Meet Some of Our Graduate Students
Zachary Albert received his B.A. in Religious Studies from Rhodes College and is currently a M.A. student in NEJS. His academic interest lies in the study of the Holocaust and Holocaust memory. At the 2011 NYMASA conference, he presented a paper entitled "In Their Shoes: Theoretical Concerns about Artistic Manifestations of the Legacy of Holocaust Memory." He is also an Archives & Special Collections Assistant at the Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections Department, and a Lipper Intern at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City.
Chris Anderson is interested in the intellectual, cultural, and social history of the ancient Near East as it is reflected in both texts and archaeology. Within this wide field, his research interests include Akkadian language and literature, the various influences of Neo-Assyrian imperialism on ancient Israel and the development of biblical literature. He is also interested in the formation, reception, and interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, especially Pentateuchal theory. He holds a MA and a MDiv from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
Aviv Ben-Or, Schusterman Scholar, is a Ph.D. student interested in Hebrew literature and the Jewish literary tradition in a broad sense, ranging from the medieval period to modern times, with a focus on Jewish communities in North Africa and the Middle East. Proficient in Hebrew and entering his third year of Arabic, he is particularly interested in examining the works of contemporary Israeli authors of Sephardi and Mizrahi background.
Elizabeth (Shevy) Baskin graduated with her B.A. in NEJS and sociology in May 2011. She is currently enrolled in the NEJS BA/MA program and plans to complete her MA this spring. Shevy's area of interest is contemporary Jewish life, and this year she has focused on Jewish rituals in non-denominational spaces. Her thesis will highlight women who have immersed in a Jewish ritual bath that is run in an intentionally non-denominational space.
Rachel Bernstein received her B.A. in Jewish Studies from the University of Virginia and her M.A. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and Women and Gender Studies from Brandeis University. Rachel's research interests include emerging adulthood and Jewish young professionals, Jewish culture and the arts, and gender and sexuality. Rachel has worked as a research assistant on projects examining new Jewish leadership, Jewish education, and gender and American Jewish families.
Ira Blum (Hornstein M.A./NEJS M.A.) A presidential and R.J. Fellows scholar, Ira graduated magna cum laude with a BA in Religion Studies from Muhlenberg College. Born and raised outside of Philadelphia, Ira has worked in a variety of formal and informal Jewish educational capacities, including teaching at religious and Hebrew school programs, participating on the executive board of his college Hillel, and as staff at Camp Ramah in the Poconos. Before enrolling at Brandeis, Ira staffed Kivunim: NewDirections, a gap year program for North American high school graduates, who studied co-existence and world Jewry in Jerusalem, and then visited ten countries over the course of ten months. He looks forward to increasing his learning of informal Jewish educational models and strategies.
Jamie Bryson is currently a PhD student in Bible and Ancient Near East at Brandeis. His main research interest is in the Hebrew Bible, and particularly the Pentateuch. Originally from South Carolina, he attended the University of South Carolina receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Speech. After college, Bryson went to Seminary at Columbia International University, where he received a Master of Divinity. While in Seminary he had the opportunity to study in Israel, an experience which propelled him to pursue further graduate studies in the Hebrew Bible at Brandeis, where he completed a Master of Arts in Bible and Ancient Near East in 2011.
Zeynep Civcik, Schusterman Scholar, is a NEJS Ph.D. student. In 2003-2004 Zeynep conducted a research project at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University and wrote a thesis about the changes and continuities of Israeli security policy. For her dissertation, she is undertaking a comparative study of the role of the military in the foreign policies of Turkey and Israel.
Joshua Cypress received his B.A. in anthropology from Princeton University and his M.A. in philosophy from Yeshiva University. Josh's focus is in modern Jewish sociology. In 1996, he received a Wexner Graduate Fellowship for rabbinic ordination and worked as an Orthodox pulpit rabbi for nine years in New York and New Haven, Connecticut.
Molly Elizabeth DeMarco is a Ph.D. candidate in Bible and Ancient Near East. She received her B.A. in Philosophy at Rhode Island College in 2005 and her M.A. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis in 2007. She is currently working on her dissertation which explores the literary correspondences between the Priestly and non-Priestly narratives in the Pentateuch. One of her primary concerns is to situate the Hebrew Bible in its broader ancient Near Eastern context.
Adam Eisler is a M.A. student focusing on the modern Middle East and Israel. Born in Ramat Gan, Israel, Adam moved to New Haven, Connecticut at a young age. Before attending Brandeis, Adam studied at the University of Connecticut and Tel Aviv University where he contributed writings to the UConn Free-Press and Namaste Human Rights Journal. His research interests include the commemoration of fallen soldiers during the 1973 October War, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and other aspects of modern Egyptian political movements.
Zev Eleff is a NEJS doctoral student studying American Jewish history. His scholarly focus is the Europeanization of American Judaism during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A Wexner Fellow-Davidson Scholar, Eleff received rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary and an MA from Teachers College, Columbia University. He has produced several books, as author of Living From Convention to Convention: A History of the NCSY, 1954-1980 (2009) and editor of Mentor of Generations: Reflections on Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (2008). His scholarly articles have appeared in the Journal of American Academy of Religion, American Jewish Archives Journal, Modern Judaism, and Tradition.
