Tikvah Affiliate Scholars 2011 - 2012
The Center associates scholars from NYU and other institutions of learning in New York as Affiliates, with a view to encouraging and facilitating scholarship by them in the field of Law & Jewish civilization, as well as enlisting their support in the learning programs of the Center.
Jay R. Berkovitz
Jay Berkovitz is Professor of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has held numerous visiting appointments, recently as the Lady Davis Professor of Jewish History at the Hebrew University. He specializes in the early modern history of the Jews, with emphasis on Jewish law, ritual, and communal governance. His publications include The Shaping of Jewish Identity in Nineteenth-century France (Wayne, 1989); Rites and Passages: The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Culture in France, 1650-1860 (Penn, 2004); Tradition and Revolution in Early Modern France [Hebrew] (Mercaz Zalman Shazar, 2007); and a forthcoming book on seventeenth-century rabbinic authority Ya’ir Hayyim Bacharach. He is also the Co-editor of Jewish History.
Berkovitz is the recipient of the inaugural National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Scholar Fellowship for 2011-2012, which is co-sponsored by the Center for Jewish History. His current research project, titled "Protocols of Justice: Family, Community and Law in Early Modern France," is based on the records of the Metz rabbinic court during the years 1771-1789.
Rabbi Saul Berman
Rabbi Saul J. Berman was ordained at Yeshiva University, from which he also received his B.A. and his M.H.L. He completed a degree in law, a J.D., at New York University, and an M.A. in Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley. He did advanced studies in Jewish Law at Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University Law Schools. Since 1971 Rabbi Berman serves as Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University. Rabbi Berman was Rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel of Berkeley CA (1963-1969), Young Israel of Brookline, MA (1969-1971) and of Lincoln Square Synagogue in Manhattan (1984-1990.) Since 1990 he has served as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University School of Law, where he teaches a seminar in Jewish Law. Aside his academic appointments, from 1997 until 2006, Rabbi Berman served as Director of Edah. Rabbi Berman is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Judaica and is the author of numerous articles which have been published in journals such as Tradition, Judaism, Journal of Jewish Studies, Dinei Yisrael, and others.
Rabbi Saul Berman was a Tikvah Fellow for the Academic Year 2009 - 2010.
Gabriella Blum
Gabriella Blum is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Law School, where she teaches international law and international conflict management.
Following her studies of law and economics at Tel-Aviv University, Blum joined the Israel Defense Forces, and served as a senior legal advisor in the International Law Department, Military Advocate General's Corps. During her military service, she was involved in the Israeli-Arab peace negotiations, Israeli strategic cooperation with foreign forces, and the administration of the Palestinian occupied territories.
After completing the LL.M. and SJD degrees at Harvard, she returned to the IDF, and then joined the Israeli National Security Council, Prime Minister's Office, as a strategic advisor. In 2005, she returned to Harvard to join the Law School faculty.
Blum is the author of Islands of Agreement: Managing Enduring Armed Rivalries, (Harvard University Press, 2007), and of the recently released co-authored book (with Philip Heymann), Laws, Outlaws, and Terrorists: Lessons from the War on Terrorism (MIT Press), as well as of several journal articles on international law and the laws of war.
Gabriella Blum was a Tikvah Fellow for the Academic Year 2010 - 2011.
Rabbi Tully Harcsztark
Tully Harcsztark is Founding Principal of SAR High School in Riverdale, New York. He is co-founder and spiritual leader of Davar, a unique learning community in Teaneck, New Jersey. He also served as Rabbi of Congregation Keter Torah in Teaneck. He received his ordination from Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary at Yeshiva University and earned an M.A. in Jewish History from Bernard Revel Graduate School.
His work is centered on bridging theory and practice in the development of institutions committed to combining advanced study of classical Jewish texts with the study of general philosophy and culture. His research focuses on the study of Talmud and Jewish Thought against the backdrop of hermeneutics and cultural studies. In academic year 2010-11, Rabbi Harcsztark will be dividing his time between the Tikvah Fellowship and his responsibilities as Principal of SAR High School in Riverdale, NY.
Rabbi Tully Harcsztark was a Tikvah Fellow for the Academic Year 2010 - 2011.
Richard Hidary
Richard Hidary is an assistant professor of Judaic Studies at Yeshiva University, having previously taught at New York University and Brooklyn College. He has published one book, Dispute for the Sake of Heaven: Legal Pluralism in the Talmud (Brown University Press, 2010), as well as articles appearing in AJS Review, Dine Israel, Encyclopedia Judaica, and Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception. He is also a rabbinics reviewer for The Lost Bible Project: The Library of Israel in Late Antiquity, to be published by JPS, and a contributor to the forthcoming New Oxford Annotated Translation of the Mishnah. An ordained rabbi, Richard is the founding director of Merkaz Moreshet Yisrael, which produces teachers guides for high school Jewish studies. Richard's next book project will analyze Talmudic dialectic and argumentation in the context of the Greco-Roman rhetorical tradition.
Suzanne Last Stone
Suzanne Last Stone is Professor of Law at Cardozo School of Law and Director of Yeshiva University’s Center for Jewish Law and Contemporary Civilization. She has held the Gruss Visiting Chair in Talmudic Civil Law at both the Harvard and University of Pennsylvania Law Schools, and has visited at Princeton, Columbia Law, Hebrew University Law, and Tel Aviv Law. Before teaching, she clerked for Judge John Minor Wisdom of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and practiced litigation at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind. Stone writes on the intersection of Jewish legal thought and contemporary legal and political theory.
