Monday 9 March 2026 at 18h
Dr. Daniella Zaidman-Mauer
University of Amsterdam
Lecture in English.
Lecture at City Campus University of Antwerp, room R.013, Rodestraat 14, 2000 Antwerpen.
Admission is free. Register via email: ijs@uantwerpen.be.
In times of epidemic, the mother tongue became a lifeline: Yiddish texts carried healing knowledge across religious and cultural boundaries into Jewish homes throughout early modern Europe. Drawing on sources that span from kabbalistic charms and sympathetic magic, through the materia medica of classical and Christian traditions, to the promotion of the first vaccine in history, Zaidman-Mauer demonstrates that Yiddish functioned as a vernacular bridge, making shared remedies accessible to ordinary readers. Branded probatum est (tried and tested), these cures reveal a worldview in which the boundaries between segules (sympathetic charms) and refues (natural cures), between prayer and physic, remained fluid. Piety and Yiddish worked in tandem: the sacred duty to preserve life demanded accessible knowledge, and the mother tongue became the vehicle through which epidemic remedies reached those who needed them most.
Daniella Zaidman-Mauer completed her PhD at the University of Amsterdam (Amsterdam School of Historical Studies), where she wrote her dissertation Plague and Piety: Yiddish Medical Literature in Early Modern Europe under the supervision of Prof. Irene Zwiep and Prof. Bart Wallet. Daniella also lectures on Early Modern Yiddish Literature and Modern Yiddish Language at the University of Amsterdam and Bar-Ilan University. Her doctoral dissertation has been accepted for publication as a monograph in the Palgrave Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Medicine series (Palgrave Macmillan), under the title Yiddish Medicine in Early Modern Europe, 1679–1808: Plague and Piety.