The Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies was created as an inter-divisional center in the Divisions of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Divinity School whose aim is to nurture dialogue among the many disciplines, scholars, and students engaged in Jewish Studies at the University. Our students come from a wide range of departments. The following is a list of our current students (with their academic advisor) and their academic interest(s), as well as a list of our alumni.
Anthropology Department
Andrew Katzenstein Atwell (Agrama, Hussein Ali), Messianism and temporality, ethics, religion and the secular, Jewish Studies, Middle East, sensibility and embodiment, political theology, sovereignty and intervention, Israel/Palestine.
Committee on Social Thought
Amy Levine [joint program with Philosophy] (Lear, Jonathan), ethics, psychoanalysis, modern Jewish thought, and Kant.
Comparative Literature Department
Yael Flusser, Israel/Palestine, Jewish and national identities
Ido Telem, (Rokem, Na'ama), modern Hebrew literature, modern German literature and thought.
Divinity School
Miriam Bilsker (Mendes-Flohr, Paul), modern Jewish intellectual history
Aslan Cohen (Chavel, Simeon; Stackert, Jeffrey; Hammerschlag, Sarah), Hebrew Bible, conceptions of language and texts within biblical literature, textual criticism (Septuagintal studies), prose narrative, lyrical poetry, reception history, literary theory.
David Leitner Cohen (Mendes-Flohr, Paul; Davidson, Arnold I.; Benjamin Pollock - Hebrew University), anti-liberal Jewish thought, philosophy of halakhah, Jewish reception of modern and medieval philosophy, modern philosophical reception of Kabbalah.
Ranana Dine (Zoloth, Laurie), Jewish Ethics, Medical Ethics, Material Visual Culture, Modern Jewish/Christian Thought
Jeffrey Fowler (Mendes-Flohr, Paul), doctrinal theology and Jewish-Christian theological relations
Rachel Katz, (Robinson, James T.), medieval Jewish philosophy, science, and exegesis
Jacob Merlin (Robinson, James T.), medieval Jewish scriptural exegesis
Justin Moses (Stackert, Jeffrey), Hebrew Bible, Egyptology
David Ridge (Stackert, Jeffrey), Hebrew Bible, Hebrew linguistics, narrative theory
Rebekah Rosenfeld (Coyne, Ryan; Hammerschlag, Sarah) modern Jewish thought
Adi Shiran (Robinson, James T.), medieval Jewish and Islamic comparative exegesis and Judeo-Arabic literature
Joel Swanson (Hammerschlag, Sarah), Modern Jewish intellectual history; debates surrounding ethnic and confessional religious definitions of Jewish identity and Judaism in relation to the "Jewish question" in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Emily Thomassen, (Stackert, Jeffrey), Hebrew Bible, Near Eastern archaeology
Alexis Wolf (Chavel, Simeon), Conceptions of the divine in the Hebrew Bible, gender and power in the Hebrew Bible and biblical reception history
History Department
Tahel Rachel Goldsmith (Auslander, Leora), modern East-Central European history and memory, space and place
Elena Hoffenberg (Auslander, Leora; Zahra, Tara), modern Jewish history
Kyra Schulman (Auslander, Leora), modern French history, urban memory, antisemitism, post-Holocaust French literature, digital humanities
Tali Winkler (Johns, Adrian), early-modern Jewish history, history of the book
NELC Department
Benjamin Arenstein (Rokem, Na'ama), Modern Hebrew Literature; Rusian and Arabic Literatures; Jewish Multilingualism; Translation Theory
David Harris (Pardee, Dennis), source criticism of the Pentateuch, textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Northwest Semitic dialectology, comparative Semitic philology & linguistics.
Tyler Harris (Pardee, Dennis), Hebrew Bible, source criticism of the Hebrew Bible, disability criticism of ancient Near Eastern texts, pedagogy of Biblical Hebrew, disability studies.
Jaesok Heo (Pardee, Dennis), Hebrew Bible/ancient Near East.
Stephanie Kraver (Hayek, Ghenwa; Rokem, Na'ama; Bashkin, Orit), modern Palestinian and Israeli literature, political poetry, constructions of memory after loss.
Alumni
Rachel Adelstein (2013; Bohlman, Philip), Music. Dissertation: Braided Voices: Women Cantors in Non-Orthodox Judaism.
Iddo Aharony (2016; Ran, Shulamit), Music. Dissertation: KOLOT.
Jessica Andruss (2015; Robinson, James T.), Divinity. Dissertation: Exegesis, Homily, and Historical Reflection in the Arabic Commentary on Lamentations by Salmon ben Yeruhim, Tenth-Century Karaite of Jerusalem.
