The Passover Story Turned Upside Down with Craig Perry
TOPIC: The Passover Story Turned Upside Down: Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt
SPEAKER: Craig Perry, Professor, Emory University
The memory of slavery in Egypt, God’s redemption of the Israelites, and the Exodus led by Moses are central to the sacred history of the Jewish people. For much of history, however, Jews were much more likely to be among the slave owning-classes than the enslaved. This presentation will focus on how a remarkable discovery in a medieval Egyptian synagogue illustrates the global history of the slave trade, the centrality of slavery in Jewish and Islamic culture, and the lives of enslaved people who converted to Judaism and became the parents of Jewish children.
BIOGRAPHY
Craig Perry is an assistant professor of Middle Eastern and Jewish Studies at Emory University. He is the co-editor of the Cambridge World History of Slavery (2021), author of Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt: a history (2026), and the winner of the Rome Prize in Medieval Studies (2024).
Book link: Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt: A History
