JEREMY COHEN
Department of Jewish History,
C.V. Contact Teaching Publications
JEREMY COHEN is the Abraham and Edita Spiegel
Family Foundation Professor of European Jewish History at
Over the years, Cohen’s research and publications have focused
on various aspects of the interaction between Judaism and Christianity. Cohen
has examined Christian anti-Judaism and Jewish-Christian polemic, as in his The Friars and the Jews:
The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (1982)
and in his edited collection, Essential Papers on Judaism and Christianity in Conflict:
From Late Antiquity to the Reformation (1991).
He has also researched the ambivalence and nuance that pervade Christian
perceptions of the Jews; these topics are explored in Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval
Christianity (1999), and a collection that he edited, From Witness to Witchcraft: Jews and Judaism in Medieval
Christian Thought (1996). The complexities of this
ambivalence are compounded in the numerous traditions and ideas shared by the
two European religions; some of these Cohen has explored in his “Be Fertile and Increase, Fill the Earth and Master It”:
The Ancient and Medieval Career of a Biblical Text (1989),
and in Sanctifying the Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish
Memories of the First Crusade (2004). His latest book is Christ-Killers: The Jews and the Passion, from the Bible
to the Big Screen, published by Oxford University Press
in 2007.
Since the publication of Christ Killers, Cohen has edited
two collections of essays: The
Jewish Contribution to Civilization: Reassessing an Idea (edited
with Richard I. Cohen, 2008), and Rethinking
European Jewish History (edited with Moshe Rosman,
2009). His current research – funded by
a four-year grant from the Israel Science Foundation – concerns Solomon ibn Verga’s
Shevet Yehudah (The Rod of Judah), one of the most popular Hebrew
books of the sixteenth century, which reacts to the persecution of Jews in late
medieval Spain and Portugal with a retrospective on the tribulations endured by
the Jewish people since the days of the Second Temple.
Over the years, Cohen’s research has also enjoyed the support of
grants from the Danforth Foundation, the National Endowment of the Humanities,
and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture.
His books have won four National Jewish Book Awards, as well as prizes
from the American Catholic Historical Association, the Ohio Academy of History,
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Israel Historical Society. He recently completed a term as editor of Zion:
A Quarterly for Research in Jewish History and is Associate Editor of The
Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies.
Click here for a full academic c.v.
Department of Jewish History, Faculty of Humanities,
69978 Tel
Phone: 972-3-6409342, 6409277 (office); fax: 972-3-6407287
e-mail: jecohen@post.tau.ac.il
·
The Blood Libel in the Middle Ages
·
The Historian’s Craft: Theory, Historiography, and
Methodology
·
History, Memory, and Literature in Medieval Jewish
Civilization
·
The Jewish-Christian Debate in the Middle Ages
·
Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages
·
The Jews and
the Passion – from the Gospels to Gibson
·
Judaism and Christianity in Conflict
·
The Maimonidean Controversy
Books
The Friars and the Jews:
The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism,
winner of: National Jewish
Book Award for scholarship, 1983
included in: ACLS Humanities E-Book collection
“Be Fertile and Increase, Fill the Earth and Master It”:
The Ancient and Medieval Career of a Biblical Text,
winner of:
--National Jewish Book Award for
scholarship, 1990
--American Catholic Historical
Association, John Gilmary Shea Prize, 1990
--
Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval
Christianity,
winner of:
--Wischnitzer Prize in Jewish
History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1999-2000
--National Jewish Book Award for
scholarship, 2000
Hebrew translation: כעיוור במראה: היהודי בתפיסה הנוצרית בימי הביניים (
winner of: Zalman Shazar
Prize in Jewish History, 2003
Sanctifying the Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish
Memories of the First Crusade,
Christ-Killers: The Jews and the Passion, from the Bible
to the Big Screen,
Edited Volumes
Essential Papers on Judaism and Christianity in Conflict:
From Late Antiquity to the Reformation,
From Witness to Witchcraft: Jews and Judaism in Medieval
Christian Thought,
Facing the Cross: The 1096 Persecutions in History and
Historiography [in Hebrew], ed. Y.T. Assis,
J. Cohen, A. Kedar, O. Limor, and M. Tokh, Jerusalem, Dinur Institute for
Jewish History, 2000
Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies, ed.
winner of: National Jewish Book Award for scholarship, 2003
The Jewish Contribution to Civilization: Reassessing an
Idea, ed.
