Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies

Jonathan Decter

Edmond J. Safra Professor of Sephardic Studies

Degrees

• Jewish Theological Seminary, PhD

• Jewish Theological Seminary, MPhil

Profile

Jonathan Decter is the Edmond J. Safra Professor of Sephardic studies at Brandeis University. His research focuses on Jews in the Islamic World, Spain, and the broader Mediterranean during the medieval period, and in Sephardic Studies more generally. Some of Professor Decter's course offerings include Jews in the World of Islam; Introduction to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Medieval Spain; and Judeo-Arabic literature. 

Selected Publications

Professor Decter’s most recent book, Dominion Built of Praise: Panegyric and Legitimacy among Jews in the Medieval Mediterranean, is the winner of the National Jewish Book Award in Sephardic Culture for 2018.  His first book, Iberian Jewish Literature: Between al-Andalus and Christian Europe, was awarded the Salo W. Baron prize for best first book in Jewish Studies in 2008. He is also the co-editor of three edited volumes and an editor of the Journal of the Intellectual History of the Islamicate World.  In addition, he publishes extensively on medieval Hebrew and Arabic literature and Jewish Thought in academic journals and edited volumes.