Teaching Faculty

Alejandro F. Botta

Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible

Email: abotta@bu.edu

Alejandro F. Botta teaches Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near Eastern languages in the School of Theology. He recently published The Aramaic and Egyptian Legal Traditions at Elephantine: An Egyptological Approach (T&T Clark, 2009); co-edited “The Bible and the Hermeneutics of Liberation,” Semeia Studies 59 (Society of Biblical Literature, 2009); and is presently working on an Aramaic Namebook from Ancient Egypt (with Bezalel Porten) and on a commentary on the Book of Chronicles.

Courses in Jewish Studies

• The Cultural Background of the Hebrew Bible (STH TO 814)
• Hebrew Reading and Exegesis I (STH TO 815)
• Hebrew Wisdom (STH TO 816)
• Hebrew Reading and Exegesis II (STH TO 819)
• The Book of Psalms (STH TO 821)

Katheryn Pfisterer Darr

Professor of Hebrew Bible and Harrell F. Beck Scholar of Hebrew Scripture

Email: kdarr@bu.edu

Katheryn Darr teaches the Hebrew Bible in the School of Theology. Her three books and numerous essays have primarily focused on the books of Isaiah and Ezekiel. She authored the commentary on Ezekiel for the New Interpreter’s Bible commentary series, for which she also served on the Editorial Board (Abingdon Press, 2001). Professor Darr won the Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1989. Currently, she is researching proverbs as they appear in ancient Israel’s prophetic corpus.

Courses in Jewish Studies

• Hebrew Bible 1 (STH TO 704)
• Biblical Hebrew (STH TO 723)

David Frankfurter

Professor of Religion and Aurelio Chair for the Appreciation of Scripture

Email: dtmf@bu.edu

David Frankfurter teaches in the areas of early Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature, early and late antique Christianity, and comparative approaches to magic, popular religion, cults of saints, and religion and violence. His publications include Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance (1998) and Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in History (2006), both from Princeton University Press and both winners of the American Academy of Religion’s award for Excellence in the Study of Religion, as well as numerous articles on apocalyptic literature, martyrology, magic, and the Christianization of Egypt.

Courses in Jewish Studies

• The Open Heaven: Apocalyptic Literature in Early Judaism and Christianity (RN 308/608)
• Magical Texts: Literature and Practice (RN 494/794)
• Religions of the World: Western (RN 104)

Abigail Gillman

Associate Professor of German and Hebrew and Convener of German and Hebrew

Email: agillman@bu.edu

Abigail Gillman lectures in the core curriculum and oversees the Hebrew and German sections of the Modern Languages & Comparative Literature Department. She teaches courses on Franz Kafka, nineteenth-century German literature, Vienna in 1900, modern Hebrew literature, German-Jewish literature and thought, and the literary afterlife of the book of Genesis. Her most recent publication, Viennese Jewish Modernism: Freud, Hofmannsthal, Beer-Hofmann, and Schnitzler (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), examines the role Jewish thinkers played in European modernism.

Courses in Jewish Studies

• Hebrew (LH)
• The Modern Jew (RN 339)
• The Heretical Jew (RN336)
• Topics in Religion and Literature (RN 524 B1)

Michael A. Grodin

Professor of Health Law, Bioethics & Human Rights and Professor of Family Medicine and Psychiatry

Email: grodin@bu.edu

Michael Grodin is Director of the Project on Medicine and the Holocaust. Dr. Grodin has received numerous teaching awards and has served on national and international panels and commissions focusing on medical ethics, human rights, and the Holocaust. He also received a special citation from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for “profound contributions—through original and creative research—to the cause of Holocaust education and remembrance.” He is the author of over 200 articles and the editor or co-editor of 5 books in the fields of Holocaust studies, bioethics, health, and human rights.

Courses in Jewish Studies

• Jewish Bioethics (RN 439/739/STH TX 850)

Nancy Harrowitz

Associate Professor of Italian

Email: nharrow@bu.edu

Nancy Harrowitz teaches courses on modern Italian literature, on fascism and the Holocaust in Italy, and on Holocaust literature and film. Her work for the past few years has concentrated primarily on Primo Levi and she is currently writing a book on the concepts of shame, autobiography, and testimony in Levi’s works. She has published Antisemitism, Misogyny and the Logic of Cultural Difference: Matilde Serao and Cesare Lombroso (University of Nebraska Press, 1995), has edited Tainted Greatness: Antisemitism and Cultural Heroes (Temple University Press, 1995), and co-edited with Barbara Hyams Jews and Gender: Responses to Otto Weininger (Temple University Press, 1996).

