Prof. ELLIOT R. WOLFSON
Rabbinics | Kabbalah
Prof. Wolfson is the Marsha and Jay Glazer Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was previously the Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University (1987-2014). His main area of scholarly research is the history of Jewish mysticism but he has brought to bear on that field training in philosophy, literary criticism, feminist theory, postmodern hermeneutics, Eastern mystical traditions, and the phenomenology of religion. Prof. Wolfson’s publications have won prestigious awards such as the American Academy of Religion’s Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in the Category of Historical Studies in 1995, the American Academy of Religion’s Award for Excellence in Constructive and Reflective Studies in 2012. Wolfson won two National Jewish Book Awards in the Scholarship category, in 1995 for Through a Speculum That Shines and in 2005 for Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination. His most recent major publication is Heidegger and Kabbalah: Hidden Gnosis and the Path of Poiēsis (2019).
Prof. HENRY ABRAMSON
History
Prof. Abramson serves as Professor of Jewish History and Dean at Touro College, New York. Before that, he was as the Dean of Academic Affairs and Student Services at Touro College’s Miami branch. He held visiting appointments at Cornell, Harvard, Oxford and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of several books in Jewish history and thought, including Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times, 1917-1920 (1999) and Torah from the Years of Wrath, 1939-1943: The Historical Context of the Aish Kodesh (2017). His research has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Social Studies and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and he is the recipient of the Excellence in the Academy award from the U.S. National Education Association. His online lectures in Jewish history are watched by 10,000 people daily.
Prof. ADELE REINHARTZ
Literature | History
Prof. Reinhartz is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Ottawa, where she is also a Professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies. Her main research contributions have been in the study of ancient Judaism and Christianity, and Bible in/and Film. Prof. Reinhartz has served as the General Editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature for 7 years (2012-2019) and as the President of the Society of Biblical Literature in 2020. She was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada in 2005, and into the American Academy for Jewish Research in 2014. Her most recent books are Cast Out of the Covenant: Jews and Anti-Judaism in the Gospel of John (2018) and The Bible and Cinema: An Introduction (2nd edition, 2022). She is currently working on a project on the so-called “parting of the ways” and the origins of Christianity.
Prof. SUSAN A. HANDELMAN
Intellectualism | Philosophy
Prof. Handelman is Professor Emeritus of English at Bar-Ilan University, where she also served as the Chair of the Department of English Literature and Linguistics (2007-09). Her fields of interest and expertise include visual rhetoric; the graphic novel; rabbinic thought and literary theory; Shakespeare; and literature and religion. She was a professor in the English Department at the University of Maryland (1979-2000). Besides numerous articles and anthologies that she co-edited, her major publications are The Slayers of Moses: The Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory (1982), Fragments of Redemption: Jewish Thought and Literary Theory in Benjamin, Scholem, and Levinas (1991), and Make Yourself a Teacher: Rabbinic Tales of Mentors and Disciples (2011).
Prof. PAUL FRANKS
Intellectualism | Philosophy
Prof. Franks is Professor of Philosophy and Judaic Studies, German, and Religious Studies at Yale University. He has taught at Indiana University and the University of Notre Dame, he has been visiting professor at the University of Chicago and KU Leuven, and he was the inaugural holder of the Jerahmiel S. and Carole S. Grafstein Chair of Jewish Philosophy at the University of Toronto. His specializes in Kantian and post-Kantian metaphysics and epistemology, and Jewish philosophy. In addition to numerous articles, he has published Franz Rosenzweig: Philosophical and Theological Writings (2000), and All or Nothing: Systematicity, Transcendental Arguments, and Skepticism in German Idealism (2005). Prof. Franks is also an Associate Editor of Internationales Jahrbuch des deutschen Idealismus.
