Dekel Canetti is a cultural sociologist, interested in generation and maintenance of common narratives. He is writing his thesis on a born-again (Tshuva) Hasidic community in Mea Shearim, Jerusalem. Dekel received his M.A. in sociology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and B.A. in economics from Haifa University. Dekel also facilitated Paths to Peace, a Palestinian-Israeli discussion workshop in the College of Arts and Science. 

Yaelle Frohlich is a doctoral candidate in NYU's Joint Program in Hebrew and Judaic Studies and History. Her dissertation, "Holy Land in the Mind's Eye: Diaspora Jewish Perceptions of Palestine, 1830-1881," examines diverse, practical forms of engagement with Eretz Israel by European and American Jews prior to the rise of Zionism. In addition, she has conducted archival research on the publication of the poet Yehoash's Yiddish translation of the Bible. Frohlich is also the creator and curator of Jewish Geography, an online project exploring contemporary intersections between place, homeland, and Jewish identity. 

Mazalit Haim is a PhD candidate in Hebrew and Judaic Studies. Her research engages with affective structures that constituted the secular in modern Jewish nationalism, particularly modern Jewish manifestations of mourning, despair, loss, and hope, and their interplay within secular and religious texts and cultural expressions. Her dissertation “Between Lament and Hope: Affect and Politics in the Work of Y.H Brenner and Yehuda Amichai” deals with the public feelings of hope and despair manifested in the work of the early twentieth-century writer Y.H Brenner and the Statehood Generation poet Yehuda Amichai; the ways in which both complicated conventional Jewish and Zionist notions of hope and despair resonant with the Jewish mythopoeic paradigm of Destruction and Redemption. Mazalit also co-organizes the OUT LOUD series, an ongoing series of marathon public readings of texts written by prominent thinkers in the history of ideas held in New York City. The aim of this project is to unleash critical thought from the exclusive realm of academia to broader areas of public relevance.

Aviva Richman is originally from Baltimore, Maryland. She received a bachelor's degree in 2006 from Oberlin College summa cum laude, with a double major in Jewish History and Chemistry.  At NYU she is a doctoral candidate with a focus on Talmud and rabbinic literature, writing a dissertation entitled "The Problem of Consent: Sexual Consent and Coercion in the Babylonian Talmud."  She received the Wexner graduate fellowship and was also a graduate fellow at the Cardozo Center for Jewish Law.

Hannah Greene is a doctoral student at New York University’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. Her research focuses on American Jewish history and Women’s and Gender Studies, particularly American Jewish women’s healthcare reform work during the Progressive Era. Hannah’s additional interests include public health, the history of medicine, multiculturalism, and women’s activism in the United States. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 2012, where she focused on Jewish Studies and nineteenth-century English and American literature.

Gilah Kletenik joined the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies in 2013. She studies Jewish Philosophy, with a focus on modern Jewish thought. Gilah is particularly interested in philosophy of language and its intersection with political philosophy, specifically, political theology. Gilah is a recipient of a Wexner Graduate Fellowship in Jewish Studies as well as a Graduate Fellowship at the Center for Jewish Law and Contemporary Civilization. Gilah received her B. A. in Political Science and M.A. in Biblical and Talmudic Interpretation from Yeshiva University. 

Geoffrey Levin is a PhD candidate in Hebrew & Judaic Studies and History at New York University. His dissertation, titled "Another Nation: Israel, American Jews, and Palestinian Rights, 1949-1977," connects the changing ways in which American Jews reacted to Palestinian rights claims with broader shifts in Israeli policy, American society, and global politics. His articles have appeared in Arab Studies Journal, Israel Affairs, and Shofar. Geoffrey’s paper on the American Jewish Committee’s engagement with Israel’s Palestinian minority won the AIS Kimmerling Prize and will be published in Israel Studies Review. Geoffrey is an Israel Institute Doctoral Fellow and teaches at Rutgers University.

To learn more about Geoffrey, click here. 

Zachary Margulies is a doctoral candidate, studying Ancient Near Eastern languages and literature, with a concentration in Hebrew Bible. His research interests include biblical poetry and its relationship to wider eastern Mediterranean poetic traditions. His dissertation compares early poetic traditions of lamentation in the eastern Mediterranean, from Homer, Ugarit and the Bible, tracing the evolution of these traditions into their classical expressions.

To learn more about Zachary, click here. 

