The Study Of The Mishnah And The Quest For Christian Identity In Early Eighteenth-Century England: Completing A Narrative Initiated By Richard Popkin

Richard Popkin left an enormous impact on my life and my career as a Jewish historian. I first met Dick soon after I had assumed my first academic position as an assistant professor of history at the University of Maryland, sometime after 1974. He was visiting his friend Leonora Cohen Rosenfeld and he wanted to meet me. Why so distinguished an historian would seek me out in the first place, I hardly understood then. Years later, I came to appreciate how many others like me were identified by Popkin, invited to engage him in conversation, and to ultimately connect with each other intellectually and socially. From this first meeting many others followed. I greatly valued the interventions of Dick in bringing Jewish history into the mainstream of historical scholarship. In those days when Jewish studies scholars still felt insecure in the academy, unsure if their colleagues would care at all about their subject and what they brought to the table, Dick became a legitimating support to argue that Jewish studies did count. Together with George Mosse and Natalie Zemon Davis, two other senior scholars who reached out to me and many other younger scholars, Dick became a critical intermediary between Judaic learning and the humanities.

Our relationship remained strong for many years. Dick was the reader for my science book for Yale press. His David Levi article, unpublished until I insisted he publish it in the Jewish Quarterly Review, was the inspiration for my book on the Jewish enlightenment in England. The crowning moment of our relationship took place in May 2000, when Dick joined 40 other scholars at a conference at Penn’s Center for Advanced Judaic Studies culminating in a year of study on Christian Hebraism. It was a wonderfully exciting year and the conference was a gem. Its high point came as Dick addressed the enthusiastic audience in its concluding session, speaking about his own journey in studying the subject of Jewish-Christian relationships for more than forty years and how he had been a solitary figure when he began but at this conference he was embraced by an entire community of scholars. Both the conference and the subsequent volume the fellows produced were dedicated to Dick Popkin. It was a touching moment for all who were present.