Prof. Ram Ben Shalom
Ram Ben-Shalom is professor of the History of the Jewish People and director of the Center Hispania Judaica in the Hebrew University.
Ram Ben-Shalom is professor of the History of the Jewish People and director of the Center Hispania Judaica in the Hebrew University.
Prof. Elisheva Baumgarten (Tenured Professor) studies the social and religious history of the Jews of medieval northern Europe (1000-1350) and teaches medieval history in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry and in the Department of History.
She is the author of two books:
Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004)
Practicing Piety in Medieval Ashkenaz: Men, Women and Everyday Religious Observance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014)
and has edited a number of books, most recently
Elisheva Baumgarten, Ruth Mazo Karras and Katelyn Mesler (eds.), Entangled Histories: Knowledge, Authority and Jewish Culture in the Thirteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017)
Her current projects include a social history of medieval Jewish marriage that is part of a larger project that seeks to outlines the contours of daily life in the Jewish communities of northern Europe during the High Middle Ages.
Elisheva completed her studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (B.A., magna cum laude, 1993; M.A., summa cum laude, 1995; Ph.D, summa cum laude, 2001) and spent two years at the University of Pennsylvania (1999-2001) and then returned to Israel. She came to the Hebrew University in 2013 after teaching in the Department of Jewish History and the Gender Studies Program at Bar Ilan University for 12 years (Lecturer, 2002; tenured Senior Lecturer, 2008).
Elisheva is a member of Israel's Young Academy. She was awarded an ERC grant for her current research project Beyond the Elite: Jewish Daily Life in Medieval Europe and is a recent recipient of the Michael Bruno Memorial Award for 2016.
Prof. Yaron Ben-Naeh holds the Bernard Cherrick Chair in the History of the Jewish People and head of the modern period division in the department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry.
Appointment in my office (room 6140): Wed. 12:15-13:00, and upon request (02-5355059).
Dr. Edward Breuer is a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry.
Professor Jonathan Dekel-Chen is the Rabbi Edward Sandrow Chair in Soviet & East European Jewry at the Hebrew University. He holds a dual appointment in the Department of Jewish History and in the Department of General History.
In 2014 he co-founded the Bikurim Youth Village for the Arts in Eshkol, which provides world-class artistic training for gifted, under-served high school students from throughout Israel.
Selected Publications:
Farming the Red Land: Jewish Agricultural Colonization and Local Soviet Power, 1923-1941. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
Mahane meshutaf? Kooperatsiia b'hityashvut ha-yehudit ha-haklait be-Rusya u-beolam, 1890-1941. Jerusalem: Magnes Press & Yad Tebenkin Press, 2008.
Editor (with David Gaunt, Natan Meir, Israel Bartal), Anti-Jewish Violence: Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.
Editor (with Eugene Avrutin and Robert Weinberg), Ritual Murder in Russia, Eastern Europe and Beyond: New Histories of an Old Accusation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017.
“Putting Agricultural History to Work: Global Action Today from a Communal Past.” Featured article in: Agricultural History 94, no. 4 (2020): 512-544.
“A Response to R. Douglas Hurt, Ben Nobbs-Thiessen and Nahum Karlinsky.” Agricultural History 94, no. 4 (Fall 2020): 562-567.
“Israeli Reactions in a Soviet Moment: Reflections on the 1970 Leningrad Affair.” Kennan Cable #58. September 2020.
“A Light unto the Nations? A Stalled Vision for the Future of the Humanities.” AJS Perspectives. Fall 2020, pp. 56-58.
“Transnational Intervention and its Limits: The Case of Interwar Poland.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 17, no. 3 (2018): 265-286.
“Between Myths, Memories, History and Politics: Creating Content for Moscow’s Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center.” The Public Historian 40, no. 4 (2018): 91-106.
