Faculty
The Bible and Ancient Near East (BANE)
Tzvi Abusch
Marc Brettler, Graduate Program Chair
Bernadette Brooten
David Wright, Department Chair
Jewish Studies
Jonathan Decter, Undergraduate Advisor
Sharon Feiman-Nemser
Sylvia Barack Fishman
ChaeRan Freeze
Ellen Kellman
Reuven Kimelman
Jon A. Levisohn
Antony Polonsky
Benjamin Ravid
Sharon Pucker Rivo
Jonathan Sarna
Eugene Sheppard
Ellen Smith
Ilana Szobel
Ilan Troen
Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies
Avigdor Levy, IMES Chair
Joseph Lumbard
Kanan Makiya
Ilan Troen
Hebrew & Arabic Languages
Lutf Al-Kibsi
Guy Antebi
Bracha Azoulay
Aliza Brosh
Sara Hascal
Bonit Porath
Vardit Ringvald, Hebrew & Arabic LanguagesDirector
Esther Shorr
Rina Winkleman
Assyriology
Religion
Hebrew Bible
Magic and Mythology of the Ancient Near East
(781) 736-2969
Contact Tzvi Abusch
TZVI ABUSCH, Rose B. and Joseph Cohen Professor of Assyriology and Ancient Near Eastern Religion, received his Ph.D. in Assyriology from Harvard University. He has taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has held a number of awards and fellowships. Most recently, he was a Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, where he was coordinator of the research theme group on magic and religion in the ancient Near East. His primary fields of research and publication are: Mesopotamian religion, magic, literature, and thought as well as Biblical and Babylonian interconnections. Among his recent publications on Mesopotamian magic and witchcraft are Babylonian Witchcraft Literature; Mesopotamian Magic (ed.); "Some Reflections on Mesopotamian Witchcraft," "Ascent to the Stars in a Mesopotamian Ritual," "Witchcraft and the Anger of the Personal God," "Considerations when Killing a Witch," and "The Internalization of Suffering and Illness in Mesopotamia." Recent articles on Mesopotamian mythology and thought include: "Ishtar," "Marduk," "Gilgamesh's Request and Siduri's Denial," and "Ghost and God: Some Observations on a Babylonian Understanding of Human Nature." Professor Abusch received several awards for the academic year 2003-2004. They are: Membership in the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton for the academic year 2003-2004; Lady Davis Visiting Professorship at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Annual Professor and National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow for the academic year 2003-2004 at the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem; a DAAD three-month Study Visit research grant to Germany. The various invitations are in recognition of the importance of his work on the Akkadian magical series Maglu and on the Epic of Gilgamesh. He will be taking up the invitations of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and of the Hebrew University, as well as partial NEH fellowship from the Albright Institute and the DAAD grant (for at least one-month).
Lutf A
l-KibsiArabic Language
(781) 736-2071
Contact Lutf Al-Kibsi
Guy AntebiHebrew Language
(781) 736-2952
Contact Guy Antebi
Hebrew Language
(781) 736-2956
Contact Bracha Azoulay
BRACHA AZOULAY, a lecturer in the Hebrew program since 1991, earned degrees in Theater in Expressive Arts Therapy. She has developed courses in Israeli theater and Hebrew Drama at Brandeis, and directs the Hebrew language theater production in conjunction with her course in Israeli Theater. She has taught drama to Ethiopian students in an Ethiopian community in Israel and is a member of an improvisational movement theater program in the Boston area. She has taught Hebrew classes in the Boston area and has developed a high school Hebrew and Chinese curriculum.
