Institute

Sivan  Balslev

Dr. Sivan Balslev

Asia-Africa Institute
Department of Islam and Middle Eastern Studies

Research Fields

  • Iranian history

  • History of Children and Childhood

  • Masculinity studies

  • Gender and sexuality

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About

Dr. Balslev is a historian of modern Iran, focusing on cultural and social history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Her fields of interest include gender, sexuality, childhood studies, and everyday life. Her current project focuses on the history of children and childhood in Iran, circa 1870-1970. This project is being funded by the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 743/21).

Since 2018, Dr. Balslev has been a facultymember of the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, where she teaches courses on modern Iran, its history, politicsand culture, as well as on social and cultural history of the modern Middle East.

 

Selected Publications

Review Article: Claus V. Pedersen. “Rise of the Persian Novel: From the Constitutional Revolution to Reza Shah 1910-1927. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2016.” In Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 50, 2021, pp. 473-480.

 "Population Crisis, Marriage Reform and the Regulation of Male Sexuality in Interwar Iran", British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, August 2016

 "Dressed for Success: Hegemonic Masculinity, Elite Men, and Westernisation in Iran, c. 1900-1940" - Gender & History 26 (3), November 2014, pp. 545-564

"Shifting Sexual Norms in Nineteenth Century Iran" in The Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History (Farmington Hills, Michigan: Scribner Macmillan, 2019), pp.1491-1494.

 

Selected Awards

2021-25 ISF individual grant – “A History of Children and Childhood in Modern Iran (circa 1870-1970),” grant no. 743/21, 4 year grant, 120,000 NIS per year. 

 

Teaching

2020: "History of Children and Childhood in the Middle East" – MA

2018: "Visual Culture in Modern Iran", Graduate Tutorial Reading.

2018-2020: "The Objects That Changed the Middle East", Undergraduate elective course.

2018-2020: "Culture and Resistance in Modern Iran" Undergraduate elective course.

2017-20: "Modern Iran" Undergraduate seminar.

2016, 2018, 2020: "Masculinity, Society and Politics in Modern Iran" – Undergraduate elective course.

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Yaron Ben-Naeh

Prof. Yaron Ben-Naeh

Jewish Studies Institute
History of the Jewish People
Faculy main building, room no. 6140

Research Fields

  • social history
  • cultural history
  • historic photography
  • ladino literature
  • Mizrahi studies

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About

Ben-Naeh is a historian of the Jews in the Ottoman Empire (16th century-early 20th century). His main interests include social history and cultural history. He is also interested in Palestine under the Ottomans.

 

Selected Publications

Yaron Ben-Naeh, Jews in the Realm of the Sultans: Ottoman Jewry in the Seventeenth Century, Mohr-Siebeck Press: Tübingen 2008

Nuh Arslantaş & Yaron Ben-Naeh, Ibranice Anonim bir kronik, Türk Tarih Kurumu: Ankara 2013

Yaron Ben-Naeh (author and ed.), Jewish Communities in the East in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Turkey, Ben Zvi Institute and Israel's Ministry of Education, Jerusalem 2010

Yaron Ben-Naeh, Sefer Korot Mishpaha: An Autobiography of a Sephardi of the Old Yishuv in Jerusalem: A Soldier, a Rabbinic Scholar and an Author during a Change of an Era, Yad Yizhak Ben-Zvi & Old Yishuv Court Museum: Jerusalem 2015

Yaron Ben-Naeh, Dan Shapira, & Aviezer Tutian, Debar Sepatayim: An Ottoman Hebrew Chronicle from the Crimea (1683-1730) Written by the Krymchak Rabbi David Lekhno, Academic Press Printing: Boston, MA; 2021

 

Selected Awards

(2007) President Yitzhak Ben Zvi Prize for my book: Jews in the Realm of the Sultans (Hebrew version)

(2011) Marc Wiznitzer Prize for my book: Jews in the Realm of the Sultans (English)

 

Teaching

Sephardi Jews as Mirrored in Photography and Painting (1850-1950)

Sabbateanism: Myth and Reality

Peddlers and Prostitutes: Sephardi Lives in Yehudah Burla's Stories

Safed Jews in the Sixteenth Century

Family Life among Ottoman Jews 

Ottoman Jerusalem and is Jewish Community (Hebrew Souces/Arabic Sources)

Communal regulations - From Baghdad to Meknes

Authors, Readers and Printers

Ottoman-Jewish Wills as a Historical Source

Holy Men and Women (hagiographic stories)

Sephardi Autobiographies

Sephardi Communities in the Light of Communal Regulations

Palestine’s Jews during the Ottoman Period

Back to the Archive

Bibliographical Tours: Hebrew Book Introductions

Jerusalem’s Sephardim 1800-1948

Jewish Questions: Guided Reading in Rabbinic Responsa from the Ottoman Empire

Hida’s Diary ‘Ma’agal Tov ha-Shalem’

