YEAR IN REVIEW | BERNARD REVEL GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JEWISH STUDIES | SCHOLARSHIP • TORAH • WISDOM • THOUGHT
About every four years, barring war or pandemic, scholars gather in Jerusalem for the World Congress of Jewish Studies. Consistent with its somewhat pretentious name, this academic conference encompasses the world of Jewish Studies, in geographic terms, because it brings together researchers from across the globe, as well as in terms of its wide disciplinary scope, with lectures on everything from pre-biblical archeology to contemporary anti-Semitism. I first attended as a starstruck undergraduate; my sister compared me to people who go to Hollywood to see popular actors. Last August, some thirty years later, I was privileged to be part of Yeshiva University’s impressive representation at the nineteenth Congress, where the program included not only talks by me and my colleagues, but also by two of our doctoral students, Akiva Koenigsberg, who presented a talk entitled, “Between Mishnah and Talmud: An Investigation into the Develop- ment of the Mishnah and the Babylonian Talmud,” and Yaakov Taubes, who
gave a lecture entitled “Search and Find: On the Changing Use of Indexes in the Age of Print.” Towards the end of December, 2025, at another world-class gathering, the 57th annual convention of the U.S.-based Association of Jewish Studies (AJS) in Washington, D.C., the schedule also featured lectures by two of our students, Noam Kornsgold (“Private Acts and Public Optics: Revisiting Marit Ha-‘Ayin in Medieval Halakhic Discourse”) and Miriam Zami (“Between Laughter and Tears: Rabbinic Responses to Incongruity”). Our students made their mark elsewhere, too. Jacob Matulia, who returned to our Ph.D. program after a year earning an M.Phil. in Cambridge, England, attended the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Boston, where he spoke about “Biblical Quotations in the Mishnah: Morphological Features and Diachrony.” And, in May, Avishag Damari presented a paper entitled “Metaphor as a Pedagogical Tool Between Imagination and Intellect in Maimonides” at the conference “Wisdom from the Middle Ages: Philosophical Contributions from the Abrahamic Traditions” at the University of New Brunswick, in Canada. Even as our students bring their research to the world, senior scholars from around the world come to Washington Heights to share their latest work with them at our Ph.D. lunch series. This year, we hosted presentations by Shira Billet (JTS), Kimmy Caplan (Bar-Ilan University), Yossi Chajes (Bar-Ilan University) and Sasha Goldstein-Sabbah (University of Groningen). We are especially proud to celebrate our two newest graduates who defended their dissertations during the 2025-2026 academic year. Raizy Gruenebaum-Chechik wrote “The Limits of Hybridity: An Intellectual Biography of Rabbi Yehuda Leib Don Yihyeh,” under the guidance of Professor Joshua Karlip. Yaakov Taubes, wrote “To Find What One Seeks: The Evolution of Search Tools in Medieval Jewish Books,” guided by Professors David Berger and Ephraim Kanarfogel. It makes me especially happy to note that both will continue their careers in service to Yeshiva University. With best wishes,
Shalom E. Holtz Professor of Bible Director of the PhD Program
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