2009-2010 Fellows

Yishai Beer

Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Faculty of Law, specializing in taxation. He is also a Major General in the Israel Defense Force,(res.) and he served formerly as the President of the Israeli Military Court of Appeals.

RESEARCH:

Law, War and Morality; A New Balance is Required

Rabbi Saul J. Berman (Berkowitz Fellow)

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.

Research:

Beth Berkowitz

Associate Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at the Jewish Theological Seminary. She earned her Ph.D. from Columbia University and has held post-doctoral fellowships in Yale University’s Program in Judaic Studies and the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Advanced Judaic Studies.

Research:

'Rabbi Moshe Feinstein’s Ambivalent Responsa about Thanksgiving: The Status of the Secular in American Jewish Orthodoxy

Moshe Idel (Joint Straus/Tikvah Fellow)

Max Cooper Professor in Jewish Thought, Department of Jewish Thought at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and Senior Researcher at the Shalom Hartman Institute. Born in 1947 in Romania, he arrived in 1963 to Israel and has lectured since 1975 at the Hebrew University.

Research:

R. Joseph Karo and His Revelations: or the Apotheosis of the Feminine in Safedian Kabbala

James Kugel

Received his B.A. from Yale University and was a Junior Fellow at Harvard University from 1972 through 1976. He received his Ph.D. degree in 1977 from the City University of New York (CUNY). From 1982-2003 he was Starr Professor of Hebrew Literature at Harvard University.

RESEARCH:

The Sources of Torah in the Book of Jubilees

Avital Margalit

Graduate of Tel Aviv University in Law (LL.B) and in Sociology and Psychology (B.A.), and a graduate of Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley (LL.M.,  J.S.D.). She teaches courses on property law and the sociology of law at the Law Faculty of Bar Ilan University.

RESEARCH:

Labor Movement Co-operatives in Mandatory Palestine: Legal Transplants and Cultural Implants

Adiel Schremer

Associate Professor in Bar-Ilan University’s Department of Jewish History and heads the Halpern Center for the Study of Jewish Self-Perception. He is the recipient of the Urbach Prize from The Jewish Memorial Foundation and the World Union for Jewish Studies, and the Rosen-Zvi Prize from the Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University. 

RESEARCH:

Toward Critical Halakhic Studies

Aharon Shemesh

Associate Professor at the department of Talmud, Bar-Ilan University. He served as visiting professor at U.C. Berkeley and Stanford University (2005); was a fellow at the Center for Jewish Studies, Harvard University (1996 and 2007), at the Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies (2000) and at the Rockefeller Foundation study center in Bellagio, Italy (summer 2006). 

RESEARCH:

Historical, cultural and legal aspects of Neziriteship as reflected in rabbinic literature and Halakhah