How Matter Matters: Material Culture, Sabbath Lamps, and the Making of Rabbinic Judaism

Dr. Gregg E. Gardner, Distinguished Faculty of Arts Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of British Columbia

Title: ‘How Matter Matters: Material Culture, Sabbath Lamps, and the Making of Rabbinic Judaism’

Abstract: Kindling flames to mark the onset of the Sabbath is one of the most well-known Jewish rituals. Lighting a wick soaked with olive oil in a clay lamp at a prescribed time provides a case study for examining the roles of material culture in late antique Judaism. Drawing on early rabbinic texts from the second-third century CE (Mishnah, Tosefta), archaeology from Roman Galilee, and scholarship on material religion, ritual studies, experimental archaeology, and theoretical Roman archaeology, this talk demonstrates that the material culture that surrounded the early rabbis influenced how they formulated religious traditions that would later become central to Judaism.

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