"Judaism has always been a culture of place," said Charlotte Fonrobert, director of the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford University. In the third Cornell Arts and Sciences Humanities Lecture on May 4, in Goldwin Smith Hall's Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, she spoke about concepts of community, space and territory in late ancient Judaism as well as their echoes in the modern world.

Fonrobert, an associate professor of religious studies, challenged the frequent overemphasis on temporality as the dominant dimension of rabbinic Judaism, such as viewing the Sabbath as a purely time-centered observance. "The temporal dimension has to be tempered by the spatial," she said, "because otherwise we inevitably end up with purely cognitive, disembodied understandings, which the rabbis wouldn't have recognized."

After the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and its centralized worship, rabbis were confronted with creating community despite their loss of control over public space, she said. "If you know nothing else about the Jewish Diaspora, you should understand that the Jews withdrew into their texts and away from any claims to collective space altogether," Fonrobert told her audience. "The genius of the rabbinic movement was to make study of text the primary Jewish practice, as in the saying, 'the only space we have left is the four cubits of halacha (Jewish law).'"

But the rabbis also established an entirely new spatial dimension with the eruv, a ritual boundary around a home or community within which observant Jews can carry things on the Sabbath (which otherwise is forbidden outside the home), said Fonrobert. An eruv encloses a community's private spaces to create a unified public space.

"The rabbis created a model of collective space that is not tied to a specific territoriality. Eruv provides a profound paradigm of transforming a place into a home," said Fonrobert. It carved out a symbolic communal space within the urban, Roman-controlled landscape. The title of Fonrobert's talk (and of her forthcoming book), "Re-Placing the Nation: Judaism, Diaspora and Neighborhood," refers to this use of eruv as the ritual affirmation of community.

Although the Palestinian Talmud says that an eruv is created "for the sake of peace," Fonrobert pointed out that some have objected to the eruv's comingling of the boundaries between public and private space. Just such a recent conflict in Fonrobert's hometown of Palo Alto, Calif., inspired her initial interest in the subject. "I got interested in what the whole bizarre controversy was about," she explained.

In an interview before the lecture, Fonrobert pointed out the irony of such conflicts. The eruv designed by the Talmudic rabbis was virtually unnoticeable by the non-Jewish community, since it was built into a courtyard doorway. Similarly, modern eruvim are constructed of nearly invisible fishing wire strung on top of utility poles.

Adam Bursi, a graduate student researching late antiquity Christianity, said he was surprised by the way Fonrobert brought in modern parallels and issues he hadn't been aware of.

For Jacob Shapiro '10, who was involved in constructing the Cornell eruv last January that encloses the campus and part of Ithaca, the talk proved particularly compelling. "I found it very interesting to hear the topic talked about in an academic environment," he said.

Fonrobert, who was schooled in Berlin, received her Ph.D. from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif., and taught at Syracuse University and the University of Judaism in Los Angeles.

The Arts and Sciences Humanities Lectures are presented with support from the Office of the President and the College of Arts and Sciences.

Linda Glaser is a staff writer in the College of Arts and Sciences.