Jewish Studies Faculty

Dan Ben-Amos, Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and Folklore

Joseph Benatov, Lecturer in Modern Hebrew Language

Michael Carasik, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Biblical Hebrew

Natalie Dohrmann, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Religious Studies

Ronit Engel, Senior Lecturer in Foreign Languages; Coordinator of the Modern Hebrew Language Program

Al Filreis, Kelly Professor of English; Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House

Talya Fishman, Associate Professor of Jewish Intellectual and Cultural History of the Medieval and Early Modern Periods

Nili Gold, Associate Professor of Modern Hebrew Language and Literature

Kathryn Hellerstein, Associate Professor of Germanic Languages; Undergraduate Director of the Jewish Studies Program

Arthur Kiron, Schottenstein-Jesselson Curator of Judaica Collections; Adjunct Assistant Professor of History

Robert A. Kraft, Emeritus Professor of Early Varieties of Judaism and Christianity

Ian S. Lustick, Bess W. Heyman Chair in Political Science

Ibrahim Miari, Lecturer in Modern Hebrew Language

Benjamin Nathans, Associate Professor of History

Annette Y. Reed, Assistant Professor in Religious Studies

Ruth Rin, Hebraica Cataloging Librarian

David B. Ruderman, Joseph Meyerhoff Professor of Jewish History; Director of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies

Yechiel Y. Schur, Adjunct Assistant Professor of History and the Klatt Family Director for Public Programs at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies

Larry Silver, Farquhar Professor of Art History

Jonathan Steinberg, Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History

David Stern, Moritz and Josephine Berg Professor of Classical Hebrew Literature

Jeffrey Tigay, A.M. Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Language & Literature

Liliane Weissberg, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor in the School of Arts and Sciences; Professor of German and Comparative Literature; Graduate Chair in the Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures

Beth Wenger, Professor of History; Director of the Jewish Studies Program

Julia Wilker, Assistant Professor of Classical Studies

Barbie Zelizer, Professor of Communication; Raymond Williams Chair of Communication

Visiting Faculty

is a Yiddish lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to teaching Yiddish, Alexander teaches music and choir at Har Zion Temple, is the director of a new independent Jewish community choir, and coordinates the annual choral youth Zimria (song festival) sponsored by United Synagogue. Since the summer of 2010, Alexander has been very busy arranging concerts featuring music by his father David Botwinik, following his newly-released book From Holocaust to Life: New Yiddish Songs. This book has already earned much praise in radio interviews and newspaper articles. Published by the League for Yiddish, New York, and now in its 2nd printing, this book comprises 56 of David Botwinik's musical compositions, compiled and engraved by Alexander. The most recent concerts were at Kol Ami Congregation in Elkins Park with singers Richard Lenatsky and internationally acclaimed Lisa Willson; and then in Montreal -- as part of the Second International Yiddish Theatre Festival, in New York at YIVO in the Center for Jewish History, and in Washington D.C., featuring Lisa Willson. At Penn Hillel, Alexander led a fun and informative event: a Yiddish-Hebrew-Russian-Dutch sing-along, in the Spring of 2011, which brought together students and faculty from the respective departments.

Daisy Braverman, Email: daisysadak@hotmail.com

Elisheva Baumgarten received her Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2001. She is a senior lecturer in the Department of Jewish History and the Gender Studies Graduate Program at Bar Ilan University and served as the head of the Fanya Gottesfeld Heller Center for the Study of Women in Judaism at Bar Ilan University 2006-2011. Baumgarten has published articles that discuss medieval life cycle rituals, midwifery and medicine, childhood and education as well as Jewish-Christian relations. Her book Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe was published by Princeton University Press in 2004 and won the Koret Award for the best book in Jewish History in 2005. She is currently completing a monograph entitled Practicing Piety: Religious Observance and Daily Life in the Medieval Jewish Communities of Northern Europe. Email: Elisheva.Baumgarten@biu.ac.il

Pawel Maciejko is Joseph H. and Belle Braun Senior Lecturer in the Humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism in the early modern period. His recent book, The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement 1756-1816 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2011) won the Salo Baron Prize of the American Academy of Jewish Research

Visting Faculty Information and Resources: click here