Adele Berlin
Robert H. Smith Professor of Hebrew Bible.
Department of English and Jewish Studies Program
Ph.D., 1976, University of Pennsylvania; B.A. 1964
aberlin@umd.edu
Dr. Berlin's special interests are literary approaches to the Bible and the theory and practice of biblical interpretation. Among her seven published books are Biblical Poetry Through Medieval Jewish Eyes (Indiana University Press, 1991), The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism (Indiana University Press, 1985), and Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative (Sheffield, 1983). She also is interested in exegesis and has published commentaries on Zephaniah (Anchor Bible, Doubleday, 1994), Lamentations (Westminster/John Knox Press), and Esther (Jewish Publication Society of America, 2001; Hebrew translation in the Miqra leYisrael series). In addition, she has written over thirty scholarly articles and edited three books. The last of these, The Jewish Study Bible (Oxford University press, 2004) received the national Jewish Book Award.
At the University of Maryland she has served as Director of the Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies (1988-1991), Acting Assistant Vice President of Academic Affairs (1993-1994), and Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs (1994-1997). She is currently Chair-elect of the University Senate and will serve as Chair in 2005-06.
Dr. Berlin is a fellow of the American Academy of Jewish Research and served on its Executive Committee. In 2000, she was the President of the Society of Biblical Literature. She has held many prestigious fellowships, including a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Bernard Cooperman
Louis
L. Kaplan Chair,
Associate Professor of Jewish History, Department of History
Ph.D., 1976, Harvard; M.A., 1972; M.A., 1969, Brandeis;
B.A. University of Toronto, 1968
cooperma@umd.edu
Dr. Cooperman's current research focuses on the development of communal institutions and political thought among Jews in Early Modern Italy. Recent publications include "Political Discourse in a Kabbalistic Register: Isaac De Lattes' Plea for Stronger Communal Government," in Be'erot Yitzhak, Isadore Twersky Memorial Volume (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), and "Theorizing Jewish Self-Government in Early Modern Italy" in Una Manna Buona per Mantova. Man Tov le-Man Tovah. Studi in onore di Vittore Colorni per il suo 92° compleanno (Florence: Olschki, 2004). Earlier work includes a translation of Tradition and Crisis by Jacob Katz (NYU Press, 1993), and edition of Pauline Wengeroff's Rememberings: Memoirs of a Russian Jewish Woman in the Nineteenth Century (University Press of Maryland, 2000), as well as editions of several volumes of scholarly essays, including Studies in Sixteenth-Century Jewish Thought (Harvard University Press, 1983); In Iberia and Beyond: Proceedings of a Conference to Mark the 500th Anniversary of the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (University of Delaware Press, 1996); and The Jews of Italy: Memory and Identity (University Press of Maryland, 2001).
Dr. Cooperman has been a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and a Lilly Fellow (1994-1995). He served as Director of the Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies from 1991 to 1997.
Course website: http://www.history.umd.edu/Faculty/BCooperman/
Maxine Grossman
Assistant Professor of Jewish
Studies and Religious Studies,
Jewish Studies Program
Ph.D., 2000, University of Pennsylvania; M.A., 1993;
A.B., Duke University, 1990
mgrossma@umd.edu
Working within the discipline of religious studies, Dr. Grossman is particularly interested in the intersections of history, literature, and cultural studies. Her primary research focus is on the literature of ancient Judaism and early Christianity, especially the Dead Sea Scrolls. Her publications in this area include Reading for History in the Damascus Document: A Methodological Study (Leiden: Brill, 2002), and articles or book chapters on 4QMMT (the so-called "Halakhic Letter" from Qumran), gender in the Damascus Document, competing notions of "priesthood" in the scrolls and the New Testament, and Solomon Schechter's portrayal of ancient Judaism. An interest in religious studies methodology and feminist critical scholarship has led Dr. Grossman to new research in the area of religion and popular culture. Her publications in this field include articles on images of God in country music and the popular perception of the Dead Sea Scrolls. She is at work on a book on religion in contemporary U.S. popular culture.
Dr. Grossman teaches courses on ancient Judaism, Hebrew Bible, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as on religion in popular culture, gender in contemporary religious culture, and non-mainstream religious movements.
She is also advisor to the minor in Religious Studies and regularly
teaches the core course for the minor, "Introduction to the Study of
World Religions."
