Authors

Dr. Meir Ben Shahar was born in Jerusalem. He studied and received His Ph.D. in Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He teaches at the Department of Jewish History at the Hebrew University and Sha’anan College. His primary research interests are historical consciousness in ancient Judaism, rabbinic literature, Second Temple literature and Josephus. 

Dr. Moshe Blidstein is a lecturer at the History Department, University of Haifa. He specializes in the religions in the Roman Empire, especially concerning ritual and ritual discourses. Among his publications are Purity, Community and Ritual in Early Christian Literature (Oxford, 2017) and “How Many Pigs were on Noah’s Ark? An Exegetical Encounter on the Nature of Impurity”, Harvard Theological Review 108:3 (2015), 448-70. He is also co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Abrahamic Religions (Oxford, 2015).

Prof. Rabbi Michael Chernick holds the Deutsch Family Chair in Jewish Jurisprudence and Social Justice at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. He received his doctorate in Rabbinics from the Bernard Revel Graduate School and his semicha from R. Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. Chernick’s area of expertise is the Talmud. He focuses on early rabbinic legal interpretation of the Bible and is the author of A Great Voice That Did Not Cease.

Dr. Rabbi Aryeh Cohen is Professor of Rabbinic Literature at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies of the American Jewish University. He received his ordination from the Ziegler School in 2010. His latest book is Justice in the City: An Argument from the Sources of Rabbinic Judaism. He is also the Rabbi-in-Residence at Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice. He blogs at Justice in the City (Justice-in-the-city.com) where many of his articles (academic and popular) can also be found.

Dr. Yehudah Cohn completed a D.Phil. in Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford in 2007, and also has an MA from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Originally from London, Dr. Cohn had a career as a commodities trader in New York prior to beginning doctoral research. His dissertation was transformed into a book, for Brown University’s Judaic Studies series, and was published by the Society for Biblical Literature in 2008 under the title Tangled Up in Text: Tefillin and the Ancient World. More recently he co-authored a Handbook of Jewish Literature from Late Antiquity (135-700 CE) together with Fergus Millar and Eyal Ben-Eliyahu, published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press in 2012. He is currently a research associate at New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World.

Dr. Yonatan Feintuch teaches Talmud and Rabbinics at Bar Ilan University and Herzog College, and specializes in talmudic narratives. He holds a PhD in Talmud from Bar Ilan University.

Dr. Ariel Furstenberg completed his graduate studies at the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science at Tel Aviv University, focusing on concept formation and conceptual change, specifically in relation to the Babylonian Talmud. He also held a research position at The School of Social Science at The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and is currently a research associate at the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences (ELSC) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His current interests lie on the interface between philosophy and brain science, specifically regarding issues of freedom, will and agency. He is the author of the forthcoming (2016) book: The Languages of Talmudic Discourse: A Philosophical Study of the Evolution of Amoraic Halakha (Magnes Press and Van Leer Jerusalem Institute Press). 

Dr. David M. Grossberg is a Visiting Scholar at Cornell University. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University. He is the author of Heresy and the Formation of the Rabbinic Community (Mohr Siebeck, 2017) and the co-editor of Genesis Rabbah in Text and Context (Mohr Siebeck, 2016). He has published articles in Journal for the Study of Judaism, Henoch, and edited volumes. 

Dr. Amit Gvaryahu is a Rothenstreich doctoral fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is also a visiting student at Princeton University. He works on wealth and money in rabbinic literature and the surrounding cultures.

Dr. Rabbi Richard Hidary is an associate professor of Judaic studies at Yeshiva University and a rabbi at Sephardic Synagogue. Richard studied at Yeshivat Har Etzion, received his ordination from the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and a PhD from NYU. He has recently published Rabbis and Classical Rhetoric: Sophistic Education and Oratory in the Talmud and Midrash with Cambridge University Press. His first book, Dispute for the Sake of Heaven: Legal Pluralism in the Talmud, has been published by Brown University, and his articles appear in AJS Review, Conversations, Dine Israel, Encyclopedia Judaica, Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, The Jewish Review of Books, and Okimta. Rabbi Hidary also runs the websites teachtorah.org, pizmonim.org, and rabbinics.org.

