Senior lecturer, Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry. Avigail Manekin-Bamberger completed her PhD at Tel Aviv University (2019) and was later a postdoctoral fellow at the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at the Hebrew University. Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of Jews in antiquity, with a special emphasis on Jewish society in the Sasanian Empire and ancient magic. Her first book (forthcoming, Yad Ben Zvi) questions the scholarly dichotomy between ancient Jewish law and magic by arguing that legal formulations constituted an essential part of Jewish magical texts and Jewish legal terms were often invested with a metaphysical meaning. She is currently working on a synthetic social history of the Jews in the Sasanian empire focusing on the daily life of Jewish individuals, the scope of rabbinic authority over popular Jewish groups, and the boundaries between Jewish and Christian communities. Dr. Manekin-Bamberger has published articles on various aspects of rabbinic literature, ancient Jewish magic and demonology and ancient Jewish culture within its broader context, her latest publications include:

-“A Jewish Magical Handbook in the Babylonian Talmud”, Jewish Studies Quarterly, forthcoming.

-“Medical and Magical Protection in Jewish Babylonian Liturgy,” [Hebrew] Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, forthcoming.

-"Babylonian Jewish Society: The Evidence of the Incantation Bowls", with Simcha Gross Jewish Quarterly Review, forthcoming.

-"Who Were the Jewish ‘Magicians’ behind the Aramaic Incantation Bowls?,” Journal of Jewish Studies  71.2 (2020), 235-254.

-“The Vow-Curse in Ancient Jewish Texts,” Harvard Theological Review 112.3 (2019), 340-357.