Ram Ben-Shalom is professor of the History of the Jewish People and director of the Center Hispania Judaica in the Hebrew University.
Dr. Amitai Baruchi-Unna deals with history and historiography of the ancient Near East, particularly in Israel and Assyria.
Teaching fellow in the section of Biblical Period of the Department of Jewish History (since 2010)
Golda Meir fellow (2005)
Fellow in the 'Researchers of Jerusalem' program of Yad Ben Zvi Institute (2012-2013)
Selected publications
The Book of Kings
The story of Hezekiah's Prayer (2 Kings 19) and Jeremiah's Polemic Concerning the Inviolability of Jerusalem, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 39.3 (2015), pp. 281-297
Two Clearings of Goats (I Kings 20: 27): An Interpretation Supported by an Akkadian Parallel, Journal of Biblical Literature 133/2 (2014), 247-249
Jehuites, Ahabites, and Omrides: Blood Kinship and Bloodshed, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament (forthcoming)
Assyrian royal inscriptions
Genres Meet: Assurbanipal's Prayer in the Inscription L4 and the Bilingual Communal Lamentations, in Time and History in the Ancient Near East - Proceedings of the 56th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Barcelona, July 26-30, 2010, eds. Lluis Feliu, et al. (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2013), pp. 611-623
Religion, Politics, and War: Gestures toward Babylonia in the Imgur-Enlil Inscription of Shalmaneser III of Assyria, ORIENT: Report of the Society for Near Eastern Studies in Japan 49 (2014), pp. 3-18
Esarhaddon's Prayer in the Inscription AsBbA as related to the mīs pî Ritual, Journal of Cuneiform Studies (forthcoming)
Reporting the Content of Divine Positive Response (annu kēnu) in Assyrian Royal Inscriptions, in “Now it happened in those days”: Studies in Biblical, Assyrian, and other Ancient Near Eastern Historiography presented to Mordechai Cogan on his 75th Birthday, eds. S. Aḥituv, A. Baruchi-Unna, I. Ephʾal, T. Forti, and J.H. Tigay (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, forthcoming)
Local traditions
The Story of the Zeal of Phinehas and Congregational Weeping at Bethel, Vetus Testamentum 65 (2015), pp. 505-515
City of Justice: Jerusalem as Embodiment of Justice in the Prophecy of Isaiah son of Amoz, in, Study of Jerusalem through the Ages, eds. Y. Ben Arieh et al. (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 2015), pp. 9-18 (Hebrew)
This is your God(s): Plural Forms Referring to the Noun Elohim and the Israelite Cultic Declaration, Shnaton. An Annual for Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies 25 (2016), pp. 141-152 (forthcoming; Hebrew)
Historical geography
Benjaminite Cities in Micah 1 in Light of a New Emendation, Judea and Samaria Research Studies 18 (2009), pp. 43-51 (Hebrew)
Geography of Biblical Land of Israel, in Jewish Study Bible2, eds. A. Berlin
and M. Z. Brettler (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 2119-2124
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).
Previously Prof. Ben-Sasson had served as Rector of the Hebrew University, as Vice Dean of the Faculty of the Faculty of Humanities and as the President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In the years 2012 to 2015 Prof. Ben-Sasson served as Chairman of the Council of Presidents of the Universities in Israel (VERA).
Before appointment as President of the University in 2009, Prof. Ben-Sasson served as a Member of the Knesset and as Chairman of its Constitution, Law and Justice Committee.
Prof. Ben-Sasson is a researcher in the Department of History of the Jewish People in the Faculty of Humanities. As a historian of Jewish heritage in the Islamic world, he wrote books and articles on a variety of topics, including the Jewish communities in Muslim countries, relations between religion and economy, as well as law and spirituality as authoritative sources in the Eastern society of the Middle-Ages. He also specializes in research on the Maimonides, social and intellectual history, the literature of the Responsa and the works of the period of the Gaonim, research of the Genizah, as well as the works and leadership of R’ Saadia Gaon.
While in the past he served as editor and a member of the editorial board in a broad range of research publications, Prof. Ben-Sasson served as President of the World Union for Jewish Studies, as Vice President of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture and as Chairman of the Ben-Zvi Institute for the study of Jewish Communities in the East, as also as a member of the Council of Yad-Vashem. In 2016 he was elected as a member of the European Academy of Science and Arts.
A list of Prizes:
1978-1979 Research Grant of the Ministry for Education and Culture;
Center for Integration of the Heritage of Oriental Jewry
1980 The Hebrew Univ., Research Fellows' Prize
1980-1981 Moritz and Scharlota Warburg Prize
1982-1983 Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture (Doctoral Scholarship)
1983-1984 Rothschild Fellowship
1985-1988 Alon Fund of the Israeli Council for Higher Education
1996/7 Feher Prize for Jewish History, and
1996/7 The Ben-Zvi Prize for the Study of Jewish Heritage.
2010 Honorary doctoral degree from The Jewish Theological Seminary
Link to YouTube:
The YouTube channel of the University has an abundance of speeches by Prof. Ben-Sasson from a profusion of events: Board of Governors, scholarship award ceremonies and conferences
https://www.youtube.com/user/HebrewUniversity
“The Jewish Intellectual Revolution of the Tenth Century”, a lecture by Prof. Ben-Sasson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW6j-86ipTw
Contact details: The Office of the President is located in the Administration Building on the Mount Scopus Campus, second floor, room 07. Reception, by appointment.
Prof Blatman main topics of research are East European Jews in the 20th century; Jewish labor movement in Eastern Europe; Polish Jews during the Holocaust its aftermath; Nazi concentration camps; Historiography of the Holocaust and genocide.
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.
Research interests: History of Israel and Its land within the Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian empires; West Semitic epigraphy; Ancient Near Eastern military history.
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.
