The Budapest Jewish Studies Colloquium
in cooperation with
the CEU-Democracy Institute, the CEU Jewish Studies Program and the Tom Lantos Institute
cordially invites you to a public lecture:
A Saint Against the State? The Contemporary Revival of a Hasidic Miracle Worker
by Sam Shuman
on May 15, 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Central European University
1051 Budapest, Nádor utca 13, 6th floor, DI Lounge (Entrance from Nádor utca 15)
Please register here by May 14.
Zoom link will be sent to registered guests.
Reception to follow.
This seminar focuses on an emergent, transnational Hasidic revival movement centered around the Kerestirer Rebbe, Yeshaya Steiner (“Shayele”), a Hungarian “miracle-worker” who lived in Hungary from 1851-1925. His iconic portrait is commonly associated with mystical protection against the infestation of rodents in Jewish homes and businesses. Sam Shuman reveals how this is only one small piece of his broader populist appeal, however. He does this by interweaving hagiographic texts, Hasidic social media, and ethnography with anthropological theory and political theology on hospitality, sovereignty, and patronage.
Sam Shuman is a visiting assistant professor at Davidson College. Sam’s research situates Hasidic Judaism within a global context to rethink larger questions in political theology about religion and capitalism, race and gender, sovereignty and empire. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Jewish Quarterly Review, Shofar, Images: A Journal of Jewish Art & Visual Culture, and Religions and as chapters in Jewish Studies Now: The Relational Politics of Memory and How Transparency Works: Ethnographies of Global Value.