Hebrew Bible
(781) 736-2968
Contact Marc Brettler
MARC BRETTLER is Dora Golding Professor of Biblical Studies. His research has been centered in several areas: the use of religious metaphors in the Hebrew Bible (God is King: Understanding an Israelite Metaphor, 1989), the nature of biblical historical texts as "literary" texts (The Creation of History in Ancient Israel, 1995; The Book of Judges, 2002), and in feminist approach. He was a co-editor of The New Oxford Annotated Bible (2001), and author of Biblical Hebrew for Students of Modern Hebrew (2002) and co-editor of the Jewish Study Bible (2004), which was awarded a National Jewish Book Award. His book How to Read the Bible was published by the Jewish Publication Society in fall 2005. He has discussed these books and their implications in a variety of Op-eds concerning the public display of the Decalogue, and Creationism and Biblical Studies. He also discussed these issues recently on "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross. He has served on the editorial board of The Journal of Biblical Literature. Professor Brettler teaches survey courses, such as Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, Women and the Hebrew Bible, as well as Hebrew text courses such as Exodus, Deuteronomy, Psalms, and Song of Songs, Biblical Historical Texts, Dead Sea Scrolls, Medieval Jewish Bible Commentaries, and Biblical Hebrew Composition. He has been awarded the Michael L. Walzer Award for Excellence in Teaching. Professor Brettler just completed his fifth term as Chair of the NEJS Department in the 2005-2006 academic year.
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Early Christianity
Women and Religion
| Brooten Website | Feminist Sexual Ethics Website |
(781) 736-2978
Contact Bernadette Brooten
BERNADETTE BROOTEN, Kraft-Hiatt Professor of Christian Studies and of Women's and Gender Studies at Brandeis University, is founder and director of the Brandeis Feminist Sexual Ethics Project. This project aims to create Jewish, Christian, and Muslim sexual ethics rooted in freedom, mutuality, meaningful consent, responsibility, and female (as well as male) pleasure, untainted by slave-holding values. These religions' sacred texts and traditions have all tolerated slavery, which has frequently involved the sexual exploitation of women and girls. Brooten heads a team of scholars, activists, artists, and policy analysts who are disentangling the nexus of slavery, religion, women, and sexuality. They aim to help religious and other people complete the abolition of slavery and move beyond harmful racial and sexual stereotypes. Because religion is a powerful social force, transformed religious sexual ethics, based not on scriptural literalism or the hierarchies of ancient slave-holding societies but on respect, will benefit the whole of society. Brooten is editing the essays that will be presented at a major public conference, "Beyond Slavery: Overcoming Its Religious and Sexual Legacy" (October 15-16, 2006, Brandeis University), and she is writing a book on early Christian women who were enslaved or who owned enslaved laborers. She has written Women Leaders in The Ancient Synagogue: Inscriptional Evidence and Background Issues (1982) and Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (1996), for which she received three awards. She has also published on various topics in ancient Jewish and early Christian history. In addition to the MacArthur Fellowship, she has held fellowships from the Harvard Law School, the Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and many other agencies. Brooten studied at the University of Portland (B.A. 1971), the University of Tübingen, Hebrew University, and Harvard University (Ph.D. 1982). She previously taught at the School of Theology at Claremont, the Claremont Graduate School, the University of Tübingen, Harvard Divinity School, and the University of Oslo.
More About Bernadette Brooten
Hebrew Language
(781) 736-2937
Contact Aliza Brosh
ALIZA BROSH, Lecturer in Hebrew at Brandeis since 2002. This is her seventh year in Boston and her fifth year of Hebrew teaching at Brandeis. She also teaches Ulpan, on-line Hebrew programs and "Prozdor" of Hebrew College. She graduated Haifa University in 1976, with a degree in literature and sociology as well as a teaching diploma. From 1981 until 2000, she held a teaching position in one of the leading high schools in Rishon Le'Zion, where she taught a variety of Hebrew related subjects. She has also run special education programs for high school students from the former USSR. She has taught the Hebrew language to adults in the N.Y. Ulpan Center during the years 1978-1980. Last year she embarked on her Master's degree at Hebrew College.
Jonathan Decter, Ph.D.
