University / institution contact details
Position: Lecturer/Professor
Department of Hebrew (Geesteswetenschappen), Universiteit van Amsterdam (University of Amsterdam)
Hebreeuws (Department of Hebrew)
Spuistraat 134
Amsterdam
1012 VB
Netherlands
Teaches (T) and/or researches (R) in:
2. History of the Jewish People: R
14: Modern: R
6. Literature (other than Biblical and Rabbinic): R
45: Recent: R
9. Contemporary Studies: R
73: Sociology (including population studies): R
Description
During the 1980s, I studied Classics and Hebrew and Jewish studies in Amsterdam and at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Upon my Ph.D. in 1995, I received a Frances Yates Fellowship at the Warburg Institute in London. Since 1997 I have held the chair in Hebrew and Jewish Studies (formally: of Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac languages and cultures from the 1st century AD) in the Hebrew department of the University of Amsterdam. Since 2008, I am also working as the director of the Institute of Culture and History, the largest of the faculty\'s research institutes. In my \'spare\' time I serve, among others, as chairman of the Academic Committee of the Levisson rabbinical training programme, as chairman of the Menasseh ben Israel Institute (a joint venture by UvA and the Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam), and as a member of the Advisory Board of the Jewish Educational Centre \'Crescas\'.
Research interests
Over the years I have specialized in (early) modern Jewish intellectual history, with the history of Hebrew literacy and linguistics and, more recently, of 19th- and 20th-century European Jewish scholarship and identity as my main areas of interest. For some years now, I have been a co-editor of Studia Rosenthaliana (Louvain: Peeters) as well as of Zutot: Perspectives on Jewish culture , the department\'s own peer-reviewed yearbook, published by Brill Boston.
Larger research projects that I am currently in the process of co-developing include:
• \'Jewish educational media between tradition and modernity\', in collaboration with prof. dr. S. Laessig and dr. D. Sadowsky of the Georg-Eckert-Institut (Braunschweig)
• \'Halakhah in the Modern World\', in collaboration with prof. dr. Frishman (UL), dr. L. Teugels (associate researcher UvA) and the Levisson Institute, Amsterdam.
• \'Hebrew Cultures in Europe, 1500-2000\', in collaboration with dr. A. Schatz (King\'s College London)
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