Jay R. Berkovitz
Distinguished Professor of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Jay R. Berkovitz, is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Professor in the Graduate Program of Jewish Studies at the Rothberg International School, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. An early modern historian, he specializes in Jewish law and jurisprudence, the family, and communal governance, and is the author of following books: The Shaping of Jewish Identity in Nineteenth-century France (Wayne, 1989); Rites and Passages: The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Culture in France, 1650-1860 (UPenn, 2004); Tradition and Revolution in Early Modern France (Shazar Center for Jewish History, 2007); Protocols of Justice: The Pinkas of the Metz Rabbinic Court, 1771-1789 (Brill, 2014), winner of the Jordan Schnitzer Award; and Law’s Dominion: Jewish Community, Religion and Early Modern Metz (Brill, 2020). Since 2012, he has served as Editor-in-Chief of Jewish History.
Berkovitz is the recipient of fellowships and grants from the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies, where he was a EURIAS Senior Fellow; the Lady Davis Foundation; the Marion and Jasper Whiting Fellowship; the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture; the Yad Hanadiv (Rothschild) Foundation; the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Jewish Studies; and the 2011-12 Inaugural National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Scholar Fellowship at the Center for Jewish History.
Selected Publications
Protocols of Justice: The Pinkas of the Metz Rabbinic Court, 1771-1789 (Brill, 2014).
Rites and Passages: The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Culture in France, 1650-1860 (UPenn, 2004).
“Rabbinic Culture and the Historical Development of Halakhah.” Cambridge History of Judaism, Volume 7 pp. 349-377. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
“Ritual and Emancipation: Reassessing Cultural Modernization in France.” Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques 32:1 (2006): 9-38.
“Authority and Innovation at the Threshold of Modernity: The Me’orei Or of Rabbi Aaron Worms of Metz.” Me’ah She’arim: Studies in Medieval Jewish Spiritual Life in Memory of Isadore Twersky. Jerusalem, 2001, pp. 249-285.
“Social and Religious Controls in Pre-Revolutionary France: Rethinking the Beginnings of Modernity.” Jewish History 15:1 (2001): 1-40.