David Ruderman
Joseph Meyerhoff Professor of Modern Jewish History
University of Pennsylvania
David B. Ruderman is presently the Joseph Meyerhoff Professor of Modern Jewish History and was formally Ella Darivoff Director of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania from 1994-2014. Prior to coming to Penn, he taught at the University of Maryland [1974-83] and at Yale University [1983-94]. He is the author of nine books and many articles. Three of these books, including the last, won national book awards in Jewish history. He has also edited or co-edited seven other books and co-edited two popular textbooks.
His most recent book A Best-Selling Hebrew Book of the Modern Era: The Book of the Covenant of Pinḥas Hurwitz and its Remarkable Legacy appeared in 2014 and a new book on missionaries, converts, and Maskilim in the 19th century is forthcoming in 2019.
He was a past president of the American Academy for Jewish Research. The Great Courses/Teaching Company produced two of his Jewish history courses, each in 24 lectures. In 2001, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture honored him with its lifetime achievement award for his work in Jewish history. In 2014, his colleagues presented him with a festschrift entitled Jewish Culture in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of David B. Ruderman, eds. Richard Cohen, Natalie Dohrmann, Adam Shear, and Elhanan Reiner (Pittsburgh, 2014).
Selected Publications
The World of a Renaissance Jew, 1981
Kabbalah, Magic, and Science, 1988
A Valley of Vision, 1990
Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe, 1995, 2001, published also in Italian, Hebrew, and Russian
Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key: Anglo-Jewry’s Construction of Modern Jewish Thought, 2000
Connecting the Covenants: Judaism and the Search for Christian Identity in Eighteenth Century England, 2007
Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History, 2010
A Best-Selling Hebrew Book of the Modern Era: The Book of the Covenant of Pinḥas Hurwitz and its Remarkable Legacy, 2014.