Prof. ERIC LAWEE
Rabbinics | Parshanut
Prof. Lawee is professor of Bible at Bar-Ilan University where he holds the Asher Weiser Chair for Research in Medieval Jewish Biblical Interpretation. He was previously a member of the Department of Humanities at York University in Toronto, where he won a Dean’s Award for Outstanding Teaching in York’s Faculty of Arts in 2007-8. Prof. Lawee’s research is focused on medieval and early modern Judaism. His book, Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance toward Tradition: Defense, Dissent, and Dialogue (2001), won a Canadian Jewish Book Award in Biblical and Rabbinic Scholarship. And his most recent publication, Rashi’s Commentary on the Torah: Canonization and Resistance in the Reception of a Jewish Classic won the 2019 award of the Jewish Book Council in the category of Scholarship.
Prof. PAULA FREDRIKSEN
History
Prof. Fredriksen, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is Aurelio Professor of Scripture emerita at Boston University and Distinguished Visiting Professor emerita in the Department of Comparative Religions at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2018. She has published widely on the social and intellectual history of ancient Christianity, and on pagan-Jewish-Christian relations in the Roman Empire. Author of Augustine on Romans (1982) and From Jesus to Christ (1988), her Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews won the 1999 National Jewish Book Award. More recently, she has explored the development of Christian anti-Judaism, and Augustine’singular response to it, in Augustine and the Jews (2010), and has investigated the shifting conceptions of God and of humanity in SIN: The Early History of an Idea (2012). Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle (2017), won the 2018 Prose Award from the American Publishers’ Association. Her most recent study, When Christians Were Jews (2018), places the Jesus movement’s Jewish messianic message within the wider world of ancient Mediterranean culture, politics, and power.
Prof. PETER TRAWNY
Intellectualism | Philosophy
Prof. Trawny teaches at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal, where he also is the director of the Martin-Heidegger-Institut. Prof. Trawny has taught at several international universities such as the University of Vienna, the Tongji University in Shanghai, Södertörns Högskola in Stockholm at the Center for Baltic and East European Studies. His fields of specialization are philosophy, political thought and aesthetics. He is the editor of several volumes of the Martin-Heidegger-Gesamtausgabe (GA 35, 69, 73, 86, 90, 94-97). Among his numerous publications are Denkbarer Holocaust. Die politische Ethik Hannah Arendts (2005), Heidegger und der Mythos der jüdischen Weltverschwörung (2014), Europa und die Revolution (2014), Philosophie der Liebe (2019), and Krise der Wahrheit (2021). Prof. Trawny also translated Prof. Chighel’s book, Kabale, into German, and in 2018 he was a Senior Fellow at the Martin Buber Society in Jerusalem.
Prof. ANNA SHTERNSHIS
Literature
Prof. Shternshis is the Al and Malka Green Professor of Yiddish studies and director of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923 – 1939 (2006); When Sonia Met Boris: An Oral History of Jewish Life under Stalin (2017), and most recently co-author of Jews in the Soviet Union: A History: War, Conquest, and Catastrophe, 1939–1945 (2022). Together with artist Psoy Korolenko, Shternshis created and directed the Grammy-nominated Yiddish Glory project, an initiative that brought back to life forgotten Yiddish music written during the Holocaust in the Soviet Union. A recipient of 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship, she is currently working on a book tentatively entitled Last Yiddish Heroes: A Lost and Found Archive of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union about Yiddish music created in Nazi-occupied Ukraine.
BENJAMIN BALINT MA
Literature
Mr. Balint is the author of several acclaimed works of non-fiction. His most recent and most celebrated publication is Kafka’s Last Trial (2018), which has been translated into ten languages, and has won the 2020 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. Mr. Balint is a co-author of Jerusalem: City of the Book (2019), described by Moshe Halbertal as “one of the most intimate and beautiful portraits ever written of Jerusalem.” He has taught literature at the Al-Quds Bard College of Arts and Sciences in East Jerusalem. His reviews and cultural journalism have been published in the Wall Street Journal, Haaretz, the Claremont Review of Books, the Weekly Standard, and Die Zeit.
Prof. MICHAEL KOCHIN
Intellectualism | Political Science
Prof. Kochin is Professor Extraordinarius in the School of Political Science, Government, and International Relations at Tel Aviv University. He has held visiting appointments at Yale, Princeton, Toronto, Claremont McKenna College, and the Catholic University of America. He has written widely on the comparative analysis of institutions, political thought, politics and literature, and political rhetoric. Prof. Kochin is the author of three books: Gender and Rhetoric in Plato’s Political Thought (2002), Five Chapters on Rhetoric: Character, Action, Things, Nothing, and Art (2009) and (with Michael Taylor) An Independent Empire: Diplomacy & War in the Making of the United States (2020).
