Recent Dissertations
Recent
dissertations include:
Ruth Abusch-Magder, “Matzo Balls and Matzo Kleis: A Comparative Study of Domestic Jewish Life in the United States and Germany, 1840-1900.”
Elizabeth
Shanks Alexander, “Study Practices That Made
the Mishnah: The Evolution of a Tradition of Exegesis”
(1999). It was published as Transmitting Mishnah: The
Shaping Influence of Oral Tradition at Cambridge University
Press in 2006. Ms. Alexander is presently Associate Professor
of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia.
Michael Alexander, “Jazz-age Jews:
Arnold Rothstein, Felix Frankfurter, Al Jolson and the Jewish
Imagination” (1999). Mr. Alexander presently holds
the Murray Friedman Chair and is Director of the Feinstein
Center for American Jewry at Temple University. His prize-winning
book, Jazz Age Jews, was published by Princeton
University Press in 2001.
Alan
Appelbaum, “‘I Clothed You in Purple’:
The Rabbinic King-Parables of the Third-Century Roman Empire”
(2007). Alan Appelbaum is currently a Research Affiliate
in the Department of Religious Studies and the Program in
Judaic Studies at Yale.
Ben
Begleiter, “Imagining a Patriarch: Images
of Abraham in Early Jewish and Christian Exegesis”
(2004).
Lila
Corwin Berman, American Religious History. Working
Title of Dissertation: “Presenting Jews: Jewishness
and America, 1920-1960” (2004).
Jeffrey Chajes, “Spirit Possession
and the Construction of Early Modern Jewish Religiosity”
(1999). It was published as Between Worlds: Dybbuks,
Exorcists, and Early Modern Judaism by University of
Pennsylvania Press in 2003. Mr. Chajes teaches Jewish History
at the University of Haifa.
Jay
Eidelman, “‘In the Wilds of America’:
The Early Republican Origins of American Judaism, 1790-1830”
(1997). Mr. Eidelman is presently Historian at the Museum
of Jewish Heritage.
Sharon
Flatto, “Prague’s Rabbinic Culture:
The Concealed and Revealed in Ezekiel Landau's Writings”
(2000). Ms. Flatto is presently Post-Doctoral Fellow in
Judaic Studies at Brown University.
Chaya
Halberstam, “Rabbinic Responsibility for
Evil: Evidence and Uncertainty” (2004). It is forthcoming as Evidence and Uncertainty: Rabbinic Judges interpret the World at Indiana University Press. Ms. Halberstam
teaches at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.
Noam Pianko, “Diaspora Jewish Nationalism
and Identity in America, 1914-1967” (2004). Mr. Pianko
teaches at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA.