Faculty

HARTMAN FELLOWS - Visiting Paideia Faculty

Professor Zvi Zohar
Prof. Zvi Zohar is a senior scholar at SHI’s Center for Contemporary Halakha and teaches in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies Program in Contemporary Jewry at Bar Ilan University. His research interests include all aspects of the anthropology, sociology, history and philosophy of halakha (the Jewish normative system) and the social and cultural history of Jews in Muslim lands in modern times.

Prof. Zohar’s publications include:
- Tradition and Change, Jerusalem (Ben Zvi Institute) 1993 – On the responses of Egyptian and Syrian rabbis to modernity.
- Conversion and Jewish Identity(co-authored with Avi Sagi), Jerusalem (SHI and Bialik Institute), 1994 – An analysis of halakhic understandings of conversion to Judaism, from Talmudic times to the present.
- Sephardic Halakha and Rabbinic Thought in the Modern Middle East (in press).
- Realms of Identity and Deviance(in press; co-authored with Avi Sagi) – An analysis of halakhic positions vis a vis desecrators of the Sabbath, from Talmudic times to the present.


Dr. Aharon Shemesh
Dr. Aharon Shemesh lectures in the Talmud Department at Bar-Ilan University and is co-director of the SHI Beit Midrash program. He has rabbinic ordination from the hesder yeshiva Kerem B'Yavneh and served as head of the Religious Kibbutz Movement Yeshiva in Ein Zurim. Dr. Shemesh was guest lecturer at UC Berkeley and a research fellow at Harvard University. His areas of research are Tanaitic Literature and the development of midrash and halakha in the Judean Desert Dead Sea Scrolls.


Dr. Haim Shapira
Dr. Haim Shapira is a lecturer at Bar Ilan University's Law School. He received his doctorate from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, specializing in the Talmudic period. He has also taught in the Jewish History Department and Law School of Hebrew University. His main area of research is the historic and philosophical aspects of the Jewish legal system. At SHI, Dr. Shapira teaches in the Jewish Education Empowerment Program.


Dr. Ariel Picard
Rabbi Dr. Ariel Picard studied in Yeshivat Har Etzion and received rabbinic ordination from the Israeli Chief Rabbinate. He studied Talmud, Philosophy and Hermeneutics at Bar Ilan University. He wrote his Ph.D. thesis on "Rabbi Ovadya Yosef's Halakhic Response to Contemporary Realities, Hermeneutical and Cultural Perspectives." Formerly the rabbi of Kibbutz Shluchot, Rabbi Dr.Picard is now a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and a lecturer at the Shalom Hartman Institute, teachers program, and the Herzog Institute in Ein Tzurim. He has contributed articles on Jewish contemporary law.






SCHOLAR-IN-RESIDENCE FOR PAIDEIA, 2004-2005

Ophir Yarden
Ophir Yarden is a specialist in informal Jewish education and the use of Israel as a teaching resource. He has taught on the faculty of many programs for Jewish and Christian students visiting Israel including Hebrew University, Hebrew Union College and the Swedish Theological Institute, the Ratisbonne Pontifical Institute of Jewish Studies for Christians and the Sisters of Sion's Biblical Studies Program at Ecce Homo, all in Jerusalem. While at Paideia, Ophir Yarden is on leave from his work as Director of Educational Initiatives and of the Center for Interreligious Encounter with Israel, both at the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel (ICCI) in Jerusalem. Ophir Yarden's research interests center on Jewish identity and it's changes over history, and he has published several articles on civil religion in Israel. In January 2003 he founded the Israel-Palestine J.C.M. Conference, which seeks to be an ongoing framework for intensive indigenous interreligious dialogue between Jews, Christians and Muslims in Israel-Palestine at Nes Ammim.


Frida Schatz
Frida Schatz came to Sweden from Israel. She studied languages at different universities:Ecole des Hautes Etudes at Sorbonne, Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her main subjects were Modern Hebrew language, literature and pedagogy. She was teaching Hebrew at the Ulpan of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and worked as a Senior Lecturer teaching Hebrew at the Institute for Near Eastern Studies at the University of Copenhagen as well as at the Department of Middle East Languages at the University of Lund.

In her free time she performs as a singer, singing mainly in Hebrew and Yiddish.
Frida Schatz teaches Hebrew on all levels.

Dr. Marion Helfer Wajngot
Dr. Marion Helfer Wajngot has done reserch in the field of Victorian fiction with particular emphasis on the relation between literature and Bible exegesis, on literature in an ethical perspective, and on midrash in our own time. Among her publications is The Birthright and the Blessing: Narrative as Exegesis in Three of Thackeray’s Later Novels. Dr Wajngot has taught at the Stockholm University and the Södertörn University College, and presently teaches at the Uppsala University as well as at Paideia. She has also translated modern Israeli fiction, by authors such as Amos Oz and Aharon Appelfeld, into Swedish.





SCHOLAR-IN-RESIDENCE FOR PAIDEIA, 2003-2004

Rabbi Michael Swirsky
Rabbi Michael Swirsky, scholar in residence, a veteran educator who has worked in both the United States and Israel. He is the founder of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, and has taught on the faculties of Hebrew University and Brandeis University. He trained at the University of
Chicago and received rabbinical ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary. Swirsky is the translator into English of several important works of Judaica.




SCHOLAR-IN-RESIDENCE FOR PAIDEIA, 2002-2003

Dr. Evyatar Marienberg
Dr Evyatar Marienberg, previous visiting scholar in the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Yeshiva University, New York after a five years stay in Paris, where he studied Catholic theology and Relegoius Sciences. More recently he was a professor at the department of Jewish Studies at McGill University in Montreal. Dr Marienberg is also a member of the French research team "Nouvelle Gallia Judaica" (CNRS). His main interest are the social history of Jews as reflected in legal works, as well as modern European Catholicism. Dr Marienberg will teach the courses: "From Tanach to Palmach": An overview of Jewish History; "Yom ze Mekhubad mi-Kol Yamim": Shabbat through the Ages; and supervise Reading the Entire Tanach.

Dr Liane Alitowski
Dr Liane Alitowski is a concert pianist versatile both as a soloist and chamber musician. She was on the fuculty of the Illinois Wesleyan University, the Israeli Conservatory of Music, and Qeens College, New York. Dr Alitowski will teach the course "The Mosaic of Jewish Music".








SCHOLAR-IN-RESIDENCE FOR PAIDEIA, 2001-2002

Professor David Zisenwine
Professor Zisenwine Tel Aviv University, is the Head of the Department of Jewish Education at Tel Aviv University. He has authered numerous articles, six testbooks, including Anti-Semitism in Europe: Sources of thee Holocaust, and has directed a staff responsible for curriculum development of Jewish studies for the Ministry of Education in Israel.


Future Faculty Positions at Paideia
The International Academic Committee of Paideia

Contact Us
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Fax +46 8 661 14 55
e-mail info@paideia-eu.org
Visiting Address: Nybrogatan 21, Stockholm