Jewish Responses to the Plague: Death and Dancing

During the Black Death, some Jews died of disease, while others died by fire for accusations of spreading illness. How did medieval Jews respond to such great mortality? The first part of this session will discuss dancing as one remarkable response to death in times of the plague and how a link between dance and pandemic has endured from past to present. The second part will discuss how the dramatic increase in mortality radically reshaped Jewish practices surrounding death and burial for centuries to come. Together we will examine how Jewish responses to plague-time hardships changed both medieval Jewish practice and communal life in the wake of the Black Death.