Anna Band (2022, Rokem, Na'ama; Auslander, Leora), History. Dissertation: At Home in My Room: Jewish Spaces of Longing and Belonging in World War I Through Weimar Berlin.
Aidan Beatty (2015, Auslander, Leora), History. Dissertation: The Life that God Desires: Masculinity and Power in Irish Nationalism, 1884-1938.
Natalie Belsky (2014, Fitzpatrick, Sheila), History. Dissertation: Encounters in the East: Evacuees in the Soviet Hinterland During the Second World War.
Anastasia Artemyev Berg (2013; Pippin, Robert), Philosophy. Dissertation: The Unity of Reason and Sensibility in Kant's Practical Philosophy.
Lauren Butler Bergier (2018; Pavel, Thomas), Social Thought. Dissertation: Paul Claudel’s Cinq Grandes Odes : A Translation and Commentary.
Chloe Blackshear (2018; Pavel, Thomas), Comparative Literature. Dissertation: Between the Figure and the Text: David Stories in Late Twentieth Century Prose.
Ezra Blaustein (2019; Robinson, James T.), Divinity. Dissertation: Cataloging Revelation: Echoes of Islamic Legal Theory in Maimonides' Sefer-ha-Mitsvot [Book of Commandments].
Samuel Lanham Boyd (2014; Pardee, Dennis), NELC. Dissertation: Contact Linguistics and Textual Reuse in the Hebrew Bible: A Socio-linguistic Approach to the Comparative Method in the Hebrew Bible.
Samuel Brody (2013), Divinity. Dissertation: This Pathless Hour: Messianism, Anarchism, Zionism, and Martin Buber’s Political Theology Reconsidered.
Aaron Butts (2013, Hasselbach, Rebecca), NELC. Dissertation: Language Change in the Wake of Empire: Syriac in Its Greco-Roman Context.
David M. Calabro (2014; Pardee, Dennis), NELC. Dissertation: Doing Things with Hands: The Ritual Use of Hand Gestures in Northwest Semitic Literature and Iconography.
Samuel Catlin (2022; Rokem, Na'ama; Hammerschlag, Sarah), Comparative Literature, Religion and Literature. Dissertation: The Rest is Literature: Midrash and the Institution of 'Theory' in America.
Joshua Connor (2017; Mendes-Flohr, Paul), Divinity. Dissertation: Recollecting the Soul: Studies of the Psyche and the I-Thou Relation.
Matthew Creighton (2021; Mendes-Flohr, Paul), Divinity. Dissertation: The Hidden Father and the Problem of Generations in Luther, Freud, and Kafka.
Joseph Cross (2022; Pardee, Dennis), NELC. Dissertation: The Poetics of Plot in the Egyptian and Judean Novella.
Marshall Cunningham (2020; Chavel, Simeon), Divinity. Dissertation: (Re)-Constructing Judeanness: Homeland, Diaspora, and the Construction of Judean Identity in the 6th and 5th Centuries ʙᴄᴇ.
Raphael Dascalu (2016; Robinson, James T.), Divinity. Dissertation: Philology, Philosophy, and Sufism: Towards an Understanding of Tanhum Ha-Yerushalmi's Exegesis and Thought with a Focus on His Commentaries on Jonah, the Song of Songs, and
Jessie DeGrado (2018: Chavel, Simeon), Divinity. Dissertation: Authoring Empire: Intellectual Engagement with the Assyrian Empire in the Bible.
Igor H. De Souza (2014; Robinson, James T.), Jewish Studies. Dissertation: Philosophical Commentaries on the Preface to "The Guide of the Perplexed," c. 1250–1362.
Erik Dreff (2017; Mendes-Flohr, Paul), Divinity. Dissertation: On God, Humankind, and Well-Being: The Intellectual Love of God in Spinoza.
Michael Figueroa (2014), Music. Dissertation: Music and the Jerusalem Question: Song, Poetry, and Politics in Israel, 1967-Present.
Kelli Gardner (2020; Chavel, Simeon), Divinity. Dissertation: The Figure and Figuration of Woman in the Hebrew Bible.
David Gottlieb (2018; Mendes-Flohr, Paul), Divinity. Dissertation: Second Slayings: The Binding of Isaac, Interpretations of Sacrifice, and the Formation of 'Midrashic Memory'.
Annie Greene (2018; Bashkin, Orit), NELC. Dissertation: Provincial, Not Peripheral: Ottoman-Iraqi Intellectuals and Cultural Networks, 1863-1914.
