Talya Fishman

Associate Professor of Religious Studies

Contact Information

Office Address:

225 Cohen Hall

Phone:

215.898.5837

Fax:

215.898.6568

Email Address:

tfishman@sas.upenn.edu

Office Hours:

Thursdays, 1:30 - 3 PM & by appointment

Education:

B.A., Wesleyan University (1976)
M.A., Jewish Theological Seminary of America (1979)
Ph.D., Harvard University (1986)

Research and Teaching Interests:

Exertionary Mental Practices of the Middle Ages
"Packaging" of Medieval Legal Cultures
Formation and Reformation of Medieval Jewish Subcultures

Selected Publications:

Becoming the People of the Talmud: Oral Torah as Written Tradition in Medieval Jewish Cultures, (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14852.html

Winner of the Nahum M. Sarna Award for Scholarship, Jewish Book Council, 2012.

Shaking the Pillars of Exile: "Voice of a Fool"'s Early Modern Jewish Critique of Rabbinic Culture, (Stanford University Press, 1997). http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=2628

"Claims About Mishna in the Epistle of Sherira Gaon: Islamic Theology and Jewish History", in David Freidenreich and Miriam Goldstein, eds., Border Crossings: Interreligious Interaction and the Exchange of Ideas in the Islamic Middle Ages, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), pp. 65-77; 184-192.

"On the Emergence and Disappearance of Rhineland Pietism", Festschrift in Honor of Professor Menahem Schmelzer, Evelyn Cohen, Emile Schrijver, editors. (Forthcoming)

"Guarding Oral Transmission: Within and Between Cultures", Oral Tradition, Volume 25, Number 1, March, 2010.
http://journal.oraltradition.org/issues/25i/fishman

"Changing Jewish Discourse About Christianity: The Efforts of Rabbi Leone Modena", in David Malkiel, ed., The Lion Shall Roar: Leone Modena and His World, (Magnes Press: Jerusalem, 2002), pp. 159-194.

"Forging Jewish Memory: Besamim Rosh and the Invention of Pre-Emancipation Jewish Culture", in E. Carlebach, J. Efron, D. Myers, eds., Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, (Brandeis University Press, 1998), pp. 70-88.

“The Rhineland Pietists’ Sacralization of Oral Torah”, Jewish Quarterly Review, vol. 96 (2006), pp. 9-16.

"Rhineland Pietist Approaches to Prayer and the Textualization of Rabbinic Culture in Medieval Northern Europe", Jewish Studies Quarterly, vol. 11 (2004), pp. 313-331.

"The Penitential System of Hasidei Ashkenaz and the Problem of Cultural Boundaries", Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, vol. 8, (1999), 201-229.

"New Light on the Dating and Provenance of Kol Sakhal's Timeless Critique of Rabbinic Authority and Tradition", Tarbiz 59 (1990): l7l-l90 [Hebrew].

Work in Progress:

Sensing Torah: A Medieval Jewish Guide to the Cultivation of Religious Experience

Formation and Re-Formation of Jewish Subcultural Identities in Medieval Europe. Co-editor, with Javier Castaño and Ephraim Kanarfogel

"Jewish Reassessments of Christian Theology in Early Modern Europe", [ to be published in The Reception of the Religious Other in Intercultural Exchange, 16th-18th Centuries, ed. Giovanni Tarantino, (Leiden: Brill, 2012)]

"The Genealogical Mapping of Medieval Jewish Subcultures: Reconsidering the Two-Center Theory"

Recent Courses:

Spirit and Law
Intro to Jewish Mysticism
Packaging Jewish Knowledge
Rabbinic Writers on Rabbinic Culture
The Religious "Other"
Themes in Medieval Jewish Culture

Curriculum vitae:

Talya Fishman - CV

Shaking the Pillars of Exile

Becoming the People of the Talmud