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.