Humphrey (Chip) Hardy (2014; Pardee, Dennis), NELC. Dissertation: Diachronic Development in Biblical Hebrew Particles: A Case Study in Grammaticalization
Elizabeth Hopp-Peters (2012; Fishbane, Michael), Divinity. Dissertation: Breaking Pots, Making Metaphors: Prophetic Action Narratives in the Book of Jeremiah"
Charles Huff (2019; Pardee, Dennis), NELC/Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East. Dissertation: Punishment in the Priestly Literature.
Avner Inbar (2016; Pippin, Robert), Social Thought. Dissertation: Rousseau's Political Psychology.
Anna Jabloner, (2015, Masco, Joseph), Anthropology. Dissertation: Humanity Pending: Californian Genomics and the Politics of Biology.
Joela (Zeller) Jacobs (2014, Wild, Christopher), Germanic Studies. Dissertation: Speaking the Non-Human: Plants, Animals, and Marginalized Humans in Literary Grotesques from Oscar Panizza to Franz Kafka.
Eric Paul Jobe (2015, Golb, Norman), NELC. Dissertation: Innovation in Post-Biblical Hebrew Poetry: A Stylistic Analysis of the Hymns of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Matthew Johnson (2022), Germanic Studies. Dissertation: Faltering Language: On German-Yiddish Literature.
Ruchama Johnston-Bloom (2013; Mendes-Flohr, Paul), Divinity. Dissertation: Muhammad, the Qur’an and German-Jewish modernities: Gustav Weil, Josef Horovitz and Muhammad Asad.
Young Bok Kim (2022; Pardee, Dennis), NELC. Dissertation: Hebrew Forms of Address: A Sociolinguistic Analysis.
Mendel Kranz (2023; Hammerschlag, Sarah), Divinity. Dissertation: The Postcolonial Jewish Question: Jewish and Arab Entanglements in Postwar France.
Mili Leitner Cohen (2022; Bohlman, Philip), Music. Dissertation: "Sacred in Your Midst": Sounding Israeli Identity Through the Performance of Jewish Liturgy in Jerusalem's Public Spaces.
Dov Lerner (2021; Fishbane, Michael), Divinity. Dissertation: Dark Matter: Malbim's Exegetical Pedagogy.
Naama Maor (2020; Stanley, Amy Dru), History. Dissertation: Delinquent Parents: Punitive Welfare and the Creation of Juvenile Justice,1899-1927.
Liane Marquis (2018; Stackert, Jeffrey and Chavel, Simeon), Divinity. Dissertation: Story and Sacrifice: Ritual Narrative and the Priestly Source.
Nathan Mastnjak (2015; Pardee, Dennis), NELC/Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East. Dissertation: The Prophet Who Was before Me: Allusions to Deuteronomy in the Book of Jeremiah.
Chelsie May (2021; Bashkin, Orit), NELC. Dissertation: Watching Whiteness Work?: The Racialization of Jewish Women in Iraq and Israel/Palestine.
Matthew James McAffee (2008; Pardee, Dennis), NELC. Dissertation: A Lexical and Literary Analysis of Life and Mortality in Ugaritic.
Meredith Aska McBride (2015), Music. Dissertation: City with Lifted Head Singing: The Practice and Politics of Music Education in Chicago.
Ilana McQuinn (2019; Zahra, Tara), History. Dissertation: The Rise and Fall of Jewish Representation and Communist Reform in Czechoslovakia, 1945-75.
Katharine Mershon (2018; Rosengarten, Richard A.), Divinity. Dissertation: Canine Redemption Narratives in the American Imaginary, 1981–2001.
Joanna Nemeh. (2016; Mendes-Flohr, Paul), Committee on Jewish Studies. Dissertation: Jewish Feminism: Quest and Answerability.
James Nemiroff (2016; de Armas, Frederick), Romance Languages and Literatures. Dissertation: Comedias judaizantes: Performing Judaism in Lope de Vega´s Toledan Plays (1590-1615).
Chaim Neria (2015; Robinson, James T.), Divinity. Dissertation: It Cannot be Valued with the Gold of Ophir (Job 28:16): Rabbi Joseph B. Shem-Tob's Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Sources and Analysis.
Yiftach Ofek (2021; Mendes-Flohr, Paul), Divinity. Dissertation: The "New Jew" of Zionist Historiography: The Social Vision and Historical Imagination of Yitzhak Baer, Gershom Scholem, and Yehezkel Kaufman.
