Associate Professor of Rabbinic Literature and Jewish History of Late Antiquity
About
Current Research Interests:
Yaron Eliav, Associate Professor of Rabbinic literature and Jewish history of late antiquity, draws on talmudic, early Christian, and classic literatures, as well as on archaeology in order to study the multi-faceted cultural environment of the Roman Mediterranean with emphasis on the encounter between Jews and Graeco-Roman culture. His book, God's Mountain: The Temple Mount in Time, Space, and Memory (Johns Hopkins University Press 2005; soft-cover 2008) won two national awards: The 2005 American Association of Publishers (AAP) award for best scholarly book on religion, and the 2006 Salo Baron prize for best first book in Judaic Studies from the American Academy for Jewish Studies.
Eliav served as the co-director of the Statuary Project, an interdisciplinary, 5-year research endeavor that involved both undergraduate and graduate students (and resulted in PhD and MA dissertations and senior theses) and an international conference with 40 participants from all over the world. Eliav was the chief editor of the publication of this project that appeared in 2008 in the series Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Culture and Religion (Peeters). In recent years, he was also invited to write the definitive summaries about central aspects of ancient Judaism for major reference works in the field, such as the entries on ‘Jews and Judaism’ and ‘Jerusalem’ for the Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome (2010) and the chapter on Jews and Judaism for the Blackwell Companion to the Roman World (2006).
Current projects:
Most recently, Eliav’s project, “Changing the Ways We Teach the Ancient World” has received a $750,000 grant, the largest ever given by the University of Michigan to a project in the humanities. In this undertaking, Yaron directs a multi-member team of scientists and scholars who are aiming to transform the learning experience of undergraduate students who study the ancient world. Eliav is also currently working on his new book, A Jew in the Roma Bathhouse: Daily Life Encounters with Hellenism in Roman Palestine and is preparing the chapter on ‘Judaea, the Phoenician, Coast, Samaria, and Galilee’ for the Blackwell Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East.
Teaching Interests:
Eliav teaches Introductory courses on Judaism, the History and Archaeology of the Land of Israel/Palestine, and Rabbinic Literature, as well as a cluster of upper level advanced seminars.
For a full CV, click here.
