2012-2013 Fellows

Richard Lewis

Has been Rosh Hayeshivaof The Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem since 2003.  Before that he was a Senior Lecturer in Talmud and Halakha and Faculty Advisor in Jewish Law in the Center for Women in Jewish Law at the Schechter Institute for Jewish Studies, and a research fellow and lecturer in the Beit Midrash program at the Shalom Hartman Institute. 

Research:

Urging Inner Devotion in Public Space: Lithuanian Musar and Liberal Religious Discourse, a Philosophical, Phenomenological Comparison

Adam Mintz

Founding rabbi of Kehilat Rayim Ahuvim in New York City and Adjunct Assistant Professor in Jewish Studies at City College of New York and Queens College.  He received his B.S., M.S. and Ordination from Yeshiva University and a Ph.D. from the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University.

RESEARCH:

The Rabbinic Eruv: A Study in the History and Halakhah of Sacred Space in America 

Michal Tamir

Associate Professor at Shaárei Mishpat College of Law. She earned her LL.B from the University of Haifa, magna cum laude (Valedictorian); her LL.M from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, summa cum laude (Valedictorian) and her LL.D (JSD) from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

RESEARCH:

Human Rights in Private Law: The Vision of the Prophets of Israel

Shai Wozner (Berkowitz Fellow)

Senior lecturer in Tel Aviv university faculty of law. He studied many years in Hebron Yeshiva in Jerusalem, received his B.A. in Talmud from Bar-Ilan University, and LL.B, LL.M, and LL.D (Cum laude) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  He was also a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem for more than 10 years.

RESEARCH:

Mordechai Zalkin

Associate professor of modern Jewish history in the Jewish History department at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His special fields of interest are the history of Lithuanian Jewry as well as the cultural, educational and social transformation east European Jewry underwent during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 

RESEARCH:

Gerald Blidstein (Joint Straus/Tikvah Fellow)

Professor Emeritus in the Goren Goldstein Department of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He has written extensively on the legal thought of Maimonides and the relationship between law and ethics in Jewish law and is considered one of the foremost authorities on the Mishneh Torah. 

RESEARCH:

Maimonides on the Education and The Study of Torah

James Diamond

Holds the Joseph & Wolf Lebovic Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Waterloo. He earned  an LLB from Osgoode Hall Law School; an LLM in International Legal Studies at New York University School of Law and, while practicing civil litigation,  an MA and PhD in Medieval Jewish Thought  from University of Toronto. 

RESEARCH:

Maimonidean Variations: Midrashic Point and Counterpoint of Jewish Law, Philosophy, and Mysticism

Eric Gregory

Professor of Religion at Princeton University.  He is author ofPolitics & The Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship (University of Chicago Press 2008), and various articles related to his interests in ethics, theology, political theory, law and religion, and the role of religion in public life. 

RESEARCH:

What Do We Owe Strangers? Global Justice and the Good Samaritan

Marion Kaplan

Skirball Professor of Modern Jewish History at NYU. She is a three time National Jewish Book Award winner for The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family and Identity in Imperial Germany (1991), Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (1998), and Gender and Jewish History (with Deborah Dash Moore, 2011) as well as a finalist for Dominican Haven: The Jewish Refugee Settlement in Sosua (2008).

RESEARCH:

Avishai Margalit (Joint Straus/Tikvah Fellow)

One of the foremost thinkers and commentators on the contemporary human condition, the moral issues of our time, and current problems facing Western societies. In addition to his influence as a philosopher, he is highly regarded for his profound and cogent observations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the broader struggle between Islam and the West.

RESEARCH:

Betrayal and Loyalty: Treason and Trust