In the Footsteps of the Emissaries (Shadarim)

 

 

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Ram  Ben-Shalom

Prof. Ram Ben-Shalom

Jewish Studies Institute
History of the Jewish People and Contemporary Judaism

Research Fields

  • Jewish Studies
  • Medieval Studies
  • Jewish-Christian Relations
  • Medieval Jewish History
  • Jewish Thought
  • Jews of Medieval Spain
  • Medieval Iberia
  • Jews of Medieval France (Southern France)
  • Religious Conversion
  • Polemics and Apologetics
  • Jewish mysticism
  • Holocaust Studies

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About

Prof. Ram Ben-Shalom is Professor of Jewish History and co-editor of the Hispania Judaica Bulletin. Since October 2021, Ben-Shalom has served as the Chair of the department of the History of the Jewish People and Contemporary Judaism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has published widely on medieval European Jewish history and is a specialist in the Jewish–Christian discourse of the Middle Ages.

 

Selected Publications

R. Ben-Shalom, Facing Christian Culture: Historical Consciousness and Images of the Past among the Jews of Spain and Southern France during the Middle Ages [Hebrew], 2006, Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East, Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

R. Ben-Shalom, Medieval Jews and the Christian Past: Jewish Historical Consciousness in Spain and Southern France, The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, Oxford 2016.

R. Ben-Shalom, The Jews of Provence: Renaissance in the Shadow of the Church [Hebrew], The Open University of Israel, Raanana 2017.

Forthcoming, an English translation: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization (Liverpool University Press); In editing. 

R. Ben-Shalom, The Letter of Salomea, Carmel. Publishing House, Jerusalem (forthcoming). [Hebrew].

R. Ben-Shalom, “The First Jewish Work on the Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Virtues,” Mediaeval Studies, 75 (2013), pp. 205-270.

 

Selected Awards

2007 - Samuel Toledano Prize by the Misgav Institute in Jerusalem was awarded to the book "Facing Christian Culture: Historical Consciousness and Images of the Past among the Jews of Spain and Southern France during the Middle Ages (2006)", for its contribution to the Sephardi past in its Christian context.

2018 – Ben Zvi Institute Prize for the book "The Jews of Provence: Renaissance in the Shadow of the Church (2017)".

2019 - "Am Olam" Prize of the Historical Society of Israel for the book "The Jews of Provence: Renaissance in the Shadow of the Church (2017)".

 

Teaching

Bachelor's degree courses

The Jewish Renaissance in Medieval Provence

Jewish-Christian Polemics: History & Literature

Introduction to the History of the Jews in Spain

The Jews of Provence: Troubadours, Heretics and Mystics

The Jewish Culture in the 13th Century - A New World?

Jewish-Christian Encounter and Polemics

Under the Cross: Jewish Life in Medieval Europe

The Jews of Provence: Renaissance and Crisis

Facing the Cross: A Journey in Provence

Eros Romantics and Medieval Misogyny

 

Master's degree courses

The Jews in 15th Century Spain: Crisis or Flourishing?

The New language of Conversion in Christian Spain

Who is a Jew in Fifteenth Century Spain? Anusim, Jews and Christians

The Jews in Provence and the Mediterranean Sea.

History and Jewish Literature in Medieval Texts.

The Challenges of the 15th Century: Criticism and Intellectual Innovation

 

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Galia Benziman

Prof. Galia Benziman

Literature Institute
English Department

Research Fields

  • English literature
  • Victorian literature
  • The long nineteenth century

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About

Prof. Galia Benziman is Associate Professor of English at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on British literature of the long nineteenth century; in particular, on Dickens, Hardy, the history of childhood, and the Elegy.

 

Selected Publications

Narratives of Child Neglect in Romantic and Victorian Culture (2012, Palgrave Macmillan)

Thomas Hardy's Elegiac Prose and Poetry: Codes of Bereavement (2018, Palgrave Macmillan)

“Dickens, Hard Times, and the Erasure of Female Origins,” JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory 2020

“Talking Birds and Talking to Birds: Transcending the Child in Barnaby Rudge,” Dickens Studies Annual 2021

“Oliver Twist: Urban Aesthetics and the Homeless Child,” in The Oxford Handbook to Charles Dickens, 2018

 

Selected Awards

Alon

Golda Meir

Fulbright

Rotenstreich

 

Teaching

Bachelor's degree courses

Historical Approach to English Literature

Becoming Women - the Female Bildungsroman

Puritan, Romantic and Victorian Childhood

Versions of Pastoral

 

Master's degree courses

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Louise Bethlehem

Prof. Louise Bethlehem

Literature Institute
Cultural Studies
English Department
Faculty main building, room no. 7816

Research Fields

  • South African literature,
  • South African literary history,
  • South African cultural studies,
  • South African jazz,
  • postcolonial literature and theory,
  • environmental humanities,
  • gender studies,
  • transnational Cold War Studies.

