Michael D. Swartz
Professor of Hebrew and Religious Studies
The Ohio State University

Michael D. Swartz is Professor of Hebrew and Religious Studies at the Ohio State University. He received his Ph.D. at New York University in 1986 and has taught at Emory University and the University of Virginia. He specializes in the cultural history of Judaism in late antiquity, rabbinic studies, early Jewish mysticism and magic, Hebrew and Aramaic liturgical poetry, and ritual studies. He is the author of The Mechanics of Providence: The Workings of Ancient Jewish Magic and Mysticism (2018); The Signifying Creator: Non-Textual Sources of Meaning in Ancient Judaism (2012); Scholastic Magic: Ritual and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism (1996), and Mystical Prayer in Ancient Judaism (1992); and co-author, with Joseph Yahalom, of Avodah: Ancient Poems for Yom Kippur (2005) and Hebrew and Aramaic Incantation Texts from the Cairo Genizah (1992), with Lawrence H. Schiffman. He also served as the Associate Editor for Judaica for the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Religion (2005). 

Michael D. Swartz has received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, Fulbright-Hayes Program, and The Rothschild Foundation/Yad Hanadiv and has been a research fellow at the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan and the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Selected Publications

The Mechanics of Providence: The Workings of Ancient Jewish Magic and Mysticism. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 2018.

The Signifying Creator: Nontextual Systems of Meaning in Ancient Judaism. New York and London: New York University Press, 2012.

Avodah: Ancient Poems for Yom Kippur. With Joseph Yahalom. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005.

Scholastic Magic: Ritual and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.

Mystical Prayer in Ancient Judaism: An Analysis of Ma‘aseh Merkavah. Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum 28. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1992.

Hebrew and Aramaic Incantation Texts from the Cairo Genizah: Selected Texts from Taylor-Schechter Box K1. With Lawrence H. Schiffman. Semitic Texts and Studies 1. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992.