Miriam Isaacs
Visiting
Assistant Professor of Yiddish, Jewish Studies Program
Ph.D., 1971, Cornell University; M.A., 1969; B.A.,
1967, Brooklyn College
misaacs@umd.edu
Dr. Isaacs specializes in Yiddish language and culture, and sociolinguistics. She is currently working on a book about the range of Yiddish culture and its uses as a tool of empowerment in the Displaced
Person's camps in Germany, Austria and Italy in the immediate aftermath of World War II. She continues her scholarship on Yiddish language among Hasidic Jews. Her most recent article, "Languages Sometimes in Contact: Components in Yiddish Hasidic Children's Literature," has appeared in Yiddish After the Holocaust (2004), published by Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Boulevard Press. Two other articles, "Haredi, Haymish, and Frim: Yiddish Vitality and Language Choice in a Multilingual Community" and "Contentious Partners: Yiddish and Hebrew in Haredi Israel," appeared in Pious Voices: Languages of Ultra-Orthodox Jews, which she edited along with Lewis Glinert, as vol. 138, #3 (1999) of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language. She also published "Yiddish in Orthodox Communities of Jerusalem," in The Politics of Yiddish: Studies in Language, Literature and Society (Altamira Press, 1998) and "Creativity in Hasidic Communities" in Yiddish Language and Culture: Then and Now (Creighton University Press). She has published essays on Holocaust memoirs, "Shards," in Second Generation Voices, edited by Alan Berger.
Dr. Isaacs has been teaching at the University of Maryland since 1995. Her teaching includes basic Yiddish language and literature in the original and in translation, as well as courses on Yiddish theater and film, fantasy and the supernatural in Yiddish literature and on Holocaust and post-Holocaust literature.
Sheila Jelen
Assistant Professor of Hebrew Literature,
Department of English and Jewish Studies Program
Ph.D., 2000, University of California-Berkeley;
B.A., 1993, University of Michigan
sjelen@umd.edu
Dr. Jelen is an assistant professor of English and Jewish Studies. Her field of specialization is modern Jewish literature and she teaches courses on American Jewish Literature, The Literature of the Holocaust, Modern Hebrew Literature, Gender and Jewish Literature, as well as an Introduction to Jewish Literature. She is currently a fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Advanced Jewish Studies where she is completing a book on the first modern Hebrew woman writer,
entitled Intimations of Difference: The Hebrew Fiction of Dvora Baron. Dr. Jelen is also currently co-editing two volumes of essays: Hebrew, Gender and Modernity: Critical Responses to Dvora Baron's Fiction and History and Literature: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue.
Hayim Lapin
Associate Professor of Ancient Jewish
History and Rabbinics,
Department of History and Jewish Studies Program
Ph.D., 1994, Columbia University; M.A., 1987, Jewish
Theological Seminary; B.A., 1987, Jewish Theological Seminary;
B.A., 1986, Columbia University
hlapin@umd.edu
Dr. Lapin currently serves as the Director of the Meyerhoff Center. He is the author of Early Rabbinic Civil Law and the Social History of Roman Galilee: A Study of Mishnah Tractate Baba' Mesi'a' (Brown Judaic Studies 307 through Scholars' Press, 1995) and Economy, Geography, and Provincial History in Later Roman Palestine (Mohr Siebeck, 2001). He also has edited Religious and Ethnic Communities in Later Roman Palestine (University Press of Maryland, 1998) and, with Dale Martin, Jews, Antiquity, and the Nineteenth-Century Imagination (University Press of Maryland, 2003) and many articles on rabbis and rabbinic culture in the period of the Mishnah and Talmud.
Dr. Lapin is currently working on a book on the history of the rabbinic movement in Palestine. Since coming to Maryland he has been awarded a number of awards including an NEH Fellowship at the Albright Institute for Archaeological Research (Jerusalem, 1996-1997) and a General Research Board Fellowship (1999).
Course website: http://www.history.umd.edu/faculty/HLapin
Nili Levy
Instructor of Hebrew language,
Department of Asian and East European Languages and Literatures
M.A., 1985, Baltimore Hebrew University;
B.A., 1966, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
nlevy@umd.edu
Ms. Levy has been teaching Hebrew language at the University of Maryland since 1983. Before she moved to the United States, Levy taught Hebrew language, literature and composition for ten years in Israeli high schools, and she taught ulpan at the Baltimore Hebrew University for four years. She currently serves as a member of the Hebrew committee for the S.A.T. II Tests administered by the College Entrance and Examination Board.
