Learning To Read Talmud
June 7-8, 2016
Participant Bios
Naftali Cohn is associate professor of religion at Concordia University in Montreal. His research
focuses on cultural historical readings of the Mishnah, with special focus on narrative, gender, and
ritual. His courses focus on the Talmud and ancient Judaism and range in topic from the Hebrew
Bible to Judaism in pop culture.
Alyssa Gray is professor of codes and responsa literature and Mehlman Chair in Rabbinics at HUCJIR in New York. Her major research interests are poverty, wealth, and charity in rabbinic and
halakhic literature, the redactions of the talmudim, and applications of theory to the study of postTalmudic halakhic literature. She teaches Talmud text and halakhah to students ranging from
beginners to advanced.
Chaya Halberstam is an associate professor of Judaism at King's University College, a Catholic
affiliate college of Western University, in London, Ontario. She is the author of Law and Truth in
Biblical and Rabbinic Literature. Her current project explores the question of divine and human
judgment in rabbinic literature in its Roman-legal context. She has been teaching rabbinic literature,
both halakhic and aggadic, in translation to undergraduates with little to no background for over 12
years.
Richard Kalmin is the Theodore R. Racoosin Professor of Rabbinic Literature at the Jewish
Theological Seminary, where he has taught since 1982. He is the author of several books and
numerous articles on the interpretation of rabbinic stories, ancient Jewish history, and the
development of rabbinic literature. His publications include the award-winning Migrating Tales: The
Talmud’s Narratives and Their Historical Context (University of California, 2014), and Jewish Babylonia
between Persia and Roman Palestine (Oxford University Press, 2006).
Jane L. Kanarek is associate professor of rabbinics at Hebrew College. She is the author of Biblical
Narrative and the Formation of Rabbinic Law (Cambridge, 2014) and together with Marjorie Lehman the
editor of Learning to Read Talmud: What It Looks Like and How It Happens (Academic Studies Press,
forthcoming 2016).
Sarit Kattan Gribetz is an assistant professor of classical Judaism in the theology department at
Fordham University. She received her B.A. and Ph.D. from the department of religion at Princeton
University, where she wrote a dissertation on conceptions of time in rabbinic sources.
Jon Kelsen is a faculty member at Drisha, where he teaches Talmud and rabbinics and is Rosh
Kollel of its June Kollel. He also acts as adjunct faculty at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah and Pardes. He
holds an M.A. in Jewish civilization from Hebrew University and is currently pursuing doctoral
studies in education and Jewish studies at New York University as a Wexner Graduate Fellow. He
received ordination from Rabbi Daniel Landes and Rabbi Zalman Nehemiah Goldberg.
Marjorie Lehman recently co-edited Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issues (28,
2015), focusing on writing feminist commentary on the Babylonian Talmud. She is writing a feminist
commentary on Massekhet Yoma. She has also just completed co-editing two books with Jane
Kanarek, Learning to Read Talmud: What it Looks Like and How It Happens (Academic Studies Press,
forthcoming 2016) and Motherhood in the Jewish Cultural Imagination (Littman Press).
Jon Levisohn is the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Professor of Jewish Educational Thought at
Brandeis, where he directs the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish
Education. His recent publications include: "Historical Thinking -- and Its Alleged Unnaturalness,"
Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2016.
Joseph Reimer teaches in education studies, Delet, and the Hornstein Programs at Brandeis. His
major area of current research is in Jewish learning at Jewish summer camps.
Michael Rosenberg is assistant professor of rabbinics at Hebrew College. His research interests
include gender, Jewish-Christian relations, and health in late antiquity.
Jeffrey L. Rubenstein is a professor of Talmud and rabbinics in the Skirball Department of
Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University. He received his B.A. in religion from Oberlin
College, his M.A. in Talmud from the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he also received rabbinic
ordination, and his Ph.D. from the department of religion of Columbia University.
Zvi Septimus is Caroline Zelaznik Gruss and Joseph S. Gruss Visiting Lecturer in Talmudic Civil
Law. Zvi’s first book, The Talmud as Book: The Work of the Reader (manuscript under review), theorizes
how the Talmud was formed—and continues to be formed—through a partnership between readers
and writers in the act of performance. His current research on Jewish legal history focuses on
legislation relating to sexual unions outside of the context of permanent marriage.
Julia Watts Belser is assistant professor of Jewish studies in the theology department at
Georgetown University, where she brings gender, queer, and disability studies theory into
conversation with rabbinic literature. The author of Power, Ethics, and Ecology in Jewish Late Antiquity:
Rabbinic Responses to Drought and Disaster (Cambridge University Press, 2015), she is currently finishing
a new book manuscript, tentatively titled Corporeal Catastrophe: Gender, Sex, and Disability in Rabbinic
Accounts of the Destruction of the Temple.