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Sephardic Studies
(781) 736-2960
Contact Jonathan Decter
JONATHAN DECTER, (Undergraduate Advising Head) Assistant Professor and Edmond J. Safra Professor of Sephardic Studies, completed his Ph.D. (2002) in Medieval Jewish Studies at The Jewish Theological Seminary of America. His research focuses on Sephardic and Middle Eastern Jewry specializing in the literature and culture of Iberian Jewry. He has studied in Cairo, Egypt as a fellow at the Center for Arabic Studies Abroad (CASA) and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on a Fulbright Fellowship. His publications include: A Myrtle in the Forest: Landscape and Nostalgia in Andalusian Hebrew Literature, Prooftexts 24 (2004): 135-66; Literatures of Medieval Sepharad in Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewry: From the Golden Age of Spain to Modern Times, ed. Zion Zohar (New York: New York University Press, 2005), pp. 77-100; The Rendering of Qur'anic Quotations in Hebrew Translations of Islamic Texts, (forthcoming in Jewish Quarterly Review). Professor Decter ,received a Jewish Studies Publication Program for the publication of his forthcoming book Out of the Garden: Cultural Transition in Iberian Jewish Literature (Indiana University Press, forthcoming). In Spring 2007, he will be a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania for the theme "Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Life Under Caliphs and Sultans."
Sharon Feiman-Nemser, Ph.D.
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Jewish Education
(781) 736-2946
Contact Sharon Feiman-Nemser
SHARON FEIMAN-NEMSER, Mandel Professor of Jewish Education at Brandeis University, also serves as Director of the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education. For the past ten years, she has been doing seminal research on mentoring and new teacher induction. This work reflects her long-standing scholarly interest in teacher learning, the role of experience in learning to teach, and the contribution of experienced teachers in novices' learning. She is currently directing a national study of three well-regarded induction programs that reflect important variations in policy and practice. Under the auspices of the National Center for Research on Teacher Learning she directed a cross-cultural study of mentoring in England, the U.S. and China. A book based on that project is in the works. Sharon Feiman-Nemser has pushed the field to think harder about the quality of mentoring by conceptualizing what she calls "educative" or "ambitious" mentoring and providing vivid cases of what that looks like in practice. She has also developed video-based case studies of mentored learning to teach which have been used effectively in mentor teacher development.
American Jewish Identity
Contemporary Jewish Life
Women's Studies and Women in Judaism
American Jewish Literature and Film
(781) 736-2065
Contact Sylvia Fishman
SYLVIA BARACK FISHMAN , Professor of Contemporary Jewish Life in the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department at Brandeis University, co-director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, and a faculty affiliate at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies. Her newest book, The Way Into the Varieties of Jewishness will be released in November, 2006, and her recent works, Choosing Jewish: Conversations About Conversion and Double Or Nothing? Jewish Families and Mixed Marriage, have created lively scholarly and communal discussion. Prof. Fishman is the author of numerous articles on Jewish education, the American Jewish family, changing roles of Jewish women, and American Jewish literature, film and popular culture, as well as previous books: Follow My Footprints: Changing Images of Women in American Jewish Fiction; A Breath of Life: Feminism in the American Jewish Community; and Jewish Life and American Culture. She received her Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis, which awarded her a Danforth Graduate Fellowship, and her undergraduate degree from Yeshiva University, which gave her the Samuel Belkin Award for Distinguished Professional Acheivement.
East European Jewish History
(781) 736-2987
Contact ChaeRan Freeze
CHAERAN FREEZE , Associate Professor, has focused her research on the history and culture of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union, Jewish family history, and gender studies. She is the author of Jewish Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia (Hanover University Press of New England, 2001), which received the Koret Foundation Publication Award and the Salo Baron Award for the Best First Book in Jewish Studies. She recently coedited Polin. Jewish Women in Eastern Europe (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2005) with Paula Hyman and Antony Polonsky. In 2002, she was recipient of the Michael Walzer Award for Teaching. Recently, she received a collaborative NEH grant for her new documentary history, Everyday Jewish Life in Imperial Russia (coauthored with Jay Harris, Harvard University) and the Laurie Foundation grant for her book Sex and the Shtetl: Jewish Sexuality in Tsarist Russia.
ascalHebrew Language
(781) 736-2955
Contact Sara Hascal
SARA HASCAL, Senior lecturer of Hebrew at Brandeis since 1985, has developed two Hebrew courses, "Voices of Jerusalem" and "Portrait of an Israeli Woman," both of which treat the subject matter through the traditions, history, politics, arts and cultural aspects of Israel. Her special area of interst is Hebrew literature.Her expertise as a consultant of reading enables her to integrate methods and reading starategies into her "introduction to Hebrew Literature courses She was a member of the team that developed authentic reading comprehension materials in Hebrew for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language (ACTFL), the first publication if its kind for Hebrew and the only one currently available. Ms. Hascal, along with her colleagues, published Brandeis Modern Hebrew, which has instantly become the standard college Hebrew Textbook in America.