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About

Louise Bethlehem is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and the Program in Cultural Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her book, Skin Tight: Apartheid Literary Culture and its Aftermath (2006) was translated into Hebrew by the Resling imprint (2011). She has co-edited nine volumes on South African literature, anti-apartheid expressive culture, African studies and cultural studies and was the Principal Investigator of the prestigious European Research Council project, APARTHEID-STOPS between 2014-2019.

 

Selected Publications

1. Bethlehem, Louise and Tal Zalmanovich, (eds). (2020). “Celebrity and Protest in the Anti-Apartheid Struggle.” Special edition of Critical Arts: A Journal of South-North Cultural and Media Studies, 34(1), 128 Pages. Taylor and Francis: London and New York.

2. Bethlehem, Louise. 2018. “Restless Itineraries: Anti-Apartheid Expressive Culture

                and Transnational Historiography.” Social Text 36 (3 [136]): 47-69. 

https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-6917766.

3. Bethlehem, Louise. 2018. “Continuity and Change in Postapartheid Fiction,” Oxford Research             Encyclopedias: Literature, DOI.10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.193

4. Bethlehem, Louise. 2013. “Lauren Beukes’s Post-Apartheid Dystopia: Inhabiting Moxyland,” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 50(5): 522-534. Article featured in September 2015 among top twenty articles published in this journal in the previous five years.

5. Bethlehem, Louise. 2006. Skin Tight: Apartheid Literary Culture and Its Aftermath.  xvii + 145 Pages. Unisa (University of South Africa) Press, Pretoria; Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden.

 

Selected Awards

Consolidators’ Grant European Research Council for the project APARTHEID-STOPS: “Apartheid the Global Itinerary: South African Cultural Formations in Transnational Circulation, 1948-1990.”

 

Teaching

Postcolonial Theory

Gender, Postcolonialism, Postmodernism

Postapartheid Literature

Globalization and Solidarity in the Anti-Apartheid Struggle

Modernism and Beyond

J.M. Coetzee: Postcolonial Metafiction

 

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Michal Biran

Prof. Michal Biran

Asia-Africa Institute
Department of Asian Studies
Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies

Research Fields

  • History of Inner Asia;
  • History of Imperial China;
  • History of the Pre-Modern Muslim world;
  • The Mongol Empire; Central Asia;
  • Cross-Cultural Contacts between China and the Muslim World;
  • Ilkhanid Baghdad;
  • Mobility;
  • Migrations;
  • Nomadic culture;
  • Conversion;
  • Transmission of knowledge;
  • Historiography;
  • Collective Memory

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About

Michal Biran is the Max and Sophie Mydans Foundation Professor in the Humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a member of the Israel Academy of Science and Humanities. Since October 2021, she has served as head of the Institute of Asian and African Study at HUJI.  She is a historian of Inner Asia, imperial China and the medieval Islamic world. She teaches in the departments of Asian Studies and Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Prof. Biran has published extensively on the Mongol Empire, Mongol and pre-Mongol Central Asia (especially the Qara Khitai and the Chaghadaids), cross-cultural contacts between China, nomadic empires and the Muslim world, comparative study of empires, nomadic culture, migrations and mobility, and Ilkhanid Baghdad. 

Prof. Biran has authored or edited 12 books and volumes and authored dozens of articles. She has recently completed editing The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire along with Hodong Kim (2 vols. forthcoming 2022).

 

Selected Publications

1. Michal Biran. Qaidu and the Rise of the Independent Mongol State in Central Asia. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Presss, 1997. (Kindle edition 2013; Reprint: London: Routledge 2016).

2. Michal Biran. The Qara Khitai Empire in Eurasian History: Between China and the Islamic World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005, 2008.

3. Michal Biran. Chinggis Khan. (“The Makers of the Muslim World”). Oxford: OneWorld Publications, 2007 (Kindle edition 2012; Mongolian translation 2015; Turkish translation 2019).

4. Michal Biran, ed. Mobility and Transformation: Cultural Exchange in Mongol Eurasia Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient  62: 2-3 (2019).

5. Michal Biran, Jonathan Brack and Francesca Fiaschetti, eds. Along the Silk Roads in Mongol Eurasia: Generals, Merchants, Intellectuals. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2020. (Korean translation 2021).

 

Selected Awards

      2021-           Corresponding Member, The Austrian Academy of Sciences

2009, 2013, 2015     Excellent Teaching Award, HUJI

2014-          Fellow, The Israel Academy for Sciences and Humanities

2014           The Klachky Prize for the Advancement of the Frontiers of Science, HUJI 

2012-2017 The Anneliese Maier Research Award, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Asian Studies)

2007           The Landau Prize for Research and Sciences (History of East Asia and Its Cultures)

2006-9 -      The Michael Bruno Prize, The Rothschild Foundation (Middle Eastern Studies) {frozen 2007-2011 for personal reasons}

2004-5         The Yoram Ben-Porat Presidential Prize for Excelling Young Researcher, HUJI.

