Research Overview

Dive Deep. Our faculty cover a wide range of research topics spanning the globe. We study and research Jewish history, religion, language, philosophy, politics, culture, society, music, art, and literature across continents and over three millennia. Faculty advance the understanding of these rich and diverse cultures and traditions.

Faculty Highlights

Rebecca Epstein-Levi

Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies

An expert on sexual ethics, Professor Epstein-Levi uses unconventional readings of classical rabbinic text to study the ethics of sex and sexuality, disability, and neurodiversity. Her book, When We Collide: Sex, Social Risk, and Jewish Ethics is a landmark reassessment of the significance of sex in contemporary Jewish ethics.

Mazalit Haim

Assistant Professor of the Practice of Jewish Studies

Professor Haim is currently working on a book project that examines the manifestations of hope and despair in Israeli culture and literature. The project focuses on the ways in which the emotional underpinnings of Israeli literary and artistic works question and recast Jewish and Zionist notions of hope and despair. Her past publications include articles on the plays of Hebrew poet Leah Goldberg, which explore her transition from lyrical poetry informed by Russian symbolism to drama informed by realism.

Ari Joskowicz

Associate Professor of Jewish Studies

Professor Joskowicz’s research interest lies in the history of European minorities, which is reflected in his various scholarly projects. He contributed to two EU studies on racism and antisemitism in contemporary Europe and translated G. C. Spivak’s essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” into German together with Stefan Nowotny (Vienna, 2007). His work has been supported by the Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center (Hebrew University, Jerusalem), the Lady Davis Fellowship Trust, the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, the American Philosophical Society, the American Society of Learned Societies (ACLS), the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

His new book, Rain of Ash: Roma, Jews, and the Holocaust (Princeton University Press, 2023) traces the unlikely entanglement of the histories of Jews and Romanies throughout the twentieth century, focusing on Western and Central Europe as well as the United States and Israel.

Shaul Kelner

Associate Professor of Jewish Studies

Professor Kelner specializes in the sociology of American Jews. His research focuses on transnational Jewish solidarity and analyzes how culture and politics intersect to shape Jewish life. His first book, Tours That Bind: Diaspora, Pilgrimage and Israeli Birthright Tourism (NYU Press, 2010), won the Association for Jewish Studies’ 2010 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award in the category of Social Science, Anthropology and Folklore and was named Honorable Mention for the American Sociological Association Culture Section’s 2011 Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book.