Peter Schäfer
Jewish Museum Berlin

Peter Schäfer, since 2014 Director of the Jewish Museum Berlin. After receiving his Dr. phil. in 1968 and completing his habilitation in 1973 he held teaching positions at the universities of Tübingen, Cologne and Berlin.

From 1998 until 2013 he served as Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor of Religion at Princeton University and (from 2005) as Director of the Program in Judaic Studies.

For his academic work, he has been honored with numerous awards, including the Leibniz Prize in 1994 and the Mellon distinguished Achievement Award in 2007. He is a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, a Foreign Member of the American Philosophical Society, a Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. He was a Member and a Visiting Mellon Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, a Member of the Historisches Kolleg Munich, and a Member at the Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin. He holds honorary degrees of the Universities Leiden and Tel Aviv.

Prof. Schäfer has written extensively on Talmudic and midrashic studies and on Jewish mysticism. His most recent work has focused on the relationship of Judaism and Christianity in late antiquity.

 

Selected Publications

Rivalität zwischen Engeln und Menschen. Untersuchungen zur rabbinischen Engelvorstellung, Berlin-New York: de Gruyter, 1975.

Der Bar Kokhba-Aufstand. Studien zum zweiten jüdischen Krieg gegen Rom, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (P. Siebeck), 1981.

The History of the Jews in the Greco-Roman World, London and New York: Routledge, 2003.

Judeophobia. Attitudes toward the Jews in the Ancient World, Cambridge, Mass. & London: Harvard University Press, 1997 (paperback edition 1998).

Mirror of His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002 (paperback 2004).

Jesus in the Talmud, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007 (paperback 2009).

The Origins of Jewish Mysticism, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009 (paperback ed. Princeton University Press, 2011).

Princeton University Sefer Hasidim Database (PUSHD) at https://etc.princeton.edu/sefer_hasidim/ (with Michael Meerson).

The Jewish Jesus: How Judaism and Christianity Shaped Each Other, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012 (paperback 2014).

Anziehung und Abstoßung/Attraction and Repulsion: Juden und Christen in den ersten Jahrhunderten ihrer Begegnung/Jews and Christians in the First Centuries of their Encounter, Lucas-Preis 2014, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015.

Zwei Götter im Himmel: Gottesvorstellungen in der jüdischen Antike, Munich: Beck, 2017.

Jüdische Polemik gegen Jesus und das Christentum: Die Entstehung eines jüdischen Gegenevangeliums, München: Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung, 2017.