Yiddish
(781) 736-2129
Contact Ellen Kellman
ELLEN KELLMAN, Assistant Professor in Yiddish Language and Literature, has her Ph.D. in Yiddish Literature from Columbia University. She researches and writes about modern Yiddish literature and East European Jewish cultural history, especially the history of Yiddish print culture. She has been teaching Yiddish language and literature at the university level since 1987, including at Columbia University, the University of Toronto and the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, Poland. Ms. Kellman is author of the article "Sholem Aleichem's Funeral (New York, 1916): the Making of a National Pagaent" in the YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science, vol. 20 (1991), "The Yiddish Book Sounds the Alarm!: Toward the History of Yiddish Reading in Interwar Poland" in Polin, vol. 16 (2003), "Feminism and Fiction: Khane Blankshteyn's Role in Inter-War Vilna" in Polin, vol. 18 (2005), "Entertaining New Americans: Popular Fiction in the Forverts (1910-1930)" in Jews and American Culture, edited by Paul Buhle (forthcoming 2007), and "An Uneasy Patronage: Dovid Bergelson's Years at the Forverts (1922-1926)" in a forthcoming volume of essays on Bergelson edited by Joseph Sherman.
Reuven Kimelman, Ph.D.
Contemporary Jewish Life
Ethics
Jewish-Christian Relations
Liturgical Issues;Talmud
(781) 736-2963
Contact Reuven Kimelman
REUVEN KIMELMAN, Professor of classical rabbinic literature, co-directed the program in Judaism and Christianity in Late Antiquity. He teaches courses and directs doctoral work in Talmud, Midrash, liturgy, ethics and and the Jewish political tradition. His focus is on the relationship between historical and literary analysis. One of his books, The Rhetoric of Jewish Prayer: a Literary and Historical Commentary on the Prayerbook, is to be published by The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, while another, The Mystical Meaning of Lekhah Dodi and the Welcoming of the Sabbath, was published in Hebrew by Magnes Press of the Hebrew University. He serves on the Executive Editorial Committee of The Cambridge University History of Judaism Volume 4:The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period and is responsible for its section on liturgy and the synagogue. Professor Kimelman recently issued three audio books, two on The Moral Meaning of the Bible - The What, How, and Why of Biblical Ethics, and one on The Hidden Poetry Of The Jewish Prayerbook: The What, How, and Why of Jewish Liturgy. He also recently served as a Lady Davis Scholar at the Hebrew University and as a fellow of the Sholom Hartman Institute of Jerusalem. He represented the Jewish community in Washington D.C. at the Catholic commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of Nostra Aetate, and served as an educator for the March of the Living in Poland and Israel.
Jon A. Levisohn, Ph.D
Jewish Education
Philosophy of Education
Philosophy of the Humanities
(781) 736-2941
Contact Jon Levisohn
JON A. LEVISOHN, Assistant Professor of Jewish Education, also serves as Assistant Academic Director of the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education. In addition, he is affiliated with the Education Program and holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Philosophy. As a philosopher of education, his work focuses on the varieties of interpretive experience, in order to illuminate the goals and processes of education, both Jewish and general. Recent publications include "Religious Experience as a Jewish Educational Ideal," Journal of Jewish Education 70:1 (2004); "Probing Pragmatism: Rorty, Reforms, and Responsibility," Philosophy of Education 2004; "How to Do Philosophy of Religious Education," Religious Education 100:1 (2005); "Patriotism and Parochialism: Why Teach American Jewish History, and How?", Jewish Education 70:3 (2004); and "Ideas and Ideals of Jewish Education: Initiating a Conversation on Visions of Jewish Education," Journal of Jewish Education 71:1 (2005).