Courses in Jewish Studies

• Representations of the Holocaust in Literature and Film (XL 281/RN 385)
• Primo Levi Within Holocaust Studies (LI 459/XL 459/RN 459)

Steven T. Katz

Slater Professor of Jewish and Holocaust Studies and Director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies

Email: stk1@bu.edu

Steven T. Katz teaches Holocaust Studies as well as courses on Judaism, Jewish Mysticism, and Modern Jewish Thought. His many publications include four edited volumes on comparative mysticism, four volumes on Post-Holocaust Theology, and the multi-volume Holocaust in Historical Context, volume 1 of which appeared in 1994; volume 2 is shortly forthcoming. He is the editor of the journal Modern Judaism, and has held fellowships and lectured at universities all over the world, including Australia, China, England, Israel, and South Africa. In December 2010 he was appointed Academic Adviser to the International Task Force on the Holocaust, sponsored by the European Union. In 2011-2012, he was the Levine Invitational Fellow at the US Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.

Courses in Jewish Studies

• Introduction to Judaism (RN 216)
• The Holocaust (RN 384/684)
• Introduction to Classical Jewish History (RN 218)
• Judaism in the Modern Period (RN 328/628)
• Jewish Mysticism (RN 325/625)

Jonathan Klawans

Associate Professor of Religion and Director of the Division of Religious & Theological Studies

Email: jklawans@bu.edu

Jonathan Klawans joined the Department of Religion and the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies in the fall of 1997. Professor Klawans is a specialist in the religion and religious literature of ancient Judaism. He teaches courses in Western Religion, the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient Jewish history, and Rabbinic literature. He has published articles in journals such as AJS Review, Harvard Theological Review, Journal of Jewish Studies, New Testament Studies, Numen, and Religious Studies Review. He is also editor for ancient Judaism for the journal Currents in Biblical Research.

Courses in Jewish Studies

• World Religion West (RN 104)
• The Hebrew Bible (RN 201)
• Priests and Prophets (RN 306/606)
• Readings in Classical Hebrew (RN 320/620)
• Wisdom in Israel (RN 321)
• Introduction to Rabbinic Literature (RN 324/624/STH TX 824)
• The Dead Sea Scrolls (RN 334/634)
• Judaism in the First Century (RN 335/635)
• Theory of Religion (RN 495)

Deeana Copeland Klepper

Associate Professor of Religion and History and Chair of the Department of Religion

Email: dklepper@bu.edu

Deeana Klepper teaches medieval and early modern European religious history, with special interest in Jewish-Christian relations. Her publications explore the complicated, contradictory attitudes of medieval Christians to Jews and Jewish tradition. Her current work examines some of the ways Christian thinkers understood, justified, and criticized policies of Jewish expulsion, examining the nexus between Augustine’s doctrine of necessary tolerance and emerging policies of absolute intolerance. Klepper has received grants and fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, and the American Philosophical Society.

Courses in Jewish Studies

• Gender and Judaism (RN 337)
• Topics in Medieval Religious Culture: Religious Cultures in Contact and Conflict: Jewish-Christian Encounter (RN 470/HI 407)

Hillel Levine

Professor of Sociology and Religion

Email: hlevine@bu.edu

Hillel Levine has written and lectured on ethnic violence and normative conflict resolution, and serves as President of the International Center for Conciliation. Previously he directed the preliminary planning for the Holocaust Museum on the Washington Mall.

