Beth A. Berkowitz
Ingeborg Rennert Chair of Jewish Studies and Professor of Religion
Barnard College

Beth A. Berkowitz is Ingeborg Rennert Chair of Jewish Studies and Professor in the Department of Religion at Barnard College. She previously held a faculty position at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, and Yale University. She is the author of Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic and Christian Cultures (Oxford University Press, 2006; winner of the Salo Baron Prize); Defining Jewish Difference: From Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge University Press, 2012); Animals and Animality in the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge University Press, 2018); and What Animals Teach Us about Families: Kinship and Species in the Bible and Rabbinic Literature (University of California Press, forthcoming 2026). She is co-editor of the volume Religious Studies and Rabbinics: A Conversation (Routledge, 2017). She has published articles in the Journal for the American Academy of Religion, Journal of Jewish Studies, Jewish Quarterly Review, Journal of Ancient Judaism, Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities, AJS Review, and Biblical Interpretation. She has served as a member of the board, chair of the special task force on conference program, and division chair for the Association for Jewish Studies. Her area of specialization is classical rabbinic literature, and her interests include animal studies, Jewish difference, rabbinic legal authority, and Bible reception history.

Selected Publications

What Animals Teach Us About Families: Kinship and Species in the Bible and Rabbinic Literature. University of California Press, in press.

Animals and Animality in the Babylonian Talmud. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Religious Studies and Rabbinics. Co-edited with Elizabeth Shanks Alexander. Routledge Jewish Studies Series. New York, NY: Routledge, 2017.

Defining Jewish Difference: From Antiquity to the Present. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic and Christian Cultures. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006. Awarded Salo Baron Prize for Outstanding First Book in Jewish Studies, 2007.