Ottoman History
Modern Middle Eastern History
Jews in the Middle East
(781) 736-2964
Contact Avigdor Levy
AVIGDOR LEVY, Professor of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, is Director of the graduate program in Middle East studies. He teaches courses on Ottoman history, the modern Middle East, and on Jewish communities in the World of Islam. He has written, edited, and co-edited seven books. He is the author of The Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire (1992), and co-author and editor of The Arab-Israeli Conflict: Risks and Opportunities (1975); The Jews of the Ottoman Empire (1994; reprinted 2003); and Jews, Turks, Ottomans: A Shared History (2002). He has published over seventy scholarly articles, book chapters, and reviews on Ottoman history, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Syrian politics, and Ottoman Jewry. He is currently working on a book dealing with political change in the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. He was recently appointed Associate Editor of the multi-volume Enyclopedia on Jews in the Islamic World to be published by Brill. Professor Levy served as Founding Chair of the undergraduate program in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies from 1981 to 1994 and again in 1997-1999 and 2002-2003. He served as Acting Chair of the NEJS department in 1980-1981.
Joseph Lumbard, Ph.D.Classical Islam
(781) 736-2971
Contact Joseph Lumbard
JOSEPH LUMBARD, Assistant Professor of Classical Islam completed his Ph.D. (2003) at Yale University. His research focuses upon Islamic intellectual traditions with an emphasis on Sufism and Islamic philosophy. He is the editor of Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition (World Wisdom, 2004), a collection of essays that examines the religious, political and historical factors that have led to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. He is currently researching the development of Sufi theories of love in the early Islamic period and their influence on the Persian Sufi tradition.
Kanan Makiya
Middle East Studies
(781) 736-2967
Contact Kanan Makiya
More About Kanan Makiya
KANAN MAKIYA, the Sylvia K. Hassenfeld Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies was born in Baghdad, left Iraq to study architecture at M.I.T, later joining Makiya Associates to design and build projects in the Middle East. In 1981, he left the practice of architecture and began to write a book about Iraq. Republic of Fear (1989), became a best-seller after Saddam Husain's invasion of Kuwait. Makiya's next book, The Monument (1991), is an essay on the aesthetics of power and kitsch. Both Republic of Fear and The Monument were written under the pseudonym, Samir al-Khalil. Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising and the Arab World (1993), was published under Makiya's own name. It was awarded The Lionel Gelber Prize for the best book on international relations published in English in 1993. His latest book is The Rock: A Seventh-Century Story of Jeruslaem, a work of historical fiction that tells the story of the building of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.Along with these books, Makiya has written for The Independent, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement and The Times. In October 1992, he acted as the convenor of the Human Rights Committee of the Iraqi National Congress, a transitional parliament based in northern Iraq. He has collaborated on two films for television, the most recent of which exposed for the first time the 1988 campaign of mass murder in northern Iraq known as the Anfal. The film was shown in the U.S. under the title 'Saddam's Killing Fields,' and received the Edward R. Morrow Award For Best Television Documentary On Foreign Affairs in 1992. Professor Makiya recently published an updated edition of The Monument: Art and Vulgarity in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. As head and founder of the The Iraq Memory Foundation a NGo based in Baghdad and the US that has been supported by both the Iraqi and Us Goverments and well as many foundations.
Antony Polonsky, Ph.D.
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Eastern European Jewry
Holocaust
Polish-Jewish Studies
(781) 736-2980
Contact Antony Polonsky
ANTONY POLONSKY, Albert Abramson Chair of Holocaust Studies, an appointment held jointly at Brandeis and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, specializes in the history of the Jews in East-Central Europe and the history of the Holocaust. He is the author of Politics in Independent Poland (Oxford, 1972); The Little Dictators: A History of Eastern Europe since 1918 (Routledge, 1975, Japanese edition, 1993) and The Great Powers and the Polish Question 1941-1945 (LSE, 1976) and co-author of The History of Poland since 1863 (Cambridge, 1981, paperback, 1983, 1985) and The Beginnings of Communist Rule in Poland (Routledge, 1981). He is the editor of numerous books including Abraham Lewin's A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto (Blackwell, 1988, paperback, 1990 French edition, 1991, Japanese edition, 1992) which was awarded the Joseph and Edith Sunlight Literary Prize in 1989 and the prize of the Jewish Book Council of America in the Holocaust section in 1990 and of 'My Brother's Keeper?' Recent Polish Debates about the Holocaust (Routledge, 1990). He is also the editor of POLIN: Studies in Polish Jewry of which eighteen volumes have appeared. POLIN was the winner of the 1999 National Jewish Book Award in the category of Eastern European Studies. He has also published numerous articles on Polish and Jewish history. Professor Polonsky has been made an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College, London. At present, he is working on a history of the Jews in Poland and Russia from 1764 to the present day.