 

Teaching

Courses taught in the last 5 years (B.A., M.A.)

BA Courses (last 5 years):

Introduction to the History and Culture of Late Imperial China (906-1911) (Lesson, EAS).

The Silk Roads: Asia and the Muslim World in the Pre-Modern Era (Seminar, ME)

Between China and the Mideast: Issues in Central Asian History (Seminar, ME and  EAS).

The Mongols in the Islamic World (Seminar, ME).

Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Pre-Modern Muslim World (BA seminar, ME)

Honors Program in Chinese Studies (with Yuri Pines and Orna Naftali/ Gideon Shelach and Yuri Pines) (EAS)

MA Courses (last 5 years):

Mobility and Transformation in Mongol Eurasia (ERC seminar 2015, 2017).

Silk Roads Encounters in North West China (Touring course in NW China, with Yuri Pines and Gideon Shelach, summer 2017, EAS)

 Eurasian Nomads in World History (ME, with Michael Shenkar 2019-20)

Issues in Ilkhanid History: The Mongols in Greater Iran (ME, 2021).

 

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Menahem Blondheim

Prof. Menahem Blondheim

History Department
Communication & Journalism
Faculty main building room no. 6623

Research Fields

  • 19th Century American History
  • History of American Communication
  • Communications in the American Civil War
  • American Rabbinics
  • Jewish Orthodox Culture in America
  • Jewish Diasporic Communication
  • Communication in the Bible
  • Historical Pragmatics
  • Digital Humanities
  • Communication Theory
  • New Media and Social Change
  • New Media and Religion
  • Health Communication

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About

Menahem Blondheim is a member of the departments of History and of Communication& Journalism, and serves as the academic director of undergraduate studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Rothberg International School. Trained at the Hebrew University (BA) and Harvard University (MA and PhD), Prof. Blondheim studies the role communication plays in American and Jewish history, as well as the history and theory of communications and media technologies.

 

Selected Publications

1. News Over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844-    1897. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994. (305 pp.)

2. “Divine Comedy: The Jewish Orthodox Sermon in the United States." In: Multilingual America:          Transnationalism, Ethnicity, and the Languages of American Literature. Ed. Werner Sollors. New York: New York University Press, 1998, pp. 191-214.

3. Copperhead Gore: Benjamin Wood’s Fort Lafayette and Civil War America. Bloomington:

            Indiana University Press, 2006. (xi, 291 pp.)

 

4. “America’s Global Standing According to Popular News Sites from Around the World,”

            Political Communication 30: 1 (2013): 139-161 (with Elad Segev).

 

5. Communication in the Jewish Diaspora: Two Thousand years of Saying Goodbye without

            Leaving. New York: Israel Academic Press, 2020 (edited with Hananel Rosenberg).

 

Selected Awards

National Endowment for the Humanities

Covert Award (AEJMC)

Donald L. Shaw Lifetime Award for Outstanding Service to Journalism History

Hazel Dicken-Garcia Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Journalism History

Excellence in Teaching Distinction, Hebrew University (awarded the prize numerous times)

 

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Ruben Borg

Prof. Ruben Borg

Literature Institute
English Department
Faculty main building room no. 7813

Research Fields

  • Modernism
  • Posthumanism
  • Continental philosophy
  • Literature and Film
  • Dante and Modernism

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About

Ruben Borg is an Associate Professor in English Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His work has appeared in numerous journals devoted to twentieth-century literature and film. His research interests include Irish Modernism, twentieth-century philosophy (especially the work of Gilles Deleuze), and the influence of Dante on modernist writers. His current project is a book on James Joyce and emotion.

 

Selected Publications

“Three Articles of Posthuman Modernism: The Metacinema of Marcel L'Herbier (and Friends).” Modernism/modernity (Print +) 4.4 (March 2020).

Fantasies of Self-Mourning: Modernism, the Posthuman and the Finite. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019.

“Putting the Impossible to Work: Beckettian Afterlife and the Posthuman Future of Humanity.” Journal of Modern Literature 35.4 (Summer 2012): 163-180.

“Mirrored Disjunctions: On a Deleuzo-Joycean Theory of the Image,” Journal of Modern Literature 33.2 (Spring 2010): 131-148.

The Measureless Time of Joyce, Deleuze and Derrida. Continuum Literary Studies. London: Continuum, 2007.

 

Selected Awards

Alon Fellowship (2008-2011)

ISF Grant

IFOBS Prize for best book-length publication on a Flann O'Brien theme (2019-2021)

 

Teaching

Narcissus on the Liffey: Image and Identity in Six Modern Irish Writers

Dante and Modernism

Spotlight Theory: Posthumanism

(BA) Paranoid Hermeneutics

The 19th Century British and American Novel

Modernism and Beyond

 

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Yochanan Breuer

Prof. Yochanan Breuer

Jewish Studies Institute

Research Fields

  • Mishnaic Hebrew
  • Babylonian Aramaic
  • Contacts between Hebrew and Aramaic
  • Massora
  • The languge of S.Y. Agnon

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About

Prof. Breuer has been part of the Hebrew University research community forover 40 years, he is a member of the Academy of the Hebrew Language. He deals mainly with Talmudic Hebrew and Aramaic.