Lucia Finotto came to Brandeis after several years of professional experience as a translator in Milan, Italy. Her doctoral studies are in Medieval Sephardic Judaism and Medieval Islam with a focus on the Jews of the medieval kingdom of Sicily. Her dissertation work examines the role of Jewish translators of 13th and 14th-century Sicily in the transmission of Islamic scientific and philosophical texts to pre-modern Europe. Besides her native Italian, Lucia's languages include Arabic, Hebrew, French and Latin.
Alexandra Tali Herzog received two MA degrees (one in French Literature and one in English Literature with a specialization in American Cultural Studies) from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She is now a PhD candidate in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies where she received a joint MA in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and Womens and Gender Studies in 2007. Her main areas of interest are Modern Jewish Literature and Culture, Yiddish literature and Comparative Literature (French, English, German and Yiddish). She is currently working on her dissertation on the Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer.
Mary Horrocks was born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She attended Earlham College where she earned her B.A. in Comparative Religion and Jewish Studies. As a 2004 intern at the National Yiddish Book Center, she studied Yiddish language and literature. She went on to become a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship finalist for her project "Troubled Memory in Yiddishland," and was recently awarded the Harry Fein Memorial Fellowship. She has studied Jewish museums and cultural institutions throughout the diaspora- most notably in New Zealand and the South Pacific, Czech Republic, and Tallinn, Estonia. Her interests are wide-ranging, from Jewish literature and folklore to Holocaust memory and representation in contemporary Israel. She currently works as a Jewish children's literature specialist at a local Jewish supplementary school, and consults with organizations and teachers about how to weave story and literature into effective curriculum and family programming.
ara Kirsh graduated last Spring from Michigan State University with a degree in International Relations and Jewish Studies. She is currently a first year masters student in the NEJS program, where she concentrates on politics in the Middle East, Israeli nuclear posture, and Zionism's impact on Israeli foreign policy. 
Susanna Klosko, Schusterman Scholar, began her doctoral studies at Brandeis in the Fall of 2009. She received undergraduate degree at the College of William and Mary, studying history and Russian Studies. At Brandeis she is a Schusterman scholar in the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies. Her interest is in Zionism and in the Yishuv. For her dissertation she will focus on the lived experiences of those Russian Jews who migrated to Ottoman Palestine between the years 1880-1920.
Ira Krakhman, BGI Fellow, is an MA student in NEJS and the Hornstein Jewish Professional Program. Before coming to Brandeis, she worked as a coordinator for a fundraising and development team at the Jewish Agency for Israel. Previously, she partnered with the Jewish Agency emissary to the Bay Area Russian Jews, laying foundations for communal engagement and stewardship among her Russian Jewish peers – a charismatic community known as Mishmash. For the past two years, as both professional and volunteer, she has taken great interest in the program's strategic development. Ira's vision is to see the Bay Area Russian Jewish community raise its unique presence through grass-roots innovation and creative engagement of local resources, including local funding sources.
Orah Minder graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 2006 with a dual major in English and religion. She then went on to pursue a Masters of Education at Lesley University. She taught for four years at the South Area Solomon Schechter Day School, now Kehillah Schechter Academy. She spent four summers at Middlebury's Bread Loaf School of English and completed her Masters of English there in August of 2010. Orah will be studying English education in the Jewish day school here at Brandeis. She is specifically interested in how Jewish day schools teach Jewish American literature and how such texts impact the formation of a Jewish American identity in day school students.
James D. Moore is interested a broad range of ancient Near Eastern subject matters and languages. He has written a Master's Thesis on scribal culture and the invention of religious texts in the ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible, which examined primary texts from Mesopotamian, Anatolian and Ancient Palestinian sources, and before attending Brandeis, he wrote an earlier thesis on wordplays in the Biblical Hebrew. He has read papers at regional and national SBL meetings dealing with Moabite grammar, ritual terminology in the Hebrew Bible, and the Syriac version of Leviticus. He is primarily interested in literary, historical and comparative approaches to ancient Near Eastern texts.
Ari Moshkovski, Schusterman Scholar, is a PhD student focusing on the history and politics of Israel and the contemporary Middle East. Ari holds a B.A. (Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa) in Jewish Studies and Political Science, and an M.A. in History from Queens College, CUNY. At Queens College, he engaged in extensive research and curriculum development on Israel and the Middle East as part of a project funded by the Clinton Global Initiative and the Ford Foundation. He was also a co-founder of the Queens College Center for Ethnic, Racial and Religious Understanding under a grant from the United States Department of Education. Ari's research interests include Israeli foreign affairs and security policy, Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, and the evolution of religious nationalisms among Jews and Arabs.