Bonit Porath
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Hebrew Language and Literature
(781)-736-2972
Contact Bonit Porath
BONIT PORATH, lecturer in Hebrew language and literature, and the Hebrew Program assistant director. She teaches classes at all levels, from novice to advanced, integrating culture with language teaching. Her special area of interest is the history of the Hebrew language and the revival of Modern Hebrew. She developed materials for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), developed test materials for the Educational Testing Services, Princeton (ETS). Ms. Porath, along with her colleagues, published Brandeis Modern Hebrew, which has instantly become the standard college Hebrew Textbook in America.
Benjamin C.I. Ravid, Ph.DMedieval and Early Modern Jewish History
(781) 736-2959
Contact Benjamin Ravid
BENJAMIN RAVID, Jennie and Mayer Weisman Professor of Jewish History, specializes in the Jews of early-modern Europe. His research focuses on the Jewish community of Venice, which serves as a case study for numerous basic issues in Jewish history, including the attitude of the church and state toward the Jews, the legal, economic and social history of the Jews, charters, the Jewish community, the institution of the ghetto, and the phenomenon of New Christians, crypto-Jews and the Iberian diaspora.In a wider context, Professor Ravid is especially interested in the general issue of the interplay between religious hostility and economic toleration in early-modern Europe, the readmission of the Jews to Western Europe and their eventual emancipation. Professor Ravid is the author of Economics and Toleration in Seventeenth Century Venice: The Background and Context of the Discorso of Simone Luzzatto (Jerusalem, 1978) and co-editor of The Jews of Early Modern Venice (2001.) He also contributed with Howard Adelman, historical notes to The Autobiography of a Seventeenth Century Venetian Rabbi: Leon Modena's Life of Judah, translated and edited by Mark R. Cohen (1988), and has written over 40 articles on aspects of Venetian Jewish history, nine of which were republished in Studies on the Jews of Venice, 1382-1792, (2003). He also has an interest in Jewish thought and twentieth-century Jewish life, in which areas he has edited three books, Iyyunim Bemahashevet Yisrael, 2 vols. (1969, 1971), Sihotai im Bialik (1983), and Israel: The Ever-Dying People (1986), reissued in paperback under the title State of Israel, Diaspora and Jewish Continuity (1998). Professor Ravid has served as Secretary-Treasurer of the Association for Jewish Studies and as Associate Editor of the AJS Review. He is currently on the Editorial Board of the Journal Italia. A Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research, he served as chair of the NEJS Department from 1989-92.
Vardit Ringvald
Hebrew Language
(781) 736-2979
Contact Vardit Ringvald
VARDIT RINGVALD. Professor Ringvald received her Ph.D. from Lesley College. She is the director of the Hebrew & Arabic language program and has been teaching at Brandeis University since 1984. Her presentations and publications deal with topics of competency-based curriculum for teaching modern Hebrew in all educational settings. She is an expert in the application and proficiency approach to foreign language instruction at the different levels, developing authentic material, and methods for integrating culture into the classroom. Her recent interests iinclude the development of bi lingual courses as a method for strengthening skills across languages and the connection between language acquisition and identity formation. She is a consultant to a variety of Hebrew language programs and is the only oral proficiency interviewer trainer for the Hebrew Speaking Test developed by ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages). Vardit serves as the chair of the SAT II for Hebrew. Professor Ringvald, along with her colleagues, published /Brandeis Modern Hebrew/, which has instantly become the standard college Hebrew textbook in America.