“Philanthropy, Diplomacy and Jewish Internationalism.” In: The Cambridge History of Judaism, Volume VIII: The Modern Period, c. 1815 – c. 2000. Edited by Mitchell Hart and Tony Michels. Cambridge University Press, 2017.
“Jewish Threads in the Fabric of International History.” In: International History in Theory and Practice. Edited by Barbara Haider-Wilson, William Godsey, Wolfgang Mueller, pp. 477-500. Vienna: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2017.
“Dueling Visions of Rebirth: Interwar Palestine versus Soviet Russia,” Journal of Jewish Identities 9, no. 2 (July 2016): 139-157.
“Rethinking Boundaries in the Jewish Diaspora from the FSU.” In: The New Jewish Diaspora: Russian-Speaking Immigrants in the United States, Israel and Germany. Edited by Zvi Gitelman, pp. 77-88. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2016.
“Faith Meets Politics and Resources: Reassessing Modern Transnational Jewish Activism.” In: Purchasing Power: The Economics of Modern Jewish History. Edited by Rebecca Kobrin and Adam Teller, pp. 216-237. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.
“Liberal Answers to the ‘Jewish Question’: Then and Now.” In: Church and Society in Modern Russia. Edited by Elise Wirtschafter and Manfred Hildermeier, pp. 133-156. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2015
“East European Jewish Migration: Inside and Outside,” East European Jewish Affairs 44, no. 3 (December 2014): 154-170.
"A Durable Harvest: Reevaluating the Russia-Israel Axis in the Jewish World." In: Bounded Mind and Spirit: Russia and Israel, 1880-2010. Edited by Brian Horowitz and Shai Ginsburg, pp. 109-129. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2013.
“Activism as Engine: Jewish Internationalism, 1880s-1980s.” In: Religious Internationals in the Modern World: Globalization and Faith Communities since 1750, pp. 269-291. Edited by Abigail Green and Vincent Viaene. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
“Crimea 2008: A Lesson about Uses and Misuses of History,” East European Jewish Affairs 39, no. 1 (April 2009): 101-105.
“‘New’ Jews of the Agricultural Kind: A Case of Soviet Interwar Propaganda,” Russian Review 66 (July 2007): 424-50.
“An Unlikely Triangle: Philanthropists, Commissars, and American Statesmanship Meet in Soviet Crimea, 1922-37.” Diplomatic History 27, no. 3 (2003): 353-376.
“Farmers, Philanthropists, and Soviet Authority: Rural Crimea and Southern Ukraine, 1923-1941.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 4, no. 4 (Fall 2003): 849-885.
Miriam Frenkel is associate professor in the Department for Jewish History, where she also serves as B.A advisor, and in the School of History. She is head of the Multi Disciplinary Program and of the Dinur Center for the Study of Jewish History.
Prof. Frenkel studies Jewish medieval history under Islam, her works being mainly based on the reach documentation found in the Cairo Geniza. Her articles and books concern social and cultural aspects of Jewish life in the medieval world of Islam, such as: charity and giving, pilgrimage, travels, material culture, literacy and book culture. She is also the editor of a text book on cultural encounters between Judaism and Islam in the Middle- Ages.
Associate Professor at the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry and a fellow at the Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Dr. David Guedj is a Senior lecturer at the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry and the Head of Misgav Yerushalayim research Center for the heritage of Sephardi Jewry.
Dr. Guedj is a historian of the Jews in Muslim countries. His research interests are focused on Intellectual history of Jews in Muslim countries in the 19th and 20th centuries; The development and modernization of a polyglot book culture in 20th century Morocco; The Maghreb during WW2 and the Holocaust; Childhood, youth and family in Jewish communities across Muslim countries; Visual and literary images of Jews from Muslim countries in their native lands and in Israel.
His first book, The Hebrew Culture in Morocco, explores the Attitudes of Moroccan Jewry toward the Hebrew language and the building of Hebrew culture during the colonial period (1912-1956). Currently he is working on a monograph tentatively titled: The development and modernization of a Jewish polyglot book culture in 20th century Morocco.