 

Selected Publications

The Hebrew in the Babylonian Talmud according to the Manuscripts of Tractate Pesahim, Jerusalem 2002

From Aramaic into Hebrew: the Method of Translation in the Book Hilkhot Re’u, Jerusalem 2020

“Perfect and Participle in Description of Ritual in the Mishnah”, Tarbiz LVI (1987), pp. 299-326

“Dissonance between Masoretic Accentuation and Vocalization in Verse Division of the Biblical Text”, M. Bar-Asher (ed.) Rabbi Mordechai Breuer Festschrift, Jerusalem 1992, pp. 191-242

“The Babylonian Aramaic in Tractate Karetot: According to MS Oxford”, Aramaic Studies 5.1 (2007), pp. 1–45

 

Teaching

Mishnaic Hebrew

Babylonian Aramaic

The Massora

The Language of S.Y. Agnon

Linguistic Studies in the Interpretation of the Bible

 

 

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Raz Chen-Morris

Prof. Raz Chen-Morris

History Department

Research Fields

  • History of early modern science
  • History of optics
  • Intellectual history
  • Johannes Kepler

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About

Prof. Raz Chen-Morris is an historian of early modern science. He studied at the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University. Chen-Morris is currently the academic director of the Martin Buber Society of Fellows.

 

Selected Publications

Ofer Gal and Raz Chen-Morris, Baroque Science. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013

Raz Chen-Morris, Measuring Shadows: Kepler's Optics of Invisibility. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016.

Ofer Gal  and Raz Chen-Morris, “Baroque Optics and the Disappearance of the Observer: From Kepler’s Optics to Descartes’ Doubt.”  Journal of the History of Ideas, 71:2, 2010, pp. 191-218

Raz Chen-Morris, "Geometry and the Making of Utopian Knowledge in Early Modern Europe". Nuncius 35 (2020) 387–412.

Raz Chen-Morris, “The Fall of Icarus and Kepler’s Observations- Forbidden Knowledge, Curiosity and the Birth of New Science in the Seventeeth Century”. History 31-32 (2014) 105-138.

רז חן-מוריס, "נפילתו של איקרוס ותצפיותיו של קפלר -ידע אסור, סקרנות ולידתו של המדע החדש במאה השבע עשרה", היסטוריה 31-32 (תשע"ד), עמ' 105-138

 

Selected Awards

2006-2009-The Australian Research Council–supported project - The Imperfection of the Universe (DP0664046)

The Selma V. Forkosch Prize for the best article published in the Journal of the History of Ideas for 2010

2010-2011-Excellent lecturer award for distinguished teaching achievements, Bar Ilan University

2020-2023-ISRAEL SCIENCE FOUNDATION (grant No. 312/20): Geometry and the Making of Geometrical Knowledge in Early Modern Europe.

 

Teaching

Bachelor's degree courses

Introduction to the history of early modern Europe

An intellectual history of science (part A): from Copernicus to Enlightenment

An intellectual history of science (part  B): from Newton to Freud

Continuity and Change in Scientific Thought from the Late Middle Ages to the 17th Century

 

HISTORIOGRAPHIC TEXTS - GREAT HISTORIC BOOKS

Places of scientific knowledge in early modern Europe

Astrology and Astronomy in the Renaissance

Science and Religion in the 17th Century

Humanism, Art and Science in the Renaissance

Sovereignty and Knowledge in the Age of Baroque

Master's degree courses

The Scientific Revolution of the 17th Century - A Global Perspective

The Sense of Sight from the Age of Cathedrals to the Baroque

 

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Hillel Cohen

Prof. Hillel Cohen

Department of Islam and Middle East Studies
Asia-Africa Institute

Research Fields

  • Zionist ideology and practice
  • Palestinian society and politics
  • Palestinian collaborators and Israel's intelligence agencies
  • Mizrahi Jews
  • Palestinian refugees
  • Jerusalem
  • holy places
  • al-Aqsa
  • Religion and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
  • Islam and Judaism - Jews and Muslims
  • Palestine under the British mandate
  • Land issues

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About

Prof. Hillel Cohen was born in 1961 in Jerusalem. Cohen studies the dynamics between the Zionist movement (and later the state of Israel) and the Palestinian Arabs, as well as the history of Jewish-Muslims relations prior to Zionism, and the history of Mizrahi (aka Oriental) Jews before and after 1948.

 

Selected Publications

Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaborators in the Service of Zionism 1917-1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008).

Good Arabs: The Israeli Intelligence and the Israeli Arabs (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).