Alex Weisberg is a PhD Candidate in Ancient Judaism at New York University University. His research examines metaphysics of world and regimes of relation in early rabbinic literature, with particular attention paid to the laws of the sabbatical year, agricultural techniques, and human-animal relations. Alex holds a B.A. in Economics and Environmental Studies from the University of Wisconsin at Madison where he served on the board of directors for a student run educational farm; as well as rabbinic ordination from Yeshivat Sulaam Yaakov in Jerusalem, Israel. Currently, he lives in Riverdale, NY with his wife and two children where they own and run a farm-to-table café.   

Robert Cook is a doctoral student at HJS in the field of Rabbinics. After a BA and MPhil at the University of Cambridge, he made the move to NYU where he has been privileged to enjoy the academic depth and breadth the faculty and university have to offer. His main research interests here focus broadly on rabbinic stories, the redaction of the Talmud and, latterly, prayer texts in rabbinic literature.

Dotan Greenvald is pursuing his PhD in the joint program of History & Hebrew and Judaic Studies. His dissertation examines the complex and often unsettling relationship between Zionism and the city of Jerusalem from the foundational years of the Zionist movement in the late 19th century until the beginning of the British Mandate period in Palestine in the 1920s. On one hand, Jerusalem’s established Jewish community exemplified the unbroken continuity of Jewish life in Palestine. On the other hand, the pronounced piety of Jerusalem starkly contrasted with the Zionist program of secularization and modernization. His research traces the geographic, demographic, political and cultural recasting of Jerusalem from a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional ‘Old City’, relegated to the margins of Zionist hopes, into the most important political and ideological touchstone of Israeli state-building during the formative era of the Zionist movement. Greenvald argues that the “Zionization” of Jerusalem provides an important corrective to the common image of modern Israel as a Jewish utopia, heroically created by a “people without a land in a land without a people.” Dotan’s research interests include Jewish nationalism, Modern Jewish Thought, Israeli politics, Ottoman Palestine, and Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewry.

To learn more about Dotan, click here. 

Caroline Gruenbaum studies Medieval Hebrew Literature and History. Her dissertation topic will explore belletristic literature from Ashkenaz. She is especially interested in transmission of literary topoi across religious boundaries, and how Jewish editorial practices reflect the multi-faceted origins of their texts. Caroline holds a B.A. from Brown University in Judaic Studies, Medieval Studies, and Classics. 

Ki-Eun is a doctoral student in Hebrew and Judaic Studies with a focus on Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East. Her dissertation research examines the social landscape of the so-called “gentilics” in the Bible and other Northwest Semitic texts from the Late Bronze and Iron Ages. Her other areas of interest include literary history of the Bible, historiography and storytelling in ancient Israel, and manifestation of religious ideas in the Near East. Prior to coming to NYU, she earned her M.A. in Bible and Ancient Near East from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and her B.A. in linguistics from Korea University.

Brett Levi is a PhD candidate in the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and Taub Center for Israel Studies at NYU. His dissertation, "Expanding the Borders of Holiness: The Construction of the Postwar Haredi Landscape," examines strictly Orthodox Jewish engagement with territory and geographic space since World War II in Israel, North America, and Europe. Brett received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied History, Jewish Studies, and History of Art, and his master's degree from Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies, where he was awarded the prize for best master's thesis in 2013 for his paper “Hasidic Geopolitics and the Greater Land of Israel: Israeli Hasidic Rebbes Encounter the West Bank, Gaza and Territorial Withdrawal, 1982–2013.” Brett has worked at research institutes and non-profit organizations in New York, Boston, and Jerusalem. His primary research interests include the history of the Israeli landscape; ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities; and post-WWII  European Jewish history.

Roni Masel holds B.A. in Hebrew literature from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she continued as a graduate fellow at the Mandel School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, until transferring to NYU. Roni is working on historical fiction in Yiddish and Hebrew at the turn of the 19th century and its role in articulating various brands of Jewish nationalism. Other research interests include German-Jewish literature, historicism and theories of temporality, nationalism and postcolonial theory, queer theory, history of Zionism and central- and eastern European Jewish history. Roni's writings of non-fiction essays, poetry and prose can be found on various Hebrew online and print platforms, including: Granta Israel, Mikan Ve’eylakh, Helikon: Journal for Poetry, Ha’Oketz, Dibbuk Jerusalem, Eyruvin, Ma’amul and others.

Ilana Ben-Ezra is studying medieval Jewish-Christian relations, focusing on how Jews appear as ideas and historical realities in canon law. Her dissertation will focus on Jews in Pope Gregory IX's Liber Extra, examining why and how they emerge in specific cases. She will further explore the connection between Jews' role in the Liber Extra and the thought of Raymond of Penaforte, who Gregory ordered to compile the code.