Dr. Jane L. Kanarek is Associate Professor of Rabbinics at Hebrew College. She is the author of Biblical Narrative and the Formation of Rabbinic Law (Cambridge, 2014). She is a co-editor of two forthcoming books: With Marjorie Lehman, Learning to Read Talmud: What It Looks Like and How It Happens (Academic Studies Press, 2016) and with Marjorie Lehman and Simon J. Bronner, Motherhood in the Jewish Cultural Imagination (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2017).

Dr. Menachem Katz is Academic Director  Emeritus of the Friedberg Manuscripts Project in Jerusalem. He also lectures at the Open University of Israel and at Chemdat Hadarom College. Dr. Katz spends much of his time poring over handwritten fragments from around the world and has published widely on the Jerusalem Talmud, Aggadic literature, as well as in the field of Digital Humanities. His latest book, A Critical Edition and a Short Explanation of Talmud Yerusalmi’s Tractate Qiddushin, was published by last year (Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi & Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem 2016). 

Prof. Admiel Kosman, is Professor for Jewish Studies at Potsdam University as well as the academic director of Geiger College, a training school for liberal rabbis, in Berlin. The author of several books and many articles in the field of talmudic research, and of collections of Hebrew poetry. His latest academic book is Gender and Dialogue in the Rabbinic Prism (Berlin, Walter de Gruyter), and his most recent collection of poetry is Approaching You in English: Selected Poems (Boston, Zephyr Press).

Dr. Joshua Kulp has been teaching rabbinic literature at the Conservative Yeshiva for twenty years. He received his PhD in Talmud from Bar-Ilan University. 

Prof. Rabbi Marty Lockshin is a professor at York University and recently made aliyah. Marty’s primary area of scholarly expertise and writing is the history of Jewish biblical interpretation, particularly the interplay between tradition and innovation.  Most of his research has been centered on those medieval biblical commentators who valued tradition intellectually, who lived traditional lives and who still innovated unabashedly in their understanding of the Bible.  The largest part of his scholarship has been about Samuel ben Meir (12th century Northern France), a traditionalist Bible commentator with an uncanny knack for offering new understandings of biblical texts—his conclusions are often strikingly similar to the “discoveries” of biblical critics seven or eight hundred years later. Professor Lockshin received rabbinical ordination while he studied in Yeshivat Mercaz Harav Kook in Israel.

Dr. Avigail Manekin–Bamberger is currently a doctoral candidate in the department of Hebrew Culture Studies at Tel Aviv University. Her thesis focuses on shared practices in rabbinical law and ancient Jewish magic, with special reference to Aramaic incantation bowls. She received her BA and MA in the Talmud department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  She has published articles on Jewish magic and rabbinic literature and was a collaborator on the Princeton Toledot Yeshu project. 

Dr. Jason Sion Mokhtarian is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University and the author of the book Rabbis, Sorcerers, Kings, and Priests: The Culture of the Talmud in Ancient Iran (University of California Press, 2015).  

Prof. Ophir Münz-Manor, an associate professor of Rabbinic Culture at the Open University of Israel, is a specialist in Jewish liturgy and liturgical poetry from Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. His studies focus on the intersections with contemporary Christian texts as well as questions of ritual, performance and gender in late antique Near Eastern cultures. His recent publications include Early Piyyut – An Annotated Anthology (Tel Aviv University Press, 2015) and Gender and Sexuality in Rabbinic Culture (The Open University of Israel Press, 2016). 

Dr. Yoni Pomeranz holds a B.A. in Classics from Princeton and a Ph.D. in Ancient Judaism from Yale. He is currently a student at Stanford Law School. 

Prof. Ishay Rosen-Zvi is Professor of Rabbinic Literature in the department of Jewish Philosophy and Talmud at Tel-Aviv University, and a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Kogod Center. He holds a Ph.D. in rabbinic literature from Tel-Aviv University and was elected to the Israel Young Academy of Sciences in 2013. Among his many publications are Demonic Desires: Yetzer Hara and the Problem of Evil in Late Antiquity (2011); Body and Soul in Ancient Judaism (2012); and Goy: Israel’s Others and the Birth of the Gentile (2018, with Adi Ophir). 