Pelle Valentin Olsen (2020; Bashkin, Orit), NELC. Dissertation: Between Work and School: Leisure and Modernity in Hashemite Baghdad , 1921–1958.
Alexander Orwin (2015), Committee on Social Thought. Dissertation: Caught Between City, Empire, and Religion: Alfarabi's Concept of the Umma.
Michal Peles Almagor (2020; Rokem, Na'ama), Comparative Literature. Dissertation: Writing at the Threshold: Language and Home in Twentieth Century Hebrew and German Literature.
William Douglas Pickut (2017; Pardee, Dennis), NELC. Dissertation: Literary Genres in Poetic Texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls
Madadh Richey (2019; Pardee, Dennis), NELC. Dissertation: Visions of Gods and Monsters: Levantine and Mesopotamian Iconographies of Divine Combat and Their Textual Impressions.
Johanna Theresa Semler (2012; Meltzer, Francois), Comparative Literature. Dissertation: Bare Life and Metamorphic Being: Nazi Propaganda, Agamben, Coetzee and Kafka.
Uri Shachar (2014; Nirenberg, David), History. Dissertation: Dialogical Warfare: Figurations of Pious Belligerence Among Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Authors in the Crusading Near-East.
Yonatan Shemesh (2021; Robinson, James), Divinity. Dissertation: Averroes as Intertext: Moses Narboni's Commentary on Maimonides' "Guide of the Perplexed."
Sam Berrin Shonkoff (2018; Mendes-Flohr, Paul), Divinity. Dissertation: Sacramental Existence: Embodiment in Martin Buber’s Philosophical and Hasidic Writings
Jordan Eugene Skornik (2018; Stackert, Jeffrey), Divinity. Dissertation: Paradigms and Possibilities: On Literary Prophecy and the Hebrew Bible.
Christine Trotter (2021; Mitchell, Margaret M.), Divinity Dissertation: Making Suffering Manageable: Hellenistic Jewish Consolatory Responses to Suffering and Death
Michael Tymkiw (2013; Mehring, Christine), Art History. Dissertation: National Socialist Exhibition Design, Spectatorship, and the Fabrication of Volksgemeinschaft.
Jacqueline Eliza Vayntrub (2015; Pardee, Dennis), NELC. Dissertation: Proverbs and the Limits of Poetry.
Monique Denise Vincent (Schloen, David), NELC. Dissertation: Households, Communities, and Dimensions of Social Identity in the Early Iron Age at Tall al-‘Umayri
Andrea Wald (2015; Wellbery, David), Dissertation: Discourses of Surface and Ornament in Literature, Art, and Psychoanalysis ca. 1900.
Daniel Watling (2021; Tarcov, Nathan), Social Thought. Dissertation: The Dearest Desire: Philosophy and Islam in the Book of Ibn Timart.
Ori Werdiger (2021; Mendes-Flohr, Paul, Davidson, Arnold), Divinity. Dissertation: A Radical Epistemology of Judaism: Knowledge and History in the Postwar Thought of Jacob Gordin (1896-1947) and Leon Askenazi (1922-1996).
Lillian Wohl (2015; Bohlman, Philip), Music. Dissertation: Mucho Ojo! Spectacles of Jewish Memory, Ethnicity and Religion in Contemporary Musical Performance in Buenos Aires.
Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg (2015; Robinson, James T.), Divinity. Dissertation: The People of the Book Without the Book: Jewish Ambivalence Toward Biblical Text After the Rise of Christianity.
Liran Yadgar (2016; Lewis, Frank), NELC. Dissertation: "All the Kings of Arabia are Seeking Your Counsel and Advice": Intellectual and Cultural Exchange Between Jews and Muslims in the Later Middle Islamic Period.
Sarah Yardney (2017; Stackert, Jeffrey), Divinity. Dissertation: Interpretation in the Septuagint of Samuel.
Ori Yehudai (2013, Wasserstein, Bernard), History. Dissertation: Forth from Zion: Jewish Emigration from Palestine and Israel Emigration from Palestine and Israel 1881-1951
Richard Zaleski (2020; Mitchell, Margaret M.), Divinity. Dissertation: Both Literal and Allegorical: Paraphrastic Biblical Exegesis in Gregory of Nyssa's and Philo of Alexandria's Lives of Moses
Shayna Zamkanei (2015; Robert Gooding-Williams and Orit Bashkin), Political Science. Dissertation: The Politics of Justice for Arab Jews
Alexandra Zirkle (2016; Mendes-Flohr, Paul), Divinity. Dissertation: Modeling the Temple: The Politics of German Jewish Biblical Hermeneutics.