Dr. SLOMÓ KÖVES
Rabbinics | Hasidism
Rabbi Dr. Köves is the Executive Rabbi of the Unified Hungarian Jewish Congregation (Egységes Magyarországi Izraelita Hitközség) since its founding in 2004, and a founder of the Ashkenazium. Besides rabbinic studies, he received his doctorate in history from the University of Debrecen (2007). Dr. Köves spearheaded the foundation of the Open University of Jewish Studies in 2003. Between 2003 and 2009 he served as Hungarian editor, translator and publisher of various classical Jewish texts, including the Pesach Haggadah and Siddur. Dr. Köves has also attained renown for initiating the foundation of the Action Protection League, an NGO countering Antisemitism; for his ordination as the chief Jewish chaplain of the Hungarian Defence Forces; and for founding the Hungarian social welfare organisation CEDEK. His major publication is Zsidó szakadás – Hamburgtól Nagymihályig (2009).
Prof. DANIEL REISER
Intellectualism | History
Prof. Daniel Reiser heads the Department of Jewish Thought at Hertzog College, Israel. He specializes in Hasidic philosophy, modern mysticism, and theology in the Shoah. He is the author of several books and articles (published in Hebrew, English and Polish). His book Vision as a Mirror (2014) was awarded the World Union of Jewish Studies Matanel Prize for the best book in Jewish Thought published during the years 2013-2014 and his book Sermons from the Years of Rage (2017) was awarded the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research 2018. His latest books are Imagery Techniques in Modern Jewish Mysticism (2018); Language of Truth in the Mother Tongue: The Yiddish Sermons of Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter (2020); and was a co-editor for Hasidism, Suffering, and Renewal: The Prewar and Holocaust Legacy of R. Kalonymus Kalman Shapira (2021).
Prof. ORA WISKIND
Literature
Prof. Wiskind is Professor of Jewish Thought at Michlalah Jerusalem College in Israel, where she also serves as Head of the Graduate Program in Jewish Studies. Her research interests include Jewish thought and literary studies, Hasidism, and the interface between scriptural exegesis, culture and hermeneutics. Her major publications are Tradition and Fantasy in the Tales of Reb Nahman of Bratslav (1998), Wisdom of the Heart: The Teachings of Rabbi Ya’akov of Izbica-Radzyn (2010) and Hasidic Commentary on the Torah (2018), a National Jewish Book Award finalist.
Dr. MENACHEM FEUER
Literature
Dr. Feuer is adjunct professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Waterloo. He has also taught at D’Youville College in the Department of English (2006-08) and at the Center for Jewish Studies at York University (2013-18). He has written numerous articles, essays, and book reviews on the figure of the schlemiel in Jewish literature and film, from the standpoint of philosophy, religion, literary theory and cultural studies. He has published in Shofar, Modern Fiction Studies, MELUS, International Studies in Philosophy and the Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy. Dr. Feuer is an Editor at the popular literature, art, and culture website Berfrois. He also runs the highly acclaimed blog, Schlemiel Theory.
Prof. MICHAEL CHIGHEL
Intellectualism | Philosophy
Prof. Chighel is the Dean of the Ashkenazium where he teaches Jewish philosophy, as well as Jewish thought, history and literature in the “aspaklaria” of Jewish philosophizing. For the greater part of his professional life, Prof. Chighel produced Jewish television (1998-2009) and online videos for Chabad.org (2016-20). He has taught philosophy and Jewish studies in Canada at York University, Queen’s University and the University of Waterloo. During 2007-14 he held the Rohr Chair of Jewish Studies at the Lauder Business School in Vienna. Prof. Chighel has published various articles in Jewish philosophy and Ḥasidic Thought, and has translated two books from French. His major publication is Kabale. Das Geheimnis des Hebräischen Humanismus im Lichte von Heideggers Denken (2020).