The Rise and Fall of Arab Jerusalem: Politics and the City 1967-2007 (London: Routledge, 2011).

Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict: 1929 (Brandeis University Press, 2015).

 

Selected Awards

Ben Zvi Prize for the best book on Israel history for Year Zero of the Israeli-Arab Conflict: 1929.

Azrieli Institute Prize for Best Book in Israel Studies, Concordia University; for Year Zero of the Israeli-Arab Conflict: 1929

 

Teaching

Bachelor's degree courses

The Palestinians: Political and Social History (B.A. seminar)

Zionism and the Arabs

Jerusalem - al-Quds

Jewish-Muslim relations from Muhammad to present: selected topics

 

Master's degree courses

1948: The real story (MA seminar)

Sephardi and Oriental Jews: History and Identity (MA seminar)
 

 

Research Fields

Zionist ideology and practice

Palestinian society and politics

Palestinian collaborators and Israel's intelligence agencies

Mizrahi Jews

Palestinian refugees

Jerusalem

holy places

al-Aqsa

Religion and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Islam and Judaism - Jews and Muslims

Palestine under the British mandate

Land issues

 

About

Prof. Hillel Cohen was born in 1961 in Jerusalem. Cohen studies the dynamics between the Zionist movement (and later the state of Israel) and the Palestinian Arabs, as well as the history of Jewish-Muslims relations prior to Zionism, and the history of Mizrahi (aka Oriental) Jews before and after 1948.

 

Selected Publications

Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaborators in the Service of Zionism 1917-1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008).

Good Arabs: The Israeli Intelligence and the Israeli Arabs (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).

The Rise and Fall of Arab Jerusalem: Politics and the City 1967-2007 (London: Routledge, 2011).

Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict: 1929 (Brandeis University Press, 2015).

 

Selected Awards

Ben Zvi Prize for the best book on Israel history for Year Zero of the Israeli-Arab Conflict: 1929.

Azrieli Institute Prize for Best Book in Israel Studies, Concordia University; for Year Zero of the Israeli-Arab Conflict: 1929

 

Teaching

Bachelor's degree courses

The Palestinians: Political and Social History (B.A. seminar)

Zionism and the Arabs

Jerusalem - al-Quds

Jewish-Muslim relations from Muhammad to present: selected topics

 

Master's degree courses

1948: The real story (MA seminar)

Sephardi and Oriental Jews: History and Identity (MA seminar)

 

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Arlette David

Prof. Arlette David

Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near East
Asia-Africa Institute

Research Fields

  • Semiotics of hieroglyphic script and Egyptian art;
  • Middle and Neo-Egyptian languages;
  • ancient Egyptian legal languages and legal system;
  • Egyptian(izing) finds in Israel;
  • iconography of kingship in Karnak and Amarna

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About

Trained as a lawyer (LLM from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium) and as an Egyptologist (theHebrew University of Jerusalem), Arlette David has published various interdisciplinary studies on the ancient Egyptian legal system, its conceptual frame, textual productions, linguistic registers, and legal categorization embedded in the hieroglyphic and hieratic scripts. Today, Prof. David investigates the interplay between pictures, script, and texts in various contexts, with new analyses of Egyptian works of art. Her recent work concerns pictures of kingship at the times of Akhenaten and Nefertiti from Karnak and Amarna.

 

Selected Publications

2021 Book: Renewing Royal Imagery - Akhenaten and Family in the Amarna Tombs (https://brill.com/view/title/57605)

2021 Article: “Akhenaten and Nefertiti's Morning Toilet in Karnak” (Journal of Near Eastern Studies 80/2)

2021 Article: “Akhenaten's Window and the Aegean Connection” (Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 30)

2010 Book: The Legal Register of Ramesside Private Law Instruments (Harrassowitz)

2006 Book: Syntactic and Lexico-Semantic Aspects of the Legal Register in Ramesside Royal Decrees (Harrassowitz)

 

Selected Awards

Prize of the Red Cross International Humanitarian Law Contest 1986

Max Schlomiuk Prize 2003

 

Teaching

B.A.

Reading Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs

Ancient Egyptian Artists: Life, Work, Models, Techniques

Middle Egyptian for beginners

Middle Egyptian intermediary level

Introduction to Ancient Egyptian Art and Culture (Predynastic to Second Intermediate Period)

Introduction to Ancient Egyptian Art and Culture (New Kingdom to Ptolemaic Period) 

Art as a System of Signs: Decoding Ancient Egyptian Images

Patterns of continuity and change in ancient Egyptian art

M.A.

