway son himself. The letters to communal leaders are shown to be more regimented, with underlying patterns…
Gender and the Art of Asking
Almost a hundred petitions from Jewish women are preserved in the Cairo Geniza, but there is practically no petition written to a Jewish woman. This is understandable, as petitions were sent to figures with political power and economic means, and Jewish women in medieval Egypt usually lacked both. This study explores the absence of such petitions by exploring the edges of the lacuna; it examines five full letters and five drafts of letters reques…
Narrating Masculine Failure
History (5 works) · Historical and Linguistic Studies (4 works) · Judaism (4 works) · Archaeology and Historical Studies (3 works) · Art (3 works) · Genizah (3 works) · Literature (3 works) · Philosophy (3 works) · Arabic (2 works) · Classics (2 works)