פרופ' מאירה פוליאק

Meira Polliack is Professor of Bible at Tel Aviv University, where she teaches biblical literature, Medieval Bible exegesis and reception history since 1996/7. She also holds the Joseph and Ceil Mazer Chair in Jewish Culture in Muslim Lands and Cairo Geniza Studies at TAU. She specialized in Jewish Arabic Bible translations during her graduate and post-graduate years at Cambridge University (1988-1995) and was Lady Davis Post-Doctoral Fellow at  the Department of Arabic Language and Literature, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1995/6); She was Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Visiting Professor of Judaic Studies at Yale University (2009/10) and Visiting Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris (2-8/2014); During 2010-2013 she was Principal Investigator (PI) of the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) research project: "The Discovery of Biblical Narrative in Medieval Judaeo-Arabic Exegesis (10th to 12th Centuries)"; During 2012-2018 she was one of the PI's of the DFG-DIP funded international research project: "Biblia Arabica - The Bible in Arabic among Jews, Christians and Muslims"  (https://www.biblia-arabica.com); During 2017-2021 she was PI of the ISF research project: "The Davidic Narratives and David's Portrayal  (The Books of Samuel and Psalms) in Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Translation and Exegesis, A Comparative Religious Approach”. Since 2008, she co-edits the Brill Book Series Karaite Texts and Studies - Études sur le judaïsme médiéval (https://brill.com/display/serial/KTS). She has published on biblical reception history and exegesis, Bible as literature, Bible and trauma studies, medieval Arabic Bible translation and exegesis in the Islamic milieu, Judaeo-Arabic literature, Karaism and the Cairo Geniza (for her publications see  https://cris.tau.ac.il/en/persons/meira-polliack;  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8538-1492)

Polliack’s current research interests focus on Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Bible exegesis and reception; Modern literary approaches to the Bible, in particular: the Hebrew Bible in light of trauma studies and ethics; Biblical narrative, in particular: characterization techniques and character development in light of biblical hermeneutics and biblical reception exegesis

Selected Publications

— The Karaite Tradition of Arabic Bible Translation: A Linguistic and Exegetical Study of the Karaite Translations of the Pentateuch from the Tenth to the Eleventh (Leiden: Brill, 1997). http://www.brill.com/karaite-tradition-arabic-bible-translation.
— Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, Arabic Old Series (T-S ar.1a-54) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001 [with C.F. Baker]). http://www.cambridge.org/il/academic/subjects/religion/judaism/arabic-and-judaeo-arabic-manuscripts-cambridge-genizah-collections-arabic-old-series-t-s-ar1a-54.
— (Ed.) Karaite Judaism: A Guide to its History and Literary Sources (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2003. http://www.brill.com/karaite-judaism.
— (With Eliezer Schlossberg.) ‘Historical-literary, Rhetorical and Redactional Methods of Interpretation in Yefet ben Eli’s Introduction to the Minor Prophets’. In Exegesis and Grammar in Medieval Karaite Texts (ed. Geoffrey Khan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 1-39. http://global.oup.com/academic/product/exegesis-and-grammar-in-medieval-karaite-texts-9780198510659?lang=en&cc=us#.
— ‘Arabic Bible Translations in the Cairo Genizah Collections’, in Jewish Studies in a New Europe (ed. Ulf Haxen et al. Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel A/S International Publishers, 1998, pp. 595-620.
— ‘Bible Translations: Judeo-Arabic (Ninth to the Thirteenth Centuries), in Encyclopedia of the Jews of the Islamic World, Volume One (ed. Norman A. Stillman. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2010), pp. 464-469. http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopedia-of-jews-in-the-islamic-world/bible-translations-SIM_000115.

—The Bible in Arabic among Jews, Christians and Muslims [= Intellectual History of the Islamicate World, 1], edited with Camilla Adang and Sabine Schmidtke.

For these and various other publications, see

https://telaviv.academia.edu/MeiraPolliack​

www.biblia-rabica.com

Editorial Work

From 2006 – Section Editor (Medieval Arabic Speaking World), Encyclopedia of the Jews in the Islamic World (Executive editor: Norman A. Stillman. Brill). www.brill.nl/ejiw.
From 2007—General Editor (with Michael G. Wechsler) of the Series Karaite Texts and Studies, in association with the series Études sur le judaïsme médiéval (editor: Paul Fenton, Brill).
From 2012 — Area Editor (Arabic Translations) of The Handbook of the Textual History of the Bible (general editors: Armine Langue, Emmanuel Tov. Brill).