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Team
Prof. Iris Idelson-Shein
PI
Iris Idelson-Shein is an associate professor in the department of Jewish History, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Her research interests include cultural translation, Old Yiddish literature, science, gender, and the body in early modern Ashkenaz. Idelson-Shein received her PhD from Tel Aviv University in 2011, and has held visiting positions at Goethe University in Frankfurt, LMU Munich, and the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies in Philadelphia. She is co-editor of “German Jewish Cultures,” a book series published by Indiana University Press and a member of the Israel Young Academy.
Raya Even David holds a BA from Hebrew University of Jerusalem where she studied Judaism and Education. She has leadership training, experience in group facilitation and has taught both adult education, young adults and children in various informal Jewish frameworks. Raya has been employed in the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev since 2018 as the administrative manager of the Center for the Study of Conversion and Inter-Religious Encounters. Since 2023 she's also the administrative manager of the PRD ERC-funded project. Bi-Lingual in Hebrew and English, she can be reached at RayaED@bgu.ac.il
Raya Even-David
Administrative Manager
Dr. Roni Cohen
Post-Doctorial Researcher
Roni Cohen submitted his Ph.D. dissertation to the Department of Jewish History at Tel-Aviv University. His research focuses on popular culture in European Jewish communities of the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. He is particularly interested in Jewish texts that were not necessarily written only for rabbinic elites, but for a relatively wide and varied audience. Within the JEWTACT project Roni will be investigating the putative connection between the rise of Yiddish musar (lit. moral) literature in the sixteenth century, and the corresponding genre of German conduct literature.
Ahuvia Goren
Doctoral Researcher
Ahuvia Goren is a doctoral student specializing in early modern Jewish intellectual and cultural history. His research centers on Jewish perspectives on Renaissance humanism, the scientific revolution, and Italian-Catholic culture. His dissertation delves into the themes of uncertainty, doubt, and disbelief within the Italian Jewish community during the early modern period, employing perspectives from cultural history and the history of scholarship.
Dr. Ossnat Sharon-Pinto
Post-Doctorial Researcher
Ossnat Sharon-Pinto is a post-doctoral researcher in the field of early modern Jewish cultural history. Her research explores the intersection of literature and implicit cultural concepts such as self, space and history. Her MA thesis was completed at the Hebrew University under the supervision of Prof. Galit Hasan-Rokem and Prof. Israel Yaacov Yuval. Her PhD dissertation, titled "The Emergence of the Self in Early Modern Jewish Travelogues: A Literary Perspective" written under the supervision of Prof. Dina Stein and Dr. Zur Shalev, was submitted to Haifa University in November 2021. In 2023-2024 she will also be a Lady Davis postdoctoral researcher at the Cultural Studies program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Maayan Zadok
Masters Students
Maayan Zadok is an MA research student at JEWTACT. She completed her BA in the Jewish History and General History department at BGU. Her thesis will focus on the first Yiddish translation "Arabian Nights" published in the early eighteenth century. Maayan is also a member of the SYLFF Association.
Alumni
Dr. Gal Sofer
Post-Doctorial Researcher
Gal Sofer was a postdoral researcher at JEWTACT during the years 2022-2023. He investigated translations of magical recipes, particularly the translations and transformations of amulets with their verbal and non-verbal components from the sixteenth century onwards.
Dr. Tamar Nadav-Bronstein
Post-Doctoral Researcher
Tamar Nadav-Bronstein was a postdoctoral researcher at JEWTACT during 2021-2022. Her research project focused on the Hebrew translations of Latin medical texts on plague and pestilential fevers, from the Black Death to the rise of print.
Mellanie Clara Plewa was an MA research student at JEWTACT during 2021-2022. Her thesis was devoted to the Hebrew translations of Christian catechisms for Jews in the sixteenth century.
Mellanie Plewa
Masters Student
Dr. Magdaléna Jánošíková
Post-doctoral Researcher
Magdaléna Jánošíková was a postdoctoral researcher at JEWTACT during the years 2019-2021. Her research project explored the topic of medicine and Jews.
Dr. Tamir Karkason
Post-Doctoral Researcher
Tamir Karkason was a postdoctoral researcher at JEWTACT during the years 2019-2021. His research project explored the topic of Ladino translations.
Dr. Yakov Z. Mayer
Post-Doctoral Researcher
Yakov Z. Mayer was a postdoctoral researcher at JEWTACT during the years 2019-2021. His research project explored translation and cultural transfer among Jews and Christians in the Italian-speaking realm during the sixteenth century.
Dr. Alexander van der Haven
Senior Research Fellow
Alex van der Haven was a senior research fellow at JEWTACT during 2019. His research focused on translations into Yiddish and Hebrew of non-Jewish texts, mostly in Dutch, but also in other languages.
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