Hussein Mostafa, Schusterman Scholar, is a NEJS Ph.D. student. Having received an MA degree from Al Azhar University in Cairo, in Islamic Studies in Israel, Hussein intends to broaden the outlook on Islamic Scholarly works conducted by Israeli scholars and on their connection to the Western oriental studies carried out by Jewish researchers. Aside from his native Arabic language - colloquial Egyptian and Classical Arabic - Hussein speaks Hebrew and German.
Jason Olson, Schusterman Scholar, completed his undergraduate degree (cum laude) in Hebrew Bible, and is planning to build on that knowledge by studying how religious Zionism affects politics in Israel and the greater Middle East. He is particularly interested in the development of the US-Israel military alliance.
Daniel Osborn, a former Peace Corps volunteer and MAT recipient, Dan is interested in pursuing advanced studies in curriculum design and reform, concentrating on the portrayal of Middle Eastern peoples in the American public school system and the interplay between normative historical renditions and the perception of others in the nation collective consciousness. His current field of inquiry examines the ideological variations within Zionism and Arab nationalism with particular emphasis on intellectual underpinnings such as collective memory, narrative formation, and the dynamics of collective identity transformation.
Lenny Prado is an M.A. student focusing on Bible and Ancient Near East. He is married and has two beautiful children. His primary research interests include such topics as the composition and compilation of the Torah; development of Israelite Religion (e.g., representation of deities, portrayals of human/divine interaction, cultic ritual practices); scribes and scribal culture in the ancient Near East; and Oral Tradition and Memory. When he is not spending time with his family or hitting the books, you can find him rooting for New York sports teams, especially the Yankees and the Knicks.
Shay Rabineau, Schusterman Scholar, is a NEJS Ph.D. student whose doctoral studies are on the modern Middle East with a focus on Israel. He is a National Merit Scholar and award-winning writer, proficient in both Hebrew and Arabic. He is spending the 2011-12 academic year in Israel researching the Israel trail network.
Bella Shapiro graduated from St. Mary's College of California with a B.A. in Integral Liberal Arts. She was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and was raised in the Bay Area, California. She also spent a semester studying abroad at Oxford University, England. After graduation, Bella spent 10 months living in Jerusalem and participated in a unique Israel Government Fellows program through which she was able to intern at both the Israel Ministry of Tourism and at the non-profit organization, MEMRI. Bella is currently pursuing a Dual Masters degree in Hornstein Jewish Proffessional Leadership and Israel studies. She is interested in working within the realm of Hasbara and Israel education.
Gangzheng She, Schusterman Scholar, is a NEJS Ph.D. student. A native speaker of Mandarin, Gangzheng's language skills include both modern and biblical Hebrew, Arabic and Cantonese. He intends to study Israeli society and Jewish civilization, examining Israel's multi-ethnic and transitional society through a socio-political comparison with other countries in the region.
Ruben Shimonov, Schusterman Scholar, is a NEJS Ph.D. student. Ruben hopes to further his understanding of the political, linguistic and socio-cultural dynamics of the Jewish world and the broader Near East, particularly by pursuing a historical and contemporary study of Mizrahi Jews. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, he intends to conduct comparative research to understand the experiences of these communities in Israel and the U.S. His language skills include Hebrew, Arabic, Persian and Russian.
Emily Sigalow, received her B.A. in Sociology/Anthropology and Mathematics from Swarthmore College and her M.A. in Jewish History from Ben Gurion University, Israel. Emily's research interests include the sociological study of religion, culture, and gender, with a specific focus on contemporary Jewish communities. Before coming to Brandeis, Emily spent nearly five years studying and working in Israel.
Malka Zeiger-Simkovich is a doctoral student studying late Second Temple Judaism, early Christianity, and early Rabbinics. Her interests focus on the interaction, cultural influence, and literary sharing between Jewish and non-Jewish individuals and communities in the 1st century BCE and 1st century CE, and how such sharing is evidenced in pseudepigraphic literature. Malka has recently written an article entitled "Greek Influence on 2 Maccabees" which has been published in the "Journal for the Study of Judaism". Her 2011 paper on attitudes towards androgyny in Plato and early Midrash won the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute Award for Outstanding Research Paper on Jews and Gender. Malka's languages include Syriac, Greek, and Hebrew.
Karen Spira, Schusterman Scholar, is a NEJS Ph.D. student. Karen will examine the reconstruction of Jewish family life in Israel among young Holocaust survivors, focusing on a group of child survivors from Slovakia and surrounding areas. She is particularly interested in strategies for effective Holocaust education. Karen’s languages include Hebrew, German and Spanish; she plans to pursue Yiddish and Czech/Slovak, to facilitate her research in Israel and Europe.
Amber Taylor graduated Cum Laude from Brigham Young University in Spanish Translation, where she was awarded the Outstanding Spanish Translation Student for 2005. She is currently pursuing her MA in NEJS, focusing on Israel Studies. She hopes to continue her research in a PhD program, examining Christianity within the state of Israel, the way Israel has related to different Christian denominations, and how different Christian groups have affected Israeli society. Her MA thesis is on Mormon leader Ezra T. Benson and his unique relationship with the State of Israel, during his time as Secretary of Agriculture under President Eisenhower, as well as before and after.