Courses in Jewish Studies

• History of Judaism (RN 322/622)
• Jewish Mystical Movements and Modernization, 1492–2000 (RN 326/626)
• American Jewish Experiences (RN 330/630)
• Antisemitism (RN 333/633)
• The Holocaust (RN 384)
• Topics in Judaic Studies (RN 499/799)

Diana Lobel

Associate Professor of Religion and Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies in Religion

Email: dnlobel@bu.edu

Diana Lobel teaches comparative religious thought. Her teaching emphasizes interactions between philosophy and religion, close textual interpretation, and spirituality and religious experience. Professor Lobel’s early work was on the impact of Sufi mysticism on Jewish philosophy. Her forthcoming book, The Quest for God and the Good: Philosophy as a Living Experience (Columbia University Press) explores concepts of divinity and goodness across philosophical and religious traditions, East and West. Her next project will continue the theme of East-West dialogue on happiness and the flourishing life.

Courses in Jewish Studies

• Sacred Texts of World Religions (RN 206)
• Religious Thought: The Quest for God and the Good/Philosophy and Religion (PH 245/RN 245)
• Classical Jewish Thought (RN 323)
• Mysticism and Philosophy: Medieval Jewish Perspectives (RN 326)
• Topics in Religious Thought: Religious Thought, East and West (RN 452)

Simon Rabinovitch

Peter T. Paul Assistant Professor of History

Email: srabinov@bu.edu

Simon Rabinovitch teaches modern Jewish and European history. His published articles examine Jewish politics in revolutionary Russia, Jewish nationalist thought, and Jewish folkloristics and ethnography. He is currently editing two anthologies of Jewish thought and politics: Diaspora Nationalism in Modern Jewish Thought (Brandeis University Press) and Modern Jewish Politics: Ideologies, Identities, and the Jewish Question (University of Wisconsin Press). Professor Rabinovitch is also working on a monograph examining Jewish autonomy in late imperial and revolutionary Russia.

Courses in Jewish Studies

• Jews in the Modern World (HI 223)
• History of the Jews in Russia and Eastern Europe (HI 337)
• Topics in Jewish History (HI 552)
• New in fall 2012: Foundations of Jewish Politics (HI 3xx/RN 332)

Adam Seligman

Professor of Religion

Email: seligman@bu.edu

Adam Seligman teaches theory and sociology of religion, and serves as a research associate at the Institute on Culture, Religion & World Affairs. His publications address issues of trust, authority, civil society, and religious toleration. His most recent publication, Modest Claims: Dialogues and Essays on Tolerance and Tradition (University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), addresses issues of tolerance and tradition between the three major monotheistic faiths. Currently, he directs the Cross-National Study of Interreligious Tolerance, and is working on the issue of religion and toleration with the help of a grant from the Ford Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Courses in Jewish Studies

• The Heretical Jew (with Abigail Gillman) (RN 336)

Michael Zank

Professor of Religion and Acting Director, The Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies (AY 2011-12)

Email: mzank@bu.edu

Michael Zank studied in Göttingen, Kiel, Heidelberg, Jerusalem, and at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. He holds the equivalent of a masters degree in Protestant Theology from the Evangelical Church of the Palatinate (Speyer/Germany) and a PhD in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University. He has been teaching  Jewish studies, religious studies, and philosophy of religion at Boston University since 1994. Zank is the author of The Idea of Atonement in the Philosophy of Hermann Cohen (Brown Judaic Studies, 2000), translator and editor of Leo Strauss, The Early Writings (SUNY Press, 2002), and editor of New Perspectives on Martin Buber (Mohr Siebeck, 2006). He also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy. For more information see HERE.

Courses in Jewish Studies

• The Bible (CASRN 101)
• Moses (UHCRN 101/CASRN 221)
• Holy City: Jerusalem in Time, Space, and the Imagination (CASRN 220)
• Modern Jewish Thought (CASRN 329/629)
• The Modern Jew (with Abigail Gillman) (CASRN 339/639)
• Maimonides (CASRN 420/720, PH409/609)

Jonathan Zatlin

Associate Professor of History (currently on sabbatical)

Email: jzatlin@bu.edu

Jonathan Zatlin teaches modern European history, focusing on Germany in particular. His initial work centered on the collapse of communism, but more recently he has become interested in Jewish history. He is currently writing a book that disentangles the (surprisingly persistent) notion that Jews have an affinity for money by tracing the fortunes and misfortunes of German Jews and their detractors during the last 150 years. Zatlin has held fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), the Fulbright Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council.

Courses in Jewish Studies

• Jews in Modern German History (HI 443)