Rethinking European Jewish History, ed.
winner of: National Jewish
Book Award for anthologies and collections, 2010
Remembering and Forgetting: Israeli Historians Look at
the Jewish Past, ed.
Articles
“Roman Imperial
Policy towards the Jews from
“The Nasi of
“The Christian
Adversary of Solomon ibn Adret,” Jewish Quarterly Review, n.s. 71
(1980), 48-55. Full
Text
“Original Sin as
the Evil Inclination--A Polemicist’s Appreciation of Human Nature,” Harvard
Theological Review 73 (1980), 495-520. Full Text
“Jews as the
Killers of Christ in the Latin Tradition, from Augustine to the Friars,” Traditio
39 (1983), 1-27.
“Philosophical
Exegesis in Historical Perspective: The Case of the Binding of Isaac,” in Divine
Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Tamar Rudavsky,
Dordrecht, The Netherlands, D. Reidel Publishers, 1985, pp. 135-42.
“The Bible, Man, and
Nature in the History of Western Thought: A Call for Reassessment,” Journal
of Religion 65 (1985), 155-72. Full Text
“Scholarship and
Intolerance in the Medieval Academy: The Study and Evaluation of Judaism in
European Christendom,” American Historical Review 91 (1986), 592-613. Full Text
“Robert Chazan’s
‘Medieval Anti-Semitism’: A Note on the Impact of Theology,” in History and
Hate: The Dimensions of Anti-Semitism, ed. David Berger,
“The Mentality of
the Medieval Jewish Apostate: Peter Alfonsi, Hermann of Cologne, and Pablo
Christiani,” in Jewish Apostasy in the Modern World, ed. T.M. Endelman,
New York, Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1987, pp. 20-47.
“The Friars and
the Jews,” in The Many Sides of History:
“Recent
Historiography on the Medieval Church and the Decline of European Jewry,” in Popes,
Teachers, and Canon Law in the Middle Ages, ed. James Ross Sweeney and
Stanley Chodorow, Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press, 1989, pp. 251-62.
“Traditional
Prejudice and Religious Reform: The Theological and Historical Foundations of
Luther's Anti-Judaism,” in Antisemitism in Times of Crisis, ed. Steven
Katz and Sander Gilman, New York, New York University Press, 1991, pp. 81-102.
“Introduction,”
in Essential Papers on Judaism and Christianity in Conflict, ed.
“Profiat Duran’s
The Reproach of the Gentiles and the Development of Jewish Anti-Christian
Polemic,” in Shlomo Simonsohn Jubilee Volume: Studies on the History of the
Jews in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed.
“Towards a
Functional Classification of Jewish Anti-Christian Polemic in the High Middle
Ages,” in Religionsgesprache im Mittelalter, ed. Bernard Lewis and
Friedrich Niewohner, Wiesbaden, Germany, Otto Harrassowitz Publishers, 1992,
pp. 93-114.
“Rationales for
Conjugal Sex in Ra’AbaD’s Ba‘alei ha-Nefesh,” Jewish History 6
(1992), 65-78.
“Medieval Jews on Christianity: Polemical
Strategies and Theological Defense,” in Interwoven Destinies: Jews and
Christians through the Ages, ed. Eugene J. Fisher,
“On Medieval
Judaism and Medieval Studies,” in The Past and Future of Medieval Studies,
ed. John Van Engen, Notre Dame, Ind., University of Notre Dame Press, 1994, pp.
73-93.
“Gezerot Tatnu:
Martyrdom and Martyrology in the Hebrew Chronicles of
“Isidore of
Seville’s Anti-Jewish Polemic: A Reevaluation,” in Proceedings of the Tenth
World Congress of Jewish Studies, (
“‘Witnesses of
Our Redemption’: Jews in the Crusading Theology of Bernard of Clairvaux,” in Medieval
Studies in Honour of Avrom Saltman, ed. Bat-Sheva Albert et al., Ramat Gan,
Bar-Ilan University Press, 1995, pp. 67-81.
