Scholarship and Biography

Reuven Kimelman specializes in the history of Judaism with a focus on the history and poetics of the Jewish liturgy. His book on the subject soon to be published is The Rhetoric of Jewish Prayer: A Historical and Literary Commentary on the Prayer Book.

He has written on the interaction between Judaism and Christianity in antiquity and modernity. He is also interested in the thematic connections between Greek and Biblical literature from Homer to Plato and from Genesis to Matthew. In the field of Jewish ethics, he focuses on the ethics of war, idolatry, the nature of humanity, and Judeophobia. He has written extensively on his mentor, Abraham Joshua Heschel and published a Hebrew book on the Sabbath prayer Lekhah Dodi.

Honors

Fellowship
National Foundation for Jewish Culture (United States, New York) - NFJC, 1973-1974
Sir Isaac Wolfson Professorship in Israel
University of Haifa (Israel, Haifa), 1980
Fellowship
Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture (United States, New York) - MFJC, 1981
Lady Davis Fellow
Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel, Jerusalem) - HUJI, 1981
Manheimer Term Assistant Professor of University Studies
Brandeis University (United States, Waltham), 1982-1983
Fellowship
Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture (United States, New York) - MFJC, 1983-1984
Starr Fellowship
Harvard University (United States, Cambridge), 1998
Shoshana Shier Distinguished Visiting Professor
University of Toronto (Canada, Toronto), 2005
Florscheim Fellowship
Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel, Jerusalem) - HUJI, 2006

Organizational Affiliations

Professor of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University

Affiliated Faculty, Master of Arts Program in Comparative Humanities, Brandeis University

Education

Yale University
Ph.D.
Yale University
M.Phil.
Columbia University in the City of New York
B.S.