Associate Director, Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies; Associate Professor, Spanish
szpiech@umich.eduOffice Information:
phone: 734.647.2334
Center for Middle Eastern & North African Studies; CMENAS Faculty; CMENAS Director; CMENAS Staff; CMENAS Executive Committee
Education/Degree:
Ph.D. Yale University, 2006Highlighted Work and Publications
Conversion and Narrative: Reading and Religious Authority in Medieval Polemic
Ryan Szpiech
In 1322, a Jewish doctor named Abner entered a synagogue in the Castilian city of Burgos and began to weep in prayer. Falling asleep, he dreamed of a "great man" who urged him to awaken from his slumber. Shortly thereafter, he converted to Christianity and wrote a number of works attacking his old faith. Abner tells the story in fantastic detail in the opening to his Hebrew-language but anti-Jewish polemical treatise, Teacher of Righteousness.
In the religiously plural context of the medieval Western Mediterranean, religious conversion played an important role as a marker...