Despair, Disgust, and Life's Chaos: Ancient Egyptian Laments

Ramesside for Beginners

Egypt in Israel: Ancient Egyptian Inscriptions Found in Israel

Entertaining an Egyptian King with Tales of Magic: Papyrus Westcar

Ancient Egyptian Artifacts: Magic and the Senses

Killing Pharaoh: The Teaching of King Amenemhat I

Shipwrecked in Wonderland: An Ancient Egyptian Mythical Narrative

Working with Ancient Egyptian Material Culture

Contribution of ancient Egyptian law to the history of thought

Ancient Egyptian tales of adventure

The Levant and Egypt, archaeology and art: cultural transfers 

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Uri Davidovich

Dr. Uri Davidovich

Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near East
Archaeology Institute

Research Fields

  • Landscape archaeology
  • Regional archaeology
  • Archaeology of natural caves
  • Urbanization and social complexity
  • Archaeological survey

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About

Dr. Uri Davidovich is a lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology, Biblical Section. His research interests revolve around environmental and landscape archaeology, especially of marginal landscapes; field and analytical methods of archaeological surveys; regional archaeology of the Judean Desert; human activity in natural caves; and the development of complex societies surrounding the transition to urbanism (Chalcolithic period and Early Bronze Age). Davidovich’s current studies include: settlement dynamics in the Upper Galilee in the Early Bronze Age and early urbanization in the southern Levant, involving multi-annual excavations at the mega-site of Tel Qedesh; archeology and landscape of refuge in cliff caves of the Judean Desert during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age; environmental and cultural changes in the Judean Desert during the Holocene (together with Dr. Nimrod Marom, University of Haifa); and comparative archaeology of ancient activity patterns in complex caves in the southern Levant.

 

Selected Publications

Davidovich U.PI, Ullman M.PI, Langford B.C, Frumkin A.C, Langgut D.C, Yahalom-Mack N.C, Abramov J.C, Marom N.C 2018. “Distancing the dead: Late Chalcolithic burials in large maze caves in the Negev Desert, Israel.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 379: 113-152. DOI: 10.5615/bullamerschoorie.379.0113

Wachtel I.PI, Davidovich U.PI, corres. auth. 2021. “Qedesh in the Galilee: The emergence of an Early Bronze Age Levantine megasite.” Journal of Field Archaeology 46: 260-274. DOI: 10.1080/00934690.2021.1901025

Lazagabaster I.A.PI, Rovelli V.PI, Fabre P.-H.C, Porat R.C, Ullman M.C, Davidovich U.C*, Lavi T.C, Ganor A.C, Klein E.C, Weiss K.C, Nuriel P.C, Meiri M.C, Nimrod MaromPI. 2021. “Rare crested rat subfossils unveil Afro-Eurasian ecological corridors synchronous with early human dispersals.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2021: 118(31): e2105719118. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2105719118

Mascher M.PI, Schünemann V.J.PI, Davidovich U.C, Himmelbach A.C, Hübner S.C, Fahima T.C, Korol A.C, David M.C, Marom N.C, Riehl S.C, Schreiber M.C, Vohr S.H.C, Green R.E.C, Dawson I.K.C, Russell J.C, Kilian B.C, Muehlbauer G.J.C, Waugh R.C, Krause J.PI, Weiss E.PI, Stein N.PI 2016. “Genomic analysis of 6,000-year-old cultivated grain illuminates the domestication history of barley.” Nature Genetics 48: 1089-1093. DOI: 10.1038/ng.3611

Davidovich U.PI, Porat N.PI, Gadot Y.PI, Avni Y.C, Lipschits O.PI 2012. “Archaeological investigations and OSL dating of terraces at Ramat Rahel, Israel.” Journal of Field Archaeology 37: 192-208.

 

Selected Awards

Rothschild Foundation Post-doctoral Fellowship in the Humanities and Social Sciences

Rotenstreich Fellowship for Outstanding Doctoral Students in the Humanities, National Council for Higher Education

Scholion Interdisciplinary Research Center in the Humanities and Jewish Studies, The Hebrew University

President Fellowship, HU Honors Program for excelled PhD Students in the Humanities, The Hebrew University

The Bernard M. Bloomfield Prize for excelled PhD Dissertation, The Hebrew University

 

Teaching

Bachelor's degree courses

GIS applications in Archaeology

Introduction to Spatial Archaeology

Caves and complex societies

Unsuccessful revolution: The Chalcolithic period

The Negev, Arabah and Edom in the Iron Age

Regional Campus: Judean Desert

Advanced survey and Regional Analysis

Bronze Age Landscapes

In the footsteps of kings and rebels: Judean Desert during the Roman and Byzantine periods

Topics in Biblical Archaeology: Violence and its archaeological expressions (B.A Seminar)

Regional Campus: Golan Heights

The Early Bronze Age I in the Southern Levant

Regional Archaeology: From Theory to Practice (in collaboration with G. Shelach-Lavi)

The Ghassulian Culture: Society, Economy and Cult

Early Pottery (in collaboration with N. Panitz-Cohen)

Introduction to the Archaeology of Israel and the Levant: 8th-4th Millenia B.C.
 

