His research interests include intellectual and political history of Zionism and modern Jewish nationalism, with an emphasis on its Central and East European contexts; history of Austro-Hungarian Jewries, including the effects of emancipation discourse, modernization projects, ethnic and national struggles, and social and cultural conflicts on Jewish life and the Jewish perceptions of Jewish-Gentile relations; Soviet Jewish history and the study of post-Soviet migration.

His book Between Prague and Jerusalem: Prague Zionists and the Origins of the Idea of Binational State in Palestine (published in Hebrew by Shazar Center & Leo Baeck, 2010), won the Hecht Prize for the Best Book in Israel Studies for 2011. A German version of this book has been published in 2013 by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen. His scholarly publications appeared in a number of leading journals in the Jewish Studies, including Zion, AJS Review, Jewish Social Studies, Jewish History, The Jewish Quarterly Review, as well as in The Russian Review, a leading journal in the Eastern European Studies.

Prof. Shumsky’s last book, Beyond the Nation-State: The Zionist Political Imagination from Pinsker to Ben-Gurion (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018), has been awarded an “Honorable Mention” (2nd place winner) of the Annual Shapiro Prize for the best book in Israel Studies awarded by the Association for Israel Studies (2019); and an “Honorable Mention” of the Ab Imperio Award for the best study in new imperial history and history of diversity in Northern Eurasia sponsored by Ab Imperio quarterly (2019).

Prof. Shumsky teaches broadly in European Jewish history from early modern to contemporary times, including courses in history of the origins and phenomenology of modern Jewish nationalisms; the Zionist ideology; the formation of modern Jewish culture in the Bohemian lands; emancipation, acculturation and identity in the Central and Eastern Europe; ethnicity, identity and conflict in Israeli society.

Prof. Shumsky was a Mandel Fellow at Scholion, the Interdisciplinary Research Center in Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University (now Interdisciplinary Research Center in the Humanities and Jewish Studies). He stayed as a guest scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Leipzig, and University of Munich. Since 2008 Prof. Shumsky won three ISF grants.

Roles:

 * Academic head of the MA program "The Bible and the Ancient Near East" at Rothberg School for Overseas Students

* Head of the academic committee in charge of the teaching of Bible in the Israeli general education system

Prof. Weiss began her studies at Hamburg University in Germany, where she specialized in German-Jewish history. In her doctoral dissertation, written at Tel Aviv University, she investigated the reciprocal relations between German Jewry and Polish Jewry following the Nazis' rise to power in Germany. In the late 1990s she taught at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, and between 2000 and 2007 served as head of the Bucerius Institute for Research of Contemporary German History and Society at Haifa University.

Alongside her work in Israel she has spent time over the past decade as a visiting scholar at the Historisches Kolleg in Munich, the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies at the Free University of Berlin, the Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften in Vienna, the Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture at Leipzig University, the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, the Remarque Institute at NYU, the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem, the Social Science Research Center Berlin, and the Europe Institute at Stanford University.

Her research operates in three arenas: German and Central European history, Jewish history, and Israeli history. It engages questions of citizenship, migration and sovereignty, as well as cultural heritage and transfer of knowledge, in comparative and spatial perspectives. Prof. Weiss works have won her the Hanna Arendt Prize for Political Thought in 2012 and the Polonsky Prize for Creativity and Originality in the Humanistic Disciplines in 2015.

Selected publications:

Ulrich Bielefeld & Yfaat Weiss, "…als Gelegenheitsgast, ohne jedes Engagement…". Jean Améry, München: Fink, 2014.

Amir Eshel & Yfaat Weiss (eds.), Kurz hinter der Wahrheit und dicht neben der Lüge: Zum Werk Barbara Honigmanns, München: Fink, 2013.

Yfaat Weiss, Lea Goldberg, Lehrjahre in Deutschland 1930-1933, Toldot – Essays zur jüdischen Geschichte und Kultur, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010.

 Mahmoud Yazbak & Yfaat Weiss, Haifa Before & After 1948. Narratives of a Mixed City, Hague: Republic of Letters, 2012.

Yfaat Weiss, A Confiscated Memory: Wadi Salib and Haifa’s lost Heritage, New York: Colombia University Press, 2011.

Daniel Levy & Yfaat Weiss, (eds.), Challenging Ethnic Citizenship: German and Israeli Perspectives on Immigration, New York: Berghahn, 2002.

Yfaat Weiss, Staatsbürgerschaft und Ethnizität. Deutsche und polnische Juden am Vorabend des Holocaust, Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte. München: Oldenbourg, 2000.