National Center for Jewish Film
(781) 736-8658
Contact Sharon Pucker Rivo
SHARON PUCKER RIVO, co-founder and Executive Director of NCJF, is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department at Brandeis University, where she teaches an annual course on Jewish film. Educated at Brandeis and with a graduate degree in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, she began her career in television as a film producer for WGBH-TV, Boston. She has worked in the field of Jewish film and media for thirty years. Recognized nationally and internationally as an authority, she has been an invited lecturer at hundreds of venues including Bowdoin College, Wellesley College, University of California at Santa Cruz, the Barbican Centre in London, the Jerusalem Film Festival, the University of Wisconsin, the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, New York University, and the University of Stockholm in Sweden. Ms. Rivo has curated a dozen retrospectives of Yiddish cinema, a retrospective of the Polish films of Andrzej Wajda, and nine annual Jewish film festivals at the Wasserman Cinematheque. Honored by a number of professional organizations including the Boston Film Critics, Anthology Film Archives, the Bureau of Jewish Education, and the American Jewish Congress and the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. Ms. Rivo brings a strong artistic and professional expertise to her position of Executive Director. In July 2005 Ms. Rivo was a Juror for "Jewish Experience" prize at Jerusalem Film Festival and in October 2005 a Juror for the Best Israeli doctumentary at the Haifa International Film Festival. She most recently was the recipient of the "Distinguished Humanist Award" May 2005 by Ohio State University, Melton Judaic Studies Department.
American Jewish History
Contemporary Jewish Life
Judaism in the Americas
(781) 736-2977
Contact Jonathan Sarna
JONATHAN SARNA, is the Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University and Director of its Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program. Dubbed by the Forward newspaper as one of America's fifty most influential American Jews, he was Chief Historian for the 350th commemoration of the American Jewish community, and is recognized as a leading commentator on American Jewish history, religion and life. Born in Philadelphia, and raised in New York and Boston, Dr. Sarna attended Brandeis University, the Boston Hebrew College, Merkaz HaRav Kook in Jerusalem, and Yale University, where he obtained his doctorate in 1979. From 1979-1990, Dr. Sarna taught at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, where he rose to become Professor of American Jewish history and Director of the Center for the Study of the American Jewish Experience. He has also taught at Yale University, the University of Cincinnati, and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Dr. Sarna came back to Brandeis in 1990 to teach American Jewish history in its Department of Near Eastern & Judaic Studies. He served two terms as chair of that department, and now chairs the Academic Advisory and Editorial Board of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives. In addition, he serves as chief historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. Dr. Sarna has written, edited, or co-edited more than twenty books, including the acclaimed American Judaism: A History. Winner of the Jewish Book Council's "Jewish Book of the Year Award" in 2004, it has been praised as being "the single best description of American Judaism during its 350 years on American soil." He is married to Professor Ruth Langer, and they have two children, Aaron and Leah.
Eugene R. Sheppard, Ph.D
Curriculum Vitae
Modern Jewish History and Thought
(781) 736-2965
Contact Eugene Sheppard
EUGENE R. SHEPPARD, is Associate Professor of Modern Jewish History and Thought, Associate Director of the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry, and is currently serving as Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. He received his Ph.D. at UCLA in the department of History in 2001. In Leo Strauss and the Politics of Exile: The Making of a Political Philosopher (Brandeis University Press 2006), he critically assesses the development of this controversial and enigmatic German-Jewish refugee's political philosophy and its legacy. Professor Sheppard is co-editing a volume on Simon Rawidowicz with David N. Myers; he and Samuel Moyn (Columbia University) are managing editors of a forthcoming series on Brandeis University Press/UPNE entitled Readings in Modern Jewish Thought. He is co-editor of the AJS Review book reviews. He is a contributor to the forthcoming Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy.
Esther ShorrHebrew Language
(781) 736-2975
Contact Esther Shorr
ESTHER SHORR, senior lecturer in the Hebrew program since 1986, has taught a variety of Hebrew courses specializing in beginning and intermediate levels. She has also been teaching at the Brandeis Hebrew Language Summer Institute and lecturing on the development of Israeli folk music and Israeli popular singing of the past seventy years. Ms. Shorr was a member of the Zamir chorale of Boston for ten years. She is a co-author of "Hebrew in 5 Minutes" via the internet (www.shorre.com) Ms. Shorr, along with her colleagues, published Brandeis Modern Hebrew, which has instantly become the standard college Hebrew Textbook in America. Esther has been known to incorporate music and film into her courses. Ms. Shorr has had extensive teaching experience of Hebrew to non-native students in the United States and in England.
