@article{kasper-marienberg_kaplan_2021, title={Nourishing a Community: Food, Hospitality, and Jewish Communal Spaces in Early Modern Frankfurt}, volume={45}, ISSN={["1475-4541"]}, DOI={10.1017/S0364009421000027}, abstractNote={This article explores early modern practices of cooking and hospitality, both in and out of homes, in the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt am Main. The focus is on Garküchen (eateries) and communal ovens, which were increasingly regulated by the community. Communal leaders employed creative strategies to find solutions for nourishing a growing local and visiting population in the limited space of the early modern Jewish ghetto. Their attempts to expand were propelled by concrete historical events, particularly by a series of fires, which shaped the physical spaces in which this process unfolded. Looking at these institutions allows for a reconsideration of the spatial boundaries of the Jewish ghetto.}, number={2}, journal={AJS REVIEW-THE JOURNAL OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR JEWISH STUDIES}, author={Kasper-Marienberg, Verena and Kaplan, Debra}, year={2021}, month={Nov}, pages={302–333} }
 @article{kasper-marienberg_2019, title={The Jewish Economic Elite: Making Modern Europe}, volume={43}, ISSN={["1475-4541"]}, DOI={10.1017/S0364009419000199}, abstractNote={Jerusalemite background and writing in Egypt) set himself on equal footing with the Iberian Judah al-H. arizi by laying out an alternate historical trajectory of Hebrew culture. Whereas al-H. arizi presented himself as the heir of the Andalusian poets descended from Jerusalem exiles and depicted Eastern authors as derivative of and inferior to himself, Yerushalmi presented the Andalusian school and himself as two prongs of the same Jerusalemite heritage (“equilibration”). The chapter on Isaac ha-Gorni and Abraham ha-Bedersi of Provence argues, based on the notion of “de-territorialization” as framed by Deleuze and Guattari (Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986]), that the poets sought to “unravel the ties between language and territory which the majority literature takes for granted” (143). The book is full of fine readings and insights. Ironically, as Kfir notes, members of the periphery often assert their arguments using the idiom of the center, measuring their accomplishments by the yardstick of existing standards— and in the process amplify the center’s preeminence. Kfir is a sensitive and logical reader of literary texts who employs literary theory with comfort and clarity. As is true of any book that seeks to interpret literary texts, some readings are more convincing than others. I am not persuaded, for example, that Elazar ben Ya‘akov ha-Bavli’s justification of a grammatical point through an appeal to Andalusian precedent was necessarily a geographically motivated “silent rejoinder” to an assault by Judah al-H. arizi (101). However, Kfir’s other arguments about the same poet are persuasive. Of course, there is always more that can be done to unpack the dynamics that are detected in this book. The data exists, for example, to delineate in more detail how the image of Andalusian superiority emerged; one might return to the manuscripts to look at scribal inscriptions and processes of anthologization that produced representations of authorial personae and geographic predominance. One could also extend the dynamics here further in time, for example, to Solomon Bonafed (fifteenth century) who described the poets of his age as following a poetics that was both “old and new” and, in one instance, imagined an extended dialogue between himself and an apparition of the long-deceased Ibn Gabirol. Kfir’s book offers an important reorientation away from the sometimes descriptive and mechanical treatments of medieval Hebrew poetry to investigate a dynamic cultural process as it unfolded.}, number={1}, journal={AJS REVIEW-THE JOURNAL OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR JEWISH STUDIES}, author={Kasper-Marienberg, Verena}, year={2019}, month={Apr}, pages={216–219} }
 @article{fram_kasper-marienberg_2015, title={Jewish Martyrdom without Persecution: The Murder of Gumpert May, Frankfurt am Main, 1781}, volume={39}, ISSN={0364-0094 1475-4541}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0364009415000069}, DOI={10.1017/S0364009415000069}, abstractNote={Sometime in the afternoon of Wednesday, August 22, 1781, in one of the narrow houses along the Jewish lane (Judengasse) in Frankfurt am Main, Gumpert (Gumperz, in Hebrew sources, Gumpel) Aaron May (Mai) prepared himself to go out to attend to some business matters. Like many of his contemporaries involved in trade, Gumpert's business activities did not focus on just one line of work; he did his best to turn a profit in a number of ways, including selling wine and lending money at interest. Gumpert, who was in his thirties or perhaps even early forties, wore underneath his shirt a fringed garment (ẓiẓit, see Num. 15:37–41), as religious custom obligated Jewish males to do. His green jacket had silver clasps and his partially bald pate was covered by a wig with two curls in the back, topped by a hat. His elegant appearance made it clear to all observers that he was from a well-situated family, and that he had adopted some of the modes of contemporary fashion. Indeed, Gumpert came from what would soon be, if it was not already, one of the wealthiest Jewish families in Frankfurt.}, number={2}, journal={AJS Review}, publisher={Cambridge University Press (CUP)}, author={Fram, Edward and Kasper-Marienberg, Verena}, year={2015}, month={Nov}, pages={267–301} }