Bio

(“Self Description”)

I see myself as an historian of religions with a particular interest in the study of the beliefs and practices of lay Jews and Christians from various periods. I am a strong believer in the many intellectual and scholarly benefits of studying more than one religious culture, whether a comparison is intended or not. This is why I study, teach, and write about the social history of Jews as reflected in their legal works, but also about various aspects of contemporary Catholicism. I think that this diversity enriches me continuously with insights that a study of one period, place, or culture might not provide.

A native Israeli, I grew up in Haifa. Before moving to France in 1994, I studied for several years in Yeshivat Ha-Kibbutz ha-Dati of Ein-Tzurim. During a five-year stay in Paris, I studied Catholic theology (Institut Catholique de Paris) and religious studies (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Sorbonne). Between 2000-2009 I have been a Visiting Fellow at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Yeshiva University in New York, a lecturer at the Department of Jewish Studies at McGill University in Montreal, a Scholar-in-Residence at Paideia Institute in Stockholm, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Tel-Aviv University, a Carey Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Notre Dame, a Starr Fellow at Harvard University, and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Talmud and Rabbinics at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York. Since July 2009 I have been an Asisstant Professor and the E.J. and Sara Evans Fellow at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

My doctoral dissertation, completed in 2002 at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, was devoted to the conceptualization of menstruation in Jewish and Christian cultures, with a particular interest in the medieval and early-modern periods. Half of it was published in France under the title Niddah. Lorsque les juifs conceptualisent la menstruation (Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 2003, 366 pages). I plan to publish a related project, a critical edition of the pseudo-talmudic text known as the Baraita de-Niddah, in the near future. This year (2010), another book of mine, the first introduction in Hebrew to the contemporary Catholic Church, will be published in Israel by Carmel Press. It will be followed by another project (in English), dealing with regaulation of marital sexuality in Jewish sources.