Yelena Luckert
Librarian
M.L.S., 1992, SUNY-Albany; M.A. 1989, SUNY-Binghamton; B.A.,
1985
yluckert@umd.edu
Ms. Luckert is the Judaica librarian responsible for building and managing the Jewish Studies collection. She also provides assistance with research questions and teaches library instruction classes for Jewish Studies courses. Luckert has published Soviet Jewish History, 1917-1991: An Annotated Bibliography and is currently working on a bibliography on Jewish women in Russia and the former Soviet Union. Along with Dr. Cooperman, she is co-editing a volume of proceedings from the recent Jewish Studies conference, "Jewish Books/Jewish People: Text, Literacy, and Culture over the Centuries."
Charles H. Manekin
Associate Professor of Jewish Philosophy.
Department of Philosophy
Ph.D., 1984, Columbia University; M.A., 1979; B.A., 1975,
Yale University
manekinc@umd.edu
Dr. Manekin specializes in medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophy and is also interested in the history of science among Muslims and Jews. The focus of Manekin's research has been Aristotelian and humanist logic in Hebrew, the philosophies of Moses Maimonides and Levi Gersonides, and the problem of free will in Jewish philosophy. He has written On Maimonides (Wadsworth, 2004) and The Logic of Gersonides: A Translation of "Sefer ha-Heqqesh ha-Yashar" (The Book of Correct Syllogism) of Rabbi Levi ben Gershom with Introduction, Commentary, and Analytical Glossary (Kluwer, 1992), and edited A Straight Path: Studies in Medieval Philosophy and Culture: Essays in Honor of Arthur Hyman (Catholic University Press, 1988) and Freedom and Moral Responsibility: General and Jewish Perspectives (University Press of Maryland, 1997). He is the editor of the forthcoming Medieval Jewish Philosophy in Texts in the History of Philosophy series published by Cambridge University Press, and a principal translator and coeditor of the Routledge Jewish Philosopher Reader (Routledge, 2000).
Dr. Manekin was recently awarded a three-year Collaboration Grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities to prepare a web-based translation and revision of the standard reference work on medieval Hebrew translations from the Arabic and the Latin and has also received fellowships from the NEH (1985), the Yad Hanadiv Foundation (1991-1992), and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture (1999-2000). He has taught at Hebrew University and Ben Gurion University in Israel, and has been an occasional Visiting Senior Lecturer at Bar Ilan University since 1993.
Course website: http://www.philosophy.umd.edu/people/faculty/manekin_charles/
Marsha L. Rozenblit
Harvey M. Meyerhoff Professor of
Jewish History, History Department
Ph.D., 1980, Columbia University; M.A., 1974; A.B., 1971,
Barnard College
mrozenbl@umd.edu
A social and cultural historian of the Jews of Central Europe, Dr. Rozenblit has published The Jews of Vienna, 1867-1914: Assimilation and Identity (1984), which also appeared in a German translation (1989). This book used quantified methods to explore the impact of immigration, social mobility, residential concentration, education, and intermarriage and conversion on the integration of Viennese Jews into Austro-German society. Recently she has written Reconstructing a National Identity: The Jews of Habsburg Austria During World War I (Oxford, 2001), which explores how the Jews, a group profoundly loyal to the multinational Monarchy, coped with the collapse of that supranational state and the creation of nation-states. Dr. Rozenblit has also written many articles on such subjects as Jewish religious reform in nineteenth-century Vienna, synagogue selection in nineteenth-century Baltimore, and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America during the Holocaust.
Dr. Rozenblit has held fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the University of Maryland's General Research Board. She served on the editorial boards of the Association for Jewish Studies Review and Jewish Social Studies, and regularly evaluates manuscripts for journals, presses, the NEH, and the Dissertation Prize Committee of the Austrian Cultural Institute. She was the Director of the Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies from 1998-2003. She is also a fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research.
Eric Zakim
Assistant Professor of Hebrew Language and Culture
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, 1996
zakim@umd.edu
Before coming to the University of Maryland in 2002, Dr. Zakim was on the faculty at Duke University for six years. He teaches courses in Hebrew Language and Israeli culture, and coordinates the Hebrew language program. Dr. Zakim received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature for a dissertation on "The Project of Expression in Modernist Literature and Music: David Fogel, Arnold Schoenberg, and David Grossman." He has published seven articles and guest-edited a volume of Prooftexts , the leading scholarly journal in his field. His book, To Build and Be Built: Landscape, Literature, and the Construction of Zionist Identity, will be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in Fall 2005, and he is currently co-editing a volume of essays on culture in the Mediterranean, Mediterranean Studies: Rethinking the Boundaries of Culture, which will be published by the MLA Press.
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