Brown University Prof. Saul Oyan, Samuel Ungerleider, Jr. Professor of Judaic Studies, Professor of Religious Studies has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s most prestigious honor societies.

The Department of Cognitive and Psychological Sciences and the Program in Judaic Studies at Brown University are hosting an interdisciplinary one-day conference on Hope and Optimism: Scientific and Jewish Perspectives, to take place in person at Brown on November 2, 2026.

We are accepting applications for fall 2022 graduate student research awards.

The Program in Judaic Studies is accepting applications for undergraduate and graduate student research awards for spring 2022.

The Program in Judaic Studies is pleased to announce the recipients of the Fall 2021 graduate student research awards.

The Program in Judaic Studies is accepting submissions for the Undergraduate Essay Prize.

Congratulations to Professor Adam Teller whose book, entitled "Rescue the Surviving Souls: The Great Jewish Refugee Crisis of the Seventeenth Century", has received an Honorable Mention for this year’s Kulczycki Book Prize in Polish Studies awarded by the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies for the best book in any discipline on any aspect of Polish affairs.

Graduate Student Research Grants - fall 2021.

Professor Adam Teller, Professor of Judaic Studies and History, has been elected a fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research (AAJR).

Professor Saul M. Olyan, Samuel Ungerleider Jr. Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies has been recognized with a Festschrift.

Congratulations to Professor Adam Teller whose new book “Rescue the Surviving Souls: The Great Jewish Refugee Crisis of the Seventeenth Century” was just named a finalist for a national Jewish book award in the history category.

Karen B. Stern of Brooklyn College, Brown Ph.D. 2006, has won a 2020 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award from the Association for Jewish Studies for her book Writing on the Wall: Graffiti and the Forgotten Jews of Antiquity (Princeton University Press, 2018).

Professor Adam Teller launches (virtually) his new book entitled "Rescue the Surviving Souls: The Great Jewish Refugee Crisis of the Seventeenth Century."

Tablet magazine writer, Roklh Kafrissen, published an article on April 7, 2020 entitled “Rokhl’s Golden City: How a brawl in Tel Aviv changed the theater scene in New York, and why Israeli soldiers are speaking Yiddish to fight COVID-19.”

Professor Saul M. Olyan, Director of the Program in Judaic Studies and Samuel Ungerleider Jr. Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies, has been elected a fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research (AAJR).

Professor Adam Teller, Professor of Judaic Studies and History at Brown University, has published a new book with Princeton University Press.

Brown Judaic Studies (BJS) announces the launch of our Open Access Books program.

Professor Adam Teller presented a lecture, at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, Poland, entitled "The Reconstruction of Jewish Life after the Chmielnicki uprising 1648" which tackled the question of how Polish-Lithuanian Jewry succeeded in overcoming so quickly the terrible devastation of the mid-seventeenth century uprising.

Read the Watson Institute article about our February 9-10, 2020 conference entitled "Gender in Israeli and Palestinian Film"

Excerpts from the fall 2019 CLS Language Panel show students discussing what it means to study Hebrew at Brown University.

We are delighted to announce that our generous benefactor Elie Hirschfeld, Brown class of 71, has been appointed to the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad.

Professor Saul M. Olyan, Samuel Ungerleider Jr. Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies, has published a book, with Oxford University Press, entitled “Violent Rituals of the Hebrew Bible."  

Professor Adam Teller (Brown University) presents a lecture entitled "From Amsterdam to Istanbul: Fundraising and Jewish Refugee Relief in the Seventeenth Century" as part of Birkbeck Arts Week 2019 on May 22, 2019 from 6:30pm - 8:00pm at Birkbeck, University of London, Clore Lecture Theatre, Clore Management Centre, Torrington Square, London WC1E 7JL.  

The Providence-Jerusalem Exchange Fellowship Program will provide students from Brown University (Brown) and Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI) with a year-long program of study focused on Israeli-Palestinian relations.

With support from a new grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, scholars from Brown University’s Judaic Studies program are set to begin digitizing much of the groundbreaking scholarship they have published in-house.

The Program in Judaic Studies is pleased to announce that Professor Paul Nahme has been awarded a Harry Starr Fellowship in Judaica from Harvard University to undertake his research project entitled "Jewish Racial Affect in Weimar Germany"

The Program in Judaic Studies is pleased to announce that Professor Katharina Galor has been awarded a three-year grant from the Leo Baeck Foundation, Berlin (funded by the Schwarz-Schütte Foundation), to support research for her new book project: Gender and Temporality in Jewish Memory: A Visual and Material Cultural Analysis.

Essays that engage the scholarship of Shaye J. D. Cohen

On 9 November 2018, Saul Olyan delivered an invited lecture at the Collège de France in Paris entitled "Les droits des animaux existent-ils selon la Bible hébraïque?" 

Brown Judaic Studies has published a new monograph entitled "The Aggada of the Bavli and Its Cultural World" (Geoffrey Herman and Jeffrey Rubenstein, editors), produced and distributed by the Society of Biblical Literature.

Professor Michael Satlow, Professor of Judaic Studies and Religious Studies, has published a book, with Routledge, entitled "Judaism and the Economy."