Prof. Rabbi Jeffrey L. Rubenstein is Skirball Professor of Talmud and Rabbinic Literature at New York University.  He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Religion of Columbia University and his rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary. His books include, The History of Sukkot in the Second Temple and Rabbinic Periods (1995); Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition and Culture (1999), Rabbinic Stories (Classics of Western Spirituality Series, 2002),  The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud (2003), and Stories of the Babylonian Talmud (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010). 

Dr. Shana Strauch Schick is a post-doctoral fellow at The Center for Inter-disciplinary Research of the Cairo Genizah at Haifa University. She received a Ph.D. in Talmudic Literature from Bernard Revel Graduate School at Yeshiva University where she also completed an M.A. in Bible, and has held a joint Postdoctoral Fellowship in Jewish Culture in the Ancient World at Haifa, Bar Ilan, and Tel Aviv Universities. Her publications include, “The Middle Persian Context of the Bavli’s Beruriah Narratives,” in Zion. In addition to academic research, she completed the Graduate Program in Advanced Talmud at Stern College and teaches in women’s learning institutions and midrashot in both New York and Jerusalem.

Prof. Joseph Tabory is a professor emeritus of Bar Ilan University where he taught for several decades in the Talmud department, serving for a time as chairperson of the department and as Dean of Libraries. He taught many courses in Aggada and in 2014 he published, together with Arnon Atzmon, a critical edition of Midrash Rabbah on Esther. His main specialization is in the history of Jewish festivals and liturgy. His main works in these fields are “Jewish Festivals in the Time of the Mishna and Talmud” (Hebrew), published by Magnes in (third edition in 2000) and Pesach Dorot (Hakibbutz Hameuchad 1996), which portrays the history of the main rituals of the Passover seder from Second Temple times until modern times. In 2008 JPS published a Haggadah with his introduction, translation and commentary in the JPS Commentary series. He has recently published an article on the influence of the Ari on the Oriental siddur and has an article forthcoming on the history of saying Shefoch Chamatcha at the Passover Seder.

Dr. Amram Tropper, Ph.D. (2002) Oxford University, is Senior Lecturer in Jewish History at Ben-Gurion University.  His publications include Wisdom, Politics, and Historiography (Oxford, 2004), Like Clay in the Hands of the Potter (Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2011) and Simeon the Righteous in Rabbinic Literature (Brill, 2013). 

Dr. Rabbi Avraham Walfish received his B.A. in philosophy from Yeshiva University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Talmudic Literature from Hebrew University, writing his dissertation on Literary Phenomena in Mishnah and their conceptual significance. He received semicha from Rabbi Zalman Nehemiah Goldberg, and has taught in many institutions of Jewish learning, including Drisha, Pardes, Matan, and Bar Ilan University. Currently he teaches at Herzog College in Alon Shvut, at the Hesder Yeshiva in Tekoah, and heads the M.Ed. program in Talmud and Jewish Thought at Jerusalem College for Women (Michlala). Most of his publications deal with literary interpretation of Mishnah and other Talmudic works, and his literary commentary on tractate Berakhot will soon be published by Tvunot Press. 

Dr. Haim Weiss is a Senior lecturer of Rabbinic literature at the department of Hebrew literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is the author of “All Dreams Follow the Mouth”? A Literary and Cultural Reading in the Talmudic ‘Dream Tractate’ (Beer-Sheva 2011) (Hebrew). His next book on the image of Shimon Bar-Kosibah in Jewish culture will be published next year.

Dr. Yishai Kiel is a Blaustein postdoctoral associate and lecturer at the Program in Judaic Studies and the Department of Religious Studies at Yale University. He received his Ph.D. in Rabbinic Literature and Sassanian Studies from the Hebrew University and his rabbinic ordination from the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. He is the author of Sexuality in the Babylonian Talmud: Christian and Sasanian Contexts in Late Antiquity.