Ellen Smith
(781) 736-2998
Lown 115, #4
Contact Ellen Smith
ELLEN SMITH, lecturer in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and the Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program at Brandeis University, and the Associate Director of its Gralla Fellows Program for Religion Journalists. She is also principal of Museumsmith, a firm specializing in museum exhibitions and historic site interpretations throughout the nation. Trained as both an academic historian and a museum curator, Ellen has published more than three dozen books, articles, and catalogs including The Jews of Boston, co-edited with Jonathan D. Sarna. Among her recent work are publications and exhibitions The Jews of Rhode Island, Seattle Jewish Women (Museum of History and Industry, Seattle); Jewish New Year Postcards; American Yiddish Theater (Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York City); Colonial American Jewish Portraits (Jewish Museum, New York City); historic immigrant synagogues; and three exhibitions on the Jews of Boston. Ellen was also the Chief Historical Consultant to the Emmy Award-winning WGBH "The Jews of Boston" television production. She was one of twelve nationally-selected scholars participating in "The Visual Culture of American Religions" project (1996-2000) funded by the Henry Luce Foundation and the Lilly Endowment. Ellen is the former Curator of the American Jewish Historical Society and the National Museum of American Jewish History, and has taught courses in American Jewish Women's History, American Jewish Material Culture, and American Jewish History at Brandeis and Northeastern Universities. In 2005 she toured the country as one of the United Jewish Community's key speakers during the 350th anniversary celebration of Jews in America.
Ilan Troen, PhD
Israel Studies
(781) 736-6220
Contact Ilan (Selwyn) Troen
ILAN TROEN, is the Karl, Harry, and Helen Stoll Family Chair in Israel Studies at Brandeis University as well as the Sam and Anna Lopin Professor of Modern History at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He has authored or edited ten books in American, Jewish and Israeli History. He is also the founding editor of Israel Studies which is published three times a year by Indiana University Press. His most recent books are Jewish Centers and Peripheries; European Jewry between America and Israel Fifty Years after World War II (Transaction, 1999); with Glenda Abramson, The Americanization of Israel (a special issue of Israel Studies, Spring 2000), with Deborah Dash-Moore, eds., Divergent Jewish Cultures: Israel and America (Yale, 2001); and Imagining Zion: Dreams, Designs, and Realities in a Century of Jewish Settlement (Yale, 2003). Recent articles include "Settlement and State in Eretz Israel," The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies (Oxford University Press, 2002). For the past 12 years he has edidted a journal published by Indiana University Press and is co-sponsored by the Department of Near Eastern and Judiac Studies through the Goodman Institute.
Hebrew Language
(781) 736-2973
Contact Rina Winkelman
RINA WINKELMAN, Lecturer in Hebrew, has an M.A. from U.S. International University in California, and a B.A. from Tel Aviv University. Her background encompasses a wide variety of positions in Israel, France, England and the U.S., spanning over twenty years. She more recently taught Hebrew at Harvard University's program in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations for 6 years, where she was awarded 9 Certificates of Distinction in Teaching, and was nominated for the Levenson Prize for Excellence in Teaching.
David P. Wright, Ph.D.
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Hebrew Bible
Semitics
(781) 736-2957
Contact David Wright
DAVID WRIGHT, (chair of the NEJS Department) Professor of Bible and Ancient Near East, offers courses on Hebrew Bible; biblical ritual; Near Eastern law, history, music; comparative Semitic linguistics; Ugaritic; Aramaic; Northwest Semitic inscriptions; and Hittite. He is author of The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and in Hittite and Mesopotamian Literature (Scholars Press, 1987), and he is chief editor of Pomegranates and Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Literature in Honor of Jacob Milgrom (Eisenbrauns, 1995). He is also author of Ritual in Narrative: The Dynamics of Feasting, Mourning, and Retaliation Rites in the Ugaritic Tale of Aqhat (Eisenbrauns, 2001). Professor Wright's book showing the influence of the Code of Hammurabi on biblical law will be published shortly by Oxford University Press.
