Tikvah Fellow
Berkowitz Fellow
Academic Year 2011-2012
Marc Hirshman
Marc Hirshman teaches rabbinic thought and midrash at the Melton Centre for Jewish Education of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where he is the incumbent of the Mandel Chair in Jewish Education. He serves also as the director of the Institute for Research on the Land of Israel at Yad Ben Zvi in Jerusalem.
Among his books are A Rivalry of Genius: Jewish and Christian Interpretation of the Bible in Late Antiquity (SUNY 1996), Torah for the Entire World: A Universalist School of Rabbinic Thought (in Hebrew, Hakibbutz Hameuchad 1999) and The Stabilization of Rabbinic Culture 100 C.E.- 350 C.E.: Texts on Education in their Late Antique Context (Oxford 2009).
Research
Studies in Rabbinic Thought: Education, Secular Knowledge, Pray and Israel
I am completing a critical edition of Ecclesiastes Rabbah chapters
1-6 with commentary and introduction. The introduction will include an attempt to situate the midrashic treatment of Ecclesiastes in both the history of exegesis of the book in late antiquity in general and in rabbinic thought in particular. I hope to accomplish preliminary research on a new volume on rabbinic thought, encompassing topics such as Education and Learning, The Land of Israel and Diaspora, and Prayer.