“The Oriental
Connection: Muslim Influences on Christian Anti-Jewish Polemic in the Twelfth
Century” [in Hebrew], in
“The Muslim
Connection, or, On the Changing Role of the Jew in High Medieval Theology,” in
From Witness to Witchcraft: Jews and Judaism in Medieval Christian Thought,
ed.
“Sexuality and
Intentionality in Rabbinic Thought of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries” [in
Hebrew], Te‘udah 13 (1997), 155-172.
“The Commandment
To ‘Be Fertile and Increase’ and Its Role in Religious Polemics” [in Hebrew],
in Sexuality and the Family in History: Collected Essays, ed.
“‘Slay Them Not’:
Augustine and the Jews in Modern Scholarship,” Medieval Encounters 4
(1998), 78-92.
“Between
Martyrdom and Apostasy: Doubt and Self-Definition in Twelfth-Century Ashkenaz,”
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 29 (1999), 431-471. Full
Text
“The Hebrew
Crusade Chronicles in Their Christian Cultural Context,” in Juden und
Christen zur Zeit der Kreuzzuge, ed. Alfred Haverkamp,
“The Second
Disputation of Paris and Thirteenth-Century Jewish-Christian Polemic” [in
Hebrew], Tarbiz 68 (1999), 557-579.
“The Crucified
Jesus, Jewish Memory, and Counter-History” [in Hebrew], Zmanim 68-69
(1999-2000), 12-29.
“A 1096
Complex? Constructing the First Crusade
in Jewish Historical Memory, Medieval and Modern,” in Jews and Christians in
Twelfth-Century Europe, ed.
“Between History
and Historiography: On the Study of the Persecutions and the Determination of
Their Significance” [in Hebrew], in Facing the Cross: The 1096 Persecutions
in History and Historiography, Jerusalem, Dinur Institute for Jewish
History, 2000, pp. 16-31.
“Raymundus
Martini's Capistrum Iudaeorum” [in Hebrew], in Me’ah She‘arim:
Studies in Mediebal Jewish Spiritual Life in Memory of Isadore Twersky, ed.
Ezra Fleischer et al., Jerusalem, Magnes Press, 2001, pp. 279-296.
“Christian
Theology and Anti-Jewish Violence in the Middle Ages: Connections and
Disjunctions,” in Religious Violence between Christians and Jews: Medieval
Roots, Modern Perspectives, ed. Anna Sapir Abulafia, Palgrave Publishers,
2002, pp. 44-60.
“Synagoga
Conversa: Honorius Augustodunensis, The Song of Songs, and Christianity’s
Eschatological Jew,’” Speculum 79 (2004), 309-340. Full Text
“The Mystery of
Israel’s Salvation: Romans 11:25-26 in Patristic and Medieval Exegesis,” Harvard
Theological Review 98 (2005), 247-281. Full
Text
“The Blood Libel in Solomon ibn Verga’s Shevet Yehudah,” in
Jewish Blood: Reality and Metaphor in Jewish History, Religion, and Culture,
ed. Mitchell Hart, London, Routledge, 2009, pp. 116-135.
“Augustine’s Doctrine of Jewish Witness Revisited,” Journal
of Religion, 89 (2009),
564-578. Full
Text
“Antichrist and
His Jewish Connections” [in Hebrew], in Rishonim ve-Achronim: Studies in
Jewish History Presented to Avraham Grossman, ed.
“‘The Guardian of
Israel neither Dozes nor Sleeps’: Exegesis, Polemics, and Politics in the Late
Medieval Jewish-Christian Encounter,” in Transforming Relations: Essays on
Jews and Christians throughout History in Honor of
“Polemic and
Pluralism: The Jewish-Christian Debate in Solomon Ibn Verga’s Shevet
Yehudah,” forthcoming in Festschrift for
LAST UPDATED: OCT. 2010