Kimberly Cheng is broadly interested in historical points of contact and interaction between Jewish and Chinese populations in Europe, America, and Asia. For her dissertation, she will examine German Jewish refugee life in Shanghai during World War II, with a particular focus on children and memory. She holds a M.S.Ed. from the University of Pennsylvania and an A.B. from Cornell University in History and Jewish Studies.

Jill Joshowitz specializes in late antique Jewish history in the Eastern Mediterranean, with an emphasis on synagogue art and architecture. Prior to beginning her doctoral studies at NYU, Jill received her bachelor’s degree in Art History and Jewish Studies, as well as her master’s degree in Ancient Jewish history from Yeshiva University in New York. She has participated in two archaeological excavations in Israel, and is currently curating an exhibition on the legacy of the Arch of Titus in Jewish memory at the Yeshiva University Museum. 

Jaime Myers is a PhD student in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies focusing on Bible and the Ancient Near East.  She holds a B.A. in Philosophy and Religious Studies from Fordham University and an M.A. in Hebrew Bible from Union Theological Seminary.  She is primarily interested in the variety of ways belief and cult practice were constructed and expressed in the Ancient Near East. Her research interests include Hebrew Bible interpretation, ancient Near Eastern cultural history, constructions of divinity and “holiness,”  the ark of Yahweh, cult practice and ritual professionals.

Jonathan Schmidt-Swartz is a doctoral student in the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies focusing on Bible and the Ancient Near East. He received his B.A. summa cum laude in Religious Studies and Comparative Literature with minors in Near Eastern Studies and Jewish Studies from Cornell University in May 2015. He spent his junior year abroad at the University of Cambridge focusing on Bible and Modern Judaism.

To learn more about Jonathan, click here. 

Patrick Angiolillo is a doctoral student in the Skirball Department of Hebrew & Judaic Studies. His research currently focuses on the intersection of literary genres in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the investigation of the "lived experience" of the sectarian community associated with the Scrolls corpus. His research interests include the Dead Sea Scrolls, early Jewish prayer practice, ritual and performance theory and the history of Jewish wisdom literature. Patrick earned his MAR from Yale Divinity School in 2016 and since 2015 has served as a member of the Huqoq Excavation Project in the Galilee region of Israel. 

To learn more about Patrick, click here. 

Ilan Benattar is a doctoral student in the Joint Program in Hebrew and Judaic Studies and History. Prior to arriving at NYU, he earned an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies at CUNY Graduate Center and a B.A. in History and Arabic Studies at Binghamton University. His research focuses on the intellectual history of late Ottoman Jewish communities. Ilan is particularly interested in the theme of galut--"exile"--as it manifests in late Ottoman Jewish thought. Ilan’s research interests include Late Ottoman history, Modern Intellectual history, Mediterranean history, Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewries, and theory and philosophy of history.

Joshua Blachorsky is currently a doctoral student in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at NYU. Prior to this, he earned a master's degree from the University of Oxford, a bachelor's degree from Rutgers University, and an associate's degree from Rockland Community College. Josh hopes to focus his research on the intersection of history and Biblical interpretation in antiquity. His research interests include Midrash, Reception Studies, History of Halakha, and Religious History in Late-Antiquity. When he is not working, Josh enjoys good coffee, playing the drums, and being disappointed by the New York Jets.

Coming off with an M.A. from Trinity International University, Quinn entered NYU with the religious and historical world of ancient Israel in view. Quinn seeks to understand Israel as one of many southern Levantine entities embedded in larger socio-political processes, ranging as far north as Anatolia. Quinn’s research interests include Yahweh and Israelite Religion, Early Israel, Late Bronze Syria-Anatolia, Hieroglyphic Luwian, West Semitic Inscriptions, Levantine Archaeology, and the biblical books Judges through 2 Kings. He is currently serving as a Lecturer in Biblical Studies at The King’s College New York City.

To learn more about Quinn, click here. 

Mark Gondelman studies early modern Jewish mysticism with a concentration in the unstudied legacy of Abraham Miguel Cardoso (1626 – 1706), one of the most important Sabbatian theologians. Under the supervision of Professor Michah Gottlieb, Mark aims to understand his legacy within the broader context of early modern thought, philosophy, Jewish and Christian mystical traditions. Moreover, Mark believes it is important to revisit Cardoso’s thought through different perspectives such as modern philosophy, religious studies, and hermeneutics.