Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Hollender is member of the Executive Committee and president of the EAJS 2018-2023. She teaches medieval Judaism and a variety of topics in Judaic Studies at the Department of Jewish Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt since 2011, having held research and teaching positions at several German universities, and research fellowships at the Hebrew University Jerusalem and the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia). She was professor for the religion of Judaism at Bochum (2009-2011) and held a guest professorship at Graz (2002).
She holds a PhD in Jewish Studies from Cologne University and a Habilitation from Duisburg University. She specializes in medieval Hebrew poetry and liturgy, and more specifically in Ashkenazic piyyut and its commentaries. In her research, she reconstructs the inner-Jewish cultural transfer with regard to liturgy and piyyut, investigates the potential of liturgy for the reconstruction of medieval Jewish (cultural) history, and uses detailed comparisons to identify individual, regional, and temporal trends.
Her books include Qedushta‘ot des Simon b. Isaak nach dem Amsterdam Mahsor. Übersetzung und Kommentar (1994), Clavis Commentariorum of Hebrew Liturgical Poetry in Manuscript (2005), Piyyut Commentary in Medieval Ashkenaz (2008), Liturgie und Geschichte. Der Aschkenasische Machsor und jüdische Mobilität im Mittelalter – Ein Methodologischer Versuch (2015), and, with Dagmar Börner Klein, Rabbinische Auslegungen zum Buch Ester (2000). Together with Joachim Yeshaya she edited Exegesis and Poetry in Medieval Karaite and Rabbanite Texts (2016), together with Joachim Yeshaya and Naoya Katsumata, she edited The Poet and the World (2019). Together with Annelies Kuyt, she edits Frankfurter Judaistische Beiträge – Frankfurt Jewish Studies Bulletin.
Elisabeth Hollender first attended an EAJS congress as graduate student in 1990 (Troyes), and has ever since regarded the European Association of Jewish Studies as an important part of her intellectual home, complementing the small departments of Jewish Studies she was and is associated with. International cooperation, inspiration by colleagues from other European countries, and communication among scholars working under partially comparable conditions are among the factors that enable us to advance our research and to develop study programs that will educate the next generation of scholars and teachers in Jewish Studies.