Dr. Noah Hacham is a researcher and teacher. Senior lecturer in the Dept. of Jewish History and Contemporary Judaism, and member of the research group "question of identity" Mandel-Scholion interdisciplinary center.
MA and PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Wrote his doctoral dissertation on the historical significance of the Third Book of Maccabees, under the supervision of Professor Daniel Schwartz, and specializes in the history of Diaspora Jewry during the Second Temple, Mishna and the Talmud, especially Hellenistic Jewish Diaspora. In addition, also explores rabbinic literature in its historical contexts.
His current research project together with Professor Tal Ilan (Free University of Berlin) is preparing the fourth volume of a collection of Jewish papyri (Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum). This collection reveals and shows everyday life of the Jews in Egypt, during the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods, and enable us to understand different aspects of the history of the Jews in this important diaspora community.
Among his publications:
'The Letter of Aristeas: A New Exodus Story? ', Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman Period 36 (2005), pp. 1-20
‘Exile and Self-Identity in the Qumran Sect and in Hellenistic Judaism’, E. Chazon & B. Halpern-Amaru (eds.), New Perspectives on Old Texts: Proceedings of the 10th International Symposium of the Orion Center for the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, 9-11 January, 2005, Brill: Leiden 2010, pp. 3-21
‘Where Does the Shekhinah Dwell? Between Dead Sea Sect, Diaspora Judaism and Rabbinic Literature’, A. Lange, E. Tov, M. Weigold (eds.), The Dead Sea Scrolls in Context: Integrating the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Study of Ancient Texts, Languages, and Cultures, vol. 1, (SVT 140/1), Brill: Leiden & Boston , 2011, pp. 399-412
‘Sanctity and the Attitude towards the Temple in Hellenistic Judaism’, D.R. Schwartz & Zeev Weiss (eds.), Was 70 C.E. a Watershed in Jewish History? On Jews and Judaism before and after the Destruction of the Second Temple, (AJEC 78), Brill: Leiden 2012, pp. 155-179
‘Between mĕšûbâ and môšābâ: On the Status of Diaspora Jews in the Period of Redemption According to the Septuagint and Hellenistic Judaism’, Melvin K.H. Peters (ed.), XIV Congress of the IOSCS, Helsinki, 2010 (SBL Septuagint and Cognate Studies, 59), Atlanta 2013, pp. 127-142
'Bigthan and Teresh and the Reason Gentiles Hate Jews', Vetus Testamentum 62 (2012), pp. 318-356
‘The High Priesthood and Onias’ Temple: The Historical Meaning of a Rabbinic Story’,Zion 78 (2013), pp. 439-469 [Hebrew]
PhD from the Hebrew University, teaches modern social history and specializes in the Jewish community of Mandate era Palestine and the first years of Israeli statehood.
Prof. Oded Irshai's scholarly interests and teaching curriculum revolve around the history and culture of the Jews in Late Antiquity under the umbrella of a Christian-Roman Empire.
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.
-“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.
Uzi Rebhun is a demographer. His research focuses on American Jewry and the population of Israel. Utilizing quantitative data through methods from the social sciences he explores topics such as internal and international migration, family and marriage, religious and ethnic identification, social and economic stratification, anti-Semitism, and Israel-Diaspora relations.
Prof. Rebhun is the Vice-Dean for Teaching of the Faculty of Humanities; and also serves as chair of the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry.
In the past his was the head of the Honors program "Revivim"; and director of the Cherrick Center for the study of Zionism, the Yishuv, and the State of Israel.
Daniel Schwartz is a historian of the Second Temple Period. Born in the USA in 1952, he moved to Israel in 1971 and then began his studies of Jewish and general history at the Hebrew University, eventually completing three degrees; his 1979 doctoral dissertation was devoted to ancient attitudes toward the Temple of Jerusalem.