Master's degree courses

Topics in Biblical Archaeology - Transitions (M.A Seminar, in collaboration with N. Yahalom-Mack)

Topics in Biblical Archaeology - Borders and Boundaries (M.A Seminar, in collaboration with N. Yahalom-Mack)

The Desert and the Sown in the Levant (M.A Seminar, in collaboration with I. Sharon)

 

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Jonathan  Dekel-Chen

Prof. Jonathan Dekel-Chen

History Department
Jewish Studies Institute
History Institute
Rabin building, room no. 6003

Research Fields

  • Transnationalism,
  • diplomacy, agricultural history,
  • modern Jewish history,
  • Russian Imperial History,
  • Soviet History,
  • International Relations,
  • Migration,
  • Applied Humanities,
  • Public History

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About

Jonathan Dekel-Chen is the Rabbi Edward Sandrow Chair in Soviet & East European Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His current research and publications deal with transnational philanthropy and advocacy, non-state diplomacy, agrarian history and migration. In 2014, Dekel-Cohen co-founded the Bikurim Youth Village for the Arts, which provides world-class artistic training for 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.

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.

“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.

 “Putting Agricultural History to Work: Global Action Today from a Communal Past.” Featured article in: Agricultural History 94, no. 4 (Fall 2020): 512-544.

 

Selected Awards

2005-2008  Israel Science Foundation Award, “A World of Good: Jewish Philanthropy and Politics

in Russia and the USSR, 1890s-1990s”.

 

Polonsky Prize for Creativity and Originality in the Humanistic Disciplines, Hebrew University, 2007.

 

Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 2008-2009.

Rose and Isidore Drench Memorial Fellowship, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 2008-2009.

Israel Institute Visiting Professor at Columbia University, N.Y., 2015-2016

 

Bildner Visiting Scholar at the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life, Rutgers University.

Vernon Carstensen Memorial Award for the best article in Agricultural History from the Agricultural History Society for “Putting Agricultural History to Work: Global Action Today from a Communal Past” (Issue 94, no. 4 [2020]: 512-544).

 

Teaching

“From Revolution to Crisis: Russia, 1789-1855.”

 “From Crisis to Revolution: Russia, 1856-1917.”

 “Russian Foreign Policy in the Middle East and Israel”

“From Bukhara to Brooklyn: Modern East European Jewry”

“The Jewish Farmer in Modern Times.” (M.A.)

"Jewish Politics and Philanthropy in the 20th Century" (M.A.)

"The Global Campaign for Soviet Jewry: Moscow, Washington, London, Jerusalem” (M.A.)

"Diplomacy and Philanthropy in the Modern Jewish World" (M.A.)

"Jewish and Non-Jewish Migration in the Modern World: Theory and Practice" (M.A.)

“Kibbutz: Beginnings, Glory, the End?” (M.A.)

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Aya Elyada

Dr. Aya Elyada

History Department
History Institute

Research Fields

  • German and German-Jewish history and culture
  • Christian-Jewish relations
  • The history of the Yiddish-German encounter
  • The social and cultural history of language and translation

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About

Dr. Aya Elyada is a senior lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem History Department and a permanent academic member at the Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History. She joined the Hebrew University in 2012, and since October 2020 she has been serving as the Chair of the History Department. Her current book project explores the place of Old Yiddish literature in modern German and German-Jewish culture.

 

Selected Publications

Protestant Scholars and Yiddish Studies in Early Modern Europe,” Past and Present 203 (2009), 69-98"

A Goy Who Speaks Yiddish: Christians and the Jewish Language in Early Modern Germany. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012, 280 pp.

Zwischen Austausch und Polemik: Christliche Übersetzungen jiddischer Literatur im Deutschland der Frühneuzeit," Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 69 (2017), 47-73"

Early Modern Yiddish and the Jewish Volkskunde, 1880-1938," Jewish Quarterly Review 107 (2017), 182-208"

Contested Heritage: Wissenschaft des Judentums and the Yiddish Biblical Literature in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” Zion: A Quarterly for the Research of Jewish History 86:4 (2021), 563-91 [in Hebrew]"

 

Selected Awards

2012-2015 Yigal Alon Fellowship for Outstanding Junior Faculty, Israeli Council for Higher Education

2013-2017 "Marie Curie Career Integration Grant (CIG), "From Yiddish into German: A Cultural History of Translation

 

Teaching

Bachelor's degree courses

The Protestant Reformation as a Theological, Social, and Cultural Revolution

Luther, the Reformation and the German Language

Religion and Society in Sixteenth-Century Germany

Poverty and Crime in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Subordinated Groups in Early Modern Germany

Christian-Jewish Relations in Early Modern Germany

Christian-Jewish Relations in the First Reich: 1096-1648

Women and Gender in the Protestant Reformation

Books and Readers in Early Modern Germany

 

Master's degree courses

Language and Identity in Early Modern Germany

The Yiddish-German Encounter Throughout the Ages

Christian Hebraism in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Hebrew-Yiddish-German: Cultural History of Language
 

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